Never Go Back

restaurant, in his opinion, not a diner. Diners were lean, mean, stripped-down places, as ruthless as combat rifles.
    They took a booth in a side wing, and a waitress brought coffee before being asked, which raised Reacher’s opinion of the place a little. The menu was a multi-page laminated thing almost as big as the tabletop. Reacher saw pancakes and eggs on page two, and investigated no further.
    Sullivan said, ‘I’m recommending a plea bargain. They’ll ask for five years and we’ll offer one and settle on two. You can do that. Two years won’t kill you.’
    Reacher said, ‘Who was Candice Dayton?’
    ‘Not my case. Someone else will talk to you about that.’
    ‘And who was Juan Rodriguez exactly?’
    ‘Someone you hit in the head who died from his injuries.’
    ‘I don’t remember him.’
    ‘That’s not the best thing to say in a case like this. It makes it sound like you hit so many people in the head that you can’t distinguish one from the other. It might prompt further inquiries. Someone might be tempted to draw up a list. And from what I hear it might be a very long list. The 110th was pretty much a rogue operation back then.’
    ‘And what is it now?’
    ‘A little better, perhaps. But far from outstanding.’
    ‘That’s your opinion?’
    ‘That’s my experience.’
    ‘Do you know anything about Susan Turner’s situation?’
    ‘I know her lawyer.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘She took a bribe.’
    ‘Do we know that for sure?’
    ‘There’s enough electronic data to float a battleship. She opened a bank account in the Cayman Islands at ten o’clock in the morning the day before yesterday, and at eleven o’clock a hundred thousand dollars showed up in it, and then she was arrested at twelve o’clock, more or less red-handed. Seems fairly open and shut to me. And fairly typical of the 110th.’
    ‘Sounds like you don’t love my old unit, overall. Which might be a problem. Because I’m entitled to a competent defence. Sixth Amendment, and so on. Do you think you’re the right person for the job?’
    ‘I’m what they’re giving you, so get used to it.’
    ‘I should see the evidence against me, at least. Don’t you think? Isn’t there something in the Sixth Amendment about that too?’
    ‘You didn’t do much paperwork sixteen years ago.’
    ‘We did some.’
    ‘I know,’ Sullivan said. ‘I’ve seen what there is of it. Among other things you did daily summaries. I have one that shows you heading out for an interview with Mr Rodriguez. Then I have a document from a county hospital ER showing his admission later the same day, for a head injury, among other things.’
    ‘And that’s it? Where’s the connection? He could have fallen down the stairs after I left. He could have been hit by a truck.’
    ‘The ER doctors thought he had been.’
    ‘That’s a weak case,’ Reacher said. ‘In fact it’s not really a case at all. I don’t remember anything about it.’
    ‘Yet you remember some stairs that Mr Rodriguez might have fallen down after your interview.’
    ‘Speculation,’ Reacher said. ‘Hypothesis. Figure of speech. Same as the truck. They’ve got nothing.’
    ‘They have an affidavit,’ Sullivan said. ‘Sworn out by Mr Rodriguez himself, some time later. He names you as his attacker.’

EIGHT
    SULLIVAN HAULED HER briefcase up on the booth’s vinyl bench. She took out a thick file and laid it on the table. She said, ‘Happy reading.’
    Which it wasn’t, of course. It was a long and sordid record of a long and sordid investigation into a long and sordid crime. The root cause was Operation Desert Shield, all the way back in late 1990, which was the build-up phase before Operation Desert Storm, which was the Gulf War the first time around, after Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded his neighbour, the independent state of Kuwait. Half a million men and women from the free world had gathered over six long months, getting ready to kick Saddam’s ass, which in the end had taken all of one hundred hours. Then the half-million men and women had gone home again.
    The material wind-down had been the problem. Armies need a lot of stuff. Six months to build it up, six months to break it down. And the build-up had received a lot more in the way of care and attention than the wind-down. The wind-down had been piecemeal and messy. Dozens of nationalities had been involved. Long story short, lots of stuff had gone missing. Which was embarrassing. But the books had to be