Take the next Road on Your Left (4)

“Who are your buddies?”
“Sorry”
“Your mates”
“I don’t follow…”
“Name”
“Joe…er…Phil…em…Andy…”
“How many names you got?”
“Oh my name”
“Maybe he’s Frank Skinner, or are you another comedian?”
“You lost me. My mates…you asked about them didn’t you? I just thought….”
“Dangerous”
“I’m harmless”
“We’ll do the brain work”
“Oh, hah, I see”
“Well perhaps you can shed some light for us then?”
The room was sparse and I expected that; a table with an audio recorder, two chairs and the obligatory two way mirror. What the fuck I was doing in it I had no idea. The two coppers quizzing me were dressed in modern mode, somewhat, but the interview was strictly 1970’s TV cop-land. I wanted to scream at them about rights but was apprehensive about appearing culpable; but of what? One thing was clear I wasn’t being sweated for knocking over a pedestrian.
“Any chance of applying the brakes a little, hey fellas?”
“Poor choice of metaphor” glared the taller of my two investigators.
This clever cunt was neat and dressed in a brown suit, green shirt and dark blue tie. I guessed he lived alone either through divorce or congenital romantic failure. The other, shorter but sturdy sported a close shaven head atop a congenial face. I guessed he wore it to make his appearance less affable. His kids were probably school bullies and he’d own a pet Bullmastiff.
This wasn’t good cop, bad cop though; the two of them were equally repellent.
“Listen boys I didn’t mean to hit the girl. She ran out on me. I haven’t killed her have I? She was conscious going into the ambulance? Okay I haven’t done her any favours but…”
“No she’s done us a favour though hasn’t she?” said Crew Cut.
“Stopped your little getaway didn’t she” quipped Colour Code.
“Wait a fucking minute are you suggesting I was going to drive away?”
“Now we’re motoring” Colour Code continued his atrocious similes.
This was getting serious. But how could they prove that? I hadn’t moved. Witnesses, perhaps, maybe they’d misled the enquiry. But hang on, there hadn’t been enough time. I was in shock at first but that couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of minutes had it? Yet hadn’t I read somewhere about people caught up in similar circumstances experiencing a kind of time distortion?
That bastard Sat-Nav. It was the first time I’d ever used it. It’d been okay up to the city centre after that it had been clueless. Then I remembered; in the middle of this inquisition, this state of almost non-being, it shot back into recall; the bloody thing had actually instructed me to turn right and in an instant ordered me to do the opposite. But the golden girls would not permit me to dwell on this technological insanity.
“You were going to have it away weren’t you? Fuck your mates”
Here he was going on about my mates again. All I could think of was my colleagues, and they weren’t really friends. They’d cut your Granny’s heart out for a sale. Not mine though - I’d already completed the surgery. At conventions and meetings we laughed and joked amongst the Chardonnay, onion bahji starters and trifles. On trips we went out on the piss and picked up girls together but that wasn’t friendship. Even then we were competing. I’d had enough.
“Could you quit the shit and tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”
Crew Cut’s eyes bore into mine. That amiability transformed itself into malevolence as he leant forward purposefully until our noses kissed and said:
“Why the bank robbery of course”