Interview - Stage Seven
The chief inspector was ready for the
meeting, though a grey haze had been hanging over him since the
incident with the body. "It's fine," he kept telling
himself. The haze would shift once this was all dealt with in an
appropriate manner.
*
All these rendezvous points had gotten
a little confusing. So many twists and turns, deviations and
reversals from expected routes.
"Come alone, and don't be
followed."
A little trick from the investigation
days, before he'd headed the team. It helped to slip into paranoia.
"To catch a criminal, it is
sometimes necessary to think like one..."
He couldn't remember who had said that
first, but he held to it. He knew it was a dangerous game to play,
but he knew it was never going to be easy. That wasn't why he joined
the force...
*
"An overarching sense of duty... a
crusade, you might say..."
He hadn't come here for this.
"Enough. No more games."
Spoilsport.
"Alright. Sit down."
"I'm not in the mood for..."
"SIT DOWN!"
Cold concrete. No chair, but
thankfully no rope. He couldn't see the convict, and his pulse
quickened. Attempting to control his breathing, he waited for the
silence to shatter.
"I suppose you're wondering about
the body..."
The chief inspector nodded, still
unable to see his man.
"Trying to make a fool of me were
you?"
"You tried to kill me."
Grey.
"The body was supposed to be me,
wasn't it? Admit it!"
The grey began to tighten.
"You weren't following
orders."
"Orders? Do you even know where my
orders come from?"
A moment of clarity.
"You answer to me."
Silence. Grey silence.
"My orders come from higher
up."
He tried to breathe.
"Inspectorate."
No. Impossible. He tried to regain
control.
"That's right. Her Majesty's
Inspectorate of Constabulary."
No. No, it couldn't be true. It
had to be another sick joke.
"We have reason to believe you
have been liaising inappropriately with criminals and attempting to
influence their behaviour with a combination of violence and
psychoactive substances."
The grey tightened around his
chest. He couldn't speak. The haze was much tighter than before. A
pain in his left arm. His breath drew short.
"You have the right to remain
silent..."
*
“And of course, you remember the
Ellison case...”
*
Play them off, that's how it is. I
had him tied to the chair, he wasn't leaving the interrogation room
until I was finished.
"Now, listen up you son of a
whore, I want to know what you did with Ellison."
Blank stare. No getting through
to him.
"Insults bore me, chief. You can't
even think of anything original."
I left and locked the door.
He
was still tied when I came back.
"You ready to tell me what
you did with Ellison? Is he dead, or you just hiding him somewhere?"
He didn't reply. I finished my
coffee and waited.
It had gone on like this for days, and he
knew it was getting to me. He was waiting for me to crack.
A
dangerous game.
It was day four I think, when it happened.
"Hey, prick. You'll never know
about Ellison."
I got up and moved toward him.
"Yeah, what you gonna do
chief? Hit me?"
"No. I hit you, you'll
recover. That won't hurt you nearly enough. So I want you to listen
to a couple of tapes for me."
I put the first tape in and hit
play.
"Daddy?"
I pressed stop.
"Recognise the voice?"
He struggled in the chair.
"You fucking prick, you
touch my son..."
I put the second tape in and hit
play. I left the room and locked it behind me. I waited ten minutes
until the tape had finished before I went back in.
The
screaming appeared to have worked.
"You ready to tell me what you've
done with Ellison, or you need a little more persuasion?"
I showed him the first printout
from my report. A photo of a dismembered body. The head of his child
lay on its side on the floor, amid a pool of blood.
"Now tell me what you've
done with Ellison or we take your daughter and your wife."
He confessed everything. I had to
knock him out before I released him to the police with his taped
confession.
He never found out that his son wasn't really
dead.
*
“I worked with you on the Ellison
case. I could have gone down for you. That was the game though,
wasn’t it? We’ll go as far as we can to get our man. But you had
to go a little too far, didn’t you?”
The chief shivered. It had been a
difficult case, the suspect highly resistant to questioning. The
standard threats were having no effect. Of course, more drastic
action would never have been officially sanctioned. The son had been
taken into custody, though the mother wasn’t informed until later.
Kidnapping, covered up with an official letter to the mother.
Dangerous ground of course, they couldn’t question the child
unsupervised, but then, that’s not what they did.
Several
photographs of the child had been taken while he had a tour of the
police station. He’d known nothing about it, other than he was
having a nice time. It was unclear whether the child understood
anything about his father’s situation. The officer giving the tour
was under the impression the child believed his father was out at
work. Interrogation cells were clearly off limits. That would have
just confused the child and jeopardised the whole operation. Of
course, the suspect could not under any circumstances see that his
son was still alive.
The threats had continued long into the
afternoon, by which time the child had already gone home to his
mother, and the manipulation of the photographs began. Officers
involved were instructed not to be too obvious. No substitution for
scenes from horror films, that would be a give-away. Beheading seemed
the most sensible option. The flash of the camera had cause the child
to close his eyes in most of the photographs, and he’d looked
rather calm. From there on in it was easy. Add some blood, cover any
obvious slips in the editing. It had taken a few hours, but the
photograph was reasonably convincing in the dim light of the cell
where they were questioning the suspect. Convincing enough for a full
confession.
*
“Is that it then? You’ve come for a
confession?”
“Hardly.”
Benny placed his suitcase on the floor
and opened it, removing a set of scales which he placed on the table.
As the Chief got up to look, Benny glared at him.
“Sit the fuck back down.”
Easy. No need for ropes or tape.
“Officer Dalton...”
A chuckle, ignored by the Chief.
“Officer Dalton, this is hardly
appropriate behaviour.”
“You’re stupid enough to believe I
used my real name?”
Benny left the knife in the suitcase.
Turning slightly to face the Chief, the interview began.
“Do you know what that is?” he
asked, pointing at the scales.
“Scales.”
“Yes. The scales of Justice.”
As the knife rose, the fear in the
Chief’s eyes told Benny that rope was definitely not required.
Placing it on the table, he waited for the Chief to sweat.
“You can’t. They’ll find you.
They’ll hear me.”
“This cell is booked for
interrogation. Strictly routine.”
A syringe, removed from the
suitcase, prepared for use. Finding a vein was easy. As terror
swelled in the Chief’s eyes, the needle broke his flesh, and sound
drained from his body as the clear liquid seeped through.
“Nobody’s going to hear you.
Nobody’s coming to save you. Now, time for a pound of flesh...”
*
Naturally, there was a reason the Chief
was getting his heart cut out. For the record, it weighed under a
pound, and further extraction was necessary. After the corruption
case and the Ellison case, he’d been chosen for something special.
All off record. Strictly unofficial. Upshot being it could be denied
if it went wrong. Arrest made, an aberration. We occasionally get
them on the force, we’re trying to weed them out, honest. Yeah
right. The standard bullshit peddled to journalists. All of it utter
bollocks, complete horse shit.
It had started innocently enough.
Boring but relatively innocent. He’d not been privy to all of the
meetings, and had struggled to stay awake in the ones he’d been
invited to. Too much jargon to dazzle anyone who might stumble across
any meeting minutes or recordings. All of it was subtext. He found
that out much later. Of course, he’d not been privy to any of the
reports. He managed to steal them eventually. Off record of course.
Lack of evidence. Denials straight from the firing squad. It had
almost been too easy.
He’d been set up to fail. Given the
level of secrecy, it was shockingly easy to see it coming. They’d
trained him a little too well. Something had to give. After the whole
affair, he was removed from duty. Given recuperation time. Stress,
the report said. Time off, grief. Compassionate leave. A steady
stream of excuses to keep him out of the way, until the were able to
get him into traffic control. It could have been a lot quicker, but
they had to avoid questions. Eyebrows would have been raised. Such a
high profile officer would never be moved to traffic control so
quickly. A rising star demoted as he appeared at his height? Nobody
would believe it. The public were rarely interested, but there were a
few that got involved. The letter writers. Scouring for a scandal.
Something to be outraged over. A justification for their lack of
doing anything else useful. If they had any idea what had actually
happened, they wouldn’t have enough letters to finish what he’d
started.
*
He sat in the hallway, waiting for the
call. The wallpaper there was much newer than in the office. Seemed
such a waste, people walking past, not taking any notice. Subliminal,
of course. All the decoration was. Barely noticed, just enough to
keep you going. A flicker of colour here and there, just to keep you
in check. Remember that you’re alive. His heartbeat slowed as he
worked on his breathing. Seconds passed with each exhale. Eyes
closed, he imagined each breath rolling down the hall like
tumbleweed. A half remembered Ennio Morricone tune whistled through
his head. This was going to be easy, he told himself. No cowboys
here. Do it properly. A flower caught his eye. A rose, the wallpaper
new enough that the colour was a deep, blood red. The thorns had been
painted out. The smell wasn’t there, so it wasn’t perhaps as
fresh as he’d first thought. Whitehall. Whitewash. A poem he’d
half remembered from hearing at school. John Cooper Clarke. Not
enough time for humour now. Barely enough time to think.
He’d been given a rough script to
work with. Naturally, it was memorised. More or less discarded, but
remembered just in case.
“Ah... Officer...”
“Brandt, Home Secretary. My
father, William, was German. No relation of course...”
A little joke to put him at ease.
They’d said that was the best way. A softener, they called it.
“Yes. You prefer formality, I see.”
Yes, it was all just a formality. All
the steps set into stone, waiting for their chance to sink.
“I’m told you’re here to discuss
the reforms...”
Peering over eyeglasses, he focused on
his papers rather than the officer. Rude, but Brandt had expected
that. Morning briefing had informed him that a politician’s
workload and other sundry pressures of the job made them particularly
surly, and ignorant to the fact. The irony was almost too much, but
he held his concentration.
“Current negotiations have been
somewhat... unsuccessful.”
The papers were set down, the
eyeglasses adjusted. Their eyes met for the first time.
“These proposals cut the powers of
the Inspectorate...”
“Well, we can’t go giving the
police too much power now, can we?”
“Whose side are you on?”
“What on Earth did you expect,
Officer? The police are not elected. You chose this job. We did not
choose you. The public may remove us, but they are stuck with you.
Will your politics change at the next election officer? I think not.
Politics is not your business.”
Officer Brandt picked up the papers.
“Shame we’re not more like the
Americans, isn’t it?”
The politician raised an eyebrow.
“We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness.”
“I’m impressed by your memory,
Officer.”
Not too far from the script.
Placing the papers in the bin and setting them alight was improvised.
Standing over them, he watched them burn, ignoring the politician.
“Don’t be so childish. We have more
copies.”
That was true.
“You also have more
politicians, but orders are orders...”
“This is tyranny!”
“No. This is justice. You have been
found to be corrupt. Part of an investigation by HM Inspectorate. The
reforms come as part of a plan to cover up the behaviour of certain
officers representing a significant, and illegal, financial interest
to certain people.”
*
The gloves came in handy when
searching the office. After dictating a suicide note, he’d placed a
gun in the dead man’s hand. Leaving the office, once the worries
about the ballistics team left him, witticisms flooded his mind.
“Elect this!” he thought. Fuck. Always too late. Anyway,
interesting story for the grandchildren. If they’d ever believe
him. Probably end up sworn to secrecy anyway. Official files were
likely already being shredded and burned. A lack of evidence was
sometimes a good thing. Problem being, it can make it difficult to
know where you stand. Initially, the Chief had been hesitant to give
any detail. People are often reluctant to just give away anything,
let alone useful information. A little pressure often helps, or some
other sort of incentive. Pain generally works best.
First the knife was dragged across his
shirt, enough to score it at first. Brandt remembered him seeming a
little calm, considering what was to come. His eyes had bulged a
little as the knife traced the same path, with a little more
pressure. As the shirt slipped away from the knife, the first bead of
sweat fell. A little too much pressure, and a few beads of blood
began to seep from his flesh.
“Feel like talking yet?”
The chief shook his head. Trained well.
Right. Time for a gear change. He shoved the knife with the base of
his hand, and it plunged a little further into the Chief’s chest.
Not deep enough to kill, of course. Brandt’s training had been
better than that. A little more... in depth, you might say. As blood
began to spill, so did words.
“They’re planning on framing you.
Whether you succeed or not, they’re planning on framing you as a
terrorist.”
“I guess I’d better work a little
harder then eh?”
He’d heard of previous cases where
the rooms weren’t secured. The tapes had too much crossover. The
interviews had to be repeated. Too much time wasted, suspects forgot
things, witnesses were less reliable. The Inspectorate had acted
then, and had many of the interrogation rooms brought up to date.
Privacy was ensured, ideal for investigations. Prevents contamination
of interview tapes.
The knife went even deeper. As he
twisted to cut around the heart, he smiled. The joys of a well
soundproofed room.
No comments:
Post a Comment