Reginald Hill - The Woodcutter

The rest of the interview was brief and farcical. Medler made no effort to be subtle. Perhaps the little bastard disliked me so much he didn’t want me to cooperate! He simply fired a fusillade of increasingly offensive questions at me – How long had I been doing this? How deeply involved was I with the people behind InArcadia? Had I ever personally taken part in any of the video sessions? and so on, and so on – never paying the slightest heed to my increasingly vehement denials.

Toby sat there silent as a statue during all this and in the end I forgot my resolve not to have a public row and screamed, ‘For fuck’s sake, man, say something! What the hell do you think I’m paying you for?’

He didn’t reply. I saw him glance at Medler. Maybe I was so wrought up I started imagining things but it seemed to me Toby was looking almost apologetic as if to say, I really don’t want to be here doing this, and Medler gave him a little sympathetic smile as if to reply, yes, I can see how tough it must be for you.

I was at the end of my admittedly short tether. It was a toss up whether I took a swing at my lawyer or the cop. If I had to rationalize I’d say it made more sense to opt for the latter on the grounds that my relationship with him was clearly beyond hope whereas I was still going to need Toby.

Whatever, I gave Medler a busted nose to add to his split lip.

And that brought the interview to a close.

My second journey to my cell was handled less courteously than the first.

The two cops who dragged me there then followed me inside were experts. I lay on the floor, racked with pain for a good half hour after the door crashed shut behind them. But when I recovered enough to examine my body, I realized there was precious little visual evidence of police brutality.

I banged at the door till a constable appeared and told me to shut up. I demanded to see Toby. He went away and came back a few minutes later to say that Mr Estover had left the station. I then said I wanted to make the phone call I was entitled to. How entitled I was, I’d no idea. Like most people my knowledge of criminal law was garnered mainly from TV and movies. The cop went away again and nothing happened for what felt like an hour. I was just about to launch another assault on the door when it opened to reveal Medler. His nose was swollen and he had a couple of stitches in his lip. In his hand was a grip that I recognized as mine. He tossed it towards me and said, ‘Get yourself dressed, Sir Wilfred.’

I opened the bag to see it contained clothing.

I said, ‘Did my wife bring this? Is she here?’

He said, ‘No. She’s gone to stay with a Mrs Nutbrown at her house, Poynters, is it? Out near Saffron Walden.’

I sat down on the bed. OK, so Johnny Nutbrown’s wife, Pippa, was Imogen’s best friend, but the notion that she was running for cover without even attempting to contact me filled me with dismay. And disappointment.

It must have showed, for Medler said roughly, as though he hated offering me any consolation, ‘She had to go. Your daughter was being taken there. The press would have been sniffing round her school in no time. They’re already camped outside your house.’

‘Yes, and whose fault is that?’ I demanded.

‘Yours, I think,’ he said shortly.

I didn’t argue. What was the point? And if Imo and Ginny needed to seek refuge, there were few better places than Poynters. Johnny had bought the half-timbered Elizabethan mansion a couple of years earlier. It must have cost him a fortune. I recall saying to him at the time, I’m obviously paying you too much! He claimed it had once belonged to the Nutbrowns back in the eighteenth century and he’d always known it would come back. The great thing in the present situation was that it was pretty remote and Pippa, who was a bit of a hi-tech nerd, had installed a state-of-the-art security system.

I tipped the clothes he’d brought on to the bed. The jacket trousers and shirt weren’t a great match, which meant they hadn’t been selected by Imogen. Presumably Medler or one of his minions had flung them together. I ripped off the paper overall.

Medler stood watching me.

‘Looking for bruises?’ I said.

He didn’t reply and I turned my back on him. As I pulled on my underpants, there was a brief flash of light. I looked round to see Medler holding a mobile phone.

‘Did you just take a photo?’ I demanded incredulously.

I got that knowing smirk, then he said, ‘That’s a nasty scar you’ve got on your back, Sir Wilfred.’

‘So I believe,’ I said, controlling my temper again. ‘I don’t see a lot of it.’

A man doesn’t spend much time watching his back. Perhaps he ought to. The scar in question dated from when I was thirteen and running wild in the Cumbrian fells. I slipped on an icy rock on Red Pike and tobogganed three hundred feet down into Mosedale. By the time I came to a halt, my clothing had been ripped to shreds and my spine was clearly visible through the torn flesh on my back. Fortunately my fall was seen and the mountain rescue boys stretchered me out to hospital in a relatively short time.

First assessment of the damage offered little hope I would ever walk again. But gradually as they worked on me over several days, their bulletins grew cautiously more optimistic, till finally, much to their amazement, they declared that, while the damage was serious, I had a fair chance of recovery. Six months later, I was back on the fells with nothing to show for my adventure other than a firm conviction of my personal immortality and a lightning-jag scar from between my shoulder blades to the tip of my coccyx.

Was it legal for Medler to take a photo of my naked body without my permission? I wondered.

Whatever, I was determined not to let him think he had worried me, so I carried on dressing and when I was finished I said, ‘Right, now I’d like to phone my wife.’

‘First things first. Sergeant, bring Sir Wilfred along to the charge room.’

Things were moving quickly. Too quickly, perhaps. Arrest, questioning, police custody, these were stages a man could come out of with his reputation intact. There were time limits that applied. Eventually that moment so beloved of TV dramatists would arrive when a solicitor says, ‘Either charge my client or let him go, Inspector.’

But Medler was pre-empting all that.

Foolishly when I realized I was being charged with assault on a police officer in the execution of his duty, I felt relieved. I took this to mean they were still uncertain about their child pornography case. I’d passed through disbelief and outrage to indignation. Either the cops had made a huge mistake or someone was trying to drop me in the shit. Either way, I felt certain I could get it sorted. After all, wasn’t I rich and powerful? I could pay for the best investigators, the best advisors, the best lawyers, and once they got on the case I felt confident that all these obscene allegations would quickly be shown for the nonsense they were.

After the formalities were over, I was about to re-assert my right to call Imogen when Medler took the wind out of my sails by saying, ‘Right, Sir Wilfred, let’s get you to a phone.’

He took me to a small windowless room containing a chair and a table with a phone on it.

‘This is linked to a recorder, I take it?’ I said mockingly.

‘Why? Are you going to say something you don’t want us to hear?’ he asked.

He always slipped away from my questions, I realized.

But what did I expect him to say anyway?

I sat down and Medler went out of the door. It took a few seconds for me to recall the Nutbrowns’ Essex number. I dialled. After six or seven rings, a woman’s voice said cautiously, ‘Yes?’