Fuck me. It’s not Ivan who has been trying to poach them for the big boys! It’s them who’ve been grooming Ivan-the-treacherous-Belgian to return to the Citadel camp. — Emily, I’m eternally grateful, but why are you doing this?
— I feel a bit bad, because of all the aggro I caused you.
— Look, it was just a daft wee shag and it shoul —
— Not that, you fucking idiot, she laughs and leans into me. — This one you really need to keep to yourself…
— Okay…
— …the dickhead thing wasn’t Carl, she confides, and we both start fitting with laughter.
42
INTERROGATION
The interview room is stark and bare. There is a Formica table, on which sits recording equipment. It’s surrounded by hard plastic chairs. Simon David Williamson has regained his composure, and part of him, as it always does, is relishing the interpersonal challenges ahead. He grinds his teeth together in a move he considers galvanising. On his arrival at the police station and prior to his placement in a holding room, he immediately insisted on calling his brief. The lawyer instructed silence until he arrived. Williamson, though, has other ideas.
He looks aloofly at the two police officers who have taken him into the room. They have sat down, one of them placing a plastic folder on the table. Williamson opts to remain standing. — Take a seat, invites one of the cops, as he turns on the recorder. This officer has cropped fair hair in quite a dramatic receding ‘V’. He has attempted to cover up an acne-ravaged chin with a beard that grows only wispy hair, therefore just emphasising the scarring more. Married the first bird that opened her legs to him is Williamson’s pitiless evaluation. In his laughing eyes and incongruously crueller, tight mouth, he reads the classic tells of the bad cop.
— If it’s all the same to you, I prefer to stand, Williamson declares. — Sitting down isn’t good for you. In fifty years from now we’ll laugh at old movies where we see people sitting at desks, in much the same way we do now when we see them smoking.
— Sit down, Bad Cop repeats, pointing to the seat.
Williamson crouches down on his hunkers. — If it’s eyeline or microphone pickup you’re concerned with, this should do it. It’s the way the creature known as Homo sapiens naturally lowers itself; we do this instinctively as bairns, then we get told to –
— In the seat! Bad Cop snaps.
Simon Williamson looks at the officer, then the chair, as if it’s an electric one, designated for his execution. — Have it on record that I was forced into sitting out of some antiquated attachment to social convention, and against my personal choice, he says pompously, before lowering himself.
My hands are steady. My nerves are cool. Even rattling on ching and alcohol withdrawal, I can still man the fuck up and function. I’m just a higher form of evolution. If I’d had the education, I would have been a surgeon. And not fannying about with stinky wee feet either. I would be transplanting hearts, even fucking brains.
As Bad Cop makes the aggressive pitch, Williamson studies the reaction of his colleague, the ironic smile of slight disdain that says: My-mate’s-a-wanker-but-what-can-I-do? We understand each other. It’s a variation on the good cop/bad cop routine. Good Cop is a tubby, dark-haired man who looks permanently startled. The harsh lights above bounce unflatteringly on his uneven, putty-like features. He keeps the grin on Williamson as Bad Cop continues. — So you were in London on the 23rd of June?
— Yes, I believe so. Easy to verify. There will be phone calls, probably a withdrawal from the NatWest cashpoint at King’s Cross Station, which I visit regularly. And of course, there’s the sandwich bar on Pentonville Road. Tell your colleagues at the Metropolitan Police to ask for Milos. I’m a weel-kent face there, as you like to say back up here, he smiles, starting to enjoy himself. — I always travel by tube, my Oyster card transactions should show a confirming pattern, and of course, my fiancée would be with me… So, what happened to Victor Syme?
— Friend of yours, was he? Bad Cop tugs at his ratty beard.
— I wouldn’t say that.
— You’re on his calls list enough.
— We explored the possibility of doing business together, Simon Williamson declares, voice now set in the authoritative cast of the tetchy businessman having his time wasted by incompetent public servants. — I run a reputable dating agency, and I was talking to him about the possibility of expanding into Edinburgh.
Bad Cop, aware that Williamson is pointedly examining his facial ministrations, lowers his hands. — So you didn’t do business together?
Simon Williamson envisions him having eczema in his genital region and trying in vain to pass it off as an STD in the dressing room of the police football team. It amuses him to think of the flakes of skin nestling in the law enforcement officer’s pubes, sticking with sweat to the face of his wife as she grimly performs fellatio duties. — No.
— Why?
— To be quite frank, Syme’s operation struck me as very low-rent and sleazy, and the girls were obviously common prostitutes – not that I make moral judgements, he adds in haste, — just not what I was looking for as a business model. I’m focusing more on MBAs, the premium market.
Bad Cop says, — You do know that prostitution is illegal?
Williamson looks at Good Cop in faux amazement, then turns to his interrogator, speaking patiently to him as one would a child. — Of course. As I say, we’re an escort agency. Our girls, or partners as we call them, accompany executives to meetings and dinners, they host events and parties. This is the legal framework within which I operate.
— Since when? You’ve had two court appearances for living off immoral earnings.
— One was when I was a very young man, addicted to heroin. My girlfriend and I were extremely desperate, driven by the dictates of that horrible drug. The second one was related to an enterprise I had absolutely nothing to do with –
— The Skylark Hotel in Finsbury Park –
— The Skylark Hotel in Finsbury Park. I happened to be visiting those premises when they were being investigated by the Metropolitan Police vice squad. There was a lazy association and some nonsense, trumped-up charges, which I was proven innocent of. Totally exonerated. That was well over a decade ago.
— So you’re Mr Snow White, Bad Cop scoffs.
Simon Williamson allows himself a highly audible exhalation. — Look, I’m not going to insult your intelligence and claim that sort of thing doesn’t go on, but, as I say, we are an agency selling escort services. Prostitution is nothing to do with us, and if any of our partners get involved in that and we find out about it, they’re off the books straight away.
— Us?
— My fiancée is now a company director.
Good Cop comes in with a complete change of emphasis. — Do you know Daniel Murphy?
To avoid seeming wrong-footed, Simon Williamson attempts to think of the great injustices Spud visited on him; concentrating on his snowdropping of a much loved Fair Isle jersey from the concrete drying greens of the Banana Flats. But all he sees in his mind’s eye is the Oor Wullie smile on a younger Spud, and he feels something in his heart melt. — Yes, and may his soul rest in peace. An old friend.
Bad Cop is back in the chair. — Do you know how he died?
Shaking his head, Williamson composes himself. An expression of genuine grief would be a good reveal, don’t panic. I tried to save him. — Some sort of illness. Danny, God love him, well, he led a very marginal life, I’m afraid.