I wished I could stay there all night. I let go of my self-imposed restraints and allowed myself to fantasise, to think what it might be like. That this was all mine, my home, lit up against the night. The sleeping woman inside my wife. Not sleeping from exhaustion, fear and whisky. But slumbering in peace.
I wished Julius would never come back.
The next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, I was arrested. Two plain-clothes policemen were waiting for me on the stairs outside my apartment as I returned home carrying a freshly purchased cake for my breakfast. We drove away through the city and from the back of the car I watched people going about their business; already I envied them the mundane ritual of their mornings.
After a few minutes the car pulled up outside an unobtrusive single-storey building and I was taken inside. Two men were standing in the lobby. They paused their conversation, their eyes followed me as I was led by. A remark was exchanged with one of my escorts. Something frivolous, followed by a laugh. We passed into a corridor, a series of grey-painted doors on either side. One of the doors was open. They pushed me inside. A cell, windowless apart from a letterbox slit of window high up a wall. Stains on the wall. The air heavy with the reek of body odour. A desk, a chair. No other furniture. I placed the cake upon the desk and sat down.
I waited. I took the time to review my situation calmly. No point panicking. Julius, Yansaneh, Kekura. No doubt whatsoever I had been arrested in connection with those three. But what were they involved in? And what did it have to do with me? I knew nothing. I would tell that to the police. But would they believe me? It seemed unlikely anything could be that simple. With the thought my heart beat harder. They must believe me. I counted my breaths. One, two, three, four.
Outside the temperature rose and so did the temperature in the room. I pinched at the cloth of my shirt. I felt sticky. I heard occasional sounds of people passing down the corridor. Nobody stopped. Nobody came to the door. I had been in need of the toilet when I arrived, and as I sat there the pressure inside my bladder began to mount. I considered my options. I could continue to wait. I could call someone. It occurred to me they had left me without locking the door. I could step outside at any time, though that seemed somehow reckless. I held on ten more minutes, then stood up and knocked on the door. I listened. I waited. I rapped again. Footsteps in the corridor. The door opened and I took a step backwards. A man leaned in, glanced at me, pushed the door fully open and held it for a second man, who stepped into the room.
‘Mr Cole. Please sit down.’
The man in front of me was short, with very black skin, dressed in a charcoal-grey suit with short sleeves and button-down pockets; he was carrying a manila folder. The first man placed a chair inside the door and departed. The second man took the chair and placed it, not opposite me, as one might imagine, but on the same side of the desk. When he sat down our knees and elbows were practically touching. He placed the papers on the desk and folded his hands.
‘I must apologise for having inconvenienced you, Mr Cole. I know you are a teacher at the university.’
‘A lecturer.’
‘Of course.’ He smiled. ‘I hope this will not make you late for classes.’
I replied that classes were over for the holidays. I relaxed slightly, relieved to hear the civil tone he was taking. I had begun to let my nervous imagination get to me. I smiled back to signal my cooperation.
‘Good,’ he replied.
From his pocket he drew a pencil and opened the folder. I watched while he wrote my name in capital letters across the top of a piece of paper. At his request I supplied my address.
‘What is your position at the university?’ he asked.
‘I am a lecturer in modern history.’
‘And how long have you taught there?’
I told him. He wrote the information down. He seemed to write at an interminable pace, like a child copying his letters.
‘If I am to make a statement, could I perhaps write it?’ I offered.
‘It is quite all right, Mr Cole.’ He glanced up, surveyed me momentarily. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ Something in the glance, the way he seemed to enjoy enunciating the syllables of my name, stopped me persisting. He added, ‘This is not a formal statement. Just some notes for my own records.’
He asked me details about my life. The time I had lived at my present address, my landlady’s name. Where I had been born and where I had studied. Which courses I taught at the university. At the mention of European history he stopped writing in order to share with me some observations on the Jacobean Wars, in which he claimed to have an interest. Amateur, naturally, he smiled. Guy Fawkes. Catholic Spain. The Gunpowder Plot. He’d become interested after observing the rituals of Bonfire Night while training in England. I could not see the relevance of any of this to my case. Though because he seemed friendly enough, I made a pretence of listening and kept my knees pressed together. I yearned for a cigarette, but I had none on me. He resumed writing. Broke off again to ask me about the contents of the box on the table. I told him the box contained a cake. His pencil lead broke, he called for a replacement. The minutes ground by.
After over an hour he had still not asked me anything of substance. I knew the time because I glanced at my watch.
Without looking up or interrupting his meticulous transcription of my answers, he said, ‘Do you need to be somewhere?’
I replied that I did not, however I did need to use the bathroom.
He continued to write.
‘I need to use the toilet,’ I repeated.
He looked up at me appearing to focus, like a small creature emerging out of the darkness: ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Thank you.’ I stood up. He waved me back down again.
‘This won’t take a minute. Please, Mr Cole, be patient. As soon as we are done here I will have somebody show you to the bathroom. You can relax. Enjoy some breakfast.’ He smiled, indicating the cake with a nod.
And so it went on, the asking and careful annotating of one banal question after another. I answered as evenly as I could, repeating my answers once, twice as he struggled to write them down verbatim. Then, without warning, the nature of the questions altered. I had answered a question about which campus activities I supervised.
In the same opaque tone, he asked, ‘Are you aware of any illegal activities taking place on campus?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘No. I mean, what sort of activity? Students drinking? That happens all the time.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I am not talking about drinking.’ He waved his hand dismissively.
‘In that case, no.’
‘What would you say if I told you the reason you are here is because we believe that you are.’
‘Well, I would have to say I’m not. I don’t even know what you are talking about.’
‘So you deny it?’
‘No, I’m not denying anything, I’m just saying I don’t know.’
‘So you are not denying it, then?’ He fixed me with a hard stare, at the same time holding up his pencil and giving it a triumphant twirl. He sounded almost cheerful. I wondered if, in his world, this was what passed for a sense of humour.
‘I am simply saying I don’t know.’ The words came out louder than I had intended. I was frustrated, unamused by this petty wordplay. I could feel the beginnings of a headache. I watched as he added my most recent words to the bottom of my lengthy and growing statement. He was either an idiot or he was amusing himself with this pretence of being a boneheaded policeman. I suspected the latter.
‘May I ask what this is about?’ I said presently.
He looked at me for several moments and blinked as if trying to make sense of the string of sounds I had just uttered. ‘What this is about?’ he repeated.