later he was arrested and charged with several offences under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, the offences dating as far back as the Eighties. A charge of conspiracy was thrown in for good measure. The scandal was a complete fabrication, he told everyone – he was being thrown to the dogs, a sacrifice on the altar of political correctness, it was a conspiracy by the gutter press to discredit him, they hated him because he supported curbing their freedom. And so on.
On the same day that Nicholas Sawyer was arrested, several others were picked up by the police. Sir Quentin Gough-Plunkett was one of them, a veteran and vocal anti-Europe campaigner. Sir Quentin was also a noted chess player – he had qualified in the Western zonal round of the World Chess Championship in 1962 and for many years had been the patron of a charity that encouraged underprivileged children to learn to play chess.
Also questioned, and eventually charged, was a retired senior police officer from Cheshire, a former circuit judge and the aged boss of a family-run construction company. They had all once been members, it was claimed, of a shadowy group known to each other as ‘the magic circle’. There is no statute of limitations in the United Kingdom for sexual offences.
The Crown Prosecution Service praised Bronte Finch, the daughter of a High Court judge, for her evidence. Her ‘brave’ testimony in open court had helped convict a ‘brutal predator’.
Another witness, Ms Felicity Yardley, gave evidence in the cases of all of the accused. She refused anonymity and later sold her story to the tabloids for an undisclosed figure. Ms Yardley, a former prostitute and drug addict, claimed that she had been persuaded by MI5 to give evidence. She claimed that ‘a man in a silver BMW’ had taken her to a safe house, where she had given a statement about the ‘foreigners’ she had met when in the company of Nicholas Sawyer. She had been told that he had sold defence secrets for years to the Russians and the Chinese and anyone else prepared to pay. MI5 were very keen to find a way to ‘neutralize’ him’ – their words, she said. She was offered witness protection by them, but ‘the bastards’ had welshed on the offer.
These shadowy figures in the Security Service told her that the magic circle were like ‘the Illuminati’ (it took her several attempts to pronounce the word) and had tentacles that reached far and wide. They were prepared to kill anyone who might reveal their secrets. She herself, she claimed, had been threatened with serious harm if she talked to anyone who was investigating the magic circle, as had a friend who had also been a victim of the same men and had been similarly threatened and even had her children kidnapped, Miss Yardley said. The prosecution was unable to produce this witness. ‘Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ Fee said, in an unconscious echo of another scapegoat of the great and the good.
The team for the defence said Miss Yardley was an unreliable witness and her evidence was that of a publicity-seeking fantasist who was hawking her story round to anyone who would listen. Nicholas Sawyer was a patriot who would never betray his country, let alone abuse underage children.
After three days’ deliberation, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.
‘This is a travesty of justice,’ Nicholas’s wife, Lady Susan Sawyer, said, adding that an appeal had already been mounted.
Gough-Plunkett died in mysterious circumstances before his case came to trial. The senior officer with the Met killed himself by jumping off the top of a multi-storey car park. The CEO of the construction company suffered a massive heart attack at his desk and was dead before his PA could run to him with the defibrillator that was kept next to the women’s washroom.
Andy Bragg was arrested while still in hospital, on charges arising from the Modern Slavery Act – human trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation, arranging travel with a view to sexual exploitation and controlling prostitution for gain – as well as on suspicion of association with criminal organizations and money-laundering offences. If he was convicted he would never see the outside world again.
‘Seems fair,’ he said to Rhoda.
‘Stupid plonker,’ was her own guilty verdict. She only came to visit him once in hospital.
While in the hospital, Andy Bragg managed to convey to Rhoda where the money was hidden and she was able to relocate to Anguilla, where