Intrusion (37 page)

‘What?’ Hope cried. McKinnon jolted upright in his seat.

‘Yes,’ Macdonald went on, with a smug glance at the lawyer, ‘the charge against you depends on your
having good reason
to believe that such an act was committed, and the evidence you have been confronted with is
in and of itself
good and indeed compelling reason, in the eyes of the law, for you to believe that. Regardless of whether that evidence leads to a conviction,
you would still be deemed knowingly complicit in the alleged act.’

Hope glared at Macdonald and turned to McKinnon. ‘Is that so?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said McKinnon. ‘I’m afraid it is. Lots of precedents over recent years, in Scotland and in England.’

‘But that’s just another … ’ Hope’s mouth was dry. She took a swallow of water. ‘Another case of being guilty even if you’re innocent.’

‘Be that as it may,’ said Macdonald, ‘the fact remains that it’s the law, and under the law, if you’re found guilty on this charge you could be put away for life, and if you’re innocent you could still lose all access to your child. And, Hope, I hate to bring this up, but that applies also to the child you’re expecting.’

Hope sagged forward in the chair. ‘No!’

‘Yes,’ said Macdonald, ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the case. Another point I’m reluctant to bring up, but which I’m obliged to in your own interests, is that once you’ve been charged with or even suspected of terrorism, you become liable to enhanced interrogation to uncover any further possible lines of inquiry. Oh, Hope, don’t look away, don’t hide from the truth! Save yourself, for heaven’s sake! You have no idea what else your husband could be charged with – treason, even.’

‘Treason?’ Hope had thought she was now beyond surprise, but no.

‘He booked a flight to Prague last week, and spoke of emigrating to Russia, all quite legal of course, but in conjunction
with concealing a weapon in an area within the North Atlantic Defence—’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ Hope jumped up. The chair clattered behind her. ‘You’d charge a man with treason for leaving a
bloody air pistol
where the fucking
Russian Army
might find it?’

‘Yes,’ said Macdonald, pushing her chair and herself backward. ‘We would. And if you don’t sit down and stop waving your arms around, I’ll see to it that you’re charged with assaulting a police officer.’

Hope retrieved her chair and sat down. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t threatening you. I was just – overcome with astonishment.’

‘Och, that’s quite understandable,’ said Macdonald. She pulled herself and the seat forward to the table, propped her elbows, and looked Hope in the eye. ‘Now – what was that about an air pistol?’

‘Oh, fuck,’ said Hope.

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ McKinnon said.

‘Indeed you don’t,’ said Macdonald, cheerfully. ‘If you don’t mind being charged forthwith, as follows … ’ She looked down at her pad. ‘You, Hope Morrison, are hereby—’

‘Stop!’ Hope cried. ‘Stop! I’ll tell you everything.’

For a frantic moment, she thought Macdonald would go on reading the charge. Then the policewoman looked up.

‘Everything?’

‘Yes,’ said Hope. ‘Everything.’

*

When she’d finished, half an hour later, the policewoman and the lawyer sat back in their chairs and triangulated her with looks of deep bewilderment.

McKinnon spoke first.

‘Mrs Morrison,’ he said, ‘do I take you to be giving me a testimony to deliver to my colleague defending your husband, in support of him urging your husband to enter a plea of
not guilty by reason of insanity
?’

Hope felt as if she was looking up from the bottom of a pit of despair and betrayal, and not sure whether she was seeing a rope to get out or a spade to dig herself in deeper.

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. ‘Do what you like. I’ve told you the truth.’

‘This interview is terminated,’ said Macdonald. She stood up. ‘Hope, I must ask you to return to the cell.’

Hope had been in the cell for half an hour when the door banged open. Dolina Macdonald stood there.

‘Come with me to the front desk, please.’

As she emerged into the reception area, Hope saw Nigel Morrison sitting on a chair at the back, his face grim. He gave her the barest flicker of a smile before she was taken to the desk. Hamish McKinnon stood beside her as her possessions were returned.

‘You’ve been released on bail,’ the lawyer told her. ‘The bail has been posted by Nigel Morrison. You must remain on Lewis, but as long as you’re on the island you can go wherever you like.
The charges are still pending. The child-protection charges, that is – the police haven’t said anything more about the other charges Dolina mentioned, and you can be sure I’ll be making a complaint about her bringing them up in the interview. Still … ’

‘Yes,’ said Hope, in a dull voice. She slid the wedding ring on, then the monitor ring, which immediately began to sting from all the contaminants in the air around her. Alcohol and nicotine molecules in the remaining traces of sick, she guessed. She looked at the fix, still in its carton and bubble, and shoved it in her pocket. ‘Still. Where’s Hugh? If they’ve charged him, shouldn’t he be here?’

McKinnon shook his head. ‘Still being held in the military brig at the airbase, I’m afraid. My colleague is making urgent representations about that.’

‘Oh please, please, go on doing that and let me know … ’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Did you really take what I said to Hugh’s solicitor?’

‘Yes,’ said McKinnon. ‘For whatever good that’ll do. I didn’t say anything about an insanity defence, of course. That was … just my first reaction. Not very professional. Sorry.’

‘What about our child? Where is he?’

‘I don’t know,’ said McKinnon. ‘You’ll have to ask his grandfather.’

‘Well, thanks for everything,’ said Hope. ‘I’m sure I’ll see you again.’

‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

Hope shook hands with him, stiffly, then walked over to Nigel, who jumped up to meet her.

‘Where’s Nick?’ she asked. ‘Is he with Mairi?’

‘No,’ said Nigel. He took her in his arms. ‘They haven’t told us where he is.’

He held her until she stopped crying, and then helped her out of the police station and along the street to the car. He carried her rucksack, but she wouldn’t let go of Nick’s.

Hugh didn’t know how long he’d been standing on tiptoe, leaning on his fingertips against the wall. Not knowing the length of time was, he was at some level aware, an intended result, a design feature of the procedure. He could see bright white light through the interweave of the bag over his head, and he could hear white noise through the headphones over his ears. Every so often the white noise would be replaced by jarring, jaunty music, or the sounds of weeping or screaming, and just as he’d got used to these and was beginning to tune them out, the white noise would rush back like incoming breakers. The tiny squares of white light danced and moved in front of his eyes, like pixels in an old low-res video game, and sometimes formed into swooping, attacking space fleets or flying shards of glass.

Every so often, when the pain in his fingers and arms and feet and the back of his legs became unbearable, he would let
go and press his palms on the wall or his bare soles on the floor, and enjoy the relief for the second or two before the blow came to the inside of his leg or his groin or the side of his trunk below the ribs or the small of his back.

But it was while he was standing as instructed that he was, without warning, struck hard across the backs of his knees. He fell to the floor, banging his head against the wall on the way down. The phones and hood were snatched off his head while he was still sprawling, dazed, at the foot of the wall. He immediately placed his arms over his head, curled up and pulled up his legs.

‘Get up!’

The command came from a metre or two away, and rang like a shout in a public toilet. Hugh rolled to his knees, then to his feet, holding himself up against the wall.

‘Open your eyes and step away from the wall.’

Hugh opened his eyes, and closed them tight shut as the light hit them. He stepped away from the wall, swayed, and fell again. This time he didn’t bang his head, and the next time he got up he was able to stay on his feet and open his eyes. A man in the uniform of a Royal Marine sergeant stood in front of him, regarding him with a curious detachment. The room was tiled white, with a cork floor and a polystyrene ceiling. The door stood open.

‘After you,’ the marine said, gesturing to the doorway.

Staggering, cringing from the expected blow, Hugh made for the door. It gave on to a narrow corridor.

‘Left,’ said the marine.

Hugh walked on until ordered into a room to the side. It looked like a lecture room, with bright overhead lights, a blank white wall screen, and rows of chairs with built-in desks. The marine pushed him, not too hard, towards a desk at the front and told him to sit down. Then he went out. Hugh’s head slumped on his arms, across the desk.

‘Hello,’ said a new voice. Hugh looked up. A shaven-headed man a few years older than him, wearing plain trousers and an open-necked blue shirt, stood over him holding two cans of Coke.

‘No coffee, I’m afraid,’ the man said, with a light smile. He had a north London accent, clipped to posh. ‘Can’t risk any hot liquids being slung around, you see. Coke?’

Hugh managed to close his hand on the chilly can. His finger joints hurt. He was still trying to get a fingernail under the tab when the man grabbed a seat, swung it around, and sat down facing him, a metre and a half away. He watched Hugh prise open the can, spill a foamy dribble down his chin, and then force a sip down his throat.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to drink too much at once. You’ve had it rough, haven’t you? Those military types … ’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘Carry on as if they were in a war zone. Never give you a chance to put your side of the story before they pile right in on you with the old routine. You’d almost think they enjoyed it. But they don’t, not really. They’re very professional. But rough, undeniably rough.’

He popped his own can and continued: ‘So, Hugh. This is your chance. Let me hear what you have to say for yourself.
From what I’ve been told, it doesn’t look good for you, but I’m sure, you know, that you have your own version of events, and if it fits in with all the known facts and accounts for them in a different way – well! That’s you off the hook! No one would be happier than me – apart from you, of course – if this all turned out to be a ridiculous misunderstanding. Result!’ He smacked his palm with his fist, making Hugh wince. ‘I’d be absolutely delighted. Walk you to the gate, put you in a taxi back to Stornoway, slap-up dinner with your wife, night in a hotel, all on the taxpayers’ tab. Sounds good, yes?’

Hugh nodded.

‘On the other hand,’ said the man, standing up and pacing about, as if nervously, between the desks and the screen, ‘suppose you have something serious to get off your chest. What you’ve done might look bad to you. Maybe you’re afraid to admit it out loud. But even so, you’re in a far better position than you might expect if you just spill it all as soon as possible. Names, dates, plans, the lot. The more the better. A full and frank confession makes a good impression on a judge, you know, and I’m sure a smart brief could come up with all sorts of mitigating circumstances. Good Lord! I can reel off half a dozen myself, just off the top of my head. Previous good character. Father of a small child. Local ways, perhaps, about guns and so forth. Seriousness of the offence not realised. Led astray, maybe, by ruthless professionals. All that sort of thing.’

He stopped, by the white screen. Hugh squinted at him, through eyes half-shut against the glare.

‘I sometimes think,’ mused the man, ‘that we make a big
mistake letting so many frightening rumours circulate. They work as a deterrent, I’ll give you that, but we seem to forget to balance this against the panic people get into when they’re facing charges like those you are. They may think that no matter what they do or say, life as they know it is over. That they’re doomed to vanish without trace into the … parallel detention system. The global gulag, as some very ill-informed journalists so frivolously call it. They really should read the book, you know, before bandying around terms like that.’

He gazed off into the middle distance for a moment. As the room’s venetian blinds were closed, this did not strike Hugh as a convincing pose.

‘All quite untrue,’ the man went on. ‘And yet, and yet … ’ He sighed. ‘I’ve seen so many cases of people who held out, for days, months, years even, thinking that a confession would make things worse for them. Not true, not true at all. And when you see the state of them when they finally come out … Sad cases.’ He shook his head. ‘It makes you wonder what their lawyers were thinking of, it really does. No!’

He turned his head sharply and faced Hugh again.

‘No!’ he repeated. ‘All the grim stuff you’ve heard of – that only happens to those who don’t confess.’ He strolled over and resumed his seat. He took a sip of his Coke, and leaned forward.

‘So tell me, Hugh,’ he began, then jumped to his feet, knocking over the desk, and shoved his face right in front of Hugh’s, ‘WHERE DID YOU HIDE THAT FUCKING GUN AND WHY DID YOU HIDE IT?’