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       Brian Fordyke

      The buzzer. The buzzer of doom. The buzzer that indicates that the jury have reached a verdict and are now ready to come back into the courtroom to deliver it. Guilty or not guilty, that’s what the buzzer means. And as soon as I hear it, the pace of my heart starts to quicken and I feel the prickle of sweat forming under my wig.

      I look behind me to the dock where my client, a pockmarked and serially dishonest rogue and drug addict by the name of Brian Fordyke, sits, charged with shoplifting. The trial has not gone particularly well for him.

      I’m in court sixteen of the City Crown Court. It’s a court where odd things happen, far away from the gaze of the media and the high-profile cases. It is tucked away, ancient, dusty and largely ignored. It is where I ply my trade as a barrister. In court sixteen the buzzer is followed by the footsteps – heavy, foreboding footsteps on the wooden floor that leads from the jury room to the courtroom: clomp, clomp, clomp.

      And with every footstep, the verdict ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, happiness or sadness, freedom or incarceration is brought a clomping step nearer.

      The door from the jury room to the courtroom opens and in they walk. The usual vengeful suspects: my jury, Brian Fordyke’s jury. There’s the little old lady who has sucked Everton Mints religiously throughout the trial; the bloke with the tattoos who sat and stared utterly oblivious to my attempts to persuade him of Brian Fordyke’s innocence; the middle-class man who has worn a suit throughout; the hippy lady in the flowing blouse who chose to affirm rather than swear on the Bible (always nice to get a couple of liberals on the jury); and the pretty girl to whom I found myself paying far too much attention during my closing speech. These and the seven others clomp towards their place in the jury box and sit down.

      At this point I watch them carefully. I know that if they look towards me or the dock then they will acquit my client, if they don’t, it’s curtains.

      They

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