Suspect (41 page)

“I did, of course.”

“You said Erskine was on holiday. Who signed off on the psych report?”

She hesitates. Her breathing changes. She is about to lie.

“I don’t remember?”

More insistent this time. “Who signed the psych report?”

She speaks straight through me, directly into the past.

“You did.”

“How? When?”

“I put the form in front of you and you signed. You thought it was a foster-parent authorization. It was your last day in Liverpool. We were having farewel drinks at the Windy House.” I moan inwardly, the phone stil to my ear.

“My name was in Bobby’s files?”

“Yes.”

“You took it out of the folders before you showed them to me?”

“It was a long time ago. I thought it didn’t matter.”

I can’t answer her. I let the phone fal from my hand. The young mother is clutching her baby tightly in her arms, jiggling him up and down to calm his cries. As I retreat down the steps, I hear her cal ing her older son inside. Nobody wants to be near me. I am like an infectious disease. An epidemic.

5

George Woodcock cal ed the ticking of the clock a mechanical tyranny that turned us into servants of a machine that we created. We are held in fear of our own monster— just like Baron von Frankenstein.

I once had a patient, a widower living alone, who became convinced that the ticking of a clock above his kitchen table sounded like human words. The clock would give him short commands. “Go to bed!” “Wash the dishes!” “Turn off the lights!” At first he ignored the sound, but the clock repeated the instructions over and over, always using the same words.

Eventual y, he began to fol ow the orders and the clock took over his life. It told him what to have for dinner and what to watch on TV, when to do the laundry, which phone cal s to return…

When he first sat in my consulting room, I asked him whether he wanted a tea or a coffee. He didn’t reply at first. He nonchalantly wandered over to the wal clock and after a moment he turned and said that a glass of water would be fine.

Strangely, he didn’t want to be cured. He could have removed al clocks from his house or gone digital, but there was something about the voices that he found reassuring and even comforting. His wife, by al accounts, had been a fusspot and a wel -organized soul, who hurried him along, writing him lists, choosing his clothes and general y making decisions for him.

Instead of wanting me to stop the voices he needed to be able to carry them with him. The house already had a clock in every room, but what happened when he went outside?

I suggested a wristwatch, but for some reason these didn’t speak loudly enough or they babbled incoherently. After much thought, we went shopping at Gray’s Antique Market and he spent more than an hour listening to old-fashioned pocket watches, until he found one that quite literal y spoke to him.

The clock I hear ticking could be the knocking of the Land Rover’s engine. Or it could be the doomsday clock— seven minutes to midnight. My perfect past is fading into history and I can’t stop the clock.

Two police cars pass me on the road out of Hatchmere, heading in the opposite direction. Mel must have final y given them Erskine’s address. They can’t know about the Land Rover—

not yet, at least. The little old lady with the photographic memory wil tel them. With any luck she’l recount her life story first, giving me time to get away.

I keep glancing in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see flashing blue lights. This wil be the opposite of a high-speed police chase. They could overtake me on bicycles unless I can find fourth gear. Maybe we’l have one of those O. J. Simpson moments, a slow-motion motorcade, filmed from the news helicopters.

I remember the final scene of
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
, when Redford and Newman keep wisecracking as they go out to face the Mexican army. Personal y I’m not quite as fearless about dying. And I can’t see anything glorious about a hail of bul ets and a closed coffin.

Lucas Dutton lives in a redbrick house in a suburban street, where the corner shops have disappeared and been replaced by drug dealers and brothels. Every blank wal is covered in spray paint. Even the folk art and Protestant murals have been spoiled. There is no sense of color or creativity. It is mindless, malicious vandalism.

Lucas is perched on a ladder in the driveway, unbolting a basketbal hoop from the wal . His hair is even darker, but he’s thickened around the waist and his forehead is etched with frown lines that disappear into bushy eyebrows.

“Do you need a hand?”

He looks down and takes a moment to put a name to my face.

“These things are rusted on,” he says, tapping the bolts. Descending the ladder he wipes his hands on his shirtfront and shakes my hand. At the same time he glances at the front door, betraying his nerves. His wife must be inside. They wil have seen the news reports or heard the radio.

I can hear music coming from an upstairs window: something with lots of thumping bass and shuffling turntables. Lucas fol ows my eyes.

“I tel her to turn it down, but she says that it has to be loud. Sign of age, I guess.”

I remember the twins. Sonia was a good swimmer— in the pool, in the sea, she had a beautiful stroke. I was invited to a barbecue one weekend when she must have been about nine.

She announced that she was going to swim the Channel one day.

“It’l be much quicker when they build the tunnel,” I’d told her.

Everyone had laughed. Sonia had rol ed her eyes. She didn’t like me after that.

Her twin sister, Claire, was the bookish one, with steel-framed glasses and a lazy eye. She spent most of the barbecue in her room, complaining that she couldn’t hear the TV because everyone outside was “gibbering like monkeys.”

Lucas is folding up the ladder and explaining that “the girls” don’t use the hoop anymore.

“I was sorry to hear about Sonia,” I say.

He acts as though he doesn’t hear me. Tools are packed away in a toolbox. I’m about to ask him what happened, when he starts tel ing me that Sonia had just won two titles at the national swimming championships and had broken a distance record.

I let him talk because I sense he’s making a point. The story unfolds. Sonia Dutton, not quite twenty-three, dressed up for a rock concert. She went with Claire and a group of friends from university. Someone gave her a white pil imprinted with a shel logo. She danced al night until her heartbeat grew rapid and her blood pressure soared. She felt faint and anxious. She col apsed in a toilet cubicle.

Lucas is stil crouched over the toolbox as though he’s lost something. His shoulders are shaking. In a rasping voice, he describes how Sonia spent three weeks in a coma, never regaining consciousness. Lucas and his wife argued over whether to turn off her life support. He was the pragmatist. He wanted to remember her gliding through the water, with her smooth stroke. His wife accused him of giving up hope, of thinking only of himself, of not praying hard enough for a miracle.

“She hasn’t said more than a dozen words to me since— not al together in a sentence. Last night she told me that she saw your photograph on the news. I asked her questions that she answered. It was the first time in ages…”

“Who gave Sonia the tablet? Did they ever catch anyone?”

Lucas shakes his head. Claire gave them a description. She looked at mug shots and a police lineup.

“What did she say he looked like?”

“Tal , skinny, tanned… he had slicked-back hair.”

“How old?”

“Mid-thirties.”

He closes the toolbox and flips the metal catches, before glancing despondently at the house, not yet ready to go inside. Chores like the basketbal hoop have become important because they keep him busy and out of the way.

“Sonia would never have taken a drug knowingly,” he says. “She wanted to go to the Olympics. She knew about banned substances and drug tests. Someone must have slipped it to her.”

“Do you remember Bobby Morgan?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Fourteen… fifteen years ago. He was only a kid.”

“Not since then?”

He shakes his head and then narrows his eyes as if something has just occurred to him. “Sonia knew someone cal ed Bobby Morgan. It couldn’t have been the same person. He worked at the swimming center.”

“You never saw him?”

“No.” He sees the curtains moving in the living room. “I wouldn’t stick around if I were you,” he says. “She’l cal the police if she sees you.” The toolbox is weighing down his right hand. He swaps it over and glances up at the basketbal hoop. “Guess that’l have to stay there a bit longer.” I thank him and he hurries inside. The door shuts and the silence amplifies my steps as I walk away. I used to think Dutton was conceited and dogmatic, unwil ing to listen or alter his point of view when it came to case conferences. He was the sort of autocratic, nitpicking public servant who is bril iant at making the trains run on time, but fails miserably when it comes to dealing with people. If only his staff could be as loyal as his Skoda— starting first time on cold mornings and reacting immediately to every turn of the steering wheel. Now he has been diminished, lessened, beaten down by circumstances.

The man who gave Sonia the tainted white tablet doesn’t sound like Bobby but eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Stress and shock can alter perceptions. Memory is flawed. Bobby is a chameleon, changing colors, camouflaging himself, moving backward and forward, but always blending in.

There is a poem that my mother used to recite to me— a political y incorrect piece of doggerel— cal ed “Ten Little Indian Boys.” It started off with ten little Indian boys going out to dine, but one chokes himself and then there were nine. Al nine little Indian boys stay up late, but one oversleeps and then there are eight…

Indian boys are stung by bees, eaten by fish, hugged by bears and chopped in half until only one remains, left alone. I feel like that last little Indian boy.

I understand what Bobby is doing now. He is trying to take away what each of us holds most dear— the love of a child, the closeness of a partner, the sense of belonging. He wants us to suffer as he suffered, to lose what we most love, to experience
his
loss.

Mel and Boyd had been soul mates. Anyone who knew them could see that. Jerzy and Esther Gorski had survived the Nazi gas chambers and settled in north London, where they raised their only child, Alison, who became a schoolteacher and moved to Liverpool. Firemen discovered Jerzy’s body at the bottom of the stairs. He was stil alive, despite the burns. Esther suffocated in her sleep.

Catherine McBride, a favored granddaughter in a wel -connected family— wayward, spoiled and smothered— had never lost the heart of her grandfather, who doted on her and forgave her indiscretions.

Rupert Erskine had no wife or children. Perhaps Bobby couldn’t discover what he held most dear or perhaps he knew al along. Erskine was a cantankerous old sod, about as likable as a carpet burn. We made excuses for him because it can’t have been easy looking after his wife for al those years. Bobby didn’t give him any latitude. He left him alive long enough—

tied to a chair— to regret his limitations.

There might be other victims. I don’t have time to find them al . Elisa is my failure. I didn’t discover Bobby’s secret soon enough. Bobby has grown more sophisticated with each death, but I am to be the prize. He could have taken Julianne or Charlie from me, but instead he has chosen to take it al — my family, friends, career, reputation and final y my freedom. And he wants me to
know
that he’s responsible.

The whole point of analysis is to understand, not to take the essence of something and reduce it to something else. Bobby once accused me of playing God. He said people like me couldn’t resist putting our hands inside someone’s psyche and changing the way they view the world.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I’ve made mistakes and fal en into the trap of not thinking hard enough about cause and effect. And I know it isn’t good enough, in the wash-up, to make excuses and say, “I meant wel .” I’ve used the same words. “With the best possible intentions…” and “with al the goodwil in the world…” In one of my first cases in Liverpool I had to decide if a mental y handicapped twenty-year-old, with no family support and a lifetime of institutionalized care, could keep her unborn child.

I can stil picture Sharon with her summer dress, stretched tightly over the swel of her pregnancy. She had taken great care, washing and brushing her hair. She knew how important the interview was for her future. Yet despite her efforts she had forgotten little things. Her socks were the same color, but different lengths. The zipper at the side of her dress was broken. A smudge of lipstick stained her cheek.

“Do you know why you’re here, Sharon?”

“Yes sir.”

“We have to decide whether you can look after your baby. It’s a very big responsibility.”

“I can. I can. I’l be a good mother. I’m going to love my baby.”

“Do you know where babies come from?”