CHAPTER 7

By the time of the Steeplechase Festival at Cheltenham in March, Steve Mitchell had been in prison for four months and his name had all but been erased from the racing pages of the newspapers as well as from the considerations of the punters. With both Mitchell and Barlow out of the running, Reno Clemens had built up a commanding lead in the battle to be this year’s champion jockey and much was expected of him at the festival. Most of his mounts would start as favourite.

Bruce Lygon had done his best at Oxford Crown Court in November to get Steve Mitchell bail but, unsurprisingly, the judge had listened to him with courtesy and then had promptly declined his application. I had sat beside Bruce in court but I hadn’t really helped him much. I don’t think it would have made much difference if I had. Letting murder suspects out on bail was never going to endear a judge to the general public and a few recent high-profile cases where the suspects had murdered again while out on bail had put paid to even the slimmest of chances.

I hadn’t actually planned to attend the bail hearing but I had received another little reminder from God-knows-who two days before it was due to take place. It had been another slim white envelope delivered as before to my chambers by hand. It had been found on the mat inside the front door and no one had seen who had left it there. Again, in the envelope there had been a single sheet of folded white paper and a photograph. Thankfully the message hadn’t been backed up this time by a personal visit from Julian Trent. However, the memory of his previous visit had remained vivid enough in my consciousness for the sweat to break out on my forehead as I had held the envelope tightly in my hands.

As before, there had been four lines of black print across the centre of the paper.

GOOD LITTLE LAWYER

I WILL BE WATCHING YOU IN OXFORD ON WEDNESDAY

DON’T GET MITCHELL BAIL

REMEMBER, LOSE THE CASE OR SOMEONE GETS HURT

The photograph had been of my dead wife Angela. In fact, to be accurate, it had been a photograph of a photograph of Angela in a silver frame. Around the sides I could see a few of the other things on the surface on which the frame had stood. I had known those items. The photograph of Angela was the one of her smiling that I had placed on her dressing table in our bedroom soon after she died. I said ‘good morning, my darling’ to that photograph every day. Someone had been into my house to take that shot. It made me very angry, but I was also more than a little afraid. Just who were these people?

I sat at my desk in chambers twiddling my thumbs and thinking. It was Monday morning and I was having a few easy days. In order to prevent a repeat of last year, when I had been stuck in court instead of jumping my way round Cheltenham on Sandeman’s back in the Foxhunter Chase, I had instructed Arthur to schedule absolutely nothing for the whole week.

I had recently finished acting for a large high-street supermarket in an out-of-date food case, which my client had won. Such relatively low-key cases were the bread and butter of many junior barristers, and highly sought after. In the big, high-profile criminal cases, the lead for the defence was almost invariably taken by a silk, a Queen’s Counsel. However, many companies, especially large well-known firms, often preferred to engage a junior in cases where they were dealing with the ‘little people’, mostly their staff or their suppliers, or with simple breaks in hygiene regulations. To turn up at a magistrates court with a QC in tow seemed to imply they were guilty, quite apart from the excessive fees of a silk. Many a junior has made a fine reputation and an excellent living from the work. Some juniors, indeed, declined the chance to be promoted to QC for fear of losing their fee-base altogether.

Personally, I enjoyed the criminal Crown Court work far more, but I earned most of my money either in the magistrates’ courts or at the disciplinary hearings of professional institutions.

But not this week. I was determined not to miss out again on a ride in the Foxhunters. Sandeman had qualified partly by virtue of winning the race last year and Paul had assured me at the end of January that the horse was fitter this time, implying that failure to win again this year would not be Sandeman’s fault. It had been a direct warning to me not to be the weak link in the partnership, an explicit instruction to get myself fit.

For weeks now I had been running every day, mostly at lunchtime, which had the added advantage of avoiding the temptation to eat with fellow counsel either in the Hall at Gray’s Inn, or at one of the many hostelries situated close to our chambers.

In addition, in mid February I had been skiing for a long weekend in Meribel in France and had pushed my aching legs time and again down the mountains. I loved to ski but, on this occasion, it had been ski boot-camp. I had risen early each morning in the chalet I’d shared with four other complete strangers whose sole passion in life was the snow. We had spent the whole day on the slopes, catching the very last lift of the day to the highest point and arriving back at the chalet exhausted, just as the daylight faded. Then I would spend hours in the sauna, sweating off the pounds, before a high-protein dinner and an early bed.

By the second week in March I was toned like I hadn’t been since my time in Lambourn fifteen years before. Bring on Julian Trent, I said to myself. I was at my best fighting weight and relished the chance.

Arthur came into my room. In spite of an excellent internal telephone system, Arthur was of the old school and liked to talk face to face when making arrangements. ‘Sir James would like to have a conference about the Mitchell case,’ he said. ‘I have scheduled it for nine thirty tomorrow. Is that all right with you?’

‘I asked you not to schedule anything at all for this week,’ I said to him.

‘But you’re not going to the races until Thursday,’ he said. ‘You will still be able to watch the Champion Hurdle tomorrow afternoon. The conference won’t last all day.’

I looked at him. How did Arthur know I wasn’t planning to go to Cheltenham until Thursday? It would be no good asking him. He would reply in the same way as he always did. ‘It’s my job to know everything about my barristers,’ he would say. I wondered for the umpteenth time if he knew more about my little problem than he was letting on.

‘Nine thirty tomorrow will be fine,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘I thought it might,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Sir James.’

Sir James Horley, QC, was now the lead in Steve Mitchell’s defence. When Bruce Lygon had finally called Arthur to engage counsel for the case, Sir James had jumped at it. He could never be accused of not being eager to take on a prominent celebrity client, even if, as in this case, the ‘celebrity’ status of the client was somewhat dubious and the evidence was stacked up against him. Sir James loved the limelight. He adored the television cameras waiting each day outside court so that they could show him on the six o’clock news replying ‘no comment’ to each of the journalists’ questions.

My heart had dropped when Arthur told me that Sir James would lead and I would be acting as his junior. Sir James has a reputation of doing very little, or nothing, in preparation for a trial while still expecting everything to be in order and complete on day one. He also had a reputation, richly deserved, for publicly blaming his junior whenever anything went wrong, whether or not they had anything to do with it. He seemed to expect his juniors to have powers of clairvoyance over the facts, yet be unable to stand up in court to question a witness, something he reserved solely for himself.

Needless to say, I still had not yet told anyone of my encounter with the murder victim in the showers at Sandown, even though I had been sorely tempted to do so in order to disqualify myself from acting alongside Sir James. But it had been so long since I should have said something that I couldn’t really do so now without placing myself in a very compromising position. I would be damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t, but, in the latter case, only if anyone else knew about it from Barlow. Was I prepared to take that risk? Perhaps I should simply plead insanity, excuse myself from the case altogether and commit myself to a mental hospital until it was all over. By then Steve Mitchell would have been tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime for which I didn’t believe he was responsible. I would then be safe from Julian Trent and life could go back to normal. That is, until the next time someone wanted to manipulate the outcome of a trial, and young Mr Trent and his baseball bat were sent to pass the message.