Suspect (30 page)

“Don’t you start, dickhead.” Baz stares him down.

Someone takes my wal et out of my jacket.

“Not the cards, just the cash,” says Baz. He’s older— in his early twenties— and has a swastika tattooed on his neck. He lifts me easily and pushes his face close to mine. I smel beer, peanuts and cigarette smoke.

“Hey, listen, toss-bag! You’re not welcome here.”

Shoved backward, I land against a wire fence topped with razor wire. Baz is toe to toe with me. He’s three inches shorter and solid like a barrel. A knife blade gleams in his hand.

“I want my wal et back. If you give it back to me I won’t press charges,” I say.

He laughs at me and mimics my voice.
Do I really sound that frightened?

“You fol owed me from the pub. I saw you in there playing pool. You lost the last game on the black.”

The girl pushes her glasses up her nose. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick.

“What’s he mean, Baz?”

“Shut up! Don’t fucking use my name.” He starts to hit her, but she shoots him a fierce glance. The silence lingers. I don’t feel drunk anymore.

I focus on the girl. “You should have trusted your instincts, Denny.”

She looks at me, wide-eyed. “How do you know my name?”

“You’re Denny and you’re underage— thirteen maybe fourteen. This is Baz, your boyfriend, and these two are Ozzie and Carl…”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Baz shoves me hard against the fence. He can sense he’s losing the initiative.

“Is this what you want, Denny? What’s your mum going to say when the police come looking for you? She thinks you’re staying at a girlfriend’s house, doesn’t she? She doesn’t like you hanging out with Baz. She thinks he’s a loser, a no-hoper.”

“Make him stop, Baz.” Denny covers her mouth.

“Shut the fuck up!”

No one says anything. They’re watching me. I take a step forward and whisper to Baz. “Use your white cel s, Baz. I just want my wal et.” Denny interrupts, on the verge of tears, “Just give him his fucking wal et. I want to go home.”

Ozzie turns to Carl. “C’mon.”

Baz doesn’t know what to do. He could carve me up like a wisp of smoke, but now he’s on his own. The others are already disappearing, loose-limbed and hooting with laughter.

He pushes me hard against the fence, pressing the knife to my neck and his face next to mine. His teeth close around my earlobe. White heat. Pain. Ripping his head to one side, he spits hard into a puddle and shoves me away.

“There’s a little souvenir from Bobby!”

He wipes blood from his mouth and tosses my wal et at my feet. Then he swaggers away and kicks at the door of a parked car. I’m sitting in water, braced against the fence. In the distance I see navigation lights blinking from the top of industrial cranes on the far side of the Mersey.

Slowly, pul ing myself upright, I try to stand. My right leg buckles and I fal to my knees. Blood leaks in a warm trail down my neck.

I stumble to the main road but there is no traffic. Glancing over my shoulder, I worry about them coming back. Half a mile down the road I find a minicab office with metal gril e over the door and windows. The inside is saturated with cigarette smoke and the smel of takeout food.

“What happened to you?” asks a fat man behind the gril e.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. The bottom part of my ear is missing and my shirt col ar is soaked with blood.

“I got mugged.”

“Who by?”

“Kids.”

I open my wal et. The cash is stil there… al of it.

The fat man rol s his eyes, no longer concerned about me. I’m just a drunk who got into a fight. He radios for a car and makes me wait outside on the footpath. I glance nervously up and down the street, looking for Baz.

A souvenir! Bobby has some charming friends. Why didn’t they take the money? What was the point? Unless they were trying to warn me off. Liverpool is a big enough place to get lost and smal enough to get noticed, particularly if you start asking questions.

Slumped on the backseat of an old Mazda 626, I close my eyes and let my heart slow. Sweat has cooled between my shoulder blades, making my neck feel stiff.

The minicab drops me at University Hospital where I wait for an hour to get six stitches in my ear. As the intern wipes the blood from my face with a towel, he asks if the police have been informed. I lie and say yes. I don’t want Ruiz knowing where I am.

Afterward, with a dose of acetaminophen to dul the pain, I walk through the city until I reach Pier Head. The last ferry is arriving from Birkenhead. The engine makes the air throb. Lights leak toward me in a colorful slick of reds and yel ows. I stare at the water and keep imagining that I can see dark shapes. Bodies. I look again and they vanish. Why do I always look for bodies?

As a child I sometimes went boating on the Thames with my sisters. One day I found a sack containing five dead kittens. Patricia kept tel ing me to put the sack down. She was screaming at me. Rebecca wanted to see inside. She, like me, had never seen anything dead except for bugs and lizards.

I emptied the sack and the kittens tumbled onto the grass. Their wet fur stood on end. I was attracted and repel ed at the same time. They had soft fur and warm blood. They weren’t so different from me.

Later, as a teenager, I imagined that I would be dead by thirty. It was in the midst of the Cold War when the world teetered on the edge of an abyss, at the mercy of whichever madman in the White House or the Kremlin had one of those, “I-wonder-what-this-button-does?” moments.

Since then my internal doomsday clock has swung wildly back and forth much like the official version. Marrying Julianne made me hugely optimistic and having Charlie added to this. I even looked forward to graceful old age when we’d trade our backpacks for suitcases on wheels, playing with grandchildren, boring them with nostalgic stories, taking up eccentric hobbies…

The future wil be different now. Instead of a dazzling road to discovery, I see a twitching, stammering, dribbling spectacle in a wheelchair. “Do we real y have to go and see Dad today?” Charlie wil ask. “He won’t know the difference if we don’t show up.”

A gust of wind sets my teeth chattering and I push away from the railing. I walk from the wharf, no longer worried about getting lost. At the same time I feel vulnerable. Exposed.

At the Albion Hotel the receptionist is knitting, moving her lips as she counts the stitches. Canned laughter emanates from somewhere beneath her feet. She doesn’t acknowledge me until she finishes a row. Then she hands me a note. It has the name and telephone number of a teacher who taught Bobby at St. Mary’s school. The morning wil be soon enough.

The stairs feel steeper than before. I’m tired and drunk. I just want to sink down and sleep.

I wake up suddenly, breathing hard. My hand slides across the sheets looking for Julianne. She normal y wakes when I cry out in my sleep. She puts her hand on my chest and whispers that everything is al right.

Taking deep breaths, I wait for my heartbeat to slow and then slip out of bed, tiptoeing across to the window. The street is empty except for a newspaper van making a delivery. I touch my ear gingerly and feel the roughness of the stitches. There is blood on my pil ow.

The door opens. There is no knock. No warning footsteps. I’m positive that I locked it. A hand appears, red-nailed, long-fingered. Then a face coloured with lipstick and blusher. She is pale-skinned and thin, with short-cropped blond hair.

“Shhhhhhhh!”

A person giggles behind her.

“For fuck’s sake, wil you be quiet.”

She’s reaching for the light switch. I’m standing silhouetted against the window.

“This room is taken.”

Her eyes meet mine and she utters a single shocked expletive. Behind her a large disheveled man in an il -fitting suit has his hand inside her top.

“You scared the crap out of me,” she says, pushing his hand away. He gropes drunkenly at her breasts again.

“How did you get into this room?”

She rol s her eyes apologetical y. “Made a mistake.”

“The door was locked.”

She shakes her head. Her male friend looks over her shoulder. “What’s he doing in
our
room?”

“It’s
his
room, ya moron!” She hits him in the chest with a silver diamanté clutch bag and starts pushing him backward out of the room. As she closes the door she turns and smiles. “You want some company? I can piss this guy off.”

She’s so thin I can see the bones in her chest above her breasts. “No thanks.”

She shrugs and hikes up her tights beneath her miniskirt. Then the door closes and I hear them trying to creep along the hal and climb to the next floor.

For a moment I feel a flush of anger. Did I real y forget to lock the door? I was drunk, maybe even partly concussed.

It is just after six. Julianne and Charlie wil stil be sleeping. I take out my mobile and turn it on, staring at the glowing face in the darkness. There are no messages. This is my penance…

to think about my wife and daughter when I fal asleep and when I wake up.

Sitting on the windowsil , I watch the sky grow lighter. Pigeons wheel and soar over the rooftops. They remind me of Varanasi in India, where the vultures circle high over funeral pyres, waiting for the charred remains to be dumped in the Ganges. Varanasi is a sorry slum of a city, with crumbling buildings, cross-eyed children and nothing of beauty except the brightly colored saris and swaying hips of the women. It appal ed and fascinated me. The same is true of Liverpool.

I wait until seven before cal ing Julianne. A male voice answers. At first I think I’ve dialed the wrong number but then I recognize Jock’s voice.

“I was just thinking about you,” he says in a booming voice. Charlie is in the background, saying, “Is that Dad? Can I talk to him? Please let me.” Jock covers the receiver, but I can stil hear him. He tel s her to fetch Julianne. Charlie complains, but obeys.

Meanwhile, Jock is ful of chummy bonhomie. I interrupt him. “What are you doing there, Jock? Is everything OK?”

“Your plumbing stil sucks.”

What does he know about my fucking plumbing? He matches my coldness with his own. I can picture his face changing. “Someone tried to break in. Julianne got a bit spooked. She didn’t want to be in the house on her own. I offered to stay.”

“Who? When?”

“It was probably just some addict. He came through the front door. The plumbers had left it open. D.J. found him in the study and chased him down the street. Lost him near the canal.”

“Was anything taken?”

“No.”

I hear footsteps on the stairs. Jock puts his hand over the phone.

“Can I talk to Julianne? I know she’s there.”

“She says no.”

I feel a flush of anger. Jock tries to banter again. “She wants to know why you cal ed her mother at three in the morning.” A vague memory surfaces: dialing the number; her mother’s icy rebuke. She hung up on me.

“Just let me talk to Julianne.”

“No can do, old boy. She’s not feeling very wel .”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. She’s feeling a bit off-color.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. She’s in good order. I’ve given her a ful physical.” He’s trying to wind me up. It’s working.

“Give her the
fucking
phone…”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to give me orders, Joe. You’re only making things worse.”

I want to sink my fist into his hundred-sit-ups-a-day stomach. Then I hear a tel tale click. Someone has picked up the phone in my office. Jock doesn’t realize.

I try to sound conciliatory and tel him that I’l cal later. He puts the phone down, but I wait, listening.

“Dad, is that you?” Charlie asks nervously.

“How are you, sweetheart?”

“Good. When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. I have to sort out a few things with Mummy.”

“Did you guys have a fight?”

“How did you know?”

“When Mum’s angry at you I should never let her brush my hair.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s OK. Was it your fault?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you just say you’re sorry? That’s what you tel me to do when I have a fight with Taylor Jones.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be enough this time.”

I can hear her thinking about this. I can even picture her biting her bottom lip in concentration.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”

“Wel … um… I want to ask you something. It’s about… wel …” She keeps starting and stopping. I tel her to think of the whole question in her head and then ask me.

Final y it comes blurting out. “There was this picture in the newspaper… someone with a coat over his head. Some of the kids were talking… at school. Lachlan O’Brien said it was you. I cal ed him a liar. Then last night I took one of the newspapers from the trash. Mum had thrown them out. I sneaked them upstairs to my room…”

“Did you read the story?”

“Yes.”

My stomach lurches. How do I explain the concept of wrongful arrest and mistaken identity to an eight-year-old? Charlie has been taught to trust the police. Justice and fairness are important— even in the playground.

“It was a mistake, Charlie. The police made a mistake.”

“Then why is Mum angry at you?”

“Because I made another mistake. A different one. It has nothing to do with the police or with you.”

She fal s silent. I can almost hear her thinking.

“What’s wrong with Mummy?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I heard her tel Uncle Jock she was late.”

“Late for what?”

“She didn’t say. She just said she was late.”

I ask her to repeat the statement word for word. She doesn’t understand why. My mouth is dry. It isn’t just the hangover. In the background I can hear Julianne cal ing Charlie’s name.

“I have to go,” whispers Charlie. “Come home soon.”

She hangs up quickly. I don’t have a chance to say goodbye. My first instinct is to cal straight back. I want to keep cal ing until Julianne talks to me. Does “late” mean what I think it means? I feel sick to the stomach: hopeless in the head.