Chapter 5
I managed to twist that walk to the prison with André to my advantage.
Who else was stuck in that hellhole whom I needed to see?
Ding, ding, ding! The infamous Julian Garros himself.
That’s right, I got the prison pass I’d filled out for Friday switched over to today.
Okay, it wasn’t valid, but the beefy guard who escorted me to the meeting room didn’t seem to care. We were old… acquaintances.
I waited inside for Julian to show up.
Unlike Timotheo Larousse, Julian had a face made for television.
A criminal like him tried to avoid the cameras as much as possible, but the reporters had pounced on him.
And when I say pounced, I mean they had infested the prison entrance with cameras on the day of his arrival, scoured the internet for images of him and for the best snapshots some photographer had taken of him during his capture (where he had a “serious look” but, in the words of a BBC presenter, “captivating”) had flooded magazine covers for months.
I think someone even wrote an erotic fanfic about him.
The first time I saw Julian Garros, my skin crawled.
Not because he was handsome, but because I could recognise a calculating look when I saw one.
I didn’t have much to do there: André had already chewed through the case as much as possible and handed it over to me to carve out the details while he took care of the Larousse case.
Julian had shared only so much with him, and no one could break his walls down. Or so I thought.
I was wrong. Julian didn’t spill secrets with his words, no. Instead, his silences did all the talking, silences that screamed louder than anything he could have said.
That Thursday, when I came face-to-face with him, I kept my greeting to myself. Julian smiled.
“I thought we were meeting on Friday,” he said, his voice calm, measured.
“No, there’s been a change of plans.”
He nodded. I took it as a question. Is this some kind of strategy to finally get me to speak? It was my turn to smile.
“André has messed up my plans for tomorrow, okay?”
“I see.”
Next silent question: Now what, girl? What did you have prepared for me?
The truth was, I hadn’t yet thought of what kind of pseudo-hypnotic science I was going to practice with him to coax out his secrets before the trial, so I didn’t have a decent answer for him.
It’s true. Even as André’s assistant, I had no idea whether Julian had truly worked alone or who his clients might have been.
Maybe it was the doubt on my face that softened him. Maybe it was the fact that, for the first time since the first meeting where André introduced us, the security guard was turned away from us.
He mouthed a string of words without making a sound.
“He arrived a few days ago.”
“Who?” I whispered.
His expression relaxed. He turned his head so the security camera trained on us could capture every gesture, and, with an air of boredom, he spoke.
“I’m not revealing anything about my clients, Vera. You know that.”
My clients. Was one of them in prison? Who could it be?
I told myself it didn’t matter. My job wasn’t to uncover criminals, but, in cases like this, to defend them. Would that information help me in my defence before the judge? I shook my head. If it were the case, Julian would have revealed it to me long ago.
“Come on, Julian, give me a break.” I laughed. “If they end up arrested, at least pass them Saidi’s contact, will you?”
He read between the lines. Why did you tell me one of your clients is here? Do you need me—or Saidi—to help them?
He shook his head.
“They don’t deserve you, that’s clear.”
Julian’s eyebrows raised, but I had no idea what he meant. Unless…
“What about André Saidi?” I asked.
Could he be talking about Larousse? It was a long shot. Larousse had been in prison for months now.
Julian held my gaze and then dropped it fast. His eyebrows fell back into place, defeated.
That was not it, either.
“You should go, Vera. I bet you’re going to have a busy weekend ahead of you.”