Silks

CHAPTER 15

I spent an hour early on Saturday connected to the internet, dealing with my e-mails, paying bills and generally managing my bank account. I also looked up when England had last played cricket on tour in South Africa. The rest of the morning was spent going through, yet again, the boxes of papers for the case. By now I knew many of them off by heart but one or two of them were new since I had last been through them.

At last, after several more threatening requests, the bank had finally produced Millie Barlow’s bank statements and I spent quite a while examining these. They did indeed show that Millie had a regular payment into her account over and above her salary from the equine hospital veterinary practice. And Scot’s statements showed that the money didn’t come from him, or at least it didn’t come from his bank account.

The amounts weren’t that big, just a few hundred every month, and, from the statements that had been sent by the bank, I was able to tell they had been paid to her for at least a year and a half before she died. But I didn’t have any information for before that.

I thought back to when I had met her parents at Scot Barlow’s house. Were they likely to have been sending their daughter money? One never knew. Their ill-fitting clothes, their cheap coach travel and their simple ways didn’t necessarily mean they had no spare cash. It might just mean they were careful with their money, and there was no crime in that.

Scot, meanwhile, had been doing very well indeed, thank you very much. Almost all his deposits were from Weatherbys, the racing administrators, who paid all the riding fees and win bonuses to owners, trainers and jockeys. There had been a few other minor deposits but nothing that amounted to much. Scot had been at the top of his profession and earning accordingly, but the statements indicated that there was nothing unusual in any of his transactions, at least nothing that I had been able to spot.

I met with Bruce Lygon on Saturday afternoon and we fairly gloomily went through the prosecution case once again. At first glance the evidence seemed overwhelming but, the more I looked at it, the more I began to believe that we had a chance to argue that Mitchell had no case to answer. Everything was circumstantial. There was no proof anywhere in their case that our client had ever been to Honeysuckle Cottage, let alone killed its owner.

‘But the evidence does show,’ Bruce said, ‘that whoever killed Barlow used Mitchell’s pitchfork as the murder weapon, was wearing Mitchell’s boots as he did it, probably drove Mitchell’s car from the scene, and,’ he emphasized, ‘also had access to Mitchell’s debit card slips.’

‘But that doesn’t mean it was definitely Mitchell who did it,’ I said.

‘What would you think if you were on the jury?’ he said. ‘Especially when you add in the fact that Mitchell hated Barlow. Everyone knew it, and Mitchell had often been heard to threaten to kill Barlow in exactly the manner in which he died.’

‘That’s why we have to argue that there’s no case to answer,’ I said. ‘If it goes to the jury we are in deep trouble.’

On Sunday, I went by train to have lunch with my father in his bungalow in the village of Kings Sutton. He came down to the village station to collect me in his old Morris Minor. He had always loved this old car and there was nothing he adored more than tinkering for hours with the old engine beneath the bulbous bonnet.

‘She’s still going well, then?’ I said to him as the car made easy work of the hill up from the station.

‘Never better,’ he said. ‘The odometer has just been round the clock again.’

I leaned over and saw that it read just twenty-two miles.

‘How many times is that?’ I asked.

‘Can’t remember,’ he said. ‘Three or four at least.’

This car had been the greatest delight of his life and he had been married to it for far longer, and much more passionately, than he had been to my mother.

It had been the first car I had ever driven. I am sure that the Health and Safety Executive would not have approved of the practice, but I could remember the joy of sitting on my father’s lap and steering at an age when my feet wouldn’t reach the pedals. Thinking back, it was a surprise that I hadn’t wanted to become a racing driver rather than a jockey.

My father’s stone-built bungalow sat in a cul-de-sac at the edge of the village with six other similar bungalows, all of them subtly different in design or orientation. He had four bedrooms in a house that looked smaller, but he had converted the smallest bedroom into an office with bookshelves full of law books and Morris Minor manuals.

Just as he had been an infrequent visitor to Barnes since Angela died, I had only been here to Kings Sutton to see him about half a dozen times in the previous three years. My father and I had never been really affectionate towards each other, even when I had been a small child. I suppose we loved each other in the way that parents and children must, and I think I would probably miss him after his days, that is if Julian Trent didn’t see me off first. But closeness and a cosy loving relationship between us was something that neither of us had wanted for a very long time, if ever.

However, that Sunday, I had a lovely time with him, sitting at his dining-room table eating a roast beef lunch with Yorkshire puddings and four different vegetables that he had cooked for us.

‘I’m very impressed,’ I said, laying down my knife and fork. ‘I never realized you could cook so well.’

‘You should come more often,’ he said in response, smiling.

Over lunch we hadn’t discussed the Mitchell case, or any other case. I think, in the end, he had been pleased that I had become a barrister, but there had been so many things said between us in those early years, things we probably both would now regret having said, that the whole question of my job and career had never been mentioned again.

‘Would you do me a favour?’ I asked him as we moved with our coffees into his sitting room.

‘Depends what it is,’ he said.

‘Would you contemplate going away for a couple of weeks?’ I said.

‘What on earth for?’ he said.

How could I explain to him that it might be for his own protection? How could I say that it was so he couldn’t be used as a lever to make me do something I didn’t want to?

‘I’d like to give you a holiday,’ I said.

‘But why?’ he said. ‘And where would I go?’

‘Wherever you like,’ I said.

‘But I don’t want to go anywhere,’ he said. ‘If you really want to give me something then give me the money to have my windows and guttering painted.’

‘It might be safer for you to go away,’ I said.

‘Safer?’ he said. ‘How would it be safer?’

I explained to him just a little about how some people were trying to influence the outcome of a trial by getting me to do things I didn’t want to do.

‘You ought to go and tell the police,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘I will. But for the time being it might be best if the people concerned didn’t know where you were.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, boy,’ he said, putting on his most authoritative voice. ‘Why on earth would anyone care where I live?’

I took a photograph out of my pocket and passed it to him. It was the one of him standing outside his front door wearing the green jumper with the hole in the elbow.

He studied it carefully and looked up at my face.

‘Are you saying that someone else took this?’ he said.

I nodded at him. ‘Last November,’ I said. ‘Do you remember me calling you about that hole in your jumper?’

‘Vaguely,’ he said, still staring at the picture.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I just don’t want these people coming here to trouble you again, that’s all.’ Iwas trying to play down the matter and make light of it so as not to frighten him unnecessarily.

‘But why would they want to?’ he persisted.

‘Because,’ I said with a forced laugh, ‘I have no intention of doing what they want me to do.’

Steve Mitchell’s trial started at ten thirty sharp on Monday morning in court number 1 at Oxford Crown Court with a red-robed High Court judge parachuted in from London for the purpose. This was a murder trial with a celebrity, albeit a minor one, in the dock and nothing was to go wrong.

As expected, I had received no call over the weekend from Sir James Horley QC asking me to request an adjournment and had, in fact, been advised by Arthur in an e-mail that Sir James was now doubtful of making it to Oxford at any time before Thursday at the earliest. I thought that he was in danger of being severely reprimanded by the trial judge, but, as they were probably old golfing chums, that wouldn’t have amounted to much.

The first hour of any trial is taken up mostly with court procedures. The jury members have to be selected and sworn in, the judge needs to become acquainted with counsel, the clerk of the court has to be happy that the right defendant is in the right court, and so on. Boxes of papers are sorted and everything has to be just right before the judge calls on the prosecution to start proceedings proper by outlining the case for the Crown.

Without exception, all criminal proceedings in the English Crown courts are prosecuted in the name of the reigning monarch. The court papers in this case were headed by R. v. Mitchell, meaning in this case Regina, the Queen, versus Steve Mitchell.

Criminal cases under English law are adversarial. There are two sides, the prosecution acting for the Crown and the defence acting for the defendant. The two sides argue against each other with the judge sitting like an independent and neutral referee in the middle. The judge is solely responsible for ensuring that the law, and its procedures, are correctly followed. The jury, having heard all the arguments and also having listened to the answers given by the witnesses called by both prosecution and defence, then decide amongst themselves, in secret, what are the facts in the case before pronouncing on the guilt, or otherwise, of the defendant. If the verdict is guilty, then the judge determines the sentence, in theory following guidelines as laid down by the Sentencing Advisory Panel.

The system has operated in this way for hundreds of years and the spread of English-style administration around the world in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries carried this legal system with it. Consequently it remains the practice in much of the world, including in the United States and in most of the old British Commonwealth.

However, in most of continental Europe the courts follow a different pattern known as the inquisitorial system where the judge, or a panel of judges, investigate the facts in the case, question the witnesses, determine the verdict and then pass sentence, all without the use of a jury. Exponents claim that it may be more precise in finding out the truth, but there is no real evidence to say that one system is more accurate than the other in reaching the correct conclusion.

Number 1 court at Oxford was set out for the adversarial system, as was every other Crown Court in the land, and both the prosecution and the defence teams were laying claim to their space. In our case, the defence consisted solely of Bruce Lygon, his secretary and me. I had asked him to bring his secretary to court so that we didn’t, as a line-up, appear too thin on the ground. To be fair, we also had Nikki Payne at our disposal. Nikki was an eager young solicitor’s clerk from Bruce’s firm, but she wasn’t in court at the start of the trial because she was busy in London trying to discover the answers to some questions I had set her the previous evening.

The prosecution, meanwhile, had seven players in situ. A top QC from London was leading, with a local barrister as his junior. These two sat in the front row, to our right, and also slightly to the right of the judge’s bench as we looked at it. Two CPS solicitors sat behind them, with two other legal assistants in the row behind that, plus a cross between a secretary and a gofer in row four. If they were trying to impress and intimidate the defence by weight of numbers, it seemed to be succeeding.

‘They look very well organized,’ Bruce said to me quietly.

‘So do we,’ I replied. ‘So appearances can be deceiving.’

Members of the public and the press were admitted, taking their respective places on the right-hand side of the court. The press were represented in force, both front-page and back-page reporters of the national dailies filling all of the green upholstered seats in the press box. This trial was going to be big news, and the thirty or so seats reserved for the public were mostly full as well.

Mr and Mrs Barlow, Scot’s parents, were both seated in the front row of this public area, which, in Oxford, was not an elevated gallery as at the Old Bailey, but on the floor of the courtroom alongside the press.

Next, Steve Mitchell was brought into court from the cells by a prison officer in uniform. Both the prison officer and Steve sat in the glass-fronted dock at the back of the court, behind the barristers’ benches. I turned round and gave Steve an encouraging smile. He looked pale and very nervous but was dressed, as I had suggested, in the blazer, white shirt and tie that I had bought for him in Newbury the previous Saturday. Courts are formal places and most of the trial participants were in legal dress or lounge suits. Only juries and the public galleries were casual, and seemingly more so each year.

‘All rise,’ announced the clerk. Everyone stood and the judge entered the court from his chambers behind. He bowed. We bowed back. And then everyone sat down again. The court was now in session.

The court clerk stood up. ‘The defendant will rise,’ she said. Steve stood up.

‘Are you Stephen Miles Mitchell?’ said the clerk.

‘Yes, I am,’ Steve replied in a strong voice that was partly muffled by the glass front of the dock that ran right to the ceiling of the court.

‘You may sit down,’ said the clerk, so he did.

‘Are you leading for the defence, Mr Mason?’ the judge asked loudly, making me jump.

I struggled to my feet. ‘Yes, My Lord,’ I said.

‘Do you not think that your team needs strengthening somewhat?’ he asked.

It was his coded way of asking whether I thought that a QC might be more appropriate, as he clearly did.

‘My Lord,’ I replied. ‘Sir James Horley is nominally leading for the defence in this case but is unable to be here today due to another case in which he is acting having run over time.’

‘You have not asked for an adjournment,’ he said, somewhat accusingly.

‘No, My Lord,’ I said. ‘Sir James and I have made the preparations for the case, and my client is content for the case to proceed today with me acting for him.’ I couldn’t exactly tell the judge that my client had been ecstatic that Sir James was not here when I’d told him earlier in the cells beneath the court.

‘I need to make it clear to you, and to your client, that this will not be grounds for an appeal if the case goes against you.’

‘I understand that, My Lord,’ I said. ‘And so does my client.’

Steve Mitchell nodded his agreement to the judge from the dock.

‘Very well,’ said the judge. ‘I have, in fact, spoken to Sir James this morning when he called me to present his apologies.’

Then why, I thought, did you ask me in the first place, you silly old fart?

The prosecution team were all looking at me and smiling, confidence oozing out of their every pore. I simply smiled back.

‘The defendant will rise,’ the clerk said again.

Steve stood up in the dock.

‘You are charged,’ the clerk said to him, ‘that on the seventeenth of November 2008, you did murder Hamish Jamie Barlow, also known as Scot Barlow. Do you understand the indictment?’

‘Yes,’ Steve replied.

‘How do you plead?’ the clerk asked him.

‘Not guilty,’ Steve said strongly.

Next came the selection and swearing in of the jury.

Everyone watched as a mixed bag of individuals entered the court and sat on more green-covered seats on the other side. There were eighteen of them in total, drawn randomly from the electoral roll and summoned to attend the court, whether they wanted to or not. Unlike in the United States neither the defence nor the prosecution had any prior knowledge of who they were or where they lived. We were not allowed to ask them any questions and, since 1989, the defence has not been able to object to a juror simply because they didn’t like the cut of his coat. Objections to jurors now had to be based on firm grounds and, even then, the judge was most likely to dismiss the objection.

Twelve of the eighteen had their names drawn from a box by the court clerk and each one, in turn, took their places in the jury box to my left and were sworn in, on oath, promising to try the case according to the evidence.

The six people, four women and two men, who had not been selected looked decidedly disappointed as they were excused by the judge back to the jury rooms upstairs, maybe to get luckier in one of the other courts.

And now we were ready to begin in earnest.

The court clerk stood up and read out the indictment to the jury. ‘That on the seventeenth of November 2008, Stephen Miles Mitchell did murder Hamish Jamie Barlow, known as Scot Barlow, contrary to common law.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ the prosecution QC was on his feet almost before the clerk had sat down. ‘You will hear, in this case, of a bitter feud in the world of horse racing that was so acrimonious that it led to the gruesome killing of one jockey at the hands of another. A story of rivalry and revenge that goes far beyond the accepted limits that exist in any competitive sport.’ He paused briefly to draw breath, and also to find a sheet of paper that he picked up from the desk and consulted, not that he probably needed to. It was simply for show. ‘Members of the jury, you will hear how the defendant did premeditatively murder the victim by driving a metal-pronged pitchfork deep into his chest, deep into his heart, and how the defendant now claims that he is innocent of the charge and is being framed by person or persons unknown. But the evidence presented to you will convince you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is, in fact, culpable of the murder, and that his claims of being framed are meaningless and unfounded, nothing more than the last refuge of a guilty soul.’ He replaced the paper onto the desk.

He was good, I thought. Too damned good. He was also far too melodramatic for my taste but it was working. I could see some of the jury members glancing at the dock with distaste.

In all, it took him more than an hour to fully outline, in considerable detail, the case for the prosecution by which time every one of the jury members was eyeing Steve with contempt. As was always the way with the English legal system, the prosecution had first go in the jury persuasion stakes. The defence would have their turn, in time. I just hoped that something would turn up by then that I could use to help me.

The judge adjourned proceedings for lunch. The slow pace of trials, especially murder trials, was becoming clear to both the jury and the defendant. The rest of us knew already.

I went straight down to the cells to see Steve.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘Did you see the way the jury was looking at me? They all think I’m guilty. I’ve got no bloody chance. I wanted so much to call that lawyer a bloody liar.’

‘Calm down, Steve,’ I said. ‘It’s always like that at the beginning of a trial. We’ll get our turn later.’ I didn’t add that it might get worse when they started calling their witnesses. ‘Have some lunch. I’ll see you in court when we resume, and try to keep calm. Remember what I said to you earlier – don’t say anything, ever. It will not look good to the jury, and it will antagonize the judge. Just bite your lip and keep quiet. You will get your turn. Do you understand?’

He nodded. ‘It’s bloody difficult, though.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But it’s very important. I’ll see you later.’

I went up in the lift and made some calls on my mobile.

There was no reply from Nikki’s phone, so I tried Arthur.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Same as always at the start of a trial,’ I said.

‘That bad, huh?’ he said.

‘Worse. Have you heard from Nikki Payne?’ I asked him.

‘Who?’ he said.

‘Nikki Payne,’ I said again. ‘Solicitor’s clerk from Bruce Lygon’s firm. She said she would pass a message to me through you.’

‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ I could hear him rustling papers. ‘Apparently she’s got something from the embassy and she’s chasing the lead. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Good. And thank you for my hotel. Very amusing.’

‘Thought you’d feel at home,’ he said, laughing.

Arthur had made reservations for me in Oxford at a hotel conveniently placed just a few hundred yards from the court building. And the reason he amusingly thought that I would feel at home was because the hotel had been created by converting the old Oxford Prison, which had housed a different clientele as recently as 1996. My room was in what had been ‘A’ wing of the prison, with galleried landings and rows of old cell doorways. It had all been tastefully converted but it still looked just like the interior of an old Victorian prison, except, of course, for the carpets. The hotel had obligingly left one cell as it had been in the prison days so the hotel guests could see how miserably the other half had once lived. I was amused to notice that porridge was on the breakfast menu.

‘Tell Nikki to call me later if she calls you again,’ I said to him. ‘I want to hear how she’s doing.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘I will. Anything else you need?’

‘A cast-iron alibi for the defendant would be nice.’

‘See what I can do,’ he said, laughing, and hung up. Arthur would have to really work a miracle, I thought, to get Mr Mitchell out of this hole.

The afternoon proved to be as frustrating as the morning had been, with the investigating police officer in the witness box for the whole two and a half hours. Only once did the judge briefly adjourn things for a few minutes for us all to stretch our legs and visit the lavatories, and to give me some relief from the damn body shell cutting into my groin. How I wished I could have had my recliner chair from my room in chambers, instead of the upright seats of the court.

The policeman, having consulted his notebooks, went through the whole affair in chronological order, from the moment that the police had first arrived at Barlow’s house to discover the body until they had arrested Steve Mitchell at eight fifty-three that evening. He also went on to describe the investigation after the arrest, including the interviewing of the suspect and the forensic tests that the police had performed on Mitchell’s boots and car together with his understanding of the results, but, as he said, he was no expert on DNA testing.

We were assured by the prosecution that they would be calling their DNA expert witness in due course, together with a member of the police forensic team that had carried out the tests.

‘Inspector,’ said the prosecution QC. ‘What model of car did the defendant own at the time of the murder?’

‘An Audi A4,’ he said. ‘Silver.’

‘Yes,’ went on the QC, ‘and in the course of your enquiries did you determine if this car was fitted with a security alarm and immobilizer system?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was.’

‘And was the system found to be functioning correctly when the car was examined after the defendant’s arrest?’

‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘It was.’

‘So would it be accurate to say that the car could only be unlocked and then driven if the correct key had been used for the purpose?’

‘That is my understanding, yes,’ said the inspector.

‘Did you find any keys for the vehicle?’ the QC asked him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There were two such keys found in Mr Mitchell’s premises when he was arrested. One was on the defendant, in his trouser pocket on a ring with other keys, and the other one,’ he consulted his notebook, ‘was in the top drawer of Mr Mitchell’s desk in his study.’

‘And did you approach an Audi dealer and ask them about keys for their cars?’

‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘They informed me that it was normal for two keys to be issued with a new car and also that replacement or additional keys are only provided after strict security checks.’

‘And had any additional keys been requested for Mr Mitchell’s car?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘They had not.’

‘One last thing, Inspector,’ the QC said with a flourish. ‘Was Mr Mitchell’s car locked when you went to his home to arrest him?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was.’

‘Your witness,’ the prosecution QC said, turning to me.

I looked at the clock on the courtroom wall. It read twenty past four.

‘Would you like to start your cross-examination in the morning, Mr Mason?’ asked the judge expectantly.

‘If it pleases My Lord,’ I said, ‘I would like to ask a few questions now.’

The judge looked at the clock.

‘Ten minutes, then,’ he said.

‘Thank you, My Lord.’ I turned to the witness and consulted my papers. ‘Inspector McNeile, can you please tell the court how it was that the police first became aware that Mr Barlow had been murdered?’

He had left that bit out of his evidence.

‘I can’t remember how I first heard of it,’ he said.

‘I asked, Inspector, not how you personally found out, but how the police force in general was informed.’

‘I believe it was a call to the police station reporting an intruder at Mr Barlow’s residence,’ he said.

‘Who was this call from?’ I asked him.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t have that information.’

‘But surely, Inspector, all emergency calls to the police are logged with the time they are made, and who they are from?’

‘That is the usual practice, yes,’ he said.

‘So how is it that you have no record of who it was that called the police to tell you that an intruder had been seen at Barlow’s house?’

He looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘The call was taken by the telephone on the desk of a civilian worker in the front office of the police station.’

‘Was that not unusual?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘And was the number of that telephone widely available to the public?’ I asked him.

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ he said.

‘Do you not think it is strange that the call was taken on a telephone where the number was not widely known, a telephone where no log was taken of incoming calls, and a telephone on which no recording equipment was attached so that the caller and his number would be unknown?’

‘Mr Mason,’ the judge interjected. ‘That’s three questions in one.’

‘I’m sorry, My Lord,’ I said. ‘Inspector McNeile, would you agree with me that, until the police arrived at Mr Barlow’s house to discover his body, it is likely that the only person or persons who knew that Mr Barlow was dead would be those responsible for his murder?’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ he said.

‘Inspector, how many years in total have you been a detective?’ I asked him.

‘Fifteen,’ he said.

‘And how often in those fifteen years,’ I said to him, ‘have you been telephoned anonymously, on an unrecorded line, to report an intruder in a property so that the police would turn up there and discover a murder victim surrounded by a mass of incriminating evidence?’

‘That’s enough, Mr Mason,’ said the judge.

‘My Lord,’ I said respectfully, and sat down. It had been a minor victory only, in a day of unremitting bad news.

‘Court adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ said the judge.

‘All rise.’

Eleanor didn’t come to Oxford on Monday night. In one way I was relieved, in another, disappointed. When I arrived back at the hotel from court I lay down on the bed, my head aching slightly from all the concentration. This slight headache soon developed into a full-on head-banger.

It was the first such headache I had suffered for some time and I had begun to forget the ferocity of the pain behind my eyes. During the first three weeks immediately after the fall at Cheltenham, I had suffered these on most days and I knew that relaxing horizontally on a bed for a couple of hours was the best and only remedy. A couple of paracetamol tablets took the edge off it, but I had carelessly left my stronger codeine pills at home. They were somewhere in the shambles that had once been my bathroom.

At some point I drifted off to sleep because I was awakened by the phone ringing beside the bed.

‘Yes?’ I said into it, struggling to sit up because of the shell.

‘Mr Mason?’ a female voice said.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘This is Nikki Payne here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been to the Home Office and the South African embassy as you asked and neither of them had any record of a Jacques Rensburg. But they did of someone called Jacques van Rensburg. In fact there are three of them who live in England. Apparently van Rensburg is quite a common name in South Africa.’

It would be.

‘Two of the South African Jacques van Rensburgs living here are at university, here on student visas. One is at Durham and the other is a post-graduate at Cambridge and both have been here for the past two years.’

I suppose it was possible that the Jacques we wanted had given up working with horses for a life of academia, but somehow I doubted it.

‘What about the third one?’ I asked.

‘His visa has expired, but it seems he’s still here although his right to work has expired too. But, apparently, that’s not unusual. That’s all I have for the moment.’

‘Well done,’ I said to her.

‘I’m not done yet,’ she said. ‘Anice chap at the embassy is searching for the third Jacques back in South Africa just in case he went home without telling the Home Office. There aren’t any proper records kept when people leave the UK, only when they arrive.’

It was true, I thought. No one from the immigration department checks your passport on the way out, only on the way in. The airlines only check their passengers’ passports to ensure they have the same names as on their boarding passes.

‘But you did show them the photo?’ I asked her.

‘Of course I did,’ she said. ‘My friend at the embassy is trying to get me a copy of this Jacques van Rensburg’s passport snap sent from the South African Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria so I can see if it is actually him.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Call me tomorrow if you get anywhere.’

She hung up and I rested my head back onto the pillow. My headache was only slightly better, so I lay there for a while longer, reclosed my eyes and drifted back off to sleep.

The phone on the bedside cabinet rang once more, waking me again. Damn it, I thought, can’t a man have any peace?

‘Hello,’ I said, irritated.

‘Just make sure you lose the case,’ said a whispering voice.

I was suddenly wide awake.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded loudly down the line.

‘Never mind who,’ said the whisperer. ‘Just do it.’

The line went dead.