The safe house

‘Were they blown up, then, this couple?’ said Loki.

‘No, though my colleagues will no doubt be asking you about the parcel received at Marshall’s Poultry.’

‘Did it go off?’

‘Fortunately not.’

‘Well, then,’ said Loki contemptuously.

‘Mr and Mrs Mackenzie’s throats were cut. How do you feel about that?’

Loki laughed.

‘I guess he’ll think twice before torturing animals again.’

‘You sick bastard, what do you think you’ll achieve by murdering people like that?’

‘Do you want a lecture about the theory of revolutionary violence?’

‘Try us,’ said Baird.

‘The torture of animals is part of our economy, part of our culture. The problem is no different from that faced by opponents of slavery or the American colonists, any oppressed group. You just have to make the activity uneconomic, unpalatable.’

‘Even if that involves murder?’

Loki leaned back in his chair.

‘Wars of liberation have their price.’

‘You little shit,’ said Baird. ‘Where were you on the night of the seventeenth of January?’

‘Asleep. A broken sleep. Like the Mackenzies.’

‘You’d better hope you have a witness.’

Loki smiled and shrugged.

‘Who’s hoping?’

‘Let me read you something, Professor Laroue,’ said Baird, holding a sheet of typescript. ‘Forgive me if I don’t do the style justice:All of us accept limits to our obligation to obey the law. After the Holocaust we may further accept that there are times when we are obliged to violate the law, even to violate the limits of what we would normally consider to be acceptable behaviour. I anticipate that future generations will ask us about our own holocaust, the holocaust of animals, and ask us how we could stand by and do nothing? We in Britain are living with Auschwitz every day. Except this time it’s worse because we can’t plead ignorance. We have it for breakfast. We wear it. What will we say to them? Perhaps the only people able to hold their heads up will be those who did something, those who fought back.

‘Do you recognize that, Professor?’

Frank Laroue’s hair was cut so short that it was almost like a film of gauze draped across his skull. He had very pale-blue eyes, with curiously tiny pupils, so that he looked already flash-bulb blind. He was dressed in an immaculate fawn suit, with a white shirt and canvas shoes. He had a pen in his fingers which he rotated compulsively, sometimes tapping it on the table.

‘Yes. It is a part of a speech that I delivered at a public meeting last year. Incidentally, it has never been published. I would be interested to know how you got a copy of it.’

‘Oh, we like to get out in the evenings. What did you mean by that passage?’

‘What is all this? My views about our responsibilities towards animals are well known. I’ve agreed to come and answer questions but I don’t understand what you want.’

‘You’ve written for Rabbit Punch.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ He gave a half-smile of acknowledgement. ‘Things I have written or things I have said may have been reproduced there, as in other magazines. That is quite a different matter.’

‘So you read it?’

‘I’ve seen it. I have an interest in the field.’

Chris Angeloglou was leaning against the wall. Baird took his jacket off and draped it over the chair on the opposite side of the table from where Laroue was sitting. Then he sat down.

‘Your speech is a clear incitement to violence.’

Laroue shook his head.

‘I’m a philosopher. I made a comparison.’

‘You suggested it was people’s duty to take violent action in defence of animals.’

There was a short pause. Then, patiently, ‘It’s not a matter of my suggestion. I believe that, objectively, it is people’s duty to take action.’

‘Is it your duty?’

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘It follows.’

‘Rabbit Punch believes the same thing, doesn’t it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The magazine publishes the names and addresses of people it accuses of harming animals. The point of this is to encourage violent action against those people?’

‘Or their property, perhaps.’

‘That wasn’t a distinction you made in your lecture.’

‘No.’

Baird leaned heavily across the table.

‘Do you believe it was wrong to kill Leo Mackenzie and his family?’

Tap, tap, tap.

‘Objectively speaking, no, I don’t,’ he said. ‘Could I have some tea or water or something?’

‘What about the innocent victims?’

‘Innocence is a difficult term to define.’

‘Professor Laroue, where were you on the night of the seventeenth of January?’

‘I was at home, in bed with my wife.’

Baird turned to Angeloglou.

‘Give me the file, will you? Thanks.’ He opened it and thumbed through some pages before finding what he wanted. ‘Your wife is Chantal Bernard Laroue, is she not?’

‘Yes.’

Baird ran his finger down the page.

‘Hunt sabotage, hunt sabotage, public order, public order, obstruction, she’s even moved on to some assault here.’

‘Good for her.’

‘But not necessarily good for you, Professor Laroue. Would you like to talk to your solicitor?’

‘No, officer.’

‘Detective Inspector.’

‘Detective Inspector.’ A smile spread across Laroue’s pale bony face and he raised his eyes to meet Baird’s gaze for the first time. ‘This is all crap. Speeches and where was I on the night of the whatever. I’m leaving now. If you want to talk to me again, make sure you’ve got something to talk to me about. Will you open the door, please, officer?’

Angeloglou looked at Baird.

‘You heard the bastard,’ said Baird. ‘Open the door for him.’

In the doorway, Laroue turned and faced the two detectives:

‘We’re going to win, you know.’

Paul Hardy said nothing at all. He sat in his long canvas overcoat, as if removing it would itself be a minor concession. Once or twice he pushed his hand through his curly brown hair. He glanced at Baird and Angeloglou in turn, but mostly he stared into space. He didn’t reply to questions or acknowledge he had even heard them.

‘Do you know about the Mackenzie murders?’

‘Where were you on the night of the seventeenth?’

‘You realize that if charges are preferred, your silence may be cited in evidence against you.’

Nothing. After several futile minutes there was a tap at the door. Angeloglou answered it. It was a young WPC.