Nobody seemed surprised that Nicholas Wickham, the UK businessman behind an alleged gold bullion Ponzi scheme in Ireland, failed to turn up for Thursday’s High Court appearance. Least of all the judge. “I didn’t expect it to be honest,” Justice Brian O’Moore said. There was, in the loose sense of the word, precedent for the no-show. When Wickham’s company Irish Gold and Silver Bullion Ltd collapsed last June under a mountain of debt, his offices in the affluent suburb of The Crescent, Monkstown, Co Dublin were found bare except for a single computer monitor unconnected to anything, and some unopened…