A teacup.
Bradshaw was mightily relieved they hadn’t opened up on him. That would have taken some explaining.
The man was petrified, rambling, ‘What are you doing? What’s going on? I haven’t done anything!’
Bradshaw walked right up to him as another officer pulled the man’s hands behind his back and cuffed his wrists.
‘Charlie Hamilton?’ asked Bradshaw.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you got a cellar?’ he asked. The man looked at him as if Bradshaw had lost his mind. The detective repeated his question slowly and clearly: ‘Have … you … got … a … cellar?’
‘Yes,’ the man managed.
‘Where’s the entrance?’
There was nothing in the cellar, just a meter cupboard, a lot of cobwebs and an ancient lawnmower rusting in a corner. There was barely room for anything else. If this man had been abducting women, he must be keeping them somewhere else. They searched the rest of the house and found nothing.
When Bradshaw returned to the man he seemed to have regained a little composure and was trying to sound indignant, though he still looked scared and guilty. ‘This is out of order,’ he told the detective. ‘It was only a bloody pamphlet.’
Bradshaw ignored this, read the man his rights and the other officers bundled him into a car and took him to the station.
Bradshaw briefed Tom and Helen on the way back there.
‘Nothing incriminating, then?’ asked Helen.
‘The place is a mess, but apart from that …’
‘Sign of a guilty man,’ quipped Tom.
‘When did you last use a Hoover?’ Helen asked him.
He considered this. ‘I think it was 1992.’
Eva had lost hope. Just when she thought she might be about to break free from the prison he had made for her inside the crate, he had placed her in another one. This time, she was far below ground, behind a solid metal door that could not be opened from the inside. He had left her there with nothing but her own mind for company, her own thoughts to torment her, and she still had no explanation as to why she was here.
He continued to bring food on a little tray and water but he barely spoke to Eva. Had he worked out what she had intended to do with the air vent? Did he realize she was planning to escape? It seemed likely. Were the silences another form of punishment, designed to slowly drive her mad? If they were, then it seemed they would succeed, for Eva had started to believe she might be going crazy.
The markings didn’t help. They were on the pipes that ran across the room just below the ceiling, and there was another one on the door.
MOD.
That was Ministry of Defence, wasn’t it? Could this place be owned by the government? Was Eva part of some terrible secret experiment they were conducting on their own people, to see how much they could take before they could endure no more? No wonder she hadn’t been rescued. Her thoughts grew more paranoid, drifting between the notion that she might be part of an enormous government conspiracy and the idea that she had been imprisoned by some solitary madman. None of it made any sense, but she knew that, somehow, she had to keep on trying to get out.
Eva had explored every inch of her new prison and found no structural weakness to exploit. The solid brick walls were thick and there was no window. There was an air vent but it was high up on the wall and the gap behind it tiny compared to the one in the crate. There was no way she could crawl through that, even if she could remove the cover, which was impossible without a tool of some kind, and she lacked one here, since the bed had no clasp and there was nothing else she could use.
Eva tried not to panic but every time she considered her situation, two things became clear: she could not escape and no one was coming to save her.
Kane was pacing his office restlessly. ‘Tell me about this man,’ he demanded of Bradshaw.
‘Charlie Hamilton is a forty-one-year-old council employee working at Green Lane, processing admin. His car has the registration number the victim gave me but –’
Kane interrupted impatiently. ‘Christ, there’s always a “but”. What is it?’
‘His car isn’t silver like she said. It’s more of a light metallic blue.’
‘Well,’ said Kane, ‘in that underpass, with not much lighting, maybe it looked silver.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Bradshaw. ‘There’s no plastic screen in it either.’
‘So he took it out,’ said Kane, by way of explanation, ‘when he knew the woman would put us on to him.’ Then he asked, ‘Has he got a wife?’
‘He’s never been married and currently lives alone.’
‘A woman-hater?’ asked Kane, almost hopefully, as if Bradshaw could possibly know this purely from the man’s marital status.
‘There’s no record of any violence towards women. However, he has been arrested on a number of occasions.’
‘Has he now?’ Kane seemed to brighten at that. ‘What for?’
‘Obstruction, mostly, and one instance of assaulting a police officer.’
‘Obstruction?’ Kane was puzzled by this. ‘But Assault ‒ so he’s violent?’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Bradshaw.
‘What do you mean?’ snapped Kane. ‘He assaulted a fellow officer. Normal people don’t do that.’
‘It happened at a demo,’ Bradshaw explained. ‘Some anti-capitalism thing outside a meeting of world leaders up in Scotland. He was on the front line, seemingly, it got a bit heated and he was bundled away. It has happened to him before but, on this occasion, he was charged with assaulting the arresting officer. However, the CPS didn’t prosecute him in the end, due to insufficient evidence.’
‘What’s your point, Bradshaw?’
‘Reading between the lines, it looks like the officer who hauled him out of the demo decided to throw the book at him and might not have had good reason.’
‘You think he fabricated it? Go on, say what you mean. You should be a bloody social worker, not a police officer.’
‘I’m not saying that at all. I’m just thinking that a struggle between a PC and a demonstrator at an anti-capitalism rally proves nothing about this man. He just doesn’t believe in the world order.’
‘And wants to bring it down,’ argued Kane. ‘Violently, if necessary. A man like that could very well be capable of abducting a woman for his own pleasure. Now, go in there, Bradshaw, and get him to admit it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
They stuck Charlie Hamilton in an interview room on his own and left him there for a while to make him sweat. Tom and Helen had no involvement in his questioning. This was police business.
‘Thank you for agreeing to speak to me,’ Bradshaw told him at the beginning of their interview, ‘without legal representation.’
‘I don’t believe in lawyers,’ sneered Hamilton.
‘For the record, I would like you to confirm you are refusing legal representation.’
‘I don’t need a lawyer. I haven’t done anything. This whole thing is entirely political.’
‘Do you know why you are here, Mr Hamilton?’
‘I have a pretty good idea.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Care to enlighten me?’
‘Police harassment.’ He folded his arms in an aggressive, almost triumphant gesture.
‘Police harassment? You’re serious?’
‘Perfectly. What other reason could there be? I’m a thorn in your side and you will never allow me to carry on with my work.’
‘And what work is that? I thought you had a job at County Hall. You work as an administrator, is that right?’
‘That’s my day job.’ He was defensive. ‘I’ve got to eat, but it’s not exactly my calling.’
‘And what is your calling?’
‘I’m an anarchist.’
Bradshaw frowned. ‘An anarchist … who works for the council.’
‘I have to pay my rent, otherwis
e I’d be homeless, wouldn’t I? But all my spare time is devoted to subverting the state.’
‘Hence your reference to the pamphlets.’
‘Which is why I’m here.’
‘I’ve not seen any pamphlets and we didn’t find any when we searched your home.’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’ The man spoke as if he was still a teenager. He looked like the kind of politics lecturer who routinely calls the police fascists in front of their students to make themselves sound trendy. ‘I’ve handed them all out. They’re gone. They’re not much use if I keep them in my home, are they?’
‘Some would argue they’re not much use once you’ve handed them out. Where do you do that, exactly, so we can find out if you are telling the truth?’
‘Lots of places ‒ political rallies, outside the football ground in Newcastle, at Grey’s Monument.’
Bradshaw had witnessed numerous men with megaphones shouting at passing shoppers beneath Grey’s Monument in the centre of Newcastle. It was ironic that the enormous statue of one of Britain’s former prime ministers seemed to attract anti-democratic extremists from both left and right, as well as God-botherers, rainbow warriors and the occasional anarchist like Charlie Hamilton, all of them wasting their breath as shoppers and football fans swiftly walked by without breaking stride, barely sparing them a glance.
‘Right,’ said Bradshaw, ‘and how do your employers feel about the being-an-anarchist thing?’
‘They don’t seem to mind.’
‘Really. How tolerant of them. You want to bring down the state while working for it. Is that it? You’re the enemy within?’
Hamilton scowled at Bradshaw, ‘It’s a crumbling edifice anyway. I’m just giving it a little push.’
Bradshaw could have argued longer with Hamilton about his political views and the effectiveness of a few pamphlets, but it would have been a waste of time, ‘Okay, so now we know how you regard the state, but how do you feel about women?’
‘Women?’ he asked, as if he had never heard of them.
‘Women, yes ‒ you know, females, the opposite sex.’
‘I don’t feel anything for them. I mean, nothing unusual. What do you mean?’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
He folded his arms defensively ‘You mean, am I a homosexual?’
‘No,’ said Bradshaw, ‘I mean, do you have a girlfriend?’
‘Not currently, no.’
‘Why not?’
‘Is that any of your business?’
‘Perhaps not,’ admitted Bradshaw, ‘but I’m trying to find out a little more about you, Mr Hamilton, because a serious allegation has been made against you, and it has nothing to do with a few pamphlets.’
‘Oh, here we go,’ snorted Hamilton, and to Bradshaw’s surprise the man added: ‘What’s she been saying?’
Bradshaw looked at Hamilton’s scornful face and decided it was time to get to the point. ‘That you tried to force her ‒’ Bradshaw was going to add the words to come with you but before he could do this Hamilton interrupted him sharply.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. That is ludicrous. That is not what happened. It’s not what happened at all.’ He was jabbing his finger at Bradshaw now, but he looked rattled.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened, then? Let’s hear your side of it.’
He seemed reluctant to continue. ‘I knew this would happen.’ He was staring at the table in front of him, then he looked up and caught Bradshaw’s eye. ‘I don’t wish to sound intolerant of people with mental health problems,’ he informed Bradshaw, before adding: ‘But she is bloody crazy.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘Look, we were both drunk … way too drunk. She came back to my house and things got a bit out of hand. I thought she wanted to …’ He was struggling to find the words.
‘Have sex with you?’ offered Bradshaw when the pause seemed never-ending.
‘Yes,’ agreed Hamilton, and Bradshaw realized he was describing an entirely different incident, one which he now assumed had been reported to the police. Bradshaw could have stopped him at that point and got him back on track but he wanted to learn more about Hamilton and just why the man thought the police might be interested in his treatment of another girl. ‘And she did sleep with me, in a literal sense. We shared a bed and I thought that meant that she was, you know, up for it.’
‘But it turned out she wasn’t?
‘Sort of, well, it’s not always easy if you don’t get a yes or a no.’
‘It is easy,’ said Bradshaw. ‘If you don’t get a yes, you can assume it’s a no.’ He regarded Hamilton closely. ‘So what happened? You raped this poor girl?’
‘God, no! No, I never did.’
‘Then what did you do? It must have been something for you to assume she’d reported you to us when I never even described the incident.’
‘I only … I just touched her … that’s all.’
‘You touched her?’
‘That’s all, I swear.’
‘You touched her while she was asleep.’
‘I’m not sure she was really asleep.’
‘But you certainly weren’t sure she was awake,’ said Bradshaw, ‘and you sexually assaulted her?’
‘Is that what she’s saying? It wasn’t like that!’
‘What was it like? Did she wake up at that point? Was she distraught? Did she threaten to report you?’
‘What has she been saying?’ He shook his head violently from side to side. ‘I’m not saying anything more. I want a solicitor.’
‘Do you? I thought you didn’t believe in lawyers. What’s the name of this girl?’
He opened his mouth to answer then stopped. ‘Well, you know her name, if she made a complaint about me.’
‘I never said anyone made a complaint about you committing a sexual assault on a sleeping girl who was incapable of giving consent,’ said Bradshaw, and Hamilton looked sick as he realized his error, ‘but we will of course be investigating that. So, tell me her name.’
‘I’m saying nothing. It didn’t happen, not like that. You’re making it up to confuse me. I’m admitting nothing.’ Bradshaw watched him for a while and allowed the silence to oppress the younger man, who began to look more and more uncomfortable until finally he managed to say, ‘Why did you bring me in here, then? If it wasn’t that?’
Bradshaw told him.
‘That wasn’t me!’ Hamilton was wild-eyed. ‘How could you think that was me?’
‘You’re an anarchist,’ Bradshaw reminded him. ‘You hate the police and don’t believe in the rule of law. Why would I assume you believe that any of the rules apply to you? Why is it such a stretch to imagine you just decided to take what you wanted, even if what you wanted didn’t want you?’
‘It’s not … that’s not what being an anarchist means. I want everyone to live in peace. It doesn’t mean grabbing people off the street.’
‘And yet you previously committed a sexual assault,’ Bradshaw reminded him.
‘I did not.’
‘Your own words on the tape.’ Bradshaw nodded at the recording device that was whirring away quietly in the background.
Hamilton panicked then. ‘I said I touched her, not that I assaulted her, and I never said where I touched her. I didn’t even give you a name.’
‘I’m sure she’ll come forward when she learns you are suspected of abducting another woman.’
‘What other woman? Who?’
‘The woman who fell out of a moving car and clocked your reg plate before you sped away. We found your car in a side street, by the way. We’ll get Forensics to look at it, so you might want to think very carefully before you answer my next question. Did you pick up a woman in your car last night in an underpass in Newcastle? Because if you say you didn’t and we find traces of her ‒ prints, fibres, DNA ‒ then you’ll have a very big problem on your hands. If you did pick her up and there was a row or something and she fell out, then perhaps you can admit that and we�
�ll take it from there.’
‘An underpass! What the fuck would I be doing in an underpass? When was this, exactly?’
‘I told you ‒ last night. Around eleven fifteen.’
‘I was round at my mate’s house then.’ And he gave Bradshaw a name and address.
‘Really? That’s handy. You’ve got a mate who can give you an alibi, have you?’
‘Yes! Well, no.’
‘Which is it?’
‘I went round to see him but he’d fallen asleep on the sofa with his music on and he didn’t let me in.’
‘High, was he?’
‘Just tired.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I knocked a few times but when he didn’t open up I got back in my car and went home.’
‘One of your anarchist mates, was it? Someone else who hates the police and the state? I’m sure they’ll believe you both in court when you come up with that story.’
Hamilton looked really scared then. ‘I want a lawyer,’ he demanded.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It took a couple of hours to equip Hamilton with a solicitor, before they could reconvene. Bradshaw decided to use that time to check out Hamilton’s alibi, weak as it was. He drove down to the street in question and knocked on some doors, got what he needed then came back to HQ to examine the evidence before Hamilton’s solicitor arrived.
When Bradshaw returned to the interview room he virtually ignored the solicitor. He was holding one of Charlie Hamilton’s pamphlets. ‘We found this in the boot of your car.’ It had an image of a CCTV camera on it with the face of Big Brother, from the film version of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, looking on approvingly.
‘I’m saying nowt more,’ Hamilton told him.
‘Fine,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Not a big fan of modern technology, are you, Mr Hamilton?’
‘Eh?’
‘Big Brother is watching you, and all that.’
‘Closed-circuit television, you mean? No, I’m not.’ He seemed to have forgotten his claim that he wouldn’t say anything more.
‘And why is that?’
‘It’s against ancient civil liberties to be spied on by the state. A man should be able to walk freely around his town without those bloody cameras pointing at him and noting his every move.’
The Chosen Ones Page 15
