Terence Gready knew the building inside out. He’d appeared here countless times with clients and had always liked the faded grandeur and sense of history and importance of the place. But now, to his humiliation, for the first time ever he had not entered through the front entrance. Instead, handcuffed and accompanied by two security guards, he had been driven round to the back in a prison van and unceremoniously marched straight down to the holding cells.

He now sat on a thin blue cushion on the hard bunk, staring around at the windowless room, his thoughts as stark as his surroundings. To add to his despondency, his wife had bought him a brand-new white shirt, which she had delivered along with his blue suit to High Down Prison last night. Why, he cursed, hadn’t she checked the shirt first? The collar had been creased, carelessly, in the wrong place, so no matter how he had arranged his tie, the starched collar rode up the back of his neck. And the shirt itched.

Mickey Starr was in another of the cells, close by, but Gready didn’t know which one. He glanced at his watch – the shitty one that no one would steal, replacing his Rolex that bitch Financial Investigator had seized. It was approaching 10 a.m. They would be going up soon for the Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing.

God, after all he’d done for Mickey over the years, the man owed it to him to stick by him now, so they had a chance of getting through this crisis. If Mickey did anything other than plead guilty, and failed to stick to the script Nick Fox had given him, Gready knew his entire defence could be scuppered.

His last meeting with Fox, two days ago at High Down, had not left him feeling confident. Quite the reverse – he’d had the sense that Fox was being evasive when he’d asked him about Starr.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his cell door opening, and the voice of a uniformed female dock officer. ‘You’re on parade, sunshine.’

As he stepped out, he saw Mickey, dressed in a suit for the first time in all the years he had known him, and looking distinctly awkward in it. It seemed at the same time to be both too big and too small for him, with his shirt collar all rucked up and his dark tie stopping halfway down his chest.

With a stern dock officer behind him, he followed the first one up the steps and emerged into the glassed-in booth that was the dock of the wood-panelled Court 3. Countless of his clients had stood here previously, but it was his very first time and he felt like a caged animal in a zoo. Both defendants sat down, separated by a dock officer and with another officer also remaining. Mickey was staring resolutely ahead.