I turned on my mobile phone. There was one voicemail message but it wasn’t from Bruce Lygon. It was from the quiet, well-spoken male whisperer. ‘Remember,’ he said menacingly, ‘do exactly as you are told.’

I sat in the window of the café eating a cheese and pickle sandwich, trying to work out what on earth it was all about. No one had told me to do anything, so how could I do it? I would have dismissed it as mistaken identity except that the caller this morning had asked if I was Geoffrey Mason. And, indeed, I was. But were there two Geoffrey Masons? There must be, but there was only one with my phone number.

I decided to ignore that problem and concentrate on the matter currently in hand. The judge that morning had not been very helpful and he had not been greatly swayed by my arguments concerning the admissibility of prior convictions in the conspiracy-to-defraud trial of the brothers. It made the case more difficult to prosecute, but not impossible. After all, the brothers had admitted having done it. All we had to do was convince the jury they had done it for gain.

I called Bruce Lygon.

‘Any news?’ I asked him.

‘No.’ He sounded bored. ‘They are apparently waiting for the results of some forensics. From his clothes and shoes, I think. And his car.’

‘How is he?’ I said.

‘Pretty fed up,’ he said. ‘Keeps saying he should be riding at Huntingdon races. Asks when he can go home. I don’t think he fully realizes the extent of the mess he’s in.’

‘So you think he will definitely be charged?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah, no question. They haven’t even bothered to question him for the past four hours. They’re sure he did it. One of them said as much to him and asked whether he wanted to confess and save them all a lot of trouble.’

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

‘Told them to get lost, or words to that effect.’ I smiled. I could imagine the actual exchange. Steve didn’t talk to anyone without at least a few bloodys sprinkled in.

‘Well, for your sake, I hope they charge him by six,’ I said, thinking of his wife’s birthday dinner. ‘Will it be you that goes with him to the magistrate’s court in the morning?’

‘Will I? Are you kidding?’ he said. ‘It’s not every day I get a case that leads on the lunchtime news. Even the wife says to stay here all night if I have to. Don’t let him out of your sight, she said, just in case he finds himself another solicitor.’

Maybe it was more than just a job to Bruce, after all. But if he thought representing a guilty but popular and celebrated client would bring him any respect he was much mistaken. Two years before I had been dramatically unsuccessful in defending a much-loved middle-aged comedy TV actress from a charge of deliberate shoplifting and the subsequent assault of the store detective. She had committed the crimes but it had been me who had been universally denounced in the press for failing to get her off. Everyone knows it was George Carmen QC, who, in the face of overwhelming evidence, secured an acquittal for Ken Dodd for tax evasion, but no one remembers the counsel who failed to keep Lester Piggott out of jail on the same charge. Such as it is in life, and such as it is in racing. Winning is all. Coming second is a disaster, even if it’s by the slightest margin, the shortest of short heads.

The afternoon was little better than the morning had been. The judge in the case seemed determined to be as unhelpful as possible, continually interrupting my questioning as I tried to cross-examine one of the defendants. In true Perry Mason style I was trying to trap him in a lie but, every time I thought I was getting close, the judge stopped me and asked if my line of questioning was relevant. This gave the defendant time to recover and recoup. He simply smiled at me and went on telling the jury his lies. I knew they were lies, and he knew they were lies. But, from their facial expressions, I realized that the jury were believing them. It was very frustrating.

I was beginning to think that I was about to notch up another courtroom loss when the elder of the brothers carelessly stated in response to my questions that you couldn’t believe what a previous witness for the prosecution had said because, he claimed, the witness was a convicted felon and a proven liar. On such things do trials turn. Because the defendant had called into question the character of a witness against him, we, the prosecution, were now entitled to call his character into question as well, and all his previous convictions were suddenly admissible into court. Hurrah. The poor defending barrister sat there with his head in his hands. He had done so well to keep the information from the jury through the judge’s earlier ruling, only for his own client to mortally hole the defence below the water line. Asinking was now inevitable.

The judge adjourned proceedings for the day soon after four o’clock with the prosecution well on top. Perhaps I would actually win the case.

I took a taxi back to chambers with my box of papers and my laptop. It had been a miserably wet autumnal November day in London and the daylight had fully gone by the time I paid off the cabbie on Theobald’s Road near the gated entrance to Raymond Buildings.

Julian Trent was waiting for me between two rows of parked cars. Whereas, the previous evening, I had been somewhat wary crossing Barnes Common, I hadn’t really been seriously concerned that I would be attacked. I had dismissed Trent’s posttrial threats as mere bravado, a lashing-out reaction to losing the case. And why would he want revenge from me when he had got off anyway? But here he was, with his trusted baseball bat, oozing menace and danger.

I didn’t actually see him until I had walked beyond his hiding place because I was concentrating on hunching my body to keep my computer dry as I balanced it on the box of papers. My peripheral vision detected a movement to my right and I turned in time to glimpse his face just before he hit me. He was smiling.

The baseball bat caught me across the back of both legs about half way up my thighs. The blow caused my knees to buckle and I was sent sprawling to the ground, my box of papers spilling out in front of me. The suddenness of the strike left me gasping for breath. Far from leaping to my feet to defend myself, I lay face down, immobile on the wet tarmac. Strangely there was no pain. My legs felt numb and somehow detached from the rest of my body. I used my arms to roll myself over onto my back. I was determined that he wouldn’t be able to knock my brains out without me seeing it coming.

He stood above me, swinging the bat from side to side. There was no one else about in the private road but he seemed not to care anyway. He was clearly enjoying himself.

‘Hello, Mister Clever-Dick Lawyer,’ he said with a curl to his upper lip. ‘Not so clever now, are we?’

I didn’t reply, not out of some feeling of defiance but because I couldn’t think of anything to say.

He raised the bat to have another swing and I felt sure that my time was up. I put my arms up around my head to protect myself, closed my eyes and waited for the crunch. I wondered if I would die here with my head beaten to a pulp. I also wondered if Angela would be waiting for me on the other side. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The bat landed with a sickening thud but not on my head, not even on my arms or hands. Trent hit my unprotected laptop computer with all his might and it obligingly disintegrated into several parts that scattered noisily across the road.

I opened my eyes and looked at him.

‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I’ll smash your head.’

Next time! Dear God, I didn’t want there to be a next time.

He then stepped forward and trod hard on my genitals, putting all his weight on his right foot and crushing my manhood between his boot and the road. This time there was pain, a shooting, stabbing, excruciating pain. I moaned and rolled away sideways and he thankfully released the pressure.