Michael Robotham

by Suspect

  "Nowadays they talk about proactive policing. Do you know what that means? It means the number of detectives they put on a case depends on how big the tabloid headlines are. The media runs these investigations now?not the police."

  "I haven't read anything about this case," I say.

  "That's because everyone thinks the victim is a prostitute. If she turns out to be Florence bloody Nightingale or the daughter of a duke I'll have forty detectives instead of twelve. The assistant chief constable will take personal charge because of the 'complex nature of the case.' Every public statement will have to be vetted by his of�fice and every line of inquiry approved."

  "Why did they give it to you?"

  "Like I said, they thought we were dealing with a dead prosti�tute. 'Give it to Ruiz,' they said. 'He'll bang heads together and put the fear of God into the pimps.' So /what/ if any of them object. My file is so full of complaint letters that Internal Affairs has given me my own filing cabinet."

  A handful of Japanese tourists pass the window and pause. They look at the blackboard menu and then at Ruiz, before deciding to keep going. Breakfast arrives, with a knife and fork wrapped in a paper napkin. Ruiz squeezes brown sauce over his eggs and begins cutting them up. I try not to watch as he eats.

  "You look like you got a question," he says between mouthfuls.

  "It's about her name."

  "You know the drill. I'm not supposed to release details until we get a positive ID and inform the next of kin."

  "I just thought..." I don't finish the sentence.

  Ruiz takes a sip of tea and butters his toast.

  "Catherine Mary McBride. She turned twenty-seven a month ago. A community nurse, but you knew that already. According to her flatmate she was in London for a job interview."

  Even knowing the answer doesn't lessen the shock. Poor Cather�ine. This is when I should tell him. I should have done it straight away. Why do I have to rationalize everything? Why can't I just say things when they enter my head?

  Leaning over his plate Ruiz scoops baked beans onto a corner of toast. His fork stops in midair in front of his open mouth. "Why did you say, 'Poor Catherine'?"

  I must have been speaking out loud. My eyes tell the rest of the story. Ruiz lets the fork clatter onto his plate. Anger and suspicion snake through his thoughts. "You knew her." It's an accusation rather than a statement. He's angry.

  "I didn't recognize her at first. That drawing yesterday could have been almost anyone. I thought you were looking for a prostitute."

  "And today?"

  "Her face was so swollen and bruised. She seemed so ... so ... vandalized I didn't want to look at her. It wasn't until I read about the scars in the postmortem report that I considered the possibility. That's why I needed a second look at the body ... just to be sure."

  Ruiz's eyes haven't left mine. "And when were you thinking of telling me all this?"

  "I intended to tell you..."

  "When? This isn't a game of twenty questions, Professor. I'm not supposed to guess what you know."

  "Catherine was a former patient of mine. Psychologists have a duty of care not to reveal confidential information about patients."

  Ruiz laughs mockingly. "She's dead, Professor?in case you missed that small detail. You conceal information from me again and I'll put my boot so far up your ass your breath will smell of shoe pol�ish." He pushes his plate to the center of the table. "Start talking?why was Catherine McBride a patient?"

  "The scars on her wrists and thighs?she deliberately cut herself."

  "A suicide attempt?"

  "No."

  I can see Ruiz struggling with this.

  Leaning closer, I try to explain how people react when over�whelmed by confusion and negative emotions. Some drink too much. Others overeat or beat their wives or kick the cat. And a sur�prising number hold their hands against a hot plate or slice open their skin with a razor blade. It's an extreme coping mechanism. They talk about their inner pain being turned outward. By giving it a physical manifestation they find it easier to deal with.

  "What was Catherine trying to cope with?"

  "Mainly low self-esteem."

  "Where did you meet her?"

  "She worked as a nurse at the Royal Marsden Hospital. I was a consultant there."

  Ruiz swirls the tea in his cup, staring at the leaves as though they might tell him something. Suddenly, he pushes back his chair, hitches his trousers and stands.

  "You're an odd fucker, you know that?" A five-pound note flut�ters onto the table and I follow him outside. A dozen paces along the footpath he turns to confront me. "OK, tell me this. Am I investigating a murder or did this girl kill herself?"

  "She was murdered."

  "So she was /made/ to do this?to cut herself all those times? Apart from her face there are no signs that she was bound, gagged, restrained or compelled to cut herself. Can you explain that?"

  I shake my head.

  "Well you're the psychologist! You're supposed to understand the world we live in. I'm a detective and it's beyond my fucking comprehension."

  **5**

  As far as I can recall I haven't been drunk since Charlie was born and my best friend Jock took it upon himself to get me absolutely ham�mered because apparently that is what intelligent, sensible and con�scientious fathers do when blessed with a child.

  With a new car you avoid alcohol completely and with a new house you can't afford to drink, but with a new baby you must "wet the head" or, in my case, throw up in a cab going around Marble Arch.

  After leaving Ruiz, I stop at a pub and have two double vodkas?a first for me. I'm trying to numb the morning's pain. I can't get the image of Catherine McBride out of my mind. It's not her face I see, but her naked body, stripped of all dignity; denied even a modest pair of panties or a strategically placed sheet. I want to protect her. I want to shield her from public gaze.

  Now I understand Ruiz?not his words but the look on his face. This wasn't the terrible conclusion to some great passion. Nor was it an ordinary, kitchen-sink killing, motivated by greed or jealousy. Catherine McBride suffered terribly. Each cut had sapped her strength like a banderilla's barbs in the neck of a bull.

  An American psychologist named Daniel Wegner conducted a famous experiment on thought suppression in 1987. In a test that might have been created by Dostoevsky, he asked a group of people /not/ to think about a white bear. Each time the white bear entered their thoughts they had to ring a bell. No matter how hard they tried, not one person could avoid the forbidden thought for more than a few minutes.

  Wegner spoke of two different thought processes counteracting each other. One is trying to think of anything except the white bear, while the other is subtly pushing forward the very thing that we wish to suppress.

  Catherine Mary McBride is my white bear. I can't get her out of my head.

  My office is in a pyramid of white boxes on Great Portland Street designed by an architect who must have drawn inspiration from his childhood. From ground level it doesn't look finished and I'm always half expecting a crane to turn up and hoist a few more boxes into the gaps.

  As I walk up the front steps I hear a car horn and turn. A bright red Ferrari pulls onto the pavement. The driver, Dr. Fenwick Spindler, raises a gloved hand to wave. Fenwick looks like a lawyer but he runs the psychopharmacology unit at London University Hospital. He also has a private practice with a consulting room next to mine.

  "Afternoon, old boy," he shouts, leaving the car in the middle of the pavement so that people have to step around it onto the road.

  "Aren't you worried about the parking police?"

  "Got one of these," he says, pointing to the doctor's sticker on the windshield. "Perfect for medical emergencies."

  Joining me on the steps, he pushes open the glass door. "Saw you on the TV the other night. Jolly good show. Wouldn't have caught me up there."

  "I'm sure you would have?"

  "Must tell you about my weekend. Went shoot
ing in Scotland. Bagged a deer."

  "Do you /bag/ deer?"

  "Whatever." He waves dismissively. "Shot the bastard right through the left eye."

  The receptionist triggers a switch to open the security door and we summon a lift. Fenwick examines himself in the internal mirrors, brushing specks of dandruff from the bunched shoulders of an ex�pensive suit. It says something about Fenwick's body when a hand-tailored suit doesn't fit him.

  "Still consorting with prostitutes?" he asks.

  "I give talks."

  "Is /that/ what they call it nowadays?" He guffaws and rearranges himself via a trouser pocket. "/How/ do you get paid?"

  He won't believe me if I tell him I do it for nothing. "They give me vouchers. I can redeem them for blow jobs later. I have a whole drawer full of them."

  He almost chokes and blushes furiously. I have to stop myself from laughing.

  Fenwick, for all his obvious success as a doctor, is one of those people who tries desperately hard to be somebody else. That's why he looks vaguely ridiculous behind the wheel of a sports car. It's like seeing Bill Gates in running shorts or George W. Bush in the White House. It just doesn't look right.

  "How's the you-know-what?" he asks.

  "Fine."

  "I haven't noticed it at all, old boy. Come to think of it, Pfizer has a new drug cocktail undergoing clinical trials. Drop by and I'll give you the literature..."

  Fenwick's contacts with drug companies are renowned. His of�fice is a shrine to Pfizer, Novartis and Hoffmann-La Roche; almost every item donated, from the fountain pens to the espresso machine. The same is true of his social life?sailing in Cowes, salmon fishing in Scotland and grouse shooting in Northumberland.

  We turn the corner and Fenwick glances inside my office. A mid�dle-aged woman sits in the waiting room clutching an orange tor�pedo-shaped life buoy.

  "I don't know how you do it, old boy," Fenwick mutters.

  "Do what?"

  "/Listen/ to them."

  "That's how I find out what's wrong."

  "Why bother? Dish out some antidepressants and send her home."

  Fenwick doesn't believe there are psychological or social factors in mental illness. He claims it is completely biological and therefore, by definition, treatable with drugs. It is just a matter of finding the right combination.

  Every afternoon (he doesn't work before midday) patients march one by one into his office, answer a few perfunctory questions before Fenwick hands them a scrip and bills them �140. If they want to talk symptoms, he wants to talk drugs. If they mention side effects, he changes the dosage.

  The strange thing is that his patients love him. They come in /wanting/ drugs and they don't care which ones. The more pills the better. Maybe they figure they're getting value for money.

  Listening to people is considered to be old-fashioned nowadays. Patients expect me to produce a magic pill that cures everything. When I tell them that I just want to talk they look disappointed.

  "Good afternoon, Margaret. Glad to see you made it."

  She holds up the life buoy.

  "Which way did you come?"

  "Putney Bridge."

  "It's a good solid bridge that one. Been around for years."

  She suffers from gephyrophobia?a fear of crossing bridges. To make matters worse she lives south of the river and has to walk her twins to school across the Thames every day. She carries the life buoy just in case the bridge falls down or is swept away by a tidal wave. I know that sounds irrational, but simple phobias are like that.

  "I should have gone to live in the Sahara," she says, only half joking.

  I tell her about eremikophobia, the fear of sand or deserts. She thinks I'm making it up.

  Three months ago Margaret panicked halfway across Putney Bridge. It took an hour before anybody realized. The children were crying, still clutching her hands. She was frozen by fear, unable to speak or nod. Passersby thought she might be a jumper. In reality Margaret was holding up that bridge with sheer willpower.

  We've done a lot of work since then. She carried the life buoy and has tried to break the thought loop that accompanies her irra�tional fear.

  "What do you believe is going to happen if you cross the bridge?"

  "It's going to fall down."

  "Why would it fall down?"

  "I don't know."

  "What is the bridge made of?"

  "Steel and rivets and concrete."

  "How long has it been there?"

  "Years and years."

  "Has it ever fallen down?"

  "No."

  Each session lasts fifty minutes and I have ten minutes to write up my notes before my next patient arrives. Meena, my secretary, is like an atomic clock, accurate to the last second.

  "A minute lost is a minute gone forever," she says, tapping the watch pinned to her breast.

  Anglo-Indian, but more English than strawberries and cream, she dresses in knee-length skirts, sensible shoes and cardigans. And she reminds me of the girls I knew at school who were addicted to Jane Austen novels and always daydreaming about meeting their Mr. Darcy.

  She's been with me since I left the Royal Marsden and started in private practice, but I'm losing her soon. She and her cats are off to open a bed-and-breakfast in Bath. I can just imagine the place?lace doilies under every vase, cat figurines and the toast soldiers in neat ranks beside every three-minute egg.

  Meena is organizing the interviews for a new secretary. She has narrowed them down to a short list, but I know I'll have trouble de�ciding. I keep hoping that she'll change her mind. If only I could purr.

  At three o'clock I glance around the waiting room.

  "Where's Bobby?"

  "He hasn't arrived."

  "Did he call?"

  "No." She tries not to meet my eyes.

  "Can you try to find him? It's been two weeks."

  I know she doesn't want to make the call. She doesn't like Bobby. At first I thought it was because he didn't turn up for ap�pointments, but it's more than that. He makes her nervous. Maybe it's his size or the bad haircut or the chip on his shoulder. She doesn't really know him. Then again, who does?

  Almost on cue, he appears in the doorway, with his odd-legged shuffle and an anxious expression. Tall and overweight, with flax-brown hair and metal-framed glasses, his great pudding of a body is trying to burst out of a long overcoat made shapeless by its bulging pockets.

  "Sorry I'm late. Something came up." He glances around the waiting room, still unsure whether to step inside.

  "Something came up for two weeks?"

  He makes eye contact with me and then turns his face away.

  I'm used to Bobby being defensive and enclosed, but this is dif�ferent. Instead of keeping secrets he's telling lies. It's like closing the shutters in front of someone and then trying to deny they exist.

  I take a quick inventory?his shoes are polished and his hair is combed. He shaved this morning, but the dark shadow has returned. His cheeks are red from the cold, but at the same time he's perspir�ing. I wonder how long he spent outside, trying to get up the courage to come and see me.

  He walks into my office and stands in front of my bookshelves, perusing the titles. Most of them are reference books on psychology and animal behavior. Eventually he stops and taps the spine of a book, /The Interpretation of Dreams/ by Sigmund Freud.

  "I thought Freud's views had been pretty much discredited these days." He has the faintest hint of a northern accent. "He couldn't tell the difference between hysteria and epilepsy."

  "It wasn't one of his best calls. Where have you been, Bobby?"

  "I got scared."

  "Why?"

  He shrugs. "I had to get away."

  "Where did you go?"

  "Nowhere."

  I don't bother pointing out the contradiction. He's full of them. Restless hands look for somewhere to hide and escape into his pock�ets, pushing them out of shape.

  "Do you want to take off
your coat?"

  "It's OK."

  "Well at least sit down."

  He looks at the chair suspiciously and then folds himself down into it, with his knees facing sideways toward the door.

  Apart from my own notes, there is very little paperwork in Bobby's file. There is a letter from a GP in north London who first picked up the case after Bobby complained of "disturbing night�mares" and a sense of being "out of control." He was then sent to Jock Owen, one of London's finest neurologists and my oldest friend. Jock did all the scans and could find nothing wrong, so he referred Bobby to me.

  His exact words to me were: "Don't worry, he's insured. You might actually get paid."

  The notes tell me that he's twenty-two years of age, with no his�tory of mental illness or habitual drug use. He has above average in�telligence, is in good health and lives in a long-term relationship with Arky, his fiancee. Apart from that I have a basic history?born in London, educated at government schools, O levels, night classes, odd jobs as a delivery driver and clerk. He and Arky live in a tower block in Hackney. She has a little boy and works at the candy bar in the lo�cal cinema. Apparently it was Arky who convinced him to seek help. Bobby's nightmares were getting worse. He woke screaming in the night, hurtling out of bed and crashing into walls, as he tried to es�cape his dreams.

  Before the summer we seemed to be getting somewhere. Then Bobby disappeared for three months and I thought he was gone for good. He turned up five weeks ago, with no appointment or expla�nation. He seemed happier. He was sleeping better. The nightmares were less severe.

  Now something is wrong. He sits motionless, but his flicking eyes don't miss a thing.

  "What's happened?"

  "Nothing."

  "Is something wrong at home?"

  He blinks. "No."

  "What then?"

  I let the silence work for me. Bobby fidgets, scratching at his hands as though something has irritated his skin. Minutes pass and he grows more and more agitated.

  I give him a direct question to get him started.