And it was only hours later, after Scout had fallen asleep on the sofa reading a book called I Like This Poem and the bells of St Paul’s were chiming the hour that I suddenly realised Tara Jones had never heard the sound of the blues-and-twos.

28

I was jolted from sleep when my phone began vibrating on the small bedside table, moving in jerky little circles as if it had a life of its own. I swung my legs out of bed. Six a.m. and the sky was still almost black. The days were getting shorter.

A woman was crying at the other end of the line. It took me a moment to realise that she was Alice Goddard.

‘They are going to let one of them out! They are going to let him off! Max, he’s going to get away with killing my husband!’

‘Slow down, Alice. What’s happening?’

She got it out. One of the gang who had killed Steve Goddard was trying to get his verdict declared unsound.

‘Which one?’ I said, although I could already guess.

‘The one who filmed it on his phone. Jed Blake. Do you remember him? He’s saying – he’s saying he didn’t take part, that it was nothing to do with him . . .’

I remembered all three of them. The coward. The weakling. And the bully. They had been cocky enough in Court Number One of the Old Bailey but far less impressive when I had first encountered them in Interview Room 2 at West End Central.

I had seen the bully blank-faced with callous indifference, too stupid to realise the enormity of what he had done. And I saw the weakling wet himself at the prospect of a prison sentence.

And I saw the coward – Jed Blake – crying for his mother, head in his hands as if he could not bear to look at the interview room, repeating over and over again that he had not laid a fist or a boot on Mr Goddard, that he had just pointed his phone and pressed record.

‘Listen to me, Alice. It sounds like this Jed Blake creep is seeking permission to appeal. The judge at their trial decided that they were all in it together. But Blake’s lawyer is probably going to argue that his conviction was unsound because they were not all in it together.’ The words stuck in my mouth, but I had to spell it out to her. ‘Because Blake was only filming what happened and not taking part in the beating.’

I heard her crying into the phone. Quietly now, knowing this was no nightmare. This was her life.

Her voice was very small. ‘But what does it all mean? He’s not really going to get out, is he?’