Michael Robotham

by Suspect

  Everything about my mother denotes her standing as a doctor's wife, right down to her box-pleated skirts, unpatterned blouses and low-heeled shoes. A creature of habit, she even carries a handbag when taking the dog for a walk.

  She can arrange a dinner party for twelve in the time it takes to boil an egg. She also does garden parties, school fetes, church jam�borees, charity fund-raisers, bridge tournaments, rummage sales, walkathons, christenings, weddings and funerals. Yet for all this abil�ity, she has managed to get through life without balancing a check�book, making an investment decision or proffering a political opinion in public. She leaves such matters to my father.

  Every time I contemplate my mother's life I am appalled by the waste and unfulfilled promise. At eighteen she won a mathematics scholarship to Cardiff University. At twenty-five she wrote a thesis that had American universities hammering at her door. What did she do? She married my father and settled for a life of cultivating con�vention and making endless compromises.

  I like to imagine her doing a Shirley Valentine and running off with a Greek waiter, or writing a steamy romantic novel. One day she is going to suddenly toss aside her prudence, self-discipline and correctness. She will go dancing barefoot in daisy fields and trekking through the Himalayas. These are nice thoughts. They're certainly better than imagining her growing old listening to my father rant at the TV screen or read aloud the letters he's written to newspapers.

  That's what he's doing now?writing a letter. He only reads /The Guardian/ when he stays with us, but "that red rag" as he refers to it, gives him enough material for at least a dozen letters.

  My mother is in the kitchen with Julianne discussing tomorrow's menu. At some stage in the previous twenty-four hours it was de�cided to make Sunday lunch a family get-together. Two of my sisters are coming, with their husbands and solemn children. Only Rebecca will escape. She's in Bosnia working for the UN. Bless her.

  My Saturday morning chores now involve moving a ton of plumbing equipment from the front hallway into the basement. Then I have to rake the leaves, oil the swing and get two more bags of coal from the local garage. Julianne is going to shop for the food, while Charlie and her grandparents go to look at the Christmas lights in Oxford Street.

  My other chore is to buy a tree?a thankless task. The only truly well-proportioned Christmas trees are the ones they use in adver�tisements. If you try to find one in real life you face inevitable dis�appointment. Your tree will lean to the left or the right. It will be too bushy at the base, or straggly at the top. It will have bald patches, or the branches on either side will be oddly spaced. Even if you do, by some miracle, find a perfect tree, it won't fit in the car and by the time you strap it to the roof rack and drive home the branches are broken or twisted out of shape. You wrestle it through the door, gagging on pine needles and sweating profusely, only to hear the mad�dening question that resonates down from countless Christmases past: "Is that really the best one you could find?"

  Charlie's cheeks are pink with the cold and her arms are draped in polished paper bags full of new clothes and a pair of shoes.

  "I got heels, Dad. Heels!"

  "How high?"

  "Only this much." She holds her thumb and forefinger apart.

  "I thought you were a tomboy," I tease.

  "They're not pink," she says sternly. "And I didn't get any dresses."

  God's-personal-physician-in-waiting is pouring himself a scotch and getting annoyed because my mother is chatting with Julianne in�stead of bringing him some ice. Charlie is excitedly opening bags.

  Then she suddenly stops. "The tree! It's lovely."

  "So it should be. It took me three hours to find."

  I have to stop myself telling her the whole story about my friend from the Greek deli in Chalk Farm Road, who told me about a guy who supplies trees to "half of London" from the back of a three-ton truck.

  The whole enterprise sounded pretty dodgy, but for once I didn't care. I wanted to get a flawless specimen and that's what it is?a pyramid of pine-scented perfection, with a straight trunk and per�fectly spaced branches.

  Since getting home I have been wandering back and forth to the sitting room, marveling at the tree. Julianne is getting slightly fed up with me saying "Isn't that a great tree?" and expecting a response.

  God's-personal-physician-in-waiting is telling me his solution to traffic congestion in central London. I'm waiting for him to com�ment on the tree. I don't want to prompt him. He's talking about banning all delivery trucks in the West End except for designated hours. Then he starts complaining about shoppers who walk too slowly and suggests a fast- and slow-lane system.

  "I found a tree today!" I interject, unable to wait. He stops abruptly and looks over his shoulder. He stands and examines it more closely, walking from side to side. Then he stands back to best appreciate the overall symmetry.

  Clearing his throat, he asks, "Is it the best one they had?"

  "No! They had dozens of better ones! Hundreds! This was one of the worst; the absolute pits; the bottom of the barrel. I felt sorry for it. That's why I brought it home. I adopted a lousy Christmas tree."

  He looks surprised. "It isn't /that/ bad."

  "You're fucking unbelievable," I mutter under my breath, unable to stay in the same room. Why do our parents have the ability to make us feel like children even when our hair is graying and we have a mortgage that feels like a Third World debt?

  I retreat to the kitchen and pour myself a drink. My father has only been here for ten hours and already I'm hitting the bottle. At least reinforcements arrive tomorrow.

  I was always running in my childhood nightmares?trying to escape a monster or a rabid dog or perhaps a Neanderthal second-rower for�ward with no front teeth and cauliflower ears. I would wake just be�fore getting caught. It didn't make me feel any safer. That is the problem with nightmares. Nothing is resolved. We rouse ourselves in midair or just before the bomb goes off or stark naked in a public place.

  I have been lying in the dark for five hours. Every time I think nice thoughts and begin drifting off to sleep, I jump awake in a panic. It's like watching a trashy horror movie that is laughably bad, but just oc�casionally there is a scene that frightens the bejesus out of you.

  Mostly I'm trying not to think about Bobby Moran because when I think about him it leads me to Catherine McBride and that's a place I don't want to go. I wonder if Bobby is in custody, or if they're watching him. I have this picture in my head of a van with blacked-out windows parked outside his place.

  People can't really sense when they're being watched?not with�out some clue or recognizing something untoward. However, Bobby doesn't operate on the same wavelength as most people. He picks up different signals. A psychotic can believe the TV is talking to him and will question why workmen are repairing phone lines over the road, or why there's a van with blacked-out windows parked outside.

  Maybe none of this is happening. With all the new technology, perhaps Ruiz can find everything he needs by simply typing Bobby's name into a computer and accessing the private files that every con�spiracy theorist is convinced the government keeps on the nation's citizens.

  "Don't think about it. Just go to sleep," Julianne whispers. She can sense when I'm worried about something. I haven't had a proper night's sleep since Charlie was born. You get out of the habit after a while. Now I have these pills, which are making things worse.

  Julianne is lying on her side, with the sheet tucked between her thighs and one hand resting on the pillow next to her face. Charlie does the same thing when she's sleeping. They barely make a sound or stir at all. It's as though they don't want to leave a footprint in their dreams.

  By midmorning the house is full of cooking smells and feminine chatter. I'm expected to set the fire and sweep the front steps. In�stead, I sneak around to the newsstands and collect the morning papers.

  Back in my study, I set aside the supplements and magazines and begin looking for stori
es on Catherine. I'm just about to sit down when I notice one of Charlie's bug-eyed goldfish is floating upside down in the aquarium. For a moment I think it might be some sort of neat goldfish trick, but on closer inspection it doesn't look too hale and hearty. It has gray speckles on its scales?evidence of an ex�otic fish fungus.

  Charlie doesn't take death very well. Middle Eastern kingdoms have shorter periods of mourning. Scooping up the fish in my hand, I stare at the poor creature. I wonder if she'll believe it just disap�peared. She /is/ only eight. Then again, she doesn't believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny anymore. How could I have bred such a cynic?

  "Charlie, I have some bad news. One of your goldfish has disap�peared."

  "How could it just disappear?"

  "Well, actually it died. I'm sorry."

  "Where is it?"

  "You don't really want to see it, do you?"

  "Yes."

  The fish is still in my hand, which is in my pocket. When I open my palm it seems more like a magic trick than a solemn deed.

  "At least you didn't try to buy me a new one," she says.

  Being very organized, Julianne has a whole collection of shoe boxes and drawstring bags that she keeps for this sort of death in the family. With Charlie looking on, I bury the bug-eyed goldfish under the plum tree, between the late Harold Hamster, a mouse known only as Mouse and a baby sparrow that flew into the French doors and broke its neck.

  By one o'clock most of the family has assembled, except for my older sister, Lucy, and her husband, Eric, who have three children whose names I can never remember, but I know they end with an "ee" sound like Debbie, Jimmy or Bobby.

  God's-personal-physician-in-waiting had wanted Lucy to name her oldest boy after him. He liked the idea of a third generation Joseph. Lucy held firm and called him something else?Andy maybe, or Gary, or Freddy.

  They're always late. Eric is an air-traffic controller and the most absentminded person I have ever met. It's frightening. He keeps for�getting where we live and has to phone up and ask for directions every time he visits. How on earth does he keep dozens of planes apart in the air? Whenever I book a flight out of Heathrow I feel like ringing up Lucy in advance and asking whether Eric is working.

  My middle sister, Patricia, is in the kitchen with her new man, Si�mon, a criminal lawyer who works for one of those TV series that exposes miscarriages of justice. Patricia's divorce has come through and she's celebrating with champagne.

  "I hardly think it warrants Bellinger," says my father.

  "Whyever not?" she says, taking a quick slurp before it bubbles over.

  I decide to rescue Simon. Nobody deserves this sort of introduc�tion to our family. We take our drinks into the sitting room and make small talk. Simon has a jolly round face and keeps slapping his stom�ach like a department store Santa. "Sorry to hear about the old Parkinson's," he says. "Terrible business."

  My heart sinks. "Who told you?"

  "Patricia."

  "How did she know?"

  Suddenly realizing his mistake, Simon starts apologizing. There have been some depressing moments in the past month, but none quite so depressing as standing in front of a complete stranger, who is drinking my scotch and feeling sorry for me.

  Who else knows?

  The doorbell rings. Eric, Lucy and the "ee" children come bustling in, with lots of vigorous handshakes and cheek kisses. Lucy takes one look at me and her bottom lip starts to tremble. She throws her arms around me and I feel her body shaking against my chest. "I'm really sorry, Joe. So, so sorry."

  My chin is resting on the top of her head. Eric puts his out�stretched hand on my shoulder as if giving me a papal blessing. I don't think I have ever been so embarrassed.

  The rest of the afternoon stretches out before me like a four-hour sociology lecture. When I get tired of answering questions about my health, I retreat to the garden where Charlie is playing with the "ee" children. She is showing them where we buried the goldfish. I finally remember their names, Harry, Perry and Jenny.

  Harry is only a toddler and looks like a miniature Michelin man in his padded jacket and woolen hat. I toss him in the air, making him giggle. The other children are grabbing my legs, pretending I'm a monster. I spy Julianne looking wistfully out the French doors. I know what she's thinking.

  After lunch we retire to the sitting room and Julianne organizes coffee and tea. Everyone says nice things about the tree and my mother's fruitcake.

  "Let's play Who Am I?" says Charlie, whose mouth is speckled with crumbs. She doesn't hear the collective groan. Instead, she hands out pens and paper, while breathlessly explaining the rules.

  "You all have to think of someone famous. They don't have to be real. It can be a cartoon character, or a movie star. It could even be Lassie..."

  "That's my choice gone."

  She scowls at me. "Don't let anyone see the name you write. Then you stick the paper on someone else's forehead. They have to guess who they are."

  The game turns out to be a scream. God's-personal-physician-in-waiting can't understand why everybody laughs so uproariously at the name on his forehead: Grumpy from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

  I'm actually beginning to enjoy myself when the doorbell rings and Charlie dashes out to answer it. Lucy and Patricia start clearing the cups and plates.

  "You don't look like a policeman," says Charlie.

  "I'm a detective."

  "Does that mean you have a badge?"

  "Do you want to see it?"

  "Maybe I should."

  Ruiz is reaching into his inside jacket pocket when I reach the door.

  "We've taught her to be careful," I say apologetically.

  "That's very wise." He smiles at Charlie and looks fifteen years younger. For a brief moment I think he might ruffle her hair, but people don't do that so much nowadays.

  Ruiz looks past me into the hall and apologizes for disturb�ing me.

  "Is there something I can do for you?"

  "Yes," he mumbles and then pats at his pockets as though he's written a note to remind himself.

  "Would you like to come in?"

  "If that's OK."

  I lead him to my study and offer to take his coat. Catherine's notes are still open on my desk where I left them.

  "Doing a little homework?"

  "I just wanted to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything."

  "And had you?"

  "No."

  "You could let me be the judge of that."

  "Not this time." I close the notebooks and put them away.

  Walking around my desk, he glances at my bookcases, studying the various photographs and my souvenir water pipe from Syria.

  "Where has he been?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You said that my murderer didn't start with Catherine, so where has he been?"

  "Practicing."

  "On whom?"

  "I don't know."

  Ruiz is now at the window, looking across the garden. He rolls his shoulders and the starched collar of his shirt presses under his ears. I want to ask him what he's learned about Bobby, but he inter�rupts me.

  "Is he going to kill again?"

  I don't want to answer. Hypothetical situations are perilous. He senses me pulling back and won't let me escape. I have to say /some�thing/.

  "At the moment he is still thinking about Catherine and how she died. When those memories begin to fade, he may go looking for new experiences to feed his fantasies."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "His actions were relaxed and deliberate. He wasn't out of con�trol or consumed by anger or desire. He was calm, considered, almost euphoric in his planning."

  "Where are these other victims? Why haven't we found them?"

  "Maybe you haven't established a link."

  Ruiz flinches and squares his shoulders. He resents the inference that he's missed something important. At the same time he's not go�ing to jeopardize the investigation because of overween
ing pride. He /wants/ to understand.

  "You're looking for clues in the method and symbolism, but these can only come from comparing crimes. Find another victim and you may find a pattern."

  Ruiz grinds his teeth as though wearing them down. What else can I give him?

  "He knows the area. It took time to bury Catherine. He knew there were no houses overlooking that part of the canal. And he knew what time of night the towpath was deserted."

  "So he lives locally."

  "Or used to."

  Ruiz is seeing how the facts support the theory, trying them on for size. People are moving downstairs. A toilet flushes. A child cries in anger.

  "But why would he choose such a public place? He could have hidden her in the middle of nowhere."

  "He wasn't hiding her. He /let/ you have Catherine."

  "Why?"

  "Maybe he's proud of his handiwork or he's giving you a sneak preview."

  Ruiz grimaces. "I don't know how you do your job. How can you walk around knowing sick fucks like that are on the loose? How can you live inside their heads?" He crosses his arms and jams his hands under his armpits. "Then again, maybe you enjoy that sort of shit."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You tell me. Is it a game for you, playing detective? Showing me one patient's file and not another's. Phoning up and asking me ques�tions. Are you enjoying this?"

  "I ... I didn't ask to be brought into this."

  He enjoys my anger. In the silence I hear laughter downstairs.

  "I think you had better leave."

  He regards me with satisfaction and physical superiority, before taking his coat and descending the stairs. Exhausted, I can visualize my energy draining away.

  At the front door, Ruiz turns down the collar of his jacket and looks back at me.

  "In the hunt, Professor, there are foxes and there are hounds and there are hunt saboteurs. Which one are you?"

  "I don't believe in foxhunting."

  "Is that right? Neither does the fox."

  When our guests have gone, Julianne sends me upstairs to have a bath. Some time later I'm aware of her sliding into bed beside me. She turns and nestles backward until her body molds into mine. Her hair smells of apple and cinnamon.