had been similar. He remembered hitting Gills and he remembered leaving the office. But those four minutes when he stood and swore at Gills had simply dropped out of his memory. However, when he had left, Gills was still alive.
"Bettie, I didn't want..."
He got out of the car backwards, without taking his eyes from the corpse. He hardly felt his own body; everything seemed just a nightmare. The strong hand of the policeman seized his wrist, closing the cool ring of a handcuff around it.
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney..."
"BETTIE!!!"
But you can't hear me,
You can't hear me,
the radio sang.
Over the desert the hot wind blew.
In the story The Beatles songs "Yesterday", "Nowhere man", "I'm only sleeping", "And your bird can sing" were quoted.
THROAT
Steel locks clanked hollowly behind my back, cutting me off from the world of the living. In modern prisons, guards don't jingle keys on thick wire rings anymore–everything is done by automatics; the locks are controlled from a central location. No chance to escape, nor even that tiny hope that the prisoners of the past had... For a moment I felt something like an attack of claustrophobia. Behind me there was a tightly locked steel door, ahead of me–a corridor without windows, with pale green walls and caged lights on the ceiling. Yes, here even they are behind bars... At that moment they burned steadily, but I knew that there were moments when they dimmed or started to flicker. It means that one more inhabitant of this place leaves it–leaves in almost the only way possible here...
Alas, I had no way back. The jailer looked at me expectantly–without anger, but also without sympathy–and I obediently went forward, deep into death row.
The guard stopped at a gray door without a number and put his card into the slot. I knew that this card wouldn't work in anyone else's hands–some kind of biometrics scanning... The lock clicked, but the jailer didn't hurry to open the door. Instead, he decided to remind me of the rules once again.
"He's chained, and the furniture is screwed to the floor. Just the same, be careful. Don't let him provoke you, don't get too close to him, and don't give him anything in a way that could allow him to grab you. For example, don't bend down if he wants to mutter something in your ear. He'll sink his teeth in it without a second thought. Don't forget who he is."
"I studied the case materials well," I answered, bored by the third such lecture already.
"I'm sure," this time there was hostility in the jailer's voice. "But you think that if you are on his side, he is on yours. And that's a big mistake."
I understood the reason for his irritation, but I didn't try to remind him once again that I was doing my duty just as he was doing his and it was not a matter of personal sympathies.
"If anything goes wrong, call for help immediately," the guard finished, having gotten no reaction from me. "I'll be right behind this door."
Then he opened the door at last and I went in.
The small room was divided by a metal table. The person in orange coveralls, sitting on the other side of the table, was indeed chained to the chair armrests: his left hand–with a regular handcuff, while the chain for the right hand was longer, allowing him, if necessary, to take something from the table if it were moved close enough to him. I didn't see his ankles, but I didn't doubt that they were in shackles, too.
Except for all these accessories, his appearance was most ordinary. He seemed to be in his early fifties (actually he was 48), a receding hairline, grizzled, with an unremarkable face (such faces are a real nightmare for policemen, as no witnesses can describe them clearly), down-turned corners of his lips, faded eyes under puffy eyelids...
However, his ordinary appearance was, well, ordinary. No maniac looks like a maniac–otherwise catching them wouldn't be that hard. And even after all charges are proved, his neighbors, colleagues, even family members still cannot believe his guilt. “Oh, that can't be true, such a decent person! Perhaps a little unsociable, but...”
Nevertheless, this unremarkable middle-aged man with the appearance of a tired accountant from a third-rate office was the one whom journalists had named Jack-is-Back, alluding to Jack the Ripper.