Chapter 124: Two Sentences

Undefined Conviction

Chapter 124: Two Sentences

Vesper waited three days and then asked him on the fire escape, which she had stopped doing, and which was the point.

"She said you've got two sentences in you."

"Yeah."

"You didn't tell anyone that part."

"No."

"You told them everything else. The trolley bay, the eight feet, the Vauxhall, the seventh one doing something with money. You gave Dana a full account and you left out the thing she said about you."

Cole didn't answer for a bit.

"Yeah," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I don't know what to do with it and I'd rather be the only person carrying a thing I can't do anything with."

"That's the same answer you gave me about your hands," Vesper said. "In this exact spot. In November."

"I know."

"You gave it to me in a kitchen about the two seconds, as well. And about the newspaper, except that time you didn't give me an answer at all, you said you were thinking about the shipment." She had her arms folded, and it wasn't defensive; she looked like someone doing arithmetic. "That's four."

"Vesper—"

"I'm not building a case. I'm telling you I've started counting, and I didn't decide to. It just started happening." She looked out at the street. "That's what worries me. Not the secrets. That my head's started keeping a list without asking me."

Cole sat with that.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"That's the wrong question and you know it's the wrong question, because if I give you a task you'll complete it and we'll both feel like it's handled." She didn't look over. "You did this in the summer. I told you that you had one tool and you sat on a step for nineteen minutes and did nothing and it was the best thing you've ever done for me."

"So do nothing."

"Do nothing." A pause. "And don't get good at doing nothing, either, because then it's a tool again."

Cole almost laughed.

"That's a narrower target than you've given me before."

"Yes," Vesper said. "Welcome to it."

Reeve told them on Sunday.

Not well. He came into the kitchen at nine in the morning when there were four people in it, which was the worst possible configuration, and said, "I need to say something and it's going to be bad," and then stood there long enough that Dana put her coffee down.

"Corvin called me twice."

Nobody said anything.

"The first time was the one you know about. He gloated and then he told me there's a patient in a Ministry care ward who broke the same machine Cole did. February. Dov Vossberg, Fairhaven, second floor." Reeve's voice was very flat and he was looking at a point on the wall. "And he told me Cole's known there was a February case since Halden told him on day one."

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Cole had not moved.

"That was eleven days ago," Reeve said.

"You verified it," Dana said.

"Yes."

"How?"

"I phoned Fairhaven pretending to be family. Then I asked Halden a stupid sideways question in a stairwell and she caught me doing it and let me get away with it." He swallowed. "And then Corvin called again on the Monday and said there's a review coming, and when it concludes Dov goes north and the visiting hours become none. He said I had about a month. That was six days ago."

Dana's chair scraped. "Six days?"

"Yes."

"Reeve, if there's a review—"

"I know."

"Do you know? Because a care ward review takes about three weeks to conclude and we're—" She had her laptop open already. "We're possibly inside the window. We might be inside the window right now."

Cole spoke for the first time.

"Why."

Reeve looked at him.

"Not why did he call you. Why did you hold it."

"Because I wanted to be the one who brought something in," Reeve said.

He said it fast, like a man getting a splinter out, and the kitchen went very quiet.

"Everyone in this room finds things. Dana finds things, Aldric knows things, Vesper draws things, Mia notices things, you understand things." He still wasn't looking anywhere. "I help. That's the job and I'm good at it and I'm not — I'm not complaining. But a man on a phone gave me a thread nobody else had and for eleven days I was going to be the person who walked in with it, and I knew exactly why I was doing it while I was doing it, and it turns out that doesn't stop you."

Aldric, who had been silent since Fairhaven, said: "That's the most honest account of a betrayal I've heard in eighty-two years, and I've heard a great many."

"It's not a betrayal."

"It is, and you'll do yourself a favour by not arguing the word." Aldric set his cup down. "I withheld a name from Dana for four months and tested this household with it, and I told myself it was diligence. You've done a smaller thing and named it correctly inside a fortnight. I'd have taken thirty years."

Dana had not looked up from her laptop.

"I'm not doing the forgiveness part," she said. "I'm doing the part where I find out how much time we've lost. Somebody else can do the other thing."

"Dana—"

"That's not coldness, Reeve, that's triage." Her typing didn't stop. "You'll get the other conversation. You've just got to wait until I know whether it's a conversation about a delay or a conversation about a man going north."

Mia was the one who broke it, from the doorway.

"Did he say anything else?"

"He said in about a fortnight somebody would ask me when I found out and I'd have to say a date out loud in front of people I like." Reeve's jaw was tight. "He was eleven days off. That's the bit I can't — he scheduled this conversation. He set the date and he was nearly right."

Cole stood up.

Everyone braced for the wrong thing.

"Dana. How long to find out where the review's up to?"

"Couple of hours if Halden'll take a call."

"Take the call in here." He was already pulling his coat off the back of the chair. "Reeve, with me."

"I'm not sure I should—"

"You're coming, because you know what you told them on the phone when you pretended to be family and I'd rather not arrive contradicting you." Cole put the coat on. "We'll talk about the eleven days after. Not now. Now there's a window."

"You're not angry."

Cole stopped at the door.

"I'm furious," he said. "I've been furious since the word February came out of your mouth and I'll still be furious on Thursday. And you're right about the thing you said, which is worse, because I've been doing exactly what you described to all of you for a year and I've never once been caught at it."

He went out.

Reeve stood there a second and then followed him.

Fairhaven's review had concluded on the Friday.

They found out at twenty past eleven, from a receptionist who said oh, he's going north Tuesday, isn't that nice, there's a garden — and Reeve, standing in a corridor that smelled of floor polish, did the arithmetic out loud without meaning to.

"Six days. If I'd said it on the Monday—"

"Don't."

"Cole, if I'd said it on the Monday we'd have had nineteen days and now we've got two."

"I know how many days we've got."

"Then say it."

Cole turned round.

"Fine. Yes. If you'd said it on Monday we'd have had three weeks and a plan, and now we've got two days and we'll do it badly, and somebody's going to get hurt doing it badly who wouldn't have got hurt doing it well." No heat in it at all, which was worse. "That's the sentence. You wanted it out loud. Now carry it, because I'm not taking it off you and I'd be lying if I said I wanted to."

Reeve didn't say anything.

"And when this is finished," Cole said, "you and I are going to sit down and you're going to tell me every single time I've done the same thing to you, and I'm going to listen to all of it, because you've earned that and I've been getting away with it for a year."

They got back at one.

Thessaly had a map out. Dana was on her second call. Aldric was writing something and had asked nobody for permission.

Two days.

Mia made toast for six people nobody sat down to eat, and at some point in the middle of it Reeve took a slice and said thanks and Mia said don't be stupid and shoved the butter at him, and that was the only forgiveness anybody offered him that day, and it was the only one he could have handled.

[End of Chapter 124]