Suspect

by Michael Robotham

  “Did you think you were punishing her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she deserve it?”

  “Yes!”

  He’s staring directly at me—his face as white as wax. At that moment I have an image of a child in a lonely corner of a playground, overweight, freakishly tall, the owner of nicknames like Jellyass and Lardbucket; a child for whom the world is a vast and empty place. A child seeking to be invisible, but who is condemned to stand out.

  “I found a dead bird today,” Bobby says, absentmindedly. “Its neck was broken. Maybe it was hit by a car.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I moved it off the path. Its body was still warm. Do you ever think about dying?”

  “I think everyone does.”

  “Some people deserve to die.”

  “And who should be the judge of that?”

  He laughs bitterly. “Not people like you.”

  The session overruns but Meena has already gone home to her cats. Most of the nearby offices are locked up and in darkness. Cleaners are moving through the corridors, emptying wastebaskets and chipping paint off the baseboards with their carts.

  Bobby has also gone. Even so, when I stare at the darkened square of the window, I can picture his face, soaked in sweat and spotted with the blood of that poor woman.

  I should have seen this coming. He is my patient, my responsibility. I know I can’t hold his hand and make him come to see me, but that’s no consolation.

  Bobby was close to crying when he described being charged, but he felt more sorry for himself than for the woman he attacked.

  I struggle to care about some of my patients. They spend ninety quid and gaze at their navels or whine about things they should be telling their partners instead of me. Bobby is different. I don’t know why.

  At times he seems totally incapacitated by awkwardness, yet he can startle me with his confidence and intellect. He laughs at the wrong places, explodes unexpectedly and has eyes as pale and cold as blue glass.

  Sometimes I think he’s waiting for something—as though mountains are going to move or all the planets will line up. And once everything is in place he’ll finally let me know what’s really going on.

  I can’t wait for that. I have to understand him now.

  At five I’m outside trying to push against the tide of people washing toward the underground stations and bus stops. I walk toward Cavendish Square and hail a cab as it starts to rain again.

  The desk sergeant at Holborn Police Station is pink-faced and freshly shaven, with his hair slicked down over his bald crown. Leaning on the counter, he dunks biscuits into a mug of tea, spilling crumbs onto the breasts of a page-three girl.

  As I push through the glass door, he licks his fingers, wipes them down his shirt and slides the newspaper under the counter. He smiles and his cheeks jiggle.

  I show him a business card and ask if I could possibly see the charge sheet for Bobby Moran. His good humor disappears.

  “We’re very busy at the moment—you’ll have to bear with me.”

  I look over my shoulder. The charge room is deserted except for a wasted teenage boy in torn jeans, trainers and an AC/DC T-shirt, who has fallen asleep on a wooden bench. There are cigarette burns on the floor and plastic cups copulating beside a metal wastebasket.

  With deliberate slowness, the sergeant saunters toward a bank of filing cabinets on the rear wall. A biscuit is stuck to the backside of his trousers and the pink icing is melting into his rump. I allow myself a smile.

  According to the charge sheet Bobby was arrested in central London eighteen days ago. He pleaded guilty at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court and was bailed to appear again on December 24 at the Old Bailey. Malicious wounding is a Section 20 offense—assault causing grievous bodily harm. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

  Bobby’s statement is typed over three pages, double-spaced, with the corrections initialed in the margins. He makes no mention of the little boy or his argument with the jeweler. The woman had jumped the queue. For her troubles, she suffered a fractured jaw, depressed cheekbone, broken nose and three busted fingers.

  “Where do I find out about the bail conditions?”

  The sergeant leafs through the file and runs his finger down a court document.

  “Eddie Barrett has the brief.” He grunts in disgust. “He’ll have this downgraded to actual bodily harm quicker than you can say ring-a-ding-ding.”

  How did Bobby get a lawyer like Eddie Barrett? He’s the best-known defense solicitor in the country, with a genius for self-promotion and the ability to produce the perfect sound bite on the courthouse steps.

  Eddie made his name a few years back by spearheading a class action against the Maastricht Treaty to stop the British government from ditching the pound. During the case he took to wearing Union Jack waistcoats and was rumored to have a tattoo of Her Majesty above his heart. Another rumor said he had no heart.

  “How much was the bail?”

  “Five grand.”

  Where would Bobby find that sort of money?

  I glance at my watch. It’s still only five thirty. Eddie’s secretary answers the phone and I can hear Eddie shouting in the background. She apologizes and asks me to wait. The two of them shout at each other. It’s like listening to a domestic fight. Eventually, she comes back to me. Eddie can give me twenty minutes.

  It’s quicker to walk than to take a taxi to Chancery Lane. Buzzed through the main door, I climb the narrow stairs to the third floor, weaving past boxes of court documents and files, which have been stacked in every available space.

  Eddie is talking on the phone as he ushers me into his office and points to a chair. I have to move two files to sit down. Eddie looks to be in his late fifties but is probably ten years younger. Whenever I’ve seen him interviewed on TV he’s put me in mind of a bulldog. He has the same swagger, with his shoulders barely moving and his ass swinging back and forth. He even has large incisor teeth, which must come in handy when ripping strips off people.

  When I mention Bobby’s name Eddie looks disappointed. I think he was hoping for a medical malpractice case. He spins his chair and begins searching the drawer of a filing cabinet.

  “What did Bobby tell you about the attack?”

  “You saw his statement.”

  “Did he mention seeing a young boy?”

  “No.”

  Eddie interrupts tiredly. “Look, I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot here, Madonna, but just explain to me why the fuck I’m talking to you. No offense.”

  “None taken.” He’s a lot less pleasant up close. I start again. “Did Bobby mention he was seeing a psychologist?”

  Eddie’s mood improves. “Shit no! Tell me more.”

  “I’ve been seeing him for about six months. I also think he’s been evaluated before but I don’t have the records.”

  “A history of mental illness—better and better.” He picks up a ringing telephone and motions for me to carry on. He’s trying to conduct two conversations at once.

  “Did Bobby tell you why he lost his temper?”

  “She took his cab.”

  “It’s hardly a reason.”

  “You ever tried to get a cab in Holborn on a wet Friday afternoon?” He half chuckles.

  “I think there’s more to it than that.”

  Eddie sighs. “Listen, Pollyanna, I don’t ask my clients to tell me the truth. I just keep them out of jail so they can go and make the same mistakes all over again.”

  “The woman—what did she look like?”

  “A fucking mess if you look at the photographs.”

  “How old?”

  “Mid-forties. Dark hair . . .”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Just a second.” He hangs up the phone and yells to his secretary to get him Bobby’s file. Then he rifles through the pages, humming to himself.

  “Mid-thigh skirt, high heels, a short jacket . . . mutton dressed as lamb
if you ask me. Why do you want to know?”

  I can’t tell him. It’s only half an idea.

  “What’s going to happen to Bobby?”

  “Right now he faces prison time. The crown prosecution service won’t downgrade the charges.”

  “Jail isn’t going to help him. I can do you a psych report. Maybe I can get him into an anger management program.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “A written request.”

  Eddie’s pen is already moving. I can’t remember the last time I could write that fluidly. He slides it across the desk.

  “Thanks for this.”

  He grunts. “It’s a letter not a kidney.”

  If ever a man had issues. Maybe it’s a Napoleon complex or he’s trying to compensate for being ugly. He’s bored with me now. The subject no longer interests him. I ask my questions quickly.

  “Who put up the bail?”

  “No idea.”

  “And who phoned you?”

  “He did.”

  Before I can say anything else, he interrupts.

  “Listen, Oprah, I’m due at a Law Society drinks party and I need a pee. This kid is your nutcase; I just defend the sorry fuck. Why don’t you take a peek inside his head, see if anything rattles and come back to me. Have a terrific day.”

  10

  Julianne is doing her stretching exercises in the spare bedroom. She does these yogalike poses every morning with names that sound like Indian squaws. Babbling Brook meets Running Deer.

  A veteran early riser, she is combat ready by 6:30 a.m. Nothing like me. I’ve been seeing bloody and beaten faces all night in my dreams.

  Julianne pads barefoot into the bedroom wearing just a pajama top. She bends to kiss me.

  “You had a restless night.”

  Pressing her head against my chest, she lets her fingers go tap-dancing up my spine until she feels me shiver. She is reminding me that she knows every square inch of me.

  “Remember I told you about Charlie singing carols with the choir?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Apparently young Ryan Fraser kissed her on the bus on the way home.”

  “Cheeky devil.”

  “It wasn’t easy. Three of her friends had to help her catch him and hold him down.”

  We laugh and I pull her on top of me, letting her feel my erection against her thigh.

  “Stay in bed.”

  She laughs and slides away. “No. I’m too busy.”

  “C’mon.”

  “It’s not the right time. You have to save your fellas.”

  My “fellas” are my sperm. She makes them sound like paratroopers.

  She’s getting dressed. White bikini pants slide along her legs and snap into place. Then she raises the shirt over her head and shrugs her shoulders into the straps of a bra. She won’t risk giving me another kiss. I might not let her go next time.

  After she’s gone I stay in bed listening to her move through the house, her feet hardly touching the floor. I hear the kettle being filled and the milk being collected from the front step. I hear the freezer door open and the toaster being pushed down.

  Dragging myself upright, I take six paces to the bathroom and turn on the shower. The boiler in the basement belches and the pipes clunk and gargle. I stand shivering on the cold tiles waiting for some sign of water. The showerhead is shaking. At any moment I expect the tiles to start coming loose from around the taps.

  After two coughs and a hacking spit, a cloudy trickle emerges and then dies.

  “The boiler is broken again,” yells Julianne from downstairs.

  Great! Brilliant! Somewhere there is a plumber laughing at me. He’s no doubt telling all his plumber mates how he pretended to fix a Jurassic boiler and charged enough to pay for a fortnight in Florida.

  I shave with cold water, using a fresh razor, without cutting myself. It may seem like a small victory, but worth noting.

  I emerge into the kitchen and watch Julianne make plunger coffee and put posh jam on a piece of whole-wheat toast. I always feel childish eating my Rice Krispies.

  I still remember the first time I saw her. She was in her first year studying languages at the University of London. I was doing my postgraduate degree. Not even my mother would call me handsome. I had curly brown hair, a pear-shaped nose and skin that freckled at the first hint of sunlight.

  I had stayed on at university determined to sleep with every promiscuous, terminally uncommitted first-year on campus, but unlike other would-be lotharios I tried too hard. I even failed miserably at being fashionably unkempt and seditious. No matter how many times I slept on someone’s floor, using my jacket as a pillow, it refused to crumple or stain. And instead of appearing grungy and intellectually blasé, I looked like someone on his way to his first job interview.

  “You had passion,” she told me later, after listening to me rail against the evils of apartheid at a rally in Trafalgar Square, outside the South African embassy. She introduced herself in the pub and let me pour her a double from the bottle of whiskey we were drinking.

  Jock was there—getting all the girls to sign his T-shirt. I knew that he would find Julianne. She was a fresh face—a pretty one. He put his arm around her waist and said, “I could grow to be a better person just being near you.”

  Without a flicker of a smile, she took his hand away and said, “Sadly, a hard-on doesn’t count as personal growth.”

  Everybody laughed except Jock. Then Julianne sat down at my table and I gazed at her in wonderment. I had never seen anyone put my best friend in his place so skillfully.

  I tried not to blush when she said I had passion. She laughed. She had a dark freckle on her bottom lip. I wanted to kiss it.

  Five doubles later she was asleep at the bar. I carried her to a cab and took her home to my bedsit in Islington. She slept on the futon and I took the sofa. In the morning she kissed me and thanked me for being such a gentleman. Then she kissed me again. I remember the look in her eyes. It wasn’t lust. It didn’t say, “Let’s have some fun and see what happens.” Her eyes were telling me, “I’m going to be your wife and have your babies.”

  We were always an odd couple. I was the quiet, practical one, who hated noisy parties, pub crawls and going home for weekends. While she was the only child of a painter father and interior designer mother, who dressed like sixties flower children and only saw the best in people, Julianne didn’t go to parties—they came to her.

  We married three years later. By then I was house-trained—having learned to put my dirty washing in the basket, to leave the toilet seat down and not to drink too much at dinner parties. Julianne didn’t so much knock off my rough edges as fashion me out of clay.

  That was sixteen years ago. Seems like yesterday.

  Julianne pushes a newspaper toward me. There’s a photograph of Catherine and the headline reads: TORTURED GIRL IS MP’S NIECE.

  Junior Home Office minister Samuel McBride has been devastated by the brutal murder of his 27-year-old niece.

  The Labour MP for Brighton-le-Sands was clearly upset yesterday when the Speaker of the House expressed the chamber’s sincerest condolences at his loss.

  Catherine McBride’s naked body was found six days ago beside the Grand Union Canal in Kensal Green, West London. She had been stabbed repeatedly.

  “At this moment we are concentrating on retracing Catherine’s final movements and finding anyone who may have seen her in the days prior to her death,” said Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, who is leading the investigation.

  “We know she took a train from Liverpool to London on Wednesday, 13 November. We believe she was coming to London for a job interview.”

  Catherine, whose parents are divorced, worked as a community nurse in Liverpool and had been estranged from her family for a number of years.

  “She had a difficult childhood and seemed to lose her way,” explained a family friend. “Recently attempts had been made for a family reconciliation.”

>   Julianne pours half a cup of coffee.

  “It’s quite strange, don’t you think, that Catherine should turn up after all these years?”

  “How do you mean strange?”

  “I don’t know.” She shivers slightly. “I mean, she caused us all those problems. You nearly lost your job. I remember how angry you were.”

  “She was hurting.”

  “She was spiteful.”

  She glances at the photograph of Catherine. It’s a shot of her graduation day as a nurse. She’s smiling fit to bust and clutching a diploma in her hand. “And now she’s back again. The police ask you to help identify her and then you get that strange letter from her . . .”

  “A coincidence is just a couple of things happening simultaneously.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Spoken like a true psychologist.”

  It has been three days since I handed Ruiz the letter and I saw the look on his face that was a mixture of self-satisfaction and suspicion. He had picked up the single page and envelope by the corners and slipped each into a plastic ziplock bag.

  I haven’t said anything to Julianne but I think the police are watching me. An unmarked police car was parked outside the office yesterday. I saw two detectives talking to the receptionist at the front desk. At lunchtime I went Christmas shopping in Tottenham Court Road and they were there again.

  A part of me felt like walking up to them and introducing myself. I wanted them to know I had found them out. Then I contemplated whether that wasn’t their whole idea. They wanted me to see them.

  I can’t be bothered with cat-and-mouse games. It is inconceivable that I could be a suspect. Why are they wasting their time and resources on me? Yet as skeptical as I am, I feel the same imperative to explore Catherine’s death. I want to empty drawers, peer under sofas and turn things upside down until I find the answers.

  Bobby Moran intercepts me as I cross the lobby. He looks even more disheveled than normal, with mud on his overcoat and papers bulging from his pockets. I wonder if he’s been waiting for sleep or something bad to happen.

  Blinking rapidly behind his glasses, he mumbles an apology.