‘I thought we were, like, going to play football, My Lord.’ Blake’s rat-like features pinched with cunning. ‘The only reason I filmed it was because I was messing about with my phone when he – the man – came out of his house. I was scared of him, My Lord. I could see he had lost his rag – that he was angry, My Lord. My mates – they had the bundle, My Lord. We were just mucking about, My Lord. It was just a laugh! A bit of a laugh, My Lord! I don’t know how it happened. The altercation, My Lord. I just froze. I didn’t touch him. It wasn’t me. It was my mates, My Lord. It’s completely wrong that I got done.’

The judge thought about it for a moment.

‘Leave to appeal . . . granted,’ he said.

I looked up at the public gallery. Heavy-set women with tattoos were celebrating as though they were at a football match. Blake’s mother, sisters, perhaps a girlfriend.

The lawyer was puffed up with pride.

‘It’s not fair, is it, Max?’ Mrs Goddard said quietly.

I looked at the stony face of her son, Steve Junior, and the quiet tears of her daughter, Kitty. And then I looked at Alice.

It clawed at my heart that she felt the need, even now, to keep her voice down.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair.’

*  *  *

I stood at the base of the main staircase and stared up at the broken shard of glass from an IRA car bomb buried deep in the wall.

All that time. Just think.

The crowds at the Old Bailey were thinning out now.

But I lingered, staring up at the detritus of an old war, troubled by a thought that I could not name.

Just think.

Then I began to move, walking up the main staircase of the Old Bailey, unsure what I was looking for.

I went through a door and into a long, lavish dining room. It was set for dinner. Perhaps fifty places. A signed portrait of the Prince of Wales smiled at me.

And then I saw it. A heavy black iron doorknocker attached to a square of hard wood, ancient but unmarked, the wood dark brown with time.

The doorknocker of Newgate Prison. It was as black as the grave. And I could see where the old saying comes from. As black as Newgate’s knocker. And as I stared at it I could understand – really understand for the first time – that Newgate Prison had once stood on this same ground.

All that time.

Just think.

I went out of the door as some kind of manservant was coming in. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said, but I was already past him, going back down the main staircase and through the marble halls of the Old Bailey.