'Can I ask what’s going on?'
'You can ask.'
'My client has a right to know of any developments.'
'At the moment my guess is your client knows more than the rest of us.'
He rose wearily and shut the door behind him. The policemen’s departure left me with a strange mingling of hope and unease.
'What do you think it is?'
Eilidh’s tone was professional. 'It might be nothing to do with your case. Or it might be new evidence of some sort.'
'Would that be good or bad?'
She gave me a thin look.
'It’d depend on what the evidence was.'
We sat in silence for a while. Movie lawyers always passed their clients a packet of cigarettes as soon as they sat at the interview table but my guess was that Eilidh probably didn’t even smoke. The headache was back, pressing at the usual spot above my temples. I wondered if I could ask Eilidh for a painkiller. I glanced at her profile; it was set in a grim expression that made me wonder how this would affect my mother if it went wrong.
'How’s Johnny?'
'John is fine, but it’s best if we concentrate on what’s happening here.'
The realisation that she couldn’t tolerate Johnny’s name on my lips stung and my voice came out high and querulous.
'I’ve done nothing.'
'You were found sleeping next to the body of an old man who’d just been battered to death. The cut on his neck was deep enough to almost decapitate him. Your fingerprints were on a beer can in his possession and you have his blood on your clothes. The police are within their rights to question you. Indeed they’d be remiss not to.'
'I didn’t do it, Eilidh, I was drunk and stupid, but I didn’t touch the old man. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.'
She shook her head and glanced at her watch. Then an officer came to accompany me back to the cells.
I sat in the cell for a long time. My waiting was punctuated by deliveries of tea that I drank and food that I felt too sick to eat. From time to time the sound of footsteps would raise the faint hope that I was about to be released, and a more definite dread that some drunken hard man was about to join me in my cell. But perhaps it was a quiet night in the world of crime, or maybe the stripy-jumper team were on a win that evening, because I was left alone to work through what had got me there.
The policeman who eventually came to collect me kept his face blank. I didn’t bother questioning him. I would find my fate out soon enough.
Eilidh was waiting for me in the same interview room where we’d sat earlier. I wondered if she’d been on duty for the whole time that I’d been locked up and how she managed to look so fresh in the middle of the night.
'They think they have the boys who did it.' Relief made me drop my head into my hands. Eilidh squeezed my shoulder for a brief second and I felt her warmth through my police-issue jumpsuit. 'They’re setting up an ID parade and want to see if you recognise them.'
I lifted my head from the cradle of my hands, feeling the blood rise to my face.
'So I’ve been promoted from arch murderer to star witness?'
'Be thankful.'
'Oh aye, I feel like I’ve won the bloody lottery.'
It was early the next morning when I eventually left the station. They’d left me to sweat it out for a few more hours in the cells but the policemen’s demeanour towards me had subtly changed. They still thought me a nasty, smelly alcoholic fuck-up, but they didn’t think I’d killed the old man. Eventually my clothes were returned. They were caked in grit from under the bridge and there was a streak of blood on the front of my jumper where the old man’s broken head had slumped against it. I threw the jumper into the corner of the cell, then lifted it and bundled it beneath my arm. I would dispose of it myself; I didn’t want to leave anything that could be stored up for future convictions.
The boys had looked diminished in the harsh light of the identity parade. A couple of them looked like they’d been crying, another like he had drifted into a trance. One of them was full-on cocky. I wondered if he really didn’t feel any fear or if he was psycho or maybe just a consummate actor. I stood behind the viewing mirror and indicated each of them by number. The boys looked young now that the energy of the assault had left them, and I remembered the way they had careered after the boat. Even if I hadn’t recognised them I would have been able to spot the accused. They were the youths who had spent a night coming down in a police cell, the ones who had sat with their social worker or mother and answered questions about the killing of an old man. If I hadn’t recognised them the parade would have been a travesty, but I knew their faces as well as I knew my own. After all, I’m expert in the art of recall.
I collected my personal belongings at the front desk, expecting a hand to reach out and a firm voice to tell me another matter that had come to light that they needed to talk to me about. I’d signed for my watch, wallet, keys and the little bit of cash I had left, when the officer at the desk produced a white envelope with my name written on it in a plain modern hand.
'Miss Hunter asked me to pass this on to you.'
'Miss Hunter?'
His voice was brisk.
