Catherine made her way across the lobby to check the screens and confirm which court was hearing Crown versus Agnew that morning. This was not one she expected to be on tenterhooks about, nor remotely fearful of fleeting caprice.

Sammy Agnew had been rescued from the chill waters of a canal back in April, having been discovered clinging on to a drainage outlet by two early-morning joggers. He was suffering symptoms of hypothermia but was most likely unable to distinguish between those and the symptoms of having been drinking for upwards of seventy-two hours prior to his plunge.

Catherine never ceased to marvel at how many murder cases involved what was described in court as ‘a three-day drinking binge’. These days she could barely manage three hours. A couple of glasses of wine once the weans were in bed and she was pleasantly on her way to unconsciousness.

On a recent visit to the pub, she had overheard one young reveller prevent his mate from ordering a burger and chips from the bar on the grounds that ‘eatin’s cheatin’.’ Even twenty years younger, she could not have related to that mentality. For guys like Agnew, however, ‘abuse’ seemed too ordinary a word to describe what they did with alcohol. It probably took less time and commitment to condition the body for Olympic competition than to be able to endure that volume and longevity of drink. Sammy wouldn’t be getting a medal, though.

Around about the time he was warming up in hospital, his nominal best friend and fellow bevvy-athlete Peter Leckie was being fished out of the same canal. Peter hadn’t been so lucky, his chances of escaping the treacherous depths and the low temperatures greatly reduced by having been dead for several hours before he ever hit the water.

Sammy’s defence was that he and Peter had been out for a late-night stroll when they were set upon by some local neds. They had chucked Sammy into the canal, but Peter had initially fought them off, his bravery earning him a severe kicking when the neds eventually got the upper hand. This accounted for the multiple blunt-trauma wounds to Peter’s head, but there were a few pernickety details outstanding. Such as Sammy being caught on CCTV taking a trolley from the nearby Morrisons supermarket, and being seen by several witnesses later the same night pushing a lifeless body towards the canal, making ‘wheee’ noises in order to give the impression that he and his companion were engaged in some harmless fun.