by Ken MacLeod
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.’
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 ai
r 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.