‘I never imagined it would be like this,’ the man said.

There is something wrong about uncontrolled noise in a police station. You associate police stations with discipline. If anyone does anything violent, you expect it to be done quietly and off-stage. My mind shied off images of violent policemen. Thoughts like that are weakening when you sit waiting in an interview room.

‘To the police, of course,’ Brond had said.

I had been astonished.

‘Where now?’ I had asked, desperately casual, watching the vast shoulders of Primo as he steered the car through the morning traffic.

‘To the police, of course.’

He had turned on me a look of mild reproach.

‘I hope,’ he said, ‘you realise the seriousness of what we found.’

‘We found Kilpatrick,’ I said.

‘We discovered a murder,’ Brond chided. He was enormously the good citizen, expensively dressed, with Primo as chauffeur, leaning forward with a folded handkerchief to wipe a trace of greasy dust from his shoes. ‘In the event, that leaves us no choice. It would be unthinkable to do anything else.’

Until the exact moment we entered the station – even while we were climbing the steps – I did not believe him. My first reaction was an enormous relief. Someone was going to sort out the pieces and let me have my life back.

The whole station heaved with confusion. An unanswered telephone was left ringing. Three constables passed at the trot. Brond spoke to the sergeant at the desk. I could not hear what was being said. I saw his face change, then it was as though the same virus affected him. He hobbled away at an incredible pace down a corridor to my left. That was the last I had seen of him.

A plain-clothes man had taken me by the arm. Five minutes, ten, had passed while I waited for Brond to come back. A sense of some vast catastrophe built up round me. It was strange to be at the centre of so much activity and be so excluded.

‘In here,’ I’d been told.

‘What’s going on?’ I’d asked.

‘Wait here. Someone’ll be along to talk to you in a moment.’

He might have been deaf. As I asked again, he gave me the look policemen use to put you on a different planet. Then he shut the door.

The only other person in the room was a brown-faced, elderly man in shirt and flannels. Despite the stains on the flannels, he had that air which mysteriously but unmistakably signals prosperous respectability. Like me, he had been waiting. We had passed the time listening, trying to make out from the confusion of sounds what was causing the panic. Once the door was thrown open and we jumped up, but it was a flustered sergeant who stared at us as if we had no right to be there.

‘I’ve been—,’ my companion began.

‘Sorry, sorry. Later. Really sorry.’

The sergeant disappeared. I had never heard a policeman offer so many apologies. It was like a measure of disorientation.

We sat down slowly.

‘This is impossible,’ flannel trousers said.

‘Something serious is going on.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘But still . . .’

We sat in silence. It was a miserable place. High on one tiled wall there was a narrow strip of window. I pulled the table over and stood on it. Pushing up on the toes of my good foot, I could just see out. It was some kind of air-shaft. Within feet of me, there was a featureless brick wall.

‘I don’t see any need for that,’ my companion said.

I climbed down.

‘Did you see anything?’ he asked inconsistently.

I offered him a sneer.

‘All I meant was that if there’s some emergency we’d best let them deal with it. All we can do to help is be patient.’

‘Splendid attitude,’ I said. ‘Admirable. You’re not a criminal yourself then.’

He flushed with annoyance.

‘Good heavens, of course not. Do I look like—’

He broke off, looking at the unsightly flannels.

‘I was gardening. That’s why I’m here. I’d bought onion sets. The roses at the back haven’t been doing well. Too sheltered perhaps. Anyway I’d decided to have them up and I’d bought onion sets. So I took out the bushes and raked and I had the sets in a pail. They’d been in water, you see. I pushed the dibble in – to make a hole, you see, for the set – but when I pulled it out the dry soil ran into the hole and ran and ran. And I stood up and stepped back and there was a roar and a gasp as if the earth itself had taken a breath. And half the garden was gone and I was standing right on the edge of a black hole I couldn’t see any bottom to. I mean it just went down, and I could hear little stones and clods still falling.’

He looked at me wide-eyed, reliving it.

‘You’re the first person I’ve told,’ he said.

I wondered if he was a lunatic.

‘Earthquake?’ I asked. ‘Surely not in Glasgow?’

‘Earthquake?’ He looked at me as if I was the one who was mad. ‘Who’s talking about earthquakes? Subsidence! My garden had slipped into an old pit shaft they’d all forgotten about.’

‘Jesus!’ I said.

‘Oh, yes. Lanarkshire, you see, rests on old coal mines.’

Not long after that someone came and took him away. Very politely, so it was possible his story was true. I waited. I had never been in this situation so it was hard for me to tell if the noises off were settling back to normal. Twice more I stood on the table. Brick walls don’t change much. Two and a half hours went by. The door was not locked. I tried it once. There was no physical barrier to stop me from going out and asking what was happening. I sat down and waited.

The short fat one took notes. The other one did the talking. Neither of them explained who they were; no names or ranks. My name. My age. My occupation.

‘How well did you know Peter Kilpatrick?’

‘Not well at all.’

‘How many of you lodge there?’

My mind scrabbled.

‘Three – no, four.’

‘Uh-huh. All of you students, isn’t that right?’

‘No – two of us. Willie Clarke and me. Muldoon isn’t. Neither is . . .’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Kilpatrick. Peter . . .’

They knew that.

‘So you’re a student. At the Uni.’

He mouthed the word in the way Davie had just before he tried to butt me in the face – yoo-ni.

‘That’s right.’

‘Uh-huh. Why didn’t you like him?’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like him.’

‘Ladies’ man, are you?’

‘Me. No.’

‘Big fellow like you. Not bad looking. All those stories about students.’

The fat man snorted appreciatively.

‘I asked you a question.’ ‘I answered it.’

‘Uh-huh. Incline the other way?’

I didn’t know what he was talking about. When I looked at him uncomprehendingly, he made a limp movement with one hand.

‘That way, are you? Fancy the boys?’

‘Not much.’

He hesitated and I thought I’d not been emphatic enough for him, but it was only a needle. He came back to what he was really after.

‘Ladies’ man, are you?’

‘I don’t run round bloody mad, if that’s what you mean.’

He turned to the fat man, who kept writing.

‘That what I mean?’

The fat man glanced up at him then at me. He sniffed.

‘No. Didn’t think so. Have a steady?’

‘A what?’

‘A steady – girl you go about with.’

‘No.’

‘Big healthy fellow like you. How long you been here?’

‘Since the session started – last October.’

‘All winter. And no girls. Funny.’

‘I didn’t say no girls. I’ve been out a few times. Took a girl home from a dance a few times . . .’

Walked the streets a few times. Howled at the moon a few times.

‘Names.’

‘Eh?’

‘Names. Give us their names.’

He waited. I thought of them being questioned by the police.

‘I’ll give you a name,’ he said. ‘Margaret Briody.’

‘She’s not a girl friend of mine.’

‘Where’d you sleep last night?’

Some time later he said that she’d been interviewed. Not long after that another man came in and stood listening.