Chapter 25

The week had gotten heavier without getting louder.

That was the thing about the kind of danger Freen was managing – it didn’t announce itself. It just added weight. Another update from Engfa. Another photograph from Nam. Another name connected to another name connected to Colonel Surat, who had signed four transfer documents and was not going to let a Bangkok courtroom be the place where that caught up with him.

Freen carried it the way she carried everything. Quietly. Without showing it.

If anything she was more present. More solid. The way a person got when they had decided that whatever was coming, they were going to be standing in front of it.

She was at her desk by seven fifteen on Tuesday. The Viroj bundle was open. Her coffee was from the downstairs vending machine because she hadn’t had time for the cafe. She was reading and making notes and running the threat assessment in the background of her mind when she heard the voice in the corridor.

—

She recognised the tone before she recognised the words.

The confident carry of someone who had decided they were speaking privately and hadn’t checked whether the glass partition was open. It wasn’t. Freen could hear everything.

“- between us, the procurement angle is a gamble. Some of us feel she’s overreaching.”

She looked up.

Khun Prawit – senior associate, twelve years at the firm, the kind of person who said between us and then said it loudly – was in the corridor outside with a client. The client was nodding slowly in the way people nodded when they were receiving information they weren’t sure about.

“The evidence is strong,” Prawit continued, “but the military connection is a risk. If it doesn’t land the whole structure suffers. Between you and me, there were safer approaches she chose not to take.”

Freen put her pen down.

She stood up.

She walked to the glass partition door and opened it and stepped into the corridor.

“Khun Prawit,” she said.

Both men looked at her.

“Sorry to interrupt.” She looked at the client. Smiled. Easy. Warm. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced properly. I’m Freen Sarocha. I’m working directly with Ms Armstrong on the Viroj case.”

The client shook her hand. He seemed relieved to have someone to look at who wasn’t Prawit. “Anon Thirawat.”

“Mr Thirawat.” She turned to face him fully, which meant Prawit was slightly behind her right shoulder. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Did you have a question about the prosecution strategy?”

“I – well, I was just hearing that the procurement angle might be-“

“The strongest part of the case,” Freen said. “Eight months of documentation. Four confirmed authorisation signatures. A paper trail going back seven years that the defence has not been able to successfully challenge in any of the preliminary hearings.” She paused. “It’s not a risk. It’s the foundation. Everything else is built on it.”

Mr Thirawat looked at her. Then at Prawit. Then back at her.

“Ms Armstrong will want to speak with you directly before closing arguments,” Freen said. “I’ll have her assistant arrange something this week. It would be good for you to hear it from her.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Yes, I think that would be good.”

“I’ll sort it out.” She smiled again. “Enjoy the rest of your morning.”

He left.

She turned around.

Prawit was looking at her with the expression of someone who had just lost an argument and wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened.

Freen looked at him for a moment.

“Good morning,” she said.

She went back inside. She sat at her desk. She picked up her pen and found the line she had been on and kept reading.

Behind her through the glass she heard Prawit walk away.

She fixed the lid on her pen. It had come slightly loose. She pressed it back into place and turned a page.

—

Noey had been at her desk by the window the whole time.

She had watched all of it through the glass with the focused attention of someone watching something they were absolutely going to tell people about later.

At four o’clock she appeared at Heng’s desk.

“Did you hear about the corridor?” she said.

Heng looked up from his screen. “I heard something happened.”

“Something happened,” Noey confirmed. She sat on the edge of his desk. “Prawit was talking to the Thirawat client. About Becky. Saying the procurement angle was a risk, she was overreaching, the usual.”

“The usual,” Heng said flatly.

“Freen walked out.”

Heng’s eyebrows went up slightly. “And?”

“And Thirawat left very happy and Prawit left very red and Freen came back inside and fixed her pen lid.”

Heng stared at her. “What did she actually say?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Noey considered this honestly. “It was very quiet. And then it was over.”

“How long did it take?”

“Maybe ninety seconds.”

Heng was quiet for a moment. “Impressive.”

“She fixed her pen lid afterward,” Noey said again, as if this was the most remarkable part. “Like nothing happened.”

Heng looked through the glass at Freen’s desk. Freen was reading something. She had not looked up once.

“Right,” Heng said.

He picked up the phone and called Becky’s office.

—

Becky listened to Heng without interrupting.

He gave her the version he had from Noey, which was slightly incomplete but accurate in the ways that mattered. When he finished she said “Thank you” and he hung up and she sat at her desk.

She was quiet for a moment.

She looked through the glass at Freen. Freen was still reading. Same posture she had had all morning. Head slightly down, pen in hand, completely absorbed.

She had walked into a corridor and dismantled a senior colleague in ninety seconds and come back and fixed her pen lid.

For Becky.

Without being asked. Without saying anything about it. Without apparently finding it worth mentioning at all.

Becky looked at her for a while.

She thought about what to say. She went through the options. Thank you felt too small for what it was and also too large for what Freen would do with it, which was probably nothing, which would somehow make it worse. Why did you do that was the wrong question because she knew why. She knew why and that was exactly the problem.

She turned back to her screen.

She opened the closing argument. She looked at the last section – the one she had been working on all week, the one that was almost right. She read the first paragraph.

She closed it again.

She picked up her bag and went home.

—

The next morning Freen arrived at seven thirty.

There was a coffee on her desk.

She stopped.

She looked at it. White cup, small logo, from the cafe two streets over. Her order – she could tell from the size and the way the lid sat. She had been getting coffee from that cafe every morning for six weeks. She knew what her order looked like.

She looked at Becky’s office.

The door was closed. The lamp was on. Becky had been in since before seven – she had been doing this all week, arriving earlier as the closing arguments got closer. She was in there now. Working.

There was no note on the cup.

Freen looked at the coffee for a moment longer. Then she looked at the closed door. Then she sat down and picked up the coffee and took a sip.

It was exactly right. Extra shot – she could taste it. Becky had noticed she took an extra shot on days she arrived early. Freen had never mentioned this. She hadn’t thought she was being obvious about it.

She put the cup down.

She opened the Viroj bundle.

Through the glass Becky’s silhouette was visible through the frosted lower panel of the office door – at her desk, head down, working. The same posture she always had when she was getting something done.

Freen looked at the coffee one more time.

Then she looked at her file and started reading.

Neither of them mentioned it.

—

At nine the door opened and Becky came out with two documents she dropped on Noey’s desk and a question she asked Heng about a filing deadline and a look she did not give Freen as she walked past.

Freen looked at her screen.

At nine fifteen Becky came back past on her way to the kitchen.

“Thirawat is coming in Thursday,” she said, not stopping. “I’ll need the evidence summary.”

“I’ll have it by Wednesday afternoon,” Freen said.

“Wednesday morning.”

“Wednesday morning,” Freen said.

Becky kept walking. She came back with coffee from the kitchen – the office kind, not the cafe kind – and went into her office and closed the door.

Freen looked at the white cup on her desk.

Then she looked at the closed door.

She picked up her pen and turned to a fresh page and started on the evidence summary. It was going to be a long morning. She didn’t mind long mornings.

She drank the coffee while she worked. It stayed warm longer than the vending machine kind. She noticed this and said nothing about it and kept working.

The office went about its Tuesday around her. Noey arrived. Heng took a call. The printer jammed and was fixed and jammed again. The ordinary noise of a firm seventeen days from the end of a trial.

At eleven Prawit walked past the glass partition without looking in.

Freen didn’t look up.

She turned a page.

—

At lunchtime Noey appeared at the edge of her desk with a sandwich from the place across the street.

“I got you one,” she said, setting it down. “You didn’t go out.”

Freen looked at the sandwich. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know.” Noey leaned against the desk. She looked at Freen with the expression that meant she had something to say and was deciding whether to say it. “For what it’s worth,” she said finally. “What you did yesterday. In the corridor.”

Freen looked at her.

“It mattered,” Noey said simply. “Prawit has been doing that for two years. Nobody ever said anything.” She pushed off the desk. “Just so you know.”

She went back to her desk.

Freen looked at the sandwich. Then at Becky’s closed door. Then at the sandwich again.

She unwrapped it and kept working.