Fastidiously, Brond waited until the dust settled. He bent over the body and turned back the shirt to look underneath.
‘Shot,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice question who killed him. The person who fired the gun or the one who brought him out here. If the two acts are traceable to the one culprit, the problem resolves itself.’
I did not understand. A broad smear of black grease striped the dead face from one eye to the side of the mouth. I felt in my pocket for a handkerchief although I never carry one.
‘Why did he come out here?’ I hardly knew what I was saying.
Brond stood up impatiently.
‘Come out? Without help? And burrow under the sacks? First being agile enough to bind himself.’
With the shoe that had the thick raised sole, he touched the body’s legs at a place where they were tied with a piece of cord.
‘His thumbs are lashed together also.’
The same shoe lifted the body over without effort. It was true. But what horrified me was to see how poorly the body was dressed – trousers, a cotton shirt, the feet were bare.
‘This would be a cold place at night,’ Brond said as if reading my thoughts. ‘He’d lost so much blood, of course, otherwise he would have struggled from under there at least. He must have been half dead already.’
It was too horrible to accept.
‘He must have been dead.’
‘No.’ Brond’s shoe scuffed at the sack. The body’s clenched fist lay on a corner of it as if to claim possession. ‘He bled on this while he was lying here. Not much – but then by that time he didn’t have a great deal left. Given his all for Queen and country. Or whatever he did give it for.’
I had never seen anything colder than Brond’s smile.
The door we had come out by lay open and so did the next two, until in the front shop I stared blankly at the last door which lay open to the street. Margaret was gone. Outside stood the sleek hulk of the car that had taken me to see Brond a lifetime ago. Primo sat behind the wheel.
‘Why didn’t he stop her?’
‘Would you have wanted that?’
‘Yes. Why would she—’
‘Well?’
Well? Well?
I shook my head. Was it conceivable that Margaret could have known while we lay in bed together that Kilpatrick was dying out there in the cold under a bundle of greasy sacks?
Nothing could make me believe that.
TWELVE
The man in the grey shirt and old flannels asked, ‘How long is that now?’
He had been asking at five minute intervals.
‘More than an hour,’ I told him.
‘It’s incomprehensible to me,’ he said.
‘Something’s happening.’
We listened to the sound of running feet and a voice shouting with an edge of panic.
‘I never imagined it would be like this,’ the man said.
There is something wrong about uncontrolled noise in a police station. You associate police stations with discipline. If anyone does anything violent, you expect it to be done quietly and off-stage. My mind shied off images of violent policemen. Thoughts like that are weakening when you sit waiting in an interview room.
‘To the police, of course,’ Brond had said.
I had been astonished.
‘Where now?’ I had asked, desperately casual, watching the vast shoulders of Primo as he steered the car through the morning traffic.
‘To the police, of course.’
He had turned on me a look of mild reproach.
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘you realise the seriousness of what we found.’
‘We found Kilpatrick,’ I said.
‘We discovered a murder,’ Brond chided. He was enormously the good citizen, expensively dressed, with Primo as chauffeur, leaning forward with a folded handkerchief to wipe a trace of greasy dust from his shoes. ‘In the event, that leaves us no choice. It would be unthinkable to do anything else.’
Until the exact moment we entered the station – even while we were climbing the steps – I did not believe him. My first reaction was an enormous relief. Someone was going to sort out the pieces and let me have my life back.
The whole station heaved with confusion. An unanswered telephone was left ringing. Three constables passed at the trot. Brond spoke to the sergeant at the desk. I could not hear what was being said. I saw his face change, then it was as though the same virus affected him. He hobbled away at an incredible pace down a corridor to my left. That was the last I had seen of him.
A plain-clothes man had taken me by the arm. Five minutes, ten, had passed while I waited for Brond to come back. A sense of some vast catastrophe built up round me. It was strange to be at the centre of so much activity and be so excluded.
‘In here,’ I’d been told.
‘What’s going on?’ I’d asked.
‘Wait here. Someone’ll be along to talk to you in a moment.’
He might have been deaf. As I asked again, he gave me the look policemen use to put you on a different planet. Then he shut the door.
The only other person in the room was a brown-faced, elderly man in shirt and flannels. Despite the stains on the flannels, he had that air which mysteriously but unmistakably signals prosperous respectability. Like me, he had been waiting. We had passed the time listening, trying to make out from the confusion of sounds what was causing the panic. Once the door was thrown open and we jumped up, but it was a flustered sergeant who stared at us as if we had no right to be there.
‘I’ve been—,’ my companion began.
‘Sorry, sorry. Later. Really sorry.’
The sergeant disappeared. I had never heard a policeman offer so many apologies. It was like a measure of disorientation.
We sat down slowly.
‘This is impossible,’ flannel trousers said.
‘Something serious is going on.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘But still . . .’
We sat in silence. It was a miserable place. High on one tiled wall there was a narrow strip of window. I pulled the table over and stood on it. Pushing up on the toes of my good foot, I could just see out. It was some kind of air-shaft. Within feet of me, there was a featureless brick wall.
‘I don’t see any need for that,’ my companion said.
I climbed down.
‘Did you see anything?’ he asked inconsistently.
I offered him a sneer.
‘All I meant was that if there’s some emergency we’d best let them deal with it. All we can do to help is be patient.’
‘Splendid attitude,’ I said. ‘Admirable. You’re not a criminal yourself then.’
He flushed with annoyance.
‘Good heavens, of course not. Do I look like—’
He broke off, looking at the unsightly flannels.
‘I was gardening. That’s why I’m here. I’d bought onion sets. The roses at the back haven’t been doing well. Too sheltered perhaps. Anyway I’d decided to have them up and I’d bought onion sets. So I took out the bushes and raked and I had the sets in a pail. They’d been in water, you see. I pushed the dibble in – to make a hole, you see, for the set – but when I pulled it out the dry soil ran into the hole and ran and ran. And I stood up and stepped back and there was a roar and a gasp as if the earth itself had taken a breath. And half the garden was gone and I was standing right on the edge of a black hole I couldn’t see any bottom to. I mean it just went down, and I could hear little stones and clods still falling.’
He looked at me wide-eyed, reliving it.
‘You’re the first person I’ve told,’ he said.
I wondered if he was a lunatic.
‘Earthquake?’ I asked. ‘Surely not in Glasgow?’
‘Earthquake?’ He looked at me as if I was the one who was mad. ‘Who’s talking about earthquakes? Subsidence! My garden had slipped into an old pit shaft they’d all forgotten about.’