Complicity

CHAPTER 8 — FRIENDLY FIRE

I head south after what I think's called a hearty breakfast and an even heartier cough. I fuel up at a wee petrol station just before the A9 and phone Fettes while the tank's filling. Sergeant Flavell sounds a little odd when I talk to him and tell him I've been to Jersey for the day but I'm on my way back to Edinburgh. I ask him if I can have my new lap-top back and he says he isn't sure. He suggests I come straight to Fettes; they want to talk to me. I say okay.

South on the A9, sound track Michelle Shocked, The Pixies, Carter and Shakespear's Sister. I catch a bit of radio while I'm changing cassettes just north of Perth and hear something called I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Bon Jovi which isn't a patch on Uncle Warren's song of the same name and makes me more than reasonably annoyed. Into Edinburgh by late lunch-time, past the signs trumpeting the up-coming Euro-summit. I don't know how they've done it but the typography on the signs makes me want to pronounce the word Edin-burg, and I live in the place, for God's sake.

Christ in a bucket: independent bastarding deterrent, The Genuine Shit Article, cold fucking filtering, Edin-burg, Edin-borow, Sleep when I'm a de-rigueurly long-haired white-skinned head-banging high-pitched middle-aged sub-grunge light-metal Zep-clone. What a pile of shit everything is!

On Ferry Road, within sight of Fettes School's preposterous spire and only minutes from the police HQ, I have the first cigarette of the day, not because I really want it, just to feel bad. (Uncle Warren knows a thing or two.)

This turns out to be smart thinking in a way because when I get to Cop Central they promptly arrest me.

The hotel is dark and very quiet. The cellars are full of junk, most of which might have been useful once but all of which is now covered in water or mud or fungus. Some of the timbers under the floor are white with fuzzy rot. On the lower ground floor you pass through the snooker room, the ballroom and a store room. The table in the snooker room is waterlogged, its baize stained and its wooden sides cracked. The old motorbikes, tables, chairs and carpets in the ballroom look like forlorn toys in some long-neglected doll's house. Rain beats softly against the windows: the only sound. Outside, it is black dark.

The stairs from here to the top floor stretch upwards around the dilapidated grandeur of the stairwell. On the next floor up the reception area is dusty and bare, the bar smells of sour booze and stale cigarette smoke and the empty dining room is redolent of dampness and decay. The kitchen is cold and hollow and echoing. There is one old domestic stove, powered by bottled gas, and one sink. There's an apron hanging on a nail.

You take the apron and put it on.

The next two floors hold bedrooms. There is dampness here too, and in some of the rooms the ceiling has fallen in, the plaster and lath lying draped over the heavy, old-fashioned furniture like some clumsy travesty of a dust-sheet. The rain is hitting the windows harder now, and the wind is getting up, whistling through cracks in the panes and the window-frames.

The top floor feels a little less damp, a little more warm, though the wind and rain still sound loud outside and above.

At one end of the dark corridor, past the wedged-open fire door, a door lies ajar. The living room inside is lit by the remains of a log fire, collapsing now into ashes. A couple of logs lie on the hearth, drying, and the air smells of their pine scent and cigarette smoke. An old coal scuttle to the side of the fireplace holds a can of paraffin, almost full.

In the corner of the room the dumb waiter contains a selection of logs of various sizes, most of them still damp. You take the biggest of the logs, which is about the size of a man's arm, and walk softly across the room to the bedroom door. You go through and stand listening to the rain and the wind, and — just audible — the noise of a man breathing slowly and rhythmically in the bed. You hold the log out in front of you as you walk towards the bed.

He moves in the darkness, something you hear more than see. You stop and stand still. Then the man in the bed starts to snore.

Rain drums on the window. You smell whisky and old tobacco smoke.

You get to the bedside and raise the log over your head.

You hold it there.

This is different, somehow. This is somebody you know. But you can't think about that because that isn't the point; although you know it does matter, you can't allow it to matter, you can't let something like that stop you. You bring the log down with all your might. It hits his head and you don't hear the noise it makes because you cry out at the same time, as though it's you in the bed, you being attacked, you being killed. There's a terrible, sucking, bubbling noise from the figure in the bed. You raise the log and bring it down again, calling out once more. The man in the bed doesn't move or make a sound.

You turn on the torch. There is a lot of blood; it looks red where it seeps into the white sheets, black where it quietly pools. You take the apron off and cover his shoulders and head with it. Then you go downstairs to get the gas bottle out of the old stove in the kitchen.

The twice-soaked bed linen lights quickly, paraffin overcoming blood. You leave the gas bottle on the floor at the foot of the bed and walk quickly away along the shorter length of corridor and step through the emergency exit out into the loud darkness of the night. You run down the metal fire escape on the gable end of the building.

You stop at the top of the road and look back, to see the flames just starting to become visible over the edge of the hotel roof, dancing orange into the night.

Maybe you hear the gas bottle explode a couple of minutes and a couple of miles later, when you're on the loch-side road heading away, but it's blowing quite hard by then and you're not sure.

It's been three days now I'm not sure though I could be wrong because I haven't slept very well I have nightmares of a man and they think it's me but it isn't, is it? Is it? I'm starting to wonder. He has a gorilla mask on and he talks with the voice of a baby and he has a huge syringe and I'm tied to the seat screaming. I can't take it. They keep questioning me, always asking where I was what I did why I did it, did all of them where I was who I was with who am I trying to kid why don't I just admit I did it well if I didn't do all these things, who did? I'm in London I'm in the nick I'm in fucking Paddington Green for Christ's sake, the high-security station they use for the Proves and they think I'm so dangerous so much a security risk they've got me here and even holding me under the Prevention of Terrorism Act Jesus God because some of them still aren't convinced they aren't dealing with some unholy alliance of the IRA, Welsh Nationalists and uppity jocks. They brought me down that day from Edinburgh, bundled me into a transit van with seats but no windows, handcuffed to a big quiet London lad who wouldn't talk to me at all and didn't even say much to the other two cops in the back of the transit just sat staring ahead and we seemed to drive all night just stopping once at some service station on the Ml, took a while to arrange everything, then they came in with a selection of cans of soft drinks and sandwiches and pasties and pork pies and chocolate and we all sat there munching then they asked me did I need the toilet and I said yes and they opened the door and it was straight over the grass into the gents" toilets, two cops guarding the door and some men, looked like truckers, standing watching me, waiting for their turn after I'd had my private visit; only wanted a pee but I couldn't do it even though the big lad wasn't actually watching just having him standing there handcuffed to me was enough so they checked the stalls and then took the cuffs off me and I had to leave the door open a crack while I went, then back out and I see the other cop cars Christ a Range Rover and a Senator too I'm a fucking VIP, then it's into the van and on with the journey to London where the questioning starts; they're concentrating on Sir Rufus's murder, for now, because they found a card a fucking business card in the woods near the burned cottage; not mine that would have been too obvious but a card from a guy I know on Jane's Defence Weekly with some scribbled notes on the back:

Ctrl + Alt 0 = PoV chnge

Shft + Alt = Chn of Cmnd zoom (bounces)

Milk Cheez Bred Shavng Foam

They ask me, Is that your writing? and it is of course it is those are Despot control codes from when the computer's mouse was misbehaving and that's the way I always spell when I do a shopping list. I vaguely recall writing down the codes months ago and losing whatever it was I wrote them on. I stare at the muddied, warped little card sealed in a deal-sized plastic bag, recognising my own writing and feeling my mouth go even drier than it already is and I can only gibber something about, Well, it looks like my writing but, I mean, and anyway, somebody, anybody could have taken that, I mean… but they just look quietly pleased and the questions go on.

And all I can think is Don't confess, don't confess, don't confess. There are detectives and DCIs and Chief Supers and Commanders every fucking where; more tecs and CID guys and Anti-Terrorism Squad chaps and regional guys than you can shake a nightstick at, all asking questions, all asking the same fucking questions and me trying to give the same fucking answers; seeing DI McDunn, sucking saliva through his teeth and letting me share his B&Hs, is like meeting an old pal even though he's got all his questions too. It's a relief when the Terrorist Squad boys seem to lose interest but that still leaves all the rest and I can't think I can't think straight I can't sleep.

It's bad enough at first but then it gets worse even as they keep me because they found more, they found two more and that was while I was here for Christ's sake while they held me while things were still happening more stuff came in while they were questioning me and they looked at me with disbelief horror disgust and I was going What? What is it? Now what? What am I supposed to have done now? And they told me about Azul, in Jersey, and before that I think it was before that they showed me the forensic photographs of all of them: Bissett skewered on the railings, grotesque and spread and limp; the blood-smeared vibrator used on the retired judge, Jamieson; the drained shapeless white body of Persimmon, tied to his grid above a pool of blood, then nothing when there should have been something; then what was left of Sir Rufus Carter, blackened bones, distorted and bent, the black skull's jaw hinged down in a blind scream but the flesh all gone very much a dental-records job and it was all black, the nails, the wood and the bones too but it's their mouths their jaws I remember, their silent screams, hanging slack or jammed open and it gets worse because they show me the fucking video they show me the video they think I made or that I think they think I made but I didn't; they make me watch it and it's horrific; there's a man and he's dressed in black or dark blue and he has a gorilla mask on and he keeps sucking on this little bottle he's carrying which must be helium because it gives him that baby voice disguising his own voice and he has this fat little guy strapped to a chrome seat, his mouth taped, one arm tied down onto the arm of the chair, shirt rolled up and the little guy's shrieking as hard as he can but it sounds quiet because the noise is having to come down his nose while the man in the gorilla mask looks from the camera to the guy in the seat and holds up this huge fucking syringe like something from a nightmare from an old movie from a horror film and I can feel my heart beating wildly because that's what this is. This is a horror movie a fucking horror movie this lunatic is making his own horror film and you can't even tell yourself Hell it's only a story aren't the special effects good it isn't real because that's exactly what it is and the gorilla man is explaining in that hideous high-pitched baby's voice what he has in this bottle and in this syringe and I throw up halfway through but they pause the video for me.

After it's over we cut to another scene and there's somebody who might be the little guy again and he's still strapped to a chair but this time it's a tall hospital chair with wheels and a little fold-away table in front of him and the straps holding his torso would be easy to undo but his hands are limp. There's some sort of board behind his head and a towel or something round his forehead holding his head upright but the eyes Christ the eyes there's nothing there and McDunn says Persistent Vegetative State they call it apparently; Persistent Vegetative State and it looks it man it looks it.

And then of course there are the other two. First it's Azul and his girlfriend. She's traumatised and dehydrated but otherwise unharmed but he's got soul brother's limbs where his own ought to be; necrosis like frostbite, blood-death at the extremities but the extremities start at shoulder and groin; he's alive but if you were him you'd rather not be. Arms salesman; okay the Avenger the Equaliser the Total Fucking Nutter went for the legs too but still, and the editor spiked, and the rapist — lenient judge raped and the pornographer poisoned and stroked and the man who was so callous about the bloodshed in the Iran/Iraq war forced to watch his penned animals die like cattle like soldiers like cattle and then bled to death in his own private fountains of blood and the businessman who put profits before safety and not only helped kill a thousand people but then tried to get out of paying the survivors and dependants any compensation gets his own gas explosion — blevey is the technical term apparently — and fuck me whoever he is (assuming he is a he), he's got a sense of humour or at least irony why he's produced what's almost a snuff video effectively a snuff video if you mean brain-death anyway it's the closest anyone will admit to ever having seen or found one even the Obscene Pubs Squad who've been looking for years but although everybody assumes they exist nobody's ever seen one until old gorilla man comes along and just makes his own, specifically to warn off any other porn merchants thinking of dealing in snuff! It's hilarious, it's really ironic and you explain all this to McDunn and you laugh because it actually isn't the fault of the police you're not sleeping it's the nightmares where you're stalked by a gorilla with the voice of a baby and a huge syringe and he wants to fuck you with it, isn't that hilarious? You can't sleep you're actually providing your own sleep deprivation and you say hey, next thing you know I really will be falling down the stairs! but he doesn't seem to get the joke and then it's back to the cell and then the interview room with the barred, opaqued windows so you can't see out and they switch on the tape-machine recording everything as usual and it's getting more bizarre; they get me to do a Michael Caine voice! They ask me to impersonate Michael fucking Caine, can you believe that? And then there's this technician or something here and they ask me to breathe in helium from a mask and make me repeat some of the things gorilla man said on the video so I feel like I'm becoming him they're trying to make me him; I don't think I sound the same as the guy on the brain-snuff video but fuck knows what they think there are too many to know what the fuck they think; loads of them, officers from all over the fucking place with different accents, London, Midlands, Welsh, Scottish, elsewhere, God knows, it's not just Flavell and McDunn though I still see them now and again especially McDunn who looks at me kind of weird most of the time like he can't really believe it was me did all these things and I get this bizarre feeling that he thinks I'm kind of pathetic I mean that in a grudging, still-determined-to-bust-the-fucker way he actually has more respect for gorilla man than he does for me because I've just gone to pieces under the questions and the things they put in my head with those photographs and that video (ha which means gorilla man has already put stuff into my head, already has fucked my brains, filling my head with the idea of that, the vision, the meme of that) and I thought I was some tough cookie but I was wrong I'm just a dunked digestive baby I'm soft I'm flopping I'm disintegrating and that's why unless I'm the best fucking actor he's ever seen McDunn can't accept I was capable of the things gorilla man did, yet so much of the evidence, especially the dates and times that sort of stuff, points at me not to mention that piece of TV-crit I did that reads like a hit-list now.

And it just goes on keeps going on another night another nightmare and then back to the interview room again and the tape machine again and more questions about Stromefirry-nofirry and Jersey and flights and that's when they tell me about the other one that's when they say oh by the way your best friend Andy is dead blown up in the hotel when it burned down; probably beaten to death first head stoved in but of course you probably know all that because you did that too, didn't you?

I lied about something. Earlier. I told it the way it felt, not as it actually was. Or the way it feels and actually is. Whatever.

'Andy; Yvonne."

'Hi," she says, shaking his hand.

'And that's William out there," I tell Andy. "With the big sword."

Andy turns and watches William. William; masked, clad in white, grasping his sabre and suddenly lunging forward, one leg darting ahead. His opponent jumps back and tries to fend off the blows with his own sabre but he's off-balance and William presses forward, swinging the sabre in a hacking, sweeping motion, whacking the edge of the heavy curved blade into the side of his opponent's torso.

"Aw, rats," the other guy says, as William stands back, relaxing. They take off their masks and William conies over to us, mask under his arm, sabre hanging from his hand, his face red and sheened with sweat, glistening in the sports hall's brilliant lights. I introduce him and Andy.

Andy with his short hair and his blazer and neatly creased jeans, face handsome but a little spotty, expression slightly disdainful and wary. He's twenty-one; two years older than us, but William looks the more confident and assured.

"Hi," William says, tossing back some blond hair fallen over his forehead. "So you're Cam's soldier boy."

Andy smiles thinly. "You must be… Willy, is it?"

I sigh. I'd hoped these two would get on.

Yvonne taps William on the shoulder with her mask. She's been fencing too, her long black hair tied back from her face, her face bright with sweat. I think she looks like some Italian princess, daughter of an ancient minor house with no real pretensions but still casually opulent; huge faded villas in Rome and on the Grand Canal and in the Tuscan hills. "Shower," she tells him. "We have to get stuff ready for tonight." She smiles at me. "Quick drink in the bar, ten minutes?"

"Great," I say. Andy is silent; Yvonne turns to him.

"Coming to the party?"

"Yes," he says. "If that's all right."

"Of course." She smiles.

"Ah! Hot hot hot!"

"What?"

"Took the hot chilli… crunched on a whole fucking green chilli… ha…" Yvonne says, fanning her mouth and hanging onto my arm. "Woof; thanks." She reaches into my vodka and lemonade and hoiks out an ice cube. "Here," she says thickly, handing a joint while she rolls the ice cube round in her mouth and tries to breathe through it at the same time. I'm grinning widely at her; she's frowning hurtfully at me. Andy is at my side but then ducks away into the throng. The music is loud, the campus flat packed with people. It's a warm May evening, the exams are over and everybody's partying. The windows are open to the night, spilling the sound of the Pretenders" first album out over the slope of grass towards the small loch and the lights of the library and Admin buildings on the far side.

"Ah, my mouth!" Yvonne says. She slaps me on the shoulder. "Look more sympathetic, you pig," she tells me. Her eyes are watering

"Sorry."

Andy comes back with a glass of milk. "Here," he says, offeri it to Yvonne. She looks at him. He nods at her mouth. "Ice won't work," he tells her. "The… the stuff that causes the heat in chillis" and I smile, because I just know from the way he phrased that that he knows the technical term but doesn't want to appear too smart-alec "isn't soluble in water, but it is soluble in fat. Try it; it'll work."

Yvonne looks round. I offer my hand and she slips the remains the ice cube delicately into my palm, then sips the milk. I shrug and put the lozenge of ice back into my drink.

Yvonne finishes the milk. She nods. "That is better. Thanks."

Andy gives a small smile, takes the empty glass from her and heads back through the crowds to the kitchen.

"Hoo," Yvonne says, dabbing at her cheeks with a tissue. She glances after Andy. "So boy scouts have their uses after all."

"Ask him to show you his Swiss Army knife later," I laugh, feeling a little treacherous. Yvonne's wearing a black scoop-necked T-shirt and a simple, black ankle-length wrap skirt. Her hair is tied back from her face and held by a long white lacy ribbon, but tumbles down loose behind. Her arms look firm and muscled and her tanned breasts are full and high, nipples producing little bumps on the black cotton of the T-shirt. The final effect is perversely exotic and I feel my usual pang of jealousy.

I glance into my glass and hand her back the J; her eyes close as she draws on it and I put my lips to my glass, slipping that sucked-on sliver of ice into my own mouth and rolling it around there, pretending it's her tongue.

"But it was true, Labour wasn't working."

"Wasn't producing the profits the capitalists want to see, you mean. The implication of the ad was that Labour had produced mass unemployment and the Tories would cure it. Not only have they made it worse, they knew they would; even if they genuinely thought their policies were somehow better for Britain as a whole, they knew damn well they'd put hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and Saatchi & Saatchi must have known that, too, if they'd bothered to think. It was a lie."

"It was an election," William says, looking tired.

"What's that got to do with it?" I exclaim. "It was still a lie!"

"It doesn't matter, and anyway it's just a short-term thing; they will produce more jobs eventually. They're just getting rid of the dead wood at the moment; there'll be new jobs in new growth industries."

"Bullshit! Even you don't believe that!"

William laughs. "You don't know what I believe. But if that ad helped win the election for Maggie, that's fine by me. Ah, come on; all's fair in love and war, Cameron. You should stop whingeing and start trying to make things work."

"All is not fair in love and war! Haven't you heard of the Geneva Convention? If Yvonne fell in love with somebody else, would you kill both of them?"

"Fucking right," William says matter-of-factly as Andy appears at our sides holding a can of lager. Somebody passes him a J but he just hands it on to me. William shakes his head. "You get this all the time, too?" he asks Andy.

"What?"

"Oh, this continual ear-bending about the Tories and what beastly cheats they are."

"All the time," Andy smiles.

"They lied to get in," I say. "They'll lie to try and stay in. How can you trust them?"

"I trust them to try and sort out the unions," William says.

"It was time for a change," Andy says.

"Country needs a kick up the fucking bum," William agrees, defiantly.

I'm horrified. "I am surrounded by selfish bastards I thought were my friends," I say, slapping my forehead with the hand holding the J and almost setting my hair alight. "This is awful."

Andy nods. He drinks from his can and looks at me over the top of it. "I voted Tory," he says quietly.

"Andy!" I say, appalled, almost despairing.

"Shock therapy." He grins, more at William than me.

"How could you?" I shake my head and pass the number to William.

Andy looks exaggeratedly thoughtful. "It was that advert that did it, I think. Don't know if you know the one: "Labour Isn't Working," it said. Great political advert; succinct, memorable, effective, even mildly witty. I've got a poster copy of that in my room back at St Andy's. Did you ever see that advert at all, William?"

William nods, watching me and grinning. I am trying not to over-react but it's difficult.

"Very fucking funny, Andy," I say.

Andy looks at me. "Oh, Cameron, come on." His voice pitched somewhere between sympathy and exasperation. "It happened. Accept it. It might all end up better than you hoped."

"Tell that to the fucking unemployed," I say, moving away towards the kitchen. I hesitate. "Either of you two Tory bastards need a drink?"

I'm lying awake in my room in the flat I share a floor down from William and Yvonne's. Took some speed a friend turned up with so I can't get to sleep. Stomach a bit churny too; too many voddies and lemonades probably, and the punch at the party was evil. The flat I share looks in the opposite direction to theirs, across the access road and the lawns to the old estate wall and the tall old trees rising on the ridge beyond. The window is open and I can hear the sound of the wind in the branches. It will be dawn soon. I hear the front door of the flat open and close, then a few seconds later the door to my room opens. My heart beats hard. A dark figure kneels at my bedside and I can smell perfume.

"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 —?"

"It's not just me, Cameron," he says tolerantly. "You know that."

"Then what —?"

"Let me be frank with you, Cameron."

"Oh, be as frank as you like, Detective Inspector."

"I don't think it's you, Cameron, but I think you know who it is."

I put my hand to my brow, looking down and shaking my head, then sigh theatrically and look at him, letting my shoulders slump. "Well, I don't know who it is, McDunn; if I did I'd tell you."

"No, you can't tell me yet," McDunn says quietly and reasonably. "You know who it is, but… you don't know that you know." I stare at him. McDunn's going metaphysical on me. Oh, shit. "You're saying it's somebody I know."

McDunn splays one hand, smiling smally. He chooses to tap his fag packet round and round on the tabletop again rather than speak to me, so I say, "Well, I'm not sure about that, but it's certainly somebody who knows me; I mean, I think that card with my writing on it proves that. Or, it's something to do with those guys in the —»

"— Lake District," McDunn sighs. "Yes…" The DI thinks my theory it's the security forces trying to fit me up is pure paranoia. "No." He shakes his head. "I think it is somebody you know, Cameron; I think it's somebody you know well. You see, I think you know them as well… well, nearly as well… as they know you. I think you can tell me who it is, I really do. You only have to think about it." He smiles. "That's all you have to do for me. Just think."

"Just think," I repeat. I nod at the DI. He nods back. "Just think," I say again. McDunn nods.

Summer in Strathspeld: the first really hot day that year, air warm and thick with the coconut smell of gorse — swathed richly yellow on the hills — and the sweet sharpness of pine resin, lying dropleted on the rough trunks in thick translucent bubbles. Insects buzzed and butterflies filled the glades with silent flashes of colour; in the fields the corncrake stooped and zoomed, its strange, percussive call stuttering through the scent-laden air.

Andy and I went down by the river and the loch, clambering up the rocks upstream then back down, watching fish jump lazily out on the calm loch, or strike at the insects speckling those flat waters, jaws snapping underneath; dispatching, swallowing, leaving ripples. We climbed some trees looking for nests but didn't find any.

We took off our shoes and socks and waded among the rushes surrounding the hidden, scalloped bay where the stream draining the ornamental pond near the house splashed down to the loch, a hundred metres up the shore from the old boat-house. We were allowed to take the boat out ourselves by then as long as we wore life-jackets and we thought we might do that, later; get in some fishing or just some pottering around.

We climbed the low hills northwest of the loch and lay in the long grass under the pines and the birch, looking out over the small glen to the forested hill on the far side where the old railway tunnel was. Beyond that, over another wooded ridge, unseen and heard only on occasion when the breeze veered from that direction, was the main road north. Further beyond that, the Grampians" southernmost summits rose green and golden-brown into the blue sky.

Later that evening we were all going into Pitlochry, to the theatre. I wasn't too impressed with this — I'd rather have seen a film — but Andy thought it was all right, so I did too.

Andy was fourteen, I'd just turned thirteen and was proud of my new status as a teenager (and, as usual, of the fact that for the next couple of months I was only a year younger than Andy). We lay in the grass looking up at the sky and the fluttering leaves on the silver birch trees, sucking on our reed stalks and talking about girls.

We were at different schools; Andy was a boarder at an all-boys school in Edinburgh and came back only at weekends. I was at the local high school. I'd asked my mum and dad if I could go to a boarding school — the one in Edinburgh Andy was at, for example — but they'd said I wouldn't like it and besides it would cost a lot of money. Plus, there wouldn't be any girls there, didn't that worry me? I was a bit embarrassed about that.

The comment about the cost confused me; I was used to thinking of us as being well-off. Dad ran a garage and petrol station on the main road through Strathspeld village and Mum had a wee gift and coffee shop; Dad had been worried after the Six-Day War when they'd introduced the fifty-miles-an-hour speed limit and even issued fuel-rationing books, but that hadn't lasted very long and, even though petrol cost more nowadays, people were still travelling and using cars. I knew our modern bungalow on the village outskirts overlooking the Carse wasn't as grand as Andy's mum and dad's house, which was practically a castle and stood in its own estate: ponds, streams, statues, lochs, rivers, hills, forests, even the old railway line passing through one corner of it; one big garden in effect and vast compared to our single acre laid to lawn and shrub. But I'd never thought of us as really having to worry about money that much; certainly I was used to getting more or less what I wanted and had come to think of this virtually as a right, the way only children are apt to if their parents are anything other than actively hostile to them.

It never occurred to me that other children weren't spoiled as a matter of course, the way I was, and it would be years — and my father would be dead — before I understood that the expense of sending me to a boarding school was just an excuse, and the simple, sentimental truth was that they knew they would have missed me.

"You have not."

"Bet you I have."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not."

"Who was it?"

"None of your business."

"Ah, you're making it up, you little tramp; you never did."

"It was Jean McDuhrie."

"What? You're kidding."

"We were in the old station. She'd seen her brother's and she wanted to see if they all looked like that and she asked me so I showed her mine, but it was only if she'd show me hers and she did as well."

"Dirty wee rascal. Did she let you touch it?"

"Touch it?" I said, surprised. "No!"

"Ah! Well, then!"

"What?"

"You're supposed to touch it."

"No, you're not, not if you just want to look."

"Of course you are."

"Rubbish!"

"Anyway, what did it look like; was there any hair on it?"

"Hair? Ugh. No."

"No? When was this?"

"Not long ago. Last summer maybe. Maybe before. Not that long. I'm not making it up, honest."

"Huh."

I was pleased we were talking about girls because I felt this was a subject where Andy's two extra years didn't really count; I was effectively the same age as him, and maybe I even knew more than he did because I mixed with girls every day and he only really knew his sister Clare. She was away shopping in Perth with her mother that day.

"Have you ever seen Clare's?"

"Don't be disgusting."

"What's disgusting? She's your sister!"

"Exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't know anything, do you?"

"Bet I know more than you do."

"Crap."

I sucked on my hollow reed for a while, staring up at the sky.

"Have you got hairs on yours, then?" I said.

"Yeah."

"You haven't!"

"Want to see?"

"Eh?"

"I'll show you it. It's pretty big too because we've been talking about women. That's what's supposed to happen."

"Oh, yeah; look at your trousers! I can see it! What a bulge!"

"Look…"

"Ah! Ugh! Wow!"

"That's called an Erection."

"Wow! God, mine never gets that big."

"Well, it's not supposed to. You're still young."

"Charming! I'm a teenager, do you mind?"

I watched Andy's cock, huge and golden and purple and sticking out of his fly like a gently curved plant, some sweet exotic fruit growing into the sunlight. I looked around, hoping there wasn't anybody nearby, watching. We were only visible from the top of the hill where the railway tunnel was, and usually nobody went there.

"You can touch it if you like."

"I don't know…"

"Some of the guys in the school touch each other's. It's not the same as being with a girl, of course, but people do it. Better than nothing."

Andy licked his fingers and started to stroke them up and down over the purple bulge of his cock. "This feels good. Do you do this yet?"

I shook my head, watching the saliva on that full, taut hood glisten in the sunlight. There was a thickness in my throat and a tight feeling in my stomach; I could feel my own cock throbbing.

"Come on; don't just lie there," Andy said matter-of-factly, leaving his cock alone and lying back in the grass, putting his arm behind his head and staring up at the sky. "Do something."

"Oh, God, all right," I said, tutting and sighing, but really my hand was shaking. I pulled up and down on his cock.

"Gently!"

"All right!"

"Use some spit."

"Good grief, I don't know…" I spat into my fingers and used them, then found his foreskin was loose enough to be rolled back and forth over the head, and did that for a while. Andy breathed hard and his free hand went to my head, stroking my hair.

"You could use your mouth," he said, voice shaky. "I mean, if you want."

"Hmm. Well, I don't know. What's wrong with — ah!"

"Oh, oh, oh…"

"Yuk. What a mess."

Andy took a deep breath and patted my head, chuckling. "Not bad," he told me. "For a beginner."

I wiped my hand on his trousers.

"Hey!"

I put my face up to his. "I've seen Clare's," I told him.

"What! You —!"

I jumped up and ran laughing down through the grass and the bushes, down into the glen. He jumped up too, then cursed and hopped about, struggling to get his fly shut before he could chase me.