CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I suggest Lara stays the night, half expecting to hear, No thanks, I’d rather wake up in my own bed, but she accepts gratefully. I try to remember the last time she did that; we used to stay with each other a lot in the years just after leaving university, a subconscious attempt to re-create the messy hubbub of student housing, where nobody need ever be alone. It occurs to me that now I am almost always alone: long periods of isolation broken by short human interactions that don’t leave me feeling any less solitary. It’s probably not good for me—at least, it’s probably not good for me that I don’t mind. In any case, I think with dark humor, now I have Severine for company.
I have a spare bedroom, but Lara crawls into bed with me like days of old, and turns on her side, resting her head on her bent arm. In the warm glow of the bedside light I can see her eyeliner is smudged and her eyelids are heavy with the wine; she looks blowsy and sloppy and decadently sexy. Modan wakes up to this, I think. Does the effect ever wear off? One day will he look at her and move on without lingering, his brain ticking over his to-do list for the day? Or will he always stop for a moment, arrested by the sight, and perhaps touch the back of his hand to her cheek? And Tom, does he remember what she looked like in his bed all those years ago? Does he yearn to see her there now? I cut off that train of thought quickly and turn on my back to look at the ceiling instead. There were times at Oxford, and in the years after, when I had stabs of jealousy toward Lara: for her effortless magnetism, her easygoing take-it-or-leave-it flirting, for how her very presence dimmed mine in the eyes of the male population. Then I would reason those feelings away; I would console myself that I appealed to the more discerning gentleman . . . I thought I had grown up, cast off my insecurities, but here we are a decade on: it’s so demeaning to realize that actually nothing has changed.
“Tom,” says Lara uncannily if sleepily, pulling my gaze back to her. “Come on, time to tell all.”
I rub a hand over my face, not trusting my voice for a moment, then recover and say, “Not much to tell.”
“You’re pretty upset for not much to tell.”
“I was drunk—well, we both were. We were sharing a cab, and I went up to his flat for a cup of tea—no, really, just tea!” I protest on Lara’s raised eyebrow. “Then somehow, I don’t know, we were kissing and then . . . God, I think I passed out.” I pull the pillow over my face. “It’s beyond humiliating,” I say, lifting it enough to let the words out. “And then this morning Tom was livid with me—he thinks I abused our friendship—and he was . . . mean. And it upset me.” I shrug and put the pillow down, concentrating on the ceiling. “It’s fine that he doesn’t want to . . . doesn’t want anything between us”—no it’s not, no it’s not, it doesn’t feel fine at all—“but he was pretty nasty.” It doesn’t feel fine to be confessing my humiliation at not being wanted to the girl he really wants, either. I wonder if she’s pleased that she hasn’t been usurped, and then I’m promptly ashamed of myself.
“Tom nasty?” Lara’s eyebrows are raised in astonishment, the hairs glowing golden in the light.
“Believe me, he’s very good at it when he tries. Very efficient.” Of course he is. Tom is the man who does what needs to be done, no matter what.
“I know, but . . . nasty to you? What did he say?”
“It doesn’t matter—no, really, it doesn’t.” I shake my head at her. “I don’t want to drag you into anything.” I look at the ceiling again. Does it need repainting? Or is it just that the lamp is casting uneven shadows? I wonder where Severine is sleeping—does she even sleep? She’s only in my head, so I suppose she must sleep when I do, except that I can’t imagine that at all. I can imagine her still, even imagine her with her eyes closed, but there’s a readiness there, like a panther in repose. At the slightest movement or sound she would unhurriedly raise her eyelids and survey the surrounds with her dark, secretive eyes. The thought is oddly comforting, like having a guard dog on the premises. Severine, my protector. I almost laugh out loud.
“Did you want it to turn into anything?” Lara asks carefully after a moment. I turn my head to look at her, but this time she’s the one inspecting the ceiling. There are mascara flakes on her eyelashes; I will find smudges on my bed linen in the morning that are hell to get out. “You always just seemed like . . . mates. What about Seb?”
It crosses my mind that Seb never looked to Lara first. Right from our very first meeting he honed in on me. In retrospect I wonder if that was part of the attraction. “Seb and I broke up a decade ago.” She turns her head to look at me with unashamed skepticism, and I can hardly blame her for it. If I didn’t know myself that I was over Seb, how could I expect anyone else to? “Seb now . . . he isn’t the same as the Seb I knew back then. Or thought I knew . . .” I’m not sure Seb was ever who I thought he was. “Maybe if I’d seen him in the intervening years I’d have been over him long ago.” Or maybe not; maybe it’s the stark contrast of now versus then that allows me to see things more clearly.
“Closure,” she says thoughtfully. Then again, with a tired smile and an American accent: “Clo-sure.” A large yawn arrives, which she covers delicately, somehow putting me in mind of a cat, and then I think of her again on that car journey back from France, golden and sated, the cat that got the cream. I close my eyes tightly, but the image remains. “But Tom,” she is saying. “Did you really want something more?”
Is she being more or less tenacious than I expect? Is she schooling her expression or is this a natural reaction? I can’t stop the second-guessing. “God, I don’t know. I never thought of him like that, and then suddenly . . .” Was it so sudden? I think of coming to the surface in his car after the journey back from lunch with his folks: wakey wakey, sleeping beauty, of that instant before the world rushed back in. Perhaps that fleeting moment lingered in my head, setting off ripples . . . I shrug, somehow disturbed by that thought. “I don’t know.” Her yawn is catching; I’m yawning myself now.
“Mmm,” she says, her eyelids drifting closed.
I reach out and flick off the bedside light. How is it that I can feel her warmth stealing across the inches between us, sense the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes evenly: the physical connection plus the intangible webs that link us—how is it that all of this binds us, yet we’re still alone inside our heads?
On Monday Julie has a message for me when I get back to my office after a meeting: Call Caroline Horridge, followed by a Haft & Weil number. There’s no message from Tom, not that he would call my office number, and not that I expect him to call at all. I answer a few e-mails first, but the yellow Post-it with Julie’s curly script sits on my desk and glares at me unrelentingly until I recognize I’m prevaricating. I grit my teeth, pick up the phone and dial, ignoring Severine, who is lounging against the wall inspecting her fingernails.
Caro answers exactly as she always does, stating her name in crisp tones after a single ring. “Hi, Caro, it’s Kate Channing here,” I say breezily, determined to cut off any of her game-playing tactics. “You left a message at my office.”
Nonetheless, she leaves a beat or two, as if, even after hearing my full name and exactly why I’m calling, she’s still struggling to place me. “Ah, yes, Kate,” she says warmly, when she finally does speak. “Apologies, I’ve just been immersed in some difficult drafting. Back to the real world, though: I was calling to talk with you about the recruitment progress.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. “In relation to . . . ?”
“Haft & Weil, of course. Our recruitment plans. I’m sure by now Gordon has told you that he’s handing over the reins of that project to me.”
“Um . . .” My fake smile slides right off my face.
“He hasn’t? Oh, I am sorry”—no, she’s not—“I didn’t mean to jump the gun”—yes, she did—“I was sure he’d spoken to you.” She knows he hasn’t. “Well, he has, so you and I are going to be working together on it from now on.” She pauses expectantly.
“Interesting,” I say. It is, actually, on a number of levels, but of course she expects something more than that. I recover the fake smile and plaster it on. “Well, welcome aboard.” I’m sure Gordon would have wanted to tell me himself; I wonder how he will react when he realizes he’s been leapfrogged.
“Thanks. I was hoping you might have some time tomorrow to drop by my office and bring me up to speed. Does that work for you?”
“Absolutely.” I glance at my electronic calendar, these days gratifyingly checkered with meetings and calls, my smile doggedly in place. “I can do 11 A.M. or anytime after 3:30 P.M. tomorrow.”
“Let’s do 11 A.M. and then we can grab a bite to eat afterward. Sound good?”
“Perfect,” I manage. “See you then.”
Paul comes in just as I’m putting the phone down. “Kate!” he exclaims. He’s definitely on an uptick these days. “Glad I caught you. We should discuss the Cavanagh account, and I really think I’m close to getting Struthers to bite, and—”
“Slow down,” I say, laughing. “I’m not going anywhere. At least take your coat off first.”
Severine glances at him with disdain, and suddenly I wonder: if Severine is a creation of my mind, are her reactions my own deeply hidden feelings? I observe Paul as he struggles out of his smart spring raincoat, trying to see him afresh. You could mock him if you wanted to, with his sharp city clothes, his urbane manner and his unflinching ambition. But I’ve seen him gray faced and crumpled with exhaustion on a Friday evening, having worked a seventy-five-hour week; I’ve drunk champagne out of mugs on the floor of this very office with him. I have no wish to mock him. I’m willing to concede that Severine—this Severine—is my creation, but she’s not me.
“What?” says Paul, looking up to find my eyes on him as he pulls his chair across to my desk.
I clear my face. “Nothing, nothing. Just . . . just thinking we’ve been gratifyingly lucky of late.”
“It’s not luck,” he says seriously, his vanishingly pale eyebrows drawing earnestly over his eyes. “It’s hard work.”
He really, truly believes it. Did I believe that once? Did I think that good things came to those who earned them? “Well,” I say equivocally, unwilling to burst his bubble, “it’s both.”
Modan, Alain Modan, Investigateur, OPJ and lover of Lara . . . a man of many talents. Later that day I start to realize that one of them is the ability to toss everybody else off balance with an elegantly judged metaphorical tap-tackle; I should think he has put effort into that talent over the years, carefully honing it to cause maximum consternation with minimum effort. He starts this particular campaign with the simplest of requests: a meeting.
“All of us, mind,” says Lara again, through the mobile that’s clamped between my ear and shoulder to leave my hands free to pack up my briefcase for a meeting. Either she’s exceptionally tired or she has just been speaking to her family in Sweden: there’s a slight lilt to her voice that only ever comes out in specific circumstances. “He says he’d rather not repeat everything five times.”
“Mmmm.”
“You don’t believe that’s the reason,” Lara says. It’s a statement, not a question.
“No.” I would have expected Modan to prefer five separate interviews, which would provide five separate opportunities for analyzing reactions—why the change of tack? I pause as I flick through the documents I’m adding to the bag. “And neither do you, I suspect.”
“No.” She lets out a long sigh that sweeps through the city and delivers her frustration into my ear. “It’s . . .”
“Infuriating?” I give up on choosing which documents I need and just drop them all in.
“No. Well, it is, but mostly it’s just . . . unsettling. He’s lying, I know he’s lying, he knows I know he’s lying—I think he even wants me to know he’s lying, like that makes it less awful or something . . . How the hell are we supposed to base a relationship on this?”
“You’re not,” I say sweetly, snapping the briefcase shut. “That’s why policemen aren’t supposed to fraternize with witnesses.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she says, half laughing.
“I shall. I’ve got to run to a meeting.” I switch the mobile into my hand. “Listen, Lara—this will pass; it won’t be like this forever for you guys. You just need to . . . ride it out, as best you can.”
“I know.” This time the long sigh curls around me, heavy and brooding. The sunshine girl is fast losing her sun. If this thing runs for another two years . . . It doesn’t bear thinking about. “Well, I’ll see you there. Tonight at six thirty.”
“Got it. And everyone is coming?” I ask this as casually as I can, but of course Lara isn’t fooled.
“Yes. Though now I don’t know who you’re most worried about seeing, Seb or Tom.”
“Caro, actually,” I say dryly. “Always Caro.”
It’s 6:30 P.M., and we are meeting at the enormous 1960s glass and concrete monstrosity that is New Scotland Yard, the home of the Met Police. I didn’t pay much attention to that when Lara gave me the details over the phone, but now, standing outside by the familiar triangular sign that I must have seen in thousands of TV news items, I feel the knot in my stomach tighten. Modan is not just the tricky Frenchman who’s screwing my best friend. He’s a man with the weight of the law behind him—both the law of his own country and of mine. Recognizing that this intimidation is intentional doesn’t make it any less effective. I look around in the vain hope that perhaps Lara might be arriving at just this moment and we can brave it all together, but no. I am on my own. I square my shoulders and push through the door.
The inside is sparse and clean and hard-edged, but I’m not really in the frame of mind to take much note. The solid-faced uniformed officer behind the reception desk is expecting me; within minutes I’m led into a conference room with a pine-effect conference table and twelve chairs—surely six too many—clustered around it, though none of those chairs are currently occupied.
“You’re the first,” says the officer, pointing out the obvious. His tone is cheerful, but his face doesn’t change. Perhaps that’s what a career in the police does to you—though Modan seems to have retained the faculty of facial expression. “I’m sure Detective Modan will be along shortly. There’s a coffee machine just down the hallway on the right if you’re so inclined.” Then I’m alone with the functional furniture. I drop my handbag onto one chair and look around. The gray London street beyond the window is slightly distorted; I wonder if the glass is bulletproof. It’s certainly soundproof; I can’t hear the traffic at all. From the hallway I can hear the muffled buzz and chatter of life continuing, but in here both I and the oversize room seem to be holding our breath, as if suspended before the roller coaster drops.
Then I hear Tom’s distinctive rumble and Lara’s giggle; I feel a sudden lurch as the roller coaster picks up speed again, and then they spill into the room with Seb on their heels. I put all my focus on Lara, absurdly self-conscious as I hug her in greeting, but I can’t hide in our hello forever; I have to release her and turn to Tom and Seb. Both of them step forward at the same time, but then Tom gestures awkwardly and steps back, leaving the field for Seb.
“Hello, Seb,” I say neutrally. Behind him I can see Caro enter the room, her blond hair pulled back into a severe chignon.
“Kate,” says Seb warmly, though perhaps I detect a touch of apprehension lurking in his eyes. “Good to see you, though of course I’d rather we were in a pub or something.” He leans in to kiss me on each cheek. I stay still throughout, imagining my cheeks are marble, and all the while I’m looking at Tom, who in turn is looking at Seb and me with a shuttered expression. When his eyes catch mine he immediately glances away. And Caro watches us all.
“Hello, Tom,” I say quietly, crossing to him.
“Hi, Kate,” he says, not quite meeting my eye. Then he leans in and kisses me on both cheeks, Tom who never kisses, Tom who always hugs. Yet again my cheeks are marble, this time not in silent protest but because it’s all I can do to hold myself in one piece. I can feel I’m beginning to tear apart, and I don’t know how to sew myself back together.
“Tom—” I start when he steps back, but Seb is talking over me.
“Christ, I need a coffee,” he’s saying. “Shall I grab you one, Tom?”
“I’ll come with you,” Tom says quickly, with what sounds suspiciously like relief. I watch the two of them leave together, and for a moment I see them as a stranger might: two men similar enough around the eyes and in frame as to be brothers, though very different in coloring. Seb always seemed older, and he seems older still, but that’s no longer a compliment. A decade ago he was a man among boys, but now he is a man hurtling more quickly toward middle age than the rest of us; in the light of day there’s a slackness to him that becomes more noticeable next to Tom’s clean bulk.
Caro is speaking to Lara and me whilst simultaneously fishing something out of her slimline soft leather briefcase. “God, I thought I’d never get here on time. I was leading a negotiation for a major client; I couldn’t really just up and leave.” I feel my jaw clench. Not just a client, a major client. Not just in a negotiation, but leading it. It’s petty and mean and plain exhausting to be so attuned to the slightest word or expression, but I just can’t stop myself. Perhaps it’s just not within me to gift Caro with the benefit of the doubt. “Anyway,” she says, finally looking up, BlackBerry in hand. “How are you two?”
“Fine,” says Lara brightly. “Just—oh, here’s Alain.”
I turn to see him pause at the doorway, an elegant gray suit encasing his long limbs, accentuated today by a powder blue tie. His eyes scan the room and stop on Lara momentarily—just long enough for something to pass between them that I could almost reach out and touch—then resume their survey. Finally he steps forward. “Ladies,” he says, a smile lurking at the edge of his mouth. “And gentlemen,” he adds as Tom and Seb return with their coffees; they each deposit their cardboard cups on the table to shake his hand. I notice that he didn’t shake hands with Caro, Lara or me. “Welcome to the glamour that is New Scotland Yard,” he says with an ironic lift of his eyebrows.
“Are police stations in France similar?” asks Lara.
He considers this seriously. “Ah, oui, in many ways. Though”—he looks at the flimsy cups on the table and wrinkles his nose in distaste—“the coffee is better.” This is greeted with great hilarity: we are all too tense, too desperate in our efforts to project good-humored ease. “And the food is better. And the decor, and the furniture . . . so, ah, maybe no, nothing like the same.” He smiles, acknowledging the laughter his words have elicited, deep lines bracketing his mouth. I haven’t seen him in this kind of environment before, where he has an audience and it’s his show. I can see that he and Lara are birds of a feather; they wear their skin with such effortless charm.
He glances round as if performing a head count. “Alors, we are complete. Please, sit.”
So we sit, Modan at the head of the table, Lara and I on one side and Tom, Seb and Caro (and her BlackBerry) on the other. It’s a split that’s reminiscent of the divisions during that fateful week in France; it doesn’t feel accidental. Caro is the last to choose a chair: I see her evaluating the options. The artificial light reveals shadows under her eyes that even her careful application of concealer has failed to hide, and there’s a gray tinge to her skin: exactly what I’d expect for a lawyer in the run-up to partnership. As she settles into the seat next to Seb I try to step outside of myself, to see her as I might if she was a prospective candidate to be placed through my firm, but I can’t do it. My dislike of her is too pervasive.
I disliked Severine, too, but that was in life. I’m growing accustomed to her in death. I can’t imagine that she would miss this, and sure enough, there are only five chairs too many: Severine has settled herself in one at the far end of the table. Her face doesn’t betray any interest—of course it doesn’t, this is Severine—but there’s a stillness within her that gives her away.
“We are complete,” says Modan again, when everyone is settled. I see Tom glance around the group, and a brief flash of despair crosses his face before he schools it back into submission. Perhaps there are only four chairs too many. I don’t expect Severine has the monopoly on haunting. “Alors, thank you, all of you, for coming.” He looks around the table slowly, his long face grave. Opposite me, Tom and Seb have both pushed their chairs back from the table and have their long legs stretched out. I wonder if they teach it in public school, this ability to take ownership of a room by an elegant display of casual relaxation. For whose benefit is the display in Tom’s case? Mine or Modan’s? “I wanted to tell you all together that we now have the results of the autopsy on Mademoiselle Severine.” I glance across the table and see Seb look up sharply, his hand tightening on the coffee cup. By contrast Tom continues to look as if Modan is merely discussing the weather, and not terribly interesting weather at that. “The conclusion is that she died by what you here call foul play.” I wait for him to continue, but he simply looks around the room again, overlooking no one.
“You didn’t get us all here just for that,” I say abruptly. I’m tired—at least I’m tired of the showmanship—and I’m upset and I’m not censoring myself quickly enough. Lara puts a hand on my arm, but it fails to halt me. “Seriously, she ended up concertinaed at the bottom of a well. How could it not be foul play?”
Modan frowns. “Concertinaed. What is this?”
Lara reels off something in rapid-fire French.
Modan’s expression clears. “Ah, I understand.” He tries out the new word. “Concertinaed. Yes, indeed, a fair point, though of course we always have to rule out suicide or accident.” He pronounces the last word in the French fashion, but I’m still caught on the incongruity of suicide. I stamp down on the highly inappropriate urge to laugh: had he seriously considered the possibility she stuffed her own self in the well? I glance down the table, and Severine’s dark eyes gleam as they meet mine: quite apart from the logistical difficulties of that particular theory, we both know she’s not the suicidal type.
“But you are right; there is more.” Modan continues, unaware of the weight of Severine’s dark eyes upon him. Across the table, Caro has her head cocked, her body leaning forward and BlackBerry forgotten, a textbook example of a person listening intently: because she is, or because that’s what she wants to portray? Tom and Seb are still sprawled out, but the tension in Seb is obvious; he doesn’t have Caro’s inherent artifice. “After this length of time, unless the body is somehow preserved, the autopsy can have, ah, nil result. Inconclusive, yes? In this case, we have a body that spent ten years in a warm, mainly dry, environment, which is the most efficient environment for leaving just the bones.” Beside me Lara shudders, the most minute of movements, but nonetheless Modan picks up on it. I wonder if he would have had it been Caro or myself doing the shuddering. “I apologize, this is not a pleasant topic, but it is necessary. So, as I was saying, there are just bones.” He spread his hands. “Broken bones.”
“Broken?” asks Lara. “From what?”
“We cannot tell if the breaks are pre- or postmortem.” He shrugs, his fingers flexing out briefly in a synchronized movement. “They would fit very well with a car crash, a . . .”—he searches for a word for a moment, then snaps his fingers—“a hit-and-run.” Across the table I see Tom’s gaze sharpen and jump sharply to Modan. In less than a blink that honed focus is gone, and once again he’s the only-casually-interested observer he has been all along. Tom is surprised by something. It’s the first time I’ve detected surprise in him since Severine was found.
“Or,” continues Modan, “they could have occurred when the body was put in the well. Concertinaed, as Kate says.” He inclines his head in my direction. There’s no smile lurking around his mouth—that would be in terribly poor taste—but I know it’s inside him.
“So you’re saying,” says Caro, her expression clinically professional, “that you have no evidence of cause of death? In which case shouldn’t you pack up and go home?”
Lara’s hand tightens on my arm. Modan doesn’t look at her. “Regrettably, non.” He adds a theatrical sigh. “You are correct, we do not have cause of death, but we do have her bones. The human body is amazing.” He shakes his head a little, half smiling. “Truly amazing. Even after death it still finds ways to speak to us.” Tell me about it, I think with dark humor. Severine’s bones are far too communicative as far as I’m concerned, though I imagine they are communicating with Modan through a somewhat different method. “We have her bones, and what they tell us is that Severine was not at the bus depot on the Saturday morning.”
“What?” says Lara, confused. “But the CCTV . . .”
Modan is shaking his head. “Not her. Non. Similar height, similar build, similar, ah, thing with the scarf”—he twirls a hand expressively above his head—“but not her. The proportions are wrong. I cannot translate the technical details, but there is something with the length of one bone in relation to another one . . . along with photographs . . . Ah, the experts, they are absolutely certain. Absolument. It is not Severine on the CCTV.”
And so. It was one of us.
His words plow into me with the weight of a wrecking ball. Somewhere inside, I’ve been expecting this, dreading this. It was one of us. Like the discovery of her body in the well, it suddenly seems inevitable, unavoidable, obvious. One of the five of us—six, including Theo—killed Severine. For all one could construct a theory to say otherwise, I now believe it with a sickening certainty that is absolute, as if I’ve always believed it.
I look around the table and see varying degrees of shock on the faces. Lara is still stuck on what he actually said; the full implication hasn’t hit her yet. I hear her mutter, “Hell of a coincidence.” Tom is very, very still, but behind those hooded eyes I imagine the activity is frenetic. Caro says, “Really? You’re sure?” to which Modan nods, and then she steeples her hands and props her chin on them, frowning thoughtfully. And Seb looks . . . tired. Gray. Defeated. He looks like he’s been dreading this, too.
“Alors,” says Modan, not quite spelling it out, “the five of you were the last to see Mademoiselle Severine alive.”
“And Theo, of course,” interjects Caro casually. Tom stiffens at this and casts her a dark, thoughtful look, and I know why: the games have begun, if they hadn’t already . . . We’re now in a macabre version of pass the parcel; when the music stops nobody wants to be left holding this prize. It would be incredibly convenient for all if Theo, the only person whose life can’t be wrecked, were to shoulder the blame. But as I look at Tom, I can’t imagine he will allow that without a fight. I look around the table again. It’s impossible not to think, as each face passes under my gaze, Was it you? Could you have done it? And, most disturbing of all, How far will you go to blame someone else? When I get to Severine she returns my gaze coolly, then slides down her chair and tips her head back, closing her eyes: sunbathing. Severine and Lara, I think bleakly: the only people I believe are innocent, and one of those is the victim and, moreover, dead.
Modan inclines his head to Caro in agreement. “Oui, of course, and Theo, too. I’m afraid I will need to conduct more interviews, but as we’re all here first I thought we might try to properly establish the timeline that night. It’s a little . . .”—his expressive hands dance—“unclear at the moment.”
Seb starts to say something, but Tom leans forward suddenly, giving up all pretense of disinterest, and speaks over him. “Should we have lawyers present?”
His words hang in a silence that is only broken by Lara’s sharp intake of breath; she has finally caught on. I look at Tom speculatively for a moment. I spoke with my own lawyer only hours before this meeting, and her instructions had been very explicit: if you must go at all, just observe, listen, and whatever you do, don’t answer a damn question without me present. I wonder if Tom has taken legal advice, too. Modan stretches out his long arms and tweaks at one of his cuffs before answering. “If you wish you can certainly have a lawyer present, though you are not under arrest. Of course.” He spreads his palms. “This is just, ah, fact-finding, non? And of course you all want to be helpful, cooperative. Waiting for lawyers . . .”—he rolls his eyes expressively—“well, it is rather a waste of time.” I can’t help admiring his performance even as the intent chills me.
“Still,” says Tom robustly. “Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone, but I think I’d rather take legal advice at this point.” In phrasing it like that—I can’t speak for everyone—he is somehow speaking for us, as if he’s created a group mentality by the mere suggestion that there could be one. He stands, pushing his chair back abruptly with the action. “And if we’re not under arrest, then of course we’re free to go at any point, correct?”
And just like that, he has wrested the power from Modan and the meeting is over.