Love Story 20

I wore my smartest clothes and shined my shoes before we set off to the Police Station at Hall Street. Nobody else hurrying along the canal in the drizzling rain would have notice the connection at first to the man trailing along behind me with a lop-sided grin. Da dressed like a folk singer in an open-neck shirt and spotted an enormous crucifix for the world to see his tanned chest. Didn’t have any sock on and seemed to have on the wrong boots, the leather was coming away from the sole so they curled slightly like Rumpelstiltskin

If he’d any worries he didn’t show them, he whistled and laughed at the ducks. I’m sure if he’d brought a Sunblest loaf, he’d have stopped to feed them. It was cold but I was sweating inside my duffle coat. I kept the hood up so nobody could see me. Wormwood had said that hell was not a place but a form of identity. Hall Street seemed a hallway to Hell. I thought I knew what was waiting for me.

The gruff, heavyset desk Sergeant said little when we presented ourselves at the desk. The Town Hall clock chimed on the hour and the reverberations through the dark wooden doors that fanned out behind him.  A space in dilapidation. Talk was of moving to new premises in the same way that the Council had built a new swimming pool, while keeping the old one open so punters could get used to the idea.

The Desk Sergeant slipped away into the back rooms without bothering to tell us where he was going. He came back quickly enough sharing a stilted conversation with two other smartly dressed officers.

‘Adam Shirley?’ The detective holding the paperwork raised his hand and pushed back a lock of thinning hair.

Da gazed up at both men with a quiet, steady gaze, as if they were about to let him in on the joke.

I bolted up and off the wooden bench at the door. ‘Yes Sir.’

‘Steady,’ said Da and tugged at my jacket. I staggered backwards.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Robert Campbell.’ He cleared his throat before introducing his colleague as Detective Brody.

His dark blonde hair was shaved into his head and made him look older and younger at the same time. Deep hollows and wide cheek bones were complimented by large eyes that had been watching us, watching me.

‘You want to come through?’ Detective Inspector Campbell made is sound like an invitation. The kind of joke my Da would have made as he followed tight behind me, his hand straying to my elbow to keep me right if I stumbled.

Dark corridors offered no clue to which direction we were going. The cloying taste in the back of my throat of what seemed like the wash of sewerage as we passed cells struck me. I jumped backwards when a prisoner shouted ‘Turnkey’ and banged on the door with some metal thing that made the cellblock ring.  

We came out in a bare room as if by accident. Thick windows let in a dim light from the street above. Two strip lights illuminated a table that had seen two world wars. It survived with little more than BundyYaBass  and carved pictures of cocks and balls as mementoes to a less discerning criminal class. Four chairs bolted to the floor were more recent additions. The stink of damp and sweat and stale fag smoke even more so.

Sitting across from us, with a half mug of cold tea. A shared ashtray in front of them, their chairs creaked as they settled into the ritual of lighting a fag before they started.

My hands were shaking in my lap and my eyes darted to the two men and up at the clock on the wall behind them.

‘What’s your name, date of birth and address?’ the good-looking officer asked in a bored tone.

‘Yeh already know that,’ said my Da. ‘Jist get on wae it.’

‘Humour us,’ said the older officer, patting his colleague’s arm. ‘You know what officialdom’s like.’

His eyes fixed on me after I’d answered. ‘So you live quite close to Mrs Connolly?’

‘We live next door,’ said my Da. ‘We’ve got a key tae her hoose.’ He dug into his pockets as if searching for it, ready to put it on the table as evidence. ‘My wife is very, very friendly wae the auld woman. Perhaps too friendly for her ain good.’ But pulled out a tatty hanky instead and honked into it, balled into his fist and stuffed it back into his pocket.

‘On the night in question,’ Detective Campell nodded. ‘You were home rather later than usual?’  

My Da laughed. ‘He was oot wae his girlfriend. That’s whit happens when yer young. Member? Huv yeh interviewed her?’

The good-looking cop chuckled. ‘You keep interrupting,’ he said to Da. ‘We’re doing you the courtesy of allowing you to stay, but just shut up forgodsake.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Da. ‘And I’ll no shut up. Yer jist an arsehole hiding behind a nametag. There should be at least a social worker here. An yeh know it.’

Brody jumped up. ‘I think we can settle this outside.’

My Da was quicker. He was up for it. I think he’d have thrown a right hook if DI Campbell hadn’t hauled his colleague’s arm and pulled him back into the seat beside him. Crying out his name, ‘Brodie,’ in a way that suggested he was peeved.

He stared down at his notebook and flung my Da his packet of cigarettes and Swan Vestas. ‘I’d like to apologise,’ he said. ‘We’ve got off on the wrong foot. I’ve got a son much the same age as your boy and I can understand why you’re very protective of him. We’ll just ask a few simple questions. Then you can get on your way.’

My Da lit up and pushed the Regal King Size back towards DI Campbell. ‘It’s alright,’ he said and nodded.

‘OK, let’s get on then,’ said DI Campbell addressing me. ‘We did actually interview your girlfriend, Ali Tuohy.’ He studied his notebook. ‘Only she said she said she wasn’t your girlfriend. That she hadn’t been out with you in the night in question. In fact, she hadn’t been out with you for several days because you assaulted her. Even though you knew she was pregnant. She showed us a mark on her face which she said was bruising.’

He stared at me. ‘What would you say to that?’

‘Dunno!’ I replied.

‘You do know that she’s pregnant?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘And is the child yours?’ he asked?

‘Eh, aye,’ I said, blinking back tears.

He spent a few seconds writing in his notebook. ‘I’m charging you with having underage sex with a minor?’

‘Hi,’ said my Da reaching over and stubbing out his cigarette. ‘You cannae dae that.’  

‘We’ve already done it,’ said DI Campbell ignoring him and focussing on me. ‘We’re cautioning you and warning you that anything you say, will and can be used against you. You understand?’

My head dropped into my chest and I sniffed as I cried, ‘Aye,’ I wailed.

‘Right,’ said DI Campbell. ‘Tell us about the photographs you put back through Mrs Connolly’s door?’ He wrote it down.

I mumbled, ‘What photographs?’ Not daring to look up at him.

‘The photographs with your fingerprints on them,’ Brodie looked up from his notebook, his eyes glistening.

‘I didnae mean it,’ I said.

‘That’s bullshit,’ spluttered Da. ‘He’s no even been fingerprinted. And you know it. Yer a lying bastard.’

‘What about the telephone receptionist? Detective Brodie offered a guttural chuckle. Said she wasn’t sure if it was a girl of boy on the line at first, but then worked out it was a right wee, ponsy, poofy-sounding, wee bastard.’

Da clocked him a beauty flush on his nose. It messed up his clean white shirt. I took a bit of a dunt myself when I tried to help. But we heard the gallop of feet and were soon outnumbered. Da’s hands cuffed too tight behind his back. Brodie’s foot on his neck.

‘I did it,’ I cried, so they’d let him up. Let him breath. ‘I burgled Mrs Connolly’s house.’

Small mercies. He was flung into the same cell as me.