Page 14 of Claim

The phone slipped from his hand onto the blanket, and he leant back in the chair, closing his eyes, as if the effort of the conversation had taken more from him than he cared to admit.

“Everything alright?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

“An ineffectual defence running scared,” he said dismissively. “Nothing more.”

“Not me, I hope?” I kept it light.

He opened his eyes then, as if only just registering my presence. I could almost see the recalibration. The moment his thoughts caught up with the fact that I was no longer merely a son with a passing curiosity about his work. I was, for all practical purposes, a challenger.

“Forget I said that.”

I smiled. “Shall we return to the safer topic of how you believe I urgently need to get laid?” I lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps you have insight into where I might conveniently source candidates to remedy my involuntary abstinence?”

He almost smiled back.

Almost.

“Perhaps your mother has.”

I laughed, quietly, and returned to my notes. But remaining seated after that was a particular kind of torture so I was rather thankful when Father dismissed me with a glance at his Rolex.

“Your mother is due any moment, so if you wish to avoid a secondary inquisition into your personal life, now would be the strategic time to depart.”

I took the olive branch with both hands, packed up, gave Father a rather awkward kiss on the cheek and left.

Outside, the air struck colder than I expected. I paused beneath the hospital canopy, fastening my wool coat and forcing myself to calm. Assumption was not evidence. A principle I enforced daily in court. Except this felt far too specific to dismiss as coincidence.

Had Father been discussing Razor’s case?

I walked rather than flagging a cab. It gave the excess energy somewhere to go, burning off the first sharp edge of it before it could tip into something careless. The city flowed around me in its usual rhythm. Engines idling, phones raised and lowered, bodies shifting without acknowledgment. I slipped back into it without effort. Camouflage had always come easily.

By the time I reached chambers, the shock had resolved into focus. But I didn’t go to my room first. Instead, I headed for the terminals near the clerks’ office. The ones everyone used, the ones no one noticed. Public-facing. Procedural. Boring.

Exactly what I needed.

I logged in and pulled up the Crown Court listings, filtering by remand cases, then narrowing by location. Pentonville. The list populated, names appearing in neat, unremarkable rows. I found Razor’s without meaning to.

Or perhaps that was a lie.

The details were sparse, though. Name. Custodial status. Next hearing: TBC. I scrolled sideways, eyes moving to the representation field. And there it was. Not blank. Not filled. Notice pending. I stared at it, heart pounding, then forced myself to keep going. Checked the timestamp. That morning. Early.

So the call hadn’t been abstract.

It hadn’t been theoretical.

I logged out, printed nothing, saved nothing, and moved away from the terminals as if I’d never stopped there at all. The rule was simple: leave no trace, not even to myself.

In my room, I shut the door and stood with my back against it for a moment, letting the information settle into its proper shape. Then I sat and opened a clean notebook. Not a case file, nor a legal pad. Personal. Unlabelled.

I wrote three words at the top of the page:

Representation instability—remand

Then I started listing facts I could verify without touching anything I shouldn’t: Time on remand. No charge. Defence notice pending. No relisted hearing.

When I’d exhausted what I already knew, I closed the notebook.

I needed context. Pattern. Confirmation that this wasn’t a one-off, that it wasn’t simply administrative chaos dressed up as design. So I took my phone out and scrolled until I found the name I was looking for and sent a message to an old friend from the Bar.