by Suspect
"I'm tired," I whisper.
"It's been a long day."
"That's not what I'm getting at. I've been thinking about making a few changes."
"Like what?"
"Just changes."
"Do you think that's wise?"
"We could go on a holiday. We could go to California. We've al�ways talked of doing that."
"What about your job ... and Charlie's schooling."
"She's young. She'll learn a lot more if we go traveling for six months than she will at school..."
Julianne turns around and props herself up on her elbow, so she can look at me. "What's brought this on?"
"Nothing."
"When this all started you said you didn't want things to change. You said the future could be anything we wanted it to be."
"I know."
"And then you stopped talking to me. You give me no idea of what you're going through and then you spring this!"
"I'm sorry. I'm just tired."
"No, it's more than that. Tell me."
"I have this rackety idea in my head that I should be doing more. You read about people whose lives are packed with incident and ad�venture and you think, Wow! I should do more. That's when I thought about going away."
"While there's still time?"
"Yes."
"So this /is/ about the Parkinson's?"
"No ... I can't explain ... Just forget it."
"I don't want to forget it. I want you to be happy. But we don't have any money?not with the mortgage and the plumbing. You said so yourself. Maybe in the summer we can go to Cornwall..."
"Yeah. You're right. Cornwall would be nice." As hard as I try to sound enthusiastic, I know I don't succeed. Julianne slips an arm around my waist and pulls herself closer. I feel her warm breath on my throat.
"With any luck I might be pregnant by then," she whispers. "We don't want to be too far away."
**18**
My head aches and my throat is scratchy. It could be a hangover. It might be the flu. According to the papers half the country has suc�cumbed to some exotic bug from Beijing or Bogota?one of those places that nobody ever leaves without carrying a virulent germ.
The good news is that I have had no detectable side effects from taking selegiline except for the insomnia, a pre-existing condition. The bad news is that the drug has had absolutely no effect on my symptoms.
I telephone Jock at seven.
"How do you know it isn't working?" he says, annoyed at being woken.
"I don't feel any different."
"That's the whole point. It doesn't make the symptoms go away?it stops them getting worse."
"OK."
"Just be patient and relax."
That's easy for him to say.
"Are you doing your exercises?" he asks.
"Yes," I lie.
"I know it's only Monday but do you fancy a game of tennis? I'll go easy on you."
"When?"
"I'll meet you at the club at six."
Julianne will see right through this, but at least I'll be out of the house. I'm owed some leeway after yesterday.
My first patient of the day is a young ballet dancer with the grace of a gazelle and the yellowing teeth and receding gums of a devoted bulimic. Then Margaret arrives still clutching her orange life buoy. She shows me a newspaper clipping about a bridge collapse in Israel. The look on her face says: I told you so!
I spend the next fifty minutes getting her to think about how many bridges there are in the world and how often they fall down.
By three o'clock I'm standing at the window, looking for Bobby among the pedestrians. I wonder if he's going to turn up. I jump when I hear his voice. He's standing in the doorway, rubbing his hands up and down his sides as if wiping something from them.
"It wasn't my fault," he says.
"What?"
"Whatever it is you think I've done."
"You kicked a woman unconscious."
"Yes. That's all. Nothing else." Light flares off the gold frames of his glasses.
"Hostility like that has to come from somewhere."
"What do you mean?"
"You're an intelligent young man. You get the idea."
It's time to confront Bobby to see how he reacts under pressure.
"How long have you been my patient? Six months. You disap�peared for half that time. You've been late for appointments, you've turned up unannounced and you've dragged me out of bed at four in the morning..."
He blinks rapidly. My tone of voice is so polite that he isn't sure whether I'm criticizing him or not.
"Even when you /are/ here, you change the subject and prevari�cate. What are you trying to hide? What are you so frightened of?"
I pull my chair closer. Our knees are almost touching. It's like looking into the eyes of a beaten dog that doesn't know enough to turn away. Some aspects of his functioning I see so clearly?particu�larly his past?but I still can't see his present. What has he become?
"Let me tell you what I think, Bobby. I think you are desperate for affection, yet unable to engage people. This started a long while ago. I see a boy who is bright and sensitive, who waits each evening to hear the sound of his father's bicycle being wheeled through the front gate. And when his father comes through the door in his con�ductor's uniform, the boy can't wait to hear his stories and help him in the workshop.
"His father is funny, kind, quick-witted and inventive. He has grand plans for weird and wonderful inventions that will change the world. He draws pictures of them on scraps of paper and builds pro�totypes in the garage. The boy watches him working and sometimes at night he curls up to sleep among the wood shavings, listening to the sound of the lathe.
"But his father disappears. The most important figure in his life?the only one he truly cares about?abandons him. His mother, sadly, doesn't recognize or excuse his grief. She regards him as being weak and full of dreams, just like his father. He is never good enough."
I keep a close eye on Bobby, looking for signs of protest or dis�sent. His eyes flit back and forth as though dreaming, but somehow he stays focused on me.
"This boy is particularly perceptive and intelligent. His senses are heightened and his emotions are intense. He begins to escape from his mother. He's not old enough or brave enough to run away from home. Instead he escapes into his mind. He creates a world that others never see or know exists. A world where he is popular and powerful: where he can punish and reward. A world where nobody laughs at him or belittles him, not even his mother. She falls at his feet?just like all the others. He is Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone all rolled into one. Redeemer. Revenger. Judge. Jury. Executioner. He can dispense his own brand of justice. He can machine gun the entire school rugby team or have the school bully nailed to a tree in the playground..."
Bobby's eyes glitter with connected memories and associated sounds?the light and dark that shade his past. The corners of his mouth are twitching.
"So what does he grow into, this boy? An insomniac. He suffers bouts of sleeplessness that jangle his nerves and have him seeing things out of the corner of his eye. He imagines conspiracies and people watching him. He lies awake and makes lists and secret codes for his lists.
"He wants to escape to his other world, but something is wrong. He can't go back there because someone has shown him something even better, more exciting, real!"
Bobby blinks and pinches the skin on the back of his hand.
"Have you ever heard the expression, 'One man's meat is an�other man's poison'?" I ask him.
He acknowledges the question almost without realizing it.
"It could be a description for human sexuality and how each of us has different interests and tastes. The boy grew up and as a young man he tasted something that excited and disturbed him in equal measure. It was a guilty secret. A forbidden pleasure. He worried that it made him a pervert?this sexual thrill from inflicting pain."
Bobby shakes his head; hi
s eyes magnified by each lens.
"But you needed a point of reference?an introduction. This is what you haven't told me, Bobby. Who was the special girlfriend who opened your eyes? What did it feel like when you hurt her?"
"You're sick!"
"And you're lying." Don't let him change the subject. "What was it like that first time? You wanted nothing to do with these games, but she goaded you. What did she say? Did she make fun of you? Did she laugh?"
"Don't talk to me. Shut up! SHUT UP!"
He clutches the cuffs of his coat in his fists and covers his ears. I know he's still listening. My words are leaking through and expand�ing in the cracks and crevices of his mind like water turned to ice.
"Someone planted the seed. Someone taught you to love the feeling of being in control ... of inflicting pain. At first you wanted to stop, but she wanted more. Then you noticed that you weren't holding back. You were enjoying it! You didn't want to stop."
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
Bobby rocks back and forth on the edge of the chair. His mouth has gone slack and he's no longer focused on me. I'm almost there. My fingers are in the cracks of his psyche. A single affirmation, no matter how small, will be enough for me to lever his defenses open. But I'm running out of story. I don't have all the pieces. I risk losing him if I overreach.
"Who was she, Bobby? Was her name Catherine McBride? I know that you knew her. Where did you meet? Was it in hospital? There's no shame in seeking help, Bobby. I know you've been evalu�ated before. Was Catherine a patient or a nurse? I think she was a pa�tient."
Bobby pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing the spot where his glasses perch. He reaches slowly into his trouser pocket and I sud�denly feel a twinge of doubt. His fingers are searching for something. He has eighty pounds and twenty years on me. The door is on the far side of the room. I won't reach it before he does.
His hand emerges. I'm staring at it, transfixed. He is holding a white handkerchief, which he unfolds and lays in his lap. Then he takes off his glasses and slowly cleans each lens, rubbing the cloth be�tween his thumb and forefinger. Maybe this slow-motion ritual is buying him time.
He raises the glasses to the light, checking for any smudges. Then he looks past them and stares directly at me. "Do you make up this crap as you go along, or did you spend all weekend coming up with it?"
The pressure is dispelled like air leaking from a punctured raft. I have overplayed my hand. I want to ask Bobby where I went wrong, but he's not going to tell me. A poker player doesn't explain why he calls a bluff. I must have been near the mark, but that's a lot like NASA saying its Mars Polar Lander achieved its target because it crashed and went missing on the right planet.
Bobby's faith in me has been shaken. He also knows that I'm frightened of him, which is not a good basis for a clinical relation�ship. What in God's name was I thinking? I've wound him up like a clockwork toy and now I have to let him loose.
**19**
The white Audi cruises along Elgin Avenue, in Maida Vale, slowing as it passes me. I continue limping along the pavement, my tennis racket under one arm and a bruise the size of a grapefruit on my right thigh. Ruiz is behind the wheel. He looks like a man who is willing to follow me all the way home at four miles an hour.
I stop and turn toward him. He leans over to open the front pas�senger door. "What happened to you?"
"A sporting injury."
"I didn't think tennis was that dangerous."
"You haven't played against my mate."
I get in beside him. The car smells of stale tobacco and apple-scented air freshener. Ruiz does a U-turn and heads west.
"Where are we going?"
"The scene of the crime."
I don't ask why. Everything about his demeanor says I don't have a choice. The temperature has fallen to just above freezing and a mist blurs the streetlights. Colored lights are blinking in windows and plastic wreaths of holly decorate front doors.
We drive along Harrow Road and turn into Scrubs Lane. After less than half a mile the lane rises and falls over Mitre Bridge where it crosses the Grand Union Canal and the Paddington rail lines. Ruiz pulls over and the engine dies. He gets out of the car and waits for me to do the same. The doors centrally lock as he walks away, ex�pecting me to follow. My thigh is still stiff from Jock's well-aimed smash. I rub it gingerly and limp along the road toward the bridge.
Ruiz has stopped at a wire cyclone fence. Grabbing hold of a metal post he swings himself upward onto a stone wall flanking the bridge. Using the same post, he lets himself down the other side. He turns and waits for me.
The towpath is deserted and the nearby buildings are dark and empty. It feels a lot later than it is?like the early hours of the morn�ing, when the world always seems much lonelier and beds much warmer.
Ruiz is walking ahead of me with his hands buried in his coat pockets and his head down. He seems full of pent-up rage. After about five hundred yards the railway tracks appear to our right. Maintenance sheds are silhouetted against the residual light. Rolling stock sits idle in a freight yard.
With barely any warning a train roars past. The sound bounces off the tin sheds and the brick walls of the canal, until it seems as though we're standing in a tunnel.
Ruiz has stopped suddenly on the path. I almost run into him.
"Recognize anything?"
I know exactly where we are. Instead of feeling horror or sadness, my only emotion is anger. It's late; I'm cold; and more than anything else I'm tired of Ruiz's snide glances and raised eyebrows. If he has something to say, get it over with and let me go home.
Ruiz raises his arm and for a moment I think he's going to strike me.
"Look over there. Follow the edge of the building down."
I trace the path of his outstretched hand and see the wall. A darker strip in the foreground must be the ditch where they found her body. Looking over his left shoulder, I see the silhouettes of the trees and the headstones of Kensal Green Cemetery.
"Why am I here?" I ask, feeling empty inside.
"Use you're imagination?you're good at that."
He's angry and for some reason I'm to blame. I don't often meet someone with his intensity?apart from obsessive-compulsives. I used to know guys like him at school; kids who were so ferociously determined to prove they were tough that they never stopped fight�ing. They had too much to prove and not enough time to prove it.
"Why am I here?" I ask again.
"Because I have some questions for you." He doesn't look at me. "And I want to tell you some things about Bobby Moran..."
"I can't talk about my patients."
"You just have to listen." He rocks from foot to foot. "Take my word for it?you'll find it fascinating." He walks two paces toward the canal and spits into the water. "Bobby Moran has no girlfriend or fiancee called Arky. He lives in a boarding house in north London, with a bunch of asylum seekers waiting for council housing. He's un�employed and hasn't worked for nearly two years. There is no such company as Nevaspring?not a registered one at any rate.
"His father was never in the air force?as a mechanic, a pilot, or anything else. Bobby grew up in Liverpool, not London. Since leav�ing school he's had part-time jobs and for a while worked as a vol�unteer at a sheltered workshop in Lancashire. We found no history of psychiatric illness or hospitalization."
Ruiz is pacing back and forth as he talks. His breath condenses in the air and trails after him like he's a steam engine. "A lot of peo�ple had nice things to say about Bobby. He is very neat and tidy ac�cording to his landlady. She does his washing and doesn't remember smelling chloroform on any of his clothes. His old bosses at the shel�ter called him a 'big softie.'
"That's what I find really strange, Professor. Nothing you said about him is true. I can understand you getting one or two details wrong. We all make mistakes. But it's as though we're talking about a completely different person."
My voice is hoarse. "It can't be him."
"T
hat's what I thought. So I checked. Big guy, six foot two, overweight, John Lennon glasses?that's our boy. Then I wondered why he'd tell all these lies to a shrink who was trying to help him. Doesn't make sense, does it?"
"He's hiding something."
"Maybe. But he didn't kill Catherine McBride."
"How can you be so sure?"
"A dozen people at an evening class can verify his whereabouts on the night she disappeared."
I don't have any strength left in my legs.
"Sometimes I'm pretty slow on the uptake, Prof. My old mum used to say that I was born a day late and never caught up. Truth is, I normally get there in the end. It just takes me a little longer than clever people." He says it with bitterness rather than triumph.
"You see, I asked myself why Bobby Moran would make up all these lies. And then I thought, what if he didn't? What if /you/ were telling the lies? You could be making this whole thing up to divert my attention."
"You can't be serious."
"How did you know that Catherine McBride cut her carotid ar�tery to hasten her death? It wasn't mentioned in the postmortem."
"I studied to be a doctor."
"What about the chloroform?"
"I told you."
"Yes, you did. I did some reading. Do you know that it takes a few drops of chloroform on a mask or a cloth to render a person un�conscious? You have to know what you're doing when you play around with that stuff. A few drops too many and the victim's breathing is shut off. They suffocate."
"The killer most likely had some medical knowledge."
"I came up with that too." Ruiz stamps his shoes on the bitumen, trying to stay warm. A stray cat, wandering along inside the wire fence, suddenly flattens itself at the sound of our voices. Both of us wait and watch, but the cat is in no hurry to move on.
"How did you know she was a nurse?" says Ruiz.
"She had the medallion."
"I think you recognized her straightaway. I think all the rest was a pretense."
"No."
His tone is colder. "You also knew her grandfather?Justice McBride."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you say so?"
"It didn't think it was important. It was years ago. Psychologists often give evidence in the family division. We do evaluations on chil�dren and parents. We make recommendations to the court."