This Thing of Darkness (22 page)

Our interrogations of Bentley and the others.

Any leads we have on the Stonemonkey.

Any accumulated forensic evidence. Any CCTV pictures. Any e-fit images.

I do, of course, know a lot of the answers and my recall for these things is always good. On the other hand, I
have
been on the inquiry part-time only and that has placed limits on how much detail I have at my command. I say so too. ‘You picked the wrong person. I’m junior and I’m part time. I’ll give you what I have, but there’s lots I just don’t know.’

The Voice says, ‘I accept that. Just make sure you tell me everything you do have.’

That threat – that promise – flickers over this whole thing. Be good: and they’ll let me go. Be bad: and they’ll kill me.

I believe the threat, but not the promise. There isn’t, in theory, a crime worse than murder, but our life sentences don’t usually mean a full life term. Most regular murderers in Britain have at least a shot at parole. A chance to see their last arthritic sunsets from a window without bars. A final glimpse of winter sunshine. But no Home Secretary likes releasing cop killers, which means that parole is seldom offered to those who have killed serving officers. Their lives are finished from the moment the handcuffs snap over their wrists. Bleep, bleep. Game over. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200. These walls are now for ever.

All that says that the Voice and his merry men will be reluctant to kill me. Reluctant to commit that greatest of all crimes.

Except, except. These guys are already drenched in blood. Already at the point where returning were as tedious as go o’er. They’re not, now, considering the magnitude of a possible sentence, merely fixed only on ensuring that we, the police, never catch up with them.

So I think they’ll complete this little interrogation. Get what they need. Kill me. Dispose of my corpse. Dump my car a long way from this barn. And bet that the police would never be able to put the clues together.

And that bet would, I think, be a good one. I don’t think we’d have enough to go on. A terrible crime, yes, but one that would never be prosecuted.

I am beginning to think it would be a good idea to get out of here soon.

But before then: more questions.

When the Voice wants a break, he takes one. Maybe five minutes. Once maybe more like an hour or two. The goons are never both visible at the same time. I assume they’re doing turn and turn about now. Eight hours on, eight hours off. Something like that. They needed two to abduct me. Right now, a kitten could master me.

And as for me, no breaks. When the others leave, I’m just left on my chair, facing my own image on screen. I’d try to get some sleep, but I can’t do it. I’m far too cold now, and achey. Though I can shift my bum an inch or two, I can’t stretch. My hands, I notice, are purple with restricted blood flow. Part purple, part white with cold.

And the bad bit hasn’t yet started
, I think.
The bad bit hasn’t yet started
.

32

Dawn. Fogged and dim behind the cobwebbed windows.

The questions still come.

An endless flow. Precisely delivered. Without emotion. Even as I feel my own answers slur and get stupider, I note the Voice remains in complete command of his faculties.

And though the questions still pour, their nature has changed. They’ve broken up, turbulent and uneasy, like a sheet of smooth water hitting rock.

So, for example, the Voice might ask about the Stonemonkey at one point, then ask about Atlantic Cables customer lists in his very next question. I think he probably has a transcript of my earlier answers with him. I suspect him of flipping pages, leaping from one thing to another.

I do my best to keep up.

I make errors, of course. Errors and omissions. Ones he pounces on, and with sharpness. ‘That’s not correct. That’s not consistent with your earlier response. Do you understand the consequence of lying?’

My head sags. I’m mostly not looking at the screen now, just down at my lap. I can feel the first flicker of hallucination playing beyond the rim of my vision, like a rugby game happening just out of sight.

I only vaguely hear my answers. ‘Yes. Understand. Earlier response probably right. Was trying to say . . .’ And I go on, trying to stitch together a fabric that will hold together under this assault.

And I haven’t lied. Not once. Not by choice. But I also feel certain he hasn’t yet asked the question that brought me here.

I feel exhausted. Wrung out. But not yet at the point of collapse.

That will come, of course, but we’re not there yet.

Some time, a few hours after dawn, there’s another change.

The Voice changes timbre, tone, intelligence.

This one is more literal. This one is definitely reading my answers off a document. He doesn’t understand it too well. Whereas the earlier Voice never showed direct anger, this one makes repeated leaps into blunt aggression. ‘Don’t lie. You’re lying. You know the consequences.’ Those things, shouted.

I’m pretty sure that this ‘Voice’ belongs to one of the goons in the inner room. The first voice was, I assume, altered and disguised by some sound modification software. Disguised enough to stop me from identifying my interrogator in any later encounter. This new one mimics the approximate pitch and tone of the first one, but not all that closely. Not enough to fool me. And, in any case, the stream of questioning, the language used, feels quite different. This has become like one of those old-fashioned pre-PACE Act police interrogations. Thuggish, brutal, effective.

I do what I need to do.

Answer the questions. Sag under the threats.

Sleep flickers around me all the time, as though this whole thing is unscrolling in half dream.

At one point I ask for food and water. Get both. One and a half bananas. Another glass of water. I say I need to pee. The goon just shrugs and says, ‘Then pee.’

I assume this phase of things lasts only as long as the Voice himself needs for rest. Say what you like, there are some things you just can’t delegate. Extracting information. Directing torture. It’s tough at the top.

Questions shout at me through the speakers.

I tell them what they want to hear.

Light shifts without sound.

My head weighs a million tonnes and my body is nowhere at all.

I do notice – or is this already psychosis? – that the smaller door set into the larger one shifts a little in the wind. I think,
They haven’t even bothered to lock it
.
I could just walk right out of here
.

Useless thoughts.

They haven’t bothered to lock the door, because I am completely powerless. I can’t move an inch and they know it.

Questions.

Answers.

Threats.

The world balling up into a single cold ache. A ball of exhaustion.

Then the Voice, the proper one, returns.

I’m relieved actually. Everything else has been a prelude. Phase one. An overture.

What happens now is the real thing. My chance at safety. My chance to not fuck this whole thing up.

33

The Voice spends time – an hour maybe, I’ve no real idea – just going over old ground, waiting for the moment.

Then it comes. No fanfare of introduction. No golden comet piercing the darkness.

Just, ‘You have said that no one at Atlantic Cables is under suspicion. Yes, they should have shared their suspicions in relation to Mr Moon and Mr Livesey much earlier than they did. But that’s all. You claim to suspect them of no serious crime.’

‘S’right. S’what I said.’

‘Yet Livesey was murdered. You’ve said so repeatedly.’

‘Murder yes. Torture first. Got proof.’

‘So you suspect whom of the murder?’

‘Stonemonkey.’

‘His motive?’

‘Money. Don’t know.’

‘Money? So who’s paying him?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘I didn’t ask for your knowledge. I asked about your suspicions. Don’t evade.’

‘Sorry.’

‘So?’

Pause. ‘Sorry. Forgot question.’

‘Who do you suspect of paying the climber?’

‘Me suspect or inquiry suspect?’

‘The inquiry. Who does the inquiry suspect?’

‘Not sure. Puzzled. Maybe cable company. Maybe Atlantic Cables competitor.’

‘That doesn’t sound very focused. What’s being done to narrow the field of enquiry?’

‘Need evidence. Catch Stonemonkey. Ask him. Go from there.’

The Voice tests out these answers, the first time it’s ventured onto this territory. I continue to answer as accurately as I can.

I wish it was someone else under this interrogation. Someone who could do less harm.

The Voice comes back to one of my earlier answers.

‘You distinguished between your suspicions and those of your colleagues. You implied your suspicions run further than theirs.’

‘Yes. Wild speculation. “Exactly what we expect from our officers,”’ I add, quoting Jackson from about a million years back.

The Voice ignores my reference. Asks, ‘And your suspicions are?’

‘Evans. Galton Evans. Greasy little fucker.’

The Voice doesn’t even pretend not to know who Galton Evans is this time. It just says, ‘Evans. Why him?’

I explain about Plas Du and Idris Gawr Investments and Idris Gawr the rock climb. Mention the coincidences of names and timing. Mention that Idris Gawr was one of the names on the Atlantic Cables customer lists.

There’s a pause as the Voice digests all that. He hasn’t paused much before now. This is sacred territory for him, I feel it.

Then, ‘That’s nothing. A few coincidences. What is the real basis for your suspicion?’

‘That. What I said.’

‘Please don’t hold back. The consequences for you will be unpleasant. So, again, what is the real basis for your suspicion?’

He bashes away.

My answers, I think, stay reasonably consistent. He asks if we’ve sought to uncover the other investors in Idris Gawr. I tell him yes. Tell him of course. Say that we haven’t been able to get past the Caymans’ wall of secrecy. That we probably won’t ever be able to.

He drills away at that. I don’t know much of the detail and say so.

Then, the real question. The thing that all this, finally, is about.

‘Let’s suppose you are correct. Let’s suppose that Galton Evans and the people behind Idris Gawr caused Moon and Livesey to be killed. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. Not suppose. Prob’ly what happened.’

‘OK, if you like. But
why
? What is Evans hoping to gain? Why kill a marine surveyor?’

‘Maps. Steal data.’

‘OK. So your murderer has stolen some data. So what? What does he do with it?’

‘Don’t know. Sell it. Competing cable. Whatever.’

‘Don’t be stupid. You said you had a tangible suspicion. Are you aware of a competing cable company?’

‘No.’

‘Are Atlantic Cables aware of a competitor?’

‘No.’

‘So who would buy the data?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Don’t lie. Your answers make no sense. Why would Idris Gawr steal data for which there is no conceivable buyer?’

‘Don’t know. Find Stonemonkey. Ask him. Evidence. Bit by bit.’

‘Tell me about your surveillance activities. What teams do you have in operation? What are they surveilling?’

‘No teams. No surveillance. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve not the slightest idea.’

He’s asked the million-dollar question.

I’ve given him my million-dollar lie.

All that remains is to see if my lie holds up.

The Voice pummels away. Asking questions at random again. Questions picked from everything we’ve talked about.

He pushes me harder. More brutal now. Faster to threaten. Faster to get aggressive.

Tiredness starts to drag at me so strongly that I think I start to sleep between me finishing one answer and starting the next.

I’m given more food, more water.

A couple of times I’m woken by one of the goons slapping me.

Questions.

Answers.

Lies.

It’s hardly disguised now, the Voice’s interest in this matter of why. Why Livesey was murdered. What Idris Gawr hopes to gain. I block, repeat, defend.

Questions.

Answers.

Lies.

Then things change again. It’s time for phase three. The make or break one. The one that will kill me or, just maybe, free me.

One of the goons brings out a black holdall and puts it on the table. Gets out a yellow thing. Briefcase-sized. A defibrillator, I think.

And a black thing. Neat, the way modern electronics is always neat, always small, always sleek.

I look at it. The whole world has been Appleified. I’m looking at the iPod of torture.

‘Picana,’ I say. ‘Picana.’

The Voice does that soundless small smile of his. Says, ‘That’s right. And now we’ll see if you’ve been telling the truth.’

34

The pain, when it comes, is extraordinary.

I’d been tempted into hoping that they’d misjudged their prisoner. That my weakness and exhaustion would somehow have carried me over the lip of fine sensation. And perhaps it has. Perhaps there is pain worse than this.

But I doubt it.

The picana’s touch causes a kind of explosion outwards. As though my body were abruptly and explosively disassembled, before being regathered. Each new touch, a new explosion. My vision goes as well. Explodes into star-spangled blackness, before slowly and cautiously reassembling itself, like a colony of rooks after a winter storm.

The goon is careful, of course. The care of experience, no doubt.

Before he even starts on me, he spritzes me with a solution of brine. He doesn’t soak me. It’s all more considered than that. A little spritz on my thigh. Then the device’s explosive touch. A squirt on my breast or neck or arm or belly and, again, a starburst of pain.

The questions too, of course. There’s not much point in this exercise without those. So they fly at me still.

‘Who is the Zorro team leader?’

‘When did you join the CID?’

‘What forensic evidence was gathered from the Bristol apartment?’

I don’t even know what answers I give now. I don’t even know if my words make any sense. If they’re audible.

I have this out-of-body sensation, in which I see myself repeatedly flung to the floor. I see myself as a puppet that keeps falling apart and has to be physically pieced back together.

The feeling is a protective one. It’s as though the pain is still there, but isn’t particularly mine. Isn’t particularly anyone’s. Just a gruesome spectacle you have to sit through, like a movie chosen by the wrong sort of boyfriend.

I’m even aware that what I’m seeing can’t really be happening. Although I would certainly fall out of my chair if I could, I can’t. No matter how much my body leaps about in response to the shocks, I’m bound too tightly to shift the chair.

And mixed in with the questions is
the
question. The golden one. The one I can’t answer.

‘Why do you think Idris Gawr had Livesey killed? Why did they want that data? Who – if anyone – are you surveilling?’

I block, defend, scream and lie.

Watch from above as my body falls apart.