Never Go Back

Answer: either yes or no. Fifty-fifty. Like heads or tails, like flipping a coin. Then: Would that new lawyer be a white male? Answer: either yes or no. Fifty-fifty. And then: Would first Major Sullivan or subsequently Captain Edmonds be in the building at the same time as Susan Turner’s new lawyer? Assuming she got one? Answer: either yes or no. Fifty-fifty. And finally: Would all three lawyers have come in through the same gate as each other? Answer: either yes or no. Fifty-fifty.

Four yes-or-no answers, each one of them a separate event all its own. Each one of them a perfect fifty-fifty chance in its own right. But four correct answers in a row were a six-in-a-hundred improbability.

Hope for the best. Which Reacher did. To some extent justifiably, he felt. Statistics were cold and indifferent. Which the real world wasn’t, necessarily. The army was an imperfect institution. Even in noncombatant roles like the JAG Corps, it wasn’t perfectly gender-neutral, for instance. Senior ranks favoured men. And a senior rank would be seen as necessary, for the defence of an MP major on a corruption charge. Therefore the gender of Susan Turner’s new lawyer wasn’t exactly a fifty-fifty proposition. Probably closer to seventy-thirty, in the desired direction. Moorcroft had been male, after all. And white. Black people were well represented in the military, but in no greater proportion than the population as a whole, which was about one in eight. About eighty-seven to thirteen, right there.

And Reacher could keep at least one of his own lawyers in the building practically indefinitely. All he had to do was keep them talking. One spurious point after another. Some big show of anxiety. He could keep them there for ever, until they grew bored or impatient enough to abandon legal propriety and good manners. Therefore the chances of his lawyer and Turner’s being present in the building together were better than fifty-fifty, too. Seventy- thirty again, possibly. Maybe even better.

And regular visitors to Dyer might know the north gate was closer to the guardhouse, and therefore they could be relied upon to use it. Maybe. Which put the gate question better than fifty-fifty, too. If Turner’s new lawyer was a regular visitor. Which he might not be. Pointy-headed classroom stars didn’t necessarily get around much. Call it fifty-five to forty-five. A marginal advantage. Not overwhelming.

Nevertheless, overall, the plan’s chances were a little better than six in a hundred.

But not a whole lot better.

If Turner got a new lawyer in the first place, that was.

Hope for the best.

Reacher waited. Relaxed, patient, inert. He counted off the time in his head. Three o’clock in the afternoon. Three thirty. Four o’clock. The chair was comfortable. The room was warm. And fairly soundproof. Very little noise was audible from the outside. Just a dull acoustic. Not that the place was remotely like a regular prison. It was a civilized place, for civilized people.

All of which, Reacher hoped, was going to help.

Finally at four thirty in the afternoon the bolts slammed back, and the lock turned, and the door opened. The beanpole captain said, ‘Major Sullivan is here to see you.’

Showtime.

SEVENTEEN

THE TALL GUY stood back and let Reacher walk in front of him. The corridor dog-legged left, and then right. Reacher pieced together the geography from what little he had seen. He figured the main office was around three more corners. Still some distance away. Before that would come the small square lobby, with the locked quarantine doors, and the clerk, and the rear door to the outside. Before that would come the interview rooms, on both sides of a short stretch of corridor all its own. The scuffed spaces for cops and suspects would be on the right, and on the left would be the slightly grander spaces he had seen on his way to the cells. There were two of them. His destination, he assumed. Higher quality, for conferences between lawyers and clients. They had windows in their doors, narrow vertical rectangles of wired glass, set off-centre above the handles.

He walked straight past the first door, glancing in the window but pretending not to, seeing Sullivan in there, seated on the left side of a table, in her neat Class A uniform, hands folded on top of her closed briefcase, and he kept on walking, to the second door, where he stopped and glanced in the window quite openly.

The second room was empty.

No client, and no lawyer, male or otherwise.

Neither heads nor tails.

Not yet.

Behind him the tall guy said, ‘Hold up, major. You’re in this one back here.’

Reacher turned around and tracked back. The door wasn’t locked. The tall guy just turned the handle and opened it up. Reacher listened to the sounds it made. A solid metallic click from the handle, a cursive precision grind from the hinges, an air-locked swish from the silicone seals. Not loud, but distinctive. Reacher stepped inside. Sullivan looked up. The tall guy said, ‘Buzz when you’re done, counsellor.’

Reacher sat down opposite Sullivan, and the tall guy closed the door and walked away. The door was not locked because there was no handle on the inside. Just a flat expanse, with something missing, unexpected, like a face without a nose. There was a doorbell button next to the jamb. Buzz when you’re done. The room itself was plain and pleasant. No windows, but it was cleaner and crisper than the cop room. The light bulb was brighter.

Sullivan kept her briefcase closed, and her hands clasped on top of it. She said, ‘I won’t represent you in the Moorcroft assault. In fact I really don’t want you as a client at all.’

Reacher didn’t answer. He was checking what he could hear from the corridor. Which wasn’t much, but was maybe enough.

Sullivan said, ‘Major?’

Reacher said, ‘I’m what they’re giving you, so get used to it.’

‘Colonel Moorcroft is a friend of mine.’

‘Your old teacher?’