Phil was saying nothing, his eyes on her. She knew that without looking at him. She couldn’t look at him. Not now. Not yet. Her fingers were trembling. She smoothed the collar of his shirt, his jacket. Stood back.
‘There. That’s better.’
Phil didn’t move. Marina didn’t either. The two of them stood before each other, Marina still avoiding eye contact. She should pull away, sit back down. Look at her notes. She knew that. She stayed where she was.
‘Marina…’
Phil put a hand out towards her. She wanted so much to let him touch her. So much. And to reciprocate that touch. Despite everything that had happened between them. But she couldn’t. From somewhere deep within she found a reserve of willpower, pulled away. Phil withdrew his hand.
‘Not now, Phil. Concentrate. Get in there and do what you’re best at.’
He nodded. ‘How do I look?’
‘Like a policeman who’s just had a fight in a scrap metal yard.’
‘Did I win?’
She smiled. It was tense, tight. ‘On points, perhaps.’
‘Well.’ He smiled. It was equally tense and tight. ‘That’s all right then.’
Phil closed his eyes, took a deep breath, another. Anchoring himself, she knew. Zoning in for what he had to do.
‘Right.’ He opened his eyes. There was no trace of the earlier Phil, Marina’s ex-lover still conflicted over the end of their relationship. There was only Phil the copper. A dedicated professional with a job to do. And whatever needed to be said between them could wait.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
39
Brotherton was slumped in his chair, legs spread out underneath the table. He looked broken, defeated even before Phil had started in on him.
The room was small, barely big enough for the chairs and the table, and despite the efforts of the cleaners, it still smelled of unclean bodies and filthy minds, of stale sweat and desperate actions, of human waste in all its forms. Air, like hope, seemed to have been sucked out of the room.
Three of the windowless walls were covered with acoustic tiles and painted a depressingly institutional shade of grey-green; the fourth wall held a mirror. If Brotherton had looked up, he would have seen his own reflection. The door was heavy and grey. One overhead strip, quietly fizzing like a dying fly, threw out shallow, flat light. The kind of light that depressed Phil, reminded him of what he had said to Marina about the aftermath of murder scenes and empty theatres, places from which the life had departed. This, he knew, was deliberate. Just as the observation room was all about power, this was the opposite. It was all about powerlessness, helplessness.
He sat down opposite Brotherton, trying not to be aware of Marina watching him. He looked down at the table. It was scarred and marked, layer added upon layer like recidivist geological striations: names both written and carved into the surface, protestations of innocence and sometimes love, anonymous attempts to grass up members of the criminal community, experiences of the police in general and certain individuals in particular. Phil always checked for his own name and the context in which it appeared. It was a little slice of immortality – at least until it was scribbled over – and he took a perverse pride in the fact that he had affected someone to such a degree that they wanted to tell the world about it. Even if they did just want to tell the world that he was a cunt.
He looked at Brotherton, who kept on ignoring him. He took a deep breath. Looked at Brotherton once more.
‘Okay, Ryan,’ he said, looking straight at him, hoping to establish eye contact, ‘this is not a formal interview under caution. We won’t be recording it or anything like that. Not just yet. This is just a chat between you and me.’
Brotherton shrugged. ‘I’ve got nothin’ to say to you.’
Phil smiled. ‘No.You let your actions do the talking.’
Brotherton looked up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Phil leaned forward. ‘Oh come on, Ryan. Chasing my DS round the yard with the grab? Dropping a whole load of metal on him? I mean, that’s imaginative, if nothing else.’
Brotherton shrugged, but with the compliment, Phil felt the man’s attitude was thawing slightly. He pressed on. ‘You didn’t need to do that, you know.’
‘No?’
‘No. No need at all. Why didn’t you just talk to us? Talk to me.’
Brotherton’s eyes narrowed. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘What do I mean? You know what I mean.’ Phil smiled conspiratorially, leaned forward over the table. ‘Man to man.’
Brotherton eyed him quizzically. Phil pressed on.
‘Ryan, I kept saying to you about Claire, you know, it’s a difficult situation, I appreciate that, but let’s have a chat. And if you’ve got something to tell me, tell me. But you insisted Sophie was there all the time.’
‘What would I have to tell you?’
Phil smiled. ‘Come on.You’re not the first person to have woman problems. And I doubt you’ll be the last. Happens to all of us.’
Brotherton snorted a laugh. ‘Even coppers?’
Phil shook his head, sighed. ‘Like you wouldn’t believe. And not so different from your troubles, either.’
Brotherton seemed interested now. Phil looked at him, the expression on his face showing uncertainty as to whether to tell him any more, share any more intimacies with someone on the other side of the table. He leaned in even closer to Brotherton. Before he spoke he looked round, as if checking for eavesdroppers, and lowered his voice.
‘All I’m saying, Ryan, is I know what it’s like. Sometimes you have to…’ He balled his hands into fists. ‘You know what I mean?’
Brotherton’s face was a battlefield of warring emotions. Phil knew he wanted to believe him, hear him talk further, find a kindred spirit, someone who might be able to understand him, help him in this hell of a mess. But he was naturally wary. Phil pressed on.
‘I had a girlfriend,’ he said. ‘My last girlfriend, actually. And you know what it’s like. Everything’s great in the beginning, you can do no wrong, always there for you, wanting to please you… and then they start, don’t they? Wanting to change you. You don’t dress well. Don’t look right. They don’t like your friends.You know what I mean?’
Brotherton nodded. ‘Yeah. Know exactly what you mean.’
‘And then they stop wanting to please you. And before you know it, you can’t do anything right, can you?’ Phil shook his head in despair. ‘I mean, why do they go out with you in the first place if everything you say or do is so wrong and they want to change it?’
‘Claire was like that,’ said Brotherton. ‘Just like that. So fuckin’… exasperatin’.’
Phil smiled knowingly. ‘Yeah. Exactly. And what can you do? Sometimes you just get so…’ He flexed and unflexed his fists, grimaced as if in anger. ‘You have to, don’t you? It gets to you.’
Brotherton sat back slightly, wary again. ‘You’ve never done that. Hit a woman.’
‘Really?’ Phil gave another look round, another check for eavesdroppers, lowered his voice even further. ‘Like I said. You’re not the first or the last.You’re not the only one.’
A kind of hope sprang up in Brotherton’s eyes. Cautious, but wanting to believe what Phil was saying. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ said Phil, as if imparting a particularly deep truth. ‘Not the only one in here, either. Tell you the truth, loads of blokes in here hate prosecuting cases like yours. Waste of resources when we could be doing proper police work. Like catching paedophiles or real villains.’
Brotherton nodded. ‘Absolutely right.’
‘Way it should be, isn’t it? Only natural. Course, you can’t say that now. Political correctness and all that.
