“That so?”
“Yeah. And I also hear that the name Gutteridge is of interest in certain quarters. Need I say more?”
“Blood oath you do. What about my phone call at this point?”
“Oh yes, well, we go by the book here. Let’s see, we’ll need an extension phone. Collins can get one somewhere, can’t you, Colly?”
Collins was leaning against the wall near the door. He’d been listening with a slightly puzzled, but relaxed grin on his face. He was enjoying himself. For a horrible second I thought he was going to say “Sure Boss”, but he didn’t.
“Must be one around somewhere,” he said through the grin.
“That’s right. Then Hardy could ring Simon Sackville and he’d come running down and get him out on habeus corpus or something. Right Hardy?”
He had me cold and he knew it, or someone had told him. Sy was out of the country, consulting on a constitutional case — independence for some group of islands off to hell and gone. He was the only lawyer whose confidence I’d ever gained. That wasn’t surprising as I was a slow payer and lots of trouble.
“Sy’s away,” I said, more to myself than O’Brien.
“Aaw, that’s too bad,” O’Brien said, “maybe you could get one of his partners and explain it all to them?”
Sy’s partners were as straight as he was strange — they only tolerated him because he was brilliant and almost always successful. They disapproved of me the way a saint disapproves of sin.
“No way,” I said wearily, “and you know it.”
O’Brien grinned. “How about legal aid?”
“You’re holding all the cards, O’Brien,” I said. “I wonder how that came about. You’re not smart enough to figure all this out for yourself.”
Collins levered himself off the wall and moved towards my chair.
“My turn, Paddy?” he said.
“Not yet.” O’Brien waved him back and leaned forward towards me over the table.
“Look Hardy, you’re a smart guy. You can add two and two. We know this Cattermole was a hood. No one’s very worried about him. Maybe the whole thing was an accident. If you’ve got something to say about Mark Gutteridge I think we can work something out. I’ve got Inspector Mills’ promise that he’ll interview you in private himself and that you won’t lose by it. He’s standing by.”
The penny dropped. The Gutteridge files were being used and some top cops were hurting. As long as they thought I knew something about the Gutteridge files I was worth keeping alive. My life wouldn’t be worth two bob if I told them a thing, either way.
“How about Jackson?”
“What?” O’Brien was startled and dropped his suave mask for a second.
“Senior Detective Charles Jackson, the crooked cop, bent as buggery.”
“He’s on suspension,” Collins said.
“Shut up Colly!” O’Brien rapped out. “What’s Jackson to you Hardy?”
“He’s shit to me,” I said, “and your Inspector Mills sounds like double shit.”
O’Brien slammed his notebook down on the table and banged his fist on top of it. He drew a deep breath and seemed to be internalising some deep moral struggle. Cop training won out. He scooped up the notebook, tucked it away in his pocket and got to his feet.
“OK, Colly,” he said, “five minutes, nothing visible.” He walked across to the door and went out of the room. Collins leaned across and snibbed the lock. He walked up behind me and took hold of the lobe of my right ear. He pinched it.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Get stuffed, you don’t even know what you’re asking about, you dumb gorilla.”
My vision and my breath and my hearing were all cut off by the kidney punch. It knocked me off the chair and left me hunched up on the floor fighting to keep control of my stomach and my bladder. Collins reached down into the waistband of my trousers and put his hand around my balls.
“Let’s hear it.”
Nothing had changed. I was dead if they found out that I knew nothing worth knowing about the files. I had to pretend that I knew and to take whatever they dished out.
“Get your hand off my balls, you faggot.”
He squeezed and I screamed and writhed away from him. He came after me and I lashed out at him with a foot. It caught him on the thigh and made him beserk, he jumped on me and started pummelling me with his fists. Through the mist of red and black I was dimly aware of a hammering on the door. Collins let go of me and I saw the door open, then slid down into an ebbing and flowing sea of pain.
I woke up in a cell and my watch told me it was three hours later in my life. They’d taken my wallet and keys but left me the tobacco and matches. I struggled up to a sitting position on the bench and looked around. I suppose it would have been luxury in Mexico — sleeping bench, large enamel bucket, fairly clean washbasin and dry concrete floor — but I wasn’t taken with it. My mouth tasted like a sewer and I rinsed some water around in it and tried to smoke a cigarette. The taste sent me running to the bucket for a monumental heave and I crawled back to the bench and pulled a thin grey blanket over me. My kidney and testicles competed for the major seat of pain award. I curled myself up under the blanket and became aware for the first time that my trousers were wet. I sniffed at my hand and got the unmistakable smell of urine from it. By experimenting carefully I found a position in which everything didn’t hurt at once. I held it until sleep hooked me and reeled me in and away from my bed of pain.
20
Breakfast came at 6.30, a cup of instant coffee and two pieces of soggy toast. I got it down somehow and sat on the bench feeling miserable. A cop came in an hour later and emptied the bucket, the only diversion for the morning. I sat on the bench smoking cigarettes and longing for a drink. I thought of asking if I could telephone the hospital but there were disadvantages in bringing Ailsa’s name to the cops’ attention just then. Mostly I worried about whether they were going to try to hold me on the charges they could get together and whether I could get anyone to put up the bail. Sy usually arranged such things for me and he’d picked a great time to go off liberating the Third World. Fretting, and a disgusting mess that could just have passed as an omelette, took me into the early part of the afternoon. I’d reconciled myself to several weeks or more of Long Bay jail when Collins unlocked the door and beckoned me out of the cell. Just the sight of him made me ache in all the old familiar places. He didn’t look as chipper as he had the night before though. He held the door open.
“Out.”
“Where to?”
“It’d be a quick trip to the harbour if it was up to me, but it seems you got friends.”
That sounded hopeful. I followed him out of the lock-up to a kind of lounge, a gentle version of the interrogation room. We went in and O’Brien was sitting at a desk talking to another man. I didn’t know him and from the look he gave me I decided I didn’t want to. I was unravelled and unshaven, he was shaved as smooth as an egg. He looked to be quite tall, a self-satisfied number. He wore a light grey suit that didn’t come off the peg, handmade brogues, a pale blue shirt and a tie from one of the good schools or regiments. His hair was thick and dark although he must have been approaching fifty to judge from the tiny wrinkles etched into his suntanned face. His teeth were white and his eyes were blue, he was perfect. O’Brien waved me into a chair and Collins took up his usual position by the door. He’d have done the same in a Bedouin tent.
It was one of those occasions where nobody likes anybody else. I sat down and O’Brien broke the silence.
“This is Mr Urquhart,” he said, “he’s got a writ for your release Hardy and we’re just working out the details.”
I looked over at Mr Cool and he gave me a slight nod which would have cost a month’s earnings if I’d been paying him.
