AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“May I have a moment to check my notes?” she asked, and then she dropped her notepad. It fell at Jack’s feet, but as she and Jack reached down simultaneously to pick it up, their heads dipping below the tabletop, it became apparent that the drop had been intentional.
“If there’s a bad guy here, it’s your client, not mine,” she said. “You’re going to regret this.”
“Ms. Ellis, last chance,” said the judge. “Do you have cross-examination?”
She picked up her notepad, and then rose to address the court. “I have nothing at this time,” she said.
She threw one last set of dagger eyes at Jack, as if to underscore the last three words.
At this time.
Chapter 36
A white transit van with the blue-and-yellow markings of the London Metropolitan Police stopped outside the Bethnal Green station house in Victoria Park Square. The sign posted at the curb readpolice vehicles only,but the heavy-gauge steel post was bent over at a forty-five-degree angle from an earlier mishap of some sort, and the sign itself was defaced with gang graffiti. It was Theo’s second visit to a police station in as many weeks, and from the very first impression, he knew he was no longer in Covent Garden.
“In you go,” the sergeant said, and a team of uniformed officers whisked Theo and the Russian up the steps and into the station house.
The lobby was straight out of cop-show classics: uniformed police officers coming and going, a couple of handcuffed gangbangers still seething over an unresolved territorial dispute, a drunk with a handkerchief to his bloody nose, and a homeless guy with vomit all over his shoes sitting on the end of a long wooden bench. Two officers took the Russian down the hall. The sergeant led Theo in the opposite direction, past the nightly circus and around the corner to an interrogation room.
It was just Theo, the sergeant, and another officer in the small, brightly lit room. Theo sat on one side of the rectangular table. The sergeant stood by the window on the other side of the table, and the patrol officer guarded the door. Theo wondered if anyone else was watching or listening from behind the one-way observation mirror on the wall. It wasn’t as scary as the time a fifteen-year-old Theo had been hauled in for questioning about the shooting of a convenience store clerk in Miami, but he assumed this wasn’t about the theft of a garden chain.
The door opened, and another officer entered with a bag of takeaway food. He handed it to the sergeant and left.
“Hungry?” asked the sergeant as he took a seat at the table opposite Theo.
Theo smiled. “Damn, I almost forgot it was the Brits who invented good-cop/bad-cop.”
He laughed. “Nothing to do with that. Just dinnertime.”
The sergeant opened the sack and started eating. It smelled like curry. He ate in silence. The guard stood at the door, saying nothing. It was as if they were waiting for Theo to start talking. Theo knew better, and not just because his best friend was a criminal defense lawyer.
They waited for twenty minutes. The sergeant stuffed the paper plates and plastic utensils into the brown sack and pitched the trash into the metal can in the corner.
Theo broke the silence. “At some point, I’ll need to use the—whatever you call it here. WC?”
The sergeant checked his watch. “Is it an emergency?”
“Not yet.”
“Then hold it. She should be here any minute.”
“She who?” asked Theo.
There was a knock, and the door opened. In walked the FBI’s legal attaché from the U.S. embassy, Madeline Coffey. She took a seat beside the sergeant and looked across the table at Theo.
“Bet you didn’t plan to see me again, did you, Mr. Knight?”
“Nope.”
“I have good news and bad news,” she said.
“Another British invention,” said the sergeant.
“What?” asked the attaché.
“Nothing,” said Theo. “Go on.”
“The good news is, you’re somewhat of a hero, Mr. Knight.”
