Suspect (27 page)

What is he doing? Has he seen me? Jogging slowly, I carry on, losing sight of him occasional y. 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 pil ars. 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 wal s 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 cal .

He doesn’t hear me. He can’t swim.

I kick off my shoes and leap. The cold slaps me so hard I swal ow 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 pul him backward, keeping his head above the surface. I talk to him gently, tel ing him to relax. We’l 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 wal and pul him up after me.

It isn’t Bobby. Some poor tramp, smel ing 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 tel 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 stil 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 cal ing 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 tel him to find somewhere to dry out. He’l 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 cal out, “How often do you sleep here?”

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

“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’l 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 col apsing 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 al the gadgets.

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

I wonder if he has any earplugs.

It is stil 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 tel Ruiz about Elisa. She shouldn’t have to face a gril ing in the witness box. I want to spare her that ordeal, if possible. And when this is al over— if nobody knows about her— I might stil 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 normal y need a motive to kil , 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 stil had the roundness of a lol ipop. 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 sel umbrel as?” I ask hopeful y. 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 ful 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 cal ? 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.

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

His coat smel ed of chloroform. Bobby had machine oil on his shirt cuffs. Catherine’s postmortem mentioned machine oil. “It’s al 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’l send him to a prison hospital like Broadmoor. Then he can astound some prison psychiatrist with his responsiveness 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 wil do for now. I take out Bobby Moran’s file and begin reading. Opening my new notebook, I make bul et 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 tel s me they’re not. I think he changed certain names and places, but not al of them. The events and emotions he described were true.

I have to find the strands of truth and fol ow 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 Hal 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 smal er. Not far from the university I find the Albion Hotel. It has a worn carpet in the entrance hal 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 wil only half close and the windowsil 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 automatical y 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 tel 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.”

“Wel , 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 al I had— us. I gave up everything for this and I loved it. I loved you. Now you’ve gone and poisoned the wel .”

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

“No, don’t you dare blame a disease. You’ve managed to do this al 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’l 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 tel you.” She doesn’t reply.

“You can get me on my mobile. Cal me, please. Give Charlie an extra hug from me. I’l 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 ful 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 hal s only fit for the bul dozer.

The Cotton Exchange in Old Hal 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 mil ion 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 wil in turn give me the names of his mother and father, and their place of residence and occupations.