But the courtroom humor, such as it was, mingled uneasily with tragedy and the sometimes cruel impersonality of the law. Twenty-five very long minutes after the drunken Mr Reynolds had been removed from the courtroom, another case had been called, another defendant – not Hardy’s – brought in. He was beginning to think that his own client wouldn’t get his hearing and that another entire day would have been wasted. This was not all that unusual an occurrence. Everyone bitched about it, but no one seemed to be able to make things better.

The new defendant was Joshua Bonder, and from the Penal Code Section read out by the clerk, Hardy knew the charge was dealing amphetamines. But before things got started, Judge Li wanted to make sure that the three material witnesses in the case were in the building and ready to testify.

Hardy was half nodding off, half aware of the jockeying between Judge Li and the attorneys, when suddenly the back door by the judge’s bench opened. At the sound of rattling chains – shades of the Middle Ages – Hardy looked up as a couple of armed bailiffs escorted three children into the courtroom.

The two boys and a girl seemed to range in age from about ten to fourteen. All of them rail-thin, poorly dressed, obviously terrified. But what sent an almost electric buzz through the courtroom was the fact that they were all shackled together in handcuffs and leg chains.

Joshua Bonder, whose own handcuffs had been removed for the hearing, screamed out, ‘You sons of bitches!’ and nearly knocked over the defense table, jumping up, trying to get to the kids. ‘What have you done to my children?’

Hardy had seen many murderers walk into the courtroom on their own, without any hardware. He thought he’d seen most of everything here, but this shocked him to his roots.

And he wasn’t alone. Both of the courtroom bailiffs had leapt to restrain Mr Bonder, and now held him by the defense table. But Judge Li himself was up behind the bench, his normal calm demeanor thrown to the winds at this outrage.