There had been speeches; there always are, with men like Damian, about career pressure and misunderstood decisions and the terrible unfairness of being held to account for things everyone supposedly did.

The judge had listened to all of it and then handed down a term of several years and an order for full restitution, and that had been the end of the speeches.

When he came out, Malcolm told me, relaying it without relish, he would own very little — the court had seen to the car and the equity and the comfortable life — and he would carry a criminal record that no amount of charm would ever talk its way around.

It was not a fate I had wished on him.