‘Jesus!’ I said.
‘Oh, yes. Lanarkshire, you see, rests on old coal mines.’
Not long after that someone came and took him away. Very politely, so it was possible his story was true. I waited. I had never been in this situation so it was hard for me to tell if the noises off were settling back to normal. Twice more I stood on the table. Brick walls don’t change much. Two and a half hours went by. The door was not locked. I tried it once. There was no physical barrier to stop me from going out and asking what was happening. I sat down and waited.
The short fat one took notes. The other one did the talking. Neither of them explained who they were; no names or ranks. My name. My age. My occupation.
‘How well did you know Peter Kilpatrick?’
‘Not well at all.’
‘How many of you lodge there?’
My mind scrabbled.
‘Three – no, four.’
‘Uh-huh. All of you students, isn’t that right?’
‘No – two of us. Willie Clarke and me. Muldoon isn’t. Neither is . . .’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Kilpatrick. Peter . . .’
They knew that.
‘So you’re a student. At the Uni.’
He mouthed the word in the way Davie had just before he tried to butt me in the face – yoo-ni.
‘That’s right.’
‘Uh-huh. Why didn’t you like him?’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like him.’
‘Ladies’ man, are you?’
‘Me. No.’
‘Big fellow like you. Not bad looking. All those stories about students.’
The fat man snorted appreciatively.
‘I asked you a question.’ ‘I answered it.’
‘Uh-huh. Incline the other way?’
I didn’t know what he was talking about. When I looked at him uncomprehendingly, he made a limp movement with one hand.
‘That way, are you? Fancy the boys?’
‘Not much.’
He hesitated and I thought I’d not been emphatic enough for him, but it was only a needle. He came back to what he was really after.
‘Ladies’ man, are you?’
‘I don’t run round bloody mad, if that’s what you mean.’
He turned to the fat man, who kept writing.
‘That what I mean?’
The fat man glanced up at him then at me. He sniffed.
‘No. Didn’t think so. Have a steady?’
‘A what?’
‘A steady – girl you go about with.’
‘No.’
‘Big healthy fellow like you. How long you been here?’
‘Since the session started – last October.’
‘All winter. And no girls. Funny.’
‘I didn’t say no girls. I’ve been out a few times. Took a girl home from a dance a few times . . .’
Walked the streets a few times. Howled at the moon a few times.
‘Names.’
‘Eh?’
‘Names. Give us their names.’
He waited. I thought of them being questioned by the police.
‘I’ll give you a name,’ he said. ‘Margaret Briody.’
‘She’s not a girl friend of mine.’
‘Where’d you sleep last night?’
Some time later he said that she’d been interviewed. Not long after that another man came in and stood listening.
‘Jealous of Peter, were you?’
‘Why should I be jealous of him?’
‘You’re telling us that you didn’t know he was sleeping with her?’
‘With who?’
‘Don’t play the funny man, son. Just answer the questions. You’re in a lot of trouble. You can do it the hard way or the easy way.’
The light in the narrow window had faded. Since the morning I had been sitting in that room.
‘I’m hungry,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Get him a sandwich – no, I’ll go.’
He got up and stretched. The man who had been standing silent sat down. The one who had been questioning went out.
The new one sat with a pencil turning it on the table. The door opened and another two newcomers appeared. One sat down and took over from the fat man. The fat man yawned and left.
‘I want to piss, too,’ I said.
‘In a minute. Tell me first about Margaret.’
‘You must have heard – I’ve said all there is to say about her.’
‘Tell me again. When did you find out about her and Peter?’
It must have been an hour later when I remembered about the sandwiches. Nobody had brought me any. But the room gradually filled up. More men kept coming in. Some were in uniform. Two or three would ask me questions taking it in turn. The men in uniform were not constables – I didn’t know what ranks but they looked important.
It was just after I felt the strangeness of this roomful of men that the last one arrived. I was being asked a question and it stopped abruptly. The new arrival closed the door and waited as if he wanted to gather every eye. I watched him as if I too had been waiting for news.
He nodded – Yes. Yes.
There was a release of breath, a mingled sigh and snarl, like the purr of a hunting cat. Then every eye turned back to me.
The man who had just come in bent over and whispered to one of my interrogators and another one got up and he took his place.
Everything changed then. Although I had been frightened before, I could make sense of what was happening. Now the questions made no sense to me.
Had I ever been a member of a political party?
Where had I met Kilpatrick?
How did I feel about the Royal Family?
Had it been in a club I met Kilpatrick?
Some kind of society or organisation?
What group did I belong to?
And then over and over again:
Where had I gone during the night – while Margaret Briody slept – before I climbed into her bed – God, they knew about that – where had I gone? What time had I slipped out? Where did I go? Did I know – this house, that street, this hotel?
Had I been inside that hotel?
Riggs Lodge – but, of course, I had. It was the hotel I had worked in as a relief porter at Christmas.
When I said that, there came another of those strange sighing chuckles, fat and satisfied and at the same time hungry.
My watch had stopped. It felt like the middle of the night. I had at the back of my mind the thought – this is wrong; and I thought that I would say nothing more; I would insist on something to eat. Dully, I realised that I wasn’t hungry any more. I was tired. The questions kept coming and I answered them while behind their distraction I conducted with myself this other argument – that it was wrong; but until I settled it what else was there to do but keep answering?
Earlier when it was still daylight they had taken my fingerprints.
‘No,’ I had said.
Two big men looked at me incuriously.
‘You don’t want to be printed?’
‘No’, I said in a small voice.
‘Up to you,’ one stone face said. ‘Case last year in Edinburgh. Fellow felt the way you do about it. They broke one arm on the Tuesday and the other one on the Wednesday. Thursday the Court said that was reasonable force. Thursday afternoon he got his fingerprints taken. Right?’
Right.
‘You know what this is?’
A large sheet of stiff paper crackled out between us. A meaty hand spread it flat. There was a bruising across the knuckles that reminded me of Primo’s hand on the apartment door, the fat swollen pressure of blood and offended tissue. He put a finger down on the paper.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You know what this is?’
It was a plan of some kind. A blueprint: the sheet was covered with detail. I understood enough to see that it was a building and that it must be very large.
The finger tapped, tapped.
‘Here. Stop bluffing. You know what this is.’
I didn’t; I knew nothing about reading plans. When I bent closer, it dissolved into a jumble of lines.
‘Through that door, right? And then up the outside.’
Somebody leaned over his shoulder and said, ‘They’re sure.’