Suspect

by Michael Robotham

“Traffic.”

  She sizes me up in the doorway, as if not quite sure whether to let me inside. Then she turns and I follow her down the hall, watching her hips slide beneath her robe.

  Elisa lives in a converted printing factory in Ladbroke Grove, not far from the Grand Union Canal. Unpainted beams and timber joists crisscross each other in a sort of bonsai version of a Tudor cottage.

  The place is full of old rugs and antique furniture that she had sent down from Yorkshire when her mother died. Her pride and joy is an Elizabethan love seat with elaborately carved arms and legs. A dozen china dolls, with delicately painted faces, sit demurely on the seat as if waiting for someone to ask them to dance.

  She pours me a drink and settles onto the sofa, patting a spot beside her. She notices me pause and pulls a face.

  “I thought something was wrong. Usually I get a kiss on the cheek.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She laughs and crosses her legs. I feel something shred inside me.

  “Christ, you look tense. What you need is a massage.”

  She pulls me down and slides behind me, driving her fingers into the knotted muscles between my shoulder blades. Her legs are stretched out around me and I can feel the soft crinkle of her public hair against the small of my back.

  “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I wanted to apologize. It was my fault. I started something that I shouldn’t have started.”

  “OK.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “You were a good fuck.”

  “I don’t want you to see it like that.”

  “What was it then?”

  I contemplate this for a moment. “We had a brief encounter.”

  She laughs. “It wasn’t that fucking romantic.”

  My toes curl in embarrassment.

  “So what happened?” she asks.

  “I don’t think it was fair on you.”

  “Or your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me why you were so upset that night.”

  I shrug. “I was just thinking about life and things.”

  “Life?”

  “And death.”

  “Jesus, not another one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A married guy who reaches his forties and suddenly starts pondering what it all means? I used to get them all the time. Talkers! I should have charged them double. I’d be a rich woman.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Well what is it?”

  “What if I told you I had an incurable disease?”

  She stops massaging my neck and turns me to face her. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Suddenly I change my mind. “No. I’m being stupid.”

  Elisa is annoyed now. She thinks she’s being manipulated. “You know what your problem is?”

  “What’s that?”

  “All your life you’ve been a protected species. Somebody has always looked after you. First it was your mother, then boarding school, then university and then you got married.”

  “And your point is?”

  “It’s been too easy. Nothing bad has ever happened to you. Bad stuff happens to other people and you pick up the pieces, but you’ve never crumbled like the rest of us. Do you remember the second time we ever met?”

  Now I’m struggling. I think it was in Holloway Prison. Elisa was twenty-three and had graduated to working for an up-market escort agency. One night she was lured to a hotel in Knightsbridge and raped by six teenage boys celebrating an eighteenth birthday.

  After the first rape she stopped fighting. Instead, she concentrated on reaching her coat, which lay beneath her on the bed. Her fingers closed around a small knife in the pocket. She stabbed one boy in the buttocks and another in his thigh. The blade was only two inches long so none of the wounds were deep.

  Elisa phoned the police from the hotel lobby. Then she went through the motions of making a complaint. The boys each had a lawyer present as they were interviewed. Their stories were identical.

  The police charged Elisa with malicious wounding while the youths were given a stern talking to by the station sergeant. Six young men—with money, privilege and a walk-up start in life—had raped her with absolute impunity.

  While on remand in Holloway Prison she asked for me by name. She sat on a plastic chair with her head cocked to one side and her hair falling over one eye. Her chipped tooth had been fixed.

  “Do you think that we determine how things turn out in our lives?” she had asked me.

  “Up to a point.”

  “And when does that point end?”

  “When something happens that we have no control over: a drunk driver runs a stop sign, or the lotto balls drop in the right order, or rogue cancer cells begin dividing inside us.”

  “So we only have a say over the little things?”

  “If we’re lucky. You take the Greek playwright Aeschylus. He died when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it. I don’t think he saw that coming.”

  She laughed. A month later she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in jail. She worked in the prison laundry. Whenever she became angry or bitter about what had happened, she opened a dryer door, put her head inside and screamed into the big warm silver drum letting the sound explode into her head.

  Is that what Elisa wants me to remember—my own pithy homily on why shit happens? She slips off the sofa and pads across the room, looking for her cigarettes.

  “So you came here to tell me that we’re not going to fuck anymore.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you want to tell me before or after we go to bed?”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I know you are. I’m sorry.”

  She lets the cigarette hang from her lips as she reties the sash of her robe. For a brief moment I glimpse a small taut nipple. I can’t tell if she’s angry, or disappointed. Maybe she doesn’t care.

  “Will you read my Home Office submission when I’m finished?” she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “And if I need you to give another talk?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  She kisses my cheek as I leave. I don’t want to go. I like this house with its faded rugs, porcelain dolls, tiny fireplace and four-poster bed. Yet already I seem to be disappearing.

  My home is in darkness, except for a light downstairs leaking through the curtains of the sitting room. Inside the air is warm. The fire has been burning in the front room. I can smell the smokeless coal.

  The last of the red embers are glowing in the grate. As I reach for the lamp switch my left hand trembles. I see the silhouette of a head and shoulders in the armchair by the window. Forearms are braced along the wide arms of the chair. Black shoes are flat on the polished wooden floor.

  “We need to talk.” Ruiz doesn’t bother to stand.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Your wife said I could wait.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You can stop pissing me about.” He leans forward into the light. His face looks ashen and his voice is tired. “You lied to me. You said the letter arrived last Friday.”

  “It did.”

  “We analyzed the postmark. It was canceled at a Liverpool post office on the ninth of November. I know people complain about British Post but a first-class stamp guarantees delivery the next working day, not the next working month.”

  “There must be some mistake.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I thought it might have slipped down the side of the sofa or been lost under a pile of old newspapers for a few weeks.”

  He’s being sarcastic. “Julianne collected the mail. She put the letter on my desk. It arrived on Friday. It must have been held up or . . . or . . .”

  “Or maybe you’re lying to me.”

  “No.”

  “First you forget to tell me things and
now you want to believe one of your former patients mailed a letter to you when she’d been dead for three weeks. Were you having an affair with Catherine McBride?”

  “No.”

  “How did she get your address?”

  “I don’t know. She could have looked it up. I’m in the phone book.”

  He runs his fingers through his hair and I see a strip of whiter skin on his ring finger where his wedding band had once been.

  “I asked the pathologist about chloroform. They didn’t look the first time. When someone has been stabbed that many times you don’t bother looking for much else.” He turns to stare at the fireplace. “How did you know?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “That’s not the answer I want to hear.”

  “It was a long shot . . . a supposition.”

  “Suppose you tell me why?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  He’s angry now. His features are chiseled instead of worn down.

  “I’m an old-fashioned detective, Professor O’Loughlin. I went to a local comprehensive and straight into the force. I didn’t go to university and I don’t read many books. You take computers. I know bugger all about them but I appreciate how useful they can be. The same is true of psychologists.”

  His voice grows quiet. “Whenever I’m involved in an investigation people are always telling me that I can’t do things. They tell me I can’t spend too much money, that I can’t tap particular phones or search particular houses. There are thousands of things I cannot do—all of which pisses me off.

  “I’ve warned you twice already. You deny me information that is relevant to my murder inquiry and I’ll bring all of this,” he motions to the room, the house, my life, “crashing down around your ears.”

  I can’t think of a sympathetic response to disarm him. What can I tell him? I have a patient called Bobby Moran who may, or may not, be a borderline schizophrenic. He kicked a woman unconscious because she looked like his mother—a woman he wants dead. He makes lists. He listens to windmills. His clothes smell of chloroform. He carries around a piece of paper with the number 21 written on it hundreds of times—the same number of stab wounds that Catherine McBride inflicted on herself . . .

  What if I say all this—he’ll probably laugh at me. There is nothing concrete linking Bobby to Catherine, yet I’ll be responsible for a dozen detectives hammering on Bobby’s door, searching through his past, terrifying his financée and her son.

  Bobby will know I’ve sent them. He won’t trust me again. He won’t trust anyone like me. His suspicions will be vindicated. He reached out for help and I betrayed him.

  I know he’s dangerous. I know his fantasies are taking him somewhere terrible. But unless he keeps coming back to me I might never be able to stop him.

  “Where were you on November thirteenth?” Ruiz asks.

  At first I don’t hear the question. I’m still distracted by the letter and my concern for Bobby. The hesitation robs me of assuredness. The thirteenth? It was the day Jock confirmed that I had Parkinson’s disease. And it was the night I slept with a woman other than my wife.

  “Detective Inspector you’ll have to excuse me but I’m not very good at remembering dates.”

  “It was a Wednesday night.”

  “My wife teaches a Spanish class. Normally, I’m home looking after Charlie.”

  “So you were at home?”

  “I assume so.”

  Ruiz flips open his marbled notebook and writes something down. “Don’t look so worried, Professor. Actions speak louder than words.”

  Bitterness and rancor hang in the air like the smell of smokeless coal. Ruiz is putting on his coat and walking toward the front door. My left arm is trembling. It’s now or never. Make a decision.

  “When you searched Catherine’s flat—did she have a red dress?”

  Ruiz reacts as though struck. He spins and takes a step toward me. “How did you know that?”

  “Is the dress missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think she might have been wearing it when she disappeared?”

  He doesn’t answer. He is framed in the open doorway. His eyes are bloodshot, but his stare fixed. Fingers open and close into fists. He wants to rip me apart.

  “Come to my office tomorrow afternoon,” I tell him. “There’s a file. You can’t take it away. I don’t even know if it will help but I have to show it to someone.”

  “I could have you arrested right now,” he snarls.

  “I know. But you won’t.”

  16

  The blue manila folder is on the desk in front of me. It has a ribbon that twists around a flat circular wheel to seal it shut. I keep undoing it and doing it up again.

  Meena glances nervously behind her as she enters the office. She walks all the way across to my desk before whispering, “There is a very scary-looking man in the waiting room. He’s asking for you.”

  “That’s OK, Meena. He’s a detective.”

  Her eyes widen in surprise. “Oh! He didn’t say. He just sort of . . .”

  “Growled.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can show him in.” I motion her closer. “In about five minutes I want you to buzz me and remind me of an important meeting outside the office.”

  “What meeting?”

  “Just an important meeting.”

  She frowns at me and nods.

  With a face like an anvil, Ruiz ignores my outstretched hand and leaves it hanging in the air as though I’m directing traffic. He sits down and leans back in the chair, spreading his legs and letting his coat flare out.

  “So this is where you work, Prof? Very nice.” He glances around the room in what appears to be a cursory way, but I know he’s taking in the details. “How much does it cost to rent an office like this?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just one of the partners.”

  Ruiz scratches his chin and then fumbles in his coat pocket for a stick of chewing gum. He unwraps it slowly.

  “What exactly does a psychologist do?”

  “We help people who are damaged by events in their lives. People with personality disorders, or sexual problems, or phobias.”

  “Do you know what I think? A man gets attacked and he’s lying bleeding on the road. Two psychologists pass by and one says to the other, ‘Let’s go and find the person who did this—he needs help.’ ”

  His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  “I help more victims than I do perpetrators.”

  Ruiz shrugs and tosses the gum wrapper into the wastebasket.

  “Start talking. How did you know about the red dress?”

  I glance down at the file and undo the ribbon. “In a few minutes from now, I’m going to get a phone call. I will have to leave the office, but you are quite welcome to stay. I think you’ll find my chair is more comfortable than yours.” I open Bobby’s file.

  “When you’re finished, if you wish to talk about anything, I’ll be across the road having a drink. I can’t talk about any specific patient or case.” I tap Bobby’s folder to stress the point. “I can only talk in general terms about personality disorders and how psychotics and psychopaths function. It will be much easier if you remember this.”

  Ruiz presses the palms of his hands together as if in prayer and taps his forefingers against his lips. “I don’t like playing games.”

  “This isn’t a game. We do it this way, or I can’t help you.”

  The phone rings. Meena starts her spiel but doesn’t finish. I’m already on my way.

  The sun is shining and the sky is blue. It feels more like May than mid-December. London does this occasionally—puts on a glorious day to remind people that it isn’t such a bad place to live.

  This is why the English are among the world’s greatest optimists. We get one magnificent hot dry week and the memory will give us succor for an entire summer. It happens every time. Come spring we buy shorts, T-shirts, bikinis and sarongs in glorious expecta
tion of a season that never arrives.

  Ruiz finds me standing at the bar nursing a mineral water.

  “It’s your round,” he says. “I’ll have a pint of bitter.”

  The place is busy with a lunchtime crowd. Ruiz wanders over to four men sitting in the corner by the front window. They look like office boys but are wearing well-cut suits and silk ties.

  Ruiz flashes his police badge under the level of the table.

  “Sorry to trouble you, gents, but I need to commandeer this table for a surveillance operation on that bank over there.”

  He motions out the window and they all turn in unison to look.

  “Try to make it a little less obvious!”

  They quickly turn back.

  “We have reason to believe it is being targeted for an armed hold-up. You see that guy on the corner, wearing the orange vest?”

  “The street sweeper?” one of them asks.

  “Yeah. Well he’s one of my best. So is the shopgirl in that lingerie shop, next door to the bank. I need this table.”

  “Of course.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Is there anything else we can do?”

  I see a twinkle in Ruiz’s eye. “Well, I don’t normally do this—use civilians undercover—but I am short of manpower. You could split up and take a corner each. Try to blend in. Look for a group of men traveling four-up in a car.”

  “How do we contact you?”

  “You tell the street sweeper.”

  “Is there some sort of password?” one of them asks.

  Ruiz rolls his eyes. “It’s a police operation not a fucking Bond movie.”

  Once they’ve gone, he takes the chair nearest the window and sets his glass on a coaster. I sit opposite him and leave my glass untouched.

  “They would have given you the table anyway,” I say, unable to decide if he likes practical jokes or dislikes people.

  “Did this Bobby Moran kill Catherine McBride?” He wipes foam from his top lip with the back of his hand.

  The question has all the subtlety of a well-thrown brick.

  “I can’t talk about individual patients.”

  “Did he admit to killing her?”

  “I can’t talk about what he may or may not have told me.”

  Ruiz’s eyes disappear into a narrow maze of wrinkles and his body tenses. Just as suddenly he exhales and gives me what I suspect is a smile. He’s out of practice.