Page 65 of The Bookshop of Forbidden Books

But Verner was already walking off down the street, with a newfound spring in his step.

* * *

Mitch got a brief call from Anna, asking him to meet her at the bottom of the courthouse steps at one o’clock sharp – and making it clear he’d better be on time. She was already there when he arrived.

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your acting skills?” she asked, without context.

It wasn’t the question that threw him, but the way she greeted him: a distant kiss on the cheek, quick and impersonal.

“Don’t give me that look. We have to stay professional, right to the end. You’ll understand once we’re inside. For once, we’re flipping the script on this patriarchal society. You’ll be my assistant, okay? Let me do the talking.” She handed him the small camera she’d brought back from exile in the Great White North.

She took his hand reflexively, then caught herself and dropped it. The last thing they needed was to be seen together holding hands on the courthouse steps.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Mitch hissed, hurrying to keep up as she strode down the corridor.

“What do you think? Take a picture when the time comes.”

She paused to ask an attorney, reading a newspaper on a bench, where the clerks’ office was.

“I have some news,” Mitch began, while she all but dragged him toward the main staircase.

“Later. I left the repair guy mid-job on the walk-in fridge to come here. He swore he’d be done by the time I got back. Not that he had a choice – I locked him in.”

“I saw Verner. He’s innocent,” Mitch said, panting, as they reached the first-floor landing.

“Did he tell you his entire life story?”

“No, but—”

“Then you have no idea.”

Anna stopped in front of a door bearing a small sign: Public entry prohibited. Open mornings only or by appointment.

She opened it without knocking and strode in.

“Hi,” she said loudly.

Startled, the court clerk slid shut the drawer of a file cabinet that had been hiding his face. His features were long and thin, his deeply lined forehead like a topographical map, his prominent nose rising from the centre like a mountain range.

His smock was spotless. His office was the opposite – a mess of teetering stacks of files.

“Can’t you read?” the clerk grumbled.

“Nice to meet you too,” Anna replied with a bright smile.

“You have no right to be in here.”

“No rights in a courthouse – write that down,” she said to Mitch. “It’ll make a great headline.”

“Headline?” the clerk echoed, suddenly nervous.

“You know – those short phrases in big bold letters that appear above newspaper articles? We call those headlines in the business.”

“You’re journalists?”

“I’d have preferred to make an appointment, but by the time we got in to see you none of this would be news anymore,” Anna went on.

“What news?”