I showed him the pictures of my house.

‘This is what happens to those who stand up and fight,’ I said. ‘Unless we all do it together.’

I showed him another photo and he seemed to visibly shrink before my eyes. I didn’t need to ask him if the photo was of the visitor. I could tell it was.

I stood up to go.

‘Just one last question,’ I said. ‘Why you?’

I didn’t really expect an answer, but what he said was very revealing.

‘I’ve been the Trent family solicitor for years,’ he said. ‘Drawn up their wills and done the conveyancing of their properties. Michael and Barbara Trent have now moved to Walton-on-Thames, but they lived in Weybridge for years.’

‘But your visitor wasn’t Julian Trent’s father?’ I said to him.

‘No, it was his godfather.’

CHAPTER 19

I took Josef Hughes and George Barnett to lunch at the Runnymede Hotel, in the restaurant there overlooking the Thames. Nikki Payne, the solicitor’s clerk from Bruce’s firm, came to join us. I had chosen the venue with care. I wanted somewhere peaceful and quiet, somewhere stress free and calming. I wanted somewhere to tell Josef and George what I had discovered and what I needed them to do to help me.

The four of us sat at a table in the window, with Nikki next to me and Josef and George opposite us. For a while we made small talk and chatted about the weather as we watched the pleasure boats moving up and down through the lock, and we laughed at a duck and her brood waddling in a line along the river bank. Everyone relaxed a little, and a glass of cool Chablis further eased their anxieties.

Finally, after we had eaten lunch from the buffet, we sat over our coffee while I told them about the murder of Scot Barlow. I told them how Steve Mitchell had been arrested for it, and how he was currently on trial at Oxford Crown Court.

‘I’ve seen reports in the papers,’ George said, nodding. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much doubt he did it, if you believe what you read there.’

‘Never believe anything you read in the papers,’ I said seriously. ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that Steve Mitchell is innocent, and he is being framed.’

Both Josef and George looked at me with that same expression of incredulity that people have when a politician says that he really cares about drug addicts, or illegal immigrants.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘And I believe he’s being framed by this man.’ I placed a copy of the photograph I had shown to Patrick Hamilton on the table in front of them.

The effect was immediate. Both Josef and George shied away from the image as if it could somehow jump up and hit them. Josef began to take fast, shallow breaths, and I feared he was in danger of passing out, while George just sat there grinding his teeth together, never once taking his eyes off the man in the picture.

‘It’s all right, guys,’ I said, trying to lighten the moment. ‘He isn’t here. And he doesn’t know we’re here, or even that I know either of you.’

Neither of them was much mollified by my assurances. They went on looking scared and uncertain.

‘With your help,’ I said. ‘I can put this man behind bars where he can’t get at you.’

‘Julian Trent was behind bars,’ said Josef quickly. ‘But…’ He tailed off, perhaps not wanting to say that it had been he who had helped get him out. ‘Who says he can’t still get at us from there? Where’s the guarantee?’

‘I agree with Josef,’ said George with a furrowed brow. ‘Julian Trent would simply repay the favour and get him out, and then where would we be?’

I felt that I was losing them.

‘Let me first explain to you what I want to do,’ I said. ‘And then you can decide if you’ll help. But, I’ll tell you, I’m going to try and get this man, whether you help me or not. And it will be easier with your backing.’

Between us, Nikki and I told them everything we had discovered.

‘But why do you need us?’ said Josef. ‘Why don’t you just take all this to the police and let them deal with it?’

‘I could,’ I said. ‘But, for a start, in this sort of case the police would take ages to do their investigating and, in the meantime, Steve Mitchell would be convicted of murder. And, as you both well know, it is easier to get someone acquitted at the first trial than to have to wait for an appeal.’

‘So what do you intend to do?’ asked George.

I told them.

I had to trust them all, including Nikki, not to tell anyone of my plans. So I didn’t tell them quite everything. I did think about showing them the other photos, the ones of the wreckage of my house, which were still in my jacket pocket. Then Josef and George would understand that I was in the same position as they were. But it would also mean telling Nikki the inconvenient truth that I was being intimidated to influence the outcome of a trial, and that might put her under an obligation to tell the court, or, at least, to tell Bruce, who was her immediate superior. I didn’t want to have to ask her to keep more confidences than I already had, and certainly not to do so when it would be so blatantly against the law.

When I had finished, the three of them sat silently for quite a while, as if digesting what I had said.

Eventually it was George who broke the spell.

‘Do you really think it will work?’ he said.

‘It’s worth a try,’ I said. ‘And I think it might if you two play your part.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Josef, all his unease returning in full measure. ‘I’ve got to think of Bridget and Rory.’

‘Well, I’m game,’ said George, smiling. ‘If only to see his face.’

‘Good,’ I said, standing up. ‘Come on. Let’s go. There’s something I want to show you.’

Bob drove us the half a mile or so to the far end of Runnymede Meadow and then waited in the car while the rest of us went for a walk. It was a bright sunny spring day but there was still a chill in the air, so the open space was largely deserted as we made our way briskly across the few hundred yards of grass to a small round classical-temple-style structure set on a plinth at the base of Cooper’s Hill, on the south side of the meadow.

It had been no accident that we had come to lunch at Runny-mede. This was where King John had been forced to sign the Magna Carta, the Great Charter of 15 June 1215. The Magna Carta remained the basis of much of our common law, including the right to be tried by a panel of one’s peers, the right to trial by jury.

The Magna Carta Memorial had been built in 1957 and paid for by voluntary donations from more than nine thousand lawyers, members of the American Bar Association, in recognition of the importance of the ancient document in shaping laws in their country, and throughout Western civilization. The memorial itself is of strikingly simple design with eight slim pillars supporting an unfussy, flattish, two-step dome about fifteen feet or so in diameter. Under the dome, in the centre of the memorial, stands a seven-foot-high pillar of English granite with the inscription: TO COMMEMORATE MAGNA CARTA, SYMBOL OF FREEDOM UNDER LAW.

Every lawyer, myself included, knew that most of the clauses were now either obsolete, or had been repealed or replaced by new legislation. However, four crucial clauses of the original charter were still valid in English courts, nearly eight hundred years after they were first sealed into law, at this place, by King John. One such clause concerns the freedom of the Church from royal interference, another with the ancient liberties and free customs of the City of London and elsewhere, while the remaining two clauses were about the freedom of the individual. As translated from the original Latin, with the ‘we’ meaning ‘the Crown’, these two ran:

No freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed; nor will we condemn him, nor will we commit him to prison, excepting by the legal judgement of his peers, or by the laws of the land.