“I kept looking round for where Charles was getting help from,” Robert says. “I knew the process was bogus—he was just so erratic—but I didn’t hear the coughs.”

Robert thinks Charles should have stuck on £500,000. Celador might have been suspicious, but it would have probably honored the check. Even though Robert himself was suspicious, he was also inspired by Charles’s success. Over the next two days, while Britain reeled from the World Trade Center attacks, Robert repeatedly called the Millionaire random selector.

“I worked out,” he says, “that if you call three hundred and fifty times you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting onto a particular show.”

He phoned more than a thousand times.

“I read that Charles had been practicing the Fastest Finger First on a mock-up console, so I built one, too, on my laptop.”

Robert’s plan worked. On September 25 he found himself in the same place Charles had been a fortnight earlier—in the Millionaire hot seat.

The next day’s Sun headline read: MILLIONAIRE WORTH FEW BOB MORE.

Super-rich Robert Brydges beamed with joy last night as he returned home after winning a million on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Banker Robert could not contain his excitement, even though he was a millionaire twice over before appearing on the quiz show. He declared with a grin: “Believe me I’m happy. I’m very happy.”

Robert is writing a book called The Third Millionaire about his and Charles’s parallel lives. What is it about the human condition that one good man can win a million pounds legitimately, when another has to resort to fraud? In the corridor, Robert introduces himself to Charles and mentions the name of his book.

“If you don’t mind, I like to think of you as the fourth millionaire,” says Charles.

“Can we agree on 3A and 3B?” says Robert.

“Charles!” calls Diana, from down the corridor.

“OK, sorry!” Charles calls back, and scuttles off.

“I don’t care how many Mensa badges he’s wearing,” mutters Robert. “On the eight-thousand-pound question he could hardly remember that Emmental cheese was from Switzerland.”

I laugh.

“Does all this remind you of Macbeth?” says Robert. “The bluff soldier, with the pale, mysterious woman behind him?”

We regulars spend much of our time psychoanalyzing the Ingrams. This is because their demeanors are so uncriminal. Even the police get involved in the speculation.

“The major is a strange character,” says one arresting officer during a press briefing. “Puzzling. I can’t figure him out. There have been some comments in court about Diana being stronger . . .” He pauses. “I don’t understand that sort of relationship. I’m not part of a relationship like that.”

“You’re a lucky man!” shouts a journalist.

At 2:15 p.m. on March 23, a miracle occurs that might just save the defendants. Tecwen Whittock takes the stand, and he is brilliant. He begins with a tour of his harrowing childhood: born in a psychiatric hospital to a mother with behavioral problems, whom he never saw again, and an alcoholic father he never knew.

“I have a recollection of seeing him once when I was seven,” he says.

He was raised in foster care, and pulled himself up through hard work to become head of business studies at Pontypridd Polytechnic, now known as the University of Glamorgan.

“Would you jeopardize all you’ve worked for to get involved in something like this?” asks his barrister, David Aubrey.

“Of course not,” says Tecwen. “I wouldn’t do that. It’s against all my morals, all I do. I wouldn’t put my family on the line for this. I know I’d land up in jail.” It is a convincing moment. And then comes the bombshell. “Look closely at the photograph,” says David Aubrey—it was a long-lens photograph of Tecwen on his way to work, head bowed, that appeared in the Sun on September 25.

“What have you got in your hand in that photograph?” asks David Aubrey.

“Some work files,” replies Tecwen.

“And in your other hand?”

“Two five-hundred-milliliter bottles.”

“Bottles of what?”

“Water. Tap water.”

“Why?”

Tecwen has his entire life suffered from a persistent cough. Water helps. He carries some everywhere, and fruit juice, and inhalers and cough medicine. It’s a ticklish cough, like a frog in his throat, very phlegmy. A stream of doctors and friends take the stand, attesting to Tecwen’s irritating cough.

Aubrey sums up by saying, “So, when was this plan supposedly hatched? During a late-night telephone call, on 9 September, lasting less than five minutes. Is it really likely that Mr. Whittock would take part in such a hastily conceived scheme? Wouldn’t he have said, ‘You can’t count on me. I’m liable to cough at any time!’”

•   •   •

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH the Ingrams has suffered a dreadful blow. Not only does Diana think I glower at her with a crazed expression, but the Ingrams have now appointed a media agent called David Thomas. These days, every time I bump into them at Starbucks or in the corridor outside Court 4, Thomas is there, saying “Hello, Jon” in a snarly manner. The rumor is that Thomas is going to handpick one journalist, and the rest of us will get nothing.

“Can I have just five minutes with the Ingrams?” I ask him.

“I’m mentally logging your request,” says Thomas.

“All I want is for them to be able to tell their side of the story,” I say.

“So your pitch is ‘I’m Honest Jon,’” he replies.

“Yes.”

“It’s mentally logged,” says Thomas. “You’ve batted your corner very well.”

I tell him my one question: “What was that thing that happened back in our childhoods with the watch straps and the number plate APOLLO G?”

“Your question is logged up here,” he says, pointing at his head. I spend the next three days sitting in the corridor, waiting for him to come back with an answer.

The jury retire to consider its verdict, and the corridor outside Court 4 becomes a frenzied bazaar. While everyone else crowds around Thomas, telling him how much they love dogs too (Thomas is a dog lover) and explaining that all they want to do is let the Ingrams tell their side of the story (he tells them they batted their corners well), I sidle up to Diana.

“I’ll tell you the one thing I really want to know . . .” I begin breezily.

“Have you met David Thomas?” she replies, looking frantically around for him.

Robert Brydges hears that John Brown Publishing—the company that had once planned to publish Diana and Adrian’s book—is now interested in reading the manuscript of The Third Millionaire.

Suddenly, there is drama. Judge Rivlin calls us all back in. “A very serious matter has arisen that does not concern the defendants,” he says. The jury is temporarily discharged. We file back out into the corridor, bewildered. It turns out that a juror was overheard holding court in a pub, saying how fantastic it was to be on the Millionaire trial jury. For a day and a half, the various parties debate whether to start the trial again with a new jury. In the end, Judge Rivlin decides to allow the eleven remaining jurors to continue.

“Well, that,” Charles mutters to himself, “amounted to the square root of fuck-all.”

So this trial, which was all about entertainment, is almost chucked out because one of the jurors found it too entertaining.

When the guilty verdict comes in, after nearly fourteen hours of deliberations over three days, Diana closes her eyes and looks down. Charles holds her hand and kisses her on the cheek. Tecwen doesn’t respond in any way. The only noises in court are tuts—the kind of tuts that mean “It’s all a bit of a shame.”

Charles and Diana have three daughters, two with special needs.

Judge Rivlin has the reputation of being tough when sentencing, but says, “I’m going to put you out of your misery. There’s no way I’m going to deprive these children of their parents.”