Never Go Back

Next you can call Captain Edmonds, at HRC. She’s my other lawyer. Tell her I want to see her right after Major Sullivan. Tell her I have urgent things to discuss.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘How many customers do you have today?’
    ‘Just you and one other.’
    ‘Which would be Major Turner, right?’
    ‘Correct.’
    ‘Is she nearby?’
    ‘This is the only cell block we got.’
    ‘She needs to know her lawyer is out of action. She needs to get another one. You need to go see her and make sure she does.’
    ‘That’s a weird thing for you to say.’
    ‘What happened to Moorcroft was nothing to do with me. You’ll know that soon enough. And the best way of getting the egg off your face is not to get it on in the first place.’
    ‘Still a weird thing for you to say. Who died and made you president of the ACLU?’
    ‘I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. So did you. Major Turner is entitled to competent representation at all times. That’s the theory. And a gap will look bad, when the appeals kick in. So tell her she needs to meet with someone new. As soon as possible. This afternoon would be good. Make sure she grasps that.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘We’re all good now,’ Reacher said. ‘Thank you, captain.’
    ‘You’re welcome,’ the tall guy said. He turned around and folded himself under the lintel again and stepped out to the corridor. The door slammed, and the lock turned, and the bolts shot home.
    Reacher stayed where he was, in the chair.
    Fifteen minutes later the door sounds came again. The bolts, the lock, the hinges. This time the duty captain stayed out in the corridor. Less strain on his neck. He said, ‘Message from Sergeant Leach, over at your HQ. The two guys in Afghanistan were found dead. On a goat trail in the Hindu Kush. Shot in the head. Nine-millimetre, probably. Three days ago, possibly, by the looks of it.’
    Reacher paused a beat, and then he said, ‘Thank you, captain.’
    Hope for the best, plan for the worst .
    And the worst had happened.

SIXTEEN
    REACHER STAYED IN his chair, thinking hard, flipping an imaginary coin in his head. First time: heads or tails? Fifty-fifty, obviously. Because the coin was imaginary. A real coin flipped by a real human trended closer to 51-49 in favour of whichever side was uppermost at the outset. No one could explain exactly why, but the phenomenon was easily observed in experiments. Something to do with multiple axes of spin, and wobble, and aerodynamics, and the general difference between theory and practice.
    But Reacher’s coin was imaginary. So, second time: heads or tails? Exactly fifty-fifty again. And the third time, and the fourth time. Each flip was a separate event all its own, with identical odds, statistically independent of anything that came before. Always fifty-fifty, every single time. But that didn’t mean the chances of flipping four heads in a row were fifty-fifty. Far from it. The chances of flipping four heads in a row were about ninety-four to six against. Much worse than fifty-fifty. Simple math.
    And Reacher needed four heads in a row. As in: Would Susan Turner get a new lawyer that afternoon? 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.