David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good by Andrew Grant Page B

that
night?” I said.
            “No,” he said.
            “So where were you?”
            He didn’t answer.
            “You can tell me,” I
said. “Anything you reveal to me is privileged information, because I’m a
lawyer. It can’t get you in trouble. But it might make it easier for me to
help.”
            He looked at the ground,
and remained silent.
            “You were at the
hospital, weren’t you?” I said.
            He nodded.
            “Down here?” I said.
            “Yes,” he said.
            “What were you doing?”
            “Collecting something.
Then the alarm went off. And I saw firemen all over the place. I thought it was
for real.”
            “So what did you do?”
            “Tried to get out
without any of them seeing me. I wasn’t supposed to be here, remember.”
            “Did you make it?”
            “Almost. Then two of
them practically fell on top of me.”
            “Where was this?”
            “At the end of the hot
corridor.”
            “The hot corridor?”
            “Where they keep the hot
waste. Along there.”
            “Why were you in that
corridor?”
            “I wasn’t. I was passing
the end of it, and I heard voices. Two men, arguing. I
paused for a moment, curious, like an idiot. Then the door opened and they
burst out, one dragging the other by the arm.”
            “Could you hear what
they were arguing about?”
            “The door to the hot
room. One had tried to get through it. Whacked it with his axe. And the other
was tearing him a new one for it. No one’s supposed to touch that door, ever.
Anyone working here should know that.”
            “So, it was one of these
firemen who’d damaged the door.”
            “Right.”
            “Are you sure they were
firemen?”
            “What kind of question
is that? There was a fire alarm. They came in a fire engine. They had firemen
suits. Yes, they were firemen.”
            “OK. So why didn’t you
tell the police what you saw?”
            “They didn’t ask.”
            “Because you weren’t
supposed to be here that night?”
            “Right.”
            “And you didn’t volunteer
the information because that would have revealed you were here when you
shouldn’t have been?”
            “Right.”
            “And is that such a big
deal? Being at the hospital when you’re off duty?”
            “It is, lately. The
rules changed. There’ve been some thefts, and stuff.”
            “How do your chances
look, keeping the police off your tail?”
            He shrugged.
            “Not good, I guess,” I
said. “They’re still crawling all over the place. And it won’t be long before
they start pulling everyone in, not just the ones who were working that night.”
            “Do you think so?” he
said.
            “I do, based on my
experience of these things. It’s how they operate. They’re like clockwork. They
have a procedure, and they follow it. But you don’t need to worry about that.
There’s a way we can shield you from it.”
            “There is? How?”
            “There’s a special kind
of statement you can make. An Incoactus Inviolati . Don’t worry about the weird-sounding name. It’s
from the Latin, and it just means that because you voluntarily provided
information which was helpful to the case, the circumstances which led you to
be in possession of that information – even if they were in and of
themselves illegal – will be excluded from the resulting investigation.”
            “Really? Are you sure?”
            “I’m a lawyer. It’s my
job to be sure. The Inviolati is a very useful tool
for the police. Without it, they wouldn’t be able to