Chapter 17

She left the office at twelve thirty.

Becky was in a client meeting that would run until two — Freen had the schedule memorised the way she had everything memorised, not because she tried to but because her brain collected information and held it whether she asked it to or not. Heng would be at the court registry until three. Noey had lunch with someone from the litigation team on the sixth floor every other Thursday and this was every other Thursday.

The office would be quiet until two.

Freen had exactly ninety minutes.

She took the back stairs rather than the lift, came out through the side entrance onto the smaller street that ran behind the building, and walked three blocks north to the coffee shop that Nam had chosen specifically because it had no cameras and two exits and the kind of steady lunchtime noise that made it impossible to hear a conversation from the next table.

Nam was already there.

She had taken the corner table — back to the wall, clear sight lines to both exits, the window to her left. She had also, somehow, already finished half a coffee and acquired a slice of cake that she was eating with the contentment of someone who considered good cake a legitimate operational expense.

Freen sat down across from her.

“You’re late,” Nam said.

“I’m on time.”

“I’ve been here twenty minutes.”

“That’s not my fault.”

Nam pointed her fork at the chair. “Sit. It’s bad news and I needed the cake first.”

Freen sat. She looked at the folder on the table between them. Standard manila, nothing written on the front. The kind of folder that looked like nothing and held everything.

She picked up the menu. A server appeared. She ordered coffee and waited until the server had gone before she looked at Nam.

“Talk,” she said.

Nam put down her fork. She opened the folder.

—

Jeff Anant.

Thirty-four years old. Court clerk at the Bangkok Civil Court for two years and three months. Before that — three years as an administrative officer at a logistics company that had, according to Nam’s research, dissolved eighteen months ago under circumstances that were difficult to trace and had left behind almost no paperwork.

“The logistics company,” Freen said.

“Shell.” Nam tapped the page. “It moved things. Officially — commercial freight. Unofficially—” She turned to the next page. A network diagram, drawn by hand in Nam’s small precise handwriting, names in boxes connected by lines. “Viroj’s distribution chain. Seven years ago this company was one of three that handled final-stage delivery for certain shipments.”

Freen looked at the diagram.

“Jeff worked there for three years,” Nam said. “Which means he didn’t stumble into this network. He was recruited into it. He knew what it was before he ever walked into the courthouse.”

“The court clerk position was deliberate.”

“The court clerk position was the whole point. Access to case scheduling, judge rosters, evidence filing timelines.” Nam turned another page. “He knows Becky’s schedule better than Heng does. He knew about the exhibit authentication hearing four days before it was publicly listed.”

Freen looked at that for a moment. Four days. Which meant he wasn’t getting it from the public court diary. He was getting it from inside.

“Khun Malee,” she said.

“Khun Malee.” Nam nodded. “We think they’ve been communicating for at least four months. Probably longer.” She paused. “There’s something else.”

She turned to the last page.

Two photographs. Printed from surveillance footage, slightly grainy but clear enough. Two men Freen didn’t recognise. Both photographed in the vicinity of the courthouse over the past three weeks. Different days, different positions, same area.

“They’re not clerks,” Nam said. “And they’re not lawyers.”

Freen looked at the photographs.

She could tell from the way they stood. The particular awareness of a man who was used to watching and being watchful — the weight distribution, the angle of the head, the way they faced the entrance without appearing to face it. She recognised the posture because she used it herself.

“Viroj’s people,” she said.

“Or Surat’s. We haven’t confirmed which.”

“Does it matter.”

Nam considered this. “Not really,” she said. “The result is the same either way.”

Freen looked at the network diagram again. Jeff in the centre, connected to Khun Malee on one side and the two unidentified men on the other, and above all of them the chain that led upward through Viroj’s organisation to the names that Becky had been reading into the court record for eight months and that had now decided to do something about it.

The picture was worse than she had thought on Tuesday. It was worse than it had been this morning. It was getting worse at a pace she didn’t like.

She closed the folder.

“Timeline,” she said.

“Closing arguments in three weeks.” Nam picked up her coffee. “If they’re going to move it has to be before that. After Becky delivers the closing everything is on the record. Stopping her after that point doesn’t change anything.”

“Three weeks.”

“Less, probably. They’ll want time to make whatever they’re planning look like something else.”

Freen looked at the window. Outside the lunch crowd moved along the pavement — office workers, tourists, a delivery driver on a bicycle navigating through the gaps. The ordinary city doing its ordinary thing.

“The two men in the photographs,” she said. “Can you get me better images.”

“Working on it.”

“And Jeff. I want to know his route. When he arrives at the courthouse, when he leaves, which entrance he uses.”

Nam made a note. “There’s a hearing this afternoon. Becky’s team. He’ll be there.”

Freen looked at her.

“I know,” Nam said. “I already checked.”

—

She was back at the firm by one fifty-five.

Becky’s meeting was still running — she could hear the voices through the closed conference room door as she walked past. She went to her desk and opened the Viroj bundle to the page she had left it on and sat and looked at the words and thought about the network diagram and the two photographs and the four days’ advance notice on a hearing that wasn’t publicly listed.

At two fifteen Becky came out of the conference room.

She walked past Freen’s desk on her way to the kitchen. Didn’t stop. Freen heard the coffee machine. Heard the particular sound of Becky’s cup on the counter — she had learned the sounds of this office the way she learned everything, without deciding to. A minute later Becky walked back. Still didn’t stop.

At the door to her office she paused.

“The hearing starts at four,” she said, without turning around. “I need you there.”

“I’ll be ready,” Freen said.

Becky went in. The door stayed open.

Freen looked at the network diagram in her head — she had memorised it at the coffee shop, the way she memorised everything, so that the paper version could go through the shredder and the information would still be there when she needed it. Jeff in the centre. The two men on the outside. The chain going upward.

She picked up her pen and turned back to the Viroj bundle.

Three weeks.

She had three weeks to keep Becky Armstrong alive long enough to finish the thing she had spent eight months building.

She was going to use all of them.

—

The courthouse at four was busy in the way courthouses were busy in the late afternoon — the morning hearings done, the day’s results settling into the system, lawyers moving between floors with the purposeful energy of people who had somewhere to be before five.

Freen stayed close to Becky without appearing to stay close to Becky. This was a skill she had been developing for six weeks and she was getting better at it. Close enough to respond to anything. Far enough that it looked like a junior associate following a senior through a busy building. The gap between those two things was not large but it was there and she used it.

They went through security. Up the stairs. Along the third floor corridor toward the hearing room.

And there was Jeff.

He was coming from the opposite direction with a stack of files under his arm and the unhurried walk of a court clerk at the end of a long day. He registered Becky first — his eyes went to her for exactly the right amount of time, the professional amount, the kind of notice that a court clerk gave to a well-known lawyer in his courthouse. Nothing that would attract attention.

Then his eyes moved to Freen.

She was already looking at him.

Not the assessment look — not the three-second memorisation she had done from the gallery on the first day. Just a look. Easy. Neutral. The kind of look you gave a stranger in a corridor when you happened to make eye contact.

She smiled.

Not a big smile. Just the small acknowledging one. The kind that said hello and nothing more. She held it for one second and then looked away and kept walking and that was all.

Jeff kept walking too.

Freen kept her eyes forward and her pace unchanged and inside her chest there was something that was not quite satisfaction but was in the neighbourhood of it. He had no idea. He had looked at her and seen a junior associate in a well-cut blazer walking behind a well-known lawyer and had registered her as exactly what she appeared to be. He had no idea that she had spent her lunch hour looking at a network diagram with his name in the centre of it.

She found this useful.

In her earpiece Nam said: “You just smiled at him like you were old friends.”

“I was being professional,” Freen said. Quietly. Without moving her lips more than necessary. The corridor was busy enough that nobody noticed.

“You looked like you were giving him a compliment.”

“I was. I was complimenting how easy he is to read.”

A pause.

“That’s slightly terrifying,” Nam said.

“Good,” Freen said.

She heard Nam make a sound that was somewhere between amusement and unease. Then the earpiece went quiet and Freen followed Becky through the hearing room door.

—

The hearing was routine. Procedural matters — a scheduling dispute, a request for additional disclosure time from the defence that Becky opposed with the kind of precise efficiency that took four minutes and left the defence counsel with very little to work with. The judge ruled in Becky’s favour on two of three points. The third she had expected to lose and had said so to Freen on the way over.

Freen sat in the third row from the back.

She monitored the room. Exits, gallery, the door behind the witness stand. She rotated through them the way she always did — thirty seconds each, keep the picture current. Jeff was in his usual position. Watching. Not writing anything.

She looked at him for exactly three seconds. Memorised the angle. Noted who he was watching — not the lawyers’ table generally. Becky’s side specifically. She had confirmed this now across multiple hearings. He tracked Becky. Her position in the room, her movements, when she spoke and when she didn’t.

He was building a schedule.

Or confirming one that Khun Malee had already provided.

Freen looked away and rotated to the next point and kept the rotation going for the remainder of the hearing.

When it was over and the gallery was clearing she let the crowd thin before she moved. Becky was at the lawyers’ table, speaking to Heng in the low voice she used when she was giving instructions she didn’t want overheard. Freen stood and picked up her notebook and watched Jeff without watching Jeff.

He left through the side exit.

Freen tracked his direction and timing and added it to the picture she was building. Then she walked down to the lawyers’ table and waited for Becky to finish with Heng.

Becky looked at her when she was done. “The disclosure ruling. We need to prepare for the possibility that the judge changes his mind on review.”

“I’ll draft the contingency argument tonight,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her for a moment. Something in her expression that Freen had learned to recognise — the look that was taking something apart very quietly and putting it back together before it showed anything.

“You were watching the gallery again,” Becky said.

“I was watching the hearing,” Freen said.

“And the gallery.”

“And the gallery.”

A beat.

“The man in the dark jacket,” Becky said. “He’s been at every hearing.”

Freen said nothing.

Becky looked at her for another moment. Long enough that Freen understood she was being assessed and was not going to be able to prevent it. Then Becky picked up her files and started walking toward the door.

“Draft the contingency argument,” she said. “By morning.”

“By morning,” Freen agreed.

She followed her out.

In her earpiece Nam said, very quietly: “She clocked him.”

“I know,” Freen said.

“Is that a problem.”

Freen thought about Becky walking ahead of her through the courthouse corridor with her files and her sharp eyes and the particular quality of mind that Charlotte had tried to explain and that Freen had understood completely within the first week.

“Not yet,” she said.

She kept walking.