Brond (17 page)

He looked at me wide-eyed, reliving it.

‘You’re the first person I’ve told,’ he said.

I wondered if he was a lunatic.

‘Earthquake?’ I asked. ‘Surely not in Glasgow?’

‘Earthquake?’ He looked at me as if I was the one who was mad. ‘Who’s talking about earthquakes? Subsidence! My garden had slipped into an old pit shaft they’d all
forgotten about.’

‘Jesus!’ I said.

‘Oh, yes. Lanarkshire, you see, rests on old coal mines.’

Not long after that someone came and took him away. Very politely, so it was possible his story was true. I waited. I had never been in this situation so it was hard for me to tell if the noises
off were settling back to normal. Twice more I stood on the table. Brick walls don’t change much. Two and a half hours went by. The door was not locked. I tried it once. There was no physical
barrier to stop me from going out and asking what was happening. I sat down and waited.

The short fat one took notes. The other one did the talking. Neither of them explained who they were; no names or ranks. My name. My age. My occupation.

‘How well did you know Peter Kilpatrick?’

‘Not well at all.’

‘How many of you lodge there?’

My mind scrabbled.

‘Three – no, four.’

‘Uh-huh. All of you students, isn’t that right?’

‘No – two of us. Willie Clarke and me. Muldoon isn’t. Neither is . . .’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Kilpatrick. Peter . . .’

They knew that.

‘So you’re a student. At the Uni.’

He mouthed the word in the way Davie had just before he tried to butt me in the face – yoo-ni.

‘That’s right.’

‘Uh-huh. Why didn’t you like him?’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like him.’

‘Ladies’ man, are you?’

‘Me. No.’

‘Big fellow like you. Not bad looking. All those stories about students.’

The fat man snorted appreciatively.

‘I asked you a question.’ ‘I answered it.’

‘Uh-huh. Incline the other way?’

I didn’t know what he was talking about. When I looked at him uncomprehendingly, he made a limp movement with one hand.

‘That way, are you? Fancy the boys?’

‘Not much.’

He hesitated and I thought I’d not been emphatic enough for him, but it was only a needle. He came back to what he was really after.

‘Ladies’ man, are you?’

‘I don’t run round bloody mad, if that’s what you mean.’

He turned to the fat man, who kept writing.

‘That what I mean?’

The fat man glanced up at him then at me. He sniffed.

‘No. Didn’t think so. Have a steady?’

‘A what?’

‘A steady – girl you go about with.’

‘No.’

‘Big healthy fellow like you. How long you been here?’

‘Since the session started – last October.’

‘All winter. And no girls. Funny.’

‘I didn’t say no girls. I’ve been out a few times. Took a girl home from a dance a few times . . .’

Walked the streets a few times. Howled at the moon a few times.

‘Names.’

‘Eh?’

‘Names. Give us their names.’

He waited. I thought of them being questioned by the police.

‘I’ll give you a name,’ he said. ‘Margaret Briody.’

‘She’s not a girl friend of mine.’

‘Where’d you sleep last night?’

Some time later he said that she’d been interviewed. Not long after that another man came in and stood listening.

‘Jealous of Peter, were you?’

‘Why should I be jealous of him?’

‘You’re telling us that you didn’t know he was sleeping with her?’

‘With who?’

‘Don’t play the funny man, son. Just answer the questions. You’re in a lot of trouble. You can do it the hard way or the easy way.’

The light in the narrow window had faded. Since the morning I had been sitting in that room.

‘I’m hungry,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Get him a sandwich – no, I’ll go.’

He got up and stretched. The man who had been standing silent sat down. The one who had been questioning went out.

The new one sat with a pencil turning it on the table. The door opened and another two newcomers appeared. One sat down and took over from the fat man. The fat man yawned and left.

‘I want to piss, too,’ I said.

‘In a minute. Tell me first about Margaret.’

‘You must have heard – I’ve said all there is to say about her.’

‘Tell me again. When did you find out about her and Peter?’

It must have been an hour later when I remembered about the sandwiches. Nobody had brought me any. But the room gradually filled up. More men kept coming in. Some were in uniform. Two or three
would ask me questions taking it in turn. The men in uniform were not constables – I didn’t know what ranks but they looked important.

It was just after I felt the strangeness of this roomful of men that the last one arrived. I was being asked a question and it stopped abruptly. The new arrival closed the door and waited as if
he wanted to gather every eye. I watched him as if I too had been waiting for news.

He nodded – Yes. Yes.

There was a release of breath, a mingled sigh and snarl, like the purr of a hunting cat. Then every eye turned back to me.

The man who had just come in bent over and whispered to one of my interrogators and another one got up and he took his place.

Everything changed then. Although I had been frightened before, I could make sense of what was happening. Now the questions made no sense to me.

Had I ever been a member of a political party?

Where had I met Kilpatrick?

How did I feel about the Royal Family?

Had it been in a club I met Kilpatrick?

Some kind of society or organisation?

What group did I belong to?

And then over and over again:

Where had I gone during the night – while Margaret Briody slept – before I climbed into her bed – God, they knew about that – where had I gone? What time had I slipped
out? Where did I go? Did I know – this house, that street, this hotel?

Had I been inside that hotel?

Riggs Lodge – but, of course, I had. It was the hotel I had worked in as a relief porter at Christmas.

When I said that, there came another of those strange sighing chuckles, fat and satisfied and at the same time hungry.

My watch had stopped. It felt like the middle of the night. I had at the back of my mind the thought – this is wrong; and I thought that I would say nothing more; I would insist on
something to eat. Dully, I realised that I wasn’t hungry any more. I was tired. The questions kept coming and I answered them while behind their distraction I conducted with myself this other
argument – that it was wrong; but until I settled it what else was there to do but keep answering?

Earlier when it was still daylight they had taken my fingerprints.

‘No,’ I had said.

Two big men looked at me incuriously.

‘You don’t want to be printed?’

‘No’, I said in a small voice.

‘Up to you,’ one stone face said. ‘Case last year in Edinburgh. Fellow felt the way you do about it. They broke one arm on the Tuesday and the other one on the Wednesday.
Thursday the Court said that was reasonable force. Thursday afternoon he got his fingerprints taken. Right?’

Right.

‘You know what this is?’

A large sheet of stiff paper crackled out between us. A meaty hand spread it flat. There was a bruising across the knuckles that reminded me of Primo’s hand on the apartment door, the fat
swollen pressure of blood and offended tissue. He put a finger down on the paper.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘You know what this is?’

It was a plan of some kind. A blueprint: the sheet was covered with detail. I understood enough to see that it was a building and that it must be very large.

The finger tapped, tapped.

‘Here. Stop bluffing. You know what this is.’

I didn’t; I knew nothing about reading plans. When I bent closer, it dissolved into a jumble of lines.

‘Through that door, right? And then up the outside.’

Somebody leaned over his shoulder and said, ‘They’re sure.’

The one who was asking the questions looked up at him irritably and that let me understand it had not been a statement aimed at me, but a question, ‘They’re sure?’

Now he stared down at me.

‘Possible,’ he said. ‘He’s a big fellow. But, Christ!’

That started them off on a new line.

What sports did I play?

Climbing? Had I done any climbing? In the University Mountaineering Club, wasn’t I?

‘I’m afraid of heights.’ The admission of something I had always been ashamed of angered me. Even watching those old movies where the comedian teetered on a ledge above toy
cars and people scurrying like ants, I would tense up and have to look away.

In or out of uniform, they were all bulky men, beef to the heels, with a lot of beer bellies hanging out in front. The room wasn’t all that big and the temperature had climbed. Spreading
patches of sweat darkened the shirts of those who had taken off their jackets.

A red misshapen face lowered over the table at me when I admitted my fear of heights. ‘You’ve been told,’ he shouted. ‘You’ve been warned about the funny stuff.
You’ve had it easy. Don’t think this is the only way. Do it easy or do it hard. Open your mouth and get it over with. If you get turned over to the heavy squad, you’ll think
we’re angels.’

He went on too long. Not that I didn’t believe in his heavy squad, just that he went on too long. I had been questioned and shouted at for hours.

‘Why don’t you,’ I said quietly, ‘go and play with yourself?’

After that I did not answer any more questions. To everything I shook my head. No more words. After a while, they stopped. People discussed in whispers; there was a general movement out.

Soon there were only two of them left. It was like when we had started so many hours ago.

‘. . . of that of that none of that none of.’

I sprawled and gasped, came up like a bad dive in the pool, ears sore, pain in my chest. Someone shook me by the shoulder.

‘None of that. This isn’t a fucking doss-house.’

I wrenched myself out of his grip.

‘Just keep awake.’ He had an unpleasant grin. ‘A guy like you shouldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep if I’d done what you did.’

‘I’ve done nothing.’

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘He’s found his tongue again.’ He leaned over me. ‘Why don’t you tell me all about it? Nobody here but us. All the big brass away. Tell
me about it and we’ll get a statement. Then you can have a sleep.’

He had lowered his voice in an elephantine gesture towards friendly persuasion. I shook my head for the millionth time. Routine.

Except that he lost his temper – or was a natural actor. A hand like a bunch of rocks bunched the front of my shirt. What must have been his thumb pushed into the hollow of my throat until
I choked. I writhed back but the chair swayed and I was held off-balance.

‘Nobody here but us,’ his voice said in the distance. It echoed in the dark that washed over me. I got both hands on his and tried to pull it away but could not move it. I had not
eaten. Even if he was a strong bastard, it was also true that I had been weakened by lack of food.

The hand came away. Slowly the room settled. By the door, another man was standing. The one who had been massaging my throat swung round and then came to a kind of attention. His trousers
wrinkled across his fat rump. The man by the door looked vaguely familiar as if he might have been one of the onlookers in the room earlier. He was in plain-clothes but wore them like a uniform;
grey hair, a big beaky nose, about fifty; you could tell he was an officer and a gentleman.

‘Did I see correctly there?’

His voice was unexpectedly high and thin.

‘Sir! I was—’

‘Never mind all that! Was he trying to pull your hand away?’

My tormentor had lost the thread. He mumbled and stopped, finally offered, ‘I suppose so.’

‘I mean
trying
. Putting an effort in.’

More confidently the answer came fast, ‘Yes, sir. He was trying.’

‘No luck though?’

Complacently, ‘No, sir.’

The man paced closer.

And you’re not Tarzan, are you, sergeant?’

The fat sergeant was lost again.

‘So it would follow chummy here wouldn’t be the world’s strongest, eh? Big fellow,’ his eyes measured me, ‘plenty of muscle. But you’ve handled
worse?’

‘Yes, sir. Plenty worse, sir.’

‘Well, then, sergeant,’ the voice squealed with frustration, ‘would that suggest anything to you? You did hear the technical boys’ opinion about what had happened? Does
that sound like chummy? Or was he bluffing about fighting you off?’

The sergeant seemed to understand all of this. He looked at me thoughtfully. I hadn’t expected him to think as well; it seemed vaguely unfair.

‘He wasn’t bluffing, sir. I’m sure of that . . . Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be an accessory. If he knew the hotel, he could have given the inside plan.’

‘But we’d still be looking for the man we really want to find.’

They studied me together.

‘If this one knows . . .’ The sergeant let his voice die away.

‘You’d like me to take a walk. Come back in half an hour or so?’

‘If he knows, I’ll get it out of him.’

Above the beak nose was a pair of pale blue eyes: they looked not at me but at a sum of problems filling the space I occupied.

There was a gentle tap at the door. I had never imagined I would be glad to see Brond.

He smiled peaceably at the picture we made.

‘There you are, sergeant. I wondered where you had got to,’ he said, ignoring the other man. ‘I hope you haven’t been living down to your reputation.’

‘I don’t know what you’re hinting at, Brond,’ the officer’s thin voice sounded strangely subdued, ‘but what happens next if we don’t run this maniac
down?’

From behind his back Brond produced a stick which I recognised as the one he had given me.

‘You left it in the car,’ he said, and passed it across the table to me.

‘What kind of tomfoolery is this?’