Intrusion

24. The Good Cop

Hugh didn’t know how long he’d been standing on tiptoe, leaning on his fingertips against the wall. Not knowing the length of time was, he was at some level aware, an intended result, a design feature of the procedure. He could see bright white light through the interweave of the bag over his head, and he could hear white noise through the headphones over his ears. Every so often the white noise would be replaced by jarring, jaunty music, or the sounds of weeping or screaming, and just as he’d got used to these and was beginning to tune them out, the white noise would rush back like incoming breakers. The tiny squares of white light danced and moved in front of his eyes, like pixels in an old low-res video game, and sometimes formed into swooping, attacking space fleets or flying shards of glass.

Every so often, when the pain in his fingers and arms and feet and the back of his legs became unbearable, he would let go and press his palms on the wall or his bare soles on the floor, and enjoy the relief for the second or two before the blow came to the inside of his leg or his groin or the side of his trunk below the ribs or the small of his back.

But it was while he was standing as instructed that he was, without warning, struck hard across the backs of his knees. He fell to the floor, banging his head against the wall on the way down. The phones and hood were snatched off his head while he was still sprawling, dazed, at the foot of the wall. He immediately placed his arms over his head, curled up and pulled up his legs.

‘Get up!’

The command came from a metre or two away, and rang like a shout in a public toilet. Hugh rolled to his knees, then to his feet, holding himself up against the wall.

‘Open your eyes and step away from the wall.’

Hugh opened his eyes, and closed them tight shut as the light hit them. He stepped away from the wall, swayed, and fell again. This time he didn’t bang his head, and the next time he got up he was able to stay on his feet and open his eyes. A man in the uniform of a Royal Marine sergeant stood in front of him, regarding him with a curious detachment. The room was tiled white, with a cork floor and a polystyrene ceiling. The door stood open.

‘After you,’ the marine said, gesturing to the doorway.

Staggering, cringing from the expected blow, Hugh made for the door. It gave on to a narrow corridor.

‘Left,’ said the marine.

Hugh walked on until ordered into a room to the side. It looked like a lecture room, with bright overhead lights, a blank white wall screen, and rows of chairs with built-in desks. The marine pushed him, not too hard, towards a desk at the front and told him to sit down. Then he went out. Hugh’s head slumped on his arms, across the desk.

‘Hello,’ said a new voice. Hugh looked up. A shaven-headed man a few years older than him, wearing plain trousers and an open-necked blue shirt, stood over him holding two cans of Coke.

‘No coffee, I’m afraid,’ the man said, with a light smile. He had a north London accent, clipped to posh. ‘Can’t risk any hot liquids being slung around, you see. Coke?’

Hugh managed to close his hand on the chilly can. His finger joints hurt. He was still trying to get a fingernail under the tab when the man grabbed a seat, swung it around, and sat down facing him, a metre and a half away. He watched Hugh prise open the can, spill a foamy dribble down his chin, and then force a sip down his throat.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to drink too much at once. You’ve had it rough, haven’t you? Those military types…’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘Carry on as if they were in a war zone. Never give you a chance to put your side of the story before they pile right in on you with the old routine. You’d almost think they enjoyed it. But they don’t, not really. They’re very professional. But rough, undeniably rough.’

He popped his own can and continued: ‘So, Hugh. This is your chance. Let me hear what you have to say for yourself. From what I’ve been told, it doesn’t look good for you, but I’m sure, you know, that you have your own version of events, and if it fits in with all the known facts and accounts for them in a different way – well! That’s you off the hook! No one would be happier than me – apart from you, of course – if this all turned out to be a ridiculous misunderstanding. Result!’ He smacked his palm with his fist, making Hugh wince. ‘I’d be absolutely delighted. Walk you to the gate, put you in a taxi back to Stornoway, slap-up dinner with your wife, night in a hotel, all on the taxpayers’ tab. Sounds good, yes?’

Hugh nodded.

‘On the other hand,’ said the man, standing up and pacing about, as if nervously, between the desks and the screen, ‘suppose you have something serious to get off your chest. What you’ve done might look bad to you. Maybe you’re afraid to admit it out loud. But even so, you’re in a far better position than you might expect if you just spill it all as soon as possible. Names, dates, plans, the lot. The more the better. A full and frank confession makes a good impression on a judge, you know, and I’m sure a smart brief could come up with all sorts of mitigating circumstances. Good Lord! I can reel off half a dozen myself, just off the top of my head. Previous good character. Father of a small child. Local ways, perhaps, about guns and so forth. Seriousness of the offence not realised. Led astray, maybe, by ruthless professionals. All that sort of thing.’

He stopped, by the white screen. Hugh squinted at him, through eyes half-shut against the glare.

‘I sometimes think,’ mused the man, ‘that we make a big mistake letting so many frightening rumours circulate. They work as a deterrent, I’ll give you that, but we seem to forget to balance this against the panic people get into when they’re facing charges like those you are. They may think that no matter what they do or say, life as they know it is over. That they’re doomed to vanish without trace into the… parallel detention system. The global gulag, as some very ill-informed journalists so frivolously call it. They really should read the book, you know, before bandying around terms like that.’

He gazed off into the middle distance for a moment. As the room’s venetian blinds were closed, this did not strike Hugh as a convincing pose.

‘All quite untrue,’ the man went on. ‘And yet, and yet…’ He sighed. ‘I’ve seen so many cases of people who held out, for days, months, years even, thinking that a confession would make things worse for them. Not true, not true at all. And when you see the state of them when they finally come out… Sad cases.’ He shook his head. ‘It makes you wonder what their lawyers were thinking of, it really does. No!’

He turned his head sharply and faced Hugh again.

‘No!’ he repeated. ‘All the grim stuff you’ve heard of – that only happens to those who don’t confess.’ He strolled over and resumed his seat. He took a sip of his Coke, and leaned forward.

‘So tell me, Hugh,’ he began, then jumped to his feet, knocking over the desk, and shoved his face right in front of Hugh’s, ‘WHERE DID YOU HIDE THAT FUCKING GUN AND WHY DID YOU HIDE IT?’

Hugh recoiled, splashing some of the cola, tipping the desk almost over. The man picked up his own seat, set it down and sat in it again, leaning forward, knees apart, arms on the desk.

‘I really do want to know, you know,’ he said. ‘Quite apart from the benefits to yourself of telling me, it really is driving me up the wall.’ He took another sip, and smiled thoughtfully. ‘You trained as an engineer, I understand. I have a smattering of physics myself. The military chaps, of course, all have a very solid scientific education. You see, don’t you, how deeply frustrating it is to be told something that violates the law of conservation of mass-energy?’

Hugh tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. He took a gulp of Coke. His arms felt like they’d been knotted from toy balloons, weak and swollen. They ached like he’d just done a thousand press-ups. His ears rang so much that he strained to hear the man speak. The urge to sleep was almost overpowering.

‘Did I say that?’ he said. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘You were interviewed after your arrest.’ He waved a hand, and the screen lit up. Hugh saw an image of himself shouting, in a desperate tone: ‘I told you! I told you before! I threw them away in the tunnel!’ There was a blur of motion across the screen, and then it went blank again. Hugh felt his hand lift slowly to his face, to meet a bruise over the cheekbone.

‘I remember now,’ he said.

He had the impression that it had gone on like that for hours, before he’d been made to stand against the wall. That would account for some of the other aches and pains.

‘A tad unprofessional,’ the man said. ‘They’re not supposed to leave visible marks, you know. Not when a court appearance is on the cards. But then… as I said, the frustration. It can get the better of the best of us.’

He brushed his palms against each other, briskly, twice. ‘But luckily for you, I didn’t have to listen through all that. I’ve come to this fresh, so to speak. Think of me as… well, supposing you were in a foreign country, and you’d got into trouble with the local police. Beaten up in the back room of the nick, slung into some stinking oubliette, bewildering charges laid against you. Think how pleased you’d be if the British consul turned up! There you are, over a cup of tea, together in private, knowing nothing you say goes beyond these walls. Think how you’d react – you’d tell him, or her, everything.’

He leaned back, opening his arms. ‘I’m that British consul, Hugh. I’m here to get you out. Or if that’s not possible, to save you from going back to the interrogation cells, and from there to worse places. Far worse. No matter what you’ve done, you have absolutely nothing to lose by telling me everything.’

‘I thought I had told them everything,’ Hugh said. He raised a hand, painfully. ‘Wait, don’t… don’t fly off the handle again. Please… bear with me, OK? I want to tell you everything. I’m honestly not sure what I said. I don’t even know what I’m accused of. Apart from having an air pistol, which it seems I’ve already admitted to. OK, I admit it again. I put my hands up to it.’ He tried the gesture, and failed. ‘Metaphorically, all right?’

The man nodded, looking sympathetic. ‘Yes, of course. Go on.’

‘I don’t know what I’m accused of, or what I’m charged with.’

‘Ah!’ The man grinned, raising a didactic finger. ‘Accused of, charged with. A valid distinction, and an interesting one. What you’re charged with are various offences under firearms, child protection, terrorism and so forth, all centred around keeping, carrying and then concealing an illegally held firearm. The terrorism bit comes in because you’ve stashed it in an area of ongoing military operations, which I take it refers to the aircraft taking off around here to stop the Russians from poking their nose-cones farther into Allied airspace. We’re on a Warm War front line, after all. All very much letter-of-the-law stuff, and they’ve thrown the book at you. If you get sent down for that, you’ll be in the regular prison system for decades and your wife gets done as an accomplice, seeing as she didn’t shop you when she had the chance, comprendez?’

‘Yes,’ Hugh croaked.

‘Now, I know what you’re going to say. This is a heck of a lot to throw at a chap because of an air pistol. Between ourselves, I quite agree. But like it or not, the law is clear on the point: Magnum, Glock, air pistol, replica, or even remotely realistic toy, all equally illegal. Because, you see, it’s not what it can do, it’s what someone might have a reasonable apprehension that it could do that turns it into a weapon. An instrument of intimidation, and therefore, potentially, of terrorism. Wave a spud gun around with a political motive, and – bang! You’re a terrorist!’

‘I understand that, but—’

‘Very good. Accused of, let’s say suspected of – different bucket of grief altogether. You’ve been in touch with two people who’ve previously confessed to offences under the Acts, you know. Still running around, free as birds. Why, you ask? Well! We’re all grown-ups here, nobody’s listening, and we’re not in the Labour Party. So we don’t have to pretend we don’t know what these confessions are worth. Not what I’d consider actionable intelligence, let’s say, but that’s what kicked this whole thing off. That, and the singularly unfortunate fact that the intelligence community has picked up some chatter recently from the Naxals, relating to Stornoway.’

‘Naxals in Stornoway?’ Hugh’s voice rose, an intonation he’d meant to sound like scorn and disbelief, but which came out dismayingly like surprise and delight.

The man waved a hand. ‘Naxals can pop up anywhere,’ he said. ‘Just your hard luck that the latest flap happens to be here. Or perhaps not entirely – your trip to Southall to book a flight to Prague didn’t help you at all. Throw in the visit and phone call from that woman Geena Fernandez, her friend Joseph Goonwardeene – you know how it is with the security boys. Paranoia is their profession.’ He smiled complicitly. ‘It isn’t mine.’

‘What is yours, then?’

The man put his elbows on the desk and wiped his fingers across his closed eyelids, brushing his eyebrows, then slid his hands to his temples and peered across at Hugh. He looked tired, suddenly, as if he’d been awake too long and the night had caught up with him.

‘Curiosity,’ he said. ‘No, seriously, Hugh. My job is getting people like you out of places like this. Do you have any idea of how much false positives cost the taxpayer in accommodation alone? How much of the time of skilled interrogators is wasted in extracting confessions from people who have nothing to confess? The sheer economic loss of taking innocent people out of the workforce? It would make your hair stand on end. And that’s leaving aside the cost of what happens when the subjects are cleared, if they ever are. Rehab where possible, compensation, legal costs… Honestly, in ten years of this I’ve saved HMG the cost of my entire projected lifetime employment plus pension a dozen times over. As for the political fallout – don’t get me started.’ He shook his head, and sighed. ‘Just don’t get me started.’

The man stood up and again began pacing around. Hugh eyed him warily, and tensed in his seat.

‘Speaking of not getting me started,’ the man said, ‘you don’t need to keep up the evasions. Your wife has given the police a full statement. The suicide box, the tearful conversation, the second sight, the land under the hill, what she saw and what you and the kiddie claimed to see in the tunnel, the lot. And her own troubles with the law and the health system. There’s nothing to hide any more, Hugh.’

He stood to the side of the screen, like a lecturer, and waited.

Hugh eased the heels of his hands from the inside edge of the desktop. He laid his arms lightly across it and let his legs stretch a little.

‘I didn’t mention any of that?’ he asked, impressed.

‘No,’ said the man. ‘Despite its being the sort of rigmarole that could have given the chaps pause. Are we, they might have asked themselves, trying to beat the truth out of a lunatic? Well, perhaps they wouldn’t have, but the ploy would have been worth a try, one would have thought. Been done, you know, been done. Extraordinary what some people can get up to. Heard of an Indian intelligence bod once, trained by yogis or some such, kept up the most…’ He snapped his fingers. ‘One for the memoirs. So, Hugh, no, you didn’t mention any of that.’

He tapped the screen, and an image came up, of jagged but approximately rectangular false-colour contours, like a mathematical diagram of some complex equation.

‘Let me tell you about the tunnel,’ he said. ‘Searched from end to end. Scanned with sub-millimetre radar. Police rescue probe plunged into the water at the bottom. Three metres deep, it goes, about two or three steps from where you turned back. No cracks in the concrete wider than a pinkie, through which the water seeps into the peat. Ten centimetres of accumulated detritus at the bottom, then solid rock. Search-and-rescue boys actually found three airgun pellets in the mud, quite easily, that’s how thorough the check was.’

He flicked with his middle finger, and another image came up. A big square, with the ghostly shape of a pistol wedged diagonally across it.

‘Drone shot of your jacket pocket,’ the man said. ‘Taken moments before you dropped into the gully. You can practically read the serial number. No question of it having been chucked before you entered the tunnel. No question at all of some piece of misdirection, like, say, one of the coppers picking it up on the way out. Every detail of every one of their movements was logged in real time on their lapel cameras.’ He snapped his fingers, and the screen went white. ‘Gone. Just like that. So where is it?’

Misdirection, Hugh thought. Like a magic trick. Maybe there was something there he could work with, but first…

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to provoke you or anything, but why does it matter so much? We’re talking about a thing that can kill a rabbit, or put an eye out if you’re careless. From the way the other guys were shouting, it was like they thought I’d set up some kind of, uh, dead drop, isn’t that what you call it? For some terrorist or spy to pick up later. Well, I can see that could be worth doing with explosives or actual guns, but – an air pistol?’

The man clicked his tongue. ‘You’d be surprised what can be done with an air pistol. Take what you’ve just said. Shoot a soldier’s eye out from ten paces, get your timing right, and you can relieve him of whatever weapon he has. And you’re off. People have built armies that way. And you’d be surprised how important it might be, in some circumstances, to shoot a rabbit. No smoke. No explosive traces to worry about. Very little sound. Stuff like that. Just a thought. But that isn’t what’s worrying the chaps, and what’s worrying me. Proof of concept, that’s the worry. If you’ve found, or been shown, a way to disappear a chunk of metal in full view of half a dozen people, what else is possible?’

Hugh took a deep breath. ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t understand that before. Maybe if they’d explained… but anyway. Can I tell you how it seemed to me, in the culvert?’

‘Oh, please do. And do stop cringing. I promise not to hit you, or even yell at you.’

‘All right. I didn’t see a pool of water. It was like the tunnel ended with an opening on a steep hillside. I saw a landscape, like the real one but at a different time, maybe in an ice age. Or maybe just after one, you know? In the sunshine beyond winter.’

‘In the sunshine beyond winter?’ The man seemed a little surprised, and to be turning the phrase over in his mind.

‘Yes. And when the police came, I threw the air pistol and the box of pellets out of the opening and… into that landscape. I threw them hard, but it wasn’t like… a good strong fling.’

‘Indeed not,’ said the man. ‘You threw like a girl.’

‘I couldn’t get my arm back,’ Hugh said, defensively. ‘I heard them fall, like on scree, not far down the hill. And I’m sure if you have such good images as you say you have of what happened, they’ll show how my arm moved, the speed of it, the force. They might even show the trajectory of the gun and the box leaving my hand.’

‘As it happens,’ said the man, ‘they don’t. They show the throw. They also show the steep, sloping roof of the culvert right in front of you. They don’t actually show the objects bouncing off, but your hand is in the way and the imaging is far from perfect.’

‘Do you have these images?’ Hugh asked. ‘Can you show me them?’

‘Of course.’ The man snapped with several fingers in succession. The screen lit up with a view, jumpy but clearer than Hugh had expected, of him and Nick and Hope, crowded together and bending over in the low, narrow space, seen from behind. It perturbed Hugh to see the light reflected off the water in front of his feet, and the sloping ceiling a metre and a half or so in front of his face. He saw his struggle to get something out of his pocket, Hope’s grab, his throw. No glimpse of what he’d thrown. Then the figures turned around, Hugh first, getting between Nick and the end of the tunnel, Hope momentarily obscuring the view of both of them. They began to move forward. The viewpoint backed off. They remained in view all the way up the tunnel. Then the light, and blurred images as Hope was grabbed.

‘That was from one camera?’

‘Yes.’

‘Show me the others.’

The man did. They were much the same; different angles, different obscurities, each sequence ending with a blur of motion as Nick and then Hugh were grabbed.

‘Well, there you are,’ Hugh said.

‘What?’ The man looked at the final still, bright and blurry.

‘It’s obvious,’ said Hugh. ‘I don’t know about you, but I can just about get my head around the idea of second sight. But not Tir Nan Og.’

The man looked puzzled.

‘Call it fairyland,’ Hugh explained. ‘Or another dimension. Or the past or the future as places you could walk into, or throw things into. Would you agree?’

‘I’m with you there,’ the man said.

‘OK. And to be honest, I don’t buy the second sight either.’ He tapped his forehead, and discovered another bruise. He winced and went on. ‘I may get hallucinations, but I’m not crazy. Not now. In there, in the culvert, I maybe was crazy. In some kind of delusional dwam.’

Another puzzled look.

‘Altered state of consciousness. I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t remember what I did. But think what must have happened. I threw the air pistol and the box hard. They must have hit what was right in front of me and bounced off. They might not have fallen in the water. They might have landed at my feet. The box wasn’t strong or tightly closed, so a couple of pellets might have fallen from it, the ones the probe found. Anyway, there I am, stooped over, turning around, behind Nick and Hope. You can’t see my arms, you can’t see much of me at all in any of these. So I have a moment to kick the pistol and the box forward, snatch them up, maybe stick them in my pocket or up the sleeve of my jacket. I don’t know. It’s what you said about misdirection that got me thinking this.’

‘Misdirection!’ the man said, sounding pleased. ‘Now that you mention it, what evidence do we have from these images that the pistol and box left your hands at all?’

‘Exactly,’ said Hugh. ‘I might not have let go.’

‘So one way or another, you could have had them on you when you came out of the culvert. Then what?’

Hugh shrugged, painfully. ‘Ask the guy who grabbed me. Local copper, a Leosach – a Lewis man, I know that from his voice. For all I know, he might know my father. He might even have known me, when we were both kids. Anyway, he’d have seen the gun from the probe images, know how seriously the authorities take that, but still have the Leosach laid-back attitude about guns himself. He might have tried to get me off the hook.’

‘Interfering with evidence? Perverting the course of justice? Serious accusations to make against a police officer.’

‘I know,’ said Hugh. ‘And I don’t want to get whoever it was into trouble. But the thing is, it does happen sometimes. And things vanishing into thin air… that doesn’t happen, ever.’

He didn’t believe a word of it.

The man stared at him for a moment.

‘Don’t go away,’ he said, as if making a joke, and left the room. Hugh didn’t watch him go. He could have vanished into thin air. He sipped the remaining Coke, now flat. More than once his head fell forward, jolting him awake.

The man returned, with the marine sergeant.

‘Sorry, old chap,’ the man said. ‘They’re not buying it. I did my best, but…’

He turned to the marine and said, in a quite different tone: ‘Let him have some sleep before the next session.’