He Said/She Said(120)
He was examining his fingertips, wondering how long it would take for the blue ink to fade completely from the whorls, when there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back and the door to his cell was thrown open with a reverberating clang. The acoustics of incarceration were new to him. They were familiar to Daniel, of course, who long before his first arrest had inherited a folk memory of heavy doors and alarmed corridors and who talked about plod and Old Bill and the filth. Paul had always called them the police with the absent-minded respect those who never really believe they will encounter them can afford.
A uniformed officer told him it was time to go back into the interview room. He wondered what they would throw at him today. Yesterday’s interview had been an intensive, hour-long inquisition that he had survived, if not won, by putting his training into practice. If they arrest you, Daniel had said, never answer, never explain. If you don’t say it, they can’t use it. Of course he had been preparing Paul to defend himself against charges of robbery or handling or trespass, but presumably the principle also applied for something like this. The longer he thought about it, the more convinced he was that there was no way for them to prove he had been there.
They passed a bathroom in the corridor: Paul begged and the officer took pity on him, waiting outside the stall. It was like the exams at college, where if you needed to go the teachers would escort you and hover at the urinal, as though you’d written the answers on the porcelain in invisible ink. Just like the school toilets, this bathroom had cubicles that amplified the sounds inside. Paul relaxed his bowels and cringed at the splash. There were more of those glass bricks where the wall met the ceiling; no chance of anyone escaping through a window here. There was no mirror over the sinks, for which he was grateful. The third dispenser he tried actually contained some soap: a little squirt of foam that looked soft and fluffy but when he washed his face with it the skin became tight and sore as though he’d splashed bleach on it. He tried putting some on his little finger and cleaning his teeth, but the taste was so bitter he was forced to spit it into the sink.
It was the same room as before, completely windowless with dark blue walls that made it look like midnight no matter what the time. Only air vent bricks in the door and at knee level reassured Paul they weren’t all going to suffocate. The black Formica table had a tatty wooden trim; their chairs were also wooden, with black vinyl seats, but his was orange plastic and attached to the floor with bolts. The reel-to-reel tape recorder took up half the table. The detectives were the same, too: the man called Detective Sergeant Woburn and the woman who had given her title but immediately afterwards asked him to call her Christine, with the result that he instantly forgot her rank and surname. They both looked fresh, and Paul realised that while he had spent the night in the station, they would have gone home to their own beds and showers and toilets. Woburn had shaved – the skin on his cheeks was pink and angry – but there was already a hint of shadow on his jaw. Paul cupped his own chin and wondered when he had last taken a razor to it. Four days ago? Five? And he was still days away from the beginnings of a beard.
He had a hard time believing Christine was a police officer. She wore lipstick and earrings and her hair was cut in a proper style. She couldn’t have been more different to the squat, sour little woman who had taken his belt and his phone and his keys and his shoes away from him the previous day. Only the duty solicitor, a man in his fifties called Rob, looked like Paul felt. He was bleary-eyed and greasy-haired and had the appearance of someone who had pulled an all-nighter. Paul remembered that Rob had looked like this when he had turned up to the station yesterday and, judging by his eggy tie and tatty shoes, probably did most of the time.
Woburn stared him out while Christine smiled, then lowered her eyes. He wished he could read their minds. Daniel was big on body language: of necessity, he was better able to read people’s minds than anyone Paul had ever met. He always knew what you were thinking. That was one of the reasons it was so difficult to lie to him.
The tape recorder clunked and whirred into action. ‘Interview with Paul Seaforth resumed at 09.20 hours, 1st September 2009,’ said Woburn. ‘We were discussing the events of the evening of 30th August, same year. While you were sleeping, we had a little chat with Scatlock. He’s told us the lot.’
Paul was incredulous and insulted. Did Woburn think he was an idiot? Daniel might be many things, but he wasn’t a grass. Carl had spoken about the police and the mind games they played: it was part of their training, they used misleading language designed by psychologists that convinced you they were telling the truth when they were bluffing. The meaning of Woburn’s words depended on Paul’s response, and he breached his wall of silence only to show that it hadn’t worked.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Fair enough,’ shrugged Woburn. He held up a photograph. Before Paul had a chance to look away, he took in a tableau of the scene that had been replaying itself in his mind ever since they had fled it. Woburn tapped the end of his pen on the worst part of the image. Paul screwed his eyes up but the picture didn’t go away. He made fists and pressed them into the sockets of his eyes but the picture was only imprinted more permanently. ‘Don’t be shy,’ said Woburn. ‘It’s not as though it’s the first time you’ve seen it.’
Paul wondered why they weren’t using the man’s name and hoped it would stay that way. Ken Hillyard. Ken Hillyard. Ken Hillyard. It had been repeating on a loop in his mind and he was afraid that if anyone said it aloud it would break his resolve, like a password. He focused on the table. The varnish had long worn off the wooden trim. He tried to worry at a splinter in it but it had already been rubbed smooth by other guilty fingers. Rob had moved his chair next to the wall and was leaning into it, his left temple pressed against the plaster.