Page 123 of Corrupt

And yeah…he’d been right. They suited him.

He’d been born to wear them.

And the air left my lungs in one brutal rush. My hands shook, the pen slipping against the page as fear and rage and disbelief crashed together so hard I thought I might be sick. I couldn’t stop staring at him. At the familiar line of his shoulders beneath clothes stripping him of everything he’d chosen for himself. I wanted to stand. Shout. Scream no! This was wrong, this wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be him.

But the court moved on, because courts must.

The clerk read the charges.

“Mr Slade, you are charged with conspiracy to supply Class A controlled drugs…”

Hands cuffed in front of him, eyes fixed on a point somewhere above the magistrates’ bench, Razor said nothing. He didn’t look for anyone. Certainly not me. He wouldn’t know I was there. And he stood where he was placed, waiting for the inevitable. For once again someone else to determine his fate. Where he belonged.

I stopped hearing the specifics. I already knew them. The sections. The language. The weight. I’d read them a hundred times in textbooks, argued them in hypotheticals. None of it prepared me for the way my own name for him caught in my throat. I kept looking at him in the dock. At the rigid line of his shoulders, the way he stood too straight, eyes fixed ahead. He didn’t scan the room. Didn’t look back. He had no idea I was here. He’d accepted, blindly, that he was alone.

The CPS prosecutor rose. I recognised her immediately. Serious crime. Always composed. The kind the CPS sent when they didn’t intend to lose. “Your Worships, this is an application to remand the defendant in custody.”

My stomach dropped.

No.

I glanced down at the court list, fingers numb against the paper. Organised supply. Crown opposition to bail. SEROCU involvement. This wasn’t about previous convictions. Though I didn’t know if he had any. But those grey joggers back at his apartment now made sense. Of course, he’d been in the system before. Probably low-level stuff. But this wasn’t about that. This was about scale. Risk. And the Crown deciding whether he mattered enough to lock away before a trial had even begun.

The CPS continued, “The Crown opposes bail on the grounds that there are substantial reasons to believe the defendant would fail to surrender, commit further offences, and interfere with witnesses.”

She paused. Long enough for me to get my legal head back on.

“The defendant is alleged to occupy a senior position within an organised supply network, with access to resources, contacts, and funds that would facilitate absconding.”

Each phrase, each careful escalation, felt like a sucker punch to my gut.

The defence leapt to their feet. “I note for the record, Your Worships, that the prosecution case is intelligence-led and framed as conspiracy. My client faces no charge of possession.”

I blinked. No possession charge. Conspiracy. Intelligence-led material.

I waited for him to follow it.

But he didn’t. He didn’t press. Didn’t ask what had actually been recovered. Just parked it like a box ticked. Giving prosecution the chance to keep twisting in my knife.

“Further, Your Worships,” Prosecution gave a snide glance to the defence, “the defendant is currently under investigation in relation to a fatal incident at a commercial premises in Battersea.”

Fatal?

The word rang in my head, sharp and hollow.

Fatal meant dead.

Meant someone hadn’t walked away.

It meant—

No.

No, no, no.

“The deceased was found at a location linked to the defendant’s alleged activities. While no further charges have been brought at this stage, the investigation is live and complex.”

Live and complex. The phrase prosecutors used when they wanted to say we’re not done yet without admitting how much they didn’t have. When they wanted the shadow of something far worse to do the work for them.