Dead Men's s Boots

And if the way we’d done it had eased the trauma and lessened the damage, the thanks probably belonged to the man who’d died a second time to make it happen. I told her to put the money towards a second honeymoon: if she invests it wisely, it might pay for a dirty weekend in Clacton.

It took me a long time to go through the files I took from Maynard Todd’s office, but the preliminary sweep of the names was quick and easy – although some of them made my eyebrows skitter across the top of my head and come to rest behind my ears.

There were a couple of Cabinet ministers in there for starters, along with a Radio 4 presenter, the head of a major union and the CEOs of three companies even I’ve heard of.

But the biggest surprise wasn’t any of those. It was another name entirely that sent me on my travels to the top end of the Northern Line, five days after all this shit had hit the fan and when the echoes had already started to fade.

Court number one at Barnet had a full docket that morning: I didn’t bother to look at the details, but summary justice was scheduled tûwasem""o be meted out to an impressive number of people.

Never mind the quality, as the saying goes: feel the burn.

I sat at the back of the court, making myself as inconspicuous as I could, but something was throwing the Honourable Mister Montague Runcie off his honourable stride. He wasn’t looking in the peak of condition, for one thing: his face was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, as though he was hunkered down under about five degrees of fever.

And he kept looking over at me at back row centre, getting more and more rattled each time. He fought his way manfully through the first case (a persistent burglar going down for a three-stretch) but he lost the thread of things a bit in the second (non-payment of council tax) and got downright tetchy in the third (bad debt). Finally he called a recess of half an hour and stormed off the bench so quickly that we didn’t have time to stand up and sit down again as the door slammed behind him.

A minute or so after that, the court clerk picked his way casually to the back row and asked me if I’d mind attending his honour in his chambers. I said I’d be delighted, and asked it if was okay if I brought my bronze funeral urn with me: it held the mortal remains of my uncle George, and it was hard for me to be parted from them.