Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  He paused for a moment, his voice sinking lower and lower, and Annie bent forward, willing him to continue, not wanting to interrupt him with anything as crass as a question or a prompt. She couldn’t believe her ears. What had started as a sop to Bullock, had turned into a profound piece of self-revelation, almost confessional in its intensity. Whether it was genuine, or simply a performance, Annie didn’t know. What mattered was that the camera was suddenly eavesdropping on an intimate conversation, a private settling of accounts. Annie had been making films long enough to recognize gold dust, and this was certainly it.

  Goodman had fallen silent now, gazing down at his hands. Annie glanced back towards his wife. She was crying, silently, one hand over her face. Goodman looked up and began to talk again. His voice had almost gone, no more than a whisper. He cleared his throat. The future, he was saying, belongs to all of us. We’ve inherited it. It’s ours, inescapably, the one real bequest of those terrible, terrible days. We must do in the future what we haven’t done before. We must be stronger. Kinder. Less selfish. More content. We must learn our limitations. Know what we can’t do, as well as what we can.

  Annie heard the door opening, very softly. She looked up. There was a figure silhouetted against the light from the corridor, someone else, slightly taller, behind. Two men stepped into the room.

  Annie frowned. Goodman had stopped again. He was looking at the intruders in the shadows. One of the two men eased forward, the light spilling onto his face. He was smiling. Goodman took his glasses off, and rubbed his eyes. He suddenly looked very tired.

  ‘You’re Gillespie,’ he said quietly, ‘I know you are.’

  Annie gazed at him, then looked at the men in the shadows. He was right. One of them was Gillespie. She stared at him.

  ‘Dave ..?’ she began.

  Goodman interrupted her. Annie, and the camera, could have been a million miles away.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said to Gillespie.

  Gillespie studied him a moment, taking his time.

  ‘I want you to meet a friend of mine,’ he said at last.

  The other man stepped forward, slightly taller, same build, lean, good face. Goodman nodded at him.

  ‘Evans,’ he said, ‘what a surprise.’

  The cameraman eased back from the viewfinder, wanting to know what was going on. Gillespie glanced across at him.

  ‘Keep filming,’ he said.

  The cameraman looked at Annie. Annie shrugged, helplessly.

  ‘Why not?’ she said, quite lost, suddenly a stranger at her own party, aware that something momentous was happening, but not knowing what.

  There was another long silence. Goodman was examining his hands again. His hands were shaking.

  ‘Take your time,’ Gillespie said, ‘don’t rush it.’

  Goodman didn’t look up.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said for the second time.

  ‘All of it. The boat. The girl. Everything …’ Gillespie paused. ‘Why don’t you start with the girl?’

  Goodman nodded, an actor taking his prompt. When he finally looked up, the voice was quite dead.

  ‘I killed a girl called Suzanne Wallace …’ he began. ‘I killed her about half-past eleven on a Tuesday night. I killed her because I loved her …’

  An hour later. The square outside the Civic Centre. The rain stopped. The air fresher. Low, broken clouds racing over a young moon.

  First out of the revolving door, out onto the flagstones, were Gillespie and Evans. They walked in silence to the head of the steps. They paused. Gillespie held out a hand. Evans shook it. Gillespie looked at him.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Evans hesitated a moment. Goodman was visible in his office on the fifth floor, standing at the window, staring out.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Evans said.

  He glanced at Gillespie. The door behind them began to revolve again, and Joanna Goodman appeared. Her face looked white in the moonlight. She walked past them, staring straight ahead, saying nothing. She began to descend the steps.

  ‘Poor cow,’ Evans said softly, ‘poor bloody cow.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There was another silence. Joanna Goodman paused at the kerbside by her car, opening the door. They watched the car drive away. Evans shrugged.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said to Gillespie.

  Gillespie nodded.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  The two men parted, Evans walking in the other direction, in towards the city centre, hugging the shadows. Gillespie was down at the bottom of the steps, crossing the square, by the time Annie caught him up. She was slightly out of breath. She was holding a video cassette, tightly, against her chest. She stood in front of him. She was smiling.

  ‘I owe you,’ she said.

  Gillespie looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘you do.’

  He glanced up at the office on the fifth floor. The light was out. Goodman had gone. Gillespie shook his head, and looked at Annie for a moment. Then he turned, and plunged his hands in his pockets, and walked away. Annie watched him, uncertain.

  ‘Dave …’ she began.

  Then she stopped, and glanced at her watch, and carried on towards the Volvo, running.