‘Fat man?’ Leo said.

The desk sergeant stared at him with disbelief.

‘You’re not listening to my son-in-law, fat man. And I think you’re being very rude.’

Leo was taking something out of his kitbag.

A claw hammer.

No, it was a nailing hammer, the hammer for banging nails through the horse’s feet so that the horseshoes stay on, and with claws for breaking off the excess nail.

It was small and vicious looking, like a miniature pickaxe.

‘Are you listening now to us, fat man?’

The desk sergeant was listening now.

‘My daughter didn’t kill anyone,’ Leo said. ‘Because I did.’

‘Drop the weapon!’

The sergeant had a Taser in his hands, aiming it at Leo’s chest.

He reached under the desk and hit a button that let off an alarm and then there were other officers, and there were handguns pointed at us.

‘Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon!’

And they were screaming and we were getting down on our knees but Leo would not let go of the nailing hammer and he was talking but nobody was listening to him.

‘On your face! On your face! On your face!’

And then we were on our bellies and I felt a boot smash down into the back of my neck, and my face was twisted sideways, and I caught one last glance of the nailing hammer before another boot stamped down hard on Leo’s hand and he cried out with pain and then the nailing hammer was kicked away.

And as my arms were pulled halfway up my spine and the handcuffs snapped on, I knew that on the end of that horseshoe nailing hammer there would be tiny traces of hair and blood and bone and brains, all the forensic remains of James Caine’s ruined skull.

Losing

1 MONTH LATER

Tara

‘How do you plead?’ the court usher asked my father, and in the front row of the public gallery in Court Two of the Central Criminal Court, my mother screamed.

It was a cry of rage more than grief, and the sound was shattering in that intimidating place of black robes and horsehair wigs and hushed, oak-panelled formalities. Then a female security guard was edging down the aisle towards us, and escorting my mother from the public gallery as if she was the victim of a sudden catastrophic accident. My mother was done up to the nines in her favourite sky-blue Chanel suit, her hair blonder than it had been for years, the glamour of her appearance in stark contrast to her hunched, stumbling gait as the security guard led her away with a tenderness that made tears spring to my eyes.

My head told me to go with her, and so did my husband’s eyes, to run to her side and comfort her in the weirdly busy corridors of the Old Bailey where witnesses and police and barristers mingled as if it was always rush hour in the criminal justice system. But I made no move to go to my mother.