by Suspect
"How much was the bail?"
"Five grand."
Where would Bobby find that sort of money?
I glance at my watch. It's still only five thirty. Eddie's secretary answers the phone and I can hear Eddie shouting in the background. She apologizes and asks me to wait. The two of them shout at each other. It's like listening to a domestic fight. Eventually, she comes back to me. Eddie can give me twenty minutes.
It's quicker to walk than to take a taxi to Chancery Lane. Buzzed through the main door, I climb the narrow stairs to the third floor, weaving past boxes of court documents and files, which have been stacked in every available space.
Eddie is talking on the phone as he ushers me into his office and points to a chair. I have to move two files to sit down. Eddie looks to be in his late fifties but is probably ten years younger. Whenever I've seen him interviewed on TV he's put me in mind of a bulldog. He has the same swagger, with his shoulders barely moving and his ass swinging back and forth. He even has large incisor teeth, which must come in handy when ripping strips off people.
When I mention Bobby's name Eddie looks disappointed. I think he was hoping for a medical malpractice case. He spins his chair and begins searching the drawer of a filing cabinet.
"What did Bobby tell you about the attack?"
"You saw his statement."
"Did he mention seeing a young boy?"
"No."
Eddie interrupts tiredly. "Look, I don't want to get off on the wrong foot here, Madonna, but just explain to me why the fuck I'm talking to you. No offense."
"None taken." He's a lot less pleasant up close. I start again. "Did Bobby mention he was seeing a psychologist?"
Eddie's mood improves. "Shit no! Tell me more."
"I've been seeing him for about six months. I also think he's been evaluated before but I don't have the records."
"A history of mental illness?better and better." He picks up a ringing telephone and motions for me to carry on. He's trying to conduct two conversations at once.
"Did Bobby tell you why he lost his temper?"
"She took his cab."
"It's hardly a reason."
"You ever tried to get a cab in Holborn on a wet Friday after�noon?" He half chuckles.
"I think there's more to it than that."
Eddie sighs. "Listen, Pollyanna, I don't ask my clients to tell me the truth. I just keep them out of jail so they can go and make the same mistakes all over again."
"The woman?what did she look like?"
"A fucking mess if you look at the photographs."
"How old?"
"Mid-forties. Dark hair..."
"What was she wearing?"
"Just a second." He hangs up the phone and yells to his secretary to get him Bobby's file. Then he rifles through the pages, humming to himself.
"Mid-thigh skirt, high heels, a short jacket ... mutton dressed as lamb if you ask me. Why do you want to know?"
I can't tell him. It's only half an idea.
"What's going to happen to Bobby?"
"Right now he faces prison time. The crown prosecution service won't downgrade the charges."
"Jail isn't going to help him. I can do you a psych report. Maybe I can get him into an anger management program."
"What do you want from me?"
"A written request."
Eddie's pen is already moving. I can't remember the last time I could write that fluidly. He slides it across the desk.
"Thanks for this."
He grunts. "It's a letter not a kidney."
If ever a man had issues. Maybe it's a Napoleon complex or he's trying to compensate for being ugly. He's bored with me now. The subject no longer interests him. I ask my questions quickly.
"Who put up the bail?"
"No idea."
"And who phoned you?"
"He did."
Before I can say anything else, he interrupts.
"Listen, Oprah, I'm due at a Law Society drinks party and I need a pee. This kid is /your/ nutcase; I just defend the sorry fuck. Why don't you take a peek inside his head, see if anything rattles and come back to me. Have a terrific day."
**10**
Julianne is doing her stretching exercises in the spare bedroom. She does these yogalike poses every morning with names that sound like Indian squaws. Babbling Brook meets Running Deer.
A veteran early riser, she is combat ready by 6:30 a.m. Nothing like me. I've been seeing bloody and beaten faces all night in my dreams.
Julianne pads barefoot into the bedroom wearing just a pajama top. She bends to kiss me.
"You had a restless night."
Pressing her head against my chest, she lets her fingers go tap-dancing up my spine until she feels me shiver. She is reminding me that she knows every square inch of me.
"Remember I told you about Charlie singing carols with the choir?"
"Uh-huh."
"Apparently young Ryan Fraser kissed her on the bus on the way home."
"Cheeky devil."
"It wasn't easy. Three of her friends had to help her catch him and hold him down."
We laugh and I pull her on top of me, letting her feel my erec�tion against her thigh.
"Stay in bed."
She laughs and slides away. "No. I'm too busy."
"C'mon."
"It's not the right time. You have to save your fellas."
My "fellas" are my sperm. She makes them sound like para�troopers.
She's getting dressed. White bikini pants slide along her legs and snap into place. Then she raises the shirt over her head and shrugs her shoulders into the straps of a bra. She won't risk giving me an�other kiss. I might not let her go next time.
After she's gone I stay in bed listening to her move through the house, her feet hardly touching the floor. I hear the kettle being filled and the milk being collected from the front step. I hear the freezer door open and the toaster being pushed down.
Dragging myself upright, I take six paces to the bathroom and turn on the shower. The boiler in the basement belches and the pipes clunk and gargle. I stand shivering on the cold tiles waiting for some sign of water. The showerhead is shaking. At any moment I expect the tiles to start coming loose from around the taps.
After two coughs and a hacking spit, a cloudy trickle emerges and then dies.
"The boiler is broken again," yells Julianne from downstairs.
Great! Brilliant! Somewhere there is a plumber laughing at me. He's no doubt telling all his plumber mates how he pretended to fix a Jurassic boiler and charged enough to pay for a fortnight in Florida.
I shave with cold water, using a fresh razor, without cutting my�self. It may seem like a small victory, but worth noting.
I emerge into the kitchen and watch Julianne make plunger cof�fee and put posh jam on a piece of whole-wheat toast. I always feel childish eating my Rice Krispies.
I still remember the first time I saw her. She was in her first year studying languages at the University of London. I was doing my post�graduate degree. Not even my mother would call me handsome. I had curly brown hair, a pear-shaped nose and skin that freckled at the first hint of sunlight.
I had stayed on at university determined to sleep with every promiscuous, terminally uncommitted first-year on campus, but un�like other would-be lotharios I tried too hard. I even failed miserably at being fashionably unkempt and seditious. No matter how many times I slept on someone's floor, using my jacket as a pillow, it re�fused to crumple or stain. And instead of appearing grungy and in�tellectually blase, I looked like someone on his way to his first job interview.
"You had passion," she told me later, after listening to me rail against the evils of apartheid at a rally in Trafalgar Square, outside the South African embassy. She introduced herself in the pub and let me pour her a double from the bottle of whiskey we were drinking.
Jock was there?getting all the girls to sign his T-shirt. I knew that he would find Julianne. She was a
fresh face?a pretty one. He put his arm around her waist and said, "I could grow to be a better person just being near you."
Without a flicker of a smile, she took his hand away and said, "Sadly, a hard-on doesn't count as personal growth."
Everybody laughed except Jock. Then Julianne sat down at my table and I gazed at her in wonderment. I had never seen anyone put my best friend in his place so skillfully.
I tried not to blush when she said I had passion. She laughed. She had a dark freckle on her bottom lip. I wanted to kiss it.
Five doubles later she was asleep at the bar. I carried her to a cab and took her home to my bedsit in Islington. She slept on the futon and I took the sofa. In the morning she kissed me and thanked me for being such a gentleman. Then she kissed me again. I remember the look in her eyes. It wasn't lust. It didn't say "Let's have some fun and see what happens." Her eyes were telling me, "I'm going to be your wife and have your babies."
We were always an odd couple. I was the quiet, practical one, who hated noisy parties, pub crawls and going home for weekends. While she was the only child of a painter father and interior designer mother, who dressed like sixties flower children and only saw the best in people, Julianne didn't go to parties?they came to her.
We married three years later. By then I was house-trained?hav�ing learned to put my dirty washing in the basket, to leave the toilet seat down and not to drink too much at dinner parties. Julianne didn't so much knock off my rough edges as fashion me out of clay.
That was sixteen years ago. Seems like yesterday.
Julianne pushes a newspaper toward me. There's a photograph of Catherine and the headline reads: TORTURED GIRL IS MP's NIECE.
Junior Home Office minister Samuel McBride has been devastated by the brutal murder of his 2 7-year-old niece.
The Labour MP for Brighton-le-Sands was clearly upset yester�day when the Speaker of the House expressed the chamber's sincerest condolences at his loss.
Catherine McBride's naked body was found six days ago beside the Grand Union Canal in Kensal Green, West London. She had been stabbed repeatedly.
"At this moment we are concentrating on retracing Catherine's final movements and finding anyone who may have seen her in the days prior to her death," said Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, who is leading the investigation.
"We know she took a train from Liverpool to London on Wednesday, 13 November. We believe she was coming to London for a job interview."
Catherine, whose parents are divorced, worked as a community nurse in Liverpool and had been estranged from her family for a number of years.
"She had a difficult childhood and seemed to lose her way," explained a family friend. "Recently attempts had been made for a family reconciliation."
Julianne pours half a cup of coffee.
"It's quite strange, don't you think, that Catherine should turn up after all these years?"
"How do you mean strange?"
"I don't know." She shivers slightly. "I mean, she caused us all those problems. You nearly lost your job. I remember how angry you were."
"She was hurting."
"She was spiteful."
She glances at the photograph of Catherine. It's a shot of her graduation day as a nurse. She's smiling fit to bust and clutching a diploma in her hand. "And now she's back again. The police ask you to help identify her and then you get that strange letter from her..."
"A coincidence is just a couple of things happening simulta�neously."
She rolls her eyes. "Spoken like a true psychologist."
It has been three days since I handed Ruiz the letter and I saw the look on his face that was a mixture of self-satisfaction and suspicion. He had picked up the single page and envelope by the corners and slipped each into a plastic ziplock bag.
I haven't said anything to Julianne but I think the police are watching me. An unmarked police car was parked outside the office yesterday. I saw two detectives talking to the receptionist at the front desk. At lunchtime I went Christmas shopping in Tottenham Court Road and they were there again.
A part of me felt like walking up to them and introducing my�self. I wanted them to /know/ I had found them out. Then I contemplated whether that wasn't their whole idea. They wanted me to see them.
I can't be bothered with cat-and-mouse games. It is inconceiv�able that I could be a suspect. Why are they wasting their time and resources on me? Yet as skeptical as I am, I feel the same imperative to explore Catherine's death. I want to empty drawers, peer under sofas and turn things upside down until I find the answers.
Bobby Moran intercepts me as I cross the lobby. He looks even more disheveled than normal, with mud on his overcoat and papers bulging from his pockets. I wonder if he's been waiting for sleep or something bad to happen.
Blinking rapidly behind his glasses, he mumbles an apology. "I have to see you."
I glance over his head at the clock on the wall. "I have another patient..."
"Please?"
I should say no. I can't have people just turning up. Meena will be furious. She could run a perfectly good office if it weren't for pa�tients turning up unannounced or not keeping appointments. "That's not the way to pack a suitcase," she'd say and I'd agree with her, even if I don't completely understand what she means.
Upstairs, I tell Bobby to sit down and set about rearranging my morning. He looks embarrassed to have caused such a fuss. He is dif�ferent today?less grounded, living in the here and now.
He is dressed in his work clothes?a gray shirt and trousers. The word Nevaspring is sewn onto the breast pocket. I write a new page for notes, struggling to loop each letter, and then look up to see if he's ready. That's when I realize he'll never be entirely ready. Jock is right?there is something fragile and erratic about Bobby. His mind is full of half-finished ideas, strange facts and snatches of conversa�tion.
"Why did you want to see me?"
Bobby stares at a spot on the floor between his feet. "You asked me about what I dream."
"Yes."
"I think there's something wrong with me. I keep having these thoughts."
"What thoughts?"
"I hurt people in my dreams."
"How do you hurt them?"
He looks up at me plaintively. "I try to stay awake ... I don't want to fall asleep. Arky keeps telling me to come to bed. She can't understand why I'm watching TV at four in the morning, wrapped in a duvet on the sofa. It's because of the dreams."
"What about them?"
"Bad things happen in them?that doesn't make me a bad per�son."
He is perched on the edge of the chair, with his eyes flicking from side to side.
"There's a girl in a red dress. She keeps turning up when I don't expect to see her."
"In your dream?"
"Yes. She just looks at me?right through me as though I don't exist. She's laughing."
His eyes snap wide as though spring-loaded and his tone sud�denly changes. Spinning around in his chair, he presses his lips to�gether and crosses his legs. I hear a harsh feminine voice.
"Now Bobby, don't tell lies."
?"I'm not a blabbermouth."
"Did he touch you or not?"
?"No."
"That's not what Mr. Erskine wants to hear."
?"Don't make me say it."
"We don't want to waste Mr. Erskine's time. He's come all this way..."
?"I know why he's come."
"Don't use that tone of voice with me, sweetie. It's not very nice."
Bobby puts his big hands in his pockets and kicks at the floor with his shoes. He speaks in a timid whisper, with his chin pressed to his chest.
?"Don't make me say it."
"Just tell him and then we can have dinner."
?"Please don't make me say..."
He shakes his head, his whole body moves. Raising his eyes to me, I see a flicker of recognition.
"Do you know that a blue whale's testicles are as large as a Volks�wagen Beetle?"
"No, I didn't know that."
"I like whales. They're very easy to draw and to carve."
"Who is Mr. Erskine?"
"Should I know him?"
"You mentioned his name."
He shakes his head and looks at me suspiciously.
"Is he someone you once met?"
"I was born in one world. Now I'm waist-deep in another."
"What does that mean?"
"I had to hold things together, hold things together."
He's not listening to me. His mind is moving so quickly that it can't grasp any subject for more than a few seconds.
"You were telling me about your dream ... a girl in a red dress. Who is she?"
"Just a girl."
"Do you know her?"
"Her arms are bare. She lifts them up and brushes her fingers through her hair. I see the scars."
"What do these scars look like?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does!"
Tipping his head to one side, Bobby runs his finger down the in�side of his shirtsleeve from his elbow to his wrist. Then he looks back at me. Nothing registers in his eyes. Is he talking about Catherine McBride?
"How did she get these scars?"
"She cut herself."
"How do you know that?"
"A lot of people do."
Bobby unbuttons his shirt cuffs and slowly rolls the sleeve along his left forearm. Turning his palm up, he holds it out toward me. The thin white scars are faint but unmistakable.
"They're like a badge of honor," he whispers.
"Bobby, listen to me." I lean forward. "What happens to the girl in your dream?"
Panic fills his eyes like a growing fever.
"I don't remember."
"Do you know this girl?"
He shakes his head.
"What color hair does she have?"
"Brown."
"What color eyes?"
He shrugs.
"You said you hurt people in your dreams. Did this girl get hurt?"
The question is too direct and confrontational. He looks at me suspiciously.
"Why are you staring at me like that? Are you taping this? Are you stealing my words?" He peers from side to side.
"No."
"Well, why are you staring at me?"
Then I realize that he's talking about the Parkinson's mask. Jock had warned me of the possibility. My face can become totally unre�sponsive and expressionless like an Easter Island statue.
