Ken MacLeod - Intrusion

‘I really do want to know, you know,’ he said. ‘Quite apart from the benefits to yourself of telling me, it really is driving me up the wall.’ He took another sip, and smiled thoughtfully. ‘You trained as an engineer, I understand. I have a smattering of physics myself. The military chaps, of course, all have a very solid scientific education. You see, don’t you, how deeply frustrating it is to be told something that violates the law of conservation of mass-energy?’

Hugh tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. He took a gulp of Coke. His arms felt like they’d been knotted from toy balloons, weak and swollen. They ached like he’d just done a thousand press-ups. His ears rang so much that he strained to hear the man speak. The urge to sleep was almost overpowering.

‘Did I say that?’ he said. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘You were interviewed after your arrest.’ He waved a hand, and the screen lit up. Hugh saw an image of himself shouting, in a desperate tone: ‘I told you! I told you before! I threw them away in the tunnel!’ There was a blur of motion across the screen, and then it went blank again. Hugh felt his hand lift slowly to his face, to meet a bruise over the cheekbone.

‘I remember now,’ he said.

He had the impression that it had gone on like that for hours, before he’d been made to stand against the wall. That would account for some of the other aches and pains.

‘A tad unprofessional,’ the man said. ‘They’re not supposed to leave visible marks, you know. Not when a court appearance is on the cards. But then… as I said, the frustration. It can get the better of the best of us.’

He brushed his palms against each other, briskly, twice. ‘But luckily for you, I didn’t have to listen through all that. I’ve come to this fresh, so to speak. Think of me as… well, supposing you were in a foreign country, and you’d got into trouble with the local police. Beaten up in the back room of the nick, slung into some stinking oubliette, bewildering charges laid against you. Think how pleased you’d be if the British consul turned up! There you are, over a cup of tea, together in private, knowing nothing you say goes beyond these walls. Think how you’d react – you’d tell him, or her, everything.’

He leaned back, opening his arms. ‘I’m that British consul, Hugh. I’m here to get you out. Or if that’s not possible, to save you from going back to the interrogation cells, and from there to worse places. Far worse. No matter what you’ve done, you have absolutely nothing to lose by telling me everything.’

‘I thought I had told them everything,’ Hugh said. He raised a hand, painfully. ‘Wait, don’t… don’t fly off the handle again. Please… bear with me, OK? I want to tell you everything. I’m honestly not sure what I said. I don’t even know what I’m accused of. Apart from having an air pistol, which it seems I’ve already admitted to. OK, I admit it again. I put my hands up to it.’ He tried the gesture, and failed. ‘Metaphorically, all right?’

The man nodded, looking sympathetic. ‘Yes, of course. Go on.’

‘I don’t know what I’m accused of, or what I’m charged with.’

‘Ah!’ The man grinned, raising a didactic finger. ‘Accused of, charged with. A valid distinction, and an interesting one. What you’re charged with are various offences under firearms, child protection, terrorism and so forth, all centred around keeping, carrying and then concealing an illegally held firearm. The terrorism bit comes in because you’ve stashed it in an area of ongoing military operations, which I take it refers to the aircraft taking off around here to stop the Russians from poking their nose-cones farther into Allied airspace. We’re on a Warm War front line, after all. All very much letter-of-the-law stuff, and they’ve thrown the book at you. If you get sent down for that, you’ll be in the regular prison system for decades and your wife gets done as an accomplice, seeing as she didn’t shop you when she had the chance, comprendez?’

‘Yes,’ Hugh croaked.

‘Now, I know what you’re going to say. This is a heck of a lot to throw at a chap because of an air pistol. Between ourselves, I quite agree. But like it or not, the law is clear on the point: Magnum, Glock, air pistol, replica, or even remotely realistic toy, all equally illegal. Because, you see, it’s not what it can do, it’s what someone might have a reasonable apprehension that it could do that turns it into a weapon. An instrument of intimidation, and therefore, potentially, of terrorism. Wave a spud gun around with a political motive, and – bang! You’re a terrorist!’

‘I understand that, but—’

‘Very good. Accused of, let’s say suspected of – different bucket of grief altogether. You’ve been in touch with two people who’ve previously confessed to offences under the Acts, you know. Still running around, free as birds. Why, you ask? Well! We’re all grown-ups here, nobody’s listening, and we’re not in the Labour Party. So we don’t have to pretend we don’t know what these confessions are worth. Not what I’d consider actionable intelligence, let’s say, but that’s what kicked this whole thing off. That, and the singularly unfortunate fact that the intelligence community has picked up some chatter recently from the Naxals, relating to Stornoway.’

‘Naxals in Stornoway ?’ Hugh’s voice rose, an intonation he’d meant to sound like scorn and disbelief, but which came out dismayingly like surprise and delight.

The man waved a hand. ‘Naxals can pop up anywhere,’ he said. ‘Just your hard luck that the latest flap happens to be here. Or perhaps not entirely – your trip to Southall to book a flight to Prague didn’t help you at all. Throw in the visit and phone call from that woman Geena Fernandez, her friend Joseph Goonwardeene – you know how it is with the security boys. Paranoia is their profession.’ He smiled complicitly. ‘It isn’t mine.’

‘What is yours, then?’

The man put his elbows on the desk and wiped his fingers across his closed eyelids, brushing his eyebrows, then slid his hands to his temples and peered across at Hugh. He looked tired, suddenly, as if he’d been awake too long and the night had caught up with him.

‘Curiosity,’ he said. ‘No, seriously, Hugh. My job is getting people like you out of places like this. Do you have any idea of how much false positives cost the taxpayer in accommodation alone? How much of the time of skilled interrogators is wasted in extracting confessions from people who have nothing to confess? The sheer economic loss of taking innocent people out of the workforce? It would make your hair stand on end. And that’s leaving aside the cost of what happens when the subjects are cleared, if they ever are. Rehab where possible, compensation, legal costs… Honestly, in ten years of this I’ve saved HMG the cost of my entire projected lifetime employment plus pension a dozen times over. As for the political fallout – don’t get me started.’ He shook his head, and sighed. ‘Just don’t get me started.’

The man stood up and again began pacing around. Hugh eyed him warily, and tensed in his seat.

‘Speaking of not getting me started,’ the man said, ‘you don’t need to keep up the evasions. Your wife has given the police a full statement. The suicide box, the tearful conversation, the second sight, the land under the hill, what she saw and what you and the kiddie claimed to see in the tunnel, the lot. And her own troubles with the law and the health system. There’s nothing to hide any more, Hugh.’

He stood to the side of the screen, like a lecturer, and waited.

Hugh eased the heels of his hands from the inside edge of the desktop. He laid his arms lightly across it and let his legs stretch a little.