It was the first such headache I had suffered for some time and I had begun to forget the ferocity of the pain behind my eyes. During the first three weeks immediately after the fall at Cheltenham, I had suffered these on most days and I knew that relaxing horizontally on a bed for a couple of hours was the best and only remedy. A couple of paracetamol tablets took the edge off it, but I had carelessly left my stronger codeine pills at home. They were somewhere in the shambles that had once been my bathroom.

At some point I drifted off to sleep because I was awakened by the phone ringing beside the bed.

‘Yes?’ I said into it, struggling to sit up because of the shell.

‘Mr Mason?’ a female voice said.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘This is Nikki Payne here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been to the Home Office and the South African embassy as you asked and neither of them had any record of a Jacques Rensburg. But they did of someone called Jacques van Rensburg. In fact there are three of them who live in England. Apparently van Rensburg is quite a common name in South Africa.’

It would be.

‘Two of the South African Jacques van Rensburgs living here are at university, here on student visas. One is at Durham and the other is a post-graduate at Cambridge and both have been here for the past two years.’

I suppose it was possible that the Jacques we wanted had given up working with horses for a life of academia, but somehow I doubted it.

‘What about the third one?’ I asked.

‘His visa has expired, but it seems he’s still here although his right to work has expired too. But, apparently, that’s not unusual. That’s all I have for the moment.’

‘Well done,’ I said to her.

‘I’m not done yet,’ she said. ‘Anice chap at the embassy is searching for the third Jacques back in South Africa just in case he went home without telling the Home Office. There aren’t any proper records kept when people leave the UK, only when they arrive.’

It was true, I thought. No one from the immigration department checks your passport on the way out, only on the way in. The airlines only check their passengers’ passports to ensure they have the same names as on their boarding passes.

‘But you did show them the photo?’ I asked her.

‘Of course I did,’ she said. ‘My friend at the embassy is trying to get me a copy of this Jacques van Rensburg’s passport snap sent from the South African Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria so I can see if it is actually him.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Call me tomorrow if you get anywhere.’

She hung up and I rested my head back onto the pillow. My headache was only slightly better, so I lay there for a while longer, reclosed my eyes and drifted back off to sleep.

The phone on the bedside cabinet rang once more, waking me again. Damn it, I thought, can’t a man have any peace?

‘Hello,’ I said, irritated.

‘Just make sure you lose the case,’ said a whispering voice.

I was suddenly wide awake.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded loudly down the line.

‘Never mind who,’ said the whisperer. ‘Just do it.’

The line went dead.

CHAPTER 16

Detective Inspector McNeile was back in the witness box on Tuesday morning for further cross-examination.

‘I remind you that you are still under oath,’ the judge said to him.

‘Yes, My Lord,’ he replied.

I levered myself to my feet, pulling on the lectern on the bench in front of me.

‘Inspector McNeile,’ I said. ‘Yesterday afternoon you told us how the police came to find out about the murder of Mr Barlow from a phone call to a non-recorded, non-emergency number, is that right?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. There was no harm, I thought, in reminding the jury.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. ‘Now I believe that the police also discovered that Mr Barlow had received a text message on his mobile telephone on the day of his death. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ he said again.

‘And did this text message say, and I quote.’ I picked up a sheet of paper myself and read from it. ‘“I’m going to come round and sort you out properly you sneaking little bastard”?’ I paused for effect. ‘And then the message was signed off with Mr Mitchell’s name?’

‘I haven’t got access to the actual text,’ he said, turning to the judge as if for assistance.

‘No,’ I said. ‘But does that sound about right to you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I believe it said something like that.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, putting down the paper. ‘And were the police able to establish that this text message had indeed been sent to Mr Barlow by Mr Mitchell?’

‘No,’ he said softly.

‘Sorry, Inspector,’ I said. ‘Could you please speak up, so the jury can hear you?’

‘No,’ he repeated more strongly.

‘And were the police able to establish who was, in fact, responsible for sending that text message to Mr Barlow?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We were not.’

‘Am I correct in saying that you discovered that the message had been sent anonymously by a free text messaging service available to anyone with access to any computer and the internet anywhere in the world?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is correct.’

‘And is it correct that you were unable to establish which computer had been used to send the message?’

‘That is correct,’ he replied.

‘So, in addition to an anonymous, unrecorded telephone call to the police directing them to a murder scene to discover incriminating evidence against the defendant.’ I glanced at the judge who was looking back at me intently. ‘There was also an anonymous text message sent to Mr Barlow’s telephone that was made to appear as if it had come from the defendant?’

‘I didn’t say that it hadn’t come from the defendant,’ said the inspector. ‘I only said that we were unable to establish that it had.’

‘Are you claiming now that, in fact, it did come from the defendant?’ I asked him with mock astonishment.

‘We don’t know who it was from,’ he said, digging himself further into a hole.

‘Thank you,’ I said to him. ‘No further questions.’

I sat down feeling rather pleased with myself. Bruce Lygon patted me gently on the shoulder. ‘Well done,’ he whispered.

I turned round to thank him and caught sight of young Julian Trent sitting right next to Mr and Mrs Barlow in the seats reserved for the public. He was watching me. I went quite cold. Damn it, I thought, how much of that cross-examination had he been listening to?

The next witness for the prosecution had been called and there was a lull in proceedings as the court usher went outside the courtroom trying to find the right person. Julian Trent watched me watching him and he clearly decided it was time to leave. He stood up and pushed past the usher as he made his way to the exit. For a moment I thought about going after him, but good sense prevailed so I stayed put. I could hardly chase him on crutches and I am sure the judge wouldn’t have taken kindly to me leaving the court in the light of the continued, but unsurprising, absence of Sir James Horley QC.

My cross-examination of Detective Inspector McNeile proved to be the high point of the day for the defence. The three further witnesses called by the prosecution gave us little respite from the damning evidence that implied that the murder had been carried out by the man in the dock.

A specialist DNA witness was followed by a police forensic science expert. Both explained to the jury, in monotonous detail, the method of extracting DNA from blood and hair, and then went on to show beyond any doubt that drops of blood and two hairs from Scot Barlow had been found in the driver’s footwell of Steve Mitchell’s car and also that more of Barlow’s blood and four more of his hairs had been found adhering to the underside of both of Steve Mitchell’s wellington boots, subsequently discovered at the Mitchell premises.