Michael Robotham

by Suspect

  "That's not enough, Joe. You broke my heart. Do you know how long I have to wait before I can get an AIDS test? Three months!"

  "Elisa is clear."

  "And how do you know? Did you ask her before you decided not to use a condom? I'm going to hang up now."

  "Wait! Please! How's Charlie?"

  "Fine."

  "What have you told her?"

  "That you're a two-timing shit and a weak, pathetic, self-pitying, self-centered creep."

  "You didn't."

  "No, but I felt like it."

  "I'll be out of town for a few days. The police might ask you questions about where I am. That's why it's best if I don't tell you."

  She doesn't reply.

  "You can get me on my mobile. Call me please. Give Charlie an extra hug from me. I'll go now. I love you."

  I hang up quickly, afraid to hear her silence.

  Locking the door on my way out, I push the heavy key deep into my trouser pocket. Twice on my way down the stairs I feel for it. Instead I find Bobby's whale. I trace its shape with my fingers.

  Outside an icy wind pushes me along Hanover Street toward the Albert Docks. Liverpool reminds me of an old woman's handbag full of bric-a-brac, odds and ends and half-finished packets of hard can�dies. Edwardian pubs squat beside mountainous cathedrals and art-deco office blocks that can't decide which continent they should be on. Some of the more modern buildings have dated so quickly that they look like derelict bingo halls only fit for the bulldozer.

  The Cotton Exchange in Old Hall Street is a grand reminder of when Liverpool was the center of the international cotton trade, feeding the Lancashire spinning industry. When the exchange build�ing opened in 1906 it had telephones, electric lifts, synchronized electric clocks and a direct cable to the New York futures market. Now it houses, among other things, thirty million records of births, deaths and marriages in Lancashire.

  A strange mixture of people queue at the indexes?a class of schoolchildren on an excursion; American tourists on the trail of dis�tant relations; matronly women in tweed skirts; probate researchers and fortune hunters.

  I have a goal. It seems fairly realistic. I queue at the color-coded volumes where I hope to find the registration of Bobby's birth. With this I can get a birth certificate, which will in turn give me the names of his mother and father, and their place of residence and occupa�tions.

  The volumes are stored on metal racks, listed by month and year. The 1970s and 1980s are arranged in quarters for each year, with surnames in alphabetical order. If Bobby has told the truth about his age, I might only have four volumes to search.

  The year should be 1980.1 can find no entry for a Bobby Moran or Robert Moran. I start working through the years on either side, going as far back as 1974 and forward to 1984. Growing frustrated I look at my notes. I wonder if Bobby could have changed the spelling of his name or altered it entirely by deed poll. If so, I'm in trouble.

  At the front information desk I ask to borrow a phone book. I can't tell if I'm charming people with my smile or frightening them. The Parkinson's mask is unpredictable.

  Bobby lied about where he went to school, but perhaps he didn't lie about the name. There are two St. Mary's in Liverpool?only one of them is a junior school. I make a note of the number and find a quiet corner in the foyer to make the call. The secretary has a Scouse accent and sounds like a character in a Ken Loach film.

  "We're closed for Christmas," she says. "I shouldn't even be here. I was just tidying up the office."

  I make up a story about a sick friend who wants to track down his old mates. I'm looking for yearbooks or class photographs from the mid-eighties. She thinks the library has a cupboard full of that sort of thing. I should call back in the New Year.

  "It can't wait that long. My friend is very sick. It's Christmas."

  "I might be able to check," she says sympathetically. "What year are you looking for?"

  "I'm not exactly sure."

  "How old is your friend."

  "Twenty-two."

  "What is his name?"

  "I think his name might have been different back then. That's why I need to see the photographs. I'll be able to recognize him."

  She is suddenly less sure of me. Her suspicion increases when I suggest coming to the school. She wants to ask the headmistress. Better still, I should put my request in writing and send it by post.

  "I don't have time. My friend..."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Wait! Please! Can you just look up a name for me? It's Bobby Moran. He might have worn glasses. He would have started in about 1985."

  She hesitates. After a long pause she suggests that I call her back in twenty minutes.

  I go in search of fresh air. Outside, at the entrance to an alley, a man stands beside a blackened barrow. Every so often he yells, "Roooooost chestnooooots," making it sound as plaintive as a gull's cry. He hands me a brown paper bag and I sit on the steps, peeling the sooty skin from the warm chestnuts.

  One of my fondest memories of Liverpool is the food. The fish and chips and Friday night curries. The jam roly-poly, bread and but�ter pudding, treacle sponge, bangers and mash ... I also loved the odd assortment of people?Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Irish, African and Chinese?good workers, fiercely proud and not afraid to wear their hearts and wipe their noses on the same sleeve.

  The school secretary is less circumspect this time. Her curiosity has been sparked. My search has become hers.

  "I'm sorry, but I couldn't find any Bobby Moran. Are you sure that you don't mean Bobby Morgan? He was here from 1985 to 1988. He left in third grade."

  "Why did he leave?"

  "I'm not sure." Her voice is uncertain. "I wasn't here then. A fam�ily tragedy?" There is someone she can ask, she says. Another teacher. She takes the name of my hotel and promises to leave a message.

  Back at the color-coded volumes I go through the names again. Why would Bobby change his surname by a single letter? Was he breaking with the past or trying to hide from it?

  In the third volume I find an entry for Robert John Morgan. Born 24 September 1980 at Liverpool University Hospital. Mother: Brid�get Elsie Morgan (nee Aherne). Father: Leonard Albert Edward Mor�gan (merchant seaman).

  I still can't be absolutely sure that it's Bobby, but the chances are good. I fill out a pink application form to order a copy of his full birth certificate. The clerical officer behind the glass screen has an ag�gressive chin and flared nostrils. He pushes the form back toward me. "You haven't stated your reasons."

  "I'm tracing my family history."

  "What about your postal address?"

  "I'll pick it up from here."

  Without ever looking up at me, he thumps the applications with a fist-sized stamp. "Come back in the New Year. We close from Mon�day for the holidays."

  "But I can't wait that long."

  He shrugs. "We open until midday on Monday. You could try then."

  Ten minutes later I leave the exchange building with a receipt in my pocket. Three days. I can't wait that long. In the time it takes me to cross the pavement I make a new plan.

  The offices of /The Liverpool Echo/ look like a mirrored Rubik's cube. The foyer is full of pensioners on a day tour. Each has a souvenir bag and a stick-on name tag.

  A young receptionist is sitting on a high stool behind a dark wooden counter. She is small and pale, with curry-colored eyes. To her left is a metal barrier with a swipe-card entry that separates us from the lifts.

  "My name is Professor Joseph O'Loughlin and I was hoping to use your library."

  "I'm sorry but we don't allow public access to the newspaper li�brary." A large bunch of flowers is sitting on the counter beside her.

  "They're lovely," I say.

  "Not mine, I'm afraid. The fashion editor gets all the freebies."

  "I'm sure you get more than your share."

  She knows I'm flirting, but laughs anyway.

  "What if I want to order a photog
raph?" I ask.

  "You fill out one of these forms."

  "What if I don't know the date, or the name of the photographer?"

  She sighs. "You don't really want a photograph, do you?"

  I shake my head. "I'm looking for a death notice."

  "How recently?"

  "About fourteen years."

  She makes me wait while she calls upstairs. Then she asks if I have anything official looking, like a security pass or business card. She slides it into a plastic wallet and pins it to my shirt.

  "The librarian knows you're coming. If anyone asks you what you're doing, say you're researching a story for the medical pages."

  I take the lift to the fourth floor and follow the corridors. Occa�sionally I glimpse a large open-plan newsroom through the swing doors. I keep my head down and try to walk with a sense of purpose. Every so often my leg locks up and swings forward as though in a splint.

  The librarian is in her sixties, with dyed hair and half-glasses that hang around her neck on a chain. She has a rubber thimble on her right thumb for turning pages. Her desk is surrounded by dozens of cacti.

  She notices me looking. "We have to keep it too dry in here for anything else to grow," she explains. "Any moisture will damage the newsprint."

  Long tables are strewn with newspapers. Someone is cutting out stories and placing them in neat piles. Another is reading each story and circling particular names or phrases. A third uses these refer�ences to sort the cuttings into files.

  "We have bound volumes going back 150 years," says the librar�ian. "The cuttings don't last that long. Eventually they fall apart along the edges and crumble into dust."

  "I thought everything would be on computer by now," I say.

  "Only for the past ten years. It's too expensive to scan all the bound volumes. They're being put onto microfilm."

  She turns on a computer terminal and asks me what I need.

  "I'm looking for a death notice published around 1988. Leonard Albert Edward Morgan..."

  "Named after the old king."

  "I think he was a bus conductor. He might have lived or worked in a place called Heyworth Street."

  "In Everton," she says, flicking at a keyboard with two fingers. "Most of the local buses either start or finish at the Pier Head or Par�adise Street."

  I make a note of this on a pad. I concentrate on making the let�ters large and evenly spaced. It reminds me of being back in pre�school?tracing huge letters on cheap paper with crayons that almost rested on your shoulder.

  The librarian leads me through the maze of shelves that stretch from the wooden floor to the sprinklers on the ceiling. Eventually we reach an old oak desk, scarred by cutting blades. A microfiche ma�chine sits at the center. She flicks a switch and the motor begins to hum. Another switch turns on the bulb and a square of light appears on the screen.

  She hands me six boxes of film covering January to June 1988. Threading the first film onto the spools she presses fast-forward, ac�celerating through the pages and knowing almost instinctively when to stop. She points to the public notices and I make a note of the page number, hoping it will be roughly the same each day.

  I trace my finger down the alphabetical listing looking for the let�ter M. Having satisfied myself there are no Morgans, I accelerate for�ward to the next day ... and the next. The focus control is finicky and has to be constantly adjusted. At other times I have to pan back and forth to keep the newspaper columns on-screen.

  Having finished the first batch I collect another six boxes of mi�crofiche from the librarian. The newspapers around Christmas have more pages and take longer to search. As I finish November 1988 my anxiety grows. What if it's not here? I can feel knots in my shoulder blades from leaning forward. My eyes ache.

  The film rolls onto a new day. I find the death notices. For sev�eral seconds I carry on down the page before realizing what I've seen. I go back. There it is! I press my finger on the name as though frightened it might vanish.

  *Lenny A. Morgan,* aged 55, died on Saturday December 10 from burns received in an explosion at the Carnegie Engineering Works. Mr. Morgan, a popular bus conductor at the Green Lane Depot in Stanley, was a former merchant seaman and a prominent union del�egate. He is survived by his sisters, Ruth and Louise, and sons Dafyyd, 19, and Robert, 8. A service will be conducted at 1 p.m. Tuesday at St. James' Church in Stanley. The family requests that memorial tributes take the form of contributions to the Socialist Worker's Party.

  I go back through papers for the week before. An accident like this must have been reported. I find the news story at the bottom of page five. The headline reads: WORKER DIES IN DEPOT BLAST.

  A Liverpool bus conductor has died after an explosion at the Carnegie Engineering Works on Saturday afternoon. Lenny Mor�gan, 55, suffered burns to 80 percent of his body when welding equipment ignited gas fumes. The blast and fire severely damaged the workshop, destroying two buses.

  Mr. Morgan was taken to Rathbone Hospital where he died on Saturday evening without regaining consciousness. The Liverpool coroner has begun an investigation into what caused the explosion.

  Friends and workmates paid tribute to Mr. Morgan yesterday describing him as extremely popular with the traveling public, who enjoyed his eccentricities. "Lenny used to dress in a Santa hat and serenade the passengers with carols at Christmas," said supervisor Bert McMullen.

  At three o'clock I rewind the microfilm, pack it into boxes and thank the librarian for her help. She doesn't ask me if I found what I wanted. She's too busy trying to repair the spine of a bound vol�ume that someone has dropped.

  Despite looking through another two months of newspapers, I found no further references to the accident. There must have been an inquest. As I ride down in the lift I flick through my notes. What am I looking for? Some link to Catherine. I don't know where she grew up, but her grandfather certainly worked in Liverpool. My instincts tell me that she and Bobby met in care?either at a children's home, or at a psych hospital.

  Bobby didn't mention having a brother. Considering that Bridget was only twenty-one when she had Bobby, Dafyyd was either adopted or more likely Lenny had an earlier marriage that produced a son.

  Lenny had two sisters but I only have the maiden name, which makes it harder to find them. Even if they didn't marry, how many Morgans are likely to be in the Liverpool phone book? I don't want to have to go there.

  Pushing through the revolving door, I'm so lost in thought I go around twice before finding the outside. Taking the steps carefully, I fix my bearings and head toward Lime Street Station.

  I hate to admit it, but I'm enjoying this: the search. I'm moti�vated. I have a mission. Last-minute shoppers fill the footpaths and queue for buses. I'm tempted to find the number 96 and see where it takes me. Lucky dips are for people who like surprises. Instead I hail a cab and ask for the Green Lane Bus Depot.

  **8**

  A mechanic holds a carburetor in one blackened hand and gives me directions with the other. The pub is called the Tramway Hotel and Bert McMullen is usually at the bar.

  "How will I recognize him?"

  The mechanic chuckles and turns back to the engine, leaning in�side the bowels of a bus.

  I find the Tramway easily enough. Someone has scrawled graffiti on the blackboard outside: A beer means never having to say, "I'm thirsty." Pushing through the door, I enter a dimly lit room, with stained floors and bare wooden furniture. Red bulbs above the bar give the place a pink tinge like a Wild West bordello. Black-and-white photographs of trams and antique buses decorate the walls, alongside posters for "live" music.

  I take my time and count eight people, including a handful of teenagers playing pool in the back alcove, near the toilets. I stand in front of the beer taps, waiting to be served by a barman who can't be bothered to look up from /The Racing Post/.

  Bert McMullen is at the far end of the bar. His crumpled tweed jacket is patched at the elbows and adorned by various badges and pi
ns, all related to buses. In one hand he holds a cigarette and in the other an empty pint glass. He turns the glass in his fingers, as if read�ing some hidden inscription etched into the side.

  Bert growls at me. "Who you gawpin' at?" His thick mustache ap�pears to sprout directly from his nose and droplets of foam and beer are clinging to the ends of the gray-and-black hairs.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stare." I offer to buy him another pint. He half turns and examines me. His eyes, like watery glass eggs, stop at my shoes. "How much did them shoes cost?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Gimme an estimate."

  I shrug. "A hundred pounds."

  He shakes his head in disgust. "I wouldn't pick 'em up with two shitty sticks. You couldn't walk more 'an twenty mile in them things before they fall apart." He's still staring at my shoes. He waves the barman over. "Hey Phil, get a load of these shoes."

  Phil leans over the bar and peers at my feet. "What d'you call them?"

  "Loafers," I answer self-consciously.

  "Gerraway!" Both men look at each other in disbelief. "Why would you want to wear a shoe called a loafer?" says Bert. "You got more bum than brains."

  "They're Italian," I say, as if that makes a difference.

  "Italian! What's wrong with English shoes?"

  "Nothing."

  Bert presses his face close to mine. I can smell baked beans. "I reckon anyone who wears shoes like that hasn't done a proper day's work in his life. You got to wear boots, kid, with a steel cap in the toe and some grip on the bottom. Them shoes of yours wouldn't last a week in a real job."

  "Unless of course he works behind a desk," says the barman.

  Bert looks at me warily. "Are you one of the overcoat gang?"

  "What's that?"

  "Never get your coat off."

  "I work hard enough."

  "Do you vote Labour?"

  "I don't think that's any of your business."

  "Are you a Hail Mary?"

  "Agnostic."

  "Ag-fucking-what?"

  "Agnostic."

  "Jesus wept! OK, this is your last chance. Do you support the mighty Liverpool?" He crosses himself.

  "No."

  He sighs in disgust. "Get off home, yer mam's got custard wait�ing."