They Framed Arthur He Returned as Lucas novel · Chapter 2 of 8

Chapter 2: Bail

Martin posts £2 million and walks Arthur out of the court into a waiting car, and Arthur sees on Martin's phone that Dailyplus has already run the story with his face on it.

They took me down to the cells under the court and told me the sentence hearing would be in six weeks.

Six weeks meant the judge had seen something he didn't like.

Six weeks meant my barrister had asked for time and got it.

I sat on a bench in a room with a drain in the floor and waited to be moved.

The guard who came for me was young and wouldn't meet my eye.

"Someone's posted bail," he said.

I said, "That isn't possible."

He shrugged and unlocked the door.

Bail for a manslaughter conviction doesn't happen.

Bail happens before a verdict. After a verdict you go down and you wait.

The guard walked me up a back staircase and along a corridor I hadn't seen.

At the end of it a door opened onto a side entrance with two cars pulled up.

Martin was standing between them.

Six foot three, navy suit, pale blue shirt buttoned to the collar, black curls cut close.

He had his hands in his pockets like a man waiting for a bus.

He looked at me and his face didn't change at all.

"Arthur."

"Martin."

That was all we said for about ten seconds.

Then he stepped forward and put his arms around me and held on.

He smelled like the same soap he'd used since we were fifteen.

His hand was flat between my shoulder blades, and it stayed there.

"You look like hell," he said into my ear.

"I've had a long week."

"Get in the car."

The first car pulled out ahead of us and the second one waited behind.

I got in the back of the middle car and Martin got in beside me.

There was a folder on the seat between us and a bottle of water.

"Drink it," he said. "You're grey."

I drank it.

"How."

"Two million. Secured against property."

"Whose property."

"Mine."

I turned and looked at him properly for the first time.

Martin had been my best friend since we were seven years old.

We grew up on the same street in Bromley. He used to climb over my back wall.

His mum worked at the Co-op and my mum worked at the school.

I said, "You don't have two million pounds."

He looked out of the window.

"I have considerably more than two million pounds."

The car turned onto the Embankment and the river went past on my left.

I sat with that sentence for a while.

"How considerably."

"Enough that it doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"I know," he said. "That's why I never told you."

He pulled out his phone to check something and I saw the screen.

Dailyplus. My face. My own face, the old one, filling the top of the page.

The headline said EXCLUSIVE: HEART SURGEON CONVICTED.

I looked at Martin.

He put the phone face down on his knee.

"That ran forty minutes ago."

"You're the editor."

"I'm the chief editor. I didn't write it and I didn't stop it."

"Why not."

"Because if I kill every story about you, somebody at that paper starts asking why I'm killing every story about you."

He said it flatly, like a man reading out a train timetable.

"Then what's the plan."

"Get you out of the country tonight. There's a plane at Luton at eleven."

"To where."

"Geneva."

"For what."

He didn't answer that.

The car stopped at a light and the driver said something into his collar.

Then the crowd found us.

They came around the front car first, and then the side, and then the windows were full of faces.

Camera flashes went off against the glass, one after another, white and then white again.

Somebody banged the roof with the flat of a hand.

Somebody shouted my name through the window, close enough that I saw spit on the glass.

"Mr. Red! Did you kill him!"

"Arthur! Arthur, look this way!"

"Is it true you were sleeping with the surgeon who testified!"

I sat very still with my hands in my lap.

Martin reached across and pulled the shade down on my window.

Then he pulled the shade down on his.

He didn't say anything at all.

The car started moving again, slow, and the crowd came with it for half a street.

A woman pressed her phone against the glass and kept it there like she was taking a photograph of an animal.

Then we were through and the road opened and they fell back.

Martin let out a breath.

"Dailyplus will have that footage by six," he said. "I'll make sure it's the version where you don't react."

"You're protecting me at your own paper."

"I'm protecting you," he said. "The paper's a separate problem."

The car went around the roundabout and up toward the bridge.

Martin put his hand on the seat between us, palm up.

I didn't take it.

Not because I didn't want to.

Because I didn't know yet what it would cost him.

"Martin."

"Yes."

"Why."

He thought about it for a long moment.

"Because I've been reading about you in my own newspaper for eleven days," he said. "And every morning I had to sit in a meeting and decide how much of it to print."

The car turned into the court's front approach to collect my bag from the property office.

There were still cameras on the steps. Fewer now, but enough.

The driver stopped and Martin got out first and stood in front of my door.

I got out behind him and the flashes started again.

I kept my head down and walked toward the entrance, and Martin walked on my left, shoulder in front of mine.

Halfway up the steps I looked up.

My mum was standing at the top with her handbag held in both hands.

Grey coat. Grey hair. The handbag she'd had for twenty years.

She'd come. She'd actually come.

She looked at my face and I saw her mouth move.

I lifted my hand.

She turned her back on me and walked away down the other side of the steps.

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