by Gerard Gray
“Yes. Father John Thomas.”
“Well then.”
“Father John Thomas doesn’t have a brother, sir.”
“What?”
“He’s an only child, sir.”
*
My whole world was beginning to crumble around me. I now knew why they hadn’t let me see my family, or call anyone for that matter. For the life of me I didn’t know how, but the police actually thought I had something to do with this. On realising this I asked again if I could speak to my wife. One of the other detectives told me that my family had been notified and that I would get to see them as soon as Detective Inspector Matthews was finished with her questioning.
My head was spinning. I didn’t know what was happening. Apparently the priest didn’t have a brother, and knew absolutely nothing about the book he had supposedly sent to me. On probing me further about this I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. How could he have sent me the book? When I’d bought it on eBay he had already been in custody for two days. Who sent the book to me then? I was getting more confused by the second.
“Look at my PC if you don’t believe me,” I said.
“Oh, we have done. All of the computers belonging to your household have been taken in for investigation. Even your PC at work.”
I must have turned the colour of slush. My God, I had surfed porn on those machines. I suppose it could have been described as hard core. Was watching women give men blowjobs hard core? Was it illegal? I didn’t know. Oh God, in the past I had even downloaded Japanese manga porn. Once I had downloaded something that turned out to be bordering on paedophilia – not so much Manga babes rather a Japanese pervert’s schoolgirl bondage fantasy. I had quickly deleted it, though, but it was probably still in its memory.
Oh dear God, I was going to go to gaol.
“I need to draw your attention to the renting of the farm, if you don’t mind.”
“What?”
“Could you please look at this receipt, sir?” The detective placed an A4 print out in front of me. “Do you recognise this internet site?”
I looked at it shaking my head. “No, I’ve never seen it before.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked at it again. “As I said, I’ve never seen it before.”
“Could I draw your attention, please, to the credit card details on the receipt?”
I stared incredulously at the name on the receipt. It was mine. I looked at the card details and I instantly recognised the first four digits as being my MasterCard number. “I don’t understand.”
“Sir, this is a receipt for the rental of Kesick Farm for the weekend of the 30th of October. The same farm that this weekend’s events took place in. Do you have any knowledge of filling out these details?”
“None whatsoever.”
“OK, sir. Could I ask you to look at this receipt?” The detective placed another receipt down in front of me. “Do you recognise this web page?”
This time I did. It was a receipt from ASDA’s online Internet site. I ran my eyes down the items on the list.
“Do you recognise these items, sir?”
“Yes, I do.” I could feel my life slowly draining away. This wasn’t happening. Something was wrong here.
“Did you place this order sir?”
“No, no I did not.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Did you not say you recognised the receipt?”
“God… Look, I’ve already told you about this. The priest’s brother…” I stopped in my tracks. He wasn’t the priest’s brother. I corrected my statement: “Steven had texted me to fetch his messages from ASDA just before attacking me in his home. I looked in the box before arriving at his flat, and that’s how I know these items. I had nothing to do with this. This is so unfair.”
“So you admit to picking these items up from ASDA?”
I was momentarily puzzled.
“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head.
“What don’t you understand, sir?”
“The vibrators.”
“Excuse me?”
“Where are the vibrators? I distinctly remember that I picked up vibrators.”
The officer looked at the list of items on the receipt. “From ASDA?”
“Yes. Two vibrators and a bondage ball. Neither of them is on this list.”
The room grew quiet. I looked up to see one of the male officers suppressing a smile.
“I don’t think ASDA sells vibrators, sir.” The lady detective said this slowly.
“My thoughts exactly!”
“OK.” The detective looked to be slightly thrown. “We’ll deal with the vibrators laters.”
One of the male officers sniggered at her accidental trip into poetry, but managed to disguise it by turning it into a cough. The female officer gave him a withering look.
“Could we return to the receipt before you, just for now? Did you pay for these items, sir?”
“No, I didn’t. He had already paid for them. I just had to pick them up.”
“You just had to pick up his messages? This man who you had only just met, asked you to pick up his messages from ASDA?”
“Look, I know it sounds ridiculous. I know I was stupid. Look at my phone if you don’t believe me. Look at the messages on my phone.”
“We have done, and we found no messages relating to this. The only messages found on your machine that day were four messages from Orange and 5 from your wife asking you where you were.”
“What?”
The detective placed the receipt in front of me.
“Can I once again ask you to look at the personal details linked to the ASDA receipt?”
“He must have deleted the messages,” I mumbled.
“Could you please look at the receipt, sir?”
I examined the receipt. My God, I almost passed out. Just like on the other receipt they were my details. This wasn’t happening.
“And this receipt. Could you please look at this one, too? It’s for the rental of a first floor flat, 12 Green Trees Avenue. Do you recognise this Internet site? Do you recognise the receipt?”
I examined the details once again. I placed the sheet of paper down onto the table and lowered my head. “I’ve never seen it before. I don’t know what’s happening here. I’m sorry but I’m very tired. I hope to God you don’t think I had anything to do with this.”
All of the officers were staring at me in silence, their faces set in stone.
“Sir, if you don’t recognise any of these receipts, then how did they come to be paid for with your credit card? Did you lose it sir and not report it?”
“I don’t know.” I clambered for my pocket in order to retrieve my wallet.
The inspector put me out my misery by placing a silver credit card, sealed in a see through packet, down before me.
“Is this your credit card, sir?”
I picked up the card and examined it through the plastic. It was mine. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“We took this from your wallet, sir. The wallet you handed over on entering the station this morning.”
“I don’t understand.” I was stunned, my mind utterly blank.
“All of the dates on the receipts are before this weekend, before you were actually taken hostage. Can you explain how this could have happened?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he could have taken it out of my wallet when I met him in the pub. Yes. I might have left my wallet on the table on going to the toilet. He could have taken it from me then, copied down the details and then placed it back in my wallet. He could even have taken it and placed it back in my wallet at a later date.”
I looked up to see an incredulous red head staring back at me. She didn’t believe a word I was saying.
“Sir, at this point in the interview I need to remind you that you have already been cautioned.”
“What? Cautioned? You mean read my rights?”
“Yes.”
“No, I haven’t been cautione
d. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“You haven’t been cautioned?” The detective turned to face the officer beside her. She didn’t look pleased. “Is this right?” The other officer handed her back a confused look. She shook her head in dismay.
“I am arresting you for the abduction and murder of Alan Graham and Steven Ramage. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence, if you fail to mention, when questioned, something that you may…”
The detective’s words disappeared into a fog. This was unbelievable. How the hell could this be happening? Were they all blind? I didn’t do this. Oh God, I didn’t do any of this. The tears started to run down my face. Why was no one listening to me? Would this nightmare ever end?
*
It was obvious to me now that the detective thought I was guilty of the murders. Call me stupid, but it wasn’t until this point in the interview that I realised what was happening here. I was being framed. As unbelievable as it appeared I was being stitched up. They didn’t even believe Steven Thomas had ever existed.
I suddenly raised my exhausted head from the table. I had remembered the girl. “What happened to the girl? Did she escape?” I already knew that she hadn’t.
“No,” replied the detective, her green eyes taking on a tinge of sympathy. “We found her shortly after bringing you here, not far from the farm. She had been the subject of a brutal attack. She is currently in the hospital in a critical condition. They don’t expect her to survive the night. She’s been brutally raped.”
Fucking bastard. He had been true to his word. Venom coursed through my veins, my face contorting with anger.
“She had her entire life ahead of her,” the detective continued. “She was only seventeen.”
“Oh, thank God for that.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I shifted my tired eyes to see a rather stunned looking red head staring back at me.
“What?”
“You said, oh thank God for that.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just that…” I didn’t know how to phrase this without admitting to something. “Steven told me she was thirteen, that’s all.”
“Thirteen, seventeen, what difference does it make? She’s been sadistically raped. She’s been stabbed well over twenty times in her chest and abdomen. Her face has been mashed to a pulp. She won’t last the night. What difference does her age make, sir?” For the first time since starting the interview the detective was beginning to show a bit of emotion. Unfortunately for me, that emotion was a mix of curbed anger and disgust.
I lowered my guilty head on remembering a similar conversation that I’d had just the night before. What difference did it make indeed? This nightmare was getting worse by the second. If only this woman knew what I had been through. I was the victim here. I was just as much the victim as those bloody kids.
Don’t you even dare. Two of those bloody kids, as you call them, have been tortured to death, and a third violently raped. Don’t you ever compare yourself to those poor kids.
The voice sounded like my dad’s. I didn’t answer him. He was right. I was a selfish, despicable little bastard. And I was as guilty as hell.
“Could I see a lawyer, please? I didn’t do this, but I’m so God damned tired. I need to see a lawyer before I say something I’ll regret.”
Chapter 24
Interrogation
I see a man about my age. He is wearing a half-length jacket and a strange hat, a bit like the Russian Premiers wore of old – a furry black Ushanka. Beside him, running along the short grass, is a boy perhaps eight years old. The path the man is walking surrounds a lake or loch or a large pond. It might be Strathclyde Park. It’s a sunny day and both the man and the boy look happy. It is a memory of my dad and me.
I asked my mum once if my dad had been there for me. She paused to think, trying to remember: “Yes, he was there for you, when he was there.”
“What sort of things did he do with me?”
“Lots. He took you swimming; he took you to Strathclyde Park; he took you hunting for tadpoles, that kind of thing.”
“I don’t remember.”
I turned my head to see a couple of officers chatting by the door. Nothing had changed; we were all still waiting. I put my head back down onto the table and returned to my wandering thoughts. In my exhausted delirium I think I was attempting to put my present predicament into perspective by analysing the past, or should I say, by dragging it up. My mind quickly returned to my dad. For some tired reason I found myself blaming him for my current situation; no, that’s not fair, I was blaming the illness.
I wondered to myself what our lives would have been like without the illness, without manic depression. Did it have that much of an impact on me? Was it responsible for me ending up here? It was a terrible curse on all of the adults concerned, true, but did my mum not manage to shield both my sister and myself from the worst of it. As soon as my dad showed any signs of going ill at all – whether it be not sleeping, overly excited, or just plain over the top angry – my mum would make a clandestine call and an uncle would appear to cart him off to the asylum.
I don’t think I ever did see him when he was really ill.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned how stressful and devastating these trips had been for my uncles. They must have hated him. All the way down the motorway he would curse and scream, invoking their deepest, darkest demons, relentless and spiteful right to the gates of the hospital. In the end my two uncles stopped talking to one another all together. These two men were married to my dad’s sisters, so the sisters stopped talking to each other as well. Thirty years had now passed and they still couldn’t bear to sit in the same room as each other.
I raised my head listlessly on hearing a sound behind me. It was one of the officers on the other side of the window. I had been on my own now for a good half hour, my mind wandering between the past and the present, finding no respite in either. I needed rest badly, but my past wouldn’t leave me alone. It was ruthlessly interrogating me like the red headed detective had done, taking me to the brink of madness and beyond. The official interrogation had been suspended until my lawyer arrived. I was in no rush to start that particular interview again. I placed my beleaguered head back down onto the desk and returned to the questioning.
Why did your dad’s sisters never speak to each other again?
I don’t know. At least I don’t know for sure.
Did this upset you… that they never spoke?
What do you think? I hated the fact the families never spoke. It wasn’t that I didn’t try. I tried at every opportunity. Whenever we got together, be it at a wedding or a funeral or whatever, I would attempt to bring the two factions back together, to bridge the gap. I tried. My ten-year-old self was deeply upset by their long-standing feud. I missed the old days. You know, I tried so hard, that in later years they would instinctively warn me as I walked over their thresholds not to talk about the other side of the family. Too much water had passed under the bridge, they would tell me; I was to leave well alone. But still I tried.
And do you still try?
No. No, I don’t anymore.
Why not?
Because I think I know the truth.
The truth?
The truth to why they never spoke anymore.
Go on.
One night I was visiting one of my cousin’s. We were all drunk. It was about three in the morning. It was on this night that my cousin decided to tell me something that they had kept secret from my side of the family for almost thirty years. My cousin had been there the night my uncles had fought, you see, and the family had finally fissured. The adults were in the living room getting drunk; the kids were in one of the bedrooms playing “Cowboys and Indians” or whatever kids play. The uncles were arguing about various things, drunk of course – that’s alcohol for you. All of a sudden the conversation turned to my dad. They were arguing about who had gone through the most with him over the years, about
whose turn it was to chauffeur the nutter to the mad house next. Like a tornado the argument began to build, swirling and curling, picking up the past and the present, throwing it about the room, until finally it exploded, span out of control and ripped my family asunder.
That was the last time they ever sat together as friends.
Are you trying to tell me that the illness split up your dad’s family? You must have felt like a right fool on finding that one out. They must have been laughing at you behind your back. All through the years the one thing that had been trying to bring them back together was ironically the one bitter reminder of the thing that had torn them apart – their brother.
Yes. But it wasn’t just his sisters the illness affected. The illness had taken its toll on all the family. It had broken the hearts of my dad’s parents, laid waste to his sisters’ friendship, and made my mum’s life a misery.
And what about you and your sister?
I don’t know. I suppose it had to have done. I often look back on our childhood and think of us as being a one-parent family, despite the fact we were happy. I think we were happy. I can remember playing chess with my dad and my sister on a snug winter’s night; I can remember opening presents on Christmas morning; I can remember being on holiday with him, walking to the beach and going to the fair. There were a lot of happy memories.
Did you love your dad?
Of course I loved my dad. When he was well he was a lovely man, a good father; I told you, I have a lot of happy memories.
But there must be a lot of bad memories as well? Surely your mum couldn’t have protected you that much?
I thought about this. I suppose there were the spaces, the voids when he wasn’t there. She couldn’t protect us from that, from not having him at all.
Sorry, I don’t understand. Could you please explain yourself?
Sorry. Whenever my dad went ill he would disappear for anything up to a year, and he would go ill almost every other year. So there were long hiatuses, if you like, in our relationship – spaces. All the time he was in the hospital we would only get to see him on occasion. He was away a lot. There were lots of spaces.
