Suspect (26 page)

“I wanted to ask you first.”

She laughs at how old-fashioned that sounds. I feel myself blush.

“Before you say anything, I want you to think very careful y,” I tel her. “I am in a very difficult position when I admit to spending the night with you. There are codes of conduct… ethics. You are a former patient.”

“But that was years ago.”

“It makes no difference. There are people who wil try to use it against me. They already see me as a maverick because of my work with prostitutes and the TV documentary. And they’re lining up to attack me over this… over you.”

Her eyes flash. “They don’t need to know. I’l go to the police and give a statement. I’l tel them you were with me. Nobody else has to find out.” I try to muster al the kindness I have left, but my words stil sting. “Think for a moment what wil happen if I get charged. You wil have to give evidence. The prosecution wil try everything they can to destroy my alibi. You are a former prostitute. You have convictions for malicious wounding. You have spent time in jail. You are also a former patient of mine. I met you when you were only fifteen. No matter how many times we tel them this was just one night, they’l think it was more…” I run out of steam, stabbing my fork into my half-finished bowl of pasta.

Elisa’s lighter flares. The flame catches in her eyes, which are already blazing. I have never seen her come so close to losing her poise. “I’l leave it up to you,” she says softly. “But I’m wil ing to give a statement. I’m not afraid.”

“Thank you.”

We sit in silence. After a while she reaches across the table and squeezes my hand again. “You never told me why you were so upset that night.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Is your wife
very
upset?”

“Yes.”

“She is lucky to have you. I hope she realizes that.”

6

As I open the office door I’m aware of a presence in the room. The chrome-faced clock above the filing cabinet shows half past three. Bobby Moran is standing in front of my bookcase.

He seems to have appeared out of thin air.

He turns suddenly. I don’t know who is more startled.

“I knocked. There was no answer.” He drops his head. “I have an appointment,” he says, reading my thoughts.

“Shouldn’t that be with your lawyer? I heard you were suing me for slander, breach of confidentiality and whatever else he can dredge up.” He looks embarrassed. “Mr. Barrett says I should do those things. He says I could get a lot of money.”

He squeezes past me and stands at my desk. He’s very close. I can smel fried dough and sugar. Damp hair is plastered to his forehead in a ragged fringe.

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you.” There is something threatening in his voice.

“I can’t help you, Bobby. You haven’t been honest with me.”

“Are you always honest?”

“I try to be.”

“How? By tel ing the police I kil ed that girl?”

He picks up a smooth glass paperweight from my desk and weighs it in his right hand, then his left. He holds it up to the light.

“Is this your crystal bal ?”

“Please, put it down.”

“Why? Scared I might bury it in your forehead?”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“After you.” He points to my chair. “Why did you become a psychologist? Don’t tel me. Let me guess… A repressive father and an overprotective mother. Or is there a dark family secret? A relative who started howling at the moon so they locked her away?”

I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how close he is to the truth. “I’m not here to talk about me.”

Bobby glances at the wal behind me. “How can you hang that diploma? It’s a joke! Until three days ago you thought I was someone completely different. Yet you were going to stand up in court and tel a judge whether I should be locked up or set free. What gives you the right to destroy someone’s life? You don’t know me.” Listening to him I sense that for once I am talking to the real Bobby Moran. He lobs the paperweight onto the desk where it rol s in slow motion and drops into my lap.

“Did you kil Catherine McBride?”

“No.”

“Did you know her?”

His eyes lock onto mine. “You’re not very good at this, are you? I expected more.”

“This is not a game.”

“No. It’s more important than that.”

We regard each other in silence.

“Do you know what a serial liar is, Bobby?” I ask eventual y. “It is someone who finds it easier to tel a lie rather than the truth, in any situation, regardless of whether it is important or not.”

“People like you are supposed to know when someone is lying.”

“That doesn’t alter what you are.”

“Al I did was change a few names and places— you got the rest of it wrong al by yourself.”

“What about Arky?”

“She left me six months ago.”

“You said you had a job.”

“I told you I was a writer.”

“You’re very good at tel ing stories.”

“Now you’re making fun of me. Do you know what’s wrong with people like you? You can’t resist putting your hands inside someone’s psyche and changing the way they view the world.

You play God with other people’s lives…”

“Who are these ‘people like me’? Who have you seen before?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bobby says dismissively. “You’re al the same. Psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, tarot card readers, witch doctors…”

“You were in hospital. Is that where you met Catherine McBride?”

“You must think I’m an idiot.”

Bobby almost loses his composure, but recovers himself quickly. He has almost no physiological response to lying. His pupil dilation, pore size, skin flush and breathing remain exactly the same. He’s like a poker player who has no “tel s.”

“Everything I’ve done in my life and everyone I have come into contact with is significant; the good, the bad and the ugly,” he says, with a note of triumph in his voice. “We are the sum of our parts or the part of our sums. You say this isn’t a game, but you’re wrong. It’s good versus evil. White versus black. Some people are pawns and some are kings.”

“Which are you?” I ask.

He thinks about this. “I was once a pawn but I reached the end of the board. I can be anything now.”

Bobby sighs and gets to his feet. The conversation has started to bore him. The session is only half an hour old but he’s had enough. It should never have started. Eddie Barrett is going to have a field day.

I fol ow Bobby into the outer office. A part of me wants him to stay. I want to shake the tree and see what fal s off the branches. I want the truth.

Bobby is waiting at the lift. The doors open.

“Good luck.”

He turns and looks at me curiously. “I don’t need luck.” The slight upturn of his mouth gives the il usion of a smile.

Back at my desk, I stare at the empty chair. An object on the floor catches my eye. It looks like a smal carved figurine— a chess piece. Picking it up, I discover it’s a smal wooden whale carved by hand. A key ring is attached with a smal eyelet screw on the whale’s back. It’s the sort of thing you see hanging from a child’s satchel or schoolbag.

Bobby must have dropped it. I can stil catch him. I can cal downstairs to the foyer and get the receptionist to have him wait. I look at the clock. Ten minutes past four. The meeting has started upstairs. I don’t want to be here.

Bobby’s sheer size makes him stand out. He’s a head tal er than anybody else and pedestrians seem to divide and part to let him through. Rain is fal ing. I bury my hands in my overcoat.

My fingers close around the smooth wooden whale.

Bobby is heading toward the underground station at Oxford Circus. If I stay close enough, hopeful y I won’t lose him in the labyrinthine walkways. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I guess I want answers instead of riddles. I want to know where he lives and who he lives with.

Suddenly, he disappears from view. I suppress the urge to run forward. I keep moving at the same pace and pass a liquor store. I catch a glimpse of Bobby at the counter. Two doors farther on I step inside a travel agency. A girl in a red skirt, white blouse and wishbone tie smiles at me.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m just looking.”

“To escape the winter?”

I’m holding a brochure for the Caribbean. “Yes, that’s right.”

Bobby passes the window. I hand her the brochure. “You can take it with you,” she suggests.

“Maybe next year.”

On the pavement, Bobby is thirty yards ahead of me. He has a distinctive shape. He has no hips and it looks as though his backside has been stolen. He keeps his trousers pul ed up high, with his belt tightly cinched.

Descending the stairs into the underground station, the crowd seems to swel . Bobby has a ticket ready. There is a queue at every ticket machine. Three underground lines cross at Oxford Circus. If I lose him now he can travel in any one of six different directions.

I push between people, ignoring their complaints. At the turnstile I place my hands on either side of it and lift my legs over the barrier. Now I’m guilty of fare evasion. The escalator descends slowly. A stale wind sweeps up from the tunnels, forced ahead of the moving engines.

On the northbound platform of the Bakerloo line, Bobby weaves through the waiting crowd until he reaches the far end. I fol ow him, needing to be close. At any moment I expect him to turn and catch sight of me. Four or five schoolboys, human petri dishes of acne and dandruff, push along the platform, wrestling each other and laughing. Everyone else stares straight ahead in silence.

A blast of wind and noise. The train appears. Doors open. I let the crowd carry me forward into the carriage. Bobby is in my peripheral vision. The doors close automatical y and the train jerks forward and gathers speed. Everything smel s of damp wool and stale sweat.

Bobby gets off the train at Warwick Avenue. It has grown dark. Black cabs swish past, the sound of their tires louder than their engines. The station is only a hundred yards from the Grand Union Canal and perhaps two miles from where Catherine’s body was found.

With fewer people around I have to drop farther back. Now he’s only a silhouette in front of me. I walk with my head down and col ar turned up. As I pass a cement mixer on the footpath, I stumble sideways and put my shoe into a puddle. My balance is deserting me.

We fol ow Blomfield Road alongside the canal until Bobby crosses a footbridge at the end of Formosa Street. Spotlights pick out an Anglican church. The fine mist looks like fal ing glitter around the beams of light. Bobby sits on a park bench and looks at the church for a long time. I lean against the trunk of a tree, my feet growing numb with the cold.

What is he doing here? Maybe he lives nearby. Whoever kil ed Catherine knew the canal wel : not just from a street map or a casual visit. He was comfortable here. It was his territory.

He knew where to leave her body so that she wouldn’t be found too quickly. He fitted in. Nobody recognized him as a stranger.

Bobby can’t have met Catherine in the hotel. If Ruiz has done his job he wil have shown photographs to the staff and patrons. Bobby isn’t the sort of person you forget easily.

Catherine left the pub alone. Whoever she was supposed to meet had failed to show. She was staying with friends in Shepherd’s Bush. It was too far to walk. What did she do? Look for a taxi. Or perhaps she started walking to Westbourne Park Station. From there it is only three stops to Shepherd’s Bush. The walk would have taken her over the canal.

A London Transport depot is across the road. Buses are coming in and out al the time. Whoever she met must have been waiting for her on the bridge. I should have asked Ruiz which part of the canal they dredged to find Catherine’s diary and mobile phone.

Catherine was five foot six and 134 pounds. Chloroform takes a few minutes to act, but someone of Bobby’s size and strength would have had few problems subduing her. She would have fought back or cried out. She wasn’t the sort to meekly surrender.

But if I’m right and he knew her, he might not have needed the chloroform— not until Catherine realized the danger and tried to escape.

What happened next? It isn’t easy carrying a body. Perhaps he dragged her onto the towpath. No, he needed somewhere private. Somewhere he’d prepared in advance. A flat or a house? Neighbors can be nosy. There are dozens of derelict factories along the canal.

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 fal . 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.