THE loud rap on the heavy door sounded like a death-knock. Two bangs, like gunshots, killed the chatter in court. Without bidding, all rose.

Only when the judge, His Honour Guy Whitburn QC, had seated himself comfortably on his imperious perch, did the court sit in silence - everyone down, except the two defendants in the dock, who were about to go down.

At the back of the court, separated from their be-wigged counsels by thick, ceiling to waist-height glass panels, they stood, waiting to hear for how long and whether - the best hope - their sentence might be suspended.

On the left was George Reynolds, chewing frantically on his nicotine gum, his wispy white hair short and flyaway, as if it was trying to make a break for it from the top of his head. His white shirt - with GR monogrammed on the breast pocket in black - was open at the neck, his blue tie roughly pushed up in an attempt to cover up the deficiency.

He was at least a head taller - and quite possibly a full furlong rounder - than his slight, wiry cousin, Richard Tennick. Mr Tennick stared ahead, Lord Kitchener-like, from behind his bushy moustache as his face drained of colour.

Quietly, but as rapidly as gunfire, Mr Whitburn summed up how Mr Reynolds had been stopped on June 14, last year, with £500,000 in his Mercedes - the proceeds of the sale of his house, Witton Hall, to the Sterling Consortium of financiers, which had taken possession of Darlington Football Club.

Mr Reynolds and Mr Tennick had admitted that that money belonged more properly to the Inland Revenue than to themselves.

Mr Whitburn's gunfire continued. From a deprived background, Mr Reynolds had become a "serious villain", but had turned his life around with "a brilliant idea", building Direct Worktops into a business, which was sold in 1998 for more than £30m.

Then "you launched into creating the egocentric folly, the George Reynolds Arena, the superbly equipped and appointed stadium of the historic Darlington Football Club", he said, pointedly adding: "This was not quite as altruistic as you endeavour to make it sound."

The judge, quite regal in his purple robe with a cerise sash and quite terrible in his majesty, then turned to the case before him.

"This was not a sophisticated cheat involving overseas accounts, foreign deposits or devious financial chicanery," he said. "You both filled in nil returns to the Revenue.

"It beggars belief that having relied on professional assistance for many years, you did not over this four-year period ask an accountant to prepare your own returns."

He referred to an encounter between Mr Reynolds and the Inland Revenue in 1993 which had left both parties "bruised".

"If ever there was a man who knew what his obligations were with regard of his income, I find that man to be you," he said.

The judge raised his eyebrows - which were as wide and as dark as the River Tyne flowing outside the courtroom - and put a pained expression on his face.

From his lofty position, Mr Whitburn quoted Shakespeare and emptied both barrels into Mr Reynolds.

"The wheel for you has turned full circle," he said.

"This offence is so serious that three years' imprisonment is the very least sentence."

Mr Reynolds did not blanch, even though it must have come as a bullet to his 69-year-old heart. In the silence of the wider courtroom, you could hear jaws drop. Experienced be-wigged fellows reckoned Mr Reynolds would get a year; three years - for defrauding the taxman, an occupation legitimised into a multi-billion pound industry called "accountancy" - seemed severe to the point of savagery.

How Mr Tennick must have quaked behind his 'tache as Mr Whitburn trained his withering fire upon him.

Mr Tennick's counsel, Paul Worsley QC, had sought to portray the defendant as hard-working, entrusting and naive. "This man is presently unemployed, looking for work, for some project he can embark upon," he concluded. "He has his house and his wife and his health, but there isn't a great deal more at the end of a long hard-working life. I ask your honour not to take away that (which) he values most."

His Honour was not so easily moved. "Clearly in the shadow of George Reynolds' dominant personality, you have lost much by doing - by coincidence or design - that what he did," he said.

Indeed, Mr Tennick's last act as a free man had been to dash around at Mr Reynolds' bidding, collecting and handing out pieces of paper to selected journalists as Mr Reynolds directed him (one of Mr Reynolds' last acts, incidentally, had been to sign a copy of his autobiography Cracked It! for the police officers who had led the investigation into his affairs).

Eyebrows raised, the judge fired at Mr Tennick: "The very least sentence is two years in prison."

No matter how savage he felt that sentence to be, Mr Tennick did not flinch. The be-wigged ones in front of him rattled through the figures one more time. Still he did not move. Eventually, Mr Reynolds turned his head to look at his cousin, but Mr Tennick - staring straight ahead - did not meet his eye.

"Take them away," ordered the judge with a frightening finality.

Mr Reynolds had bullishly walked into the court shortly before 9.30am yesterday, flicking Churchillian Vs at the cameramen. In between taking calls of support on his mobile phone from current Sunderland footballers, he had been bragging that his next business venture would break in the new year. It would not be in leather or the sex industry, he said, but it would be big - it would go national; international.

He left the dock for prison shortly before 1pm yesterday and managed only to raise his left arm to shoulder-height. It was not a gesture of defiance; it looked more like a farewell.

The bravado had been drained away, the ego had been deflated. The eyes - once ablaze with fury at anyone who had the temerity to stand in his way - were hollow and sunken; the colourful character had turned ashen white. His was not so much a face as a deathmask.

And then, with Mr Tennick shuffling behind him, he was gone.

The court rose, the judge left his perch, the piles and piles of boxes for T20057151 Regina V Reynolds and Tennick were wheeled away, pending inevitable appeal.

Justice had been done. But it felt brutal.