It was black until he reached inside and touched a switch. One unshaded bulb stirring in the draught threw a hard light on peeling walls, bare boards, heavy wood shutters sealing the windows.
The room was empty except for a kitchen chair under the light.
I understood the function of the room. There was a quality Sunday paper that condemned examples of torment with dates and details until the sufferings flowed together, even the ages and jobs of the victims seemed identical, and only the names of the continents changed. Stories of torture were the pornography of the middle classes on this island.
Muldoon sat down where he was told. That was strange too, since he knew what the function of the room was.
‘I want you to tell me about a young man – a boy really – called Peter Kilpatrick,’ Brond said. ‘I want you to tell me when you saw him last. I want you to tell me about Michael Dart.’
‘Michael who? I don’t know that name,’ Muldoon said.
There might have been a signal or maybe it was time, but Primo leaned down and hurt him. I waited and did not throw myself to his defence.
‘I’ll speak more clearly this time,’ Brond said.
‘I won’t stay here,’ and I turned for the door sure that they would try to stop me and then I would have to act.
Brond glanced round.
‘Wait along there,’ he said. ‘Don’t be foolish about going off.’
I sat behind the table of papers in the room at the head of the stair. From the sofa that once had been expensive, tears leaked dirty brown wadding. I remembered a night when I had been ill with bad wine and fever, how I had lain on the steps trying to grab Muldoon by the crotch. I had never liked him. And then I sat forward and put my hands over my ears and pretended I could hear only the shell sighs of my blood. Staring at the desk, I had a stupid idea. I imagined that everywhere over the whole world where people were being abused – political victims, children, frightened women – at this very moment the thumb of God would appear out of the air to crush each tormentor out of existence. I imagined that over and over again until a light touch fell on my shoulder.
It was Primo.
The touch of his hand was a horror to me but, as I flinched from it, he pulled it away as if my shoulder burned.
‘I never thought I’d sympathise with the IRA,’ I said. ‘You’ve done that for me.’
His face was shiny with sweat and he looked unwell.
‘Not ordinary policemen, Briody said that to you. By Christ, he was right!’
I took courage from the sound of my own voice and his silence.
‘I don’t think Brond’s a policeman. I don’t think anybody knows what he really is. Has he been pretending to the IRA that he’s one of them?’
‘Damn the IRA,’ Primo said in a slurred voice like drink, so that I could hardly make out the words. ‘What country do you think you’re in?’
Then I saw among the papers scattered across the table an old newspaper clipping. There had been rumours of Scottish republican movements, secret societies, but no one took them seriously. There had been a trial though. I remembered the headline. The government had set it up as a propaganda exercise and the papers were ready to play along; but it had crumbled under their fingers in court into a farce of blundering amateurs and comic opera robbery. Only the sentences had been serious. I held up the scrap of newsprint towards Primo.
‘Something new,’ he said. ‘Not like anything before.’
‘And Brond is part of it – a government spy.’
Primo lifted his clenched fist quivering above my face.
‘Because of him,’ he said, ‘this time things will be different.’
Beyond his arm, I saw Brond appear in the doorway. At the same instant, Primo felt his presence. His arm fell to his side.
‘Our friend next door is sleeping,’ Brond said. ‘Would you make sure that he is comfortable?’
When Primo went out, Brond closed the door.
‘Like the cavalry again,’ he said.
Appearing over the hill to rescue me; and like before I was glad that he had come.
‘You shouldn’t upset him,’ he said looking towards the closed door. ‘He’s like a soldier. A good soldier.’
‘I know. Kilts and trumpets at dawn. You told me before.’
‘It’s quite true,’ Brond said, sounding serious, even indignant, until he spoiled it by beginning to laugh. ‘He went off to fight in Malaya – a mere schoolboy furious with the Communists for trying to subvert the British Empire. The first time he tried to volunteer his father chased after him and fetched him home because he was under-age. He got there though, and did splendidly well.’
Some confused perception of the finality of his contempt – for Primo, for me, for everyone; maybe even for himself? – gave me the courage of anger.
‘If I get out of here—’ Why had I said that? I would get out of there. They weren’t going to kill me. ‘When I get out of here, I’ll talk. Even if you take me back to the police, I’ll tell them.’
Somebody would listen.
‘Tell them what?’ Brond asked. He watched me expectantly, and that puzzling anticipation chilled my anger.
‘About Muldoon,’ I said hesitantly. ‘You can’t do – what you did to him – not in this country.’
‘Nothing else?’ Brond wondered. ‘Isn’t there something else you want to tell them?’ I shook my head in denial. ‘Muldoon’s not really very interesting,’ he went on. ‘We knew about him, of course. His whole family is up to its unwashed neck in Irish Republicanism of one stripe or another. His father was interned during the war and has spent most of the last fifteen years enjoying Her Majesty’s same brand of hospitality. We suspected there might be a bigger fish, but never got near to thinking it was Kennedy. Michael Dart!’ He tasted the name appreciatively. ‘Oh, he was good. He knew that hiding wasn’t a matter of putting on a false moustache. You have to put on a false life. He lied to the world. If he was a sleeper, he was one of the best. There’s a price, though, for living in ambush behind your eyes. That little wife didn’t know who he was. But who is he? He’s her husband Kennedy night and day, and Michael Dart for an hour a month – perhaps not so much. Or he’s not Kennedy at all except as an actor – not even when he’s holding her in his arms. Michael Dart all the time and always pretending. I think that would be hard to do. In the end, who was he? . . . I find that interesting.’
Suddenly, as he finished, he came round the desk towards me. Despite his limp, he moved very rapidly and I shrank away from him in my seat. Bending above me, however, he slid open the file drawer and began to rummage inside. ‘That, yes, interesting,’ he said, as if to himself, groping at the back of the drawer. ‘Muldoon, no. Muldoon now is a dead letter. You’ll have to do better if you want to tell a tale. Isn’t there something else you want to tell?’
I saw a bridge in bright sunlight and a boy scrabbling to draw himself up to the parapet.
‘Eh?’ Brond said, touching me on the shoulder. ‘Something else?’
‘No!’ I cried too emphatically. ‘Just Muldoon. There wasn’t anything else.’
He had taken a box from the drawer and now, turning away from me with a look of disappointment, plucked out a fat white chocolate which he popped into his mouth. Muscles in his plump jowls writhed as he smacked upon it. ‘I almost forgot I’d left these on my last visit. Fresh cream, but it’s cold here and so they keep.’
If he had offered me one, I would have refused it. He didn’t offer. Instead, reaching with the hand that held the chocolate box, he caught up one of the papers scattered on the desk. As it dangled, held between his third and little finger, I saw that it was the newspaper clipping about the trial of the Republicans or radicals or revolutionaries – whatever they were, Scottish certainly.
‘What do you make of this then?’ he asked, flicking it at me. ‘You read it while you were waiting?’ I nodded warily. ‘Trust a student, of course. And?’