Page 1 of Claim

Chapter One

Tristan

“Your Honour, with respect, the Crown’s position relies on absence masquerading as evidence.”

The words left my mouth evenly, as if they’d been waiting there all along. They had. I’d turned the counterargument over so many times it had worn smooth. Instinct now, not thought. I could have delivered it in my sleep.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t.

I was on my feet, shoulders squared, black gown falling correctly from my frame, horsehair wig heavy and faintly abrasive over my scalp. I’d stopped registering the irritation sometime around mid-morning. There were worse sensations than discomfort. Most of them I’d learnt intimately over the past eight weeks.

The courtroom went quiet.

Not bored quiet. Listening quiet.

Because, honestly, the application itself was absurd on its face.

I was standing up for a defendant with no prior convictions, arrested for low-level acquisitive crime. Yet the Crown was opposing bail. Not on what they had, but on what they suggested might exist beyond the charge sheet. It was too familiar for me not to get riled up about.

“Mr Hale-Fitzroy, the Crown has served an addendum.” The usher leant in while the judge was still settling her papers.

I tried hard not to roll my eyes as I took the papers from the usher. Three pages. Freshly printed. Warm. Designed to look incidental while changing everything. I skimmed. Because the problem with late disclosure was that it always arrived dressed as courtesy.

And there it was.

A reframing. No new evidence. They were careful about disclosing that. They’d tightened their language enough to sharpen implication. No co-defendants named, no recovered devices linked to wider offending, no evidence of coordination. Just intelligence-shaped phrasing designed to imply scale. Intelligence suggests. Ongoing lines of enquiry. Phrases that did the work of accusation without ever carrying its weight. The Crown knew what it was doing. Drop it late. Force me to choose between responding half-prepared or appearing evasive.

I rose. “Your Honour, before we proceed, may I address the Crown’s supplemental submission?”

Judge Milson looked up. She was tired. That was always the trick. Judges were most dangerous when you asked them to be patient.

“You may,” she sighed. “Briefly.”

I turned, just enough to orient myself, not enough to look back. The defendant stood behind me in the dock, nineteen and shaking, fingers white where they gripped the rail. But I didn’t meet his eyes. I couldn’t afford to anchor myself to panic. Panic was contagious.

I held the pages up. “The Crown’s addendum served moments ago introduces speculative material not previously disclosed, framed in language implying gravity without substantiation.”

The prosecutor scrambled to his feet. “Your Honour, this is standard—”

“With respect,” I cut him off before he could piss all over my argument, “standard practice does not extend to smuggling conjecture into bail submissions under the guise of clarification.”

A ripple moved through the public gallery. Not any noise. Interested noise. It spurred me on. So I kept going.

“There is still no forensic link. No contemporaneous identification. No evidence placing my client at the scene beyond inference retrofitted after the fact. The Crown cannot cure an absence of proof by italicising suspicion.”

My voice sounded older than it had eight weeks ago. That wasn’t imagination. Something in me had flattened. Sharpened. Grief had a way of sanding people down until there were fewer soft edges left to catch on things.

The judge held up a hand, silencing the prosecutor. “Mr Hale-Fitzroy, are you suggesting bad faith?”

Her Honour Judge Milson was in her late fifties, I guessed, with a particular brand of exhaustion coming from seeing the same mistakes made by different people over and over again. She looked at me, assessing rather than reacting.

I held her gaze. Her appraisal.

Once, months ago, I would have been acutely aware of my surname in moments like this. Of what people assumed when they saw it on the case list. Hale-Fitzroy. Old chambers. Old money. Older expectations.

Now, I barely thought about it.

“No, Your Honour.” I let a beat pass. “I’m suggesting gravity inflation. Which the courts have been clear is impermissible.”