‘He was convinced somebody was watching him,’ said Tomas. ‘We should have done more to ensure his attendance, Mr Priest.’

‘Short of bundling him in the back of my car and holding him hostage I’m not sure what,’ Priest remarked, ignoring Tomas’s intonation.

‘I take it you’ve rung him?’ asked Gail.

He glanced over at Georgie who had just lowered her phone. She shook her head.

‘Straight to voicemail,’ she explained.

‘Let’s not worry just yet.’ Priest smiled and turned back to whisper confidentially into Okoro’s ear. ‘Did you hear all that, old man?’

Okoro replied in a low growl, ‘As I understand it you want me to win this case without my star witness, relying purely on hearsay evidence from non-independent witnesses. Is that right?’

‘Yes and I pay you bloody well for it, too,’ Priest hissed back. ‘But I realise it’s a tall order so why don’t we try an alternative approach under which you buy me time and I go and find our witness?’

‘That’s fine because, doing it my way, Dickie’s going to have a bloody field day.’

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Priest’s exit from court thirteen was far less grand than his entrance and would have been entirely unnoticed had it not been for Alexia Elias’s grey eyes watching his every step.

Outside the courtroom, he passed several robing rooms, finding vague amusement with the sign pinned to one of the doors – MEMBERS OF THE BAR ONLY. As a solicitor-advocate, Priest was perfectly entitled to pop in and use one of the wire coat hangers to store his overcoat, but the thought couldn’t have been further from his mind. Firstly, because he did not own an overcoat and, secondly, because Charlie Priest generally hated other lawyers. Those that he didn’t were merely the exceptions that proved the rule.

As he passed myriad portraits of stony-faced judges he couldn’t name and didn’t care about, he tried to reflect on the present situation. Simeon’s no-show was bad news but it wasn’t his firm’s one hundred per cent win record that troubled him. It was the grey eyes of Alexia Elias that had tracked his quiet withdrawal from court. There had been mounting media pressure backed by a plethora of very high-profile individuals against The Real Byte and, indirectly, its lawyers. The Turkey scandal aside, the Elias Children’s Foundation had benefited tens of thousands of children across the globe. Its brand stood for everything that was good in humanity. This trial meant everything for both sides.

Litigation disaster management rule number two: if you have to call Mother Teresa a whore, make sure it’s a charge that sticks.