He had not taken a bribe or bent a rule.

He had done his job, competently and in good faith, on the evidence he had been given.

And the evidence he had been given had been manufactured, every crucial piece of it, by the real killer, and fed to him, and to the jury, and to the world.

He had been, without ever knowing it, a weapon in Richard Cole’s hands.

Every argument he had made, every camera he had stood before, every stone he had helped lay in the wall around Elena, had been Richard’s work performed by a proxy who thought he was serving justice.