Brond

by Frederic Lindsay

  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?’

  F
rom 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?’

  ‘Our friend here had a broken foot,’ Brond said reasonably. ‘The stick supports him.’

  Both the sergeant and his officer gaped at me. I was beyond surprise at anything anyone said or did.

  ‘Foot? Foot!’ the officer squealed. ‘Get up! Up!’

  I got to my feet and almost keeled over. I had been kept in that seat since the questioning started.

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Quite,’ Brond said. He sounded complacent.

  ‘But this is—’ He mastered his temper with an effort. ‘Not the world’s strongest man. And just to round it off he’s a bloody cripple. Why did no one say he was crippled?’

  ‘I’m not a cripple,’ I said. My tongue felt as if it had rusted. ‘I hurt my toes moving furniture.’

  The officer jerked his clenched fist. He looked as though he wanted to strike me, the sergeant, somebody – anybody perhaps but Brond.

  ‘A monkey on a bloody stick!’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ the sergeant said, ‘doesn’t mean he isn’t an accessory.’

  ‘Charge him!’

  ‘Surely not,’ Brond said. ‘I’d leave the hotel side of things – for the moment.’

  ‘I take it that’s not meant to be anything more than advice,’ the officer said. I think despite himself, it came out sounding like a question.

  ‘I leave the details to you,’ Brond said sweetly. He began to laugh, ‘Take care of the ponce and the pounds will take care of themselves, eh, sergeant?’

  They didn’t think that was funny. The officer said so. ‘Not funny. You know what happened at the hotel is all anybody is going to care about. But we don’t forget that the boy Kilpatrick’s father and his uncles – damn it, the whole family were policemen. The father John Kilpatrick was a well-respected man on this force. We don’t like it happening to one of our own.’

  ‘I disapprove of murder,’ Brond said, ‘as a general principle. That overrides its particular applications. If you feel so strongly about Kilpatrick, bring a charge. I still doubt if the other matter is ripe . . . Stick to Kilpatrick. It’s not certain anyway that the other business will have much to do with you by morning . . . You stick to Kilpatrick – if the two are connected it might give you a toehold in the big one. Keep the London boys from pushing you completely out of it.’

  The sergeant looked from me to Brond. Clearly this was not his idea of a conversation in front of a suspect . . . from the way his eyes flickered down to avoid his superior officer, I guessed he did not feel hearing this would do him much good. Muddled and frightened, I had the wild idea Brond was trying to give me some clue as to what was going on, but all I could think of was Kilpatrick: that he had been a policeman and that he was dead.

  Not long afterwards they took me out of the room where I had been questioned. Brond went away somewhere and left me. While the men spoke around me, I could only see that there was a wash of grey light across each pebble of frosted glass in a window. The night was over.

  They charged me with the murder of Peter Kilpatrick, and then they put me in a cell where there was a bed and allowed me at last to sleep.

  THIRTEEN

  I had only been a prisoner for a day and some part of this day, and yet as they hustled me out to the car my heart hurt me with the relief of being under the sky again; and as we were driven through the streets I could not have enough of looking at the women on the pavements. How could I come to harm when the city was full of mothers buying food and bargaining?

  We were held up at the lights outside a jeweller’s. Above the door I saw the words Mappin and Webb and we edged forward and there were three clocks arranged in a window. As I watched, their hands shaped eleven o’clock in unison and in my silence I imagined their chimes.

  I was wide awake; everything was sharp-edged and clear; I was beyond exhaustion. They had shaken and lifted me out of sleep. It was like the times after parties this winter when I had wakened in the morning still drunk. I thought my mind was clear. At intervals I considered that I had been charged with murder. It was a true event which referred to someone else. Under all that pretence, a silent mouth inside me screamed.

  The dark man’s stomach rumbled.

  ‘So much for sandwiches on the plane,’ he said pleasantly, as much it seemed to me as anyone.

  The fair-headed one on my other side grunted agreement. On the next corner, he eased himself up and farted.

  ‘Sandwiches,’ the dark one said and they laughed.

  They were both Cockneys. The Noel Coward song kept jingling in my head, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner . . . Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner . . .’

  ‘What a bloody dump!’ the dark one said.

  ‘The arsehole of Europe,’ the fair one said.

  They both laughed again. They were like a cross-talk act.

  The dark one nudged me.

  ‘That bother you, Jock?’

  ‘I don’t come from Glasgow,’ I said. He seemed to think I was a member of the Tourist Board.

  ‘Funny that,’ the fair one took it up. ‘You not getting angry. I’d have thought that would have made you angry. Believing what you believe.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Easier to shoot your mouth off in a pub?’ the dark one said. ‘With your mates. In pubs like. Not so easy here. Tell me! I’m listening.’

  I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Fucking berk!’ the fair one said.

  I wondered what the driver thought of the conversation. Yes, sir, I’d heard him say when we came out. He had a Glasgow voice.

  Fortunately the journey ended quickly. We got out and I felt sick at the sight of the hotel I had been questioned about the previous night. They put a hand each on my arms, just above the elbow. They didn’t grip hard but it was extraordinarily unpleasant.

  Inside, I saw the manager who had spared a quick word to me and the other temporaries at Christmas. The doorman too I recognised, and one of the porters. It felt as if everyone was staring at me, but I doubt if any of the guests realised what was going on.

  One of the hotel staff led us along a corridor.

  ‘We’ll manage from here,’ the dark one said to him.

  ‘Do you know how to find your way upstairs? There’s a back way.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll come back to the desk. You can take us.’

  ‘I could wait. The hotel would prefer as much discretion as possible.’

  They looked at him silently.

  ‘Well,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘I’ll be at the desk.’

  When he’d gone, one said, ‘Discretion – make you bloody sick,’ and the other agreed, ‘Much they care.’

  ‘Show us the door.’

  ‘What door?’

  ‘Games. They said you were a comedian.’

  The hand on each bicep urged me forward. Before the end of the corridor, we stopped beside a door. It had the look of painted metal like a fire door.

  ‘Push it.’

  ‘Give it a push,’ the other one repeated.

  I shoved and it swung open. There was a narrow area ten feet or so square. The windows facing us had ventilators set in at the top. You could not see through them but one had been pulled down and there was a clatter of kitchen noises and a man’s voice mauling a pop song. I had washed dishes somewhere behind those windows.

  ‘Lock’s been broken.’

  The dark one was doing all the talking now. He pulled me round by the arm.

  ‘Take a look.’

  There was a metal bar that must have been intended to slot into the wall.

  ‘It’s been forced,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right.’ He sounded like a master whose dimmest pupil had just managed an answer. ‘You know anybody who could do that?’

  ‘I don’t underst
and.’

  ‘People come along here all the time,’ he said. ‘Somebody would notice if you messed up the wall. Whoever did this did it so there was no mess. And he must have done it fast. Fast as a bleeding gorilla. You know anybody like that?’

  ‘Jock here could do it,’ the fair one said, finding his voice again. ‘Feel your muscle?’

  And he put his hand back on my arm and rubbed the bicep.

  ‘Ooh, ooh,’ he did a parody of camp appreciation.

  ‘Cut it out!’ I said pulling away.

  ‘Watch it! We’ll turn you over for attempted escape.’

  ‘Might hit us with his stick.’

  ‘What’s he bleeding got it for anyway? Ridiculous. Desperate character and they leave him with a weapon.’

  He took the stick out of my hand and weighed it reflectively.

  ‘It ain’t heavy, but it don’t mean you couldn’t manage a bit of GBH. He could poke you in the balls with it, Wally.’

  ‘I need it to walk. That’s why they left it. I’ve hurt my foot.’

  ‘No!’ he said in sympathetic disbelief.

  He moved too quickly and anyway his grinning face gave me no warning. Before I could react, he stepped on the injured foot. The pain was so bad and unexpected that I blacked out.

  It could only have been for a second. I was leaning against the wall – the fair one had stopped grinning. He held out the stick. I took it.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

  And he grinned.

  ‘Outside,’ the dark one said and moved me out into the area. When I looked up, the sky was blue and far away at the top of the funnel.

  ‘We’re interested in the window four floors up. Don’t need to tell you, though, do we?’

  ‘Why not? I don’t—’

  I broke off. What was the use?

  ‘You don’t . . .? Nobody ever teach you it’s manners to finish a sentence?’

  ‘I think I should have a lawyer.’

  The laugh they gave sounded genuinely amused.

  ‘Bit late for that, my old son,’ one said. And the other, ‘You’ve been watching those late-night movies. But this isn’t fucking America, it’s England.’

  ‘Like fuck it is,’ I said.