by Declan Burke
In reality Cassie is under the influence of three G&Ts and enough Rohypnol to make an elephant forget it has a trunk. She is merry, tipsy and determined to be sophisticated in a potentially embarrassing situation. Thus she will not – indeed, does not – notice the slightly acrid taste of two Nytols crushed into her glass of Pinot.
I put ‘Swanlights’ on the stereo. Cassie lasts until well into track four, ‘I’m In Love’, before she begins to slur her words. By track eight, ‘Thank You For Your Love’, Cassie is in a funny way. Her head slumps onto her chest. She emits a gentle snore. I allow the album to play out, then pick her up in a fireman’s lift and carry her into the bedroom. There I rumple the sheets before undressing Cassie and carelessly strewing her clothes around the room, although I carefully place her pants atop the lamp on the bedside locker.
And now for the train station. Spare not the horses, James.
The pulse stutters and flares. Events march steadily on. Circumstance develops its own momentum.
The vacuum-sealed underground chamber is rapidly approaching its capacity to absorb silane gas. The moment is imminent.
Perhaps the old ex-mechanic’s death was an omen.
Thus we make a feint designed to distract attention away from the hospital basement. Thus we draw Joe’s prematurely grey gaze onto us. Thus we require an ex-lover’s garbled and essentially unprovable accounts of disaffected lunacy, including that of alleged rape, the administering of illegal drugs, and the blowing up of hospitals.
Now is not the time to panic. Now is the time for cool heads and dry trousers.
My line for today is, You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth. (Henrik Ibsen)
•
‘I’m curious,’ I say.
Billy glances up from his notes. ‘About what?’
‘All this silane gas in the bunker. You said earlier on you’d been doing it for eight months, right?’
‘So?’
‘That means you had to have been doing it long before we started the redraft.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘Well, were you? Or did you just write that?’
‘What does it matter? The tank is gassed. We’re ready to rock ‘n’ roll.’
‘I’m not saying it matters. I’m just asking.’
‘Ask no questions,’ he says, ‘hear no lies.’
•
I go to the station. Quelle surprise, the train is late. I smoke and observe the faces of those waiting on the platform.
Finally the train arrives. The passengers disembark. There is no twelve-year-old waiting with her mother for eleven-year-old Jennifer travelling from Dublin. This represents gross dereliction on Yasmin’s behalf. For this she may need to be placed on the naughty step forever.
I leave the station and go outside to the car park, there to sit on the low wall, facing back towards the station and the hotel next door. I smoke another cigarette. I watch as the travellers disperse into the early evening. No twelve-year-old and her mother hove into view, running late and anxious that eleven-year-old Jennifer not be left alone at the mercy of men in shabby raincoats.
This is disappointing. This represents a significant blow to my plans. This represents a waste of precious Rohypnol.
I am about to leave when I realise I am thinking too literally. Too fixedly. And so I do not leave. Instead I take out another cigarette, then get up from the low wall and approach the maroon Mercedes parked in front of the hotel with a view of the station car park and the T-junction beyond. The man in the Mercedes is forty-ish, bald on top and shaved at the sides, with a bluey stubble. He pretends not to see me. I hold up the cigarette and tap on his window, then go through the motions of lighting a cigarette. He puffs out his cheeks and punches in the dashboard cigarette lighter. His window descends with a whining hum.
‘There you go,’ he says, passing me the glowing lighter. I spark my cigarette and hand it back, saying, ‘Thanks, Yasmin.’
His reaction is nothing that would convict him in a court of law. A faint flush behind the bluey stubble, eyes that are quickly averted.
‘No bother,’ he says, reaching for the cigarette lighter.
‘You can drive away,’ I say, ‘and have me track you down through your registration number. Or we can chat about it now.’
‘Say again?’ he says. He still holds the glowing lighter aloft, like a middle-aged devotee of Star Wars.
‘I’m Jennifer,’ I say. ‘Oh, and happy birthday.’
‘The fuck’re you talking about?’
‘You have options here, Yasmin.’ Again, a barely perceptible flinch. ‘You can try to explain away to the cops all those emails on your computer arranging to meet an eleven-year-old girl at the train station. Or maybe you’re an IT whizz, you know how to deep-clean your PC, although you don’t look like any kind of geek to me. Anyway, option two: you and I can have a chat, see if we can’t come to some kind of arrangement.’
By now his jowls are an unhealthy shade of plum.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I’m not after money. All I need is an alibi for this evening. Other than that, you’re free and clear.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re––’
‘Sound,’ I say. ‘On you go.’ I step back from the Mercedes, glancing at its registration number. ‘I obviously made a mistake. My apologies.’
He slots the lighter back into the dashboard and starts the engine.
‘You’ll appreciate,’ I say, ‘that as a good citizen it’s my moral duty to report my suspicions to the cops. I don’t know how seriously they’ll take me, or how quickly they’ll respond. So you’ll have maybe a whole day to get your computer deep-cleaned. Maybe even a week. And maybe they won’t come looking for it at all. A word of advice, though. Don’t dump it and buy a new one. That’ll look bad. A schoolboy error, that. Even worse than having your PC deep-cleaned the day before the cops come calling.’
I walk away, out of the car park and across the road towards Wine Street. I’m waiting at the traffic lights for the green man to show when the Mercedes pulls up. He reaches across and opens the door.
‘Get in,’ he says.
I get in. The lights go green. ‘Have you ever seen Raging Bull?’ I say. ‘The De Niro flick, the boxing one.’
He nods tersely.
‘Whatever happened to Robert De Niro?’ I say. ‘Huh?’
‘What?’
‘I’m guessing here,’ I say, ‘so correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d say you’re a laptop man rather than a PC. So you can take it to bed with you. Am I right?’
A cherry flush beneath the bluey stubble.
‘I’ll be needing your laptop, Yasmin,’ I say.
Two uniformed cops swing by my flat. One of them, burly, with a football-wide face and bright pink cheeks, says, ‘William Karlsson?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Sir, I’d like to ask you to accompany us to the Garda Station.’
‘The station? Why? What for?’
‘Purely routine, sir. So you can help us with our enquiries.’
‘Yeah, but what’s the enquiry about?’
‘I’d rather we discussed that at the station.’
I bite my lower lip and swallow dry. ‘Am I under, ah, arrest?’
‘We’re hoping that that won’t be necessary, sir. We always prefer it when people come along voluntarily.’
This discretion is not for my benefit. This discretion is preferable to arresting someone and then filling out the relevant reports in triplicate.
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to pitch my tone somewhere between anxious and dazed. ‘Okay. Just let me grab my jacket.’
We drive to the station in a squad car. I am escorted to an interview room that contains one desk, three chairs, an ashtray and two detectives. I sit down on the chair opposite the detective sitting behind the desk. He is sallow, narrow-faced. Right now his expression is sour. His tie is loose but his hair is neatly c
oiffed. It glistens under the harsh sodium light.
He switches on a tape-recorder and announces the time, establishes who we all are. Then he tells me I’m entitled to have legal representation present.
I waive. ‘Look, what’s this all about?’
His lips thin. This is distasteful for him. ‘There’s been an allegation of rape.’
‘You’re what?’ This meaningless ejaculation is designed to promote my innocence.
‘Rape,’ he says.
‘But . . . I mean, who . . . ?’
‘Cassie Kennedy.’
‘Cassie? But me and Cass . . .’ I shake my head violently, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘No fucking way, man.’
‘Watch the language,’ growls the other detective, who is leaning against the wall.
I hold up a hand, an apology. ‘Sorry, but . . .’ I shake my head again. I meet the sallow detective’s eye. ‘This is . . . There’s just no way.’
‘Ms Kennedy says you met her last Saturday evening.’
‘That’s right, yeah. But I only met her to give back some of her stuff, books and shit. They were in a black rubbish bag.’ I am attempting to babble. ‘I gave her the stuff, we had a couple of drinks, then we went back to my place for, for . . .’
‘For what?’
‘To listen to music. A few glasses of wine.’
‘Listen to music,’ the Growler sneers.
‘No, seriously. The new Antony and the Johnsons album. Cassie’s a fan but she hadn’t heard that one yet.’
‘Then what?’ the Sallow Guy says.
‘She fell asleep halfway through.’
‘Some fan,’ sneers the Growler.
‘What happened then?’ Sallow Face says.
‘I couldn’t wake her so I went out again. I’d had a couple of pints, I fancied a few more. I didn’t want to waste the buzz.’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘D—’s.’
‘Anyone see you there?’
‘Everyone saw me. I was sitting at the bar.’
‘I mean, anyone who can verify you were there.’
‘Sure. The barman, for one. And I ended up chatting to a bloke, he was sitting beside me.’
‘About what?’
‘Movies, mostly. There was boxing on the TV, we were talking about boxing movies. The Fighter, Raging Bull, y’know.’
‘Did you catch his name?’
‘I don’t know. Sean, I think. Or Shane, maybe.’ I shrug. ‘I was a bit jarred at that stage.’
‘You just left her in your flat?’ the Growler cuts in.
‘Why not? She used to live there. She had a key, she could lock up when she was going.’
‘She says she woke up naked in your bed.’
‘Maybe she did. I wasn’t there. And it’s not so long since that was our bed.’
‘She says she can’t remember getting into it.’
‘Yeah, well, she’d had a few gins, some wine––’
‘How about some Rohypnol, hey?’
‘No fucking way, that’s––’
‘I already told you to watch the language.’
‘Okay. But there’s no way I gave Cassie anything she didn’t want.’
‘So how come she just fell asleep and doesn’t remember getting undressed?’
I tug at my nose. I look from one detective to the other. I clear my throat. ‘Did she mention smoking dope?’
‘Say again?’
‘We smoked a couple of joints. Nothing too heavy, but maybe on top of the gin and wine . . .’
‘She didn’t say anything about any joints.’
‘Well, we smoked them.’
‘Why wouldn’t she say she’d smoked dope if she did?’
‘Maybe she didn’t want it coming out. Maybe she thought it’d affect her professionally. Or maybe she doesn’t remember, Cass never was much of a drinker.’
The Growler says, ‘We’re going to want to take a swab.’
‘Sure. No problem. Look, I never touched her.’
The Growler is fishing up a pole. He knows that the combination of Cassie’s delay in reporting her suspicions and the red-tape of police bureaucracy, along with the fact that Cassie was drugged and thus physically relaxed if not actually compliant, means that any evidence of rape would be negligible at best. Ditto for Rohypnol.
This case will not be pursued on the basis of my guilt. It will be pursued on the likelihood of securing a conviction.
In my favour is the recent furore over the cops in Mayo who managed to tape themselves threatening rape against some Shell to Sea protestors. Now is not the time for any cop to toss around false rumours of rape.
Sallow Face says, ‘Why do you think Miss Kennedy would make these allegations against you?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘You were in a relationship that ended recently. Is that correct?’
‘What has that to do with anything?’
‘Revenge is a common motive for rape.’
‘Maybe so, but I didn’t . . .’ I pause, swallow thickly. ‘Cassie and me, we split because she didn’t want kids. Or not yet, anyway.’
‘Miss Kennedy claims the relationship ended badly.’
‘If they don’t end badly, they don’t end at all. One person wants kids, another doesn’t . . .’ I shrug. ‘Being honest, we weren’t even having sex that often by the time we split up. She’d had a miscarriage.’
‘So you went and raped her,’ the Growler says, ‘because that was the only way you could exert any influence over the situation.’
‘Look,’ I say, ‘rape is a hate crime. As far as I know it has nothing do with sex and a lot to do with power.’ Sallow Face nods along, hoping to encourage me into an incriminating statement. ‘What I’m saying is, if anyone was feeling powerless, it was Cassie. She couldn’t convince me to keep things going without kids. And to tell you the truth, I was worried about her on Saturday night. How would I flip over from that into hating her enough to rape her?’
‘How come you were worried?’
‘That carry-on with the books.’
‘What books?’
‘The books and the other stuff she left behind when she packed. There were a couple of books in there, she didn’t recognise them.’
‘So?’
‘Cassie signs her name on her books, every book she ever bought. That’s how I knew they were hers when I was clearing out those shelves. But when she took them out of the bag she went into this whole thing about how they weren’t hers, she couldn’t remember buying them.’
‘It’s easy enough forget about a couple of books,’ the Growler growls.
‘For some people, maybe. But Cassie’s a reader, she loves books. And she’d signed these ones.’
The Growler doesn’t like my ‘some people’ jibe. ‘Why would you be so worried about her forgetting a couple of books?’ he persists.
‘It’s not just the books. I’ll be straight with you – when I saw the cops at the door tonight, I thought they were coming to arrest me for blowing up the hospital.’
The Growler half-chokes, but Sallow Guy only squints. He’s heard about the hospital before. ‘Go on,’ he says.
‘Cassie and me, we had a lot of arguments before we broke up.’ He’s heard about this too. ‘My job is crap, but it gives me plenty of time to write.’
‘What’s this about blowing up a hospital?’ the Growler growls.
‘This story I was writing, it’s about a guy who wants to blow up a hospital. Cassie read it and accused me of wanting to blow up the hospital.’
‘What – the hospital here?’
‘Exactly.’ I half-grin, then bite on my inner lip. ‘I mean, she accused me of planning to blow up the place where I work.’
The detectives exchange glances. Sallow Guy says, ‘Go on.’
‘I gave Cassie the story to read, I thought she’d like it. But she went ballistic.’ I shrug. ‘Sometimes Cassie wasn’t so good at picking up on irony.’
<
br /> ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, the story’s about this porter who gets so freaked out at being on the bottom of the shit-pile, not being appreciated, that he decides to blow up his hospital. Reading between the lines, it’s a parable about how writers are demented by their own egos. The hospital coming down is supposed to be this impossible pursuit, like the whale in Moby-Dick. Because, at the end, the hospital never blows up. He’s just this sociopath fantasist.’ I shrug. ‘But Cassie didn’t get any of that. She just freaked. I don’t know, maybe she didn’t read all the way to the end.’
‘What has that to do with her claiming you raped her?’
‘All I’m saying is, Cassie took things too literally sometimes.’
‘Things don’t get much more literal than rape.’
‘You’re singing to the choir on that one, man. Look – I like Cassie. I trust her, she still has the keys to my flat. We just want different things.’
The detectives exchange glances.
‘This guy she’s hooked up with now,’ I say, ‘Tony, her ex. I met him, he seems a good guy, he’s going to make her happier than I could and good luck to them both. I’m happy she’s happy, I told her that on Saturday night. The last thing I want to do is go raping her.’ This much, at least, is true. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe I should just have told her I was pissed off. Maybe she got pissed off I wasn’t pissed off it all ended.’
This statement meets with silence. This is not exactly misogyny in action. It is not exactly three men in a room not fathoming the impenetrable workings of the female mind. It is not exactly worth an alibi in itself. But every little helps.
Sallow Guy says, ‘We’ll need to take that swab.’
‘Fine. Take whatever you need, I have nothing to hide.’
‘We’re also going to want to have a look around your flat.’
‘For what?’
‘We’ll know that,’ the Growler growls, ‘when we find it.’
‘It’d also look good,’ Sallow Face says, ‘if you voluntarily surrendered your passport. To show willing.’
‘No problem. I’m not going anywhere.’
Sallow Face sniffs. ‘We appreciate your co-operation, Mr Karlsson.’ He sounds mechanical, as if speaking by rote. ‘This must be a difficult situation for you.’
