Chapter Ten Tristan #3
“There’s no seizure listed. No exhibit numbers. No chain of custody. You’re charged with intent. Intelligence-led.” I met his gaze. “Which tells me you were empty-handed. And that you’re in here because someone wants you in here.”
Something in him loosened, subtle but unmistakable. As if he’d been bracing for an argument that never came.
He leant back slowly. “Would you be here if I had been?”
The question wasn’t legal.
It was everything else.
“I’d be here,” I said. Then, after a beat, “But for different reasons.” I rubbed a hand over my forehead and looked back at him. “My job wouldn’t be to pretend it didn’t matter. It would be to deal with it.”
“And your job now?”
“To make sure you’re treated justly.”
He nodded.
I smiled. Brief. Restrained. Then dropped my gaze back to the file. When I spoke again, my voice was lower, meant only for him. “But I’m glad you weren’t.”
“Because it makes your job easier?”
“No.” I lifted my eyes to his. “Because it makes knowing where you went from, then to easier for me to come to terms with.”
He said nothing. He knew what I meant. That he’d left my bed on the demand of Cormac to do a drop. And when I’d asked him not to, he’d gone anyway. The last place he’d been before being arrested was in my bed.
I clicked my pen. “Tell me what’s happened to you since you’ve been in here.”
“Ghost happened.”
I wrote it down. “Ghost.” Then, after a beat, “Rival crew.”
“Mm.”
“You were placed on the same wing as Leon Morris?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So he did…” I gestured with the pen. “That?”
“No. Not all of it.” His jaw tightened. “The bits underneath.”
I inhaled. “This isn’t your first fight.”
He let out a dry laugh. “No.”
“What else?”
“They moved my cellmates. Then moved me. Different wing. Said it was operational. I thought it was about Ghost. Keeping us apart.”
“But?”
“But they put me somewhere else. Where people were already waiting. Keeley’s boyfriend’s in here.
The one who got busted…well, you know when.
He’s being leant on and…fuck.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair, longer now, and it made me want to rake my fingers through it.
I shook that aside. “I was protecting him.”
“Right.” I chewed my lip. “That gives me something to work from.”
Razor frowned. “Does it?”
“Yes.” I wrote some stuff down. Notes for later. Reminders. “Because bail isn’t about proving innocence. Not at this stage.” I tapped the file. “It’s about risk.”
“Risk of me doing a runner?”
“Risk to you,” I corrected. “Which is now demonstrable.”
He shifted. Winced. Didn’t argue.
“You’ve been refused bail once, which means we can’t reapply unless there’s been a material change in circumstances.”
“And this counts?”
“This,” I gestured to his face without looking at it again, “counts.” Then I flipped the page, scribbling the things I needed to know on it.
“You were moved without explanation. Placed in proximity to known adversaries. Injured in custody. Then denied immediate access to counsel.” I peered up.
“That is a failure of duty of care. And it alters the balance.”
“So what happens?”
“I draft an urgent renewed application. Filed to the Crown Court. I’ll argue that continued remand now presents an unacceptable risk to your safety, and that the prison has demonstrated it cannot adequately mitigate that risk.”
“And the fight?”
“I contextualise it. You didn’t seek violence. You reacted to it. And, crucially, you were placed somewhere it was foreseeable.”
Razor glanced away. “They’ll say I’m dangerous.”
“They always do. Which is why we get ahead of it.”
Razor turned back. “How?”
“I’ll propose strict conditions. Curfew. Residence. Reporting. Whatever they want. Short of an ankle monitor surgically attached, we’ll offer it.”
“And that works?”
“Often enough. Judges don’t like it when the state creates risk and then uses that risk to justify detention.”
Silence settled again.
Razor shook his head. “My last defence didn’t offer any of this.”
“No. I doubt they would have.”
“Why?”
“Because they were never equipped to push back. And because you weren’t meant to get someone who would.”
Razor chewed on that. “Why not?”
“Because someone in a high place took a disliking to you…when you took what they wanted away from them.”
We held each other’s gaze, with Razor chewing on his lip. He blew out a breath from his nose, then shook his head in realisation.
“And if I get out, what then?”
“Then you stay exactly where I tell you.” I shut the file. “You don’t go near anyone connected to this case. You don’t respond to provocation. You don’t solve this yourself. You let me.”
He studied me. “You really think you can get me out?”
“I think that keeping you in here is becoming legally indefensible.”
His expression shifted then. Not hope. Not yet. More cautious. Dangerous.
“When?” he asked.
“Soon. Days, not weeks.”
He nodded. Then, quieter, “And if they knock it back again?”
“Then we escalate.”
His mouth curved faintly. “You always talk like this?”
“Like what?”
“Hard balls.”
I smiled. “Only when I mean it.”
“Always did think you had a pretty mouth with a fierce tongue.”
Heat rose to my face. I dropped my gaze, just in time for a sharp rap on the door.
Time.
I stood, gathering my things. “Needless to say, don’t give them anything else.”
“Easier said than done when they put me in front of people who want me dead.”
“Granted. But…” I glanced up to check the coast was clear. “Think of the lake.”
Razor cocked his head, eyebrows drawing in.
“You have to trust that I won’t let you drown.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. Then he glanced down. “And if you can get me bail? Where would I go? Gonna assume they won’t want me back roaming Hackney.”
I stilled.
Every answer I ran through my head collapsed under its own weight.
Everything he owned was tied to Cormac. Every address was traceable.
Every place he’d ever laid his head was compromised.
Either a leash or a liability. The prosecution would seize on it, dress it up as risk, call it organised crime proximity and make it sound inevitable.
It was a problem. A serious one.
“We’ll figure something out.” I smiled.
It wasn’t a solution. Not yet. But it was the truth I could give him without lying.
He nodded, accepting it for what it was.
Then the door went, and I had to leave him there with uncertainty where hope had taken root. I didn’t know how I was going to solve it. But I knew one thing.
I wasn’t leaving him.
Ever.