Suspect (20 page)

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 another 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 thril from inflicting pain.” Bobby shakes his head; his 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 stil listening. My words are leaking through and expanding 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 smal , wil be enough for me to lever his defenses open. But I’m running out of story. I don’t have al 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 evaluated before. Was Catherine a patient or a nurse? I think she was a patient.”

Bobby pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing the spot where his glasses perch. He reaches slowly into his trouser pocket and I suddenly 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 between 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 al weekend coming up with it?”

The pressure is dispel ed 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 tel me. A poker player doesn’t explain why he cal s 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 relationship. 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 wil ing to fol ow me al the way home at four miles an hour.

I stop and turn toward him. He leans over to open the front passenger 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 smel s 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 fal en to just above freezing and a mist blurs the streetlights. Colored lights are blinking in windows and plastic wreaths of hol y decorate front doors.

We drive along Harrow Road and turn into Scrubs Lane. After less than half a mile the lane rises and fal s over Mitre Bridge where it crosses the Grand Union Canal and the Paddington rail lines. Ruiz pul s over and the engine dies. He gets out of the car and waits for me to do the same. The doors central y lock as he walks away, expecting me to fol ow. My thigh is stil stiff from Jock’s wel -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 wal 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 morning, 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 ful of pent-up rage. After about five hundred yards the railway tracks appear to our right. Maintenance sheds are silhouetted against the residual light. Rol ing 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 wal s 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. Fol ow the edge of the building down.”

I trace the path of his outstretched hand and see the wal . 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 fighting. 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 tel 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’l find it fascinating.” He walks two paces toward the canal and spits into the water. “Bobby Moran has no girlfriend or fiancée cal ed Arky. He lives in a boarding house in north London, with a bunch of asylum seekers waiting for council housing. He’s unemployed 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 leaving school he’s had part-time jobs and for a while worked as a volunteer at a sheltered workshop in Lancashire. We found no history of psychiatric il ness 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 people had nice things to say about Bobby. He is very neat and tidy according to his landlady. She does his washing and doesn’t remember smel ing chloroform on any of his clothes. His old bosses at the shelter cal ed him a ‘big softie.’

“That’s what I find real y strange, Professor. Nothing you said about him is true. I can understand you getting one or two details wrong. We al make mistakes. But it’s as though we’re talking about a completely different person.”

My voice is hoarse. “It can’t be him.”

“That’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 tel al 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 kil 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 normal y 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 al these lies. And then I thought, what if he didn’t? What if
you
were tel ing 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 artery 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 unconscious? 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 kil er 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 medal ion.”

“I think you recognized her straightaway. I think al 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 children and parents. We make recommendations to the court.”

“What did you make of him?”

“He had his faults, but he was an honest judge. I respected him.”

Ruiz is trying hard to be cordial, but polite restraint doesn’t come natural y to him.

“Do you know what I find real y hard to explain?” he says. “Why it took you so long to tel me about knowing Catherine McBride and her grandfather, yet you give me a crock of shit about somebody cal ed Bobby Moran. No, sorry that isn’t right— you
don’t
talk about your patients, do you? You just play little schoolboy games of show and tel . Wel , two can play that game…”

He grins at me— al white teeth and dark eyes.

“Shal I tel you what I’ve been doing these last two weeks? I’ve been searching this canal. We brought in dredging equipment and emptied the locks. It was a lousy job. There was three feet of putrid sludge and slime. We found stolen bicycles, shopping carts, car chassis, hubcaps, two washing machines, car tires, condoms and more than four thousand used syringes… Do you know what else we found?”

I shake my head.

“Catherine McBride’s handbag and her mobile phone. It took us a while to dry everything out. Then we had to check the phone records. That’s when we discovered that the very last cal she made was to your office. At 6:37 p.m. on Wednesday, November thirteenth. She was cal ing from a pub not far from here. Whoever had arranged to meet her hadn’t turned up. My guess is that she cal ed to find out why.”

“How can you be sure?”

Ruiz smiles. “We also found her diary. It had been in the water for so long the pages were stuck together and the ink had washed away. The scene-of-crime boys had to dry it very careful y and pul the pages apart. Then they used an electron microscope to find the faint traces of ink. It’s amazing what they can do nowadays.” Ruiz has squared up to me, his eyes just inches from mine. This is his Agatha Christie moment: his drawing-room soliloquy.