Declan Burke - Slaughter's hound

The interview room was tricked out like a little girl’s bedroom, pastel pinks and blues. Some new EU directive, no doubt, designed to minimise the invasiveness of the interrogation process for those thugs and scumbags who suffered from a sensitive disposition. The lighting subdued, not so much as a cigarette burn or graffiti scar on the formica-topped table. The smell of paint was fresh enough to give me a faint headache.

Tohill stalked the room with his hands in his pockets, fair-haired, late thirties, his face a scuffed steel-toe boot. He liked me as well as he’d like any other ex-con who’d left the scene of a crime.

We’d chewed that one over. Last I’d heard, suicide wasn’t a crime. Tohill was of the opinion it wasn’t suicide until he said so. Now he leaned on the back of the chair across the table and ducked his head so his pale blue eyes were level with mine. ‘Let’s just go over it one more time.’

‘Sound, yeah. Can we get someone in, make this the official statement?’

‘You in a hurry?’

I was exhausted. There’d been a single uniform standing guard at the PA when I’d dropped back the Audi, who’d just stared, waiting for the punch line, when I’d asked if he could ring for a squad car to take me in to the station. So I’d hoofed it, in along the docks and all the way across town, a long and solitary hike, begrudging every last plodding step. Not exactly the Bataan Death March, okay. But I’d been badly shook for about two hours by then, and it felt like every cell in my body was screaming to shut down, just blank it all out.

And now Tohill looked to be in the mood to break out his Bud White impression.

‘I get the impression you’re the thorough type,’ I said. ‘So I’d say you went up there, had a good look around. And if you’d found anything, what they call signs of a struggle, I’d be having this conversation with my brief.’

‘I found your hands ripped to shit,’ he said. ‘That looks like signs of a struggle to me.’

‘Maybe it does, if you’re willing to get up in court and say I tried to batter Finn off the roof with a pile of scrap metal. And I’m talking about the studio. They find anything up there?’

‘Should they have?’

‘How would I know? I didn’t go up there.’

‘You did go up there.’

‘I mean after. I didn’t go up there after.’

‘You weren’t curious?’

‘That’s a sick question.’

The wide grin suggested that he genuinely enjoyed that one. ‘You’re telling me I’m sick?’

He had all night, a charred corpse and an eyewitness who’d done seven years in the home for the criminally bewildered for shooting his brother in cold blood. Promotions have been grubbed from a lot less.

A Catch-22 bind, no matter how it fell out. If I copped to insanity when I blew Gonzo away, then I was a loose cannon, liable to blow any time, maybe heave a friend through a window nine storeys up.

The flip side being, if I claimed I’d been stone cold sane when I punched a hole in my only brother’s chest, same deal, I was capable of anything.

So I picked a spot on the wall over his head and stared.

‘See, what I’m not getting,’ Tohill said, flicking some pages in the folder on the desk, ‘is why this guy might want to jump. If it was you, grand, you’re off your bap, we’d all be home tucked up right now wondering why you couldn’t have jumped in the water, saved us the hassle of cleaning up the mess. Only this guy looks like he had it all.’

It was a fair question, the one that had been bugging me all night. How Finn had been so upbeat back at the PA before he jumped. If he’d been down, sure, it’d make sense, the black dog snarling and chasing him out onto the ledge. Except Finn, when he was down, could hardly walk. It was when he was up that he wanted to jump, burn off the evil buzz.

Bell jars away …

‘I mean,’ Tohill said, ‘if you’d been smart about it, torched the building and then said he’d jumped from the blaze, we’d all be thinking it was Finn the firebug, he just couldn’t help himself. Am I right?’

The spot on the wall was maybe a damp patch they hadn’t treated, just painted over.

‘Hey!’ Tohill pounded the table with a clenched fist. I started in the seat, a jagged pain darting down my left ribs.

‘Look,’ I said, breathing out slow, ‘I came in here to do you a favour. I don’t need to-’

‘Bullfucking shit . You’re about this close,’ his thumb and forefinger pressed together, ‘from an obstruction of justice charge. Yeah? Because right now I’m wondering what the big fucking deal is, what it is you’re trying to hide.’ He poked a stubby forefinger into the pristine formica. ‘So my advice to you is to open your fucking mouth and have something half-intelligent come out. Otherwise we’re in for a long fucking night.’

The pain ebbed, subsided. A cold sweat prickling my back. ‘Are we making movies?’ I said. I glanced up at the camera high in the corner, its green light blinking. ‘Tell them be sure to get my good side.’

‘You want me to tell them to turn it off?’ he said. ‘So we can have a proper chat, like?’

Dee once told me I had eyes like a jilted shark. I met his stare and then shut down the lights, let him see what sick really looked like. ‘Just you and me,’ I said. ‘A proper chat.’

A twitch under his right eye, a faint narrowing. Then he rolled his shoulders and grinned. He fancied his chances. ‘Maybe we’ll do that,’ he said. ‘Just not here, yeah?’

‘You’ll know where to find me.’

‘Fucking right I’ll know where to find you. Because right now you’re headed for a padded cell again.’ He straightened up, jammed his hands into this pockets, took a little stroll around the room. ‘Go back to the start,’ he said. A faint smirk. ‘Tell me how you and Finn were bunk buddies.’

‘We shared a room, yeah.’

‘A room ?’ He chuckled. Easily amused, Tohill. ‘Where was this, the Radisson?’

‘They called them rooms. Part of the rehab process.’

‘Normalisation,’ he nodded, ‘am I right? So you don’t feel a freak for blowing a hole in your brother. I get it. So there you are,’ he said, rolling his shoulders again, ‘all cosy in your room, and Finn Hamilton wanders in stinking like the pit lane at Le Mans. Did you jump his bones straight away or give him time to settle in?’

He was old school, Tohill. He’d be checking to see if I wore white socks next, asking if I liked to jazzercise to Liza Minelli show tunes.

‘What I don’t get,’ Tohill said, flipping idly through the pages of the folder, ‘is how you got such soft time. Like, here it says fit to be tried, and you were up on murder, there was just you and him in a room, you shot him. Right? Black and white. Except then you’re allowed plead self-defence and temporary insanity?’ He waited. I stared. ‘Next thing we know,’ he flipped a couple of pages, ‘you’re remanded to Dundrum for observation, assessment. Which is supposed to last two weeks, max, except you’re in there four years.’ Again he paused. ‘Maybe you’re more complicated than most,’ he said, ‘but four years’ worth?’ He pursed his lips, made a sucking sound. ‘And then you get transferred to the mental hospital here, nice and easy, not a single objection. Even though,’ he flipped back a page or two, ‘I’m not seeing any gold stars, no one raving about how you’re a model prisoner. What, you think this is funny? I’m some kind of comedian?’

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘Then what’s so fucking funny?’

I shouldn’t have rolled him the shark eyes. Bad things happen. Cogs and gears slipping their mesh, something flapping free in the back of my head.