by Denise Mina
“Hmm.” She continued looking through her notes. “D’you watch a lot of cop shows on TV?”
He checked with Harold and Harold nodded him on. “No. I’m at boarding school, we don’t get to watch much TV.”
“You don’t get to have a car either.” She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. “No, the reason I’m asking is because I wonder if you’ve ever heard of ‘the prisoner’s dilemma’?”
“Is that a cop show?”
“No.”
Jonathon looked quite amused by this train of conversation and pushed himself away from the table, swinging on the back two legs of the chair. “What is it then?”
“Two guys in two rooms being questioned about the same events. Yeah?”
He nodded.
“Both want to keep it a secret. Suppose, for example, they’ve done a bad thing.” She gave him a hard look. “If you can imagine that scenario.”
He sucked his cheeks in as though killing a smile.
“These two guys in the two rooms have done a bad thing together. And they’ve been caught—”
“Or given themselves up,” he said.
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, in one scenario they’re sneaking off,” he smirked. “In the other they’ve—you know—done the deciding.”
“I see.” She nodded at Harold. “An interesting distinction. So the two guys are in two different rooms and neither of these guys knows what the other one is saying about what happened. They give different versions. I was out of the room the whole time, say stuff like that.” She dropped her voice and smiled, conspiratorial, as if she was sharing a family receipt: “We work out what happened from the contradictions.”
He let his chair drop forward onto all fours. “Don’t they just blame each other?”
“Well, that can happen, yes, sometimes, classic episode.” She nodded happily. “They give each other up. One says ‘he did everything, I’m innocent,’ the other one says, ‘no, it was him, I’m the innocent party.’ Quite the conundrum for the police. Then we have to fall back on our physical evidence, try to piece it together. Work out what happened. Course, it costs more because the case goes to court, everyone pleading innocence and that, but ye get that pay-off, you know?” She smacked her lips. “Sentences are much longer. The feeling that everything’s been looked at and looked under, cross-examined, pulled apart…”
Jonathon smiled and licked his lips, pushed back, rocked his chair again. “Is that what’s happening here?”
“No. Here you’re saying he did it and you happen to have lots of physical evidence that he did it. In your version you did nothing and all the physical evidence about what you did is missing. Isn’t that a stroke of luck? Apparently you were off saying your prayers while it happened.”
He sat forward and nodded seriously. “OK.”
She looked at him and at Harold and found them both looking smug. She turned a page of her notes. “Oh.” She looked closer at the page. “Oh, dearie me. Two sets of footprints are stamped all over Sarah’s soft face.” She looked up and smiled. “What kind of prayer is that? I’m not religious so—”
Jonathon shot forwards. “No—”
“OK.” Harold stood up. “We’re stopping here for a comfort break.”
Morrow looked confused.
“That,” he said, “is aggressive, intimidating questioning of a minor.”
She stood up very slowly, holding her stomach and giving him a wolfish smile. “Harold, are you a lawyer?”
Harold snorted indignantly through his nose. “We want a comfort break.”
Morrow slapped shut the folder on the desk. “Take as long as you like. I’m finished. You’ll be taken downstairs now and charged.”
Jonathon stood up. “Then can I go home?”
Morrow widened her eyes at Harold. “No, Jonathon, you’ll be taken to court and they decide.”
“And they’ll let me go home?” Suddenly panicked, he looked tearfully from Harris to Morrow to Harold.
No one answered. In the pause Morrow saw something die in Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon’s eyes.
She slipped his gaze, ashamed of the glee she felt at the death of hope in a child. She picked up her folder. “You’ll be taken downstairs now and charged with Sarah Erroll’s murder…”
FORTY-NINE
A wall, a gray wall, not the car. Not in the car now, out of the car. A gray wall in a bare cell. Nothing in it but a short bench attached to a wall. When he sat down on it he was facing the door with a handle and a lock, a big lock that had screws in it and a slat for looking through and it was too much information so he shut his eyes and didn’t look anymore and found he could breathe. It was a small room. Thomas nodded to himself. It was a small room.
Outside, in the corridor, people moved around, shuffling, speaking sometimes. That was too much. He was sliding.
Feet moved towards his door, a hand slid over the metal, precursor to a key jabbing blindly at the lock. Thomas sat with his eyes shut and shuddered.
The door opened, light burned into him, his chin buckled at the horror of being looked at, and a commanding, fatherly voice said, “Out, mate. Come on.”
He was shivering. His hands were welded to the bench, his ankles soft at the thought of having to stand up, step out into the world and be seen. I can’t do this.
“Come on, out.”
Thomas stood up. He staggered once but managed to stand, opened his eyes wide enough to look at the ground in front of him. He shuffled over the threshold, into the day, into the corridor with other people in it.
“They’re waiting for you upstairs. Scottish. Two women.” He said it as if it was lucky, as if he’d lucked out having two women to question him. Thomas stood still. The man seemed to be looking at him, he saw his feet pointed towards him. “Got an appropriate adult to talk to you. Tell you what’s going on.”
He was staring at him; Thomas felt he needed to show him that he wasn’t mental. He looked up at the policeman, a fat man, and was surprised to hear himself say, “OK.”
Relieved, the officer jolted forward to a side door, keeping Thomas in front of him. He showed him around the corridor to the meeting room, pointing him in the right direction with jabs of his fat finger.
Into a room, a bigger room, no windows. A camera in the high corner, sitting on a corner shelf made of plywood. A man at a table. Gray hair, gray face, gray fingernails.
The man smelled of cigarettes. He slumped the same way Thomas slumped. They took either side of the table, knees avoiding the table legs, facing away from each other. Thomas found it hard to listen. He was to be questioned by officers from Strathclyde Police about a murder. He could answer or not answer but both would damn him. He’d had a gun and bullets on him. This was bad. He would have to explain. Explain. He, the cigarette man, the stale, smoky, depressed man would explain when things happened. Thomas stopped listening. When he tuned back in the man told him he could ask. He didn’t really know what he was supposed to ask about but his lips were too heavy to ask for clarification.
“THOMAS!” The man wanted his attention. Thomas gave it to him. “Do you understand me?”
His teeth were as yellow as kippers, as if he’d been sucking his cigarettes, dipping them in yellow wine and sucking the brown tar and rolling it between his teeth. He was disgusting. His gray eyebrows were raised in a gray question. Thomas nodded to make him stop asking him things. He nodded and nodded and then knew it was too much and stopped.
The man got up slowly, moved around to the wall behind Thomas, pulling a chair over. Thomas didn’t turn but heard him sit down by the wall. When he turned to look the man had a spiral notebook flipped to the first page and a pen poised over it, ready to write. He leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. Thomas turned away.
They waited in the silent room for a long time.
Ella came to see him off. The police arrived. Moira let them in and brought them upstairs and said “There he is,” or “He’s t
here,” something simple, and they stood over him reciting a sort of prayer, monotone. They waited for him to react and then they took him, lifting him from Ella’s sofa by the elbows, telling him “Up” and “Come on, up onto your feet.”
It felt so right for them to come. Like hall monitors finding a lost first-year in a corridor and taking him to his classroom. Like an unaccompanied child holding the hand of a pretty stewardess. It was too much for him to take in, all the flight boards when he couldn’t read very well, all the time zones, because Mexico City was a long way away and he didn’t even know when to eat. Lars left on business the day after he arrived.
The hall monitors noticed his trousers sagging. What is this in your pocket. Sorry, spread your arms, yes, just a moment, no, stay that way. Thanks. Anything else? Any needles on you?
Ella got out of bed. She was in the doorway between her living room and her bedroom and she looked at him and she caught his eye and she saw then, that he was where she was, but he’d never had the chance to say it or tell her. They spoke to each other as two strange men in uniforms patted his legs and pockets and found the clips. She watched them take the gun from his pocket and she licked her lips and glanced back at him. She looked hurt, too depressed for palliative lies. She looked hurt but she blinked and pressed her lips together, part reproach, part apology.
Moira had changed her clothes. She had changed into the leather trousers from the stairs and a cream blouse with ruffles all down the front. She was gulping for air and tugging at the ruffles and a price tag hung from the label at the back.
She couldn’t come with him, she told the police stewardesses, because her daughter was gravely ill and she had called the doctor and he was due at any moment. There was no one else. To go with him. There was no one else. She tugged the ruffles on her shirt so hard the front of her bra was visible and beneath that, on her stomach, a wrinkled crease like a smile. There was no one else.
He was outside then, suddenly, in the open air, a hand on his head, pressing hard, making him corkscrew at the knees, until they sat him in the back seat and shut the door. He looked back up to the door and saw her, Ella. Tiny. She stood in the huge entrance, watching him drive away, her mouth slack, tears rolling down her cheeks. Moira behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder and Ella, feral, snapping her teeth at Moira’s hand.
In the still room, the door opened. Two people came in—one round like Santa Claus, one a slim woman. He looked up. Two suits, navy blue and black. Slim was small, big nose, pretty. The other, blonde hair, tall, big shoulders, dimples. Amazonian. Pregnant. Stern.
Folder on the table. A green cardboard folder with sheets of lined foolscap, scribbled on, handwritten. Photos of things. He could see the top of the pictures.
Introductions. Names. Cassette tapes. He’d never seen one before. Out of the cellophane wrapper, into a machine. A waspish buzz filled the room and the pregnant one asked him his name.
“Thomas Anderson.” He was surprised by how well it had gone, his speaking. His voice sounded fine.
She asked him another question, did he know what was going on, or something, and he said yes. But then it was dates, and that Monday, and he didn’t really know what she was asking about. The sentences were too long, he couldn’t hold the head until she got to the tail of these great snaky sentences.
They looked at each other for a while. She asked if he was all right. He said he was.
“Do you know Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon?”
He caught a breath and shrugged with one shoulder.
“The boys at school call him,” she glanced at her notes, “‘Squeak.’ ”
“I’m at school with him.”
“Do you know him?”
He looked at the women. The pregnant one was looking at him intently, blue eyes heavy-lidded. The pretty one looked hard at the table. This was an important question. His future might hang in the balance but he couldn’t focus. This was a trap.
“No. I don’t know him.” This was a trap trap trap.
“He says he knows you.”
“We don’t know each other.” That was true.
“Have you spoken to him since you left school on Tuesday?”
“No.”
“You didn’t phone each other?”
Just say no. Say no. “No.”
“Did he call you?”
The sim card was in the toilet in Biggin Hill airfield. They couldn’t prove Squeak had called him or that it was his mobile number. It was in the toilet.
“We don’t know each other.” But Donny McD had the same number for him. Lie to them. Just say no. “He phoned me but I don’t know him, I didn’t even answer the phone. I don’t know him.” That was true. That bit was true.
“You don’t know him?”
“No.” He said it certainly, knowing he was on safe ground, knowing it was true.
“How did you know he phoned you if you didn’t answer?”
“Well…” How did he know? “Well, his name came up on the screen.”
“What did it say?”
“Said ‘Squeak.’” Thomas blushed because what she said next was obvious:
“You don’t know him but you had his number in your phone, listed under his nickname?”
Thomas blushed and shuddered. Stander. Vulnerable. Things to hide. Found out. He felt himself slide sideways, as though he was melting, as though the heat of shame had melted half his face and he was melting sideways through the room like a pool of mercury flinching from her touch. But the questions went on as he flowed downhill, about Monday night and Sarah Erroll until he felt the words pop from his mouth.
“Her address was on Lars’s phone.”
A pause. “When did you get it?”
“January.”
“Months ago. Why did you go to her house?”
“Lars—”
“Lars sent you?” She was hungry now the answers were coming, interrupted him when he was fishing a sentence out from deep down. He looked at her hands, rolling his eyes back to tell her how hard it was, speaking, and she sat back, leaving him room.
“Lars took me out. Sunday. Sunday before that Monday. Ice cream.”
Lars took him out for ice cream. For ice cream. As if he was Ella. And in the room were other men in suits with kids, unhappy men and unhappy children who bore a faint resemblance to one another, like a grooming parlor for incestuous pedos. Thomas was the oldest by years. Lars bought him the biggest ice cream and he knew the news was going to be bad. He thought Lars had cancer. But it wasn’t cancer.
“What did he say to you on that Sunday?”
The memory made Thomas feel so heavy he could barely shrug.
At the sprinkles: I have another wife. Digging through vanilla and bloody sauce, crystals of ice binding the balls of ice cream together. Other children. Very much want you to meet. Philip. Fillip. Fillip. And a photo, smiling fillip. Beachy smiles. Down to the fruit, pointless, as if the damage of the sick-making cream could be mitigated by tinned pineapple, cut small into little rays of syrup-sun. Coming to St. Augustus. You and he will be friends. And everyone will know you are a cunt. And everyone will laugh in your fucking face because you were never the One Son, never the only begotten. And Thomas asked his father, why have you forsaken me? And his father told him not to be a child and waved to the waitress for the bill.
In the present, in the room, the women were looking at him, craning in to hear his thoughts. He spoke:
“Got another family. Another son. Coming to my school. I was upset. Thought it was her.” He looked at the green folder. “Sarah.”
“Did you tell Squeak about it?”
“Only because he had the car. We don’t know each other.” And they didn’t. They really didn’t.
“Did you go there to kill her?”
“No. Scare her. Lars.” He fell away to muttering the middles of words floating in space—impress him—stand up—don’t take shit—know he’d love it.
Did he kill Sarah Erroll?
&nb
sp; Floating off in words, a cloud of mumbles, a stormy cloud churning words and smack on the table and a loud shout—Did he kill Sarah Erroll?
Thomas looked at the pregnant woman, at this virgin filled with the promise of a new life, blonde, like Mary in the nativity, blonde and his face began to cry, his eyes began to cry and he told her what he thought. “Worse. Standing. Watching. Doing nothing. It’s worse.”
She showed him photos of the house, the bedroom, the kitchen, of Sarah Erroll at the foot of the stairs, her face gone, her head gone, her life gone, and he thought of the horse in Guernica and he thought of the lucky wasps dying and he lost all his words. Except one word. And he said that one over and over, always with the same intonation, an incantation: worse.
And then they put him back into the small room and let him sleep.
Morrow stood in the security queue at Gatwick airport, seventy people in front of her, but ready, holding her laptop and a ziplock plastic bag with a lonely ChapStick in it, waiting. Last flight home. They were lucky. Leonard was behind her, carrying the notes. The babies were leaping hard on her pelvis, cheerleaders for life, telling her not to give up, not to get sucked down.
It was the hardest interrogation she’d ever done. Low before she started, tired before she started, she saw the despair in Thomas Anderson and knew what he was thinking though he said very little. Lars had killed him over the ice cream. Lars had wiped out his significance and his identity over the ice cream. He had wiped out the meaning of his mother. There was another. He had wiped out the significance of him by having another son, loving another son, and she knew from her own experience that what haunted him more than anything was the suspicion that his father loved the other son and was kind to him and proud of him. Danny had that same look in his eye, a lack, a suspicion that there were children in the world who were beloved when he wasn’t. That’s what she couldn’t look at in him. That’s what she had avoided all these years.