Transition (35 page)

Then today the violation. I did not open my eyes to see who might have come into the room. I felt the bedclothes being shifted
and thought that perhaps a doctor was going to examine me, though whoever it was didn’t smell like a doctor. Probably not
an orderly or a cleaning assistant either, for the same reason. They sometimes tidy me up if I’ve eaten messily or I’ve slumped
awkwardly in my bed. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said it might be another patient, though not one of the more unpleasantly
scented ones. I foolishly thought that whoever it was might take the hint that I was asleep or pretending to be asleep and
therefore did not want to be woken up, but then I felt the sheets being pulled out somewhere down near my hip. I could feel
air enter the warm mustiness of the bed just there. What was going on, I wondered?

Then a hand touched my hip, the fingers seeming to prod at first, then lifting and clutching at the material of my pyjamas
as though trying to tug them up. What did they think they were doing? Did they think I was wearing a nightgown? I still did
not open my eyes, thinking that whoever this incompetent was it would only embarrass them if I confronted them (one ought
always to keep the medical staff on one’s side and so should avoid making them feel awkward). The hand gave up the vain attempt
to pull my pyjama bottoms up and reached out over my crotch. And slipped into the open fly of the pyjama bottoms, fumbling
for and closing on my manhood, squeezing it once and then reaching down to hold my testes!

I opened my eyes an instant after the light clicked out. It was not afternoon at all. It was dark now with the light out;
late evening or night. I felt confused, disoriented. The hand withdrew immediately from my private parts and the shadowy,
barely glimpsed figure at the side of my bed rose hurriedly with a grunting, distressed noise and was gone before I could
glimpse who it might have been, leaving the door swinging still further open as they ran down the corridor. Slippers. They
were wearing slippers, from the sound of it, and they could not run very fast. I thought of getting up and giving chase but
it would have taken too long.

I shouted for help instead.

But the cheek, the nerve, the banal sordidness of it!

Is this what I’m reduced to – being the sexual plaything of some drooling, sub-sentient inmate of a benighted cretin depository
like this? The shame of it. With my past, my achievements, my status and – I swear – my still unfulfilled promise.

The Philosopher

There was only one occasion on which I intervened when technically I should not have. I used my seniority to take a subject
from the operative they had been assigned to. He was, supposedly, just Subject 47767 to us, but I had seen his name and details
on the system and had been intrigued. It was partly because of him that I had offered my services to the police and security
service when I’d left the army. He was something of a hero to me and a lot of other people. What was he doing in our clutches?

His case file spoke of an assault on a prominent person and suspected membership of a terrorist group or a related organisation.
The second part of the charge might mean almost nothing; some wit in our office had pointed out that the law regarding “related
organisations” and having some sort of connection to terrorist groups was so vaguely and widely drawn that technically it
included us. It was the sort of thing you charged people with when you didn’t know what else to charge them with but didn’t
want to let them go, when you just suspected them generally.

This man, 47767, had been in the police ten years ago, when the terrorist threat was just starting to become serious. He’d
been in a unit that had captured a couple of terrorists who had been planting bombs in various public places, in litter bins
in railway and bus stations and in busy thoroughfares, killing a few people and injuring dozens. When they were picked up
there had been some sort of breakdown in communication between different parts of their terrorist cell and detailed warnings
had been sent for the latest batch of bombs before all of them had been planted. A quick-thinking officer had sent police
to the sites relating to the warnings and both men had been caught, though not before they had already planted at least one
other bomb not covered by the original warning.

The suspects were split up, and one was questioned conventionally. The other one, who had been in the charge of the police
officer who was now our Subject 47767, had been questioned rather more forcefully by him and had revealed the location of
the bomb that he and his accomplice had already planted. Police officers dispatched to the location were able to evacuate
the area and prevent any deaths or injuries when the bomb detonated just a quarter-hour later. It was one of the few unqualified
successes of those early years.

The identity of the officer who would become our Subject 47767 was discovered by the press and he was acclaimed as a hero
both in the papers and by the mass of the public as a man who had done something distasteful but necessary. The means he had
employed to produce the life-saving results were also discovered; he had been tearing out the terrorist’s fingernails with
a pair of pliers (there was no detail on how many he’d had to remove like this before achieving cooperation). This is one
of those amateurish but fairly effective techniques you hear about sometimes.

Despite the fact that lives had been saved and the terrorist himself was still very much alive, certain sections of the press
and some politicians nevertheless wanted the man to be prosecuted and thrown out of the police force for what he had done.
Eventually, as I recalled, he was hounded out of the force and was charged with criminal assault. He refused defence counsel,
saying he would defend himself, then at the trial he said nothing. He was jailed for only a couple of years, but things went
badly for him in prison and he spent nearly ten years inside. In that time his children grew up and his wife divorced him,
moving away and remarrying.

He had slipped from public consciousness in the intervening decade, filled as it was with so much violence and treachery.
He had been released earlier this year and now had ended up in the hands of the police again, scheduled to be questioned.
I felt there was an untold story here, and there were puzzling details that I had never heard had been cleared up. I was unable
to contain my curiosity and took over the case myself. This was not actually against regulations but it was highly irregular,
the sort of thing you could get away with once or twice but which, done consistently, would be noted in your file.

He was an ordinary-looking man. Medium build, pale skin, short receding brown hair and a resigned, beaten look on his face.
There might have been some defiance in his eyes, though perhaps that was just my own prejudice. He had been beaten up at some
point in the last few days, judging from the bruising on his face. He was still dressed and his hands were handcuffed and
chained to the floor behind him, though he was otherwise unrestrained and was seated normally.

I sat in front of him in another chair. I even put myself within kicking distance of his feet with nothing in between, which
I would never normally do. A junior officer sat to one side monitoring the recording equipment but took no part in the subsequent
proceedings.

I began by asking Subject 47767 if he was who I thought he was. He confirmed that he was. We used his real first name throughout.
It was Jay. I asked him why he thought he was here.

He laughed bitterly. “I hit the wrong person.”

I asked who that might have been.

“The son of the Justice Minister.” He gave a sour smile.

I asked why he had hit him.

“Because I’m sick to the back teeth of vicious, ignorant dickheads telling me what a fucking hero I am.”

I asked him if he meant because of what had happened with the terrorist he had tortured to discover the location of the bomb.

Jay shook his head and looked away. “Oh, let me guess. I’m a hero figure to people like you, would that be right?”

I said that many people admired what he had done, amongst them, certainly, myself.

“Yeah, well, you would, wouldn’t you?” he replied.

I asked if he meant because of what he obviously – and correctly – took to be my role.

He nodded. “Because you’re a torturer,” he said. He looked straight into my eyes as he said this. I am well used to staring
people down, but he would not look away.

I told him that even if I was not, I would still admire him because of what he had done.

“You and every other idiot,” he said. He said it more with resignation than defiance, thought there was an understandable
hint of nervousness too. He swallowed conspicuously.

I asked if he didn’t feel proud of what he had done.

“No,” he said. “No, I fucking don’t.”

But he had saved lives, I pointed out.

“I did what I thought I had to do,” Jay said.

Would he do the same thing again, knowing what he did now?

“I don’t know.”

Why not? I asked.

“Because I don’t know what might have happened differently if I hadn’t done it. Probably nothing would have been any different
so I suppose I might as well have done what I did. A few people may still be alive who wouldn’t have been otherwise, but who
knows? We haven’t got a time machine.”

What did he think might have happened differently?

“We might not live in a society where people live in fear of people like you,” he told me. He shrugged. “But, like I say,
probably it would still all have worked out just like it is now. I don’t kid myself that what I might have done differently
would have made any difference.”

I said I thought he was wrong to assume the current state of our society was somehow his fault. The fault lay with the people
who threatened our society: terrorists, radicals, leftists, liberals and other traitors – those who would like to tear down
the state either through direct action or through using words and propaganda to influence the more gullible sections of the
masses to do their dirty work for them.

“Yeah, you would think that, too.” Jay sounded tired.

I told him I thought it was tough that he’d ended up in prison. He should never have been prosecuted in the first place and
certainly should never have been found guilty. He should have been given a medal, not sent to prison. That had probably ruined
his life. Especially as they had kept him in for so long.

“Here we go,” he said, sounding tired again. “You don’t understand anything, do you?”

If he thought that, I said, perhaps he ought to tell me what he thought I ought to understand.

“I insisted that I should be prosecuted. I demanded that I be prosecuted. I refused a defence because I’d wanted to plead
guilty but they wouldn’t let me. They threatened my family. So I had to plead innocent. But then I offered no defence and
so I was found guilty. They sentenced me to two years but the correct sentence, the least anybody else would have got would
have been nine years, so I made sure I stayed in prison for that amount of time. Having time added is not difficult.” Jay
smiled without humour. “And when I got out I told anybody who accused me of being a hero that they were an idiot, and people
who said I should have got a medal to fuck off. Finally, when one guy got too insistent about how big a hero I was and how
he could make sure that I did get a medal, I hit him. Only it turned out he was the son of the Justice Minister, like I said.
And that’s why I’m here.”

I told him I didn’t understand. Why had he wanted to be prosecuted? Why had he wanted to be found guilty? Why had he wanted
to be locked up for nine years?

Jay sounded animated at last. He held his head up. “Because I believe in justice.” He spat that word out. “I believe in the
law.” That word too. “I did something wrong, something against the law, and I needed to be punished for it. It was wrong that
I was going to be let off for it. Even more wrong that people wanted to give me medals for it.”

But he hadn’t done something wrong, I suggested. He had saved innocent lives and helped defeat those who would bring society
down.

“It was still against the
law
!” he shouted. “Don’t you see? If the law means anything then I couldn’t be above it. Not just because I was a police officer
or because my breaking it had resulted in some lives being saved. That’s not the point. Torture was illegal. I’d broken the
law. Can’t you
see
any of this?” He shook his the chair, rattling the chains attaching his handcuffs to the floor. “It’s even more important
to prosecute police who’ve broken the law than it is to prosecute anybody else, because otherwise nobody trusts the police.”

I pointed out that the forceful questioning of suspects was now entirely if unfortunately legal, even if it hadn’t been then.

“‘Forceful questioning.’ You mean torture.”

If that was what he wanted to call it. But why hadn’t he made his feelings clear to all these newspapers that wanted to talk
to him? Or at his trial, where, of all places, he was guaranteed a fair hearing?

Jay looked at me scornfully. “Do you really think the papers print what people actually say? I mean, if it’s not what their
proprietors or the government want everybody to hear?” He shook his head. “Same at the trial.”

I said that I still thought he was being too harsh on himself. He had done the right thing.

He looked tired and defeated now, and we had, as I have made clear, applied no physical pressure whatsoever to him up to this
point. “The thing is,” he said, “maybe in the same situation, even knowing what I know now, I’d still do the same thing. I’d
still tear that Christian bastard’s nails out, get him to talk, find out where the bomb was, hope that the plods got the right
street, the right end of it, the right fucking city.” He looked at me with what might have been defiance or even a sort of
pleading. “But I’d still insist that I was charged and prosecuted.” He shook his head again. “Don’t you see? You can’t have
a state where torture is legal, not for anything. You start saying it’s only for the most serious cases, but that never lasts.
It should always be illegal, for everybody, for everything. You might not stop it. Laws against murder don’t stop all murders,
do they? But you make sure people don’t even think about it unless it’s a desperate situation, something immediate. And you
have to make the torturer pay. In full. There has to be that disincentive, or they’ll all be at it.” He raised his head and
looked about him, his gaze obviously being meant to take in not just the room we were in but the whole building; maybe even
more than that. “Or you end up with this.” He looked at me. “With you. Whoever you are.”