Brown was a QC – a Queen’s Counsel, or ‘silk’ as they were colloquially known – with an impressive track record. A short and ferociously bright woman of fifty-five, her fair hair pulled tightly and severely back and gripped by an ornate hairslide, she had a penchant for voluminous, sombre dresses, chunky jewellery and expensive shoes.

For many years Terence Gready had regularly entrusted clients to her when he needed the services of a QC, and they could afford her, and she seldom disappointed, either in the eye-watering size of her fees or in the evisceration of the prosecution’s case. At an age when many of her colleagues had opted for less stressful, but also less lucrative, positions as judges she had made the career decision to remain at the Bar, because she loved the work and was endlessly fascinated by the characters she encountered. But during these past months it was Gready himself who was now dependent on her skills of advocacy – and at the mercy of her fee notes.

At 11 a.m., seated opposite him at the metal table in the cramped, grotty interview room at High Down Prison – away from his home patch of Brighton and Hove – Primrose Brown brought a rare dash of glamour into the numbing drabness of the place, Gready thought, and the fragrance of her scent made a welcome change to the cheesy ingrained smell in the room. To her left was her junior barrister, a smartly turned-out man in his late thirties called Crispin Sykes, who spoke little but had made copious notes at every meeting since Gready’s arrest. Primrose would not normally attend this type of meeting, leaving it to her junior counsel, but she had made an exception today due to her long history with Terence Gready.

To his left was Nick Fox. This was their last meeting before the trial.

Primrose Brown’s voice over the years had refined from a Yorkshire accent into London legal posh. But a trace of the gravelly North Country still remained. ‘I have to level with you, Terry, it’s not looking good,’ she said, peering at him through half-frame glasses.

And he wasn’t looking good, either, she thought. He’d lost weight and looked a decade older than when he’d first been incarcerated, just over five months ago. Prison did that to people, she was well aware; the diet, the drugs, the lack of fresh air – and perhaps all the other mental stuff, including loss of self-esteem, that went with the territory of being banged up. She’d met plenty of recidivists who looked twenty years older than their real age, but all the same she was shocked this change had happened so quickly.