Merry as I’d been all night, while alone at the table I couldn’t help but think again about the detective and his documents and how the answers to my questions were eluding me. The questions led to more questions and a frustrating sense of not knowing something I ought to. I closed my eyes, suddenly thinking hard and seriously, barely conscious of the chattering and laughter around me. For some reason I also thought of Monsignor Hough and his mysterious Mr Humphrey Miller. Too many questions. I wanted to go home to bed.
Claude barged in with three more pints, splashing froth onto the tabletop as he set them down. He was quite drunk.
“Now - what’s the matter, George?” he slurred affably. “You look knackered. Buggered. You’re not getting out enough these days. You’re out of shape, it’s disgusting. Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I said, without spirit. We clinked glasses, and I realised that I was drunk also, much drunker than I ought to be on a work night.
“You know, George, you shouldn’t remain sober when you do as much as you do. It’s not good for you.”
At that moment the publican came over to our table. He looked gruff, and at first I thought he was going to tell us to behave ourselves. But he said: “Which of you gentlemen is Mr George Haye?”
“I am.”
He gave me a slip of paper with handwriting on it. “Message for you, sir.”
Message for Mr George Haye:
Contact Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen at station or on tel extension 811.
URGENT
I groaned. Certainly, I wanted my questions answered, but I’d been drinking and I wanted to go home, not quibble with an impeccably formal Scandinavian policeman.
“Don’t worry about it until tomorrow,” offered Claude.
But in a wave of alcohol-fuelled stubbornness I made up my mind to ring Nielsen and get it over with. At the bar I paid fourpence for the call.
The telephone was down a hallway, next to the stairs that led up to the Elephant and Castle’s accommodation. From here the noises of the pub seemed far away. I lifted the earpiece and was just about to ask the operator to put me through when I heard a man scream from upstairs.
Momentarily I thought it was my imagination. But I heard it again. A scream. An old man’s scream.
There was fear and agony in that scream. My spine tingled.
I dropped the telephone earpiece and sprinted up the stairs. It vaguely occurred to me that it probably wasn’t wise to intervene when I was drunk, but I reached the top of the stairs before I could reconsider. There were at least ten doors off the second floor hallway.
I heard more screaming, this time louder, and I checked myself, for the alcohol in my blood did not stop me being scared. But someone was in trouble, serious trouble. I rushed at one of the doors, not knowing what I’d do if confronted with a situation as violent as the one I imagined. The room was empty. I charged out and burst into the next room.
There were two men on the bed. A man in white clothes, driving a knife into the guts of a skinny old man. No, it wasn’t a knife, it was smaller, but it was razor sharp. A scalpel. The old man had been disembowelled, and was choking on his own blood in abject terror.
A disgusting smell filled my nostrils. Paper, scattered from a briefcase near the window, blew across the room. It was suddenly freezing cold.
Almost instantly, the white man leapt from the bed to stab me. As he charged, I caught the expression on his face: completely blank, as though a cruel machine had sucked the life from him, and left him with a set of bloodshot eyes devoid of every human feeling. Dodging his weapon, I crashed with the force of his assault back onto the wardrobe. Steel flashed as the white man lurched again at me with his tiny blade. I let him through, then drove my knee into his ribs.
He made no sound, despite my knee connecting solidly. I flung him at the far wall, which he hit hard. He dropped the scalpel but recovered instantly, picking up a brown glass bottle from the bed and hurling it at my head. It missed by inches and smashed on the cupboard behind me, showering me with glass and a sickly smelling white liquid. Split seconds later, circles - big, blood-red circles - formed in my vision. Something strange was happening. The man launched himself. I felt weak and dizzy, and knew that I could not avoid him.
But he missed. I heard glass smash. My attacker had crashed through the window. I was confused. Had he jumped? Had he fallen? My head spun wildly as I staggered to the broken panes and stared into the street twenty feet below. There was nothing, no-one. He was gone.
I was passing out. I slumped to the floor, my eyes flooded with violet lines and weird scarlet shapes, vaguely conscious of the many footsteps in the hall.
10
“The hard edge
of a keen-ground knife cuts me now.
Fingers fold me, and a fowl’s-pride
drives its treasure trail across me …”
The Bible, a riddle from The Exeter Book, c. 970 AD
Everything was bright - painfully bright - and at a strange angle. It took a moment to remember the murdered old man, the scalpel, the blood, the dizzy feeling. I was in a room, unnaturally well lit. Had I died? No, my head ached too much. How long had I passed out for? Where the hell was I? I sat up gingerly and looked around. I was in a makeshift bed on the floor of the interview room of the Allminster Central Police Station, and Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen was sitting at the table two yards away.
“I was just about to wake you, sir. A colleague has brought water and some hot tea for you.”
My hangover was crippling, and swiftly worsening in the harsh light. “What time is it?” I croaked.
“It is five in the morning, Mr Haye. How do you feel?”
“Bloody awful.”
“Can you stand?”
Before I could answer, Nielsen came over, helped me from the bed and sat me at the table. “I have had a doctor look you over twice already, Mr Haye. I can assure you that you are not seriously harmed, although you no doubt feel unwell at the moment.”
A cup of steaming black tea, a jug of water and a glass were on the table in front of me. The hangover pounded on the inside of my skull. I moaned and propped my face up on my hands, shutting my eyes to block out the almost blinding light. Suddenly I felt depressed, unable to fathom the violence of the night before as it returned to me in terrible flashes.
The glass looked filthy. I wiped it with the blanket Nielsen had dropped onto my shoulders, but the blanket was also dirty and I spread what looked like thin fat all over the glass. I used my shirt to clean it, and poured some water out of the jug. It tasted good, and I had two more.
“What happened to that man on the bed, Mr Nielsen?”
“He was murdered, sir.”
I shuddered: I had seen one human being murder another. “Why?”
“I do not know yet.”
“It was horrible. That man … cut him open …”
“Tell me everything you saw,” said Nielsen, “starting at the beginning. Please do not leave anything out, however unimportant it may seem.”
I told him everything I could remember. Dinner and a few pints with my best friends. The message from the publican. Using the telephone in the hall. I was just making the call when I heard a scream from upstairs. No, I didn’t hear any other voices, or people shouting, nothing like that. Just an old man screaming …
I