He looked round the North Court of the High Court building in Glasgow. Seated above him, the trial judge Lord Cowden pressed on with his charge to the jury. In his red and white robes with prominent red crosses, Charles Arthur Blair, judicially styled the Honourable Lord Cowden, was a pinched little man sporting half-moon spectacles and with a voice which sounded as if it was being filtered through rough sand. Not a man who was noted for his sense of humour, he had the air of a man born to be a mute at a funeral. (Indeed, it was rumoured that his entry in Who’s Who listed ‘attending interments’ as one of his hobbies.)

Cowden was not James Muirhead’s favourite judge. He made little attempt to conceal his view that if the Crown brought an accused man to court, that was reason enough to suppose he was very probably guilty. The prosecuting counsel or advocate depute should be given a free run at satisfying the jury of what his Lordship was inclined to believe was true. The defence, on the other hand, did nothing but cause problems, and defence counsel were a particular irritation. They constantly objected to evidence which pointed to the guilt of their clients. They tricked and bullied hapless witnesses and turned the clearest of evidence into a hideous mass of confusion. They harangued police officers and accused them of all forms of heinous misconduct such as planting evidence and fabricating confessions.

Opposite Muirhead at the table in the well of the court sat the advocate depute, Michael Matthews QC. The two knew each other well and had been admitted to the Faculty of Advocates on the same day, but there all similarities ended. Matthews’ father was a judge who had recently retired from the bench. His son had spent most of his legal career dealing with lucrative tax cases and was a recognised specialist in the exciting world of corporate taxation. He was very much an Establishment man who, like his father before him, was undoubtedly destined for the bench. Only dishonesty, indulging in child pornography, or drinking his soup with a dessert spoon could prevent him getting there. His only interest in life was the law. If Matthews had a hobby at all, it was reading a weighty periodical, Current Law, from cover to cover, twice, just in case he missed something the first time around. He was, in short, a boring fart.

He had no affection whatever for the criminal law or its practitioners. He found it and them rather vulgar. This view was not entirely without justification. As a well-known court reporter had remarked, ‘If you put the lawyers into the dock and the clients in gowns, who would notice the change?’ However, he appreciated that he had to serve his three-year stint as a public prosecutor and ‘do his bit’, as a necessary evil on his way to the bench.