Prints of Darkness
Saturday, September 24
At lunchtime Saturday, Simon Hogg phoned in a fluster. I’d just hung up when the front door slammed and I heard high heels clatter and echo across the black marble vestibule amid much huffing and puffing. Gabriel appeared through the kitchen door carrying a banana box of fresh vegetables. She hefted this across our enormous ‘authentic’ country kitchen and dumped it on our enormous ‘authentic’ IKEA country kitchen table.
‘This will restore your faith in humanity, monkey,’ she said. ‘I just found the most awesome organic shop in Cragmoor. They’ve got everything! Vegies, eggs, fruit. And, would you believe it, there was an honesty box! How quaint is that? They had this little sign saying “If we’re not here, please total up your goods and leave money in the tin. There was a calculator and a tin sitting there with all this money in it. I could have got all these for free and walked out with fifty pounds!’ Finally her eyes settled on mine. ‘What’s wrong?’
I sat heavily at the table. ‘Simon just rang.’
‘Oh?’ She began to beaver through her vegetables.
‘The police went to see your parents this morning. They’re going around collecting all the letters for forensics and Simon needs his letter back.’
‘So? We don’t need it, do we?’
‘Whose fingerprints are all over it, Gabriel?’
She slid the crisper drawer open, stopped and stared at its contents. ‘Yours,’ she said almost cheerfully, clearly not yet up to speed with the gravity of this fact.
‘And yours,’ I said in the hope this might turbo charge her a bit. It didn’t.
‘Simon showed us the letter outside the Pig. So what?’
‘Simon’s petrified of doing anything wrong in the eyes of your father. I shouldn’t even need to tell you that.’
She stood from the crisper having deposited a particularly healthy looking branch of fresh broccoli and returned to her carton of vegies. She was grimacing and shaking her head. ‘Am I missing something? He showed us the letter. Why is that such a big deal?’
I sighed. ‘Simon effectively rescued us from the Pig in Muck mob. Can you imagine what would have happened if your father had seen us first?’
‘Pissed, he’d have probably chased us home with a shot gun.’
‘Exactly. So how’s he going to react if he finds out Simon actually helped us escape?’
‘Badly.’ An organic leek thudded into the crisper drawer.
‘Simon panicked and told the police and his father he’d left the letter at the rugby club. He’s on his way here to get it. What do you think we should we do?’
‘These carrots don’t look very fresh,’ she said absently, frowning down at the cracked and dirt covered orange vegetable in her hands.
‘Are you listening?’ I asked a little louder.
‘Whatever, monkey,’ she said, still more interested in her carrot. ‘As you’re probably the closest thing the police have to a suspect, they’re going to be after your fingerprints soon enough.’
‘And yours.’
She looked up from her carrot, smiled. ‘Simon’s story won’t last very long then, will it?’
‘We’ll face that one when it comes.’
‘Yes. Let’s just ignore it. It might go away.’ There was facetiousness in her tone echoing what I already knew – this wasn’t something we could apply the Three Monkeys theory to. This wasn’t going away. Not by any stretch.
***
Proof came later that very afternoon.
‘Gabriel? I think there’s a police car outside!’ This statement was yelled as Gabriel was currently in the downstairs loo and I was peering out the kitchen window having been alerted to a possible visitor by two agitated, currently indoor dogs.
‘What do you mean you think there’s a police car outside?’ came the barely discernible reply through the open door of the loo down the hall.
‘Well,’ I called. ‘It’s police colours and it’s got police written all over it, but it’s not a proper police car. It’s just a little hatchback of some kind. Might be some police chaplain distributing Gideon’s bibles or something.’
Gabriel appeared at the window still buttoning her jeans. ‘Shit! That is a proper police car, monkey! That’s what they drive here. Oh God. Mum and Dad must have sent them!’
I grabbed her. ‘Don’t panic, okay? We’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘Yes we have! I’ve just stunk out the fucking hall!’
‘Gidday,’ I said opening the door to two British police, one male, one female, adorned, I would have thought, rather unsatisfactorily in great cumbersome waterproof jackets covered in yellow reflector patches. They looked more like school pedestrian crossing attendants than enforcers of the law. They didn’t even have guns.
I invited them in, deeming this not only polite, but sensible as they had asked for me by name and saying ‘Now isn’t a good time’ to such people was basically asking them to come in anyway.
That said, now wasn’t a good time. The grisly remains of last night’s Tesco chicken korma with pilau rice and naan bread still lay about the lounge like a pandemic on plates, Indian restaurant-type fragrances wafting about the front of the house, second hand chicken korma with pilau rice and naan bread wafting much more embarrassingly about the rear. The hard part was where to take them without appearing to be ushering them away from the room where Osama Bin Laden made his infidel battery hen farmer videos.
‘I have to say,’ I said guiding them into the lounge as Gabriel darted about stacking gooey plates and pottles and lids, ‘you’ve caught us a bit on the hop. Not in an evidence concealing sort of way. Just we didn’t clean up before we went to bed.’
‘We were a bit pissed,’ Gabriel said before running to the kitchen with a steepling stack of crap.
I offered the two constables seats, which they declined, opting instead for a nice two seater couch which they said they’d be back to collect in a larger vehicle once the whole thing had blown over. If only it could have been that easy. I offered the two constables seats, which they accepted, sitting on the very edge of them with practised care just in case some unwashed truncheon blood got on our upholstery. I sat on the couch facing them and adopted an open stance, aiming my knees straight at them, placing one arm along the top of the couch, the other loosely in my lap. I’d seen this pose described as confident and inviting by a psychologist on a speed dating show. While I had no intentions of bedding either of the constables, they would be far more aware of my body language than Karen, 39, solo mum from Shropshire.
‘Fire away!’ I said, hands in the air. Then, noting the absence of guns: ‘Or should that be pummel away!’
This went down like an ice cream van at a car crash. But pummel away they did. The two constables were with us for two cups of tea and an interminable two hours of interrogation and painfully, painstakingly slow note taking on official interrogation forms. They took what they euphemistically called “elimination prints”. These, they explained, were to eliminate us from suspicion or, as the case may be, to eliminate us from society. Every finger and thumb of every hand the two of us could muster was rolled into little boxes on more official forms, then complete hand prints, left and right, were stuck in on top of those.
They noted my confession as author of the supposedly damning chicken battery article, begrudgingly acknowledged its chronology, yet refused to discount its significance. They quizzed me thoroughly and unflinchingly on my underworld connections: Had I ever held another passport? Had I ever gone by another name in the United Kingdom or any other country? Had I ever been a member of a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom or any other country? Had I ever committed a terrorist act in the United Kingdom or any other country? Had I ever solicited the purchase of weapons or explosive devices in the United Kingdom or any other country? The answers I gave were emphatic, facetious denials, which while ticking the right boxes, did nothing to endear me to the two constables. To restore balance I offered names and where possible, addresses and phone numbers of anyone I knew who could testify to my lack of genocidal tendencies. I even volunteered samples of my photocopy paper.
Interestingly, the police informed me that the letters – forty-three so far – had all been sent from a Southampton post code. I was able to inform them that I had no idea where Southampton was. I did this quite convincingly, because it was true. As may have happened in Sierra Leone, I was not then hauled off for more creative interrogation “downtown”. The two constables merely thanked us for the tea, filed all their copious notes and fingerprints in a large leather satchel and left, neither of them exuding the air of someone who knew they had their man.
It was done. Our fingerprints were now official Government property to be disposed of the moment we were “eliminated”. To heighten our aura of innocence, we signed a form consenting to this disposal taking place unsupervised.
It was now over to Simon. His letter. And a potentially damning forensics report yet to come.
