you make me laugh

The buzzer buzzes and a second later the heavy green steel gate shudders once and trundles off to the left. Frank drives the ambulance up the ramp, turns at the top and backs in to the first bay of the custody suite. As we climb out an officer nods and smiles with a familiar, sharp-creased sense of complicity. He leads us to another green door, taps in a sequence of numbers, an internal bolt clanks, and we walk through an arched holding bay to another door at the far end. More numbers, another clank, and we reach the heart of the place, a bare, high vaulted room laid out in speckled green marmoleum, dominated by a raised control desk like the massive hub of a wheel lain on its side, each segment a counter marked left and right by dark screens, each counter with its own computer terminal and a small black camera set out in front, gazing outwards. A silhouetted pair of shoes marks the spot a person should stand in front of the counter, but around the hub disparate arrangements of people hang about in ones and twos and threes, snagged in their individual negotiations, leaning on the partitions or away, swapping things, chatting, swearing, staring at us as we come out of the bay and further into the room.

‘This way.’

He leads us over to a counter on the furthest side of the hub, presided over by an officer with such a small head and such spindly arms he could be a gigantic cellar spider in a starched white shirt, each limb moving independently, smoothly drawing out documents, answering phones, typing names - the whole business managed with dreadful efficiency from the pivot point of his squeaky black chair. He scrutinises us as we approach.

‘You’ve come for Phelan,’ he says. ‘Lovely. Here are the papers.’

He extends an arm about three metres in my direction, and drops into my hands a plain brown packet with the words: Section Papers printed in bold letters. ‘If you’d like to follow me.’ He rises noiselessly and high-steps ahead of us towards another steel door.

Phelan is curled up under a blanket on the bed shelf over against the far wall of the cell. The air is thick with parazone, stewed meat and tea, and the sweated layers of hours.
‘The ambulance is here to take you to Southview. I’ve got your things here in a bag.’ Phelan sits up. The officer produces from nowhere a clear plastic bag filled with a pair of rolled-up jeans, a mobile phone, a magazine and some coins – the whole collection secured at the top with a yellow plastic strip.
‘I’ll give it to the boys to look after. Meanwhile, can you be getting yourself ready, please?’
‘I want my phone,’ says Phelan, dropping the blanket. ‘You can’t keep my stuff. Give me my phone. Now.’
‘You’ll get it back at the hospital,’ says the officer. ‘Now be a good chap.’
‘I’ll sue you. I’ll sue you bastards.’
‘As you wish.’
The officer hands me the plastic bag.
‘Any escort?’ I ask him.
‘No. It won’t be necessary.’
Phelan slouches out into the corridor. By the time he has reached the threshold, the officer has re-wrapped him securely in the blanket, closed the door, found the key to lock it, tapped another officer on the shoulder to give instructions, checked his watch. ‘It really won’t be necessary,’ he says. Suddenly we are back in the hall. ‘Have a good trip.’

***

Phelan stares and frowns at me in the back of the truck.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask him.
Nothing.
‘Warm enough?’
Nothing.
‘The journey will take about an hour,’ I say. ‘If there’s anything you need, let me know. Otherwise – you could doze a little, if you like. I’ll put some music on.’
I stand up to turn the music on in the back, then sit back down and pull out a copy of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie from my jacket pocket. Smooth it open it to where I left off.

‘I am surprised at you, Sandy,’ said Miss Brodie. 'I thought you were the leaven in the lump.'

‘I want XFM.’
‘What?’
‘Put XFM on.’
‘We can’t get XFM.’
‘I want XFM.’
‘We just can’t get it.’
‘Put XFM on.’
‘Sorry, Phelan. I can do you Heart or Radio One. So I’m guessing Radio One.’
I smile at him.
He frowns and stares.
‘All right?’
Nothing.

‘I am surprised at you, Sandy,’ said Miss Brodie. 'I thought you were the leaven in the lump.'

‘Give me that,’ he says.
‘Well I’m not going to give you my book, am I? I’m reading it.’
‘Give it me.’
‘No. Sorry.’
His hair is cut into a pattern of tiny, square bunches, like the skin of a pineapple made out in black fabric, or a Google Earth shot of a place. It makes him seem uneven. He scratches the dry skin between the squares, then spends the next ten minutes trying to wrap his head in the blanket.

‘I am surprised at you, Sandy,’ said Miss Brodie. 'I thought you were the leaven in the lump.'

The blanket falls away and he stares at me again.
‘All right, Phelan?’
‘What Giveaways have you got?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Freebies. You know. Giveaways.’ He scratches his nose. ‘I need envelopes. Glue. It’s an ambulance? You got glue, right?’
‘Not really.’
He sticks his arm out straight.
‘Wrap that,’ he says.
For a moment I’m confused. Does he mean for me to touch fists, like a handshake or something?
‘What do you mean, wrap that?’
‘Wrap it. Wrap it. In bandages. It’s an ambulance, right? You got bandages?’
‘Yep. We’ve got bandages. But I’m not going to waste any wrapping them round your arm.’
‘Why not? You got loads.’
‘Yes, but. It’d be a waste.’
After a second or two he drops his gaze onto the Section Papers lying on the trolley in front of me. As innocently as I can, I pick them up, fold them in half and put them in my pocket.

He frowns and stares.

Then suddenly he laughs, a forced, thin sound, and he flaps the blanket either side of him and rises up a little, like a great tatty duck on a lake.
‘You,’ he says. ‘You make me laugh.’
But the laugh fades as quickly as it came, and he settles back into a long stare. I try to break it with conversation, but the stare blasts through my best efforts. Eventually I smile in surrender again, and get back to the book.

‘I am surprised at you, Sandy,’ said Miss Brodie. 'I thought you were the leaven in the lump.'

Suddenly Phelan is leaning forwards in his chair and his eyes have taken on a quicker, more glittering character.
‘I’ve got a suggestion,’ he whispers.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Why don’t me and you kill your partner.’
‘I don’t think that’s such a great idea, Phelan.’
‘Go on. Why not? You’ve got a gun.’
‘Why would you want to kill Frank? He’s a lovely man.’
‘So? Who cares? Come on. Let’s do it.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Come on.’
‘No.’
Then suddenly that laugh again, glassy, high and brittle.
‘You!’ he cackles, settling back into the chair. ‘You make me laugh.’