‘What do you want?’ I heard my father say rather bossily. There was something that I didn’t catch from his visitor, and then I could hear my father again, his voice now full of concern. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want any. Please go away.’

Suddenly there was a crash and the phone line went dead.

I quickly called the house landline number, but it simply rang and rang until, eventually, someone picked it up. But it went dead again before I had a chance to say anything. I tried it again, but this time there was nothing but the engaged tone.

‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘I think Julian Trent has just arrived, and my father is still there.’

Eleanor floored the accelerator as we swept onto the A34 dual carriageway north. Fortunately, the rush hour had yet to get into full swing and we hurtled up to the motorway junction and onto the M40 at breakneck speed.

I tried my father’s landline once more, but it was still engaged.

‘Call the police again,’ said Eleanor.

This time I was connected to a different policeman and he now recorded the incident as an emergency. He promised to dispatch a patrol car immediately.

‘How long will it take?’ I said.

‘About twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘At best. Maybe longer.’

‘Twenty minutes!’ I said incredulously. ‘Can’t you get someone there sooner than that?’

‘Kings Sutton is right on the edge of the county,’ he said. ‘The patrol car has to come from Towcester.’

‘How about Banbury?’ I said. ‘That’s got to be closer.’

‘Banbury is Thames Valley,’ he said. ‘Kings Sutton is Northamptonshire Constabulary.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. ‘Just get someone there as soon as you can.’

Throughout the call, Eleanor had been driving like a woman possessed, overtaking a lorry around the outside of a roundabout when turning right, and then causing a group of mothers and toddlers crossing the road to leap for their lives. But we made it safely to Kings Sutton in record time and she pulled up where I told her, round the corner and just out of sight of my father’s bungalow.

‘Wait here,’ I said, climbing out of the car and struggling with the crutches.

‘Why don’t you wait for the police?’ she said. She came round the car and took my hand. ‘Please will you wait?’

It had only been about seven or eight minutes since I had last spoken to them. And they wouldn’t be here for ages yet.

‘Eleanor, my darling, my father’s in there on his own with Julian Trent,’ I said. ‘Would you wait?’

‘I’ll come with you, then,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You must wait here and speak to the police when they arrive. Show them which is the right house.’

Eleanor grabbed me and hugged me hard. ‘Be careful, my Barrister Man,’ she said. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you more,’ I said, but then I pushed her away. I had things to do.

I made my way gingerly through an herbaceous border and along the side of the bungalow to my father’s front door. It was standing wide open. I peeped inside but could see nothing unusual, save for the mobile phone, which lay on the floor with its back off, the battery lying close by. I reckoned my father must have dropped it as Trent had forced his way in.

I stepped through the doorway into the hall, rather wishing that the crutches didn’t make so much of a clink when I put them down on the hard wood-block floor. But I needn’t have worried about the noise. As I moved across the hallway I could clearly hear Julian Trent and his baseball bat systematically doing to my father’s home what he had previously done to mine. He was down the far end of the corridor causing mayhem in the bedrooms.

I looked into the sitting room. My father lay face down on the carpet, with blood oozing from his head. I quickly went over to him and bent down, using one end of the light blue sofa for support. He was not in great shape, not at all. I turned him over slightly and saw that he had been struck severely at least once across his face, and also that there was a nasty wound behind his right ear. I couldn’t really tell if he was breathing or not, and I tried unsuccessfully to find a pulse in his neck. However, the cuts on his head were still bleeding slightly, which gave me some hope. I checked that his mouth and airway were open by tilting his head back a bit and laying him more on his side.

Where were those damn police? I thought.

The noise of destruction in the bedrooms suddenly ceased and I could hear Trent’s footsteps coming back along the corridor. I struggled up and hid behind the open sitting-room door. Perhaps he would go past me. Perhaps he would go away.

My father groaned.

In truth, it was not much more than a sigh, but Trent heard it and he stopped in the doorway.

I looked down at my father on the floor and realized with horror that I’d left one of my crutches lying right next to him on the carpet.

It was too late to retrieve it now.

Trent came into the sitting room. I pressed myself back tight against the wall behind the door and sensed rather than saw him, but there was no doubt he was there. I could see the end of the baseball bat as he held it out in front of him. From where he stood, he would be clearly able to see my father, and the crutch.

‘OK,’ he said loudly into the silence, making me jump. ‘I know you’re here. Show yourself.’

Oh shit, I thought. I was hardly in any shape to fight a twelve-year-old cripple, let alone someone twice that age who was very fit and healthy, and who was holding a baseball bat to boot. I stayed exactly where I was.

The door was pulled away from me, exposing my hiding place. And there he was, in blue denim jeans and a short-sleeved dark green polo shirt, swinging his baseball bat back and forth. And, once again, he was smiling.

‘Time to complete some unfinished business,’ he said with relish.

‘It won’t do you any good,’ I said defiantly. ‘Your godfather was arrested in court this morning and the police are on their way here to arrest you.’

He hardly seemed to care. I glanced out of the window. Where were those wretched police?

‘I’d better make it quick, then,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘That’s a shame. I was planning to take my time and enjoy killing you.’

‘No handy pitchfork for you to use this time,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, still smiling. ‘That is a pity, but this will do instead.’

He swung the baseball bat at my head so fast that he almost caught me unawares.

At the last moment I ducked down and the wooden bat thumped into the wall, right where my head had been only a fraction of a second before. I dived away from him, hopping madly on one leg. I would just have to put the other foot down, I thought, and hope my knee would carry my weight. I tried it as I made my way across the room and without too much of a problem. But I was too slow, and Trent had time to turn and swing the bat again, landing a glancing blow on my left biceps, just above the elbow. It wasn’t a direct hit but it was enough to cause my arm to go completely dead, numb and useless.

I leaned up against the wall by the window, breathing heavily. Two months of inactivity since the races at Cheltenham had left me hopelessly unfit. This battle was going to be over much too soon for my liking.

The feeling and movement in my left arm began to return slightly, but I feared it was too little, too late. Trent advanced towards me, grinning broadly, and he raised the bat for another strike. I stood stock still and stared at him. If he was going to kill me he would have to do it with me watching him. I wasn’t going to cower down and let him hit me over the back of the head, as he had clearly done to my father.

I dived down to my left at the last instant and the bat thumped again into the wall above my right shoulder. I grabbed it with my good right hand, and also with my nearly useless left. I clung on to the bat for dear life. I gripped it so tight that my fingers felt as if they were digging into the wood.