The four of them had an almost festive attitude; payback time for my barely concealed contempt for them. Down down, we went, through the three clanging steel gates, past half a dozen emergency cells, a route designed to worry and intimidate. I had used the tactic often enough. The dowdy beat up corridor, scarred paint on the walls, hard concrete floor, harsh lights, grime being just kept at bay only depressed you more even before we reached ‘The Box’ itself.
Grey, small, dingy, dank with ingrained sweat of years, the windowless interview room showed the scars of a thousand clashes and confessions. Just getting there was unnerving. Steel locks bolting behind you, toilets flushing, felons yelling from nearby cells, you feel yourself falling away from life, away from daylight, out of the daily loop. Being disconnected, alone, weak, helpless, lost.
And so, it had come. I was ‘The Suspect.’ The husband is the likeliest to have done whatever has been done. I was it.
***
They left me alone for an hour, no doubt watching on the screens in another room. I was not even worth a PC in the room with me.
When he finally sat down opposite, I looked directly into Creel’s eyes. The cast there reminded me of light trapped under grainy grey water. The wheels were turning over in his brain. Odling stood behind me. The whirr of the tape machine, the wheezing of the Sergeant, the two weak light bulbs swinging slowly above on their thin chains, melded as a muted background noise in the sound proofed room.
Creel interviewing was a worry. Terrible detective that he was, he only ever got involved in major cases when a breakthrough was nigh to claim the glory. Tall, and angular, he had the face of a hawk - a sharp beak, thin lips, high forehead, hair already slate grey and close cropped. Eyes that were light and warm as he buried you in detail, on your side, just wanting to understand before he lanced you with a stare that people said was a yellow piercing stab and struck with points that it was too late to recover from.
In general, he left Odling to run his squad and get results while he did the policy, the politicking, the administration, the budgets. In fairness, he recruited excellent detectives to support his Sergeant even if they seldom stayed long. Creel kept out of day to day detecting, free to obfuscate as he manipulated, smoothed and cooed the brass and covered when things did not go his squad’s way. He never ever forgot a slight or a lack of support though. If you were not with him, you were against him. In other words, he got results by fair means or foul, power and influence and promotion being his major concerns. That day his focus was on me, a long-time foe and his only internal competitor for the next big step up.
An expensive dark suit, hand tooled belt, white shirt and yellow silk tie, made up his immaculate ensemble, as he opened his leather file, took out his fountain pen and wrote my name, the date and the time down within.
His voice, when it finally came, was from the south-west of England, a flat baritone, the vowels phlegmy round and from deep within. The Bristol burr flattened, like speech learnt in a previous century yet leavened with the maddening liturgy of modern management speak.
Creel surprised me. There were no major points revealed, no histrionics. Instead, he methodically questioned me, quietly presented the evidence and asked for my replies. I had dismissed their offer of a lawyer. He led me through my story of how I returned from a squad exercise in Wales to find the police at my house and my family missing.
Did I know that my lounge, study and hall way had been methodically, ‘indeed forensically’ cleaned, Creel asked? I did not know for certain though I guessed from the very beginning as there had been a strange smell when I first entered to find my family gone. I had then lived with my mother for two months and she had methodically cleaned the house herself before my return.
Was my marriage happy? It was. I would never tell these two but I dreamt the dream of our final afternoon and night together each and every night from the very first lost day. He continued. Bess and I had been heard arguing, sometimes violently? No.
Were we moving away from Ancaster County or thinking about it, to Cambridge perhaps? I hesitated, my eyes making the slip I knew of looking up and away rather than at him, but still I said No. My overall strategy was to tell the truth, after all I had done nothing wrong. But some things were private, our own, and those I would not give up.
Creel seemed on the verge of sleep, closing his eyes when he heard this, then made a note. His relish at the scraping of the nib told me he thought he had me. I used the technique myself. Making a long note could mean anything - disbelief, sympathy, agreement. Not as loud as the impassioned groan of a detective too used to the weakness of men and women, hearing deceit so often he could smell it but did not want to say out loud.
Creel’s eyes were ablaze as he looked up at me. Was Bess planning to move away on her own? No. I objected to this creature using her name. Were we, was I short of money? We could do better, but no. Clearly, he did not believe me on any of these last answers. This next grunt was no stratagem, it cried ‘liar’ as did his now alert eyes and body language.
Break the momentum. I insisted we took a break. Smith and Marshall accompanied me to the toilet. A girl who was the best coffee maker in the cafeteria, one I often complimented on her craft, brought a large latte with my normal extra shot, a hot pain au raisin and the slightest of nervous smiles.
13
The mind film of that attempt to break me in ‘The Box’ almost seven years ago flickers on in my head as I drive away after Sam’s arrest. That afternoon, we covered the same ground for another four hours before a middle-aged woman brought a hot meal and tea mainly swilling in the saucer. Without any smile.
Early evening, Odling took over, Creel retiring to sit at the side of the room, out of my line of sight as he scratched notes in his file.
I actually respected Odling as a skilled interviewer. Serene one moment, switching to insulting or close to violent pressure without warning the next. I had seen it myself, did not really approve at times but admired his cunning and self-control in the worst cases of child abuse we worked together once. He spoke in a hoarse rumble, almost sorrowful that he had to ask such questions, to treat me in the same way he did the collection of rogues, liars and vagabonds he normally sullied his hands with. I was different, it was all a big mistake he knew, or some act on the spur of the moment that I now regretted. Still truth would out, it had to be done, given the circumstantial evidence that was stacking up against me. I would feel better if I told all.
I understood, admired the ingenuity of the approach. His face was all sympathetic gloom. I found myself caught in the undertow he created, almost wanted to please, to offer such honest statements that his inbuilt concern would be allayed, if only for a minute or an hour.
He asked about the course I had been on with my squad in Wales, leaving my family home on the Monday morning for the December week in question.
“Bloody awful part of the world, did this exercise myself with my squad, froze our balls off that November,” he sympathized. “And in Wales, partly why I left Liverpool, too near bloody Wales.”.
“Morale and team building,” I explained, knowing Odling actually sat in the local hotel for five days, “with two days training and then a three-day exercise, living and working together on our wits outdoors in the Brecon Beacons to achieve a goal and defeat three other teams from other forces.”
My answer gave Odling pause. This was new ground to Creel’s coverage, I thought it odd he had left it out, and the fountain pen’s scraping increased its speed behind me.
“Together?” Odling asks quizzically. I do not reply and he pauses.
“But for thirty-six hours you were not together, not with your team, were you, DCI Cade?” Odling’s voice was low. “Not together at all then?”
I did not reply as he looked at an official report and a bunch of witness statements, his voice soothing, “As a squad you decided, no, you as senior officer ordered that you would strike out on your own, alone, while the others stayed together and worked as
a group to be the first team back to base. With the various target objects, they had to pick up on the way. Is that correct?”
It was. Country born and bred, I felt I could lead the pursuers and perhaps the other teams astray, distract, confuse and let my trusted squad get the job done. Two of them, especially a young new DC, Jean Parsons, were real country folk too and had the knowledge of the land, of nature to succeed.
I had explained to Odling, “They were not sure they could do it. I was. And it worked, we were first, and, the reward was we did not have to stay another day for extra training as the other teams from other forces did. I wanted to get home. To my family. For Christmas.”
Creel’s voice is quietly decisive from behind, “We understand DCI Cade. Admirable to be sure. But you accept, you were alone for thirty-six hours, including the twenty-four-hour time period - from eight p.m. Wednesday, the evening when your wife and daughter were last seen to late Thursday evening when your Bess and Grace were discovered missing by the night shift PCs keeping an eye on them for you?”
I wanted to look around at him, but forced myself not to. I know I hesitated even as I explained I was hiding out and moving rapidly through the forests, hills and streams to lay a false trail for those thirty-six hours. I had always known this topic was going to come sometime, but still am wrong footed. The only surprise was that it had taken them three months to home in on this window when I was alone. My squad must have proved tenacious in leading them away from this major point of my opportunity.
Creel’s low voice had moved to falsetto in his excitement, “So how would you account for your car being caught on several CCTV cameras, making the journey in the dark from Wales to Ancaster early on the Wednesday night and returning very early on the Friday morning?”
Even now almost seven years later I smell Odling’s sweat at his excitement, Creel’s sickening deodorant, the sheer drabness of The Box.
I had replied, weakly, that it was either not my car or I was not driving it if it was. They must be simply making this up.
The car was still there in the car park space in Wales on the Friday? The night I had driven back home in it? It was, I did. Why would someone take my car and then bring it back? Who knows.
Creel sighs and asks sympathetically, his voice still coming from out of my vision as Odling stares contemptuously at me “I am sorry to have to ask you this, ehm Caleb, but your marriage? You understand. I have to ask.”
I had said nothing, my mind thrumming even as my face was glacial. I did understand. I also recognised that this was perhaps the first time he had ever called me by my Christian name, a sure sign in interviews that the coup de grace is coming, that a confession would be best all round. I also saw their theory: that I had a thirty-six-hour window to return home from Wales and harm my family, that I used my own car, that Bess was leaving me to live elsewhere and that our relationship had turned stormy.
I was about to pick those points apart with facts against them when Odling interjected loudly, dramatically thumping the table, “And at least one witness says he saw you driving into your village as he went to work around one on the Thursday morning which fits with all the CCTV footage.”
Though I cannot see him, I hear Creel start forward quickly with a sharp intake of nervous energy, and I know this last at least is a lie.
Odling snorts loudly when I dismiss him with a flick of my hand. Creel quietly leaves the room, too important to be involved in the intimidating shenanigans that they have clearly planned. Odling stands quickly, knocking his chair over in the process, all energy and threat as he moves around the table and leans over me. Marshall and Smith enter the room at the noise. It is a crude pre-arranged signal.
Odling’s face is close to mine, stinking of cigarettes and beer presumably from a quick dinner at the local pub, as he hisses, “You think you are so fucking superior, DCI when it should have been me, Cambridge graduate, Doctor wife, looking down on the rest of us.”
Oddly I almost laugh at such tedious play acting and histrionics.
A toxic hiss, “Killed your slag wife.
“Playing away, daring to dump the great man, has she? Set off the violence everyone knows is in you.”
Then suddenly sad, “And your beautiful innocent little baby got caught in the melee.”
***
I had been doing so well. Replying quietly, resolved to respect their genuine belief in my guilt and their efforts to find the truth even if misguided, perhaps even enjoying their performance in some ways.
This day was all a set-up leading to this instigation for me to react violently and give them cause to manhandle me as they dragged me to a cell. They had no real evidence, but wanted to provoke, perhaps so they could restrain me, even do real hurt in the process. Three big men who all hated me for different reasons and no one to say ‘Nay’ to what they might do. It was perfect for them.
They knew I was tense, taut, over the loss of my family, the lack of progress by the investigation. Too shallow, too used to stomping all over the debris of people’s lives, they could not see grief twisted beyond endurance by simply not knowing. My wife and daughter were missing, perhaps gone forever and they were playing stupid games over their silly grievances.
My succubus, the demon for direct and violent action that lays coiled within most of us, fully erupted for the first time. Ever. I did not even realize it existed until then. But in a lightning bolt haze of red and black colours flashing in my eyes when he said ‘slag’ and ‘innocent,’ the noise of battle in my ears and ice cold thinking in my brain and actions, it announced its feral presence.
Rising slightly to a crouch I hit Odling with the sweetest of right uppercuts, which swept up from beneath the table in a short upwards movement, felling him in a moment as my bunched fist hit his chin, glazing his eyes as his body collapsed on the dirty floor.
My hand ached but my mind was clear. I took Odling out, purely because he was the nearest. Fighting morons is harder so I would have much preferred Smith and Marshall first. You have no idea what idiots are going to do. Odling, perhaps a six out of ten in conflict cunning, would have a plan to execute. Fighting fools is harder than taking on clever ones like him.
I need not have worried. Smith came lumbering towards me, his short baton already out and raised high. I side stepped him and my right fist buried itself up to my wrist in his shirt and his left kidney to double him over, before an almost instantaneous blow from my left behind his ear saw him slump down too.
Marshall, to his credit, tried to restrain rather than hurt by using a bear hug as he came upon me from the back. To no effect. I used his forward momentum to smash upwards with my left elbow into his throat, spin his heavy bulk around and deliver ‘a Candy Cane.’ The corkscrew effect of the famous Sugar Ray Robinson punch, right-handed to the body, slightly turning over and pushing downward, took the big man hard against the wall. I could, should have left him then but a short punch to the face as he bounced back meant he too was senseless, blood pouring out of his broken nose.
I was not even breathing deeply though both my fists were in agony. Inflamed I moved to pick each man up in turn and inflict further pain, oblivious to what I was doing, knowing they would have turned the room’s cameras and recording equipment off. Hauling Odling’s unconscious body partly up I was about to batter his head against the metal table bolted down to the floor, even as waves of sick self-disgust broke over me.
Violence on paper does not, cannot contain the smell, feel, sound, almost taste of blood, snot, teeth as fists twang against head and flesh. The broken nose meant a stream of blood spurting up, out, everywhere like water from a suddenly snapped water pipe.
My demons receded as rapidly as they had come. I returned to cold normality, locking ‘The Box’ from the outside, leaving the key in the door. I saw Creel prance through the far steel barred gate at the end of the corridor and leave it open. He had been listening outside, but in his zeal to escape neglected to do the obvious. I pressed the Alarm but
ton on the wall myself, mouthing to the camera high above in the corridor that I was going into a cell two doors away and opened my hands to show I was not any further danger to anyone. I went in, curled up on the thin mattress, heard alarms ringing, running feet, shouts that ‘The DCI has gone mad.’
My Bess would be ashamed of me. I was horrified then in that cell, and ever since. Yet as the years went by without progress to salve my loss, with people thinking me guilty and making that plain to my face, possible further eruptions are barely contained, I know. I reason that such moments of pure rage are understandable, perhaps even legitimate. The failure to investigate any other explanation, bar my evil, means as a family we have been so badly wronged that the righteousness of our cause flows into my veins and makes all I do right. Or so I reason.
Then I had not slept properly for even one night in months. In that cell, I was adrift within moments, the violence giving me some peace at last. The lights flashing in the corridor mixed to black in my head, the thundering alarm was muted, the feet pounding down the steps and along the corridors all faded away for me even as pandemonium reigned in the whole building I learnt later. For one night only, I did not even dream my dream or nightmare.
I half woke up, who knows when but hours later, at the woman’s gentle words from the door, ‘Another fine mess you have got yourself into Caleb?’ before I curled up again and longed to never wake again.
14
Hostile eyes threaten. I feel them traversing me like an artillery target as the sky glowers darkly and sleet falls angrily peppering my windscreen.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 8
