‘It’s all right, Steve,’ I’d said, trying to reassure him. ‘I know you didn’t do it.’

He had looked back at my face. ‘How do you know? How can you be sure?’

‘I just am,’ I’d said.

‘Convince the bloody jury then.’

Maybe that is what I should do, I thought, sitting here at my desk. Perhaps I should tell the jury that I had been threatened to make sure I lost in court. That was it. I must tell Sir James that I had been approached and intimidated. Then I could become a witness instead of a barrister in the case and I could tell the jury all about baseball bats and Julian Trent. But would that be enough to help Steve? Probably not. The judge might not even allow testimony concerning intimidation of one of the lawyers to be admitted. It was hardly significant evidence in the case, irrespective of what I might think. It might just be relevant if the defence could use it as support for our belief that Steve was being framed. But in the face of the prosecution case, would the jury believe it?

And where would that leave me, I wondered. Did I just sit and wait to have my head smashed in and my balls cut off? And how about my elderly father in his holey green jumper? What danger would I be putting him in?

It seemed to me that the only solution to my multiple dilemmas was to discover who was intimidating me and then show that they were the true murderers of Scot Barlow, and to do it quickly, before any ‘next time’.

Simple, I thought. But where do I start?

Julian Trent. He must be the key.

The following morning, I didn’t tell Sir James Horley QC anything about intimidation, or anything about an encounter in the Sandown showers. He and I sat on one side of the table in the small conference room in the lower ground floor of chambers. Bruce Lygon sat opposite us. For two hours we had been once again going through every aspect of the prosecution case. We had received their secondary disclosure, but there was nothing new to help us.

The prosecution was required to disclose to the defence anything that they, or the police, had discovered which would assist us based on our Defence Case Statement. The response had been short but to the point. Their letter simply stated that they had no information other than that already disclosed in their primary disclosure and Statement of Case. We hadn’t really expected anything.

‘Are you sure that Mitchell shouldn’t plead guilty?’ said Sir James. ‘The case against him is very strong.’ I wondered, ungraciously, if Sir James liked the idea of a guilty plea to save him a courtroom loss. Maybe he was having second thoughts about taking this case.

‘He says he didn’t do it,’ I said. ‘He’s adamant that he will not plead guilty to something he didn’t do.’

‘How about a plea based on a lesser charge?’ said Bruce. ‘Or on diminished responsibility, or temporary insanity.’

Insanity was right, I thought. They were clutching at straws.

‘Our defence is that our client didn’t do it and is being framed, so we shall have no guilty pleas to anything, OK?’ I said firmly.

‘Then we had better find out who’s framing him,’ said Sir James. ‘Otherwise we shall have egg on our faces. Trial date is set for the second week in May at Oxford. That’s eight weeks from now. I suggest we meet again in two weeks to see if we are any further on.’ He stood up and tied the papers together with ribbon and bows, as if they were Christmas presents. The ribbon was pink. Pink for defence. Prosecution briefs were tied up in white ribbon.

Papers so tied could not be looked at by any member of chambers except those acting for the appropriate side in that case. It was not unusual for different counsel within chambers to be acting for both sides in the same trial. I had once been prosecuting an armed robbery case while a colleague who normally shared the same room as me was acting for the defendant. We had temporarily been separated to opposite ends of the building, but we still needed to be very careful not to discuss aspects of the trial in the other’s hearing. Arthur had even installed segregated photocopiers so that a document carelessly left in one machine would not fall into the other camp’s hands.

I went back to my room and looked at the desk of that colleague. As always, it was almost impossible to see the wood from which it had been constructed. The tough old English oak was doing its duty supporting stack upon stack of papers and box files. I was the tidiest of the three of us who shared this space, and even my area could look like a war zone at times. Stuff that couldn’t fit on our desks was stacked in boxes on the floor or in the full-length bookshelves down the side of the room, opposite the windows. But nothing was ever lost. At least that’s what we told everyone and it was almost the truth, although maybe not the whole truth.

There had been a large white envelope in my box in the clerks’ room and I sat at my desk and looked at it. This envelope, however, had been expected and contained no sinister threatening note, and no photograph. I had ordered a full transcript of the Julian Trent appeal hearing from last November and now I eagerly scanned its close-typed pages looking for a certain name.

Josef Hughes of 845 Finchley Road, Golders Green, north London, was the rogue solicitor who had forced the appeal in the first place. It was his supposed intervention with the jury that had got Trent off. If, as I suspected, he had been coerced into giving his evidence to the Court of Appeal, then he might be prepared to help me find out how and why Julian Trent was connected to Scot Barlow’s murder. I went to Golders Green first thing on Wednesday morning.

Josef Hughes went white and his knees buckled as soon as I mentioned Julian Trent. I thought he was going to pass out completely in the doorway of his bed-sit, one of half a dozen or so bed-sits crammed into the large 1930s-built semi-detached house at 845 Finchley Road.

He might have collapsed right down to the floor if I hadn’t held him by his left elbow and helped him through the door and into the room. He sat down heavily on the side of the double bed that took up most of the available floor space. We were not alone. Ayoung woman, not much more than a child, sat on an upright wooden chair nursing a young baby. She didn’t move as I helped Josef over to the bed but sat silently staring at me with big brown, frightened eyes.

I looked around. Apart from the green blanket-covered bed and the chair there was a small square table under the window, another upright chair that matched the first, and a tiny kitchenette in the corner, half hidden by a thin curtain that was badly in need of a wash.

I went over to the kitchen sink to fetch Josef a glass of water. There were no glasses visible but there was a moderately clean though badly chipped coffee mug upturned on the drainer. I splashed some water into it and held it out to him.

He looked up at me in real horror, but he took the mug and drank some of the water. The colour in his face improved fractionally.

‘It’s all right,’ I said in as comforting manner as I could muster. ‘I haven’t been sent here by Julian Trent.’

At the sound of the name, the young woman gave out a slight moan and I was suddenly afraid that she too was about to pass out. I stepped towards her as if to catch her baby but she pulled the child away from me and curled her body round it as protection.

What on earth had Julian Trent done to these people to make them so afraid?

I looked around the room again. Everything was very basic, with threadbare carpets, paper-thin curtains and bare cream-painted walls that were overdue a redecoration. A plastic tubular travel cot was folded and leaned up against the wall behind the door with three blue baby romper suits hanging on it to dry.

‘We used to have the big flat on the top floor,’ said the girl, watching me look. ‘With our own bathroom. Then Joe lost his job and we had to move down here. Now, we share a bathroom on the landing with three other rooms.’