Mr Dixon Disappears

‘Can you take off your clothes please, Mr Armstrong? I’ll remove your handcuffs.’

‘But…I’m a librarian! I check out your books! You can’t just…’

He recognised another of the policemen present as a borrower of Hayes car manuals from the library, and he appealed directly to him, as a library user.

‘It’s me! Look! Me. Israel Armstrong. The librarian!’

The policeman stared back emotionless at Israel. Being a librarian was maybe not going to swing it. Israel could see no easy way out of this.

‘Do you know Stanley Milgram?’ He was babbling now.

‘Clothes, Mr Armstrong.’

‘Or the Stanford prison experiment?’

‘Clothes, Mr Armstrong.’

‘In the Stanford prison experiment, they divided up the volunteers into guards and inmates to see how they behaved.’

‘Clothes, please.’

‘And the guards behaved like guards. And the inmates behaved like inmates. Have you ever read about that? Have you?’

‘Clothes,’ said Sergeant Friel.

‘And if I do? If I do take them off?’

‘Then we’ll be able to move on.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine. OK.’ He was desperate. ‘I’ll take my clothes off. You all have to turn around though, OK?’

‘You turn around,’ said Sergeant Friel.

‘Oh, all right, I see. Fine. OK. I’ll turn around. This is ridiculous, you know.’

‘Thank you, Mr Armstrong. The quicker you get on with it, the quicker it’ll be sorted out. This is for you.’ Sergeant Friel handed Israel a one-piece paper suit, with a zip up the front.

‘I see. It’s like Guantánamo Bay.’

‘Och aye. Just like it.’

Once he’d been unhandcuffed and taken off his clothes – the duffle coat, the tank-top, his cords, one of Brownie’s T-shirts – ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’ – Israel put on the paper suit and a pair of plimsolls. His clothes were sealed in see-through plastic bags.

‘It chafes.’

‘Sorry?’ said Sergeant Friel.

‘The paper suit. It chafes.’

‘Right.’

‘So we’re done now, are we?’

‘No,’ said Sergeant Friel. ‘Now we need to take a blood sample.’

‘What?’ said Israel. ‘A blood sample? You are joking? No, no, no. Definitely not. You said we were done.’

‘I did not say we were done, Mr Armstrong.’

‘Oh, yes, you did! You said!’

‘We’re not done, Mr Armstrong.’

‘Come on, that’s not fair! You keep moving the goalposts.’

‘We are not moving the goalposts, Mr Armstrong. We need to take a blood sample,’ said Sergeant Friel.

‘No. First I agreed to come here. Then I agreed to take my clothes off. And now you want to take a blood sample? It’s like being…Brian Keenan, or somebody.’

‘Aye?’

‘Yes. Or…You know, the Birmingham Six.’

‘Right enough.’

‘This is outrageous! This is Abu Ghraib!’

‘No, Mr Armstrong. This is Rathkeltair police station.’

‘I’m being illegally detained.’

‘No, you’re being legally detained, Mr Armstrong, in full accordance with the law, and in full accordance with the law we need to take a blood sample.’

‘You don’t need to take a blood sample!’ protested Israel. ‘I was only in Dixon and Pickering’s setting up my display.’

‘Aye, well, you’ve already said that. But we still need to take a blood sample, so we can eliminate you from our inquiries. And I have to tell you, if you refuse to give it, we have to tell the court you refused. And we ask the court to draw an inference.’

‘What? The court?’ Israel felt like crying. ‘The court! No one mentioned a court before. I’m not going to court!’

‘At your current rate, Mr Armstrong, you will be going to a court.’

‘I can’t go to court!’ He didn’t just feel like crying now. He was about to cry. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘The blood sample please, Mr Armstrong.’