THE second day of a drugs trial involving the former owner of Northwich Victoria centred on a painstaking run-through of mobile phone records and police observations in a two-month period.

James Rushe, 54, is on trial at Liverpool Crown Court accused of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.

Rushe, of Runcorn Road, in Runcorn, appears alongside co-defendants defendants Mark Fishwick, 46, of Greencroft, in Preston, and Andrew Fetherstone, 47, of Barnard Road, in Manchester.

All three have denied the charge.

Today, Tuesday, in the second day of what has been listed as a seven-day trial, Det Con Anthony Greenhough, from the North West Regional Crime Unit, took to the stand while prosecutor David Potter went through the majority of a hefty document detailing the sequence of events in the case.

This featured the times, dates and durations of calls, texts and instant messages made by mobile telephones registered to the defendants and those attributed to members of a Merseyside organised crime group run by a Preston man called Paul Berry, 47, of Abbey Walk, who pleaded guilty to his part in the conspiracy at an earlier hearing.

It also featured details of the communications made by an un-registered phone, attributed by the prosecution to Fishwick.

The sequence of events described a meeting between Rushe, Fishwick and Berry at a Warrington pub called the Mascrat Manor on February 27 last year, which was observed by a police officer who will appear as a witness later in the trial.

The court also heard the events of and in the run-up to March 18, 2015, when Berry’s couriers, Michael Kairns, 43, of Dovecot Avenue, in Huyton, and Martin Cleary, 37, of Shaw Lane, in Prescot, drove to Karting 2000, in Manchester, a karting track formerly owned by Rushe and run by Fetherstone and Rushe’s sons at the time.

There the prosecution argues Kairns and Cleary, who admitted their part in a large-scale drugs conspiracy at an earlier hearing, passed a package to Fetherstone, which he hid in his jacket.

The sequence of events, including details of the police seizure of quarter of a kilo of 83 per cent pure cocaine which the prosecution argue was being couriered to Fishwick, will be concluded tomorrow.

The trial continues.