What Time Devours (39 page)

Inside, the custody sergeant listened to the account of the arrest, then asked for his name.

“What was that, sir?”

“Knight,” said Thomas, conscious that he was muttering. “Thomas Knight.”

“And I’ll need some form of identification.”

Thomas fished in his pockets and drew out wallet and passport.

“A visitor from overseas?” said the sergeant, pleasantly, as if Thomas were clearing customs at Gatwick. The redhaired officer who had arrested him gave him a long look.

“If you will just empty your pockets,” said the custody sergeant, “remove all jewelry, your belt, and your shoelaces, then you can step through there.”

Thomas stared at him.

“I really didn’t do anything,” he said. “I just wanted to see if . . .”

“Your belt, please, sir.”

Thomas was in a daze. His fingers didn’t work properly. He had to focus on them as they unfastened the belt buckle, watching them as if they belonged to someone else.

“And your shoelaces, please, sir.”

“That really isn’t necessary,” Thomas began.

“I’m afraid it is, sir.”

Thomas’s gaze faltered and shifted.

“I’m going to check your pockets now, sir.”

He did so.

“You are entitled to call your consulate prior to your interview if you wish.”

Thomas shook his head quickly. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone about what had happened, and he certainly didn’t want to draw attention from home to his idiocy. If nothing else, it could cost him his job, though in truth he wasn’t being that practical right now. He just couldn’t stand the idea of admitting what he’d done to some official to whom it would be a stupid inconvenience.

“And you understand why you have been detained?”

He nodded.

“Burglary,” he said. “I didn’t take anything, but, yes.”

“Burglary doesn’t necessarily involve theft,” said the custody sergeant. “But it is a Crown court indictment punishable with up to fourteen years’ jail time.”

Thomas, who had lowered his eyes, looked up again.

“Sure you don’t want to talk to your consulate?” said the sergeant.

Thomas thought, then shook his head again, slower this time.

His eyes closed.

 

He was photographed and fingerprinted, each finger individually rolled, then the palms of both hands. He washed his hands but couldn’t rinse off the ink. The sergeant gave him a cloth impregnated with methylated spirit, which got the ink out from everywhere but under his nails but left a sharp, alcoholic stench that he couldn’t get rid of, even with more washing. He was searched. He was shown to what the duty sergeant called—sarcastically or not, he couldn’t tell—the “custodial suite.” It was a small room, perhaps ten feet by twelve with a single narrow window—barred and with unusually heavy glass—above head height: a cell.

He stepped inside, and was about to say something—what, he didn’t know, just something—when the heavy metal door swung clanging shut behind him.

A spy hole in the door slid open and the sergeant said,

“I’ll be by to check on you.”

Then he was gone.

 

The room was brick, but painted with a thick gloss paint the color of mantling cream. The floor was concrete. There was a long solid structure against one wall that was obviously supposed to be a bed, though it was really a brick platform—part of the structure of the room—on which lay a stained mattress covered with rubberized plastic. There was a toilet in an alcove, which was flushed remotely from outside. Suddenly Thomas found he wanted to use it, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He considered calling for assistance, but couldn’t bear the idea of speaking to anyone.

CHAPTER 81

They came for him about a half hour later.

“This way, please, sir,” said the sergeant.

Thomas smiled weakly at their politeness, then looked down as he followed them. He still felt stunned, drained of energy, of fight, by a sense of guilt and stupidity. He thought of Kumi and shrugged the image away, barely holding in a groan of horror and shame.

They took him to another room, this one with a large silver tape recorder labeled Neal Interview Recorder 7000 Series. It contained two sets of spools. There was a mirror on one wall and a camera in the corner on a ceiling bracket. There was a table with four chairs of thin tubular steel with wooden seats and backs, almost exactly the kind of chairs he had in his Evanston classroom.

A young man in shirtsleeves was already inside. Thomas was motioned into the chair next to him. He shot Thomas a quick look and then returned his gaze to a sheet of paper. The sergeant didn’t sit, but stood by the door like a guard.

The officer who had arrested him produced two reels of tape.

“Please confirm that these are sealed,” he said, looking at Thomas.

“What?”

“The tape reels. Can you confirm that they are sealed?”

Thomas looked at them and then at the officer, as if he had been asked to perform some complex conjuring trick.

“I guess so,” he said.

The policeman turned on the recorder.

“This interview is being recorded and is taking place in an interview room at Newbury Police Station,” he said, in the flat monotone of someone who has said the same thing a thousand times before. “If your case is brought to trial, this recording may be given in evidence. At the end of the interview I shall give you a notice explaining what will happen to the tapes and how you can obtain a copy. The time by my watch is five thirty-five P.M. and the date is the twenty-first of June, 2008. I am Sergeant Jeff Hodges, the arresting officer. I am accompanied by the Custody Sergeant Harry Philips. Since the suspect is not a British citizen, a solicitor—Mr. Devan Cummings—has been provided for him. If this is not acceptable, the suspect can request other counsel.”

He gave Thomas an expectant look. Thomas, belatedly, shook his head.

“The suspect has signified in the negative by shaking his head.”

Thomas just looked at him. The whole thing was surreal, like he was in a TV show.

“For the benefit of the tape,” Hodges went on, “could you please state your name, age, and address.”

“Thomas Knight, age thirty-eight, 1247 Sycamore Street, Evanston, Illinois.”

“That’s in the United States of America, is it, sir?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Could you please speak up a little, sir. For the tape.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Do you agree that the people whose names I just gave are the only people in the room?”

“Yes.”

“A little louder, please, sir.”

“Yes. They are the only people in the room.”

“The sheet of paper I am giving you now is the notice to persons being interviewed. Please review that now. If you have questions, the interview will be delayed until we have answered them to your satisfaction.”

Thomas stared at the form but his mind could not take it in. He looked at Hodges.

“May I proceed?” said the policeman.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Knight, you were arrested because you were seen coming out of a house that you do not own. Would you mind telling us what you were doing there?”

Thomas had known since he had been picked up that this is where they would start, but he could still think of nothing to say. How was he supposed to explain that he was looking into the death of a child twenty-six years ago as a way of tracking two more recent killings and a lost Shakespeare play. It would seem absurd. No, worse than that. It
would
be absurd.

I know not seems
, he thought.

For the first time since Escolme had called him, it all seemed completely preposterous, and the prospect of telling the story made him feel even more humbled.

But tell it he did, slowly, haltingly, doubling back to clarify points, speaking in a hushed monotone, while the others sat in silence, listening. He gave them the names of Polinski in Evanston and Robson in Kenilworth, as if merely knowing officers of the law would help somehow, and he insisted that he had not taken anything from Elsbeth Church’s house, that he had merely looked and left.

“Was the back door open?” said Hodges.

Thomas hesitated, knowing that he had dodged this point before, that it was a fork in the road that would determine a great deal. If he admitted forcing the door, he would surely be charged. If he lied and said the door was open, he might walk, but he also might find himself in considerably deeper waters when Church swore she’d locked it behind her.

“I tried it, and it opened,” he said.

“Did ‘trying it’ involve the use of this?” said Hodges.

He produced a clear plastic bag containing Thomas’s out-of-date MasterCard.

“I mention it because it seems scratched,” said Hodges, pretending to discover the damage for the first time. “And see there? There’s a notch in the bottom edge, as if someone forced it . . .”

“Yes, I used the credit card,” said Thomas.

Hodges sat back in his chair, considering him. For a moment he didn’t speak.

“Your passport says you’re a teacher,” he said. “That right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, you’ll need to speak up a bit.”

“I said yes, that’s right,” said Thomas, raising his head.

“And this detective thing you’re doing, that’s like a summer holiday, is it? A bit of a lark before you go back for the autumn—sorry, the
fall
—term.”

He used the word like it was something shiny he had just picked up.

Thomas shrugged.

“I was trying to help,” he said. It sounded pathetically inadequate. “I wanted to clear Escolme’s name, to prove that what he had said was true. He was my student . . .”

Silence.

“And you didn’t remove anything from Miss Church’s property?”

“Nothing,” said Thomas. “You saw me as soon as I came out. You have my things.”

“Nasty bruise you’re getting there,” said Hodges, peering at Thomas’s forehead.

Thomas rubbed it self-consciously.

“I had a bit of a fall. By the watermill at Warwick Castle.”

“And you carry your shoulder funny,” said Hodges. “That a fall too?”

“No. I got shot. In Chicago. You can check with Polinski.”

“Quite a life you lead, isn’t it, Mr. Knight? I mean, for a teacher.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say to that,” said Thomas.

“Did you find what you were looking for, at Miss Church’s?”

“Not sure what I was looking for,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. I now know that Dagenhart—an old professor of mine—knew Daniella Blackstone at the time of the fire, but I pretty much knew that already.”

“So just your arrest to show for the day’s work,” said Hodges. “I hope the rest of your holiday—sorry,
vacation
—goes better.”

“Is it likely to?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Hodges, looking over a sheet of notes. “We have you on suspected burglary . . .”

“I told you,” Thomas inserted. “I didn’t take anything!”

“Burglary is a complex crime,” said Hodges. “You don’t have to have stolen anything. Section nine, subsections one A and B of the Theft Act say that burglary has various possible ingredients, which include theft, but also might include rape, grievous bodily harm, or unlawful damage.”

“I didn’t do any of those things.”

“You don’t need to have actually committed any of those offenses if the intent to commit them was part of your unlawful entrance.”

“Why would I be looking to attack Elsbeth Church or smash her property?”

“I can’t say, can I?” said Hodges. “But I can tell you this. You could be charged with various crimes pending consultation with the homeowner. At the very least, civil trespass. Or we could go back to the venerable English common law—a law preserved not through statute but practice from time immemorial—and charge you with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. Or we can get really creative, and charge you with being found on enclosed premises for unlawful purposes, as per the 1824 Vagrancy Act. But we’d have to clear you of burglary before we started trying those, and we’re a long way from having done that, aren’t we? So no, Mr. Knight, to answer your question: I don’t see your vacation getting any better.”

CHAPTER 82

Hodges asked if he thought English law didn’t apply to him. He wondered aloud if Thomas was relying on his citizenship to save him from trouble and if as an American he was used to thinking that he was somehow above the law and custom of other countries, that his own interests and desires—however frivolous or absurd—somehow trumped all other concerns. If he did, said the policeman, he was sorely misled.

Thomas said little, merely shaking his head and periodically saying, “No, sir, I don’t think that.”

The policemen were being studiously polite and methodical, but Thomas couldn’t help wondering if he had touched a nerve. He had seen enough of the U.K. papers to catch a recurrent preoccupation with American high-handedness on the global stage, a tendency to act on their self-declared moral authority regardless of what the rest of the world thought. He knew this rankled a lot of Europeans. They didn’t think much of that America-as-policeman-of-the-world stuff. They probably weren’t too keen on Americans playing world private investigator either . . .

The last thing Hodges said to him was a cliché, offered halfway between explanation and defiance:

“You ever hear the phrase, ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’?”

Thomas said he had.

“Well,” said the policeman. “There you are then.”

Thomas was taken back down the hallway, escorted by a tall black officer who watched him impassively, as Hodges and the sergeant continued their conversation elsewhere.