A Fragment of Fear (11 page)

I liked his eager, babbling incoherent manner. It was nice and friendly.

“It might save us troubling you further,” he added, as an afterthought.

“Certainly, if you wish,” I said, and sat down again. He went out of the room. He was a pleasant, ingenuous character, probably a young uniformed officer on probation to be a detective.

I waited for ten minutes. When the door opened again two other plain-clothes men came in. They were different.

One of them announced himself briefly as the superintendent in charge of what he called “the Paradise case.” Later, he referred to the other man as “sergeant.”

My first impression of the superintendent was of a tall, well-built man in his early fifties, with grey eyes, a good head of grey hair, dressed in a grey suit. His face seemed grey, too. It was a strong face, with a good brow and a firm but not cruel mouth. The nose was a little too long, and the chin was pointed rather than square, but it was a pleasant enough, intelligent face. He spoke good English with a strong voice, and had a slight north-country accent.

The sergeant, on the other hand, gave an impression of fawnness. He was shorter and stouter than the superintendent, and had a round, bullet head, a short nose, and a jaw and underlip which protruded aggressively. His hair was spread in bootlace style over a nearly bald skull, and was brown except for the grey bits above his ears. He had brown eyes, and wore a brown suit, and had a putty-coloured complexion. He was of about the same age as the superintendent but, I think, lacked the former’s education and general intellect. He was more of the “old sweat” type of N.C.O. which one used to find in the Army.

They had, however, one dreadful thing in common—fatigue. It was not the superficial fatigue which can be shed by a good nine hours’ sleep. It was something far deeper, something that had been built up over a long period of years. Just as the dirt and grime of certain industrial cities seems to become ingrained in the skins of the workers, so the greyness and the lines of fatigue were implanted on the faces of these two detectives. Their appearance spoke more forcefully than any leading article of a Force below establishment, of cancelled week-ends and shortened holidays, of long nights and days at work, and little appreciation, and no joy.

The superintendent held some typescript in his hand. He said:

“Good evening. You’re Mr. James Compton, of 274 Stratford Road?”

“That’s right. I just called in—”

“Yes, sir, thank you very much,” he said quickly. “There are one or two points I want to clear up.”

“Carry on,” I said.

He gave me the impression of a man in a hurry, which is never very complimentary.

“Last night you were returning home, according to this station report, when you allege you were threatened by two men, at present unidentified. Right?”

“I thought only one man was actually threatening me. The other man—”

But he wouldn’t let me finish.

“Well, anyway, you thought you were being threatened?”

“Correct,” I said shortly.

“You reported the incident. Very properly. You then went to your flat in Stratford Road, where your suspicions were aroused, and you thought some person or persons unknown were in the flat. But a search showed your suspicions were apparently unfounded. Right?”

“Yes—you could put it that way.”

The tired lines round his mouth deepened. He said:

“Look, sir, I don’t want to put it any way except the correct way.”

“Well, that’s right,” I said reluctantly. “But I think my suspicions were right, and I think it’s connected with this woman in the train who complained about me.”

He interrupted me again.

“Tell me about her, sir.”

“There’s not much to tell, and I’ve told Sergeant Matthews already.”

He sat down opposite me. The sergeant shouted through the doorway, “Bert, bring another chair in, will you?” The superintendent waited until the sergeant was seated. Then he said:

“Tell me the story briefly, right from the beginning, sir.”

“Going right back? Back to Mrs. Dawson and Pompeii?”

“Who’s Mrs. Dawson?” he asked.

I guessed that Sergeant Matthews had not bothered to put in a report about anything other than the matter about which he had called.

I had a feeling he wouldn’t do more than briefly mention what I had told him, because of the bored way he had put poor Bunface’s communication in his notebook. But I hadn’t expected him to put in no report at all.

There was nothing for it but to go over the whole thing again. I saw the bald-headed sergeant scribbling shorthand notes. When I had finished there was a silence.

The superintendent was picking at the wooden table with a pin he had found lying on it.

“Can you think of any reason why this unfortunate woman should have made any complaint against you, sir?”

“Certainly not, except that she was in a highly emotional state, and probably neurotic.”

“Can you think of any reason why this woman, whom you had met for the first time, should know your name and address, unless you gave it to her for some purpose, and if you gave it to her, why did you?”

“I dealt with that point with Sergeant Matthews,” I said. The fawn-coloured sergeant spoke for the first time. He had a rasping voice which contrasted with the superintendent’s soft tones. He sounded as though he had spent much of his life shouting at dogs, or horses, or men.

“The superintendent here, he isn’t Sergeant Matthews, sir. He is just asking—”

“I know what the superintendent wants to know, and the answer is, I didn’t give her my name and address and I don’t know how she got it.”

I liked the grey superintendent, but I didn’t like the fawn-coloured sergeant with his jutting jaw and lower lip.

“About this message you think was written on your machine and paper,” began the sergeant.

“I don’t think it was written on my machine. I
know
it was. So does Sergeant Matthews, and so would you, if he’d written a proper report. And if you’d read it, of course.”

“Why should the message have been typed on your machine, and taken down to the coast, and then brought up again, why shouldn’t it have just been put through your letter box or posted?” asked the superintendent gently.

He had his left elbow on the table, his left hand supporting his head, and was looking thoughtfully. I shook my head helplessly.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I just don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said the sergeant.

The superintendent made no comment.

Suddenly the whole thing infuriated me.

“Anyway, why should anyone wish to prevent me probing into Mrs. Dawson’s background? Why should they cook up all this bloody nonsense?”

“There’s a woman been killed,” said the sergeant flatly. “You come along here, and you say, yes, I travelled up with her in the train, the evening before she was killed, and she must have been very neurotic, you say, otherwise she wouldn’t have made up some story about me, you say. Right? And when we ask you a few simple questions, what happens? You bang the table. You get all touchy. Why?”

I didn’t answer. When I spoke I looked at the superintendent, as if he had asked the questions.

“I am not getting touchy.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” he said. “Sergeant, Mr. Compton is not getting touchy, why should he be touchy? He just misunderstood you.”

He looked at me with his calm, tired eyes.

“Mr. Compton, I don’t think you quite understand.”

“No, I don’t,” I said, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. I only know what I know, and that’s what I’ve told Sergeant Matthews, and now you, and I called in here voluntarily to try to help you, and you go on at me. You go on at me so,” I added indignantly.

“We’re not going on at you,” said the sergeant, in his rasping voice. “The superintendent here, he’s just trying to clear up a few points. He’s a busy man, you want to understand that. When a case like this happens, he’s a busy man.”

The superintendent said:

“I am going to ask you again a question I asked you earlier, but on a broader basis. I asked you whether you could think of any reason why this woman should have lodged a complaint against you—I now ask you whether you can think of any reason why you should
imagine
that this woman lodged a complaint against you?”

I stared at him, bewildered.

“Would you mind repeating that?”

“Can you think of any reason why you should imagine that this woman made an allegation against you, Mr. Compton?”

I sat back in my chair and looked at him again.

“Imagine it?”

He had turned half sideways to me and was filling his pipe from a grey rubber pouch.

“That, and other things.”

“What things?”

“Can you think of any reason why two alleged thugs should try to intimidate you?”

“Only in connection with what I’ve told you.”

“Can you think of any reason why a mysterious, unknown man should telephone you.”

“Look,” I said, “it’s no good going on like that—you’ve got to accept the whole story in its entirety or not at all.”

The sergeant had stopped writing shorthand. He was doodling idly. The superintendent had put a second match to his pipe. He said:

“The point is this, Mr. Compton. We cannot find any trace of a woman lodging a complaint against you at this station, or in fact at any station in the Metropolitan area.”

The sergeant said:

“That’s why the superintendent asked whether—”

He stopped speaking, but went on doodling, without looking up.

“Whether what, for God’s sake?” I asked loudly.

“That’s why I asked whether you thought she might have done—even if she didn’t, sir,” said the superintendent.

“Your records,” I said quickly, “your records must be wrong. If you’ll look through your records—”

“The other point is this,” interrupted the superintendent, “we have no Sergeant Matthews at this station. And haven’t had for years.”

I
t was a pleasant evening outside, warm for October, the sky still blue, and I don’t feel the cold physically as much as some; but in certain circumstances there is a mental chill, a kind of freezing up, which can be equally devastating. This I felt.

You know you are in a police station, and you know you have come there voluntarily; and you touch the chair you’re sitting on, and the table in front of you, and you hear the traffic going past outside, and so you know you are alive; furthermore, you know you are not dreaming, because dreams move faster.

You can hear your heart beating, and feel a stickiness in the throat when you swallow, because if you are not dead, and not asleep and dreaming, there is only one reasonable conclusion at which you can arrive.

You fight against this conclusion; even those who really are mentally sick strenuously deny it, maintaining with a sad, forlorn intenseness that it is they who are sane, the others who are mistaken.

I sometimes wonder if they hear the voices of others as from a distance, echoing distortedly, as I did now.

“What is your job, sir?” asked the superintendent, with surprising gentleness.

“I write, I write books and articles. There’s something wrong,” I added urgently, “there’s something wrong with the system, either that or I am going mad. This Sergeant Matthews—”

“There is no police officer called Matthews who could have called on you, sir,” interrupted the bald-headed sergeant. “That’s what the superintendent has just said, loud and clear, sir. He said there’s no Sergeant Matthews attached to this station or any station near here.”

“Be that as it may,” I began.

“Be that as it isn’t,” said the sergeant. “Facts are facts.”

“Well, somebody calling himself Sergeant Matthews called,” I said angrily, “and I would like to say that I am not at all surprised, upon reflection, that this woman made up a complaint. I am sorry she has ended as she has, but she was in a highly emotional and neurotic state.”

Neither of them was looking at me.

“So I’m not surprised. Not at all surprised. Not really.”

The superintendent got up and walked across the room, and stared at the yellow painted wall. Without turning round, he said:

“I have tried to tell you that there is no record that this woman made any complaint against you. Why do you insist that she did?”

“Because she did,” I replied sullenly. “You’ve got it wrong somewhere. Same as you have about Sergeant Matthews.”

He came back and sat down again and said:

“You realise what you are saying, Mr. Compton?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You are saying that you travelled with an unknown woman who has now been killed?”

“Yes, I am—I’m saying that.”

“You’re saying that although you did not give her your name and address, she somehow knew it?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And laid a complaint against you?”

“And laid a complaint against me.”

“And gave you a message you cannot now produce?”

“I can’t produce it, because I handed it over to a police officer, at his request.”

“You insist that she complained about you, although there is no record that she did?”

The sergeant was taking notes again. I felt an increasing need to be meticulously accurate.

“I insist,” I said carefully, “that a police officer called on me and said she had made a complaint.”

“And that the officer’s name was Matthews?”

“And that he
said
his name was Matthews.”

“And that somebody phoned you in the night?”

“Yes.”

“Twice?”

“The second call might have been a wrong number.”

“And that you were, in your view, menaced on a public footpath at night?”

“In my view, yes.”

“And that on the self-same night a person or persons entered your flat, although a search revealed no signs of intruders?”

“Correct.”

“You think you are being followed all the time?”

I shook my head. A feeling of helplessness came over me.

“Not all the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“Probably most of the time. I don’t know. How should I?”

“You feel your flat is under observation?” asked the sergeant.

“Yes.”

“All the time?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“You think that all this elaborate business is just to frighten you out of investigating the background of another lady, this Mrs. Dawson?” asked the superintendent.

“This Mrs. Dawson, as you call her, yes, I do.”

“Who was also murdered?”

“Who was also murdered,” I muttered.

“His lady friends seem kind of accident prone,” murmured the sergeant, looking up, looking at the superintendent, not looking at me. The superintendent said:

“Can you suggest any other reason why all this rigmarole should be organised against you?”

I banged the table with the palms of both my hands and stood up, looking down at the superintendent and the sergeant.

“Look, I have had enough of this!” I said, and almost shouted the words. “I’ve just about bloody well had enough of this!”

“I expect you have,” said the superintendent, and nodded.

“Too bloody true, you have,” said the sergeant.

“I’m an ordinary citizen, leading an ordinary life, and I’m being persecuted, and when I seek the assistance of the police, what bloody well happens?”

“Imaginary policemen call on you with imaginary complaints, voices ring you up in the early hours, that’s what happens,” said the sergeant abruptly, tapping his protruding lower lip with his Stationery Office Pencil.

“You mustn’t take too much notice of the old sergeant, here, he’s a down-to-earth character,” murmured the superintendent.

He looked at the sergeant expressionlessly, neither approvingly nor disapprovingly. He looked as though he had heard it all before, not once, but many times.

“Women in trains give him messages typed on his own typewriter, and footpads menace him,” muttered the sergeant. “And thieves break into his flat and steal nothing, and quietly make off. What a life!”

The superintendent took no notice. He said:

“Have you been victimised much in your life, Mr. Compton? Had much bad luck, one way and another? Made a lot of enemies, through no fault of your own? That sort of thing?”

I shook my head and gathered my packet of cigarettes and lighter from the table and put them in my pocket. There was nothing more I could say.

I was feeling the heat from the electric lighting, and the voices of the superintendent and sergeant were not so clear, and the noises of the traffic outside had grown dimmer. I had a feeling of panic, an impression that I was indeed losing my grip on reality.

“I can describe him,” I heard myself say.

“Describe who?” said the sergeant. “The unknown voice who rang you up?”

“He was a middle-aged sergeant,” I went on doggedly, “with a fresh complexion, and a bald head, and he was rather stout, and he had brown eyes.”

They were looking at me placidly, as people look at a child reciting a poem. But I forced myself to go on.

“He came on a bicycle, and wore bicycle clips on his trousers. And he said his name was Matthews, Sergeant Matthews, of Kensington Police Station. You say he doesn’t exist and couldn’t have brought a complaint. Can’t you suggest something? Can’t you help me? What am I to think?”

I rubbed my forehead with the fingers of my right hand, and looked down to where the superintendent was still sitting at the table, and saw him watching me with more attention.

“Why did you go to Italy, where this Mrs. Dawson was killed?” he asked quietly.

“I’d had a car accident and was a bit run down. My legs had been slashed a bit,” I said indifferently, and moved to the door.

“They say car accidents can make you sleep badly,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Yes, I was sleeping badly. I’m all right now, though.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Nasty shock, a bad car accident,” said the sergeant mildly.

The superintendent asked:

“Did you sleep well in Italy?”

“After the first few days.”

“Chap I knew was in a car accident,” said the sergeant. “Went round for some time afterwards thinking he’d got a radio set in his head. All right now, though. Still, it just shows.”

I paused and stared at him.

“That’s usually a sign of schizophrenia. That’s not delayed shock. That’s got nothing to do with car accidents,” I said quickly.

“Hasn’t it, sir? Well, maybe he was schizo anyway. Better now. They cure all sorts of things these days.”

He had dropped his hectoring tone. He got to his feet, and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered me one.

The three of us stood near the closed door of the waiting-room. Almost like three acquaintances who had satisfactorily concluded a difficult business deal, except that my stomach muscles were still contracted and I wanted desperately to get out of the place. But the superintendent was leaning against the door, and the sergeant was near him, and I was on the inside of the room.

“Well, I must go now,” I said firmly, and walked towards them, but they didn’t move. I had to stop. The grey superintendent glanced casually at me, and then back to the sergeant. They began talking between themselves, as if I wasn’t there.

The superintendent said, yes, of course, it was a question of early diagnosis, and early treatment, like everything else in medical matters. The sergeant said, “well, yes, sir, but that was the whole difficulty, getting people to have treatment, especially in certain cases.

“You can’t get ’em certified,” he said in a low voice, “unless they’re right round the bend, I mean, so long as they can look after themselves, more or less—and probably less than more—and so long as they’re not causing what you might call a public nuisance, you can’t do anything about it. And that’s the trouble.”

The superintendent said:

“And more’s the pity, both for their sakes and everybody’s.”

“They’ve got to go voluntary,” said the sergeant.

“Doctors are reluctant to certify,” said the superintendent, “and it’s not surprising—one mistake, and bingo, they’re sued for damages. It’s a pity, really.”

“It is, sir.”

“A bit of treatment, and they’re free of it all. No more radio sets in their heads, no more voices out of the ether, no more feeling that the whole world’s against them, spying on them, and all that lark. They’re happy.”

“But they won’t go, sir. They won’t go, not voluntarily,” said the sergeant regretfully.

I felt that if I didn’t leave at once that very instant, the pressure building up inside me would burst, and I would jump at the door, and push them aside, and run out, though I knew I wouldn’t get far.

They were too cautious, too experienced, to say what they meant openly to me. They accepted that I had been in the same train as sad Bunface. They had to, because I had described her so minutely.

But they didn’t accept anything else.

They thought I heard voices, and dreamed dreams, and saw visions. One had the impression that in a long career of interviewing all sorts and kinds of people, they had formed mental patterns of how people behaved in certain circumstances, and what could happen and what could not.

“It’s been a waste of time,” I said bitterly. “Your time and mine. You can’t cope, and I suppose I don’t blame you, because you’re faced with a situation you’ve never experienced before.”

“Oh, yes, we have,” said the sergeant defensively.

“There’s just one last question, sir,” said the superintendent, making no move from the door.

I was wondering when they would ask it.

“Go on,” I said, “I can guess it.”

“It’s just a formality, Mr. Compton, nothing for you to worry about. More a question of tidying up loose ends, if you know what I mean, seeing that you’ve come forward and admitted to an encounter with this Paradise Lane woman, which we didn’t know about—and seeing that you got the idea she laid a complaint against you. If we can just clear it up now, then there won’t be anything more to worry about.”

“No, nothing more to worry about,” I muttered.

“Where were you between say eleven-thirty last night, and one-thirty this morning, sir? That’s putting it a bit baldly, of course, but it’s just for the record. You’re an intelligent man, and—”

“Am I,” I interrupted sharply. “Am I indeed? Just now you were saying I needed mental treatment.”

I saw them both stiffen, suddenly look less relaxed, more alert. When the sergeant spoke he could have been addressing a child of ten. He didn’t exactly pat me on the head, but his tone was patient and coaxing.

It nearly made me sick.

“Now, now, now, sir, the superintendent wasn’t saying any such thing, were you, sir? Nor was I.”