Jack had no expectations as he approached the entrance. He always kept an eye out for the unusual cases, and so he listened in to the chatter of the lawyers, especially the prosecutors, because they always relished the chance to tell a good story. Something amusing or with low-shock value usually worked nicely, but the best cases rarely ended on the first hearing, so he kept a diary, just to make sure that he didn’t miss the hearings. The best cases attracted the internet spies though – those who looked at his reports and then turned up for the sentencing hearings – and so he preferred the unexpected.

He strode up the court steps and noticed how quiet it was. He was used to striding through the haze of old tobacco mingled with nervous sweat and last night’s booze, but there was none of that today. His feet echoed against the long tiled corridor cast in yellow lighting with interview rooms to one side. It was almost deserted, apart from three people waiting, staring into space. He glanced at the clock. It was just after eleven. It seemed too early to have cleared the morning list.

It should have been busier. He’d been attracted to crime reporting by the mayhem, the excitement he’d felt for the stories of bad men doing wicked things. It had always been crime that had interested him, from the television thrillers of his childhood to the Johnny Cash prison concerts that his father played constantly. His father had been a policeman, and Jack remembered the pride he’d felt when his father left each morning, his trousers dark and pressed, his boots shined, ready to take on the bad guys. Jack grew more distant from his father as he grew older, when they both retreated into themselves after the death of Jack’s mother, but when he was smaller, his father felt like his own private superhero.

He looked back at the security guards by the entrance, old men in crisp white shirts, security wands in their hands. They were already counting the minutes until lunch. So this was it? Jack Garrett, hotshot reporter. He sighed. A quiet court meant nothing to report.

The duty solicitor room – a small square room designed for client interviews usually filled with bored lawyers moaning about how they couldn’t make a fortune anymore – was slightly busier.

He put his head in to ask if anyone had a case worth writing up. There was a general shake of the head and then it went quiet. They spoke to him when they wanted publicity or an audience for their wit, but Jack would never be part of the lawyer-clique, he knew that. His old denims and long blue shirt didn’t fit in with the dark pinstripes. Some were doing crosswords, photocopies from the national papers that got passed around at court. Sam Nixon was there, one of the main players, who practised from a small office over a copy shop, where tattered sofas and plastic plants served as a reception waiting area.

‘Nothing at all for you, Sam?’

He shook his head. ‘Times are lean, Jack.’

‘I’ve just been up to a murder scene,’ Jack said. ‘They’ve found another girl.’ Everyone looked up at that. ‘Maybe you’ll get a slice of that when they catch the killer?’

‘You see, us lawyers are not that bad,’ Sam said, waving his hand at the others in the room. ‘We want the killer to be caught, not stay free.’

‘That bad?’

Sam smiled. ‘It might keep me in business for another few months.’

‘You’re all heart,’ Jack said, and then nodded at the prosecutor, who was playing with a touchscreen phone. ‘And it might generate some excitement from him.’

‘I doubt it. I had to blow the dust from him before,’ Sam said.

The prosecutor looked up and raised his eyebrows, just greying on the fringes, to match the silver streaks along his temples. ‘My activity is all deep,’ he said, grinning. ‘That’s the trouble with defence lawyers: they’re all show and no substance.’ Then he pointed towards the door as the sound of bold footsteps clicking rhythmically on the tiles got louder and louder. ‘Just to prove my point.’

Jack put his head back out of the door and knew who it was before he even saw him: David Hoyle.

He was different from the rest of the defence lawyers. Most of the lawyers in Blackley were sons of old names, the firms passed through the generations, sometimes split up and married off to other firms. Hoyle was an outsider. He had been sent to Blackley to head up the new branch of Freshwaters, a Manchester firm trying to establish a foothold away from the big city. No one had expected it, and Hoyle had just arrived at court one day, in a suit with broad pinstripes and a swagger that no one seemed to think he had earned.

The other lawyers didn’t like him, because he made bold promises that made clients shift loyalties. Low-level crooks usually wanted nothing more than someone to shout on their behalf, and David Hoyle did that. And he didn’t work out of an office. Freshwaters had premises, but it was really just somewhere for Hoyle to park his Mercedes. He ran his files from home, did his own typing, and visited his clients on their own turf.

His client trotted behind him, a red-faced man in a grey suit, his stomach pushing out the buttons, his shoes shiny underneath the pressed hems of his trousers. He wasn’t the usual court customer. Suddenly, Hoyle turned to smile and shake hands with his client, but from the look of regret Hoyle gave, Jack guessed that things hadn’t gone his way.

There was the scent of a story, a disgraced professional always gets a column, and so he checked his pocket for his camera; get the picture first, the story later, because the shame sold better if there was a face a neighbour might recognise. It was the part of the job that used to make Jack most uncomfortable, but he’d learned a long time ago that he had to write stories that people wanted to read, and having a troubled conscience didn’t help sell a newspaper.

Jack watched them walk past and then headed after them as they made their way to the steps and then outside.

Hoyle had stopped at the bottom to straighten his tie and fix his hair, using the glass panel in a door as a mirror, before lighting a cigarette.

‘I’m too good for this place,’ he said to his reflection, and then turned round and blew smoke towards Jack, who had appeared over his shoulder. ‘Mr Journo, you’re looking twitchy.’

‘Where’s your client?’ Jack said.

Hoyle took another long pull on his cigarette. ‘Now, what do you want with that poor man?’ he said, wagging a finger.

‘When there isn’t much going on, I have to chase what I can.’

‘Didn’t you have bigger ambition than that when you first started out?’ Hoyle said. ‘Dreams of travel, interviewing presidents, uncovering conspiracies?’

‘What do you mean?’

He grinned, smoke seeping out between his teeth. ‘This?’ he said, and he pointed up the stairs. ‘Was this your plan when you left reporting school, or wherever you people graduate from, trying to shame people for stepping on the wrong side of the line sometimes?’

‘It’s not like that,’ Jack said, bristling.

‘So what is it like?’

‘It’s the freedom of the press,’ Jack said. ‘It’s about letting the wider community know what is going on around them, where the threats lie. Over the years, it paints the town’s history.’

Hoyle raised his eyebrows. ‘If that makes you feel better.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You flatter yourself, cover yourself in glory talk,’ Hoyle said. ‘It’s all bullshit, this freedom of the press stuff.’

‘And this was your life plan?’ Jack retorted. ‘Did you always dream of giving speeches to a bench of bored greengrocers in a backwater Lancashire town? Why are you here? Did it not work out in the big city?’

‘We’re both parasites,’ Hoyle said, his voice low, stepping closer to Jack. ‘Necessary evils, that’s all. A fair justice system is essential to our freedoms. That’s right, isn’t it, Mr Journo? Like a free press.’ He scoffed. ‘But that isn’t why I do it. I like the game, and if that means I help guilty people get away with bad things, so be it, because it is all a game, you know that. And if the odds are stacked against me, I’ve got to make sure that they don’t get the punishment they deserve, so they can skip out of court, laughing at the system. You like it that way too, because it means that you can write it up as an outrage. But I like what I do, because I get off on the fight, the challenge. What about you, Mr Journo?’