Chapter 21 Leverage Season #2
“It does if they're someone who'll honour the deal.” A pause. “Is it Harrow?”
“Yes.”
“Then you're fucked, Mercer. Harrow doesn't make fair trades. He takes what he wants and burns anyone stupid enough to trust him.”
“I know. But I have to try.”
“What information are you offering?”
“Enough to make him think I'm compromised. Enough to drive a wedge between me and my partner. Enough to make him think he's winning.” I closed my eyes. “I need Bishop out tonight. Whatever it costs.”
“And your partner? He know you're making this call?”
“No.”
“Does he know you're planning to feed Harrow information?”
“It won't be real information. Just enough truth to seem convincing, enough to buy Bishop's release without actually compromising the investigation.”
“That's a very thin line to walk.”
“I've walked thinner.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I'll reach out to Harrow's people, see what they'll accept. But Mercer? This is going to cost you more than you think. Harrow doesn't forget, and once you start trading, he'll expect you to keep trading.”
“I understand.”
“You're about to destroy the trust your partner has in you. For a broker who knew the risks of this life. That's not strategy. That's martyrdom.”
“Maybe.” I opened my eyes. “But Bishop saved my life three times. I owe him this.”
“Then you're a better person than most people in our profession. Or a stupider one. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
She hung up.
I sat there holding the phone, knowing I'd just made a choice Dom would never forgive, knowing I should tell him, knowing I wouldn't—because telling him would mean watching him try to stop me.
It would mean arguing about acceptable losses.
It would mean admitting that I still operated under the assumption that I was expendable and everyone else wasn't.
My phone buzzed. A message from the handler:
Handler:
Harrow's people are interested. They want Webb's location in exchange for Bishop.
Callahan:
No. Webb's not on the table.
Handler:
Then what are you offering?
Callahan:
Information about Ravenswood's security protocols. Access points. Timing. Enough to make them think they can get to Webb if they move fast.
Handler:
That's suicide. You're giving them a roadmap to attack Adrian Calloway's home.
Callahan:
Adrian's security can handle it. And it'll force Harrow to move before he's ready. Expose himself.
Handler:
You're either brilliant or insane.
Callahan:
Both. Do we have a deal?
Handler:
I'll confirm in ten minutes.
I waited. Paced. Tried not to think about what Dom would say when he found out, about the look on his face when he realised I'd made this call without consulting him.
The confirmation came:
Handler:
Deal accepted. Bishop will be released within the hour. Information delivery to follow.
I sent back the security details. Partial. Incomplete. Enough to seem valuable without actually giving Harrow clean access. Then I deleted the conversation, cleared my call logs, and removed any evidence of the trade.
Bishop would be free. That was what mattered.
Everything else was an acceptable loss.
I went back downstairs and found Dom still in the interrogation room. Webb was slumped in his chair, exhausted and defeated.
“Anything new?” I asked.
“No. He's told us everything he knows.” Dom looked at me. “Where did you go?”
“Made some calls. Followed up on a few leads.”
“What leads?”
“The judge Webb mentioned, Carolyn Reeves. I have a contact who might know how to approach her.”
It wasn't a lie. Just not the complete truth.
Dom studied my face. “You're being evasive.”
“I'm working quickly. We have twelve hours according to Adrian, and I'm not wasting them.”
“Cal—”
“Not now, Dom. We have work to do.”
I moved to the table and started reviewing my notes, cataloguing what Webb had given us, building the case piece by piece.
Dom watched me for another moment, then left. Probably to check on Adrian, probably to report that I was being difficult again.
Good. Distance would make the next part easier.
Four hours later, I had a lead.
One of Webb's contacts, a court administrator who'd handled evidence transfers, had been flagged in the financial records as receiving payments from the same offshore accounts Harrow used.
I found his address, confirmed he was home, and made a plan that didn't include Dom, because Dom would insist on coming and I needed to do this alone.
I left through Ravenswood's east entrance and drove across London to a neighbourhood that existed in the grey space between respectable and rough.
The administrator lived in a terraced house that had seen better decades. I knocked and waited. The door opened on a man in his sixties who looked at me with instant suspicion.
“Oliver Chen?” I asked.
“Who's asking?”
“Someone interested in your relationship with Marcus Webb. And with Elliot Harrow.” I showed him my phone—screenshots of the transactions, his name, his account numbers.
“We can have this conversation inside, or I can have it very loudly on your doorstep where your neighbours can hear. Your choice.”
He let me in.
The house smelled of cigarettes and old takeaway. Chen led me to a sitting room that was cluttered but clean and sat down heavily, looking at me with the tired resignation of a man who had been expecting this moment for years.
“What do you want?”
“Information about how evidence suppression actually works. The physical process. Who handles it. Where it goes.”
“And if I don't tell you?”
“Then these financial records go to every news outlet in London.
Your family finds out you've been taking bribes. Your pension disappears. Your legacy becomes a cautionary tale about corruption.” I kept my voice flat and clinical.
“Or you cooperate and maybe I find a way to keep your name out of the public reports.”
“You can't promise that.”
“No. But I can try, which is more than you'll get from Harrow when this all comes down.” I leaned forward. “He's burning everyone connected to him. Webb's already in protective custody. How long before Harrow decides you're a loose end?”
Chen's hands were shaking. “What do you want to know?”
“Lily Rourke's case. Three years ago. Evidence was sealed, the autopsy altered, witness statements removed. Walk me through it. Every step.”
He did—reluctantly, with the particular shame of a man who had compromised himself in small increments until the total became unbearable.
The evidence had come to him from the crime scene through a standard chain of custody.
He'd logged it properly and filed it in the secure room where all sensitive materials were stored.
Then the suppression order came through, signed by Judge Reeves and countersigned by DA Brennan.
Chen had pulled the evidence and transferred it to a different storage location, one that wasn't officially catalogued, where it could be accessed privately, altered if necessary, and eventually destroyed without a record.
The autopsy report had gone through a similar process. Dr Quinn's original findings had been filed, then recalled under the suppression order. An altered version had replaced it in the official record, and the original had disappeared.
The witness statements were the same. Collected, filed, recalled. The ones that contradicted Harrow's preferred narrative had been removed from the file entirely. The ones that supported it had been kept and emphasised.
By the time the trial happened, Ethan had been convicted based on a version of events carefully curated to ensure a specific outcome.
“Who gave the order to alter the autopsy?” I asked. “Not the suppression order. The actual instruction to change Dr Quinn's findings.”
Chen hesitated. “It came from Harrow directly, through Webb. Special handling. Twenty thousand for the pathologist who made the changes.”
“Name.”
“Dr Simon Graves. He's since left the country. Works in Dubai now.”
I made a note. Another thread to pull, another person to track down and pressure into testimony.
“And the original evidence? Where is it now?”
“Destroyed. Burned three months after the trial concluded. Standard protocol for suppressed materials.”
“So there's no physical evidence left.”
“No. Just the digital records showing it existed, and the people who remember what it said before the alteration.”
I pulled out my phone and showed him another photograph. My partner. Detective Inspector James Crawford. Dead three years, on the same timeline as Lily Rourke.
“What about this one?” My voice stayed level despite the tightness in my chest. “A detective who died during a corruption investigation. Officially ruled a suicide. I know it wasn't. Tell me you handled evidence suppression for this case too.”
Chen's face went grey. “I don't—”
“Don't lie to me. I have the financial records. I know Webb paid you. I know Harrow was involved. I just need you to confirm how it worked.” I leaned closer.
“My partner was investigating Harrow's network.
He found something, something that got him killed and made to look as though he'd eaten his gun out of guilt. So tell me: what evidence did you suppress?”
Chen's hands were trembling badly now. “The crime scene photos. The original ones. They showed—they showed it couldn't have been self-inflicted. Wrong angle. Wrong powder pattern. The scene was staged.”
The words landed like bullets. I'd suspected, had known it in my gut, but hearing it confirmed made the rage in my chest crystallise into something colder and much more precise.
“What else?”
“Witness statements. Someone saw a car leaving the scene and described the plates. That statement disappeared before it could be officially logged.”
“And the ballistics?”
“Altered. The weapon found at the scene, your partner's service pistol, didn't match the bullet that killed him. That detail got removed from the final report, and a different weapon was logged as evidence. Same calibre, close enough that nobody questioned it.”