Michael Robotham

by Suspect

  "This room is taken."

  Her eyes meet mine and she utters a single shocked expletive. Behind her a large disheveled man in an ill-fitting suit has his hand inside her top.

  "You scared the crap out of me," she says, pushing his hand away. He gropes drunkenly at her breasts again.

  "How did you get into this room?"

  She rolls her eyes apologetically. "Made a mistake."

  "The door was locked."

  She shakes her head. Her male friend looks over her shoulder. "What's he doing in /our/ room?"

  "It's /his/ room, ya moron!" She hits him in the chest with a silver diamante clutch bag and starts pushing him backward out of the room. As she closes the door she turns and smiles. "You want some company? I can piss this guy off."

  She's so thin I can see the bones in her chest above her breasts. "No thanks."

  She shrugs and hikes up her tights beneath her miniskirt. Then the door closes and I hear them trying to creep along the hall and climb to the next floor.

  For a moment I feel a flush of anger. Did I really forget to lock the door? I was drunk, maybe even partly concussed.

  It is just after six. Julianne and Charlie will still be sleeping. I take out my mobile and turn it on, staring at the glowing face in the dark�ness. There are no messages. This is my penance ... to think about my wife and daughter when I fall asleep and when I wake up.

  Sitting on the windowsill, I watch the sky grow lighter. Pigeons wheel and soar over the rooftops. They remind me of Varanasi in In�dia, where the vultures circle high over funeral pyres, waiting for the charred remains to be dumped in the Ganges. Varanasi is a sorry slum of a city, with crumbling buildings, cross-eyed children and nothing of beauty except the brightly colored saris and swaying hips of the women. It appalled and fascinated me. The same is true of Liverpool.

  I wait until seven before calling Julianne. A male voice answers. At first I think I've dialed the wrong number but then I recognize Jock's voice.

  "I was just thinking about you," he says in a booming voice. Char�lie is in the background, saying, "Is that Dad? Can I talk to him? Please let me."

  Jock covers the receiver, but I can still hear him. He tells her to fetch Julianne. Charlie complains, but obeys.

  Meanwhile, Jock is full of chummy bonhomie. I interrupt him. "What are you doing there, Jock? Is everything OK?"

  "Your plumbing still sucks."

  What does he know about my fucking plumbing? He matches my coldness with his own. I can picture his face changing. "Someone tried to break in. Julianne got a bit spooked. She didn't want to be in the house on her own. I offered to stay."

  "Who? When?"

  "It was probably just some addict. He came through the front door. The plumbers had left it open. D.J. found him in the study and chased him down the street. Lost him near the canal."

  "Was anything taken?"

  "No."

  I hear footsteps on the stairs. Jock puts his hand over the phone.

  "Can I talk to Julianne? I know she's there."

  "She says no."

  I feel a flush of anger. Jock tries to banter again. "She wants to know why you called her mother at three in the morning."

  A vague memory surfaces: dialing the number; her mother's icy rebuke. She hung up on me.

  "Just let me talk to Julianne."

  "No can do, old boy. She's not feeling very well."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I said. She's feeling a bit off-color."

  "Is anything wrong?"

  "No. She's in good order. I've given her a full physical." He's try�ing to wind me up. It's working.

  "Give her the /fucking/ phone..."

  "I don't think you're in any position to give me orders, Joe. You're only making things worse."

  I want to sink my fist into his hundred-sit-ups-a-day stomach. Then I hear a telltale click. Someone has picked up the phone in my office. Jock doesn't realize.

  I try to sound conciliatory and tell him that I'll call later. He puts the phone down, but I wait, listening.

  "Dad, is that you?" Charlie asks nervously.

  "How are you, sweetheart?"

  "Good. When are you coming home?"

  "I don't know. I have to sort out a few things with Mummy."

  "Did you guys have a fight?"

  "How did you know?"

  "When Mum's angry at you I should never let her brush my hair."

  "I'm sorry."

  "That's OK. Was it your fault?"

  "Yes."

  "Why don't you just say you're sorry? That's what you tell me to do when I have a fight with Taylor Jones."

  "I don't think that's going to be enough this time."

  I can hear her thinking about this. I can even picture her biting her bottom lip in concentration.

  "Dad?"

  "Yes."

  "Well ... um ... I want to ask you something. It's about ... well..." She keeps starting and stopping. I tell her to think of the whole question in her head and then ask me.

  Finally it comes blurting out. "There was this picture in the news�paper ... someone with a coat over his head. Some of the kids were talking ... at school. Lachlan O'Brien said it was you. I called him a liar. Then last night I took one of the newspapers from the trash. Mum had thrown them out. I sneaked them upstairs to my room..."

  "Did you read the story?"

  "Yes."

  My stomach lurches. How do I explain the concept of wrongful arrest and mistaken identity to an eight-year-old? Charlie has been taught to trust the police. Justice and fairness are important?even in the playground.

  "It was a mistake, Charlie. The police made a mistake."

  "Then why is Mum angry at you?"

  "Because I made another mistake. A different one. It has nothing to do with the police or with you."

  She falls silent. I can almost hear her thinking.

  "What's wrong with Mummy?" I ask.

  "I don't know. I heard her tell Uncle Jock she was late."

  "Late for what?"

  "She didn't say. She just said she was late."

  I ask her to repeat the statement word for word. She doesn't un�derstand why. My mouth is dry. It isn't just the hangover. In the background I can hear Julianne calling Charlie's name.

  "I have to go," whispers Charlie. "Come home soon."

  She hangs up quickly. I don't have a chance to say goodbye. My first instinct is to call straight back. I want to keep calling until Ju�lianne talks to me. Does "late" mean what I think it means? I feel sick to the stomach: hopeless in the head.

  I could be home in three hours if I caught a train. I could stand on the doorstep until she agrees to talk to me. Maybe that's what she wants?for me to come running back to fight for her.

  We've waited six years. Julianne never stopped believing. I was the one who gave up hope.

  **10**

  A bell tinkles above my head as I enter the shop. The aromas of scented oils, perfumed candles and herbal poultices curl into my nostrils. Narrow shelves made of dark wood stretch from the floor to the ceiling. These are crammed with incense, soap, oils and bell jars full of everything from pumice stones to seaweed.

  A large woman emerges from behind a partition. She wears a brightly colored caftan that starts at her throat and billows outward over huge breasts. Strings of beads sprout from her skull and clack as she walks.

  "Come, come, don't be shy," she says, waving me toward her. This is Louise Elwood. I recognize her voice from the phone. Some peo�ple look like their voices. She is one of them?deep, low and loud. Bangles clink on her arms as she shakes my hand. At the center of her forehead is a pasted red dot.

  "Oh my, oh my, oh my," she says, holding her hand beneath my chin. "You are just in time. Look at those eyes. Dull. Dry. You haven't been sleeping well, have you? Toxins in the blood. Too much red meat. Maybe a wheat allergy. What happened to your ear?"

  "An overzealous hairdresser."

  She raises an e
yebrow.

  "We spoke on the phone," I explain. "I'm Professor O'Loughlin."

  "Typical! Look at the state of you! Doctors and academics make the worst patients. They never take their own advice."

  She pirouettes with remarkable agility and bustles deeper into the shop. At the same time she keeps talking. There are no obvious signs of a man in her life. Photographs of children on the noticeboard are probably nieces and nephews. She is self-conscious about her size, but makes it part of her personality. She has a Burmese (cat hair), a drawer full of chocolates (tinsel on the floor] and a taste for romance writers (/The Silent Lady/ by Catherine Cookson).

  Behind the partition is a small back room with just enough space for a table, three chairs and a bench containing a small sink. An elec�tric kettle and a radio are plugged into the lone socket. The center of the table has a women's magazine open at the crossword.

  "Herbal tea?"

  "Do you have coffee?"

  "No."

  "Tea will be fine."

  She rattles off a list of a dozen different blends. By the time she's finished I've forgotten the first few.

  "Chamomile."

  "Excellent choice. Good for relieving stress and tension." She pauses. "You're not a believer, are you?"

  "I have never been able to work out why herbal tea smells so wonderful, but tastes so bland."

  She laughs. Her whole body shakes. "The taste is subtle. It works in harmony with the body. Smell is the most immediate of all our senses. Touch might develop earlier and be the last to fade, but smell is hot-wired directly into our brains."

  She sets out two small china cups and fills a ceramic teapot with steaming water. The tea leaves are filtered twice through a silver sieve before she pushes a cup toward me.

  "You don't read tea leaves then?"

  "I think you're making fun of me, Professor." She's not offended.

  "Fifteen years ago you were a teacher at St. Mary's."

  "For my sins."

  "Do you remember a boy called Bobby Morgan?"

  "Of course I do."

  "What do you remember about him?"

  "He was quite bright, although a little self-conscious about his size. Some of the other boys used to tease him because he wasn't very good at sports, but he had a lovely singing voice."

  "You taught the choir?"

  "Yes."

  "I once suggested singing lessons, but his mother wasn't the most approachable of women. I only saw her once at the school. She came to complain about Bobby stealing money from her purse to pay for an excursion to the Liverpool Museum."

  "What about his father?"

  She looks at me quizzically. Clearly, I'm expected to know some�thing. Now she is trying to decide whether to continue.

  "Bobby's father wasn't allowed at the school," she says. "He had a court order taken out against him when Bobby was in the second grade. Didn't Bobby tell you any of this?"

  "No."

  She shakes her head. Beads swing from side to side. "I raised the alarm. Bobby had wet himself in class twice in a few weeks. Then he soiled his pants and spent most of the afternoon hiding in the boys' toilets. He was upset. When I asked him what was wrong he wouldn't say. I took him to the school nurse. She found him another pair of trousers. That's when she noticed the welts on his legs. It looked as though he'd been beaten."

  The school nurse followed the normal procedure and informed the deputy headmistress who, in turn, notified the Department of Social Services. I know the process by heart. A duty social worker would have taken the referral. It was then discussed with an area manager. The dominoes started falling?medical examinations, interviews, allegations, denials, case conferences, "at risk" findings, interim care orders, appeals?each tumbling into the next.

  "Tell me about the court order," I ask.

  She recalls only scant details. Allegations of sexual abuse, which the father denied. A restraining order. Chaperoning Bobby between classes.

  "The police investigated but I don't know the outcome. The deputy headmistress dealt with the social workers and police."

  "Is she still around?"

  "No. She resigned eighteen months ago; family reasons."

  "What happened to Bobby?"

  "He changed. He had a stillness about him that you don't see in most children. A lot of the teachers found it very unnerving." She stares into her teacup, tilting it gently back and forth. "When his fa�ther died he became even more isolated. It was as though he was on the outside, with his face pressed against the glass."

  "Do you think Bobby was abused?"

  "St. Mary's is in a very poor area, Dr. O'Loughlin. In some house�holds just waking up in the morning is a form of abuse."

  I know almost nothing about cars. I can fill them with petrol, put air in the tires and water in the radiator, but I have no interest in makes, models or the dynamics of the modern combustion engine. Usually I take no notice of other vehicles on the road but today it's different. I keep seeing a white van. I noticed it first this morning when I left the Albion Hotel. It was parked opposite. The other cars were cov�ered in frost, but not the van. The windshield and back window had ragged circles of clear glass.

  The same white van?or another one just like it?is parked on a delivery ramp opposite Louise Elwood's shop. The back doors are open. I can see Hessian sacks inside, lining the floor. There must be hundreds of white vans in Liverpool: perhaps a whole fleet of them belonging to a courier company.

  After last night I'm seeing phantoms lurking in every doorway and sitting in cars. I walk across the market square, stopping at a de�partment store window. Studying the reflection, I can see the square behind me. Nobody is following.

  I haven't eaten. Seeking out warmth, I find a cafe on the first floor of a shopping arcade, overlooking the atrium. From my table I can watch the escalators.

  H. L. Mencken?journalist, beer drinker and sage?said that for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong. I share his mistrust for the obvious.

  At university I drove my lecturers to distraction by constantly questioning straightforward assumptions. "Why can't you just accept things as they are?" they asked. "Why /can't/ the easy answer be right?"

  Nature isn't like that. If evolution had been about simple an�swers we would all have bigger brains and not watch /You've Been Framed/, or smaller brains and not invent weapons of mass destruc�tion. Mothers would have four arms and babies would leave home after six weeks. We would all have titanium bones, UV-resistant skin, X-ray vision and the ability to have permanent erections and multi�ple orgasms.

  Bobby Morgan?I'll call him by his real name now?had many of the hallmarks of sexual abuse. Even so, I don't want it to be true. I have grown to like Lenny Morgan. He did a lot of things right when he raised Bobby. People warmed to him. Bobby adored him.

  Perhaps Lenny had two sides to his personality. There is nothing to stop an abuser being a safe, loving figure. It would certainly ex�plain his suicide. It could also be the reason why Bobby needed two personalities to survive.

  **11**

  Social Services keeps files on children who have been sexually abused. I once had full access to them, but I'm no longer part of the system. The privacy laws are compelling.

  I need help from someone I haven't seen in more than a decade. Her name is Melinda Cossimo and I'm worried I might not recog�nize her. We arrange to meet in a coffee shop opposite the Magis�trates Court.

  When I first arrived in Liverpool Mel was a duty social worker. Now she's an area manager (they call it a "child protection special�ist"). Not many people last this long in social services. They either burn out or blow up.

  Mel was your original punk, with spiky hair and a wardrobe of distressed leather jackets and torn denim. She was always challeng�ing everyone's opinions because she liked to see people stand up for their beliefs, whether she agreed with them or not.

  Growing up in Cornwall, she had listened to her father, a local fis
herman, pontificate on the distinction between "men's work" and "women's work." Almost predictably, she became an ardent feminist and author of "When Women Wear the Pants"?her doctoral thesis. Her father must be turning in his grave.

  Mel's husband, Boyd, a Lancashire lad, wore khaki pants, turtleneck sweaters and rolled his own cigarettes. Tall and thin, he went gray at nineteen but kept his hair long and tied back in a ponytail. I only ever saw it loose once, in the showers after we had played bad�minton.

  They were great hosts. We'd get together most weekends for din�ner parties on Boyd's run-down terrace, with its "wind chime" garden and cannabis plants growing in an old fishpond. We were all over�worked, underappreciated and yet still idealistic. Julianne played the guitar and Mel had a voice like Joni Mitchell. We ate vegetarian feasts, drank too much wine, smoked a little dope and righted the wrongs of the world. The hangovers lasted until Monday and the flatulence until midweek.

  Mel makes a face at me through the window. Her hair is straight and pinned back from her face. She's wearing dark trousers and a tai�lored beige jacket. A white ribbon is pinned to her lapel. I can't re�member what charity it represents.

  "Is this the management look?"

  "No, it's middle age." She laughs, grateful to sit down. "These shoes are killing me." She kicks them off and rubs her ankles.

  "Shopping?"

  "An appointment in the children's court?an emergency care order."

  "Good result?"

  "It could have been worse."

  I get the coffees while she minds the table. I know she's check�ing me out?trying to establish how much has changed. Do we still have things in common? Why have I suddenly surfaced? The caring profession is a suspicious one.

  "So what happened to your ear?"

  "Got bitten by a dog."

  "You should never work with animals."

  "So I've heard."

  Mel watches as my left hand tries to stir my coffee. "Are you still with Julianne?"

  "Uh-huh. We have Charlie now. She's eight. I think Julianne might be pregnant /again/."

  "Aren't you sure?" She laughs.

  I laugh with her, but feel a pang of guilt.

  I ask about Boyd. I picture him as an aging hippie, still wearing linen shirts and Punjabi pants. Mel turns her face away, but not be�fore I see the pain drift across her eyes like a cloud.