Throw Me to the Wolves by Patrick McGuinness

Author:Patrick McGuinness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Squeeze the Day

I notice Gary says they’re charging him. Not we. It’s a Deskfish decision, because while Mr Wolphram has been sitting in that cell, fidgeting in that interview room, the secondary sweating has been done behind me, by Deskfish in his executive aquarium with the trophies and the certificates left over from his predecessor, who died in the saddle and whose family never claimed them back. Deskfish uses them now, and figures, correctly, that no one checks the name on certificates and trophies, only the achievements they testify to. ‘Police Communicator of the year: Regional Winner, Derbyshire’ is Gary’s favourite.

It was based on this certificate that Gary invented the game ‘Niche Accolades’, in which competitors are tasked with inventing superlatives for activities with diminutive catchment areas and restrictively specific eligibility conditions. ‘Best-performing Moldovan bank’, ‘Miss Frodsham’, ‘Yorkshire philanthropist of the year’ …

‘They haven’t got enough to charge him,’ I tell Gary, keeping to his choice of pronoun.

‘They’ve got enough circumstantial stuff, Prof: her in his car, her in his flat, him in her flat … him getting times and dates wrong, telling lies or looking like it. The car was used on the day after she died, maybe with her in it. She’s worried about stalkers, she’s looking up help sites. He’s incapable of giving straight answers, he’s got no alibi—’

‘People who live alone don’t tend to have alibis, Gary, you and I of all people should know that.’

‘Touché, Prof, but, come on, let’s face it …’ Gary’s voice tapers off because he wants me to say it for him:

So I do: ‘He’s not exactly normal, Gary, is that what you mean?’

‘Ah, Prof – you beat me to it.’

We say nothing. I stir my coffee, tap the spoon against the chipped rim of the cup. It says ‘Best Dad in Norfolk’ on it, and it too belonged to Deskfish’s predecessor. It is the specificity that gives the title its lustre: less is more.

‘Look,’ Gary goes on, ‘they need a result, Deskfish needs something to tell people. Okay, he’s a spineless desk-humper surrounded by a dead man’s certificates [Gary pronounces it stiffikuts], but he’s also the one they go to first: the public, the newspapers, the TV reporters, the top brass worried about PR, the shopkeepers spooked about Christmas footfall … They’re all at him, Prof, phoning, tweeting, emailing, texting … I feel for him, Prof. A bit.’

‘And he’s just given in – the whole point of getting a result is that it’s the right result, not some morsel to keep the outside world happy …’

‘It’s about running out of time. Look, we’ve got this great big turd hanging by a tiny thread over our heads, thin as a baby’s hair, Prof, just waiting to fall on all of us, you, me, Deskfish, everyone—’

‘It’s a sword, Gary, the sword of Damocles—’

‘It’s a turd now, Prof – where d’you think you are? Lord of the Rings? The point is to get out from under it before the thread snaps.’

‘But now we have to spend our time proving he did it rather than investigating who might actually have done it.

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