STOCKS & SHARES 11

The room itself was business-like and bare, bureaucratic rather than ceremonial, but it still had the sombre trappings of all Courts of Justice. The Judge’s robes still carried that aura of the days of hanging, the Royal crest instantly reminding everyone present that the laws of the state, the sheer almost visible power invested in this room was centred on the human presence of the Judge.

The power itself was no longer the substance of life and death, but the verdict of the Court still had the awesome ability to change lives forever, to create or destroy, albeit in a more subtle (though sometimes worse) sense than the grim days of corporal punishment.

The Judge glared sternly over his spectacles. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury - have you

reached a verdict?”

The foreman of the Jury, a thin-faced man with

a fiercely determined expression of honesty on his face, stood up solemnly.

“Yes, your Honour,” he declared proudly.