Michael Robotham

by Suspect

  "And you'll still see me?" he asks.

  "Yes."

  He buttons his coat and nods his approval. I walk with him down the corridor and we share a lift. "Have you ever had absences like this before?" I ask.

  "What do you mean, 'absences'?"

  "Gaps in your memory where time seems to disappear."

  "It happened about a month ago."

  "Do you remember which day?"

  He nods. "That hate had to be emptied."

  The main doors of the hospital are open. On the front steps Bobby turns and thanks me. There is that smell again. I know what it is now. Chloroform.

  **14**

  Chloroform is a colorless liquid, half again as dense as water, with an etherlike odor and a taste forty times sweeter than sugarcane. It is an important organic solvent mainly used in industry.

  The Scottish physician Sir James Simpson of Edinburgh was the first to use it as an anesthetic in 1847. Six years later the English physician John Snow gave it to Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold, her eighth child.

  A few drops on a mask or a cloth are usually enough to pro�duce surgical anesthesia within a few minutes. The patient awakens in 10-15 minutes, groggy but with very little nausea or vomiting. It is highly dangerous and causes fatal cardiac paralysis in about one in 3,000 cases...

  Closing the encyclopedia, I slip it back onto a shelf and scribble a note to myself. Why would Bobby Moran have chloroform on his clothes? What possible use would he have for an industrial solvent or an anesthetic? I seem to remember that chloroform is sometimes used in cough medicines and anti-itching creams, but the quantities aren't enough to create the unique odor.

  Bobby said he worked as a courier. Maybe he delivers industrial solvents. I will ask him at our next session, if Major Tom is in touch with ground control by then.

  I can hear banging coming from downstairs in the basement. D.J. and his apprentice are still working on the boiler. Apparently our en�tire internal plumbing system was put together by a maniac with a fetish for bending pipes. The inside of our walls looks like a modern sculpture. God knows how much it's going to cost.

  In the kitchen, having poured a coffee, I sit next to Charlie at the breakfast bar. She props her library book against a box of cereal. My morning paper is resting against the orange juice.

  Charlie is playing a game?mimicking everything I do. When I take a bite of toast, she does the same. When I sip my coffee, she sips her tea. She even cocks her head the same way I do when I'm trying to read newsprint that has disappeared into the fold of the paper.

  "Are you finished with the marmalade?" she asks waving her hand in front of my face.

  "Yes. Sorry."

  "You were away with the pixies."

  "They send their regards."

  Julianne emerges from the laundry, brushing a stray strand of hair from her forehead. The tumble dryer is rumbling in the back�ground. We used to have breakfast together?drinking plunger cof�fee and swapping sections of the morning paper. Now she doesn't stop for long enough.

  She packs the dishwasher and puts my pill in front of me.

  "What happened at the hospital?"

  "One of my patients had a fall. He's OK."

  She frowns. "You were going to do fewer emergency calls."

  "I know. Just this once."

  She takes a bite from a quarter of toast and starts packing Char�lie's lunch box. I smell her perfume and notice that she's wearing new jeans and her best jacket.

  "Where are you off to?"

  "I have my seminar on 'Understanding Islam.' You promised to be home by four o'clock for Charlie."

  "I can't. I have an appointment."

  She's annoyed at me. "Someone has to be here."

  "I can be home by five."

  "OK, I'll see if I can find a sitter."

  I call Ruiz from the office. In the background I can hear the dredg�ing equipment and the sound of running water. The moment I an�nounce myself I also hear a telltale electronic click. I contemplate whether he's recording our conversation.

  "I wanted to ask you something about Catherine McBride."

  "Yeah?"

  "How many stab wounds were there?"

  "Twenty-one."

  "Did the pathologist find any traces of chloroform?"

  "You read the report."

  "There wasn't any mention of it."

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "It's probably not important."

  He sighs. "Say, let's do a deal. Stop ringing me up asking bullshit questions and I'll waive that unpaid parking fine of yours."

  Before I can apologize for troubling him, I hear someone calling his name. He grunts a thanks-for-nothing and hangs up. The man has the communication skills of a mortician.

  Fenwick is lurking in my waiting room, glancing at his gold Rolex. We're going to lunch in Mayfair at his favorite restaurant. It is one of those places that gets written up in the Sunday supplements because the chef is temperamental, handsome and dates a supermodel.

  I'm never quite sure what these lunches are about. Usually, he's trying to convince me to invest in a property deal or a start-up biotech company. He has absolutely no concept of money or, more important, of how little most people earn and the size of their mort�gages.

  Today Fenwick is trying extra hard to be affable. The waiter ar�rives and Fenwick delivers precise instructions as to how he wants his meal prepared, right down to suggesting oven temperatures and whether the meat should be tenderized in advance. If the waiter has any sense he'll make sure these instructions never reach the kitchen.

  Although he's probably the last person I would normally ask for advice, Fenwick is here and the conversation reaches a lull.

  "I have a hypothetical question for you," I say, folding and un�folding my napkin. "If you had a patient who you suspected might have committed a serious crime, what would you do?"

  Fenwick looks alarmed. He glances over his shoulder as if wor�ried someone might have overheard.

  "Do you have any evidence?" he whispers.

  "Not really ... more a gut instinct."

  "How serious a crime?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps the most serious."

  Fenwick leans forward and cups a hand over his mouth. He couldn't be more conspicuous. "You must tell the police, old boy."

  "What about doctor-patient confidentiality? If patients don't trust me, I can't help them. It lies at the heart of everything I do."

  "It doesn't apply. Remember the Tarasoff precedent."

  Tarasoff was a university student murdered by her ex-boyfriend in California in the late sixties. During a therapy session her boy�friend had told a university psychologist that he planned to kill her. The murdered girl's parents sued the psychologist for negligence and won the case.

  Fenwick is still talking, his nose twitching nervously. "You have a duty to divulge confidential information if a client communicates a plausible intention to do serious harm to a third party."

  "Exactly, but what if he's made no threat against a specific per�son."

  "I don't think that matters."

  "Yes it does. We have a duty to protect /intended/ victims from harm, but only if the patient has communicated the threat of vio�lence and actually identified someone."

  "You're splitting hairs."

  "No I'm not."

  "So we leave a killer roaming the streets."

  "I don't know if he's a killer."

  "Shouldn't you let the police decide?"

  Maybe Fenwick is right, but what if I'm jumping to the wrong conclusion? Confidentiality is an integral part of clinical psychology. If I reveal details of my sessions with Bobby without his consent, I'm breaking about a dozen regulations. I could end up being disciplined by my association or facing a lawsuit.

  How confident am I that Bobby is dangerous? He attacked the woman in the cab. His clothes smelled of chloroform. Other than that I have his psychotic ramblings about windmills and a girl in
a red dress with scars on her arms.

  Our food arrives and the conversation ebbs and flows over fa�miliar territory. Fenwick tells me about his latest investments and holiday plans. I sense that he's building up to something but can't find an opening in the conversation that moves us smoothly onto the subject.

  Finally over coffee he plunges in.

  "There's something I'd like to ask you, Joe. I'm not the sort of chap who usually asks for favors, but I have one to ask of you."

  My mind is automatically working out how to say no. I can't think of a solitary reason why Fenwick might need my help.

  Weighed down by the gravity of the request, he starts the same sentence several times. Eventually, he explains that he and Geraldine, his longtime girlfriend, have become engaged.

  "Good for you! Congratulations!"

  He raises his hand to interrupt me. "Yes, well, we're getting mar�ried in June in West Sussex. Her father has an estate there. I wanted to ask you ... well ... what I wanted to say ... I meant ... I would be honored if you would acquiesce to being my best man."

  For a brief moment I'm worried I might laugh. I barely know Fenwick. We have worked in adjacent offices for two years, but apart from these occasional lunches we have never socialized or shared a round of golf or a game of tennis. I vaguely remember meeting Geraldine at an office Christmas party. Until then I had harbored suspicions that Fenwick might be a bachelor dandy of the old school.

  "Surely there must be someone else..."

  "Well, yes of course. I just thought ... well, I just thought..." Fenwick is blinking rapidly, a picture of misery.

  Then it dawns on me. For all his name-dropping, social climbing and overweening pride, Fenwick hasn't any friends. Why else would he choose me to be his best man?

  "Of course," I say. "As long as you're sure..."

  Fenwick is so excited I think he's going to embrace me. He reaches across the table and grasps my hand, shaking it furiously. His smile is so pitiful that I want to take him home like I might a stray dog.

  On the walk back to the office he suggests all sorts of things we can do together, including arranging a stag night. "We could use some of your vouchers from your lectures," he says sheepishly.

  I am suddenly reminded of a lesson I learned on my first day at boarding school, aged eight. The very first child to introduce himself will be the one with the fewest friends. Fenwick is /that/ boy.

  **15**

  Elisa opens the door wearing a Thai silk robe. Light spills from be�hind her, outlining her body beneath the fabric. I try to concentrate on her face, but my eyes betray me.

  "Why are you so late? I thought you were coming hours ago."

  "Traffic."

  She sizes me up in the doorway, as if not quite sure whether to let me inside. Then she turns and I follow her down the hall, watch�ing her hips slide beneath her robe.

  Elisa lives in a converted printing factory in Ladbroke Grove, not far from the Grand Union Canal. Unpainted beams and timber joists crisscross each other in a sort of bonsai version of a Tudor cottage.

  The place is full of old rugs and antique furniture that she had sent down from Yorkshire when her mother died. Her pride and joy is an Elizabethan love seat with elaborately carved arms and legs. A dozen china dolls, with delicately painted faces, sit demurely on the seat as if waiting for someone to ask them to dance.

  She pours me a drink and settles onto the sofa, patting a spot be�side her. She notices me pause and pulls a face.

  "I thought something was wrong. Usually I get a kiss on the cheek."

  "I'm sorry."

  She laughs and crosses her legs. I feel something shred inside me.

  "Christ, you look tense. What you need is a massage."

  She pulls me down and slides behind me, driving her fingers into the knotted muscles between my shoulder blades. Her legs are stretched out around me and I can feel the soft crinkle of her public hair against the small of my back.

  "I shouldn't have come."

  "Why did you?"

  "I wanted to apologize. It was my fault. I started something that I shouldn't have started."

  "OK."

  "You don't mind?"

  "You were a good fuck."

  "I don't want you to see it like that."

  "What was it then?"

  I contemplate this for a moment. "We had a brief encounter."

  She laughs. "It wasn't that /fucking/ romantic."

  My toes curl in embarrassment.

  "So what happened?" she asks.

  "I don't think it was fair on you."

  "Or your wife?"

  "Yes."

  "You never told me why you were so upset that night."

  I shrug. "I was just thinking about life and things."

  "Life?"

  "And death."

  "Jesus, not another one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "A married guy who reaches his forties and suddenly starts pon�dering what it all means? I used to get them all the time. Talkers! I should have charged them double. I'd be a rich woman."

  "It's not like that."

  "Well what is it?"

  "What if I told you I had an incurable disease?"

  She stops massaging my neck and turns me to face her. "Is that what you're saying?"

  Suddenly I change my mind. "No. I'm being stupid."

  Elisa is annoyed now. She thinks she's being manipulated. "You know what your problem is?"

  "What's that?"

  "All your life you've been a protected species. Somebody has al�ways looked after you. First it was your mother, then boarding school, then university and then you got married."

  "And your point is?"

  "It's been too easy. Nothing bad has ever happened to you. Bad stuff happens to other people and you pick up the pieces, /but you've/ never crumbled like the rest of us. Do you remember the second time we ever met?"

  Now I'm struggling. I think it was in Holloway Prison. Elisa was twenty-three and had graduated to working for an up-market escort agency. One night she was lured to a hotel in Knightsbridge and raped by six teenage boys celebrating an eighteenth birthday.

  After the first rape she stopped fighting. Instead, she concen�trated on reaching her coat, which lay beneath her on the bed. Her fingers closed around a small knife in the pocket. She stabbed one boy in the buttocks and another in his thigh. The blade was only two inches long so none of the wounds were deep.

  Elisa phoned the police from the hotel lobby. Then she went through the motions of making a complaint. The boys each had a lawyer present as they were interviewed. Their stories were iden�tical.

  The police charged Elisa with malicious wounding while the youths were given a stern talking to by the station sergeant. Six young men?with money, privilege and a walk-up start in life?had raped her with absolute impunity.

  While on remand in Holloway Prison she asked for me by name. She sat on a plastic chair with her head cocked to one side and her hair falling over one eye. Her chipped tooth had been fixed.

  "Do you think that we determine how things turn out in our lives?" she had asked me.

  "Up to a point."

  "And when does that point end?"

  "When something happens that we have no control over: a drunk driver runs a stop sign, or the lotto balls drop in the right order, or rogue cancer cells begin dividing inside us."

  "So we only have a say over the /little/ things?"

  "If we're lucky. You take the Greek playwright Aeschylus. He died when an eagle mistook his bald head for a rock and dropped a tortoise on it. I don't think he saw that coming."

  She laughed. A month later she pleaded guilty and was sen�tenced to two years in jail. She worked in the prison laundry. When�ever she became angry or bitter about what had happened, she opened a dryer door, put her head inside and screamed into the big warm silver drum letting the sound explode into her head.

  Is that what Elisa wants me to remember?my own pithy hom�il
y on why shit happens? She slips off the sofa and pads across the room, looking for her cigarettes.

  "So you came here to tell me that we're not going to fuck any�more."

  "Yes."

  "Did you want to tell me before or after we go to bed?"

  "I'm being serious."

  "I know you are. I'm sorry."

  She lets the cigarette hang from her lips as she reties the sash of her robe. For a brief moment I glimpse a small taut nipple. I can't tell if she's angry, or disappointed. Maybe she doesn't care.

  "Will you read my Home Office submission when I'm finished?" she asks.

  "Of course."

  "And if I need you to give another talk?"

  "I'll be there."

  She kisses my cheek as I leave. I don't want to go. I like this house with its faded rugs, porcelain dolls, tiny fireplace and four-poster bed. Yet already I seem to be disappearing.

  My home is in darkness, except for a light downstairs leaking through the curtains of the sitting room. Inside the air is warm. The fire has been burning in the front room. I can smell the smokeless coal.

  The last of the red embers are glowing in the grate. As I reach for the lamp switch my left hand trembles. I see the silhouette of a head and shoulders in the armchair by the window. Forearms are braced along the wide arms of the chair. Black shoes are flat on the polished wooden floor.

  "We need to talk." Ruiz doesn't bother to stand.

  "How did you get in here?"

  "Your wife said I could wait."

  "/What/ can I do for you?"

  "You can stop pissing me about." He leans forward into the light. His face looks ashen and his voice is tired. "You lied to me. You said the letter arrived last Friday."

  "It did."

  "We analyzed the postmark. It was canceled at a Liverpool post office on the ninth of November. I know people complain about British Post but a first-class stamp guarantees delivery the next work�ing day, not the next working month."

  "There must be some mistake."

  "Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought it might have slipped down the side of the sofa or been lost under a pile of old newspapers for a few weeks."

  He's being sarcastic. "Julianne collected the mail. She put the let�ter on my desk. It arrived on Friday. It must have been held up or ... or..."