On the evening of Strange’s birthday, a wretched man sat wretchedly on his bed in a cell on A-Wing. From what he had gathered so far, he feared that his own temporary accommodation there would very soon be exchanged for a far more permanent tenancy in one of Her Majesty’s top-security prisons somewhere else in the UK.
The man’s name was Kieran Dominic Muldoon.
The question at stake was not really one of innocence or guilt, since there was universal consensus in favour of the latter. Even at the age of sixteen, Muldoon had been flirting with terrorism; and now, twenty years later, she had long been his permanent mistress.
That much was known.
It was now only a question of evidence — of sufficient evidence to shore up a case for a prosecuting counsel.
So far he’d been lucky, Muldoon knew that. Both in Belfast and in Birmingham, when he’d been detained, incriminatory links between people and places and plans had proved too difficult to substantiate; and the authorities had released him.
Had been compelled to release him.
This time, though, he’d surely been a bit unlucky?
He’d been conscious of that when they’d arrested him three days earlier from his Cowley Road bed-sit and taken him to St. Aldate’s Police Station in the City Centre, when with conspicuous confidence they’d straightaway charged him, and when the Magistrates’ Court (immediately opposite) had granted a remand into custody without the slightest demur.
That, in turn, had been only a few hours after they’d discovered the explosive and the timers and the detonators out in the flat in Bannister Close on the Blackbird Leys Estate.
Jesus! What a mistake that had been to tell them he’d never been anywhere near the flat; didn’t even know where the bloody block of flats was.
Why had they smiled at him?
Thinking back on things, he had felt uneasy that late afternoon a week ago when he’d gone along there — the only time he’d even gone along there. He’d heard neither the clicks of any hidden camera nor the tell-tale whirr of a Camcorder; had seen no flashes; had spotted no suspicious unmarked van. No. It must have been someone in one of the council houses opposite — if they’d got some photographic evidence against him.
Because the police had got something.
So calm, this time. Especially that bugger Crawford.
So bloody cocky.
It couldn’t be fingerprints, surely? As ever, the three of them had been almost neurotically finicky on that score; and the dozen or so cans of booze had been put into a black plastic bag and duly consigned (Muldoon had no reason to doubt) to one of the skips at the local Waste Reception Area.
But could they have been careless, and left something.
Because the police had got something.
Still, he’d kept his cool pretty well when they d grilled him on names, addresses, train-journeys, stolen cars, money-transfers, weapons, explosives... For apart from a few regular protestations of ignorance and innocence, he’d answered little.
Or nothing.
It was at a somewhat lower level of anxiety that he worried about the ransacking of his bed-sit. They must have found them all by now.
The videos.
Ever since he could remember, Muldoon had been preoccupied with the female body, in which (as he well knew) he joined the vast majority of the human race, masculine, and some significant few of the human race, feminine. But in his own case the preoccupation was extraordinarily obsessive and intense; and intensifying as the years passed by — frequently satisfied (oh, yes!) yet ever feeding, as it were, upon its own satiety.
Only thirteen, he had been, when the hard-eyed woman had ushered him through into the darkened warmth of the cinema where, as he groped for a seat, his young eyes had immediately been transfixed upon the luridly pornographic exploits projected on the screen there, his whole being jerked into an incredible joy...
Since he’d been in Oxford — three months now — he’d learned that the boss of the Bodleian Library was entitled to receive a copy of every single book published in the UK. And in his own darkly erotic fancies, Muldoon’s idea of Heaven was easily conceived: to be appointed Curator of some Ethereal Emporium receiving a copy of every hard-porn video passed by some Celestial Film Censor as “Suitable Only For Advanced Voyeurs,” with crates of Irish whiskey and trays of stout and cartons of cigarettes stacked double-deep all round his penthouse walls...
Jesus!
How could he even begin to cope if they put him inside for five — ten — years? Longer?
Please, God — no!
He’d not started off wanting too desperately to change the world; indeed not too troubled, in those early days, even about changing the borders of a divided Ireland. Certainly never positively wanting to kill civilians... women and children.
But he had done so. Twice now.
Or his bombs had.
He rose from his bed, lit another cigarette, and with the aid of an elbow-crutch stomped miserably around the small cell.
Sixteen years ago the accident had been, in Newry — when he’d crashed a stolen car at 96.5 mph (according to police evidence). Somehow a piece of glass had cut a neat slice from the top of his left ear; and the paramedics had had little option but to leave his right leg behind in the concertina’ed Cortina. All right, they’d given him an artificial leg; patiently taught him how to use it. But he’d always preferred the elbow-crutch; indoors, anyway. And no choice in the matter now, since the leg was back there in the bed-sit — in a cupboard — along with the videos.
Yes, they must have found them all by now.
And a few other things.
According to the solicitor fellow, they were still going through his room with a tooth-comb; still going through the flat in Bannister Close, too.
Jesus!
If they found him guilty — even on the possession of firearms and explosives charge...
Would he talk? Would he grass — if the police suggested some... some arrangement?
Course not!
He had a right to silence; he had a duty to silence.
Say nothing!
Let them do the talking.
He wouldn’t.
Unless things became unbearable, perhaps...
Muldoon sat down on the side of his bed once more, conscious that just a tiny corner of his resolution was starting to crumble.
(iii)
You may not drive straight on a twisting lane.
(Russian proverb)
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Lewis was still waiting patiently in the corridor outside the office of Detective Inspector Crawford. He could hear the voices inside: Morse’s, Crawford’s, and a third — doubtless that of Detective Sergeant Wilkins; but the general drift of the conversation escaped him. Only when (at last!) the door partially opened did individual words become recognizable — and those, Morse’s:
“No!” (fortissimo) “No!” (forte) “And if you take my advice, you’ll have nothing to do with it yourself, either. There are better ways of doing things than that, believe me.” (mezzo piano) “Cleverer ways, too.”
Looking unusually perturbed, his pale cheeks flushed, Morse closed the door behind him; and the words “Christ Almighty!” (pianissimo) escaped his lips before he was aware of Lewis’s presence.
“What the ’ell are you doing here?”
“The Super rang me, sir. You told him I was running you back home.”
“So what?”