Brond

by Frederic Lindsay

  They looked at me as if I had given them a present.

  ‘England starts a hundred miles south of here,’ I said lamely.

  ‘You’re a bit of a fanatic, aren’t you?’ the dark one said.

  ‘Because I don’t think this is England? That’s not fanaticism, it’s geography.’

  ‘He’s full of chat, isn’t he?’ the fair one said.

  ‘Full of piss.’

  The singer in the kitchen beyond the lowered window had his repertory of pop songs interrupted. Something had gone wrong and an immediate uproar of angry voices flared until it subsided under the dominance of a single spate of heavily accented cursing.

  ‘Another piss artist,’ the fair one said. ‘Bleeding wogs.’

  I wanted to smash them down. That night in the Union when I had bumped the elbow of the guy who turned out to be a medical student. Sorry, I’d said. Some of the beer splashed on his trousers. Just spots. It was nothing. Beer from his glass poured down the front of my jacket. I remembered that and his fat fee-paying-school face mouthing at me, but I didn’t remember hitting him. Although his jaw had been broken, they had smoothed things over. No penalty: mostly because I had been ill that night. Nobody knew how much it frightened me that I couldn’t remember.

  The Homicidal Pacifist, Donald Baxter had named me after that.

  ‘You’re wasting time with me,’ I said. ‘Can’t you get that through your head? I’m not stupid – I don’t know anything about – this.’ I jerked my arm free and pointed to the windows above us. ‘Somebody broke in from the corridor – somebody climbed up there. I don’t know why anybody would want to do that. But I couldn’t. Do you understand that? I hate heights. I don’t know what happened up there. I don’t know why— why you should blame me.’

  They looked at me seriously. For a moment, I thought I had got through to them.

  ‘Like a handkerchief, flower?’ the fair one said.

  ‘You didn’t know who, did you? Not at Christmas,’ the dark one said. ‘Not when you were planning it. But somebody, sooner or later. Place like this, stood to reason, sooner or later there’d be somebody your lot wanted. Only as usual with amateurs you got caught.’

  ‘We can fit you up for this one. You’re in the shit.’ The fair one mouthed the word like a soft fruit. ‘We’re the only friends you’ve got left.’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ the dark one said in a kindly way. ‘He’s a bit rough, but he’s not wrong. Take the rest of your lot. Suppose they stay in the clear. Who’s left? It’s all down to you. They’ll put you inside and post the key to Robert the fucking Bruce. Since he’s dead – it’ll get lost. Your old mum’ll be dead before you get out.’

  ‘Your kid bloody sister’ll be dead.’

  ‘How did you—’

  I shut up again. It was stupid to show I was upset by anything they said. It was just that I hadn’t expected them to mention Jess, who was only eight years old.

  ‘We know everything worth knowing about you,’ the dark one said. ‘You’d be surprised how much we know about anybody – if he gets important enough.’

  ‘Important!’ the fair one spat between my feet. ‘Bloody amateur! His lips are sealed. He’s in a dream world. Honour among thieves.’

  ‘Not thieves,’ the dark one said. ‘Idealists. That’s the word, isn’t it, son? Idealists . . . Patriots.’

  I was like a ball they passed back and foward. We looked at one another. Their game was one I didn’t know. The rules changed. I lost.

  ‘Patriots.’

  Going up in the lift, the dark one said, not maliciously, but in a quiet way, like advice, ‘You don’t want to mind your head about geography, son. We’ll decide the geography. That’s our job.’

  ‘We’re geography teachers,’ the fair one said.

  In the suite on the fourth floor, there were two men I recognised. They had been two of the quiet faces, elderly watchful men who had not intervened in the questioning but had gathered glances during the hours of the night. I had known they were the ones who mattered.

  My Cockney cross-talk act gave them scant respect. The ‘sirs’ were perfunctory.

  ‘The bedroom? Through here would it be, sir?’

  I had no choice but to join the procession. It was a bedroom, but with a television and all the required bits and pieces to remind you the riffraff were kept outside. The food was good too – I had scraped enough of it off cold plates to remember that. The bed hadn’t been made.

  In luxury hotels beds don’t get left unmade – unless something has happened.

  Even then I didn’t realise. I thought of a robbery – or someone caught in bed with the King of Spain. The Cockneys carried that shade with them – of diplomats blackmailed, refugee scientists; people like them had been around since the Medes invented laws and a state to justify them.

  ‘His own detective heard nothing?’

  ‘No. He became suspicious, though, and it was he who found—’

  ‘Yes.’ The dark one interrupted him. ‘But since no one’s told chummy here anything about that he doesn’t know what was found. That’s right, isn’t it, son?’

  I hated him more than anyone I had ever met – except his fair partner.

  ‘You’re satisfied things were tight at your end?’

  ‘Of course,’ one of the older men said frowning. ‘We’re not unused to this kind of thing. Car park had been checked out – no access in case of any bomb nonsense. Surveillance – discreetly – in the corridors and the rooms gone over with a toothcomb before . . .’

  ‘Maybe you were too discreet,’ the dark one said.

  The man who had described the security arrangements went a strange purple colour. Before he could say anything, the other senior officer crossed to the window.

  ‘Who could have anticipated this?’ He twitched aside the curtain. ‘A quite exceptional affair. I still find it difficult to—’ His voice faded as he leaned out. He re-emerged looking persuasively startled. ‘And that door downstairs – incredible.’

  ‘Incredible like in fake?’ the dark man asked.

  ‘Fake? What fake?’ For a distinguished senior officer, he sounded inappropriately tentative.

  ‘You said “incredible.” I wondered if that’s what you meant . . . sir. Unbelievable – that’s what I wondered. If you don’t believe all that – the door downstairs, the window.’ He too went over and peered out. ‘It’s a hell of a climb, and then doing a window like this from outside . . . I can see anybody might wonder if it was a put up job.’

  The senior officer gave him a look that seemed to me full of dislike. I have unusually sharp hearing, not always a comfortable gift. I can eavesdrop on a conversation three tables away in a restaurant. People don’t realise. Now I could hear them as they murmured at the window.

  ‘Don’t like your attitude. The detectives immediately involved – as usual – weren’t our people. If you want to suggest an inside job, you’d better start looking nearer home.’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me, sir. I wasn’t suggesting—’

  ‘That’s all right then, isn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly. But you understand we’re here to get results—’

  ‘Well, what about this fellow? Do you prefer to have them standing around while you discuss possibilities? Is that how you people handle suspects? Or am I missing something – new technique, is it?’

  ‘Not a technique, no. We don’t need technique for this fellow. Seems to me he’s a dead duck.’

  I missed the rest of the conversation. I was thinking so hard about what he meant that I lost my sense of the place and sat down on the bed.

  ‘Get up out of that!’ the second of the local men screamed in rage.

  I fell off the bed – shot up like a cat that has had its tail pulled.

  ‘He’s a cool one,’ the dark man said. He and the older man came forward from the window. The four of them made a half circle hemming me in against the bed.

  ‘Cool? Cold-blooded. That really i
s cold-blooded.’

  ‘And bloody insolence,’ the other senior officer said.

  The Cockneys ignored this local repartee. They waited quietly, two solid men like matched bookends or a pair of duelling pistols. Even standing relaxed, they had their weight balanced. I didn’t fancy my chances of making a break for the door. Even if I had, there would have been no point. If they were secret police, I had no border I could cross to get away from them. There was nowhere for me to go.

  ‘You don’t mind sitting on a bed where someone’s died?’ the dark man said.

  I should have known that it was death that had brought us here. Accusing me of one murder without reason or sense, they could extend the list until I had more victims than Jack the Ripper.

  ‘Somebody’s died in most beds,’ I said.

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘Not this recently,’ his partner offered.

  ‘Last night recently.’

  ‘You know where I was last night. God, I have the best alibi in Glasgow. I was with these two for a start—’

  The two senior officers looked confused.

  The fair man frowned: ‘Not last bleeding night. Night before last. Same night you did the other one.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said.

  ‘We have two bodies,’ the dark man said reasonably. ‘One’s in a shed – under sacks?’ The older of the local men nodded. ‘And the other one’s, well, he’s under these soft sheets.’ He rubbed a sheet between thumb and fingers like a patter merchant on a stall at the Barrows. ‘He’s dead too.’

  ‘There must be plenty of people die in the city – every night of the year.’

  I didn’t know why I kept talking. Even in my own ears, I sounded like a criminal defending himself. A cold-blooded customer – and bloody insolent.

  ‘Well, now, that’s a point of view.’ The dark man was enjoying himself. ‘All those slums. No Mean City and that. Razor slashers chopping each other’s sporrans off. Dozens of murders every night, I expect.’

  The two older men still looked like officers; they even looked distinguished; it was just that they didn’t look powerful any more.

  ‘Only thing is you don’t get dozens of them tied up first.’

  Tied up? I had an image of Peter Kilpatrick with his legs and wrists bound. And the smear on his face I had wanted to wipe away.

  ‘Want to say something?’

  I shook my head – no. What was there to say?

  ‘Plenty of time to change your mind,’ the dark man said comfortably. ‘We were talking about coincidences. Two killed – that happens. Both tied up – could be. Tied up with the same cord – second one tied up with cord cut off the piece used on the first one. That’s no fucking coincidence, not any more.’

  ‘Who was killed?’ I looked at the bed. And then by an involuntary reaction tried to move away from it – but the fair-headed man was in the way. He crowded me against it.

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘He only works here. He only works it all out. He only plans it. Didn’t you care who got killed?’

  The dark man took over from him. He had such a gentle and reasonable manner, I had begun to prefer his partner.

  ‘Of course, he cared,’ he said. ‘Not much point in killing just anyone. That would be murder. That’s right, isn’t it? You wouldn’t call this murder. Of course not. Idealist. Don’t think I don’t understand. We make a study of it. Plenty of idealists about nowadays. Planting bombs. Blowing up schoolkids. Shooting down old ladies at airports. And this kind of thing,’ he nodded at the turbulent bed, ‘not murder. Assassination. Oh, you’ve got what you wanted. Every paper in the world this morning has what you’ve done in a fat headline. In London and Berlin and Rome – even in Rio de Janeiro, I expect. Wouldn’t surprise me if even the Chinks had it on their telly – how you murdered him. Pardon – telling how you assassinated him. They admire that kind of thing.’ He had talked himself into a controlled fury. ‘We don’t. You’re going to be surprised how much we don’t – especially where he was concerned. Put it this way – if some people, even some of your people up here, could get their hands on you they’d tear you apart piece by piece for what you did to him.’

  He stopped, breathing hard, the muscles in his thick neck swelling. ‘Lucky, isn’t it,’ he asked putting his face into mine, ‘that we’re in a bleeding civilised country?’

  ‘Like the cavalry,’ Brond said to me in the car. ‘I came over the hill for the second time.’

  And he had. At that moment, the cavalry image seemed exact to me – pennants and a brave show of horsemen to the rescue. My Cockney Indians had frightened me more than any of the tough cops who had surrounded me during the night. I said that to Brond.

  ‘Their technique would have been different.’ His plump cheeks crinkled in a smile.

  ‘The tall man with grey hair, he asked them if it was a new technique to have me standing there while they argued. Is that what you mean – some psychological technique?’

  Brond laughed. I thought it was the only genuinely amused sound I had heard him make.

  ‘They’d have beaten it out of you. Either here or at the house in Chelmsford. What was going on last night would have seemed a waste of time to them.’

  I felt sick. There was no question of not believing him. Everything he said carried authority.

  ‘But why did they let me go? Was there new evidence? Has someone confessed?’

  Brond looked at me carefully.

  ‘ “Let go.” I don’t think we could say that, not exactly “let go”.’ I watched Primo’s hands turn the wheel. The sun had gone behind a cloud.

  ‘Are you going to take me back to them?’

  ‘I hope not. Think of yourself as being in my custody. Not let go, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Are you a policeman?’

  ‘We seem to have arrived,’ Brond said.

  I hadn’t recognised the streets, although I should have. We were at Margaret Briody’s house.

  Primo got out of the car and came with us which surprised me. I couldn’t think of him as being any kind of policeman. He hadn’t been with Brond at police headquarters or even later at the hotel, although when we came out he had been sitting in the car waiting for us. Maybe it was because the first time I had seen him he had been a workman. I remembered the removal man Davie with his snot-yellow grin and the thud of Primo’s blows beating into his flesh. Perhaps no one was what he seemed. (Except Andy surely – how else would he have got the knack?) Now Primo stood a step or two behind us in a grey suit which was an imitation of Brond’s, only since it was less expensive the cheaper cut made the brute width of his shoulders seem disproportionate, like a parody.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the woman who opened the door asked.

  As soon as I heard the Irish lilt, I knew she must be Margaret’s aunt who had to be kept in ignorance of the facts of life. If it had not been for her, we would not have spent the night at the yard or been there in the morning when Brond came to search the place. I might have been lying now on my bed thinking idle thoughts of Jackie as the sun idled lasciviously down the stag’s horns in the picture on the wall.

  ‘Margaret’s not here,’ she said when Brond asked. ‘But she’ll be back soon, God willing. Is it something to do with the University?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Brond said soothingly.

  He exerted on her the charm of authority.

  ‘Would you want to wait?’

  We sat in the living room where Muldoon had bluffed me such a long time ago. When she called, the uncle came through drying his hands on a towel.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘I’m Liam Briody. And you’re from the University?’

  But, even as he was speaking, those quick eyes had run over us. Considering us, he wiped the towel over his knuckles slowly.

  ‘Would you leave us for a bit,’ he asked his wife, ‘while I have a word?’

  She looked flustered but got up. At the door, she aske
d, ‘Would you be wanting some tea?’

  Before we could answer, Briody told her, ‘No. We’ll have our chat first.’

  He waited until the door had closed and then, in a different tone, wondered aloud, ‘The University? Is that what you told my wife?’

  It seemed to me Brond deliberately waited to let him take the next step.

  ‘I know the young fellow there. According to him, he’s a friend of Margaret’s. He’s here and then yesterday Margaret appears looking as if the world had stopped. Now three of you. What’s it about?’ He made a calculation then, like a light switching on as the notion took him. ‘Police! Is it police, you are?’

  Brond waited appreciatively.

  ‘Not ordinary police,’ Liam Briody said. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘We’re interested in Margaret,’ Brond said at last.

  ‘She’s done nothing wrong.’

  I admired that. The tone was very different from what I had taken to be his casual mocking attitude towards her.

  ‘I’m very willing to believe that,’ Brond said. ‘Although, of course, it’s not something that’s settled – not at this stage – not yet.’

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Briody said sturdily, but he was no kind of match for Brond, who pressed people into the shape he wished.

  ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with Michael Dart?’ Briody asked. Suddenly he looked like the old dealer in horses who came over from Cork to the market my father took me to as a boy; he would spit on his hand and shake with the man he was getting the better of to show the deal was made. He was a great one, that old man, for trading to and fro – giving to get, what you wanted for what he needed.

  That was how I heard the story of Kennedy, who Briody told us was in reality a Southern Irishman called Michael Dart.

  ‘His father had been a hard core man who’d taken the gun with De Valera against the Free State. But that was a long time earlier – and this was before the new troubles and the new deaths. Then, in the North they went quietly collecting their welfare benefits and unemployment money; while in the Republic most of us were too busy trying to live to worry about the Border. But Francis Dart, Michael’s father, would still be arguing and living the old battles. Michael took in the talk of dead heroes with his mother’s milk. I think he must often have been with the Hound of Culann sitting at the knees of Sencha and Cathbad instead of labouring in the mud of a poor farm. When he was fifteen it came to be known that he was one of four that had boobytrapped an RUC post on the far side of the border. They blinded a fellow of twenty or so – a man with a young family. Both the hands on him were blown off by the same bomb. Michael was marked from that time on, and it’s true that some of the foolish young men thought he was a hero . . . It must be hard to be a hero when you’re only fifteen.’