Not Dead Enough

Brian Bishop’s interview from earlier began to play on the screen. Grace fast-forwarded, watching the dark- haired man in his tan designer jacket with its flashy silver buttons and his two-tone brown and white golfing shoes.

‘Look like spats, those shoes,’ Branson said, sitting down next to him. ‘You know, like those 1930s gangsters films. Ever see Some Like It Hot?’ His voice was flat, lacking its usual energy, but he seemed to be making a superhuman effort to be cheerful.

Grace realized this must be a difficult time of day for him. Early evening. Normally, if he were home, he’d be helping get his two children ready for bed. ‘That the one with Marilyn Monroe?’

‘Yeah, and Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft. Well brilliant. That scene, right, when they wheel the cake in and the man steps out from inside it with a machine gun and blows everyone away, and George Raft says, “There was summin’ in that cake that didn’t agree wid him!”’

‘A modern spin on the Trojan Horse,’ Grace said.

‘You mean it was a remake?’ Branson said, puzzled. ‘The Trojan Horse? Don’t remember it.’

Grace shook his head. ‘Not a movie, Glenn. What the Greeks did, in Troy!’

‘What did they do?’

Grace stared hard at his friend. ‘Did you get all your bloody education from watching movies? Didn’t you ever learn any history?’

Branson shrugged defensively. ‘Enough.’

Grace slowed the tape. On the screen Glenn Branson said, ‘May I ask when you last saw your wife, Mr Bishop?’

Grace paused the tape. ‘Now, I want you to concentrate on Bishop’s eyes. I want you to count his blinks. I want the number of blinks per minute. You got a second hand on that NASA control tower on your wrist?’

Branson peered down at his watch as if thrown by the question. It was a fashionably large Casio chronometer, one of the kind that had so many dials and buttons Grace wondered if his friend had any idea what half of them did. ‘Somewhere,’ he said.

‘OK, start timing now.’

Glenn messed it up a couple of times. Then, on the screen, Roy Grace entered the room and began questioning Bishop.

‘Where did you sleep last night, Mr Bishop?’

‘In my flat in London.’

‘Could anyone vouch for that?’

‘Twenty-four!’ Glenn Branson announced, his eyes switching from his watch, to the screen, then back again.

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Do it again.’

On the screen Grace asked Bishop, ‘What time were you on the tee at the golf club this morning?’

‘Just after nine.’

‘And you drove down from London?’

‘Yes.’

‘What time would that have been?’

‘About half-six.’

‘Twenty-four again!’

Grace froze the tape. ‘Interesting,’ he said.

‘What exactly?’ Branson asked.

‘It’s an experiment. I’m trying out something I read the other day in a psychology newsletter I subscribe to. The writer said they’d established in a lab at a university – I think it was Edinburgh – that people blink more times a minute when they are telling the truth than when they are lying.’

‘For real?’

‘They blink 23.6 times a minute when they are telling the truth and 18.5 times a minute when they are lying. It’s a fact that liars sit very still – they have to think harder than people telling the truth – and when we think harder we are stiller.’ He ran the tape on.

Brian Bishop seemed to be getting increasingly agitated, finally standing up and gesticulating.