5. The Test #2
He took three full seconds before he replied. Not because he was uncertain, but because he needed the investigator to see him considering it, to see him treating the question with what looked like seriousness rather than evasion.
“I believe in evidence,” Reid said. “I believe in what I can document, test, and present to a court. Whether science can explain a particular piece of evidence is a matter for scientists, not Scotland Yard.”
The investigator’s eyes stayed on him for a long count. The question had gotten close, closer than anything else today, and they both knew it. The three seconds had been visible. Not damning, but visible.
“My personal relationships are my own concern.”
“Not when they compromise your judgment as an officer of the law.” Ashworth’s voice hardened. “Inspector Reid, this committee has received reports suggesting that you have... sympathies toward certain communities. Communities that this bill is designed to address.”
“I’m a Scotland Yard detective,” Reid said flatly. “My sympathies are with the victims of crime and the pursuit of justice. Nothing more.”
“And if justice requires you to investigate Miss Vance? To arrest Mrs. Holloway? To treat the people you’ve been consorting with as suspects rather than allies?”
The question landed like a blow. Reid felt it reverberate through his chest, through the certainty he’d built over five days of working alongside Charlotte, Eleanor, and James.
“If evidence suggests any of those individuals have committed crimes,” he said carefully, “I will investigate appropriately. But I will not arrest people on the basis of Parliamentary prejudice.”
Silence fell. The investigator’s expression flickered with satisfaction. The look of a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted.
“Inspector Reid.” Ashworth’s voice was soft now, almost gentle. “This committee appreciates your candor. But I must warn you. The bill currently before Parliament will require all officers of the law to cooperate with its provisions. Those who refuse may find their positions... reevaluated.”
“Is that a threat, my lord?”
“It’s information.” Ashworth rose, signaling that the interview was ending. “Consider it carefully, Inspector. Choose wisely.”
Reid stood. He met Ashworth’s eyes, saw the calculation there, the political machinery turning behind a concerned expression, and understood with perfect clarity what he was facing.
“I’ve already chosen, my lord.” He didn’t bother to hide the edge in his voice. “I chose the night I met Charlotte Vance. I chose when I walked into a world I didn’t understand and found people worth protecting. I chose every day for the past three weeks when I could have walked away and didn’t.”
He turned toward the door.
“Inspector Reid.”
Reid paused, his hand on the handle.
“That wasn’t the wise choice.”
“Perhaps not.” Reid opened the door. “But it was the right one.”
Williams found him at the pub near H Division, nursing a whiskey he didn’t taste.
“Sir.”
Reid didn’t look up. “They’re going to reassign me. Or fire me. Or find some way to bury me in paperwork until I quit.”
“Probably.” Williams slid into the seat across from him. “What happened in there?”
“They asked about Charlotte. About Eleanor. About my associations with unusual communities.” Reid finally met his sergeant’s eyes.
“They’re building a case, Williams. Not a criminal one, a political one.
When this bill passes, they want officers who will enforce it. Officers who don’t have... sympathies.”
“And you have sympathies.”
“I have Charlotte.” Reid’s voice cracked on the name.
“I have a woman who can see truth the way other people see color, and when she looks at me, she sees someone worth loving. I have a family that fights impossible enemies and never gives up. I have,” He stopped, overwhelmed by the weight of what he was about to lose.
“You have allies.” Williams’s voice was quiet. “More than you know.”
Reid looked at him, remembering the conversation in the alley. Principles over careers. Loyalty over politics.
“The Yard isn’t united,” Williams continued. “There are officers who’ve seen things, cases that didn’t make sense, evidence that shouldn’t exist. Not everyone will follow Ashworth’s lead when the bill passes. Some of us will follow you.”
“Follow me where?”
“Wherever you’re going.” Williams smiled, the expression carrying steel beneath it. “You’ve had my answer for twelve years, sir. I know which side I’m on. And I’m not the only one.”
Reid set his glass down.
Twenty years. Not an abstract number. He could hold specific things against it, the way you could press your thumb against a bruise and know exactly where it hurt.
The first case he’d closed on his own, a warehouse fire in Bermondsey, two dead workers, an owner who thought his accounts told a better story than a coroner’s inquest. Reid had been twenty-six, certain of almost nothing except that the evidence didn’t add up, and he’d pulled at it until it came apart.
The promotion to inspector had taken three years after that, three years of watching men with better connections and worse instincts move past him, and he’d worn the commendation letter so many times in his mind that when it finally came he’d been surprised.
A colleague’s face came to him too. Alderton, who’d retired six years ago, who’d shaken his hand at the door and said you’ll outlast the rest of them with the certainty of a man who’d seen enough of the Yard to know what lasted and what didn’t.
That was the real grief of it. Not the badge. The accumulation.
And now he was sitting here calculating how many of his men might follow him somewhere he couldn’t map yet.
“How many?” Reid asked.
“Sir?”
“You said you’re not the only one.” He met Williams’s eyes. “How many?”
Williams considered it. “Enough to matter.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Four that I’d stake my own position on,” Williams said. “Another three who’d have to think about it. Could go either way depending on how the bill’s written, what enforcement looks like on the ground.”
“And how long have you known?” Reid kept his voice level. “That there was a truth in it at all.”
A beat. “The Ashworth case, sir. When the statements came back. I’ve worked enough crime scenes to know when the physical record doesn’t match what someone could have done.” He didn’t elaborate, and Reid didn’t ask him to. “I kept it to myself until I understood who was asking the questions.”
Fourteen months, then. Williams had carried it for fourteen months without a word, tracking Reid’s choices, waiting to see which way it would go.
Reid picked up his glass. He finished what was in it in a single swallow, not tasting it, and set the glass back with the quietness of a decision already made. He reached for his coat from the back of the chair.
“I’m going to Eleanor Holloway’s townhouse,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”
Charlotte was at the window when he arrived.
She didn’t cross the entry hall when he came through the door, and she didn’t ask if he was all right.
She had been watching the door for two hours, he could see it in how she was standing, the quality of someone who has been waiting and has stopped pretending otherwise, and she was reading him now the way she read everything, without performing the reading.
He set his coat over the back of a chair and sat down.
She sat across from him, close enough that their knees nearly touched. The gas lamp on the side table threw the room into amber. Outside, a cart went past on the cobbles.
He told her the shape of it, the room, Ashworth’s constructed concern, the investigator by the window, the question about powers science couldn’t explain, and the answer he had given, and the investigator’s three-second count of silence after.
He told her what Ashworth had said at the end, that wasn’t the wise choice.
Charlotte listened the way she always listened—completely, without making a sound to show him she was following.
When he finished, she said, “And?”
Not softly. Not bracing him for a blow. It was the word of a woman who had already read the answer in the way he’d told it, and wanted to hear him say it plainly.
“I’d do it the same way,” Reid said.
She looked at him. A moment passed in which the lamp hissed and the cart outside turned a corner and disappeared.
“I know,” Charlotte said.
That was all. She reached across and put her hand over his, not squeezing, not gripping, just resting there, warm, and they sat in the amber light while the political machinery went on grinding somewhere else, in rooms with the wrong people in the chairs.