Rodney’s eyes were wide with fear as he entered the custody area. Porter tried to contain his disgust, and only the presence of witnesses stopped him from digging his knuckles into his back and sending him sprawling into the custody desk.
The custody suite was busy, which was unusual for Brampton, but it was as if every copper on duty had found a reason to be there. They all stared as Rodney approached the desk. The sergeant glared at him over his spectacles before reaching behind for a clipboard holding a paper custody record, still empty.
As the sergeant filled out the forms, Rodney looked around, as if trying to get a fix on his new surroundings. It was the lack of windows that would strike him the most, Porter knew that. The cells were in the basement of the old police station, the custody desk at one end, the only light artificial, no way of knowing whether it was day or night. It played on people’s minds when they were locked up, so minutes stretched into hours and prisoners became more anxious to get out.
Rodney’s voice was quiet as he answered the questions, nervous and timid. Porter clenched his fists into his pocket, desperate to smash Rodney’s face into the desk and scream at him about the dead children, whether they had met their fates timid and quiet, or whether they had cried for their mothers as they died.
He stayed calm. The cries of the parents filled his thoughts. He’d hardly slept since the first murder. Everything about the case haunted him. The way people had talked about the parents, or the sight of the twisted young body, and the slur on Brampton. His town. He patrolled these streets. He’d grown up here and wanted to die here, and for over a month the town had been nothing but the centre of media talk.
As Rodney moved away from the desk, the sergeant leading the way, a key in his hand, Porter leaned forward and whispered, ‘Enjoy the silence. It won’t be the same when you get to prison.’
Rodney blinked, before he turned away and looked at the floor, right up until the moment the sergeant opened the cell door and stood to one side so that Rodney could shuffle in.
Porter was annoyed with himself. He should have been more professional, but he was still a human being, with emotions. He didn’t want to lose that and turn into a form-filling robot. No, his emotions drove him, even though he never displayed them. His fingernails dug into his palms as he clenched his fist.
As the sergeant slammed the cell door, making the heavy metallic clang echo along the corridor, he said, ‘Is he the man then, or is this some game, hoping he’s got information?’
‘He’s the man. I know it. Any innocent would be protesting. Not him. He came along like a condemned man.’
The sergeant scowled. ‘I was tempted to let him keep his belt, just so he could do us all a favour and make his own lights go out.’
Porter shook his head. ‘Let him suffer for every one of the days he has left. The fear will kill him more slowly, and I want it to be slow.’
The sergeant headed back along the corridor, jangling his keys.
Porter dropped the hatch so that he could peer into the cell.
It was a small square with walls painted grey, a light concealed into the ceiling and a steel toilet in one corner.
The toilet will break him, Porter thought. The stink from it, years of piss and shit and vomit, splashed and then bleached away, will get into every pore, take days to wash away, so he’ll get more desperate not to be locked up.
Rodney was sitting on a plastic mattress, his head down, his body slumped. Defeated.
Porter closed the hatch, pleased with what he saw, before he was distracted by a noise by the custody desk. The arrival of a lawyer. He could tell from the booming voice and the rasp of heavy breathing.
Ken Goodman. A small-town lawyer who dealt in all areas of law. He sorted out house sales and divorces and sued the council when people tripped over loose paving stones. He was all the lawyer anyone needed. Or, at least, so he thought.
Ken Goodman was a copper’s lawyer. He leaked secrets and made friends with everyone, playing the part of the colourful leader of the community, known by all, liked by most. For Ken, being a lawyer in Brampton was about keeping the town happy. Those who’d done wrong said sorry, and those who’d been wronged were never slighted.
If Porter ever needed a lawyer, Ken Goodman would be the last one he’d choose. He was too cosy with the local coppers, enjoying the golf club and the lunches, taking out other inspectors and higher, sorting out tickets for football matches, all in the name of ‘corporate hospitality’. The hospitality was visible in the movement of his stomach, rotund and flabby and always seeming to swing the opposite way to the rest of his torso.
Porter was relieved to see him though. Whenever one of the bigger city firms came along, which wasn’t often, they advised silence and didn’t make any effort to see the police side.
‘Mr Goodman, so good to see you,’ Porter said, as he went back into the open area near the custody desk.
Ken turned and grinned. ‘Chief Inspector Porter, I’m charmed.’ He mopped his brow and then his unshaven jowls with a red handkerchief he pulled from his pocket, leaving small bits of red fluff on his cheeks, snagged by the stubble. ‘Is this going to be all night?’
‘Have you been told it’s a murder? The two children killed in the last month.’
Ken’s face lost some of its brightness. ‘Yes, so I understand.’ He took a deep breath, his heavy frame shifting, bulging over his trousers and forcing them down his hips. ‘Show me to him, let’s see what he has to say.’
The sergeant led him along the corridor, the long-trodden route, and let Ken into the cell, Porter just behind him.
There’d been talk of a new police station, with proper facilities, so they could stop lawyers using the cells as interview rooms, sitting next to their clients on the plastic mattress and relying on a red buzzer and the speed of a custody sergeant to rescue them if the client ever became aggressive.
Porter turned away as the cell door closed again. Worrying about defence lawyers did not come high on the list of priorities for the local police budget.
Half an hour later, Ken sounded the buzzer. Two short bursts. No long urgent blast. He was let out and his client followed as Porter led them to the interview room.
The silence continued.
Porter wouldn’t normally conduct a suspect interview. His role was to supervise and direct, but he couldn’t do that cocooned in an interview room. He wanted to hear his first account though.
He didn’t get to hear anything. He sat with a junior detective on one side of a small wooden table, Ken Goodman and Rodney on the other, a black tape deck with two slots between them. Rodney gave his name and nodded when asked if he understood the police caution, then gave a loud, ‘Yes,’ when told that the microphones wouldn’t pick up a nod. He stared at the tapes as they whirred, and then down at the table as Porter struggled to control his temper.
Rodney didn’t answer any questions, each one met with a monotone, ‘No comment.’
Porter let someone else take over from him, but Rodney kept it up through another five interviews. Each piece of evidence was put to him, to give him the chance to respond, but he maintained his two-word mantra. No comment.
When Rodney was charged, Porter watched him, exhausted from a mixture of frustration and spent adrenaline, waiting for a flicker of something, anything, to explain why he’d done it.
Before he was taken back to his cell to await his first court appearance, the only words he said were, ‘What will happen to my children?’
Porter snarled, ‘They’ll stay alive, which doesn’t seem like a bad deal when I think of William and Ruby.’
Rodney didn’t respond. Instead, he trudged back to his cell and, once the cell door clanged shut again, fell into silence once more.