Bob Shaw - The Peace Machine

“Is your work classified?”

“Moderately. It is also very boring. One of the reasons I’m so positive I’ve never discussed it with anybody is that nothing would turn them off quicker.”

Crombie-Carson stood up, removed his coat, and set it on a chair. “What do you know about Miss Knight’s disappearance?”

“Just what you told me. Have you no clue about where she is?”

“Have you any idea why three armed men should go to her apartment, forcibly drag her out of it, and take her away?”

“None.”

“Have you any idea who did it?”

“No. Have you?”

“Mr. Hutchman,” the Inspector said impatiently, “let’s conduct this interview the old-fashioned way. It’s always more productive when I ask the questions.”

“All right — but permit me to be concerned about the welfare of a friend. All you tell me is…”

“A friend? Would acquaintance not be a better word?”

Hutchman closed his eyes. “Your use of the language is very precise.”

At that moment the door opened and a sergeant came into the room with a buff folder. He set it on the table in front of CrombieCarson and left without speaking. The Inspector glanced through it and took out eight photographs. They were not typical policerecord pictures, but whole-plate shots of men’s faces, some of them portraits and others apparently blown up from sections of crowd photographs. Crombie-Carson spread them in front of Hutchman.

“Study these faces closely, and tell me if you’ve seen any of them before.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing any of these men,” Hutchman said after he had scanned the pictures. He lifted the edge of one and tried to turn it over, but Crombie-Carson’s hand pressed it down again.

“I’ll take those.” The Inspector gathered up the glossy rectangles and returned them to the folder.

“If you have finished with me,” Hutchman said carefully, “i have a craving for a pint of stout.”

Crombie-Carson laughed incredulously and glanced at the shorthand writer with raised eyebrows. “You haven’t a hope in hell.”

“But what more do you want from me?”

“I’ll tell you. We have just completed part one of the interview. Part one is the section in which I treat the interviewee gently and with the respect a ratepayer deserves — until it becomes obvious he is not going to co-operate. That part is over now, and you’ve made it clear you are not going to be helpful of your own accord. From now on, Mr. Hutchman, lam going to lean on you. More than a little.”

Hutchman gaped at him. “You can’t! You have nothing against me.”

Crombie-Carson leaned across the table. “Give me some credit, friend. I’m a professional. Every day in life I’m up against other professionals and I nearly always win. Did you seriously think I would let a big soft amateur like you stand in my way?”

“An amateur at what?” Hutchman demanded, concealing his panic.

“I don’t know exactly what you’ve been up to — yet — but you’ve done something. You’re also a very poor liar, but I don’t mind that because it makes things easier for me. What I really object to about you is that you’re a kind of walking disaster area.”

I’m the ground zero man , a voice chanted in Hutchman’s head. “What do you mean?”

“Since you quietly slipped out of your fashionable bungalow this morning one woman has been abducted and two men have died.”

“ Two men! I don’t…”

“Did I forget to tell you?” Crombie-Carson was elaborately apologetic. “One of the three men who abducted Miss Knight shot and killed a passer-by who tried to interfere.”

Part two of the interview was every bit as bad as Hutchman had been led to expect. Seemingly endless series of questions, often about trivia, shouted or whispered, throwing coils of words around his mind. Implications which if not immediately spotted and challenged hedged him in, drove him closer and closer to telling the wrong lie or the wrong truth. Grazing ellipsis , Hutchman thought at one stage, his exhaustion creating a feeling — akin to the spurious cosmic revelation of semiwakefulness — that he had produced the greatest pun of all time. So numbed was he by the end of the ordeal that he was in bed in a neat but windowless “guest room” on an upper floor of the station before realizing he had not been given the option of going home to sleep. He stared resentfully at the closed door for a full minute, telling himself he would kick up hell if it proved to be locked. But he had had virtually no sleep for forty-eight hours, his brain had been savaged by Crombie-Carson, and although he was going to stand no nonsense about the door, it seemed hardly worth while doing anything about it before morning…

He dropped cleanly into sleep.

The sound of the door being opened wakened him. Convinced he had been asleep only a few minutes, Hutchman glanced at his watch and found that it registered ten past six. He sat up, becoming aware that he was wearing gray linen pyjamas, and watched the doorway as a young uniformed constable came in carrying a cloth-covered tray. The small room filled with the smell of bacon and strong tea.

“Good morning, sir,” the constable said. “Here’s your breakfast. I hope you like your tea nearly solid.”

“I don’t mind.” Hutchman’s preference was for weak tea, but his thoughts were occupied by something infinitely more important. This was Monday — and the remainder of his envelopes should have been in the mail. A crushing sense of urgency dulled his voice. “I take it I’m free to leave here at any time?”

The fresh-faced constable removed the tray cloth and folded it meticulously. “That’s something you would need to raise with Inspector Crombie-Carson, sir.”

“You mean I’m not free to leave?”

“That’s a matter for the Inspector.”

“Don’t give me that. You fellows on duty at the desk must receive instructions about who is allowed to leave and who isn’t.”

“I’ll tell the Inspector you want to see him.” The constable set the tray across Hutchman’s thighs and walked to the door. “Don’t let your scrambled egg get cold — there’s only one sitting for breakfast.”

“Just a minute! Is the Inspector here now?”

“No, sir. He had a long day yesterday and has gone home to sleep. He’ll probably be here in the afternoon.”

The door closed on the constable’s final word before Hutchman could put the tray aside, and he realised it had been set on his knees deliberately to immobilize him. He slid it onto the bedside locker and went to the door. It was locked. He walked around the featureless perimeter of the room, arrived back at the bed, and sat down. The strips of bacon looked underdone, the fat still translucent, and too much butter had been used in the scrambled eggs, making them a greasy yellow mush. Hutchman lifted the mug of tea and sipped it experimentally. It was over sweet and much too strong, but hot. He held the mug in both hands and slowly drank the brown brew, deriving satisfaction from the tiny thrill which coursed through the nerves in his temples at every sip. The tea had no food value but at least it helped him to think.

Monday afternoon would probably be time enough to post the last of the envelopes, but what guarantee was there that he would be out by then? The constable had said Crombie-Carson would probably be at the station in the afternoon, and even if he did show up nobody was obliged to report his presence to Hutchman. And, going one step further, the Inspector could at that stage put his cards on the table and say he intended to hold onto Hutchman for several days or longer. Hutchman vainly tried to recall his own legal rights. He knew that the powers of the police, including that of detaining without showing cause, had been extended recently as part of the Establishment’s tougher measures to combat epidemic violence. In the security of his previous existence he had approved of the police having more authority, on the rare occasions when the idea crossed his mind, but now it seemed intolerable.