A Fragment of Fear: A Novel by John Bingham

Author:John Bingham [Bingham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2007-07-17T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER7

It was a pleasant evening outside, warm for October, the sky still blue, and I don’t feel the cold physically as much as some; but in certain circumstances there is a mental chill, a kind of freezing up, which can be equally devastating. This I felt.

You know you are in a police station, and you know you have come there voluntarily; and you touch the chair you’re sitting on, and the table in front of you, and you hear the traffic going past outside, and so you know you are alive; furthermore, you know you are not dreaming, because dreams move faster.

You can hear your heart beating, and feel a stickiness in the throat when you swallow, because if you are not dead, and not asleep and dreaming, there is only one reasonable conclusion at which you can arrive.

You fight against this conclusion; even those who really are mentally sick strenuously deny it, maintaining with a sad, forlorn intenseness that it is they who are sane, the others who are mistaken.

I sometimes wonder if they hear the voices of others as from a distance, echoing distortedly, as I did now.

“What is your job, sir?” asked the superintendent, with surprising gentleness.

“I write, I write books and articles. There’s something wrong,” I added urgently, “there’s something wrong with the system, either that or I am going mad. This Sergeant Matthews—”

“There is no police officer called Matthews who could have called on you, sir,” interrupted the bald-headed sergeant. “That’s what the superintendent has just said, loud and clear, sir. He said there’s no Sergeant Matthews attached to this station or any station near here.”

“Be that as it may,” I began.

“Be that as it isn’t,” said the sergeant. “Facts are facts.”

“Well, somebody calling himself Sergeant Matthews called,” I said angrily, “and I would like to say that I am not at all surprised, upon reflection, that this woman made up a complaint. I am sorry she has ended as she has, but she was in a highly emotional and neurotic state.”

Neither of them was looking at me.

“So I’m not surprised. Not at all surprised. Not really.”

The superintendent got up and walked across the room, and stared at the yellow painted wall. Without turning round, he said:

“I have tried to tell you that there is no record that this woman made any complaint against you. Why do you insist that she did?”

“Because she did,” I replied sullenly. “You’ve got it wrong somewhere. Same as you have about Sergeant Matthews.”

He came back and sat down again and said:

“You realise what you are saying, Mr. Compton?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You are saying that you travelled with an unknown woman who has now been killed?”

“Yes, I am—I’m saying that.”

“You’re saying that although you did not give her your name and address, she somehow knew it?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And laid a complaint against you?”

“And laid a complaint against me.”

“And gave you a message you cannot now produce?”

“I can’t produce it, because I handed it over to a police officer, at his request.”

“You

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