Red brick and curved handrails, a wooden desk that looked like a Post Office counter. A poster on the wall said, See it, report it! He almost had to stop himself from tearing it down; that was what he would have done if it had been anywhere else.
‘Can I help you?’
This from a boy about Samhain’s own age behind the counter, a boy in policeman’s navy, a shirt new and white.
First time Samhain had ever entered a police station voluntarily. Now he was here, it seemed less of a smart idea than it had that morning.
Cameras pointed. Two behind his back, over his shoulder, and two in the office corner, pointed at his face. Even if his brother never met him, he still might be watching him. Somewhere in a back office, face lit by screens.
‘I’m hoping to see Gareth Stokes.’
‘Gareth.’ The boy glanced at him, picking up the phone on the desk. ‘No problem. I think he’s around somewhere. What’s it about?’
‘It’s kind of... kind of a long story.’
The boy listened to the phone for a moment, and stared. There didn’t appear to be any answer on the other end; he reached for a biro. ‘What’s your name, sir?’
‘Samhain.’
Scribbling. Scraps of paper from the desk. ‘Samhain what?’
‘Samhain Foss.’
‘What’s it regarding?’
Samhain tapped the desk. This place, so calm and clean, meant to reassure the public. You would never guess that this was the same force that drove protestors back into concrete buildings with police horses; a force that pressed you bodily against others, crushed your ribs, left you unable to breathe. A force that took your photograph as you tried to leave Trafalgar Square after a war protest. ‘It’s personal,’ he said.
‘Right.’ The desk sergeant sighed. ‘Well, at least try to help me out a bit. You got a crime number?’
‘No.’ Samhain answered.
‘Have you committed a crime?’
‘No.’
‘Warrant out for your arrest?’
‘No.’
‘Here to sign bail?’
‘No.’
‘Will he know what it’s about?’
‘Look, I told you, it’s personal. Private. It’s a bit of a delicate situation.’
‘I’ll see whether he’s busy.’ The desk sergeant grabbed the paper, and went to a back door which was half toughened glass. ‘Wait there.’
A small room, grey, windowless. Desk, two steel chairs. Mirror. A place the same as any other police interview room, only this time, he was free to go.
‘Well.’
He was ushered in. Gareth, six inches taller, had a belly starting to overhang trousers. ‘Sit down.’
He had the same nose and same eyes. Strange to see himself like this, across the table, with a wobbling extra chin, a wrinkled uniform. Gareth didn’t wear his things quite so neatly as did the boy on the front desk.
‘Dad warned us you’d come one day.’
It was not a friendly comment. Gareth, double-chinned and jowly, looking at him the same way as any policeman did: as though he was a piece of gum stuck to his shoe.
Had he thought it would be like this? Airless, atmosphereless, two men in a closed-up room. ‘Did he?’
‘Yeah.’
This man, almost his exact age, related to him, paunch-bound and uniform-striped. He sat by a desk most of the week and ate donuts; at night, he went home and watched soaps. This was a man who supermarket shopped at the weekend, with a girlfriend with identikit blonde hair, who tossed Ronan Keating CDs into the shopping trolley. He probably had a mortgage and Type 2 diabetes.
Samhain rested his elbows on the desk, and noticed that Gareth was already doing the same thing. One hand folded over his left forearm, exact way Samhain did it.
Gareth reached idly for the clippings and notes on the table. The newspaper story, the letters from Fox-Eyes. He turned them over, glancing at them as though they were somebody else’s till receipts. ‘What are these?’
Notes from Samhain’s first time in the library. His writing, the names of groups Flores had been in. Deep Green Resistance, Earth Fight!, Women at Menwith Hill, plus the countries he thought she’d been in, before he’d been born.
‘The names of protest groups my Mum was in. When she knew your father. Our father.’
‘Who art in heaven,’ Gareth said. It wasn’t a joke; he shuffled the bits of paper together, and pushed them back across the desk. ‘The thing is, like I said, I don’t know what you’ve been told, or what you think you know. But you’ve got no business being here.’
Gareth spoke these words as though they were facts from an encyclopaedia. As though he was saying there were nine planets in the solar system, each with its own system of gravity.
‘You knew about me?’
‘My father warned me, yes.’
‘So you knew. You’ve known – for how long?’
‘I don’t know.’ Fat shoulders shrugging. ‘When we were young lads. Teenagers. We’d always known about Dad’s half-brother. Uncle Phil. Your father. Dad didn’t like to talk about him. They didn’t get on... and then Mum was ill for a while. It looked like she might pass on, and Dad sat us both down, and said – you’ve got a cousin – because your Uncle Phil’s got at least one son that we know of...’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Samhain started drumming on the desk. ‘Your father – Graeme Stokes – told you we were cousins?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Jesus.’
Gareth breathed out with the energy of a sleeping bear. ‘Like I said,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, or who’s told you it, but you’ve been misled.’ He started to get up, extending his hand for a shake. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a tough time. There’s not a lot more that I can do to help. Let’s say that that’s the last of it, shall we? All the best.’
This took Sam right back to the time in Genoa, when the police had been determined to get something out of him, for something he supposedly knew. They’d been sure enough of it to break two of his ribs. Their truth had no bearing on the actual truth; it didn’t matter that what they believed was wrong. They’d kept on at it for three days, and let him out without admitting they’d been mistaken.
When the police believed something, they really believed it. It didn’t seem to matter that the evidence said something totally different.
‘Now, wait a minute.’ Sam got up too, chair scraping backwards. ‘I think you’re the one who’s been misled.’
Gareth had his hand already on the desk, templed. ‘Sam, you’ve been led a merry dance. I don’t know what your mother’s told you – she’s always been a troubled soul. Probably wants you to have a father, any father, so long as it’s not Uncle Bill. But she’s told you the wrong thing.’
‘Your dad was an undercover cop in Europe in the eighties. He was in activist camps with my Mum in Switzerland and Belgium around the time I was conceived.’ He pointed to the back of the room. ‘You and me, stand side by side in that mirror. Turn around and look. You’ll see it for yourself.’
‘Sam.’ Gareth seemed hypervigilant and weary, both at the same time. His back was showing in the glass: broad, the size of a wall. ‘You’ve been told a lot of things that aren’t true. It isn’t your fault.’ He was between Samhain and the door, the way all police sat in an interview; there was no getting past him. ‘He did warn us you’d turn up some day.’
He looked at Samhain with something approaching pity. ‘Never knew your father, did you?’
‘No. He left my mum when she found out who he really was – an undercover cop. Ran out on her, leaving her on her own, in one of the protest camps, when I was still young.’
Gareth was shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry you’ve been told that Sam, but that’s not the way it happened.’
They really would tell you anything, the police. That was how they got people to stop and give them their names and addresses; the uniform gave them the seeming power to get it. They made it seem as though you had to do it. Let them stop you; let them pull your scarf down, and take a photo of your face. Sam had been told no end of lies by the police. They’d say anything to get you to do what they wanted.
The difference here was that Gareth really did seem to believe what he was saying.
‘I remember coming back across Europe as a small boy,’ Samhain said. ‘The buses – the ferry ride. Coming to live in a house...’
‘Don’t remember your dad though, do you?’
He was up, standing, the way they did when the interview was over. No more ‘no comment’, no more ‘I want to see a lawyer.’ Getting up was usually the last thing they did before they put you in a cell for the night.
Samhain shook his head. ‘No. But–’
‘Uncle Phil,’ Gareth said, ‘was trouble. Always here, always there, going from woman to woman. He told them all kinds of lies, all sorts of things. Sometimes he’d have two or three of them on the go at once; he used to tell them he was in the SAS, on a secret mission, all kinds of stuff. Anything so they didn’t put two and two together, and realise they weren’t his only girlfriend. My dad didn’t have much to do with him. Mum wouldn’t even have him in the house. You knew when he turned up it meant trouble. If it wasn’t women, it was money.’
‘This is bullshit,’ Samhain said.
‘Look,’ said Gareth. ‘I’m sorry you’re hearing this from me. It should be coming from your mum, but... I don’t know, maybe she’s blocked it all out.’
‘You’re making out that my mum’s loopy. She’s been lied to by the police.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The way Gareth said it was final. Made it clear their conversation was almost over. ‘My father was a straight-up man, honest almost to a fault. He dedicated his life to Queen and Country – gave his whole life to the force. Hundreds admired him for it, for the work he did. You wouldn’t understand. When he passed away, they couldn’t even all get into the church. There were people crowding outside. Grown men weeping – half the Greater Manchester Police force were there. He wasn’t an undercover cop or a spy or anything else. There’s no way he would have done... what you’re saying he did.’
‘He was there. In Europe. You would have been too young to realise, and some of it was before you were born. But he was there alright, and he got away with it, because most of it’s been covered up.’
‘That’s enough.’ Gareth was at the door. ‘I’ve given you too much of my time already. Now look – I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, but don’t try and drag my family into it.’
‘Our family, you mean.’
Samhain saw a moment’s flicker, a second’s hesitation before Gareth opened the door.
Then he turned, quickly. Faster than a man of his size ought to have been able to. It brought Samhain up short, his nose close, breath, the smell of coffee in his face.
‘Now you look here,’ he said. ‘Don’t you bring my family into it. If I find out you’ve been anywhere near my mum – especially my mum – I’ll be down on you so hard for harassment, you’ll wish you’d never been born. Right?’
A quick pinch, hard as a hypodermic needle, somewhere in Samhain’s ribs. It winded him; he tried to pull away, tears spiking at his eyes.
‘We can get away with a lot in here,’ Gareth said. ‘How much would surprise you.’
Samhain didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The pain caused blotches, like splashes of engine oil on tarmac, blurring his vision.
‘You understand, son?’
Ears hurt. Pinching inside, roaring, like the agony of cold air. Samhain nodded.
‘Good.’
Release. The skin loosened, and Samhain felt a bruise forming; he gasped for air.
‘Just so long as we’re clear.’
Gareth was friendly again now, a professional with a busy diary. He opened the door, and ushered Samhain out. A woman rushed by in the same uniform, hatless and haring.
‘Good to see you,’ Gareth chirped. ‘All the best.’
The woman ran around the corner. Gareth muttered: ‘Don’t contact me again, you understand? When I come back down here this afternoon, you’d better be gone.’
It was the first time Samhain had ever gone out of a police station without a bail sheet or notice of caution in hand.
He came out into a day so weakly fine it seemed to have been diluted. Standing out there on the busy Manchester street, hearing the distant ding of the trams, trying to figure out the quickest way back to the train station.
There was a buzz and whistle from his pocket. Sam took it out of his pocket, and looked at the name flashing on screen: Flores.