Free Country of the Blind by Christopher Brookmyre Page A

"
    He had it. She was about to say "inside were ", not "inside was". That's what was bothering him. She had talked about an envelope first, not a letter. She had something else. McInnes had given her something else. The tape played on, Parlabane's blind wondering about what more had been in Carrow's envelope giving way to wondering why no extracts from the letter were being thrown up in any tediously overblown computer-animated graphic sequence to accompany the report, or at least read out by the poe-faced bastard in the trenchcoat. The only explanation for this was that they hadn't been given a copy, and as he couldn't imagine the cops sticking any kind of injunction on the letter and then blabbing on about its contents to the cameras, it must have been Carrow who denied them.
    Why?
    At this stage, with no evidence on the table, the name of the game is publicity. Why not give the media a copy, get it right into the public domain? Unless she was holding something else back, too.
    ". . . as disingenuous to suggest that a few handwritten words can in any way clear the suspicion of a terrorist motive," said Garloch again.
    "And why do you believe that?"
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    "Well, Miss Carrow's paragraphs do not actually prove that the suspects didn't. . . "
    He sat up straight, hit Pause, leaving the policeman open-mouthed and palms-up on the screen in front of him, trisected by two vibrating lines of interference.
    A few handwritten words, thought Parlabane. Miss Carrow's paragraphs. Never mind what else she was holding back - she hadn't even let the cops see the full text of the letter.
    Sarah rested her head on Parlabane's chest as she lay along the settee, eyes on the TV screen, attempting to digest the latest assault in his chili-laden campaign to defoliate their colonic flora. He lowered his head slightly as he sat, enough for his nose to touch a few stray strands of that cascading red hair, and breathed in her smell as she wriggled cosily against him. She was losing herself in the video; he was losing himself in her. Again.
    "Surprised to see you here," she had said when she arrived back from work and found him in the kitchen, thoughtfully stirring a voluminous pot.
    "I thought you'd be up in Perthshire causing trouble, and asking awkward questions."
    "Who, me?" he asked, feigning indignant disbelief, arms wide like an Italian full-back who's just decapitated a winger. They were both making light of it, tiptoeing their way around a dangerous obstacle. She had to joke because she didn't want to sound too accusatory, or to lay her worries on too thick. He had to joke back to assure her that he wasn't offended and that she had nothing to worry about anyway.
    And she didn't, he had gradually come to realise.
    "There's no angle," he said as they ate. She had brought the Voss thing up, probably hoping that he might benefit from a certain amount of catharsis, and hoping equally that what she heard would reassure her. "I'm interested, of course, but really just from a spectator's point of view. I spoke to Jenny today, and it sounds like they're under martial law."
    "So they're really going for this terrorist thing? What do you reckon about it?"
    "Couldn't say. That lawyer on the news knows something more than she's letting on, but what she's said doesn't change the fact that these guys went in very well prepared and took out four people in an incisively clinical exercise. They knew what they were doing, and whether it was for purposes of robbery, revenge, terrorism or their idea of a laugh on a dull Sunday night seems of secondary importance to me."
    "So if they knew what they were doing so much, how come they all got caught?"
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    "Don't know. Cops haven't said yet. In fact, there's a lot of things the cops haven't said, but I can't say their reticence either surprises me or makes me suspicious. Whatever went on up there, there's some bad bastards involved, and I'm more than happy for it to be the cops who find out who they are and what they're