Chapter 4
Four hours later, just as the nineteenth-century gold carriage clock on his mantelpiece chimed one, the harsh buzz of the apartment intercom jolted Joseph from his thoughts.
He lifted his head and blinked past the circle of light created by the angle-poise lamp. The rest of the living room was in darkness but for the sodium glow of the streetlights peering in at the windows.
A glass of Bordeaux sat half-full in front of him, and his dining table was covered with documents, statute books, and copies of Hansard. Pencils, their points perfectly sharp but for the one in his hand, were ranged to one side of him, while on the other was a stack of neatly aligned pages carefully removed from a legal pad—further amendments and notes for discussion on the work they’d done over the last
