A Sandhurst instructor told his wife that £4,000 the Sun newspaper paid him for a picture of Prince William in a bikini had come from a gambling win, a court has heard.
John Hardy, a colour sergeant at the military academy, asked his wife Claire to pick up the bonanza at a Thomas Cook outlet in Slough in June 2006.
He was in Australia at the time and told her the jackpot was from the bookies.
He is on trial over allegations he received more than £23,000 for titbits about Prince William, Prince Harry and others between 2006 and 2008.
Jurors heard that the £4,000 was described in News International’s books as a payment for “Prince William wearing a bikini exclusive” and was to be collected by “Claire Hardy”.
Hardy had left Sandhurst at the time but had continued contact with the paper’s royal editor, Duncan Larcombe.
The retired soldier told jurors previously that he had “fabricated a story” to suggest he could have got hold of a photo of the prince dressed as a Bond girl in order to get the cash in advance for the picture.
“John called me to tell me to pick up some money that he said he’d won in Australia,” his wife said. “I don’t remember if he told me how much. I remember it was a large amount of money.”
She said her husband instructed her to take the money to HM Supplies in Camberley to pay off a bill for boots for cadets at Sandhurst.
Hardy said she remembered going there and speaking to an older woman who was “grumpy” because she was closing the shop and wanted to go home.
She recalled there was woman who was “older, small build and very grumpy” in the shop.
Hardy remembered she “the £4,000 did go up on the counter” and that she got a receipt, but the shop did not have a record of this transaction nine years on.
Prosecutor Mark Bryant-Heron put it to her that she and her husband “concocted” this “false account” of supplying boots to Sandhurst to conceal the fact he was actually brokering a deal with someone else for the Prince William photo.
“The reason you’ve alighted on this [cover story] was you thought they did not have records going back that far,” he said.
She said the shop told her they had no records but she had a distinct recollection of telling the shopkeeper she had the money for her husband.
“When I said John Hardy she knew exactly what that was,” she added.
Bryant-Heron put it to her that the truth was “Mr Hardy has brokered a deal for the provision of the photo.” She replied “It was not”.
In his evidence, Hardy told jurors he had never seen a photo of Prince William in a bikini but he had led Larcombe to believe he could get one and asked for payment in advance.
She denied ever knowing that her husband was selling information to the Sun or that he was using her bank account for payments from the paper.
She has been charged with aiding and abetting the alleged crime by allowing her bank account to be used to funnel some of the payments.
She said she did not read the Sun and did not know what News International was until the day of her arrest.
She said she did not notice the words “News International” in her bank statement. Jurors heard she used telephone banking and would generally call her bank to pay bills or to check her balance.
“Did he ever tell you at any stage during this period of 2006 to 2008 that he would be paid money by News International or by the Sun for information that he was supplying them?” she was asked by her counsel.
“Never,” she replied.
She said she did not give News International her bank account details and did not know Larcombe before this trial started in January.
“Did you read the Sun? “ she was asked by her counsel.
“No, it’s not my thing – sport and lady parts are not my thing,” she said.
“If you had seen the words News International back in 2006 would you have made a connection between these words and the Sun newspaper?” her counsel said.
“No,” she replied.
She denied telling police in her home on the morning of her arrest that she knew what her husband had been up to. A police note, signed by her at the time, said she made the “unsolicited comment” that “I know the money from them went into my bank account.”
Police have testified that she said this while sitting on the sofa and talking to one of the officers.
She told jurors that what she said was “I know he did work for a newspaper.”
In reference to a second job he had at the Daily Mail in the past, she said the officer had said something about a newspaper in conversation. “That triggered off a memory that John did some work for papers, he did the Daily Mail thing.”
Hardy said she was “stunned, shocked, and scared” when the police arrived at her house in a dawn raid and that one of the police officers sat with her on the settee “trying to put me at my ease”,
“I didn’t talk to him at all and just then he sat forward and said ‘Come on, you must have realised they were going to come knocking,” she said. “He was just saying things like ‘you must have known’.”
Asked if she knew if it was “right, wrong or indifferent for that officer to have the sort of conversation”, she replied: “I think he was trying to calm me.” .
Fighting back tears, she agreed that her husband had always supported her and their daughter Olivia. “You don’t need much to be happy,” she said.
She said her husband never discussed work with her. “He went to work, came back – it was just a job,” she said.
The trial continues.
