Reid took his eyes away from the papers and looked around his room. At nothing in particular. He just needed to see something that was not an A4 typed page or a computer screen. Whenever Reid felt this way the features of his room – some personal, most professional – provided a welcome distraction.

Reid had been a member of the same barristers’ chambers for thirty-four years. An entire career. His pupillage – the same process Michael Devlin had gone through under Reid’s own guidance – had been elsewhere. But he had joined Eight Essex Court immediately afterwards, and he had been here ever since.

In that time Reid had seen the chambers grow from just twenty-eight working barristers to the current number of eighty-three. A huge increase in number, if not necessarily in ability. Successive cuts in legal aid had seen the earnings of publicly funded criminal barristers devastated, driving the best potential applicants elsewhere. Into professions willing to pay market rates for their skills.

But while the ability of many applicants had fallen, their numbers had not. And so Eight Essex Court now had three times as many bodies, shoehorned into a centuries-old building barely big enough for the original number. Most rooms were overflowing, with both paper and with people. Even some of chambers’ seven Queen’s Counsel – which now included Michael Devlin – shared their office space with others.

Somehow Reid had secured a room of his own. Old it might be. Beaten up and with ageing bookshelves creaking under the weight of endless files. But it was Reid’s and Reid’s alone. His brilliant reputation may not have secured him the rank of ‘silk’, but at least it counted for something here.

Reid’s office carried little concession to the modern world. He was proud of that. But for two or three items the room could have existed at any time in the past 150 years. Reid considered himself a throwback to a simpler time. A time when a barrister’s skills in court were all that mattered for success. It was a conscious decision that his room should give the same impression, one only broken by the presence of his laptop, a small flat-screen television and an expensive coffee-machine. All of which were essential as far as Reid was concerned.

It was the television that attracted Reid’s attention as he looked up from his desk and saw the face of Sarah Truman on the screen. This alone would have ordinarily brought Reid to a halt; he enjoyed watching his friend’s work. But the sight he saw behind Sarah banished all thoughts of work from his mind. It was Phillip Longman’s old family home.

Reid reached out for the screen’s remote control. His heart was suddenly pumping fast. He could feel himself beginning to panic as he fumbled with the buttons, desperate to switch off the TV’s mute setting. Finally he managed to make the damn thing work.

The sound of the television – of Sarah’s voice – immediately filled the room.