The lawyer's office looked tired and defeated — chipped walls, old signage, carpet with a decade-long indentation from a watercooler that was no longer there.
Martin had chosen the firm carefully — or rather, obsessively. He had read every review, every “about” page, every photograph of every staff member. The lawyer he selected was mid-career, mid-priced, and possessed a facial expression that hovered ambiguously between “we’ll see” and “I’ll allow it.”
He arrived with a folder under his arm. Inside: a printed timeline of events, a sketch of the badminton centre, and three possible drafts of the statement he hoped to extract.
The receptionist took his name.
He sat.
He did not read a magazine.
The lawyer was a man in his early forties with the body language of someone who had already endured several lifetimes of client madness and was prepared for several more.
He extended a hand. Martin shook it with the solemnity of a condemned man greeting the priest.
“So,” the lawyer said, sitting. “What brings you in?”
Martin exhaled.
“It’s to do with... co-responsibility,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know,” Martin went on, “when someone tells you about something they’ve done — something criminal, or possibly criminal — and then you know about it. And then you become, in a way, part of the structure of the crime. Not legally, necessarily, but psychologically. And then possibly legally.”
The lawyer blinked once.
“I see.”
Martin leaned forward, conspiratorially.
“I was at a badminton centre. Post-match drinks. Very casual. Not my choice — it was a social thing. Anyway, a man — an acquaintance — disclosed to me that he smokes marijuana. Regularly. Here. In this country. He also works illegally. Cash-in-hand, no permit. He said these things. To me.”
The lawyer opened a notepad.
“So you’re asking... what, exactly?”
“I want to know,” Martin said carefully, “if, by hearing that information, I’ve entered into some kind of implied complicity. Or what I’m calling — and I think this is quite apt — co-responsibility.”
The lawyer nodded slowly, in the way that doctors nod at patients describing symptoms of alien abduction.
“Knowing someone smokes weed doesn’t make you guilty of anything.”
“But what if I didn’t report it?”
“You’re not required to.”
“But I could be.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
Martin shifted in his chair.
“Could you... put that in writing?”
The lawyer looked up.
“In writing?”
“Yes. Just something I could keep. On file. Just in case. A statement. Confirming my non-liability.”
There was a pause.
“You want me to write a legal opinion stating that you are not criminally responsible for someone else’s recreational drug use?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not really... a thing.”
“But couldn’t it be?” Martin said. “You’re a lawyer. With fifteen years of experience. That’s authority. Just a few lines. Something I can sign beneath. As a kind of... counter-testimony, should the matter ever arise.”
“It won’t arise.”
“But if it does?”
The lawyer put down his pen.
“Let me ask you this: now that you’ve told me, am I now... co-responsible?”
Martin went still. Blinked. Tilted his head.
“You make an excellent point.”
The lawyer stared.
“I think you could be,” Martin said. “In a secondary capacity. Not legally — yet — but ethically? Definitely.”
A silence fell. The sort of silence that’s normally followed by security being called.
Then Martin added, quietly: “I’ll pay triple your hourly rate.”
Fifteen minutes later, the lawyer was typing.
He did not look happy about it.
Martin sat opposite, cross-legged, hands folded in his lap like a man awaiting a passport renewal.
The lawyer printed the statement. Signed it. Pushed it across the desk.
Martin read it with a reverence usually reserved for ancient scrolls:
"To whom it may concern: Based on the account provided to me by Mr. Martin Henderson, it is my professional opinion that he bears no legal responsibility for the disclosures made to him by a third party during a recreational badminton event. Mr. Martin Henderson is not legally obligated to report hearsay or casual comments pertaining to minor infractions. He has not, to the best of my understanding, committed any offence, nor aided or abetted any offence. Signed, [Lawyer's Signature], Attorney-at-Law, 15 years' experience."
Martin sighed, long and low. It was the exhalation of a man finally released from moral detention.
He signed beneath the lawyer’s name, just for good measure.
That evening, back home, Martin placed the statement in a fireproof envelope and tucked it between two folders labelled IMMIGRATION RECORDS and POTENTIAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS. He poured himself a mint tea. He didn’t drink it.
Instead, he stared at the document. The language comforted him. “To the best of my understanding” — that was a phrase you could live inside.
And yet...
He frowned.
The lawyer now knew the same things he knew. The lawyer had not reported them. Which made the lawyer — what? Also implicated?
And if the lawyer was implicated... and he hadn’t reported the lawyer... then what did that make Martin?
He stared out the window. His breath fogged the glass.
He would sleep badly tonight.
But he would sleep legally.