Vela tried again. ‘The judge ordered-’

But Li wasn’t having any part of that. Exploding, he pointed his whole hand at the prosecutor, now booming at the top of his voice. ‘I ordered the least restrictive setting that would ensure the children’s return to court. Least restrictive, Mr Vela. You know what that means?’

The smallest of the three kids had started crying, and the girl had moved over, putting her arm around him. As the bailiff moved in to separate them, Gina Roake cried out, ‘Don’t you dare touch them. Your honor?’ A plea.

Which Li accepted. ‘Let them alone.’

A moment of relative quiet ensued. Into it, Gina Roake inserted a heartfelt reproach. ‘Your honor, this is the inevitable outcome when children are drawn into the criminal justice system. There has to be a better way. This is a travesty.’

At long last, it was Hardy’s turn.

His client, a 32-year-old recent Dallas transplant named Jason Trent, made his living laying carpet and was now in custody charged with three counts of mayhem and inflicting grievous bodily injury pursuant to a fight in the 3Com Stadium parking lot after a Forty-Niner game.

Trent’s story, and Hardy believed it, was that a trio of local boys had taken exception to his Dallas Cowboys attire and, after the ‘Niners had been soundly thrashed, thought they would work out some of their frustrations by ganging up on the lone cowboy. This, in common with most of the other Niner decisions on the field during the game, turned out to be a bad idea for the home team.

Jason Trent had black belts in both karate and aikido and had also been a Golden Gloves champion in his teens back in Fort Worth. After being sprayed with beer and pushed from two directions at once, and all the while warning his assailants about his various defense skills, Jason had finally lost his temper. In a very short fight, he put all three boys on the ground. Then – his real mistake – he’d gone around with a few more rage-driven punches, in the process breaking two arms, one collarbone, and one nose.

‘You should have stopped when they were down,’ Hardy had told him.

To which Jason had shrugged. ‘They started it.’

Even so, the story probably would have ended there had not one of the three ‘victims’ been the son of Richard Raintree, a San Francisco supervisor and political ally of District Attorney Sharron Pratt. Raintree contended that Jason Trent had overreacted to what amounted only to good-natured hazing and was himself drunk on beer. Sharron Pratt agreed – she’d ordered Jason arrested and charged. Now Hardy addressed Judge Li. ’Your honor,‘ he said, ’this is my client’s first alleged offense. He has no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. He holds a steady job. He’s married and has three young children. He shouldn’t even be here in this courtroom. His alleged victims started this fight and he was forced to defend himself.‘

Li allowed a crack in his stern visage, glancing over at the bandaged and splinted victims at the prosecution table. ‘And did a good job of it, didn’t he?’

Hardy kept at it. ‘The point, your honor, is that Mr Trent was pushed to this extreme by three punks who were ganging up on him. For all he knew, they were planning to kill him.’

This woke up the prosecutor, Frank Fischer, who objected to the use of the word punk. ‘And further, your honor, the victims were on the ground at the time of the attack. They posed no threat to Mr Trent at that time.’

‘They are the reason anything happened at all, your honor.’ The odds were that he was whistling in the wind, but Hardy felt he had to go ahead. This was San Francisco in the Nineties.

The ultimate responsibility for any action only rarely got all the way back to a prime mover – there were always too many victims in the path who could claim stress or that their rights had somehow been violated.

The law said that Jason Trent had gone beyond simple self-defense. Trent himself admitted that he’d been driven to loss of control. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t do it. He’d hurt these slimeballs on purpose because they’d hurt and threatened him first. Whose fault was that? he wanted to know.

So, law or no law, Hardy felt that for his client’s sake he had to make the point. ‘Mr Trent didn’t do anything wrong here, your honor. The law recognizes self-defense as a perfect defense. These young men scared and outnumbered him. He felt he had no option but to immobilize them until he could get away.’

‘Even after they were down on the ground?’ Li asked. Hardy nodded. ‘He wanted to make sure they wouldn’t get up until he could remove himself from any further danger. He didn’t use anything like deadly force, which he very well could have, your honor. He used appropriate force to stop a vicious and unprovoked attack.’

Hardy noted vibration at his belt, his silent beeper going off. He glanced down at it – a message from his office. Well, he was almost done here. Finally. The judge had heard his little speech, and now would set bail and assign a trial date, and then…

But Li, no doubt still simmering in his earlier fury with the DA’s cavalier style, suddenly had a different idea. After he listened to Hardy’s argument, he allowed a short silence to reign in his courtroom. Then he looked over at the prosecutor. ‘Mr Fischer,’ he said, ‘do the People concede that Messrs Raintree et al. assaulted the defendant here, Mr Trent, without provocation of any kind, other than his choice of clothing?’

Fischer was a nondescript functionary in his mid-thirties. By his reaction, this might have been the very first time that a judge had surprised him, or even spoken to him in the course of a proceeding. Now he stood up slowly, looked down at his notebook, and brought his eyes back up to the judge. ‘Your honor, there was an exchange of words and insults. We have witnesses who…’

Li interrupted. ‘Who hit who first?’

Fischer scratched at the table before him. ‘Regardless of whatever instigated the fight that resulted in…’

Li’s face remained placid but his voice hardened. ‘Excuse me, Mr Fischer, I asked you a simple question. Would you like me to repeat it?’

‘No, your honor. That isn’t necessary.’

‘Then would you do me the kindness to answer it?’ Li repeated it anyway. ‘Did Mr Raintree and the others start this fight?’

Fischer looked over at Hardy. Finally, he had to give it up. ‘Yes, your honor.’

Hardy thought he saw a momentary glint in the judge’s eye, and was suddenly certain he knew what the judge was going to do next. He wasn’t supposed to do it, but Li obviously had had enough and didn’t care. A couple more seconds of thought, then he tapped his gavel and stunned the courtroom with the words, ‘Case dismissed.’

Hardy had no time to savor the triumph. He thought he’d just quickly call his office, pick up his message, and then go have a celebratory birthday/freedom lunch with Jason Trent. Enjoy a rare midday Martini. Maybe two.

But the phone message ended all thought of that. It was the call all parents fear. His receptionist, Phyllis, told him that Theresa Wilson from Merryvale needed him to get in touch with her as soon as possible. Merryvale was where his children – Rebecca and Vincent – went to school, and Theresa Wilson was the principal there. It was one thirty, a Thursday afternoon in the middle of October.

‘Are the kids all right?’ He blurted it out. Hardy had lost a son, Michael, twenty-five years before and that wound still hadn’t completely healed – it never would. Now any threat to his children blanked his mind and brought his stomach to his throat.

‘They’re fine.’

He closed his eyes and let out a breath of relief. ‘But no one’s come to pick them up.’

‘Frannie hasn’t called?’ No, of course she hadn’t. That’s why Mrs Wilson was on the phone with him. He flicked a glance down at his watch. ‘How late is she?’