Chapter 28

Freen arrived at seven twenty-six.

Four minutes earlier than usual. She had been ready to leave at seven and had made herself wait because arriving significantly earlier than usual was the kind of thing people noticed and today of all days she did not want to be the kind of thing people noticed.

Seven twenty-six was close enough to normal.

She went to her desk. She put her bag down. She opened the Viroj bundle to the authentication response she had been working on last night and found her place and kept going.

She did not look at Becky’s office door.

The door was closed. The lamp was on inside. This meant Becky was already here, which meant Becky had also arrived earlier than usual, which meant neither of them had slept particularly well and both of them were pretending otherwise.

Freen turned a page.

—

Becky had arrived at seven ten.

She had told herself she was coming in early because of the motion response. Because nine o’clock was nine o’clock and the argument needed to be airtight and she wanted another hour with it before the day started.

This was true.

It was not the only reason she had come in early and she was not examining the other reason.

She sat at her desk with the authentication response open and read through what she and Freen had built last night. It was good. Solid. The appointment records were exactly what she needed and the argument was clean and she could see exactly how to present it this morning.

She read it again.

It was still good.

She looked at her screen.

She opened the closing argument. The last section. She had been working on it all week and it was almost there and she needed to finish it and this was a completely normal Wednesday morning and she was going to write the next sentence.

She wrote three sentences.

Read them back.

Deleted all of them.

She looked at her screen for a moment. Then she wrote them again. The same three sentences, more or less. She read them back.

She kept them this time.

Through the glass Freen was at her desk. She had arrived at some point – Becky hadn’t heard her come in, which meant she had been too focused on the closing argument to notice, which was good. Normal. Completely normal. Freen was at her desk and working and the morning was proceeding.

Becky looked at the back of her head.

Then she looked at her screen.

She wrote a fourth sentence.

—

At eight Heng arrived.

He came through the glass partition door with his bag and his coffee and the particular organised energy of someone who had already read his emails on the way in and knew exactly what the day looked like. He went to his desk. He put his bag down. He looked at the office.

Becky’s door was closed.

Freen was at her desk.

Heng had worked for Becky for four years. He had watched her through difficult hearings and lost motions and eighteen-hour days and the particular exhausted focus of someone who refused to stop until the thing was done. He knew every variation of her closed-door mornings.

He looked at Freen.

Freen was reading something. Very focused. The kind of focused that was slightly more deliberate than usual.

Heng looked at Becky’s closed door again.

He put his bag down. He went to the kitchen. He came back eleven minutes after arriving with two coffees from the machine – not his usual one coffee, two – and he walked to Freen’s desk and set one down without a word and then knocked twice on Becky’s door and opened it and set the other on the corner of her desk.

Becky looked up. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Heng said pleasantly.

He went back to his desk and opened his laptop and started working with the expression of someone who was very focused on their screen and absolutely not watching anything.

Freen looked at the coffee on her desk.

She looked at the back of Heng’s head.

She picked up the coffee and drank it and turned a page.

—

Nam sent the surveillance log at eight thirty.

She sent it to Engfa, the way she always did, the standard daily update covering overnight assessments and current threat levels. It was formatted correctly. It covered all the required points.

It also contained the following entry under Internal Situation:

No new external threats detected. All surveillance points nominal. Internal situation: developing. Note: office camera footage from 22:47 last night has been reviewed and flagged for relevance. Asset appears operational. Subject appears- [entry continues on attached document]

There was no attached document.

Engfa read the log.

She typed back: handle it.

Nam stared at her screen.

She typed: I am going to need more specific instructions.

Three minutes passed.

Engfa: no you’re not.

Nam put her phone down. She looked at the office camera feed on her laptop. Freen was at her desk. Becky’s door was closed. Heng was typing something with the focused innocence of someone who knew exactly what was going on and was pretending otherwise.

Nam picked up her phone.

She typed to Freen: good morning

No response.

She typed: how are we today

No response.

She typed: I reviewed the footage

Freen’s typing indicator appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Then: working. don’t.

Nam smiled. She put her phone down and went back to her threat assessment.

—

At eight fifty-five Becky’s door opened.

She came out with the motion response printed and clipped and her bag over her shoulder. Hearing at nine. She walked through the outer office toward the glass partition.

She passed Freen’s desk.

Freen looked up.

Their eyes met.

One second.

Both of them looked away at exactly the same moment in opposite directions – Freen at her file, Becky at the glass partition door. The timing was so precise it would have been funny if either of them had been in a position to find it funny, which they were not.

Becky pushed through the door.

“Sarocha,” she said without turning around. “Let’s go.”

Freen was already standing.

—

The hearing lasted forty minutes.

Becky presented the authentication argument exactly as they had built it. Clean, direct, the appointment records doing the work they were supposed to do. The defence pushed back on two points and she answered both of them and the judge took twelve minutes and denied the motion.

All three exhibits stayed in.

Outside in the corridor afterward Heng shook his head slowly in the way he did when he was impressed and didn’t want to make a big thing of it. “The appointment records,” he said. “Where did those come from?”

“Research,” Becky said.

“I didn’t pull them.”

“I know.” She picked up her bag. “Let’s go back.”

Heng looked at Freen. Freen looked at her file. Heng looked at Becky’s back as she walked ahead of them down the corridor.

He said nothing.

He was very good at saying nothing.

—

Back at the office the morning settled into its normal rhythm.

Almost normal. The edges of it were slightly different and everyone who worked on the fourteenth floor could feel it even if they couldn’t name it. Noey had arrived while they were at the hearing and had been briefed by Heng in about forty seconds and had spent the rest of the morning with the expression of someone practicing extremely hard not to have an expression.

Becky went into her office. Door open this time.

Freen sat at her desk.

The open door was different from the closed door. The open door meant the morning had moved into something more ordinary. The open door meant Becky was back in her professional space and the night before was in the category of things that had happened and were not currently being addressed.

Freen was fine with this.

She was completely fine with this.

She opened the witness prep notes she needed to review and started reading.

At eleven Becky called out from her office. “The expert witness prep. Have you finished the summary?”

“Sending it now,” Freen said.

She sent it.

Two minutes passed.

“It’s good,” Becky said.

“Thank you.”

Silence. The ordinary office silence.

Freen read her witness notes.

Becky worked on the closing argument.

Noey typed something and then looked at the ceiling for a moment and then typed something else. Heng took a call and spoke quietly and made three notes and hung up. The printer ran for a while and stopped.

At twelve fifteen Freen got up to get water.

She was coming back from the kitchen when Becky came out of her office at the same moment heading to the kitchen.

They stopped.

A metre apart. Both of them with perfectly good reasons to be in this corridor at this exact moment.

Becky looked at her.

Freen looked at her.

“The motion response,” Becky said.

“Yes,” Freen said.

“You did good work on it. Last night.”

“You did the work.”

“The appointment records were-” She stopped. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A pause.

“Good,” Becky said.

“Good,” Freen said.

Becky went to the kitchen. Freen went back to her desk. She sat down and looked at her witness notes and read the first line.

She read it again.

It went in on the third try.

—

At two o’clock Nam sent another message.

Just to Freen this time. No surveillance log format. Just: engfa wants an update on the internal situation.

Freen stared at this for a moment.

She typed back: tell her the office is secure.

Nam: she’s not asking about the office

Freen: I know

Nam: so

Freen: working. don’t.

Nam: you said that this morning

Freen: it’s still true

A long pause. Then: okay. but for what it’s worth

Freen waited.

the appointment records thing was very smooth. just saying.

Freen put her phone down.

She looked at the glass partition. Through it she could see Becky at her desk, head down, working on the closing argument. She had been working on it since they got back from the hearing. She would probably work on it until this evening.

She looked like herself. Completely focused, completely precise, completely in her element.

Freen looked at her witness notes.

She turned a page.

—

At four Becky came to her office door.

“The closing argument,” she said. “Last section. I need another pair of ears tonight.”

Freen looked up. “What time.”

“Seven. If you’re-“

“Seven is fine,” Freen said.

Becky nodded. She went back in. The door stayed open.

Freen looked at the open door for a moment.

Then she looked at her screen and kept working.

Outside Noey appeared at Heng’s desk. She said something very quietly. Heng responded equally quietly. Freen caught the words seven o’clock and nothing else.

She turned a page.

Heng said something back to Noey that made her press her lips together very hard in the specific way of someone not smiling.

Freen kept reading.