Ли Чайлд: No Middle Name

Reacher nodded. ‘Which means you would say the kid in the black sweatshirt was the unknown suspect. You would say he was due to receive the bag all along.’

Delaney nodded. ‘And we got him, and therefore the operation was in fact a total success.’

‘Easy for you to say. Also very convenient.’

Delaney didn’t answer.

Reacher asked, ‘Where is the kid now?’

Delaney pointed to the door. ‘Two rooms away. We’re taking him to Bangor soon.’

‘Is he talking?’

‘Not so far. He’s being a good little soldier.’

‘Unless he isn’t a soldier at all.’

‘We think he is. And we think he’ll talk, when he comes to appreciate the full extent of his jeopardy.’

‘One other major problem,’ Reacher said.

‘Which is?’

‘The bag looked empty to me. What kind of a delivery or a payment would that be? You won’t get a conviction for following an empty bag around.’

‘The bag wasn’t empty,’ Delaney said. ‘At least not originally.’

‘What was in it?’

‘We’ll get to that. But first we need to loop back around. To what I asked you at the very beginning. To make sure. About your state of mind.’

‘I was helping the cops.’

‘Were you?’

‘You worried about liability? If I was a civilian rendering assistance, I get the same immunity law enforcement gets. Plus the kid wasn’t hurt anyway. Couple of bruises, maybe. Maybe a scrape on his knee. No problem. Unless you got some really weird judges here.’

‘Our judges are OK. When they understand the context.’

‘What else could the context be? I witnessed a felony. There was a clear desire on the part of the police department to apprehend the perpetrator. I helped them. Are you saying you’ve got an issue with that?’

Delaney said, ‘Would you excuse us for a moment?’

Reacher didn’t answer. Cook and Delaney got up and shuffled out from behind the crossways table. They stepped to the door and left the room. The door snicked shut behind them. This time Reacher was pretty sure it locked. He glanced at the mirror. Saw nothing but his reflection, grey tinged with green.

Ten minutes of your time. What’s the worst thing could happen?

Nothing happened. Not for three long minutes. Then Cook and Delaney came back in. They sat down again, Cook on the left and Delaney on the right.

Delaney said, ‘You claim you were rendering assistance to law enforcement.’

Reacher said, ‘Correct.’

‘Would you like to revisit that statement?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No,’ Delaney said.

‘Why not?’

‘We think the truth was very different.’

‘How so?’

‘We think you were taking the bag from the kid. The same way he took it from the girl. We think you were a second surprising and unpredictable cut-out.’

‘The bag fell on the ground.’

‘We have witnesses who saw you bend down to pick it up.’

‘I thought better of it. I left it there. Aaron picked it up.’

Delaney nodded. ‘And by then it was empty.’

‘Want to search my pockets?’

‘We think you extracted the contents of the bag, and handed them off to someone in the crowd.’

‘What?’

‘If you were a second cut-out, why wouldn’t there be a third?’

‘Bullshit,’ Reacher said.

Delaney said, ‘Jack-none-Reacher, you are under arrest for felonious involvement with a racketeer-influenced corrupt organization. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to the presence of an attorney before further questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, then one will be appointed for you, on the taxpayers’ dime.’

Four county cops came in, three with handguns drawn and the fourth with a shotgun held at port arms across his body. Across the table Cook and Delaney merely peeled back their lapels to show off Glock 17s in shoulder holsters. Reacher sat still. Six against one. Too many. Dumb odds. Plus nervous tension in the air, plus trigger fingers, plus a completely unknown level of training, expertise, and experience.

Mistakes might be made.

Reacher sat still.

He said, ‘I want the public defender.’

After that, he said nothing at all.

They handcuffed his wrists behind his back and led him out to the corridor, and around two dogleg corners, and through a locked steel door in a concrete frame, into the station’s holding area, which was a miniature cell block with three empty billets on a narrow corridor, all the far side of a booking table that was currently unoccupied. One of the county cops holstered his weapon and stepped around. Reacher’s handcuffs were removed. He gave up his passport, his ATM card, his toothbrush, seventy bucks in bills, seventy-five cents in quarters, and his shoelaces. In exchange he got a shove in the back and sole occupancy of the first cell in line. The door clanged shut, and the lock tripped like a hammer hitting a railroad spike. The cops looked in for a second more, like people at the zoo, and then they about-turned and walked back past the booking table and out of the room, one after the other. Reacher heard the steel door close after the last of them. He heard it lock.

He waited. He was good at waiting. He was a patient man. He had nowhere to go, and all the time in the world to get there. He sat on the bed, which was a cast concrete structure, as was a little desk, with an integral stool. The stool had a little round pad, made of the same thin vinyl-covered foam as the mattress on the bed. The toilet was steel, with a dished-in top to act as a basin. Cold water only. Like the world’s lousiest motel room, further stripped back to the unavoidable minimum requirements, and then reduced in size to the barely bearable. The old-time architects had used even more concrete than elsewhere. As if prisoners trying to escape might exert more force than atom bombs.

Reacher kept track of time in his head. Two hours ticked by, and part of a third, and then the youngest of the county uniforms came by for a status check. He looked in the bars and said, ‘You OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ Reacher said. ‘A little hungry, maybe. It’s past lunchtime.’

‘There’s a problem with that.’

‘Is the chef out sick?’

‘We don’t have a chef. We send out. To the diner down the block. Lunch is authorized up to four dollars. But that’s the county rate. You’re a state prisoner. We don’t know what they pay for lunch.’

‘More, I hope.’

‘But we need to know for sure. Otherwise we could get stuck with it.’

‘Doesn’t Delaney know? Or Cook?’

‘They left. They took their other suspect back to their HQ in Bangor.’

‘How much do you spend on dinner?’

‘Six and a half.’

‘Breakfast?’

‘You won’t be here for breakfast. You’re a state prisoner. Like the other guy. They’ll come get you tonight.’

An hour later the young cop came back again with a grilled cheese sandwich and a foam cup of Coke. Three bucks and change. Apparently Detective Aaron had said if the state paid less than that, he would cover the difference personally.

‘Tell him thanks,’ Reacher said. ‘And tell him to be careful. One favour for another.’

‘Careful about what?’

‘Which mast he nails his colours to.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Either he’ll understand or he won’t.’

‘You saying you didn’t do it?’

Reacher smiled. ‘I guess you heard that before.’

The young cop nodded. ‘Everyone says it. None of you ever did a damn thing. It’s what we expect.’

Then the guy walked away, and Reacher ate his meal, and went back to waiting.