Intrusion

25. The Unsmoking Gun

Hugh sat on the edge of a narrow metal shelf with a foam mattress and no other bedding, and gazed across at a toilet bowl with no seat a metre or so away, and a tap above a metal bowl fixed in the wall beside it. Two neat stacks, of sheets of toilet paper and of paper towels, lay beside the washstand. After the tiled room, the cell’s fittings seemed like scenery. There was no window. One of the panels in the ceiling had a light behind it, silhouetting half a dozen dead flies. Nothing was too good for this cell’s residents. Wildlife, even. No expense spared. His body ached all over, even more than it had done in the lecture room with the man. He had drunk some cold water from the tap, he’d pissed, and he’d washed his face and neck and dried them with the scratchy paper towels. His skin itched in various places, mostly over flesh too bruised to scratch. (He’d scratched anyway.) He had no idea what the time was, but he knew he had slept.

He was not even bored. Every minute here was a minute not in the tiled room, or in one of the worse places the man had warned him about. He picked at the edge of the foam mattress. It was about ten centimetres thick and had been quite comfortable to sleep on. He found he couldn’t pick away any bits from the edge, but it wasn’t clear whether the foam was too strong to tear – perhaps the material was designed that way, so that prisoners couldn’t damage it or self-harm with it – or whether his fingers were too weak or too sore to apply enough force to tear it. There must be some way of finding out which it was. This problem occupied his mind for some time.

He was plucking at the front of his shirt and not getting anywhere when the door clanged open. A couple of orderlies in scrubs stepped inside.

Here it comes, he thought. The next session. He brought his knees to his chin and wrapped his arms around his head.

One of the orderlies laughed. ‘They learn fast.’

‘On your feet, chum,’ the other said. ‘Come on. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Not unless you stay there.’

Hugh expected this was a trick, but he unfolded his limbs and stood up anyway. They took an arm each and led him out of the cell. Corridor, turn, corridor, door, then double doors and a corridor with carpets and lights and partitions with sounds of office life behind them. They turned him into a cubicle with a desk and three chairs. On the floor beside the rubbish bin were his boots, belt and socks. His jacket and fleece hung from a coat-hanger hooked over the top of a partition.

‘Sit down.’

Hugh complied.

‘Put your boots and socks on.’

Hugh tried. The socks had been washed and dried. He got them on eventually, and his feet into his boots, but he fumbled the laces. One of the orderlies stooped, tightened the laces a little, and tied them loosely. The boots still felt too tight.

‘Stay there.’ It didn’t sound like a joke.

Hugh nodded. They went away. Hugh stared at the desk, and fumbled his belt through the loops. He kept missing loops and having to go back.

‘Ah, good morning,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Coffee?’

The man came in carrying two plastic cups of coffee and a clutch of sachets.

‘Sugar, whitener,’ he said, putting them down. He sat behind the desk, and flashed a wink. ‘Reckon we can risk hot drinks now, eh?’

Hugh picked up a cup and sipped black coffee, scalding his tongue.

The man leaned sideways and pulled out a drawer of the desk. He took out and placed on the desk a ziplock plastic bag. It contained an air pistol, and a tattered carton from which one or two pellets had spilled in the bag.

‘Recognise this?’ he said. ‘Take your time.’

Hugh stared down at the pistol, through the transparent plastic.

‘Pick it up and have a look,’ said the man. ‘Go on. Just don’t do anything impulsive.’

Hugh did, and didn’t, as instructed (though he had a wild, vivid momentary daydream of tearing it from the bag and leaping out and contriving a hostage situation; he could feel the heat of a woman’s body through a thin blouse, he could smell the hair on the back of her head…).

He knew nearly every scratch on the thing. Those he didn’t recognise were fresh. He put it down.

‘It’s mine,’ he said.

‘The one you said you threw away in the culvert?’

‘Yes.’

‘The one you might, by sleight of hand, have removed from the culvert?’

‘Yes, that one,’ said Hugh, irritated.

‘Hmm.’ The man cupped an elbow and lipped a knuckle. ‘Odd. Care to guess where it was found?’

‘In the culvert?’ Hugh hazarded.

‘Don’t try my patience,’ said the man. ‘We’ve been over that. So to speak.’

‘Stornoway Police Station?’

‘Much better. It was delivered there earlier this morning. In this evidence bag. By a policeman who has excellent recordings to show that he was called by your father in the wee sma’ hours, that he drove to the Old Manse at first light, and was shown to a locked metal safe in the utility meter cupboard.’

‘The one under the stairs?’

‘Yes. He was handed a key, and he opened the safe himself. The lock, he said, was very stiff. Inside the safe were these items, along with a very old but still valid firearms licence, naming your father as the responsible owner and you as a permitted user.’

Hugh closed his eyes and opened them. ‘How the fuck did these get there?’

‘You tell me. Your father claims he was up half the night worrying, suddenly remembered the certificate and wondered if it might be of some help to your defence, searched high and low for the key, found the things in the safe, and immediately rang the police station. He says he’d taken for granted that you took the gun with you when you left home, because you’d always kept it close to hand. Quite gobsmacked to find it there. Swears he hadn’t looked in the safe for years.’

‘Is he saying it must have been in the safe all along?’

‘I’ve told you what he’s saying. The only evidence we have that says anything different is various recordings – the self-surveillance, and the confessions and interrogations – of you and your wife talking about it. And we already know that your wife is loyal and you have hallucinations.’

‘What about the drone sensor image?’

The man blinked rapidly. ‘What image?’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m talking about the evidence we have. Evidence that could be produced in court and backed up by police testimony.’ He shifted one shoulder and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I don’t think we want to go there.’

The coffee was safe to drink now. Hugh gulped it.

‘So what happens now?’ he asked.

‘You’re free to go.’

Hugh stared at him. ‘And my wife and my son?’

‘Waiting for you at the police station, with your parents. You’re all out of trouble. Free and clear.’

Hugh still couldn’t believe it.

‘And the other people, the people in London, Geena and, uh, Joe? All the conspiracies that got thrown at me between punches?’

‘Oh, that,’ the man said. ‘That stuff only got on your wife’s profile because of Islington Social Services, and I don’t doubt the audit trail for this whole disgraceful hoo-ha leads straight back to them. That’ll go on my report, don’t you worry. And I’ve reset the parameters on your good lady’s profile. She’d practically have to starve a kid, beat it and sell it before she gets flagged up as an unfit mother. You needn’t expect any more trouble from that quarter. Nor from the police, or the security services, as long as you keep your nose clean. As things stand, there’s no evidence that any crime has been committed at all.’

Hugh looked down at the air pistol, still in the bag. ‘There might be fingerprints, DNA traces…’

‘Are you trying to get yourself back in trouble?’

‘I’m just not sure I’m out of it. I keep expecting a trick.’

‘Trust issues,’ the man said, nodding. ‘You’re going to have these, or so the shrinks tell me. No, really, you’re free to go. Fingerprints, DNA… the local plod didn’t have time for that, but we’ve had a quick look in the lab, and it’s all very messy. You must have let your little pals get their grubby paws all over it when you were a lad.’

Hugh had never let any of his friends know about the air pistol, let alone touch it. He looked the man in the eye and nodded firmly.

‘Yeah, ’fraid so. Lesson learned.’

He stood up, slowly, and moved to reach for his jacket and fleece. The man jumped up and held them for him as he put his arms down the sleeves.

‘Thanks,’ said Hugh.

‘No hard feelings, eh?’

The weight of the jacket, or maybe the torch and radio and battery that had been placed in its pockets, was already making Hugh’s shoulders ache. He shrugged anyway.

‘None at all.’

He stuck out a hand to shake. The man, instead, handed him the bag with the gun.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours, and it’s legal.’

Hugh put it in his pocket, and the man sat back down at the desk. He put on glasses, and started rattling his fingers on the table, as if he’d forgotten about Hugh and was already busy on another problem.

Hugh hesitated. The man looked up.

‘Someone will see you out,’ he said.

Hugh saw two Military Police approaching, and he couldn’t help but feel for a moment dread rather than relief. Trust issues. He took a grip on himself and stepped firmly out of the cubicle into the aisle to meet them.

‘Oi!’ the man called out. ‘Wait a mo!’

Hugh stood still, feeling as if a huge weight that had been lifted from his shoulders had just crashed down again, then stepped back into the opening of the cubicle.

‘One last thing,’ the man said, frowning at him over the top of his glasses. ‘I almost forgot. Speaking of shrinks. In case you happen to consult one over those hallucinations you’ve been having, or anything else… If I were you, I’d keep my trap shut on any mention of seeing visions of past or future ice ages. Particularly future. “The sunshine beyond winter”, and all that. Good grief! What were you thinking?’ He shook his head, as if in disbelief. ‘Not a word, in these or any other circumstances. That kind of loose talk can bring a chap right back up on the radar, flashing bright green. Know what I mean?’

Hugh was still having trust issues when the two Military Police dropped him off from the unmarked car outside the police station, and waited at the kerb, engine running, until he went inside. His legs shook as he stepped over the threshold. He opened the swing door to the reception area with a hand that pushed only with its fingertips.

Sitting on plastic chairs at the side of the room were Nigel, Hope and Nick. Nigel’s suit was grubby, and he looked exhausted, his face deeply lined, as if he’d aged five years overnight. Hope was staring straight ahead. Nick saw him first and jumped up and ran to him and hurled himself into Hugh’s open arms, and Hugh forgot the pain. He looked over Nick’s head, buried in his shoulder, and saw Hope still seated. She gazed at him as if afraid he wasn’t there, or as if he might be snatched away at any moment. One of her hands was closed, on her lap, and the other held an open plastic water bottle. Still staring at him, she clapped one hand to her mouth, and followed it with a long swig from the water bottle. She set the bottle down on the floor, and stood up, and walked towards him, smiling like a suicide bomber.