Best Regards From Aunty Jane

Best

Regards

From

Aunty

Jane

Amber Jo Illsley

Copyright © 2023 Amber Jo Illsley.

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Cover Photo: Weka Pass, North Canterbury, New Zealand. Author Photo

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9794-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9793-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023915268

Balboa Press rev. date: 09/28/2023

This is Book Two of

the Aunty Jane series.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Thirty

CHAPTER ONE

I was terrified.

He had me by the throat, telling me he wasn’t going to hurt me, as long as I stayed still. His hand, only lightly wrapped around my neck crept up to cup my chin and then he began slowly kissing me, and my terror of a moment ago dissolved and in its place crept a beautiful feeling of lassitude. I couldn’t see his face but the few words he said had a strong Irish accent.

It was Patrick. No man had gone such a long way in chasing away my feelings of self-doubt and lack of faith in men until Patrick came along. Patrick - that lovely big man with an accent that could charm the birds out of trees; he even totally charmed me - me, the freelance journalist whose second name was Sceptism – and yes, with a capital S.

Just as my arms were creeping up and around his neck and my fingers were getting delightfully tangled with his black curly hair, the alarm went off. I woke up with a groan - feeling short-changed and as if I’d had no sleep at all, and cursed the fact that I was so tired still.

Dang! I said out loud, but making that disgruntled noise actually helped a bit. It was turning into such a lovely dream too.

Correction: it already was a lovely dream.

I did wonder however, about the beginning of it, with the hand around my throat, albeit gently. An analyst might suggest that it was a form of control and he or she would probably be right, but I wasn’t into analysing my dream right then. I just liked the way it was developing, and darn it all, the alarm had to go off and spoil it.

I got out of bed and rubbed at my face. The alarm kept going, but then I realised in my still half-asleep state that it was the phone by my bed. I picked it up, and yawned. Hello.

It was the guy in charge of the court reporting at The Press. His name was Benji Solomon and he was such a sweet guy. Is that you, Ruby-Jane? You sound strange.

If it’s not me, then it’s my clone, I said, giving another yawn.

Good, there are two of you, Benji said. Twice the work output.

I could hear the smile in his voice. Despite all the mayhem he dealt with in court reporting, he never seemed to be affected by it. "In that case, no pun intended, or maybe it was intended, perhaps one of you would be available to cover the district court reporting today?"

Isn’t one of the regular journalists available?

No, they’re working on other stuff, including a Christmas supplement which will be in Saturday’s paper.

Huh? Christmas coming up so soon? What happened to the year?

It sped on by lightly, or perhaps on not so lightly greased wings, but thankfully we do at least have a bit of time before the mad rush decends upon us. Benji said. So, are you free to do a day’s work for the Press?

I visualised Benji as we spoke; thirtyish, good-natured, round and jolly with a sweet, angelic-looking face, and a great person to have as a friend. Unmarried, and quite happily too, so he’d told me once, after observing several of his friends’ marriages disintegrate and having seen the aftermath.

In fact, I wished Benji had been more my friend than what the tall gossip boys were. At least Benji had a jolly good excuse in wanting to find out information! One would never have known, with Benji having such a sweet face and equally sweet nature, that he dealt with the unlovely facts of life on a regular basis.

I had already done quite a few stints at court reporting and always went home feeling utterly drained. Perhaps one got used to it, I pondered, then decided that I for one would never get used to the stuff that came out in court.

There were of course, the odd moments when humorous things did happen in court, but that was fairly rare.

So, Ruby-Jane, have we agreed on your doing the court reporting for today? Sorry it’s such short notice but the other journos are too busy and my usual bloke is away sick. I heard him over the phone - he sounded terrible.

But is it a case of ‘all the world’s a stage’...et cetera?

No, not in this case, Benji said. "But there are quite a few in the office here who are really good at putting on an act if they have another agenda. That is, if their dear old grannie has supposedly died, and they simply must attend the funeral. The excuse wears out after the editor has been made aware that the perpetrator has at least five grannies, and he has a stunning, sexy girlfriend who works nights at a hotel but is free during the day."

Perpetrator... I said, amused. It’s time you had a decent break from court reporting, my friend.

What? Oh yes, I hear you - and I hear again what I said. You’re right, Ruby. Otherwise the next thing I’ll be doing is calling the editor ‘Your Honour’, and we can’t have that, can we? It would be too embarrassing. Imagine if he’d invited me to lunch, for instance, and he was about to get up from his fancy office chair to leave for the restaurant and I said to him that he may now step down from the dock?

Does he do that often?

What, step down from the dock?

I giggled at the mental image.

No, invite you for lunch.

On the rare occasions, when he wants me to do something extra for the newspaper.

Hmmm - okay Benji, I’ll do the court reporting for you. It should be fun.

You’re a doll. Have I said that to you before?

I’m an angel usually, I chuckled, but doll will do nicely. I thought vaguely of my editor for the rural magazine, Bob Meadows, and how he often called me Doll.

I mentally ran through the writing jobs I already had to do, and fortunately they weren’t many as I’d been up late getting my replies done for the Aunty Jane column I wrote on a regular basis for Girly Gossip magazine, a magazine that sounded more suitable for young girls, but had really good content. Of course, my page was a popular part of the ‘good content’!

My boss Maddie Jones looked like the epitome of a young woman who would undoubtedly be part and parcel of a magazine such as Girly Gossip; fluffy, curly blonde hair, a lovely face, bright blue eyes, tall slender figure and lots of rattling bangles and earrings. That all makes her sound rather like a cliché, but a cliché she was not - otherwise she would not have been the editor of said magazine. There was a steeliness and intelligence in her that explained the reason why she had the important job as editor. The doll-like features and very girly apparel was an added bonus I am sure, for the all-male members of the panel who’d initially interviewed her for the position as editor. I found out all this further down the track, of course. Maddie was not one of those people to reveal all on first introductions.

Come to that, neither was I.

Okay Benji, I’ll do the court reporting, I repeated, giving my head a bit of a shake to stop myself doing one of my habits of thinking off on a tangent when I was tired and/or overworked, or both. I’d better get a move on, to get some of the basic info from the desk at reception then, before court is in session.

Send in your clone - or should I sing ‘Send In The Clowns’? He sang the title of the song.

Very witty, you little punster, I said with a small sigh. I won’t ask you to enlarge on that statement slash sung question. I must admit it would be very handy to have a clone.

I was smiling as I started packing a few things into my briefcase with one hand while holding the phone with the other. We often tried to outdo one another with puns, and Benji would say how much he enjoyed my off the wall humour. Usually I hated puns - or pretended that I did, but Benji was the exception to my sort-of rule. Puns were rather great, unless people came out with some that were so lame that one felt like lying down and groaning. Or even crawling under the table in pun-overload.

The guys here don’t have much of a sense of humour at all, more’s the pity, he said. Or maybe it’s just me.

I told him about the time a few years before when I’d had some small moles cut out from my midriff. My doctor, who liked to be called Doc Matthew was a character of a man and like me, enjoyed black humour and was also a Gary Larson fan. We were laughing about one of his cartoons when the nurse knocked and entered the surgery at the precise moment the doctor was holding up a small chunk of my flesh, complete with moles attached and blood dripping off. The nurse looked horrified at the sight - although I am more than sure she had seen blood on many prior occasions. Just from other people. Maybe it was the laughter that gave her a horrified look. Or perhaps she thought I was rather manic, laughing uproariously while the doctor held bloodied flesh above me. I will concede that it most likely wasn’t an everyday occurrence for the poor nurse.

I had just been telling Doc Matthew the joke along the lines of two stags in a forest glade; the stags humanised and smoking cigars while standing on their hind legs. One of the stags has a massive target painted on his stomach. The other stag takes his cigar from his mouth and comments: ‘that’s one hell of a birth mark you’ve got there, bud,’ - or words to that effect. Of course that really appealed to Doc Matthew’s and my sense of humour. When we’d related the joke to the nurse who appeared to be transfixed by my bit of flesh still held up by Doc Matthew, she didn’t get the Gary Larsen joke.

‘Ohhh right,’ she’d said vaguely, looking warily at me and then she added that Mrs Coots was waiting for the doc to come and check out her bunions as well as the veins in her legs. Doc Matthew had nodded as she turned to exit. I knew who Mrs Coots was and it was common knowledge that she was known as ‘Bandicoot’, in part due to her name, but the other part was because she had bandy legs. The doc had given me a wee smile as the nurse exited. I knew what he was thinking but did not voice due to ethics and possible gossip. Mrs Coots, that denizen of disgust, purveyor of personal information and perfidy on her neighbours; a glorified gossip and whatever other poetic and alliteration licence one might care to use when making reference to her - Mrs Coots was all of those things, and a more unlovely person one would be hard pushed to find. Not that one would purposely go and seek someone of her ilk, but there you go - maybe someone, from somewhere would.

A serious masochist, maybe.

I just hoped it would never be me whom she would seek out. But having thought that thought and being from Ireland I thought I had better unthink any thoughts about Mrs Coots, good or bad, but mostly bad, just in case the worst happened and the woman contacted me to write a story about her. Ugh. On the other hand, she might have an interesting story to tell one day.

I’d told all these things to Benji this particular morning, while he listened patiently and gave an occasional chuckle. He too, knew Mrs Coots.

With another chuckle he said catch up later, Ruby-J, and thanks again.

We ended our call and I took a deep breath.

A new day had well and truly begun.

I knew the ropes; get the basic info from the reception desk at the courthouse, scrawl it down as quickly as possible to save time later, head into the courtroom and sit at the reporter’s desk up near the magistrate’s bench. Listen hard to all the charges, take lots of notes and get the court stories done in the evening and email them all to Benji. It was going to be another exhausting day, but I didn’t mind doing it for Benji, as he was so good natured. And so was one of my editors, as I mentioned before; Bob Meadows (I so loooved his surname! So fitting for the managing editor and writer of rural magazines!), who rang me regularly from Auckland, with names and wordage required on rural stories for the three magazines under a parent company. I had eased right back on the stories when the magazines were taken over by a larger company; a shock at the time but I’d started burning out again. So perhaps it was all very timely. These days I did a little more for the Girly Gossip magazine, and my other writing had taken on a slightly different direction - such as extra court reporting from time to time.

I’d really missed hearing from Bob but as we all know, things that seem to have been the same for years and years can suddenly change overnight, and that’s what happened with the magazines. I missed my friend Freddie too, with whom I used to stay on my journeys southwards to cover rural stories and photography. But no doubt he was busy with his girlfriend Maxie; I couldn’t remember her last name offhand but I’d remembered how well she could ride a farm bike! Better than your average guy - or maybe that was just me; the memory of her arising some irritation in me. She’d not been one of those women one would like to have as a bestie. Oh yes, I remembered now, her name was Maxie Bell. Certainly a long way from the belle of the ball, I thought snidely, thinking of the way she had treated me when I’d first met her.

But back to the courtroom. Sometimes a funny story came out of the big room; but mostly not. When something amusing did emerge, the court registrar would glare around the room, almost daring anyone to smile and ruin the gravity of the situation. Even if it wasn’t particularly grave at all. I could see that person, a hundred and fifty years or more ago, wearing a black robe and wig and being immensely proud of his status in court. I rather liked the mental picture of a bewigged and robed gentleman flouncing around the courtroom, acting as he was the man in charge, rather than the magistrate of the day.

But flouncing - somehow would have ruined his superior act. A court registrar is not renown for flouncing, as it were, methinks.

~~

Dressed in a slim-fitting black poly-linen skirt that flared out very prettily just below my knees, and a matching, fitted jacket with a simple lemon-shade blouse and looking very official - even if I do say so myself, I headed off to the courthouse and wondered what gems I was going to have to write about today. Still, it was work after all, and money in the bank. I would remind myself of the latter every time I had the urge to not go out and report.

Sylvia, the receptionist at the courthouse greeted me warmly as she always did.

Nice to see someone normal here for a change, she said, then looked around warily in case anyone had overheard her and perhaps complained: the complainant most likely being a particular lobbyist for the rights of defendants. ‘Poor souls,’ I remember the lobbyist saying one morning when I happened to be the reporter for the day. The woman had annoyed me from the start. She’d pushed in front of me to see Sylvia who had looked at her warily, having had dealings with her in the past, and fairly frequently. ‘They know not what they do.’

‘Baloney,’ I’d said, earning a filthy look from the lobbyist. I continued anyway. ‘They jolly well do know what they’re doing. But they just hope a bleeding heart like yourself is going to come along and say poor soul, you can’t help it, having had such a dreadful childhood. Even though the perpetrator is now six foot six, deemed of sound mind, covered in ugly tats, hasn’t had a shower or bath for three weeks and has just robbed and raped a poor innocent woman.’

‘I should complain about you,’ the woman had said sniffily.

‘Please do then, be my guest. Make sure you complain to the police and they will tell you exactly what goes on in the real world!’

The woman had looked daggers at both me and Sylvia and stomped off.

If she’d thought we were going to be intimidated by the filthy look, she had to think again.

Good, no one else around, Sylvia said just now, with a wide grin. Not mentioning any names, of course.

Of course not, I agreed and smiled, remembering the lobbyist. Now Sylvia, what poor, dear innocent souls – who know not what they do are up on charges today?

We giggled together as she showed me the list. Sylvia moved away and fetched something from a cupboard as I quickly wrote down the basics of information, including the correct spelling of names. After a further few minutes of chatting and double-checking my list I raised my head and commented on the lovely perfume wafting round the room.

What a lovely perfume, I commented, taking a deep sniff. It’s the same as I have had the pleasure of smelling on other occasions I’ve been here.

Sylvia gave me a wry look and held up a can of air freshener. "It’s air freshener, Ruby. I have to spray it around the room every court day. You know there are some people up on drug charges who are sooo cheeky that they dare to smoke cannabis outside the courthouse on court day. And each time someone comes through the front door, the smell wafts in here."

"Huh, the cheek of them! I said. How dare they?" I added with a grin.

Yes, that’s the way I feel. I suppose they’re of the mind that they may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

Er - under the circumstances... I said with a grin, looking up and gesturing at the very visible Justice Department sign on the wall behind the reception desk.

She smiled in response, noting what I was looking at. There’ll be no hanging today, Ruby.

Whew, thank goodness for that, I said, giving a wipe to my mock-fevered brow. Grinning broadly, I bid Sylvia adieu for the time being, and headed into the corridor and into the partly-open big heavy teak door opposite.

The first time I had entered through that open door I had felt quite intimidated. ‘What lies on the other side of the door?’ could have been a catch cry. But at the time I’d taken a deep breath and thought: ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ I’d decided that to find a body slumped and bleeding still, on the other side would definitely be rather off-putting, but it hadn’t happened then and nor would it today. These days I pushed the door open with confidence.

Two lawyers were there, one with a knee up on a chair and his smart suit jacket flicked out to show the very pretty silver grey embossed lining. The lawyer eyed me up in suspicion when I entered.

Good morning! I said cheerfully.

Is it? said the larger of the two men. He looked so tall and imposing I would have thought that every day was a good one for him. Meaning that no one would dare intimidate him due to his sheer size and presence, but there you go, I thought. Even the biggies have their bad days. Seemingly this one was going to be a bad day for him. I had a moment of disquiet, wondering what lovely citizens were going to be up on charges, but then decided that although only some of the names on my list were a bit familiar, I would just wait and see and take notes like the good little journalist I was.

Yes it is, I replied. Oh, by the way, I added, noting the sole of the shoe of the other lawyer who still had his knee on the chair. Just as well I am not here for a divorce.

Oh? And why’s that? Apart from the fact that divorce is done differently these days.

You have a hole in the sole of your shoe and I might feel sorry enough for you to pay more for you to represent me!

The tall lawyer gave a snort of laughter and the shorter fellow promptly lowered his foot to the floor and gave me a narrow-eyed stare.

Are you filing for a divorce? he asked smoothly, looking towards my left hand which was ringless.

Nope, I said happily. I’m not married!

Why am I not surprised? he said snidely.

Probably because I look too smart to get caught, I said, also smoothly, but with a grin. Have a great day, gentlemen!

The shorter lawyer gave a bit of a snort too, but at least he smiled at me this time. I sat down at the reporter’s desk, rearranged the slightly skewed large blotter and checked my list of people up on charges again. I also re-read the names of the lawyers; Toby Whitehead and Peter Sawyer. I would know soon enough who was representing whom. I’d scrawled details down so quickly I hadn’t had time to put them with the right people up on charges. Peter was easy to remember; Sawyer the lawyer. I would think of Toby as to be, or not to be, that is the question - so really, that was easy too. And Toby is a short name to scrawl down. And I could also think of him as Toby Jug. ‘T-J’ would do nicely, for my form of shorthand.

A few more people entered the courtroom, some to sit in the visitors’ seats – perhaps to support a relative up on charges, or else to simply be entertained - maybe both, and in just a few more minutes most of the seats had been filled. I was the only journalist that day, which suited me just fine. I didn’t have to worry about a journalist from another newspaper trying to steal glances at my notes, which had happened on two of the other occasions. I sat back in my chair, which was from a much earlier era: wooden seat, dark with age and old polish; with wooden arms and fairly ornate legs, and was very sturdily built. Thankfully the cushion on it was clean and comfy. Oh, if this chair could talk, I thought, wondering what fascinating snippets it could tell me from the past.

Maybe even something about the slumped body on the other side of the door that I had imagined earlier. But that would have been from very long ago, I hastily added to my imaginings.

I thought about the time not so very long ago when I’d had to share the reporters’ desks with the journalist from the main newspaper in Christchurch. I was first in the courtroom and then Jody Templeton arrived and told me I was in her chair.

‘I don’t see your name anywhere on it," I had replied. ‘I understand that this is government property.’

‘Well I always sit here!’ she’d exclaimed, her cheeks red with annoyance. Personally, I thought she usually sat in this particular chair so she could be on view to the people at the other end of the courtroom: those up on charges and also those who had come to be entertained by the proceedings. I was aware that she was somewhat of a poser.

‘Not today you don’t!’ I’d said shortly.

‘Well, that’s my blotter!’

‘We will swap blotters then,’ I said, promptly swapping them over. I was happy to do so as her blotter was a mish-mash of doodles and scribbles and quite frankly I was surprised that whoever cleaned the courtroom after a sitting, hadn’t removed the very messy page.

With a harrumph from Jody, the morning had worn on. And presently it was time for the court to adjourn for lunch. Bryce Sullivan, the policeman on door duty for the day came over to us and started telling us all about the big crop of cannabis they’d discovered a few days ago. ‘In full flower it was too,’ he had said with a little smile. I saw that his eyes were twinkling. ‘Y’know, if you get that stuff on your uniform sleeves, whewee...you take a sniff up and down your arms and oh boy, you have to be careful you don’t sniff too hard because it’s easy to get high on that stuff when you’re taking it away to be burnt.’

I’d glanced at Jody. I saw that her eyes were glittering and already I could see her headline: ‘Local Cop Admits to Getting High On The Job’, which technically would have been as least partly true, but I knew Jody loved scandal and loved to make a hot story out of practically nothing. I decided to stop her before she went too far. ‘Take no notice of him Jody! He’s just having you on.’

The tell-tale deep flush across her cheeks told me that I was right; that she had been planning a story out of innocent remarks made by Bryce.

Had I ignored the tell-tale signs, the headline would have made a mockery of the local police, and would most likely have made national news.

Just now, I glanced around at the visitors, many of whom had their eyes on me and I turned away to face the big door I had entered through just moments before. Soon, they would be watching the magistrate and the defendants and their lawyers and would mostly forget I was there, which was just what I wanted.

CHAPTER TWO

All rise, intoned the registrar in a majestic alto voice, just as the magistrate entered the courtroom. He strode in, the years of dealing with the dark side of human nature having weighed on him, so that he appeared stooped under the load.

We all rose from our seats. I listened to the nervous clearing of throats and the occasional cough, thinking that really, how little human nature changes. People nearly always coughed or cleared their throats when they were nervous.

The man in his black robe looked so like a caricature of a judge that I had to hide a smile. Judge Ernest MacIlroy seated himself and stared over top of his half-glasses; his face long and mournful. But having seen and heard him in action on a few other occasions, I knew that that long and mournful face hid a great sense of humour, one so delightfully droll that it had taken me by surprise the first time it had come to the fore. I remembered the occasion and smiled to myself. A very tarty and hard-looking woman had laid a molestation charge against a local policeman, and was seeking payment due to the alleged damages to her. She’d stepped up into the dock and her defending lawyer had read out the claims she’d made. The judge had looked at her in such a cynical way, one elbow leaning on his bench and his chin cupped in his hand and I’d had to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t laugh. He’d asked her what damages she felt had been done to her, as he could see no evidence of damage. The woman, a Mrs Muriel Smith, had claimed that the policeman had just ‘upped and attacked’ her, without any provocation whatsoever. But over the next half hour photographs were produced which had been taken of the policeman who was actually the one who had been attacked, not the other way around. He had been making enquiries regarding a shoplifting incident at a big supermarket in one of the suburbs. The policeman had sustained a black eye, swollen cheek and cut lip when the woman had belted him with a handbag, which turned out to be stolen from another retail store.

Judge MacIlroy had suggested that it would have been in Mrs Smith’s best interests to pay damages to the poor policeman, rather than expect the opposite. ‘Attack is the best form of defence may seem to be a good maxim, and this is what you’re attempting, madam,’ he’d said.

‘I dunno what yer on about,’ Mrs Smith had said. ‘All I did was hit him with me handbag, when he started getting too nosy.’

‘And therein lies an excellent admission, in front of many witnesses, and add to that the outright lie, as the handbag was not actually yours, but stolen property from another retail outlet,’ the judge had intoned. ‘In summary, you are hereby charged in this court Mrs Smith, for attacking a police officer in the course of his duty, and stealing a handbag, property of Handsell’s Clothing And Accessories. I could add here that you are accessory after the fact, but that would not be quite true and anyway, I’m almost out of puns today. You will pay recompense to Handsell’s Clothing and Accessories of sixty dollars and ninety cents, and nine dollars and ten cents to the supermarket for stealing a frozen chicken - too big for the handbag, eh? And far too noticeable? And you will be fined five hundred dollars for the attack on the police officer. You will also pay recompense for his medical expenses and loss of earnings while off duty. This recompense amounts to five hundred and fifty dollars. Let me see now, while I add this up - oh yes good heavens, Mrs Smith, one thousand, one hundred and twenty dollars exactly, plus of course, court costs. And there you have my little bit of alliteration for the day. Please step down, and think yourself lucky you didn’t end up getting a jail sentence, since this is not your first, nor even your second or third time up on charges, but your fourth time. All monies are to be paid within thirty days, and if not, you will be arrested and charged accordingly.’

‘Get stuffed,’ she’d said. Her lawyer, in this case T-J had rolled his eyes in disgust with his client. He’d caught my eye and I gave him a sympathetic look. The man had barely had a chance to speak on her behalf, but maybe he was actually glad about that.

‘I will add another $200 right now to your fines, for contempt of court.’

Judge MacIlroy had banged his gavel on his bench and Mrs Smith stepped down, turned to flip the bird at him and tripped on a worn part of the carpet. She went down in an untidy heap, her full skirt awry and showing off her large pink knickers. ‘Just be glad I’m not fining you further, Mrs Smith, for displaying your underwear to the judiciary. Not a fine sight,’ he’d added, his eyes narrow with suppressed amusement at the unlovely Mrs Smith, still sprawled on the carpet. There were loud titters around the courtroom.

I was brought back to the present, when someone gave a loud cough.

Judge MacIlroy casually waved a hand and told everyone to please be seated.

Who have we got up first? he said, while staring over top of his glasses and letting his gaze settle on me for a moment. Oh, not me, sire! I wanted to call out, but I thought it best not to be facetious. Who are you representing? he finally asked me.

The Press, I replied.

Ah. You do not look at all like the usual court reporter, and so I am assuming that you are someone else, he said with a tiny smile.

That is correct Your Honour, I replied. The usual Press reporter is unavailable.

Unavailable, eh? A very careful response, if I may say so, and I may indeed say so, since I am the judge here. He gave a small chuckle. Hmmm…if I remember rightly, you have been here before, the judge murmured and adjusted his specs to read notes that had been placed on his bench.

Yes indeed I have, I said firmly.

I could have said all sorts of things, including: you assume right, but one should be careful about making assumptions, shouldn’t one, your Honour? And maybe I had a certain look on my face that suggested to the registrar that I was about to make an unsuitable comment, as she gave me a warning look. I gave her an innocent one in return, and batted my eyelashes at her. Okay, so I know I should not have done that as I knew she was gay and I for one, did not want the possibility of being waylaid after court had adjourned for the day.

I soon realised I need not have worried as she gave me another glare and I looked down at my blotter and hid a smile, which almost broke into a snort of laughter as the previous reporter had drawn a funny face; portraying ugly jug ears, snub nose and sticking his tongue out and saying ‘bleeeehhh!’ with droplets of spittle added for realism. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen that right away; maybe because I was too busy looking around the courtroom.

I just had to ask Benji later on who the reporter was who had likely done that drawing. It really was very good and knowing Benji, quite possibly his work of art. I was surprised that the glaring registrar had not removed the top page of the blotter, but maybe she simply had not seen it, and maybe the cleaner, whoever he or she was, had simply forgotten to remove it. For that I was glad, for if any particularly nasty cases came up before the judge, I would just need to look at the ‘Bleeeehhh’ face every so often to instantly cheer myself up.

After another moment, the judge asked the first person up on charges to enter the dock. Calling Danny Hipkiss! Danny Hipkiss, was the registrar’s imperious voice as she gestured to the cop who was standing tall in front of the big side door. The cop opened it with a flourish.

A young man, who looked no more than sixteen, entered the courtroom, walked hesitantly up to the dock and entered it. He blushed with embarrassment and nervousness.

"Been a bit of a naughty boy, haven’t you, young man?" Judge MacIlroy said loudly, but not expecting an answer. I fought the urge to giggle.

The cop was standing straight, almost unmoving at the big door opposite, looking so much like cops do on the telly; all strong, fit and tall, ramrod straight and with his arms folded; face inscrutable and woe betide anyone who tried to leave via that exit. He looked straight at me and yes, it was Constable Bryce Sullivan again.

The boy in the dock went even redder, if that were possible. The judge asked the cop at the desk directly in front to stand and read out the charges.

The boy was older than he looked and no doubt that was how he’d got away with a lot in the past. He looked so young and innocent, but was actually twenty-three.

The defendant, Danny James Hipkiss, was found and arrested at the address of 13 Hopkinson Street, the cop said in a monotone. At the time of his arrest he was in possession of a quantity of cannabis plant. The cop paused and checked his notes and read out what the quantity was. "That cannabis was located in bedroom number one. In bedroom number two, we found a