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He’d try mouthfuls of new ones to tell her all over again, in quite different but still furious sentences, which threatened to tip him over into hysterical rage. Neither habit was likely to impress the court.
    At their first meeting Trish had summed up five minutes’ worth of his muddled ranting in two crisp sentences. His relief had been all the reward she’d wanted for the headache-inducing concentration needed to pick out what he had actually been saying from the maelstrom of outrage and irrelevance he had produced. Antony’s half-mocking approval had been an unexpected extra and had set the tone for all their work on the case since.
    In the old days, Will had had a small business on the Hampshire-Sussex Border, making traditional meat products for the upper end of the delicatessen and mail-order trade. He
had never intended to expand; the company had made him a good living, and provided ten jobs in a rural area of high unemployment. Everything had gone well until he’d had the first, highly flattering letter from Furbishers.
    ‘It was a fantastic moment,’ he’d said at that first meeting in chambers, ‘even though I’d never had any ambitions to trade on such a huge scale.’
    In order to fulfil Furbishers’ requirements, he’d bought more machines, taken on more staff and committed himself to ordering vastly increased supplies of raw materials, financing it all with a bank loan guaranteed against his house and all the business assets. Then, three months after he’d started to make his deliveries to Furbishers, they’d at last sent through the written contracts with an infinitely lower price per unit than he’d agreed.
    Having committed himself to the expansion, Will had struggled to make the deal work, and stuck with it for far too long, losing money every day. Eventually the bank had called in the loan. He’d lost everything.
    Some of the more comprehensible parts of his original diatribe came back to Trish, full of the emotion that had made him gobble and gag on the words. ‘I did everything I was supposed to do and half-killed myself to get Furbishers what they said they wanted, then they screwed me royally and didn’t give a shit.
    ‘People like that have to take responsibility for the damage they do to the suckers they trick into believing in them. What they did to me would have made it impossible for anyone to fulfil their contract.
    ‘It’s not the money. I mean, it’s not only the money. It’s my marriage, my self-respect, my home, my faith in the basic decency of other human beings, my—’ Tears of fury had filled his eyes, and he’d had to fight for control. Trish had considered explaining the law on consequential loss, but had decided to
wait for a better time. The effort Will had made to keep his voice steady deepened it into a rolling bass. ‘Everything. Then they made me believe it was my fault.’
    That had been the killer accusation for her. In the past she’d seen plenty of rapists and paedophiles who’d made themselves feel better by blaming their victims. Furbishers’ crime might not have been as bad as theirs, but the tactic was the same. She’d always thought it was vicious. This time it had ratcheted up her already powerful sympathy for her client.
    ‘By the way,’ she said to him, ‘it won’t be Antony asking the questions today. It’ll be me.’
    Will shook off her hand so that he could grab her by the shoulders, turning her so that the light from the high leaded windows fell on her face.
    ‘Honestly?’ he said. ‘Oh, Trish, thank God. I wish I’d known. I’d have slept much better.’
    Over Will’s shoulder she could see Antony, raising his thumb like a merciful spectator of gladiatorial games. She let one eyelid droop in acknowledgement, hoping Will wouldn’t notice.
    ‘I’ve got to go to the robing room now,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in a bit. OK?’
    He produced a quivery smile and nodded her away.

Chapter 3
    Tim Hayleigh stood in the