‘Cool? Cold-blooded. That really is cold-blooded.’
‘And bloody insolence,’ the other senior officer said.
The Cockneys ignored this local repartee. They waited quietly, two solid men like matched bookends or a pair of duelling pistols. Even standing relaxed, they had their weight balanced. I didn’t fancy my chances of making a break for the door. Even if I had, there would have been no point. If they were secret police, I had no border I could cross to get away from them. There was nowhere for me to go.
‘You don’t mind sitting on a bed where someone’s died?’ the dark man said.
I should have known that it was death that had brought us here. Accusing me of one murder without reason or sense, they could extend the list until I had more victims than Jack the Ripper.
‘Somebody’s died in most beds,’ I said.
‘Not recently.’
‘Not this recently,’ his partner offered.
‘Last night recently.’
‘You know where I was last night. God, I have the best alibi in Glasgow. I was with these two for a start—’
The two senior officers looked confused.
The fair man frowned: ‘Not last bleeding night. Night before last. Same night you did the other one.’
‘Not me,’ I said.
‘We have two bodies,’ the dark man said reasonably. ‘One’s in a shed – under sacks?’ The older of the local men nodded. ‘And the other one’s, well, he’s under these soft sheets.’ He rubbed a sheet between thumb and fingers like a patter merchant on a stall at the Barrows. ‘He’s dead too.’
‘There must be plenty of people die in the city – every night of the year.’
I didn’t know why I kept talking. Even in my own ears, I sounded like a criminal defending himself. A cold-blooded customer – and bloody insolent.
‘Well, now, that’s a point of view.’ The dark man was enjoying himself. ‘All those slums. No Mean City and that. Razor slashers chopping each other’s sporrans off. Dozens of murders every night, I expect.’
The two older men still looked like officers; they even looked distinguished; it was just that they didn’t look powerful any more.
‘Only thing is you don’t get dozens of them tied up first.’
Tied up? I had an image of Peter Kilpatrick with his legs and wrists bound. And the smear on his face I had wanted to wipe away.
‘Want to say something?’
I shook my head – no. What was there to say?
‘Plenty of time to change your mind,’ the dark man said comfortably. ‘We were talking about coincidences. Two killed – that happens. Both tied up – could be. Tied up with the same cord – second one tied up with cord cut off the piece used on the first one. That’s no fucking coincidence, not any more.’
‘Who was killed?’ I looked at the bed. And then by an involuntary reaction tried to move away from it – but the fair-headed man was in the way. He crowded me against it.
‘He doesn’t know,’ he said.
‘I don’t.’
‘He only works here. He only works it all out. He only plans it. Didn’t you care who got killed?’
The dark man took over from him. He had such a gentle and reasonable manner, I had begun to prefer his partner.
‘Of course, he cared,’ he said. ‘Not much point in killing just anyone. That would be murder. That’s right, isn’t it? You wouldn’t call this murder. Of course not. Idealist. Don’t think I don’t understand. We make a study of it. Plenty of idealists about nowadays. Planting bombs. Blowing up schoolkids. Shooting down old ladies at airports. And this kind of thing,’ he nodded at the turbulent bed, ‘not murder. Assassination. Oh, you’ve got what you wanted. Every paper in the world this morning has what you’ve done in a fat headline. In London and Berlin and Rome – even in Rio de Janeiro, I expect. Wouldn’t surprise me if even the Chinks had it on their telly – how you murdered him. Pardon – telling how you assassinated him. They admire that kind of thing.’ He had talked himself into a controlled fury. ‘We don’t. You’re going to be surprised how much we don’t – especially where he was concerned. Put it this way – if some people, even some of your people up here, could get their hands on you they’d tear you apart piece by piece for what you did to him.’
He stopped, breathing hard, the muscles in his thick neck swelling. ‘Lucky, isn’t it,’ he asked putting his face into mine, ‘that we’re in a bleeding civilised country?’
‘Like the cavalry,’ Brond said to me in the car. ‘I came over the hill for the second time.’
And he had. At that moment, the cavalry image seemed exact to me – pennants and a brave show of horsemen to the rescue. My Cockney Indians had frightened me more than any of the tough cops who had surrounded me during the night. I said that to Brond.
‘Their technique would have been different.’ His plump cheeks crinkled in a smile.
‘The tall man with grey hair, he asked them if it was a new technique to have me standing there while they argued. Is that what you mean – some psychological technique?’
Brond laughed. I thought it was the only genuinely amused sound I had heard him make.
‘They’d have beaten it out of you. Either here or at the house in Chelmsford. What was going on last night would have seemed a waste of time to them.’
I felt sick. There was no question of not believing him. Everything he said carried authority.
‘But why did they let me go? Was there new evidence? Has someone confessed?’
Brond looked at me carefully.
‘ “Let go.” I don’t think we could say that, not exactly “let go”.’ I watched Primo’s hands turn the wheel. The sun had gone behind a cloud.
‘Are you going to take me back to them?’
‘I hope not. Think of yourself as being in my custody. Not let go, I’m afraid.’
‘Are you a policeman?’
‘We seem to have arrived,’ Brond said.
I hadn’t recognised the streets, although I should have. We were at Margaret Briody’s house.
Primo got out of the car and came with us which surprised me. I couldn’t think of him as being any kind of policeman. He hadn’t been with Brond at police headquarters or even later at the hotel, although when we came out he had been sitting in the car waiting for us. Maybe it was because the first time I had seen him he had been a workman. I remembered the removal man Davie with his snot-yellow grin and the thud of Primo’s blows beating into his flesh. Perhaps no one was what he seemed. (Except Andy surely – how else would he have got the knack?) Now Primo stood a step or two behind us in a grey suit which was an imitation of Brond’s, only since it was less expensive the cheaper cut made the brute width of his shoulders seem disproportionate, like a parody.
‘Can I help you?’ the woman who opened the door asked.
As soon as I heard the Irish lilt, I knew she must be Margaret’s aunt who had to be kept in ignorance of the facts of life. If it had not been for her, we would not have spent the night at the yard or been there in the morning when Brond came to search the place. I might have been lying now on my bed thinking idle thoughts of Jackie as the sun idled lasciviously down the stag’s horns in the picture on the wall.
‘Margaret’s not here,’ she said when Brond asked. ‘But she’ll be back soon, God willing. Is it something to do with the University?’
‘That’s it,’ Brond said soothingly.
He exerted on her the charm of authority.
‘Would you want to wait?’
We sat in the living room where Muldoon had bluffed me such a long time ago. When she called, the uncle came through drying his hands on a towel.
‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘I’m Liam Briody. And you’re from the University?’
But, even as he was speaking, those quick eyes had run over us. Considering us, he wiped the towel over his knuckles slowly.
‘Would you leave us for a bit,’ he asked his wife, ‘while I have a word?’