Suspect

by Michael Robotham

  Did he risk using the towpath? The homeless sometimes sleep under the bridges or couples use them for romantic rendezvous.

  The shadow of a narrow boat moves past me. The rumble of the motor is so low that the sound barely reaches me. The only light on the vessel is near the wheel. It casts a red glow on the face of the helmsman. I wonder. Traces of machine oil and diesel were found on Catherine’s buttocks and hair.

  I peer around the tree. The park bench is empty. Damn! Where has he gone? There is a figure on the far side of the church, moving along the railings. I can’t be sure it’s him.

  My mind sets off at a run, but my legs are left behind. I finish up doing a perfect limp fall. Nothing is broken. Only my pride hurts.

  I stumble onward and reach the corner of the church where the iron railings take a ninety-degree turn. The figure is staying on the path but moving much more quickly. I doubt if I can keep up with him.

  What is he doing? Has he seen me? Jogging slowly, I carry on, losing sight of him occasionally. Doubt gnaws at my resolve. What if he’s stopped up ahead? Perhaps he’s waiting for me. The six lanes of the Westway curve above me, supported by enormous concrete pillars. The glow of headlights is too high to help me.

  Ahead I hear a splash and a muffled cry. Someone is in the canal. Arms are thrashing at the water. I start running. There is the faint outline of a figure beneath the bridge. The sides of the canal are higher there. The stone walls are black and slick.

  I try to shrug off my overcoat. My right arm gets caught in the sleeve and I swing it around until it comes loose. “This way! Over here!” I call.

  He doesn’t hear me. He can’t swim.

  I kick off my shoes and leap. The cold slaps me so hard I swallow a mouthful of water. I cough it out through my mouth and nose. Three strokes. I’m with him. I slide my arm around him from behind and pull him backward, keeping his head above the surface. I talk to him gently, telling him to relax. We’ll find a place to get out. Wet clothes weigh him down.

  I swim us away from the bridge. “You can touch the bottom here. Just hold on to the side.” I scramble up the stone wall and pull him up after me.

  It isn’t Bobby. Some poor tramp, smelling of beer and vomit, lies at my feet, coughing and spluttering. I check his head, neck and limbs for any sign of trauma. His face is smeared with snot and tears.

  “What happened?”

  “Some sick fuck threw me in the canal! One minute I’m sleepin’ and the next I’m flying.” He’s resting on his knees, doubled over and swaying back and forth like an underwater plant. “I tell yer it ain’t safe no more. It’s like a fuckin’ jungle . . . Did he take me blanket? If he took me blanket you can throw me back in.”

  His blanket is still under the bridge, piled on a makeshift bed of flattened cardboard boxes.

  “What about me teeth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He curses and scoops up his things, jealously clutching them to his chest. I suggest calling an ambulance and then the police, but he wants none of it. My whole body has started to tremble and I feel like I’m inhaling slivers of ice.

  Retrieving my overcoat and shoes, I give him a soggy twenty-pound note and tell him to find somewhere to dry out. He’ll probably buy a bottle and be warm on the inside. My feet squelch in my shoes as I climb the stairs onto the bridge. The Grand Union Hotel is on the corner.

  Almost as an afterthought, I lean over the side of the bridge and call out, “How often do you sleep here?”

  His voice echoes from beneath the stone arch. “Only when the Ritz is full.”

  “Have you ever seen a narrow boat moored under the bridge?”

  “Nah. They moor farther along.”

  “What about a few weeks ago?”

  “I try not to remember things. I mind me own business.”

  He has nothing to add. I have no authority to press him. Elisa lives close by. I contemplate knocking on her door but I’ve brought enough trouble to her doorstep already.

  After twenty minutes I manage to hail a cab. The driver doesn’t want to take me because I’ll ruin the seats. I offer him an extra twenty quid. It’s only water. I’m sure he’s had worse.

  Jock isn’t home. I am so tired I can barely get my shoes off before collapsing into the spare bed. In the early hours I hear his key in the lock. A woman laughs drunkenly and kicks off her shoes. She comments on all the gadgets.

  “Just wait till you see what I keep in the bedroom,” says Jock, triggering more giggles.

  I wonder if he has any earplugs.

  It is still dark as I pack a sports bag and leave a note taped to the microwave. Outside, a street-sweeping machine is polishing the streets. There isn’t a hamburger wrapper in sight.

  On the ride toward the city I keep looking through the rear window. I change cabs twice and visit two cash machines before catching a bus along Euston Road.

  I feel as though I’m slowly coming out of an anesthetic. Over the past few days I have been letting details slip. Even worse, I have stopped trusting my instincts.

  I am not going to tell Ruiz about Elisa. She shouldn’t have to face a grilling in the witness box. I want to spare her that ordeal, if possible. And when this is all over—if nobody knows about her—I might still have a career that can be resurrected.

  Bobby Moran had something to do with Catherine McBride’s death. I’m convinced of it. If the police won’t put him under the microscope then it’s up to me. People normally need a motive to kill, but not to stay free. I will not let them send me to prison. I will not be separated from my family.

  At Euston Station I do a quick inventory. Apart from a change of clothes, I have Bobby Moran’s notes, Catherine McBride’s CV, my mobile phone and a thousand pounds in cash. I forgot to bring a photograph of Charlie and Julianne. The one I keep at the office is from years ago. They were playing on one of those colorful adventure playgrounds, each putting their heads through a porthole. Charlie’s hair was much shorter and her face still had the roundness of a lollipop. Julianne looked like her teenage sister.

  I pay for the train ticket in cash. With fifteen minutes to spare, I have time to buy a toothbrush, toothpaste, a recharger for my mobile phone and one of those traveling towels that looks like a car chamois.

  “Do you sell umbrellas?” I ask hopefully. The shopkeeper looks at me as though I’ve asked for a shotgun.

  Nursing a takeout coffee, I board the train and find a double seat facing forward. I keep my bag beside me, covered by my overcoat.

  The empty platform slides past the window and the northern suburbs of London disappear the same way. The train leans on floating axles as it corners at high speed.

  We tear past tiny stations with empty platforms where trains no longer seem to stop. One or two vehicles are parked in the long-term car parks that look so far beyond the pale that I half expect to see a hose running from an exhaust pipe and a body slumped over a steering wheel.

  My head is full of questions. Catherine applied to be my secretary. She phoned Meena twice, and then took a train down to London, arriving a day early.

  Why did she phone the office that evening? Who answered the call? Did she have second thoughts about surprising me? Did she want to cancel? Perhaps she’d been stood up and just wanted to go out for a drink. Maybe she wanted to apologize for causing me so much trouble.

  All of this is supposition. At the same time, it fits the framework of detail. It can be built upon. All the pieces can be made to fit a story, except for one—Bobby.

  His coat smelled of chloroform. Bobby had machine oil on his shirt cuffs. Catherine’s postmortem mentioned machine oil. “It’s all about the oil,” Bobby told me. Did he know she had twenty-one stab wounds? Did he lead me to the place where she disappeared?

  Perhaps he’s using me to construct an insanity defense. By playing “mad” he might avoid a life sentence. Instead they’ll send him to a prison hospital like Broadmoor. Then he can astound some prison psychiatrist with his responsiven
ess to treatment. He could be out within five years.

  I’m sounding more and more like him—fashioning conspiracies out of coincidences. Whatever lies at the heart of this, I must not underestimate Bobby. He has played games with me. I don’t know why.

  My search has to start somewhere. Liverpool will do for now. I take out Bobby Moran’s file and begin reading. Opening my new notebook, I make bullet points—the name of a primary school, the number of his father’s bus, a club his parents used to visit . . .

  These could be more of Bobby’s lies. Something tells me they’re not. I think he changed certain names and places, but not all of them. The events and emotions he described were true. I have to find the strands of truth and follow them back to the center of the web.

  7

  The clock at Lime Street Station glows white with solid black hands pointing to eleven o’clock. I walk quickly across the concourse, past the coffee stand and closed public toilet. A gaggle of teenage girls, speaking at 110 decibels, communicate through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  It must be five degrees colder than in London, with a wind straight off the Irish Sea. I half expect to see icebergs on the horizon. St. George’s Hall is across the way. Banners snap in the wind advertising the latest Beatles retrospective.

  I walk past the large hotels on Lime Street and search the side streets for something smaller. Not far from the university I find the Albion Hotel. It has a worn carpet in the entrance hall and a family of Iraqis camped on the first-floor landing. Young children look at me shyly, hiding behind their mother’s skirts. The men are nowhere to be seen.

  My room is on the second floor. It is just large enough for a double bed and a wardrobe held shut with a wire hanger. The hand basin has a rust stain in the shape of a teardrop beneath the tap. The curtains will only half close and the windowsill is dotted with cigarette burns.

  There have been very few hotel rooms in my life. I am grateful for that. For some reason loneliness and regret seem to be part of their decor.

  I press the memory button on my mobile and hear the singsong tones of the number being automatically dialed. Julianne’s voice is on the answering machine. I know she’s listening. I can picture her. I make a feeble attempt to apologize and ask her to pick up the phone. I tell her it’s important.

  I wait . . . and wait . . .

  She picks up. My heart skips.

  “What is so important?” Her tone is harsh.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “I’m not ready to talk.”

  “You’re not giving me a chance to explain.”

  “I gave you a chance two nights ago, Joe. I asked you why you slept with a whore and you told me that you found it easier to talk to her than to me . . .” Her voice is breaking. “I guess that makes me a pretty lousy wife.”

  “You have everything planned. Your life runs like clockwork—the house, work, Charlie, school; you never miss a beat. I’m the only thing that doesn’t work . . . not properly . . . not anymore.”

  “And that’s my fault?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  “Well, pardon me for trying so hard. I thought I was making us a lovely home. I thought we were happy. It’s fine for you, Joe, you have your career and your patients who think you walk on water. This is all I had—us. I gave up everything for this and I loved it. I loved you. Now you’ve gone and poisoned the well.”

  “But don’t you see—what I’ve got is going to destroy all that . . .”

  “No, don’t you dare blame a disease. You’ve managed to do this all by yourself.”

  “It was only one night,” I say plaintively.

  “No! It was someone else! You kissed her the way you kiss me. You fucked her! How could you?”

  Even when sobbing and angry she manages to remain piercingly articulate. I am selfish, immature, deceitful and cruel. I try to pick out which of these adjectives doesn’t apply to me, and fail. “I made a mistake,” I say weakly. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not enough, Joe. You broke my heart. Do you know how long I have to wait before I can get an AIDS test? Three months!”

  “Elisa is clear.”

  “And how do you know? Did you ask her before you decided not to use a condom? I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Wait! Please! How’s Charlie?”

  “Fine.”

  “What have you told her?”

  “That you’re a two-timing shit and a weak, pathetic, self-pitying, self-centered creep.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, but I felt like it.”

  “I’ll be out of town for a few days. The police might ask you questions about where I am. That’s why it’s best if I don’t tell you.”

  She doesn’t reply.

  “You can get me on my mobile. Call me, please. Give Charlie an extra hug from me. I’ll go now. I love you.”

  I hang up quickly, afraid to hear her silence.

  Locking the door on my way out, I push the heavy key deep into my trouser pocket. Twice on my way down the stairs I feel for it. Instead I find Bobby’s whale. I trace its shape with my fingers.

  Outside an icy wind pushes me along Hanover Street toward the Albert Docks. Liverpool reminds me of an old woman’s handbag full of bric-a-brac, odds and ends and half-finished packets of hard candies. Edwardian pubs squat beside mountainous cathedrals and art-deco office blocks that can’t decide which continent they should be on. Some of the more modern buildings have dated so quickly that they look like derelict bingo halls only fit for the bulldozer.

  The Cotton Exchange in Old Hall Street is a grand reminder of when Liverpool was the center of the international cotton trade, feeding the Lancashire spinning industry. When the exchange building opened in 1906 it had telephones, electric lifts, synchronized electric clocks and a direct cable to the New York futures market. Now it houses, among other things, thirty million records of births, deaths and marriages in Lancashire.

  A strange mixture of people queue at the indexes—a class of schoolchildren on an excursion; American tourists on the trail of distant relations; matronly women in tweed skirts; probate researchers and fortune hunters.

  I have a goal. It seems fairly realistic. I queue at the color-coded volumes where I hope to find the registration of Bobby’s birth. With this I can get a birth certificate, which will in turn give me the names of his mother and father, and their place of residence and occupations.

  The volumes are stored on metal racks, listed by month and year. The 1970s and 1980s are arranged in quarters for each year, with surnames in alphabetical order. If Bobby has told the truth about his age, I might only have four volumes to search.

  The year should be 1980. I can find no entry for a Bobby Moran or Robert Moran. I start working through the years on either side, going as far back as 1974 and forward to 1984. Growing frustrated I look at my notes. I wonder if Bobby could have changed the spelling of his name or altered it entirely by deed poll. If so, I’m in trouble.

  At the front information desk I ask to borrow a phone book. I can’t tell if I’m charming people with my smile or frightening them. The Parkinson’s mask is unpredictable.

  Bobby lied about where he went to school, but perhaps he didn’t lie about the name. There are two St. Mary’s in Liverpool—only one of them is a junior school. I make a note of the number and find a quiet corner in the foyer to make the call. The secretary has a Scouse accent and sounds like a character in a Ken Loach film.

  “We’re closed for Christmas,” she says. “I shouldn’t even be here. I was just tidying up the office.”

  I make up a story about a sick friend who wants to track down his old mates. I’m looking for yearbooks or class photographs from the mid-eighties. She thinks the library has a cupboard full of that sort of thing. I should call back in the New Year.

  “It can’t wait that long. My friend is very sick. It’s Christmas.”

  “I might be able to check,” she says sympathetically. “What yea
r are you looking for?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.”

  “How old is your friend.”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “What is his name?”

  “I think his name might have been different back then. That’s why I need to see the photographs. I’ll be able to recognize him.”

  She is suddenly less sure of me. Her suspicion increases when I suggest coming to the school. She wants to ask the headmistress. Better still, I should put my request in writing and send it by post.

  “I don’t have time. My friend . . .”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Wait! Please! Can you just look up a name for me? It’s Bobby Moran. He might have worn glasses. He would have started in about 1985.”

  She hesitates. After a long pause she suggests that I call her back in twenty minutes.

  I go in search of fresh air. Outside, at the entrance to an alley, a man stands beside a blackened barrow. Every so often he yells, “Roooooost chestnooooots,” making it sound as plaintive as a gull’s cry. He hands me a brown paper bag and I sit on the steps, peeling the sooty skin from the warm chestnuts.

  One of my fondest memories of Liverpool is the food. The fish and chips and Friday night curries. The jam roly-poly, bread and butter pudding, treacle sponge, bangers and mash . . . I also loved the odd assortment of people—Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Irish, African and Chinese—good workers, fiercely proud and not afraid to wear their hearts and wipe their noses on the same sleeve.

  The school secretary is less circumspect this time. Her curiosity has been sparked. My search has become hers.

  “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t find any Bobby Moran. Are you sure that you don’t mean Bobby Morgan? He was here from 1985 to 1988. He left in third grade.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “I’m not sure.” Her voice is uncertain. “I wasn’t here then. A family tragedy?” There is someone she can ask, she says. Another teacher. She takes the name of my hotel and promises to leave a message.