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round,’ Sir James said. It was a statement rather than a question.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. I remembered it all too well. ‘Open-and-shut case. Guilty as sin. How he got a retrial on appeal I’ll never know.’
    ‘That damn solicitor,’ said Sir James. ‘And now he’s got off completely.’ He took back the piece of paper and reread the short passage on it. ‘Case dismissed for lack of evidence, it says here.’
    More like for lack of witnesses prepared to give their evidence, I thought. They were afraid of getting beaten up.
    I had taken a special interest in the appeal against Julian Trent’s conviction in spite of no longer acting for the little thug. That damn solicitor, as Sir James had called him, was one of the Crown Prosecution team who had admitted cajoling members of the original trial jury to produce a guilty verdict. Three members of the jury had been to the police to report the incident, and all three had subsequently given evidence at the appeal hearing stating that they had been approached independently by the same solicitor. Why he’d done it, I couldn’t understand, as the evidence in the case had been overwhelming. But the Appeal Court judges had had little choice but to order a retrial.
    The episode had cost the solicitor his job, his reputation and, ultimately, his professional qualification to practise. There had been a minor scandal in the corridors of the Law Society. But at least the appeal judges had had the good sense to keep young Julian remanded in jail pending the new proceedings.
    Now, it seemed, he would be walking free, his conviction and lengthy prison sentence being mere distant memories.
    I recalled the last thing he had said to me in the cells under the Old Bailey courtroom last March. It was not a happy memory. It was customary for defence counsel to visit their client after the verdict, win or lose, but this had not been a normal visit.
    ‘I’ll get even with you, you spineless bastard,’ he’d shouted at me with venom as I had entered the cell.
    I presumed he thought that his conviction was my fault because I had refused to threaten the witnesses with violence as he had wanted me to do.
    ‘You’d better watch your back,’ he’d gone on menacingly. ‘One day soon I’ll creep up on you and you’ll never see it coming.’
    The hairs on the back of my neck now rose up and I instinctively turned round as if to find him right here in chambers. At the time of his conviction I had been exceedingly thankful to leave him in the custody of the prison officers and I deeply wished he still was. Over the years I had been threatened by some others of my less affable clients, but there was something about Julian Trent that frightened me badly, very badly indeed.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Sir James was looking at me with his head slightly inclined.
    ‘Fine,’ I said with a slightly croaky voice. I cleared my throat. ‘Perfectly fine, thank you, Sir James.’
    ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he said.
    Perhaps I had. Was it me? Would I be a ghost when Julian Trent came a-calling?
    I shook my head. ‘Just remembering the original trial,’ I said.
    ‘The whole thing is fishy if you ask me,’ he said in his rather pompous manner.
    ‘And is anyone asking you?’ I said.
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Sir James.
    ‘You seem well acquainted with the case, and the result is clearly important to you.’ Sir James had never sworn before in my hearing. ‘I didn’t realize that anyone from these chambers was acting.’
    ‘They aren’t,’ he said.
    Sir James Horley QC, as Head of Chambers, had his finger on all that was going on within these walls. He knew aboutevery case in which barristers from ‘his’ chambers were acting, whether on the prosecution side or the defence. He had a reputation for it. But equally, he knew nothing, nor cared little, about cases where ‘his’ team were not involved. At least, that was the impression he usually wanted to give.
    ‘So why the