"Cameron?" she says quietly.
"Yvonne?" I whisper.
She puts her hand behind my head, then her lips to mine. I'm in the middle of the kiss before it occurs to me I might be dreaming, but I know immediately I'm not. I put one hand to the back of her neck, then to her shoulder. She shrugs off her dressing-gown and slips into the little single bed beside me, warm and naked and already wet.
She makes love quickly, strongly, almost silently. I try to keep quiet too, and — because I had a quick, quiet wank earlier-don't come too quickly. She gives a brief, cut-off little cry like a chirp as she comes, and sinks her teeth into my shoulder. It is quite sore. She lies on top of me, breathing hard, head on my shoulder for a few minutes, then she stirs, pulls herself up so that I flop out of her and her hard little nipples stroke my chest. She puts her lips to my ear.
"Taking advantage of you, Cameron," she purrs, barely audible.
"Hey," I whisper, "I'm a man of easy virtue."
"William drank too much; fell asleep at a really frustrating point."
"Ah-hah, Well; any time."
"Mm-hmm. This never happened, all right?"
"Between these four walls."
She kisses me, then she's out, slipping on the dressing-gown and padding away and clicking the door closed behind her.
I can hear gentle snoring coming from the room next to mine; one of my flat-mates. The only extra sound-proofing on the breeze blocks between his room and mine is a couple of layers of paint, which is probably why Yvonne was being quiet.
I lift my head up and look down to the floor at the foot of the bed, where Andy is lying curled up in his sleeping bag, unseen in the shadows, which is why I was being quiet.
"Andy?" I whisper very quietly, thinking that maybe he slept through it all.
"Lucky fucking bastard," he says in a normal voice.
I lie back, laughing silently.
I can feel blood on my shoulder, where her teeth broke the skin.
Another morning, another interview, interrogation, little chat…
I sit down in the grey plastic chair in the featureless room with McDunn and a man from the Welsh squad; a big blond brindle guy in a tight grey suit; he has a rugby player's neck and steely eyes and huge hands that are clasped on the table, lying there like a mace of flesh and bone.
McDunn's eyes narrow. He makes that sucking noise through his teeth. "What you been doing to your eyes, Cameron?"
I swallow, take a long sigh and look at him. "Crying," I tell him. He looks surprised. The Welsh boyo looks to one side.
"Crying, Cameron?" McDunn says, his dark, heavy-looking face creasing into a frown. I take a deep breath, trying to control things. "You said Andy was dead. Andy Gould. He was my best friend. He was my best friend and I didn't… fucking… kill him, all right?"
McDunn looks at me, as though slightly puzzled. The Welsh lad's got this steady gaze on me like he wants to use my head as a rugby ball.
Another deep breath. "So I've been grieving for him." And another. "Is that all right?"
McDunn nods slowly, slightly, a distant look in his eyes like he's not really nodding at what I've just told him; hasn't been listening to a word I've said, in fact.
The Welsh guy clears his throat and picks up his briefcase. He takes out some papers and another tape recorder. He passes an A4 sheet over to me. "Just read out the words on this sheet of paper, all right, Colley?"
I read the words through first; looks like it's the statement our man phoned in after Sir Rufus was flame-grilled; Welsh Nationalist extremists apparently claiming responsibility.
"Any particular voice?" I ask. "Michael Caine, John Wayne, Tom Jones?"
"Let's try your own voice first, eh?" steely-eyes says. "Then we'll try you with a Welsh accent." He smiles, the way I imagine a prop forward smiles just before he bites your ear off.
"Cigarette?"
Ta."
Afternoon session. McDunn again; McDunn seems to be settling out as the Colley specialist. He lights a cigarette for me, holding it in his mouth. My hands aren't shaking so bad right now so maybe this isn't strictly necessary but I don't care. He hands the fag to me. I take it and it tastes good. I cough a bit but it still tastes good. McDunn looks on sympathetically. I actually find that I appreciate this. I know how they're supposed to work, I know all about the importance attached to establishing a rapport and initiating trust and building confidence and all that shit (and I'm almost flattered they haven't done the old good-cop bad-cop routine, though maybe they just don't do that at all any more because everybody knows about it from the TV), but I really do feel something for McDunn: he's like my lifeline back to reality, my ray of sanity in the nightmare. I'm trying not to get too dependent on him but it's hard not to.
"So?" I say, sitting back in the grey plastic seat. I'm wearing a blue prison-issue shirt — open-neck, of course — and the jeans I was wearing when they arrested me. They don't hug so well without the belt; bum's a little saggy, to tell the truth, but fashion isn't my top priority these days.
"Well," McDunn says, looking at his notebook, "we've found people who think they remember seeing you in the Broughton Arms Hotel on the night of Sunday the twenty-fifth of October, when Sir Rufus was murdered."
"Good, good," I nod.
"And the times for you getting down to London for the attack on Oliver, if you include the times you — or whoever — were seen in the toilets at Tottenham Court Road, are looking very tight; there was a delay on all the flights from Edinburgh into Heathrow that day… makes it impossible, really."
"Great," I say, rocking back and forward in my seat. "Brilliant."
"Unless," he says, "you had a double in Edinburgh or a lot of people are lying, it means you'd have to have an accomplice in London; somebody you'd hired to… ah, make the collection." McDunn looks at me levelly. I still can't read him; I'm not able to tell whether he thinks this is likely or not, whether he thinks this is evidence I'm not his man or he still thinks I am but I had help.
"Well, look," I say, "put me on an identity parade —»
"Now, now, Cameron," McDunn says tolerantly. This is something I've suggested before, something I keep on suggesting because it's all I can think of. Will the limbless Mr Azul think I'm the guy he saw at the front door? What about rent boys from the toilets at TCR? The cops think I'm the right build and they suspect gorilla man wears a wig and false moustache sometimes and maybe false teeth too. They've taken some very carefully set-up photographs with a big fucking camera and I suspect — from an aside or two they probably didn't expect me to understand — that these snaps will be the basis for some computer manipulation to see how well I fit the bill. Anyway, the upshot is McDunn doesn't think it's time for a parade yet. He looks wise and fatherly and says, "I don't think we want to be bothered with that, do you?"
"Come on, McDunn, give me a shot; I'll try anything. I want out of here."
McDunn taps the fag packet round and round on the table a couple of times. "Well, that's up to you, isn't it, Cameron?"
"Eh? What do you mean?"
Oh, he's got me now; I'm interested, I'm leaning forward, elbows on table, face forward. Hooked, in other words. Whatever he's going to try and sell me, I'm buying.
"Cameron," he says, like he's just come to some big decision, and sucks air through his teeth, "you know I don't think it's you."
"Oh, great!" I say, and laugh, sitting back and looking round the room at the bare paint walls and the constable sitting by the door. "Then what the fuck am I —?"