2007 - A tale etched in blood and hard black pencel (9 page)

Helen, like everybody else, knows there’s no single correct answer to this, and given how things just worked out for David Reardon, she sensibly takes a wee moment to think about it. There’s total silence while she does, with everybody in the hall aware that Momo’s temper just got turned up a wee notch. You could hear a pin drop, which means there’s nobody in the hall
doesn’t
hear the slightly louder noise of a wee squeaky fart from somewhere to Scot’s right. It’s a really tight one, a high-pitched number that sounded like whoever did it was trying their best to hold it in. A few folk giggle, and Scot can feel his face creasing up while he tries, like just about everyone else, not to laugh.

“Matches, sir,” Helen decides.

“That’s right, Helen. Good girl. You must
never
play with matches,” he informs them all, wagging a stubby finger for emphasis. “Because fiyarrs can get started by accident. Now, Brendan Mclntyre, do you think
this
fiyarr was started by accident?”

Brendan, one of the Primary Sixes, pauses only a moment before replying, “I don’t know, sir,” an answer Scot admires for its astute reading of the situation and deft prevention of any follow-up.

“Well, do you want to know what I think?” Momo asks the room. “Do you want to know what I think?” he repeats, starting to pace, giving his opinion the big build-up. He pauses for impact, letting the silence grow, and it grows just long enough for a second fart to fill it: this time louder and slightly longer, but still with enough tightness to suggest another failed bum-struggle.

Scot is shuddering now, and from all sides he hears the wheezy tittering of several weans fighting their own losing battles against laughter.

Fortunately, Momo either never heard the fart or is ignoring it and pressing on regardless. “I think it
was
started by accident. Because, sawd as I am to say it, I think it was started by some bawd iggs at
this…very…school
. And bawd as they might be, I don’t believe, I
can’t
believe anyone could be so bawd, so very, very, very bawd indeed, to deliberately burn down the lovely wee Primary Ones’ and wee Primary Twos’ and wee Primary Threes’ classrooms. And that’s why I’m going to give them the chance to own up. That’s why I’ve called everyone here to assembly. If whoever did it can be as big and brave as to own up, like they thought they were big and brave when they were playing with matches, then we can put the matter behind us. They can stand up and say sorry to all the other children sitting here, then come with me to the Church Hall to say sorry to the wee Primary Ones and Primary Twos, and after that the police won’t need to be told. But if they don’t own up, here and now…” Momo paces again, shaking his head. Scot knows he’s looking at a volcano about to erupt. “Then
woe betide theml
Because they will be found. The police are clever—very, very clever—and they have machines for finding out who is telling lies. And when those bawd iggs are found, I will be taking my strap, and I will drag them round each and every classroom, from Primary One to Primary Seven, and I will
belt them in each and every classroom, for all the boys and gerrals to see
. And they will be crying [boxer-dog once more] like wee babies, crying and crying, and when they have run out of tears, I will
take them back to the first class and begin again!
”

Momo’s voice echoes off the walls. There’s weans with their hair practically standing on end now. It’s as well the Primary Ones and Twos aren’t here, because any bets they’d all be greeting.

Scot has to hand it to Momo: he makes it sound like a good offer. And if anybody believed him for a second about his end of the deal, he might even get takers. Hell, there were one or two eejits who would probably be prepared to own up and say sorry in exchange for the boost it would give their reputations to get the credit for something as massive as the blaze.
If
they believed him for a second.

“So now, here is your chance, your one big chance, to do it the easy way and own up. To say sorry. I’ll give you ten seconds, and then, after that, I’ll be practising with my strap. I’ll be eating steak and drinking milk to build up my muscles for that strap.” And with this, he pulls the aforementioned black leather tawse from inside his jacket where it’s permanently draped over his shoulder, grips it in his giant, knobbly fist and lashes it down with all his might against the stage. The crack echoes off the four walls, the reverberation felt in Scot’s and probably just about everyone else’s stomach.

Momo sticks the leather away again and folds his arms. “Ten…nine…eight…”

Even from halfway back down the gym hall, Scot can see that the belt has left a big brown mark on the stage. Any bets it’s left a few brown marks elsewhere as well.

“Three…two…one…”

If Scot thought there was silence earlier, then that was a riot compared to now, with every person in the place simultaneously holding their breath. You can hear rain on the windows, the purr of a car driving past out on the main road.

Then there sounds out the biggest, loudest, longest, wateriest brammer of a fart Scot has ever had the privilege to witness. Nae kidding, this is
world class
. You don’t just hear it, you feel it, like when a high wind rattles the sills or an aeroplane flies low over your house. It’s more than a fart; ‘fart’ doesn’t seem a big or long enough word for this arse-concerto. It’s an event, almost on the scale of the fire.

And immediately, of course, there is total uproar: a dam breaking as all that high tension collapses and everybody totally cracks up. Even the most fearful and most self-disciplined weans are helpless, their terror of the heidie no match for the irresistible hilarity of the moment. Scot is bent over where he’s sitting, and even through tears in his eyes he can see some of the staff’s features contort as they strive professionally to keep the smiles off their own coupons. And in the middle of it, like he’s trying to hold back the tide and not get washed away, is Momo, bellowing his lungs out. “Who was tha-aat? Who? Who made that
terrible
and disgusting noise?”

Aye, fuck’s sake. Like somebody would own up to a fart like that under any circumstances, never mind to Momo on the warpath. Give us peace.

Scot has heard there is someone in Primary Five who can make himself fart when he wants to, but you hear a lot of shite like that, and thus he hadn’t given the reports much credence. Scot can make himself burp (though if he does it too much it gives him the hiccups), but until now he didn’t believe you could make yourself fart—or believe anyone would
want
to. But the timing of these trumpetings has just been too good to be accidental.

Momo is now walking forward among the squatting assembly like he’s wading out to sea. “
Quiet!
” he shouts, but for the moment the laughter is still too infectious. “I
said quiet!
” he tries again, this time with the added visual cue of pulling the belt from his shoulder.

This has an immediate, widespread impact. Everybody tries really hard to hold it in, and the noise dies right down, though there’s still a lot of shoulders shuddering. Scot can see some folk nipping their own skin so that the pain stops them from thinking about how funny the fart was.

Momo holds the belt in both hands, folding it in two. “Who made that noise?” he demands again. His eyes are blazing. His previous antics were a calculated effort in putting the wind up everybody, but since the wind came right back out, you can tell he’s totally lost the place. The mad bastard’s probably even forgotten all about the fire by this point. “Who? Who?” He leans down and stares at one of the Primary Fours. “Derek Coogan. Was it you?”

You can see this Primary Four’s whole body tremble as he shakes his heid and says, “No, sir.”

“Allan McQueen. Was it you?”

No, but if you keep this up, Momo, somebody’s going to actually shite themselves, never mind fart.

Momo wades deeper, further up the hall, getting nearer to Scot. He can feel his heart beating faster, imagines wee Jamesy’s will be doing double that again. He stops on the spot and starts sniffing the air. There’s close to silence again now; Momo’s cranked up the tension once more and put the fear back into atmos. He takes another couple of steps, still sniffing, his eyebrows bunched together like two caterpillars having a square go. Then Scot feels a horrible sensation running through him as he realises what’s about to happen just half a second before it does. Momo’s stopped over Harry Fenwick, his nostrils still twitching and a look on his face familiar to anybody who’s just arrived in a Fenwick’s immediate vicinity.

“Haa-rold Fenwick,” he blurts out, slavers dripping from his gub in his blind outrage. “Disgusting boy. It was you.” And with that he reaches down a huge paw and yanks poor Harry to his feet.

“Sir, it wasnae…” barely escapes from Harry’s mouth before greeting drowns his voice.

Momo practically drags the boy along with him, shouting, “Out! To the front!” as he does so. He’s got hold of Harry’s jumper at the back of his neck with one hand and is already battering lumps out his head with the other as he hauls him forward. “We’ll see how funny those revolting noises are in just one minute,” Momo rumbles, for the benefit of all present, not just Harry.

Momo all but throws him against the wee stage as he lets go of Harry’s neck, the force nearly knocking him off his feet. He puts a hand out to steady himself but his legs are all wobbly from fear. “Get your hands out, disgusting boy.
Filthy boy
, ” Momo shouts. Harry’s bubbling away, shaking like a wet dog as he reluctantly lifts a hand out, palm up. He looks tiny compared to Momo, who is towering over him, trembling as much with rage as Harry is with terror. “Both hands,” he adds, so Harry will place one hand under the other. This is so the impact won’t knock the hand away and lessen the blow. Momo is a fucking bastard.

Scot feels like he shouldn’t look, like there’s something wrong about this being made a public spectacle, but at the same time he can’t take his eyes off it. He now understands what his ma means when she says the shops were busy ‘like an execution’.

“This is what happens to boys who make disgusting noises,” Momo says. He draws the belt back over his shoulder, and, again, everybody breathes in, at which point a second super-fart all but rattles the windows.

Momo’s eyes nearly burst out his skull with a fury nobody has ever witnessed even from him before. He turns away from Harry to face the assembly, which is by now once again a sea of helplessly rocking weans, and stamps his right foot so hard against the polished boards it’s like a bomb going off. “
Quiet!
” he roars. “
Quiet!
”

But this time there’s just no holding back the tide. Momo’s face is now going purple. His fists are clenched, his knuckles white and his eyeballs about ready to explode from his shuddering heid. He leans back a wee bit and then jumps in the air—both feet actually leave the ground—while screaming, “I
said…
” The third word was meant to be ‘quiet’, but as his clumpy shoes crash back to earth and shake the floor, that’s not what emerges from his mouth. A top-plate of false teeth goes fleeing from between his lips and skites along the floorboards up one of the aisles between the rows of assembled weans.

A lassie screams and starts greeting. Maybe she thought Momo’s heid had burst, but no luck, he’s still alive. He’s got one hand clamped over his gub and goes galumphing down the hall with the other one outstretched to retrieve his fugitive falsers. Meanwhile, Harris steps from the side of the stage to the middle and yells, “
Hail Queen of Heaven
. One, two, three,” and starts singing, waving like fuck to the other teachers to join in.

Some of the less hysterical weans—mainly lassies—obediently take up the hymn and just about drown out the sound of folk creasing themselves as Momo goes lolloping away up the corridor like a wounded orang-utan.

Scot looks round at Jamesy, and has never seen him happier. They even both start singing, like it’s a song of triumph and not some dirge. Then more and more folk join in, singing it with a joy and enthusiasm Harris has never seen and can barely believe. But that’s because they know—while she doesn’t—that they’ve got their own version of the last line.

“Thrown on life’s surge, we claim thy care,” they all belt out, big, daft grins on their faces. “Save us from peril—and Mo-mo!”

T
here is a crucial prelude to every interview, a silent exchange before the first word is spoken, which is often as instructive in getting to the truth as any of the verbal submissions that follow. That’s why Karen is always nervous in the minutes immediately before her first meeting with a suspect, regardless of how many dozens of times she’s done it in the past. No matter the hour, no matter how tired, no matter what other worries might threaten to cloud her vision, she has to get ready, get entirely focused for those first brief seconds when her eyes meet those of whoever is sitting on the far side of the table. It’s not as though the game is won and lost in that first exchange (a deficit can usually be recovered), but it certainly helps get a result if you can be the one to seize an early advantage.

If you’re ready, if you’re focused, you can see a lot in that first glance. You can see fear; of yourself, of someone else, or sometimes in its sheer essence. You can see anger. You can see defiance. Regret. Desperation. Bewilderment. Defeat. Resignation. Confidence. Complacency. You can see the person on the other side sizing you up, working out tactics. And if you read it fast enough, you can evaluate every word from then on in light of mis.

She’s been played by a few suspects—who hasn’t?—but not for a long time. It’s not about instinct and it can’t really be taught, other than by plain experience. In fact, it’s the one thing in this job of which you could say that, early on in your career, it’s possible to make too
few
mistakes. You screw up, you misread, you get taken, and you learn not to fall for the same shite twice. No amount of other cops’ stories can drive it home; only your own anger can galvanise you, can make you see the same pitfall when it inevitably comes around again.