Page 30 of Claim

“Which is how?” Colin looked shit-scared.

I didn’t water it down for him. “With fucking blood.”

* * * *

Tristan

That night, after seeing Lennon, time slipped into hours.

And I slipped into Razor’s old shirt.

The one he’d given me months ago, back when our lives had first collided at the Velvet Lounge. Back when none of this had yet unspooled. It still smelt of him. And it was the only thing I had left that hadn’t been processed into paperwork. I’d slept in it too, clinging to the warm familiarity when everything else had turned procedural and cold.

Though I don’t think I actually slept.

The night was measured in pages, footnotes, margins tightening and loosening as I stripped Razor back to what he had to be. A case. I worked until the screen blurred and the words lost shape, until I couldn’t tell whether I was sharpening the argument or sanding it down to nothing.

In the morning, I dressed. My own shirt, sadly. Suit. Coat. Gathered the papers into a neat stack, pretending to be calmer than I was. And when I left the flat, the city felt half-asleep still. Bins out, pavements wet, taxis ghosting past with no urgency.

Chambers was also quiet when I arrived. Early enough that parking was easy, which would have amused my father more than it amused me. Parking was a luxury for members only. And my father had a membership going back decades, which passed to me. One reason I should be thankful for the car. I locked up and stood for a moment before going in, looking up at the stone frontage, the tall windows catching the grey morning light.

Then I got myself together and went in.

Inside, it was all polish and old paper. The corridors were still, lights half-on, the building stretching itself awake. I went straight to my room and set my papers down and kept working. By the time the first footsteps sounded and doors opened, voices murmuring, the building filling with life, I’d rewritten the opening paragraph three times.

Imogen’s office sat further along the corridor, set apart without being showy. Bigger. Quieter. A room that had absorbed decades of authority and no longer needed to announce it. KCs didn’t sit among the rest of us; they orbited us. Close enough to command, distant enough to remain intact.

I kept my eye on it until I heard the soft, decisive, “Morning.”

Imogen swept past, shrugging off her scarf as she went, mid-thought and elsewhere.

This was it.

I gathered the papers, straightened my jacket, and followed her down the corridor. Whether it was professional suicide to try to catch her before eight in the morning, I didn’t know. But I also knew this: there was nothing more I could do without her.

I knocked once on her open door as she shrugged out of her coat.

She glanced up. “Tristan.”

“Do you have a moment?”

She moved a stack of files. “Do I ever?”

I exhaled. “Then I’ll rephrase. Could I have a moment?”

That got a glance. Dry. Appraising. “Very clever.” She held up two fingers. “Two minutes. I have a meeting.”

I stepped inside and closed the door. Which at least made her sit back, cocking her head in intrigue.

I handed her the papers. “I’ve reviewed a remand case fallen into limbo. Defendant currently without effective representation.”

She took the file and skimmed the first page. “Name.”

“Slade. Richard.”

She read more carefully, and the silence stretched, wreaking havoc with my nerves.

“This isn’t a skeleton.” She peered up at me.