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Cockburn, QC? ‘What’s Cockburn want with me?’
    The collar of Villiers’ shirt was grubby. He fingered it in his usual obsequious fashion. ‘It’s the
Running Rein
business. As is commonly known, Colonel Peel has defaulted. Mr Ernest Wood has taken out a writ. It is reported that the case will come on in the Exchequer Court. The Solicitor General has been retained for Colonel Peel. Mr Cockburn has accepted the brief for Mr Wood.’
    I can still remember the surge of anticipatory excitement that travelled through my veins. But I managed to retain my casual tone. ‘So?’
    Villiers handed me a document, tied in pink string. ‘Mr Cockburn will naturally require a junior to support him. Mr Wood has requested that you be briefed.’
    I stared at the writing on the face of the brief. The solicitors were identified as Bulstrode and Bulstrode from Exeter. But I also saw other names. Cockburn and James. A fine combination. And it would mean a fine fat fee.
    It was my first step on the ladder to success. I knew it, instinctively . What I did not appreciate at the time was that it also signified the first step on a long, slippery slope downwards, to disgrace and ignominy.
    You know, my boy, when you’re at the top of the tree, it’s a long way down. And the sad thing is, there’s no bugger waiting at the bottom to break your fall.
    But just then, standing in the courtroom with the brief for
Wood v Peel
in my hands, knowing it would be a hearing that all of London would want to attend, all I could think of was that my financial problems would now soon be over.
    I could ride to glory, on the back of
Running Rein.
3
    That foxy little bastard Cockburn kept us waiting, of course, in his anteroom, just by way of making an unspoken demonstration of his importance. But the delay gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with the briefing solicitor Mr Bulstrode.
    I could see at a glance that the burly Mr Bulstrode thought he knew a Great Man when he saw one. He came towards me, with a deferential bow.
    ‘You come highly recommended, sir,’ he averred in an obsequious tone. By the corn merchant, of course. This, on the basis of a card handed to a triumphant – now infuriated – horse owner. I’d been lucky, if unprincipled.
    In the next few minutes I realized that Bulstrode was also the kind of person who considered himself to be no fool.
    ‘I tell you, sir,’ he confided in me as we waited, ‘there are those who assume that, because I have a West Country accent and affect gilt buttons on my waistcoat, my wits are not as sharp and my judgment as measured as other London solicitors. They might think me a dandy….’
    It was exactly how he impressed me, with his high-collared, dark-blue coat and stiff stock, the satin ornamented with a small diamond and pin connected with a thin gold chain.
    ‘But to make assumptions about my perspicacity from such evidence is, in my view, shortsightedness on their part,’ he averred.
    I listened with interest, and kept my eyes on the diamond and pin. He was not yet forty years of age, he advised me proudly, and had already established a successful practice in London, from the Exeter firm his father had founded: Bulstrode and Bulstrode were now a force to be reckoned with in both the West Country and the metropolis. He was a relatively wealthy man and did not need to seek work, but he enjoyed the bustle and excitement of the London courts and the Home Circuit. And though he did not say so, he clearly enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Great Men.
    Alexander Cockburn, as we both knew, was already a Great Man. A Queen’s Counsel with a considerable reputation. And I had been highly recommended, so Bulstrode already regarded me with respect. He kept me entertained with views about his own connections in the West Country but leapt eagerly to his feet when Cockburn’s clerk asked us to enter the chambers, and even stepped aside to allow me the privilege of preceding him.
    Alexander Cockburn,