I have spoken to a junior barrister at Blackwood Chambers who worked on the case. Speaking in the strictest confidence and with total anonymity, he told me that this was the agreed strategy. ‘We had to separate the two boys. Wayne Howard was the older of the two. He didn’t even live in Moxham Heath, but on the nearby Sheldon Estate, which was part of Chippenham. His father had been arrested for drug offences. He was physically larger, on the edge of puberty. It was evident from the start that he was a Machiavellian figure, even though he was only eleven, and that Stephen had been in thrall to him from the day they’d met. Our task was to make the judge see this, to prove the psychological manipulation which the older boy had exerted over the younger. Put simply, we set out to represent Stephen Longhurst as the victim he undoubtedly was.’
It helped that Stephen was physically small, with a voice that had not broken and baby blue eyes. Although it has never been proved, several reports have suggested that when his trial began （by video link）， he was dressed in a set of Red Button clothes that had been specially created for him, but which were originally designed for seven-year-olds. He was clutching a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, his favourite book. The aim was to make him look as sweet and innocent as possible.
As we have seen, this was only half the truth. There are the memories of Rosemary Alden, who helped at Moxham Heath Primary School and knew both boys, and the testimony of Stephen’s nanny, Lisa Carr, who still carries the scars of her time with him. There’s the evidence given by Police Constable Brownlow, who first encountered the two boys following the village allotment incident. And what does it all add up to? Simply this. That Stephen Longhurst was the archetypal spoilt brat, entitled, rude to the staff and cruel to animals. The best that can be said of him is that he was an innocent, waiting to be led astray. If Wayne Howard hadn’t come stumbling into his life, it might have been someone else. And whose fault was all this?
Step forward, Trevor and Annabel Longhurst.
They had always made it abundantly clear that their second son was an afterthought, the unwanted child – and how do you think it affected Stephen, hearing this? Oh yes, they showered him with material wealth – the quad bikes, the computer games, his own horse before he was even nine – but they were never actually there, too focused on their investment portfolio, their business in America and their fashionable charity projects. Their home might be in Wiltshire, but their hearts were in London and New York. The ten-year-old had no relationship with his teenaged, self-centred brother who had spent the past five years at a top public school and was about to disappear on a ‘charity’ trip around Africa. Martin Longhurst really didn’t need a gap year. The gap between him and his brother could hardly be more apparent.
Lonely and alone, surrounded by paid staff rather than people who loved him, Stephen Longhurst was the perfect target for a boy like Wayne Howard. Oliver Twist had found his Artful Dodger … in this instance, a young lout who had been born, quite literally, into a life of crime – slumbering in a pram that had been stolen from John Lewis. Wayne must have thought he had struck gold when he first set foot in Moxham Hall.
The two of them found common ground in vandalism and delinquency. They had set off on a road that could only lead to disaster. A violent and unnecessary death was just a few breaths away.
And yet, there is still a part of me that feels sorry for Wayne Howard. He may have been a bully and a bad influence, but I have to remind myself that he too was only eleven years old, brought up on a rough council estate. What chances had he ever had in life? A father with a conviction for dealing Class A drugs. A mother who spent her child benefit on cheap vodka and cigarettes. The social workers who visited the Howards’ home on the Sheldon Estate – far too late, of course – described a scene of squalor. I can defend Wayne because one thing is certain. Nobody else did.
From the very start, it is clear that Trevor and Annabel Longhurst and their razor-sharp legal team had decided it would be perfectly all right to throw Wayne to the wolves if it would save their own boy. Ironic, isn’t it! A group of socialists who had espoused the values of New Labour and who were loudly beating the drum for equality of opportunity and education were ready to pile onto a working-class kid who’d never had one-tenth of the privilege of their own son. That may not be my view, but it was one that was being cited as the funeral of Major Philip Alden ended and the first day of the court hearing drew near.
18
Moxham Hall
Like Hawthorne, I had managed to download Harriet’s book on Kindle and I skimmed through it on the train to Chippenham. What was I to make of Harriet Throsby’s writing style? It was a mishmash of treacly sentimentalism and sheer venom, worth every penny of the ￡0.00 that Kindle had attached to it. I had to agree with what Martin Longhurst had said. There was something deeply offensive about turning a tiny incident, a tragedy in an English village, into some sort of Mills & Boon morality tale, and reading it, I felt less bad about her review of Mindgame. It was one thing to trash a play at the theatre, but with Bad Boys she had done the same to people’s lives and almost every sentence demonstrated to me what a thoroughly unpleasant woman she had been. Why should I care what she thought of me? It’s an interesting paradox. The more humane the critics, the more hurtful their opinions.