“And this movement happened quite suddenly?” Coleridge asked each of them. They all agreed that it had, that there had been a sudden flurry of limbs and soft warm skin, followed by the faintest waft of cooler air. With hindsight it was clear that this must have been Kelly rushing off to the lavatory.
“Could anybody have sneaked off after her?” Coleridge asked them. Yes, was the reply, they all felt strongly that in the cramped, crowded darkness and confusion of it all, it would have been possible for a second person to follow Kelly out of the sweatbox unnoticed.
“But you yourself were unaware of it.”
“Inspector,” said Gazzer, and he might have been speaking for them all, “I wasn’t aware of anything.”
Sally’s were the only recollections that differed substantially from the norm. When she appeared Coleridge had been taken aback. He had never seen a woman whose arms were completely covered in tattoos before and he knew that he would have to try not to let it prejudice his view of her.
“So you were not involved in the sexual activity?” Coleridge asked.
“No. I decided to try and use the exercise to improve my understanding of other cultures,” Sally replied. “I found a corner of the box, ignored what the others were doing and concentrated on recreating the consciousness of a Native American fighting woman.”
Coleridge could not stop himself from reflecting that to the best of his knowledge all the Native American fighting had been done by men, but he decided to let it go. “You didn’t want to join in the, um, fun?” he asked.
“No, I’m a dyke, and all the other women who were in that box are straight, or at least they think they are. Besides, I had to concentrate on something other than them, you see. I had to concentrate.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like dark, confined spaces. I don’t like getting into black boxes.”
“Really? Is this something you have much experience of?”
“Not for real, no. But in my head I imagine it all the time.”
Coleridge noted that the cigarette Sally held in her hand was shaking. The column of smoke rising above it was jagged. Like the edge of a rough saw. “Why do you imagine dark boxes?”
“To test myself. To see what happens to me when I go there.”
“So on being confronted by a real physical black box, you decided to use it as a test of your mental strength.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And did you pass the test?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about what happened in that box. It just totally weirded me out and so I went somewhere else in my head.”
And press her though he might, Coleridge could get nothing more out of Sally.
“I’m not holding out on you,” she protested, “I swear. I liked Kelly. I’d tell you if I knew something, but I don’t remember anything at all. I don’t even remember being there.”
“Thank you, that’ll be all for now,” Coleridge said.
As Sally was leaving she turned at the door. “One thing, though. Anything Moon tells you is a lie, all right? That woman wouldn’t know the truth if it stuck a knife in her head.” Then she left the room.
“Do you think she was trying to tell us Moon did it?” Hooper said.
“I have no idea,” Coleridge replied.
Both David and Hamish struck Coleridge as evasive. Their statements were much the same as Garry’s, Jason’s and Moon’s had been, but they seemed less frank, more guarded.
“I couldn’t tell you where Kelly was in the box,” said Hamish. “I know I was feeling up one of the girls, but to be honest I couldn’t tell you which.”
Something about his manner struck Coleridge as jarring. Later on, when discussing it with Hooper, the sergeant admitted that he had felt the same way. They had both interviewed enough liars to be able to spot the signs. The defensive body language, the folded arms and squared shoulders, the body pushed right back in the seat as if preparing for attack from any side. Hamish was probably lying, they thought, but whether it was a big lie or a little one they could not tell.
“You’re a doctor, it says here,” Coleridge observed.
“I am,” said Hamish.
“I would have thought that a doctor might have been a little more aware. After all, there were only four women in that darkness. You’d known them all for a month. Are you seriously telling me that you were groping one of them and had no idea which?”
“I was very drunk.”
“Hmmm,” said Coleridge after a long pause. “So much for doctors and their sensitive hands.”
Coleridge would have known that David was an actor without having to refer to Peeping Tom’s notes. There was something mannered about his expressions of grief; not that this meant he wasn’t sorry, but it did mean he was conscious of how he was presenting his sorrow. The pauses before he spoke were too long, the frank manly eye contact a little too frank and manly. He smoked a number of cigarettes during his interview, but since he clearly did not inhale it struck Coleridge that the cigarettes were props. He held them between his thumb and forefinger, his hand cupped around the burning end which pointed towards his palm. Not a very practical way to hold a cigarette, Coleridge thought, but it certainly gave an impression of anguish. When David wasn’t looking earnestly into Coleridge’s eyes, he was staring intently at his cupped cigarette.
“I loved Kelly. We were mates,” he said. “She was such a free and open spirit. I only wish I’d known her better. But I certainly was not aware of her in the box. To be honest, Dervla would be more my type if I’d been fishing, but I’m afraid I was too drunk and disoriented to take much interest in anyone.”
It was all so vague, so confused. Coleridge inwardly cursed these scared, bewildered young people. Or he cursed six of them, at any rate. The murderer he could only grudgingly respect. Six people had been present when the murderer left the box and also when he returned and yet they had all been too damned drunk and libidinous to notice.
Only Dervla, to whom he spoke last, was clearer in her recollection. This was of course Coleridge’s first experience of Dervla, but immediately he liked her. She seemed to be the steadiest of the bunch, intelligent but also giving the impression of being frank and open. He found himself wondering what madness had moved a nice, clever girl like her to get involved with an exercise as utterly fatuous as House Arrest in the first place. He could not understand it at all, but then Coleridge felt that he no longer understood anything very much.
Dervla alone seemed to have been relatively aware of her surroundings during those last few minutes in the sweatbox. She recalled that when the agitated girl had made her hurried exit, she herself must have been close to the flaps, for she had definitely felt the waft of cooler air. She was also quite certain that the figure she felt slide across her and exit through the flaps had most definitely been Kelly.
“I felt her breasts slide across my legs, and they were big, but not as big as Sally’s,” she said, reddening at the thought of the scene that she must be conjuring up in the minds of the detectives.
“Anything else about her?” Coleridge asked.
“Yes, she was shaking with emotion,” said Dervla. “I know that I felt a real sense of tension, almost of panic”
“So she was upset?” Coleridge asked.
“I’m trying to remember what I thought at the time,” Dervla said. “Yes, I think I thought she was upset.”
“But you don’t know why.”
“Well, a lot of strange things were happening inside that box, inspector, things that would be embarrassing enough to recall in the morning without having to relate them to police officers.”