The One Who Is Two (Book 1 of White Rabbit)

Chapter 10

  'Have you ever had this sort of feeling for a child's toy before? Or was it just this one in particular that took your fancy?'

  The policeman smiled and leaned forward in his chair, tapping the table beside the out of focus black and white photograph of Loofah holding Peony's doll.

  'They do make them very realistic, don't they? Nice curvy bodies, legs that go on forever, pretty little faces. Perhaps you just got a bit – what shall we say? – carried away. Being away from home, on your own and a bit lonely.'

  'But… but it was a doll, just a little plastic doll,' Loofah said, 'Why would I want to – ?'

  'Molest it? Pull its little panties off?' interrupted the second policeman, 'That's what we want to know.'

  There were three of them in the room with him: a massive uniformed con¬stable who stood impassively beside the iron door with his arms folded across his huge chest, a silent guardian of righteousness, and the two detectives – Inspector Truscott and Detective Sergeant Meadows – who sat facing him across the harsh wooden table. Truscott was a big man too, but with a small head, round like a ping-pong ball balanced on his well-padded slab of a torso. He smiled a lot, big wide grins that spanned the whole of his small face, though somehow always managing to miss out the eyes.

  'But it wasn't like that,' pleaded Loofah, 'I've already told you – I was trying to keep its knickers on, not take them off.'

  Both detectives watched him silently. He looked from one to the other, from Truscott the pin-headed bear to Meadows, hard and thin with a narrow face and a permanent sneer, like a sour tempered heron.

  'It was getting sort of aroused, you see, squeaking and moaning and rubbing itself against me, and the little girl was on her swing and – .'

  'Your sort make me sick!' spat Meadows, turning away.

  It had been like this since the beginning of time itself: a windowless white cube flooded with a dead fluorescent light that percolated into every crevice of his being, Truscott with his cheerless grins and endless questions, with occa¬sional spurts of bile from Meadows, interjected like venomous punctuation – and all under the inscrutable gaze of the guardian of the door.

  They had now lapsed into another era of silence. Loofah watched the anxious patterns squirm and flow in the grain of the table top while Truscott smiled at his hands and Meadows stared at the floor, his face twisted with disgust.

  Eventually Truscott spoke.

  'Let's talk about the dog, shall we?' he said, 'For a start, where did you get the under¬wear? And how did you know her size?'

  'I've told you already: that wasn't me,' said Loofah, 'At least I don't think it was.'

  The Inspector didn't reply, but with a cheerful smile opened the tattered folder on the table in front of him and pushed a second photograph towards Loofah; although blurred, it was clearly his face that the Weimaraner was licking.

  'I think it was somebody else, actually,' said Loofah, lamely.

  Meadows spun round and loomed across the table, lizard eyes blazing with hatred.

  'Bollocks, you slag!' he spat, with drops of spittle bouncing off his lips, 'If that isn't you, who the fuck is it?'

  Loofah stared blankly at the policeman's face, the force of its loathing cutting into him like a laser. He could not answer the question.

  Truscott pulled more photographs out of the folder.

  'There's a lot here,' he said, 'Forcing a dog, a harmless house-pet, to perform acts of a lewd nature. Wrecking a parking meter…'

  'With forty minutes still on the clock,' added Meadows.

  'Breaking into a house to assault a young mother…'

  'And her little daughter.'

  'Tampering with Mrs Frimpton's laundry,' said Truscott, enunciating each word with disbelief.

  'Slaughtering a litter of puppies with an axe,' spat Meadows with even more venom than usual, clearly a dog lover.

  'And a playground full of school children with a chain-saw.'

  'Acts of gross indecency.'

  'Robbery.'

  'Rape.'

  'Arson.'

  'Murder.'

  'Genocide.'

  'Jay-walking'

  'All documented.'

  'Plenty of witnesses.'

  'Photographic and forensic evidence.'

  The detectives stopped suddenly, watching him closely.

  'I… I…' spluttered Loofah, 'I think I remember the sheet and the doll. But the puppies and the chain-saw…'

  'Just look at the photographs,' said Truscott, 'Is it the same person or isn't it?'

  'I don't know…'

  'Is it or isn't it, scumbag?' snapped Meadows.

  'They do look very similar…'

  'The same! The same! The same!' Meadows stabbed at each photograph with his finger, his voice rising to a shout.

  Loofah looked from one to the other, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. Could they be right? Perhaps it was him in all the pictures, perhaps he really had done all those terrible things.

  'But… why don't I remember?' he eventually stammered.

  Truscott leaned forward and smiled affectionately.

  'Terrible crimes, too terrible to think about. The mind blocks out, refuses to remember. It's a common phenomenon, almost universal in fact. Believe me, we see it all the time.'

  Loofah glanced anxiously at the photographs, at the poor little puppies, at the ravished young mother, at the chain-sawed children. Images flashed through his mind: the cold glint on the axe blade, the scent of hollyhocks in the cottage garden, the savage whine of the chain-saw. He could remember! – so it was true. No, he was forgetting the cinema – he had seen these things in the cinema.

  Or had he?

  'Best to come clean, you know,' continued Truscott, 'Saves everybody's time – the judge doesn't miss his lunch, the jury can go home to their families. Then everyone's happy, everyone's on your side. Here, do yourself a favour – sign the statement, make a clean breast of it.'

  With this he pushed a thick, neatly typed document across the table. Loofah took the offered pen and held it over the paper, poised to sign. It did seem the best thing to do, to bring this eternity in the white cube of hell to an end. And after all he was guilty… well, probably.

  As he went to sign, however, his hand wouldn't obey him. He stopped and looked up at Truscott.

  'Are you sure there's no-one else it could have been?' he said, in little more than a bleat.

  'Pathetic scumbag!' spat Meadows.

  Truscott sighed and smiled sadly. 'Right then,' he said with resignation, 'let's start again.'