John Bingham - A Fragment of Fear

I stared at him, bewildered.

“Would you mind repeating that?”

“Can you think of any reason why you should imagine that this woman made an allegation against you, Mr. Compton?”

I sat back in my chair and looked at him again.

“Imagine it?”

He had turned half sideways to me and was filling his pipe from a grey rubber pouch.

“That, and other things.”

“What things?”

“Can you think of any reason why two alleged thugs should try to intimidate you?”

“Only in connection with what I’ve told you.”

“Can you think of any reason why a mysterious, unknown man should telephone you.”

“Look,” I said, “it’s no good going on like that-you’ve got to accept the whole story in its entirety or not at all.”

The sergeant had stopped writing shorthand. He was doodling idly. The superintendent had put a second match to his pipe. He said:

“The point is this, Mr. Compton. We cannot find any trace of a woman lodging a complaint against you at this station, or in fact at any station in the Metropolitan area.”

The sergeant said:

“That’s why the superintendent asked whether-”

He stopped speaking, but went on doodling, without looking up.

“Whether what, for God’s sake?” I asked loudly.

“That’s why I asked whether you thought she might have done-even if she didn’t, sir,” said the superintendent.

“Your records,” I said quickly, “your records must be wrong. If you’ll look through your records-”

“The other point is this,” interrupted the superintendent, “we have no Sergeant Matthews at this station. And haven’t had for years.”

It was a pleasant evening outside, warm for October, the sky still blue, and I don’t feel the cold physically as much as some; but in certain circumstances there is a mental chill, a kind of freezing up, which can be equally devastating. This I felt.

You know you are in a police station, and you know you have come there voluntarily; and you touch the chair you’re sitting on, and the table in front of you, and you hear the traffic going past outside, and so you know you are alive; furthermore, you know you are not dreaming, because dreams move faster.

You can hear your heart beating, and feel a stickiness in the throat when you swallow, because if you are not dead, and not asleep and dreaming, there is only one reasonable conclusion at which you can arrive.

You fight against this conclusion; even those who really are mentally sick strenuously deny it, maintaining with a sad, forlorn intenseness that it is they who are sane, the others who are mistaken.

I sometimes wonder if they hear the voices of others as from a distance, echoing distortedly, as I did now.

“What is your job, sir?” asked the superintendent, with surprising gentleness.

“I write, I write books and articles. There’s something wrong,” I added urgently, “there’s something wrong with the system, either that or I am going mad. This Sergeant Matthews-”

“There is no police officer called Matthews who could have called on you, sir,” interrupted the bald-headed sergeant. “That’s what the superintendent has just said, loud and clear, sir. He said there’s no Sergeant Matthews attached to this station or any station near here.”

“Be that as it may,” I began.

“Be that as it isn’t,” said the sergeant. “Facts are facts.”

“Well, somebody calling himself Sergeant Matthews called,” I said angrily, “and I would like to say that I am not at all surprised, upon reflection, that this woman made up a complaint. I am sorry she has ended as she has, but she was in a highly emotional and neurotic state.”

Neither of them was looking at me.

“So I’m not surprised. Not at all surprised. Not really.”

The superintendent got up and walked across the room, and stared at the yellow painted wall. Without turning round, he said:

“I have tried to tell you that there is no record that this woman made any complaint against you. Why do you insist that she did?”

“Because she did,” I replied sullenly. “You’ve got it wrong somewhere. Same as you have about Sergeant Matthews.”

He came back and sat down again and said:

“You realise what you are saying, Mr. Compton?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You are saying that you travelled with an unknown woman who has now been killed?”

“Yes, I am-I’m saying that.”

“You’re saying that although you did not give her your name and address, she somehow knew it?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And laid a complaint against you?”

“And laid a complaint against me.”

“And gave you a message you cannot now produce?”

“I can’t produce it, because I handed it over to a police officer, at his request.”

“You insist that she complained about you, although there is no record that she did?”

The sergeant was taking notes again. I felt an increasing need to be meticulously accurate.

“I insist,” I said carefully, “that a police officer called on me and said she had made a complaint.”

“And that the officer’s name was Matthews?”

“And that he said his name was Matthews.”

“And that somebody phoned you in the night?”

“Yes.”

“Twice?”

“The second call might have been a wrong number.”

“And that you were, in your view, menaced on a public footpath at night?”

“In my view, yes.”

“And that on the self-same night a person or persons entered your flat, although a search revealed no signs of intruders?”

“Correct.”

“You think you are being followed all the time?”

I shook my head. A feeling of helplessness came over me.

“Not all the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“Probably most of the time. I don’t know. How should I?”

“You feel your flat is under observation?” asked the sergeant.

“Yes.”

“All the time?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“You think that all this elaborate business is just to frighten you out of investigating the background of another lady, this Mrs. Dawson?” asked the superintendent.

“This Mrs. Dawson, as you call her, yes, I do.”

“Who was also murdered?”

“Who was also murdered,” I muttered.

“His lady friends seem kind of accident prone,” murmured the sergeant, looking up, looking at the superintendent, not looking at me. The superintendent said:

“Can you suggest any other reason why all this rigmarole should be organised against you?”

I banged the table with the palms of both my hands and stood up, looking down at the superintendent and the sergeant.

“Look, I have had enough of this!” I said, and almost shouted the words. “I’ve just about bloody well had enough of this!”

“I expect you have,” said the superintendent, and nodded.

“Too bloody true, you have,” said the sergeant.

“I’m an ordinary citizen, leading an ordinary life, and I’m being persecuted, and when I seek the assistance of the police, what bloody well happens?”

“Imaginary policemen call on you with imaginary complaints, voices ring you up in the early hours, that’s what happens,” said the sergeant abruptly, tapping his protruding lower lip with his Stationery Office Pencil.

“You mustn’t take too much notice of the old sergeant, here, he’s a down-to-earth character,” murmured the superintendent.

He looked at the sergeant expressionlessly, neither approvingly nor disapprovingly. He looked as though he had heard it all before, not once, but many times.

“Women in trains give him messages typed on his own typewriter, and footpads menace him,” muttered the sergeant. “And thieves break into his flat and steal nothing, and quietly make off. What a life!”