The Suspect jo-1

by Michael Robotham

  I let him talk because I sense he’s making a point. The story unfolds. Sonia Dutton, not quite twenty-three, dressed up for a rock concert. She went with Claire and a group of friends from university. Someone gave her a white pill imprinted with a shell logo. She danced all night until her heartbeat grew rapid and her blood pressure soared. She felt faint and anxious. She collapsed in a toilet cubicle.

  Lucas is still crouched over the toolbox as though he’s lost something. His shoulders are shaking. In a rasping voice, he describes how Sonia spent three weeks in a coma, never regaining consciousness. Lucas and his wife argued over whether to turn off her life support. He was the pragmatist. He wanted to remember her gliding through the water, with her smooth stroke. His wife accused him of giving up hope, of thinking only of himself, of not praying hard enough for a miracle.

  “She hasn’t said more than a dozen words to me since— not all together in a sentence. Last night she told me that she saw your photograph on the news. I asked her questions that she answered. It was the first time in ages…”

  “Who gave Sonia the tablet? Did they ever catch anyone?”

  Lucas shakes his head. Claire gave them a description. She looked at mug shots and a police lineup.

  “What did she say he looked like?”

  “Tall, skinny, tanned… he had slicked-back hair.”

  “How old?”

  “Mid-thirties.”

  He closes the toolbox and flips the metal catches, before glancing despondently at the house, not yet ready to go inside. Chores like the basketball hoop have become important because they keep him busy and out of the way.

  “Sonia would never have taken a drug knowingly,” he says. “She wanted to go to the Olympics. She knew about banned substances and drug tests. Someone must have slipped it to her.”

  “Do you remember Bobby Morgan?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Fourteen… fifteen years ago. He was only a kid.”

  “Not since then?”

  He shakes his head and then narrows his eyes as if something has just occurred to him. “Sonia knew someone called Bobby Morgan. It couldn’t have been the same person. He worked at the swimming center.”

  “You never saw him?”

  “No.” He sees the curtains moving in the living room. “I wouldn’t stick around if I were you,” he says. “She’ll call the police if she sees you.”

  The toolbox is weighing down his right hand. He swaps it over and glances up at the basketball hoop. “Guess that’ll have to stay there a bit longer.”

  I thank him and he hurries inside. The door shuts and the silence amplifies my steps as I walk away. I used to think Dutton was conceited and dogmatic, unwilling to listen or alter his point of view when it came to case conferences. He was the sort of autocratic, nitpicking public servant who is brilliant at making the trains run on time, but fails miserably when it comes to dealing with people. If only his staff could be as loyal as his Skoda— starting first time on cold mornings and reacting immediately to every turn of the steering wheel. Now he has been diminished, lessened, beaten down by circumstances.

  The man who gave Sonia the tainted white tablet doesn’t sound like Bobby but eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Stress and shock can alter perceptions. Memory is flawed. Bobby is a chameleon, changing colors, camouflaging himself, moving backward and forward, but always blending in.

  There is a poem that my mother used to recite to me— a politically incorrect piece of doggerel— called “Ten Little Indian Boys.” It started off with ten little Indian boys going out to dine, but one chokes himself and then there were nine. All nine little Indian boys stay up late, but one oversleeps and then there are eight…

  Indian boys are stung by bees, eaten by fish, hugged by bears and chopped in half until only one remains, left alone. I feel like that last little Indian boy.

  I understand what Bobby is doing now. He is trying to take away what each of us holds most dear— the love of a child, the closeness of a partner, the sense of belonging. He wants us to suffer as he suffered, to lose what we most love, to experience his loss.

  Mel and Boyd had been soul mates. Anyone who knew them could see that. Jerzy and Esther Gorski had survived the Nazi gas chambers and settled in north London, where they raised their only child, Alison, who became a schoolteacher and moved to Liverpool. Firemen discovered Jerzy’s body at the bottom of the stairs. He was still alive, despite the burns. Esther suffocated in her sleep.

  Catherine McBride, a favored granddaughter in a well-connected family— wayward, spoiled and smothered— had never lost the heart of her grandfather, who doted on her and forgave her indiscretions.

  Rupert Erskine had no wife or children. Perhaps Bobby couldn’t discover what he held most dear or perhaps he knew all along. Erskine was a cantankerous old sod, about as likable as a carpet burn. We made excuses for him because it can’t have been easy looking after his wife for all those years. Bobby didn’t give him any latitude. He left him alive long enough— tied to a chair— to regret his limitations.

  There might be other victims. I don’t have time to find them all. Elisa is my failure. I didn’t discover Bobby’s secret soon enough. Bobby has grown more sophisticated with each death, but I am to be the prize. He could have taken Julianne or Charlie from me, but instead he has chosen to take it all— my family, friends, career, reputation and finally my freedom. And he wants me to know that he’s responsible.

  The whole point of analysis is to understand, not to take the essence of something and reduce it to something else. Bobby once accused me of playing God. He said people like me couldn’t resist putting our hands inside someone’s psyche and changing the way they view the world.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I’ve made mistakes and fallen into the trap of not thinking hard enough about cause and effect. And I know it isn’t good enough, in the wash-up, to make excuses and say, “I meant well.” I’ve used the same words. “With the best possible intentions…” and “with all the goodwill in the world…”

  In one of my first cases in Liverpool I had to decide if a mentally handicapped twenty-year-old, with no family support and a lifetime of institutionalized care, could keep her unborn child.

  I can still picture Sharon with her summer dress, stretched tightly over the swell of her pregnancy. She had taken great care, washing and brushing her hair. She knew how important the interview was for her future. Yet despite her efforts she had forgotten little things. Her socks were the same color, but different lengths. The zipper at the side of her dress was broken. A smudge of lipstick stained her cheek.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Sharon?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We have to decide whether you can look after your baby. It’s a very big responsibility.”

  “I can. I can. I’ll be a good mother. I’m going to love my baby.”

  “Do you know where babies come from?”

  “It’s growing inside me. God put it there.” She spoke very reverentially and rubbed her tummy.

  I couldn’t fault her logic. “Let’s play a ‘what if’ game. OK? I want you to imagine that you’re bathing your baby and the telephone rings. The baby is all slippery and wet. What do you do?”

  “I… I… I… put my baby on the floor, wrapped in a towel.”

  “While you are on the telephone, someone knocks on the front door. Do you answer it?”

  She momentarily looked unsure. “It might be the fire brigade,” I added. “Or maybe it’s your social worker.”

  “I’d answer the door,” she said, nodding her head forcefully.

  “It turns out to be your neighbor. Some young boys have thrown a rock through her window. She has to go to work. She wants you to sit inside her flat and wait for the glaziers to come.”

  “Those little shits— they’re always throwing rocks,” Sharon said, bunching her fists.

  “Your neighbor has satellite
TV: movie channels, cartoons, daytime soap operas. What are you going to watch while you’re waiting?”

  “Cartoons.”

  “Will you have a cup of tea?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Your neighbor has left you some money to pay the glazier. Fifty quid. The job is only going to cost £45, but she says you can keep the change.”

  Her eyes lit up. “I can keep the money?”

  “Yes. What are you going to buy?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “Where are you going to buy it?”

  “Down the shops.”

  “When you go to the shops what do you normally take?”

  “My keys and my purse.”

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where is your baby, Sharon?”

  A look of panic spread across her face and her bottom lip began to tremble. Just when I thought she was going to cry, she suddenly announced, “Barney will look after her.”

  “Who’s Barney?”

  “My dog.”

  A couple of months later, I sat outside the delivery suite and listened to Sharon sobbing as her baby boy was swaddled in a blanket and taken away from her. It was my job to transfer the boy to a different hospital. I strapped him in a carry-cot on the backseat of my car. Looking down at the sleeping bundle, I wondered what he’d think, years from then, about the decision I had made for him. Would he thank me for rescuing him or blame me for ruining his life?

  A different child has come back. His message is clear. We have failed Bobby. We failed his father— an innocent man, arrested and questioned for hours about his sex life and the length of his penis. His house and workplace were searched for child pornography that didn’t exist and his name put on a central index of sex offenders despite him never having been charged, let alone convicted.

  This indelible stain was going to blot his life forever. All his future relationships would be tainted. Wives and partners would have to be told. Fathering a child would become a risk. Coaching a kid’s soccer team would be downright reckless. Surely this is enough to drive a man to suicide.

  Socrates— the wisest of all Greeks— was wrongly convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death. He could have escaped, but he drank the poison. Socrates believed that our bodies are less important than our souls. Maybe he had Parkinson’s.

  I share the blame for Bobby. I was part of the system. Mine was the cowardice of acquiescence. Rather than disagree I said nothing. I went along with the majority view. I was young, just starting my career, but that is no excuse. I acted like a spectator instead of a referee.

  Julianne called me a coward when she threw me out. I know what she means now. I have sat in the grandstand, not wanting to get drawn into my marriage or my disease. I kept my distance, scared of what might happen. I have let my own state of mind absorb me. I was so worried about rocking the boat that I failed to spot the iceberg.

  6

  Three hours ago I came up with a plan. It wasn’t my first. I worked my way through about a dozen, looking at all the fundamentals, but each had a fatal flaw. I have enough of those already. My ingenuity has to be tempered by my physical limitations. This meant jettisoning anything that requires me to abseil down a building, overpower a guard, short-circuit a security system or crack open a safe.

  I also shelved any plan that didn’t have an exit strategy. That’s why most campaigns fail. The players don’t think far enough ahead. The endgame is the boring bit, the mopping-up operation, without the glamour and excitement of the principal challenge. Therefore, people get frustrated and only plan so far. From then on they imagine winging it, confident in their ability to master their retreat as skillfully as their advance.

  I know this because I have had people in my consulting room who cheat, steal and embezzle for a living. They own nice houses, send their children to private schools and play off single-figure handicaps. They vote Tory and view law and order as an important issue because the streets just aren’t safe anymore. These people rarely get caught and hardly ever go to prison. Why? Because they plan for every outcome.

  I am sitting in the darkest corner of a car park in Liverpool. On the seat beside me is a waxed paper shopping bag with a pleated rope handle. My old clothes are inside it and I’m now wearing new charcoal gray trousers, a woolen sweater and an overcoat. My hair is neatly trimmed and my face is freshly shaved. Lying between my legs is a walking stick. Now that I’m walking like a cripple, I might as well get some sympathy for it.

  The phone rings. I don’t recognize the number on the screen. For a split second I wonder whether Bobby could have found me. I should have known it would be Ruiz.

  “You surprise me, Professor O’Loughlin…” His voice is all gravel and phlegm. “I figured you for the sort who would turn up at the nearest police station with a team of lawyers and a PR man.”

  “I’m sorry if I disappoint you.”

  “I lost twenty quid. Not to worry— we’re running a new book. We’re taking bets on whether you get shot or not.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “I can get three to one on you dodging a bullet.”

  I hear traffic noise in the background. He’s on a motorway.

  “I know where you are,” he says.

  “You’re guessing.”

  “No. And I know what you’re trying to do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First you tell me why you killed Elisa.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  Ruiz draws deeply on a cigarette. He’s smoking again. I feel a curious sense of achievement. “Why would I kill Elisa? That’s where I spent the night on the thirteenth of November. She was my alibi.”

  “That’s unfortunate for you.”

  “She wanted to give a statement, but I knew you wouldn’t believe her. You’d drag up her past and humiliate her. I didn’t want to put her through it all again…”

  He laughs the way Jock often does, as though I’m soft in the head.

  Talking over the top of him, I try to keep the desperation out of my voice. I tell him to go back to the beginning and look for the red edge.

  “His name is Bobby Morgan— not Moran. Read the case notes. All the pieces are there. Put them together…”

  He’s not listening to me. It’s too big for him to comprehend.

  “Under different circumstances I might admire your enthusiasm, but I have enough evidence already,” he says. “I have motive, opportunity and physical evidence. You couldn’t have marked your territory any better if you’d pissed in every corner.”

  “I can explain…”

  “Good! Explain it to a jury! That’s the beauty of our legal system— you get plenty of chances to state your case. If the jury doesn’t believe you, you can appeal to the High Court and then the House of Lords and the European Court of Human sodding Rights. You can spend the rest of your life appealing. It obviously helps pass the time when you’re banged up for life.”

  I press the “end call” button and turn off the phone.

  Leaving the car park, I descend the stairs and emerge on street level. I dump my old clothes and shoes in a trash can, along with the travel bag and the soggy scraps of paper from my hotel room. As I head along the street, I swing my cane in what I hope is a jaunty, cheerful way. The shoppers are out and every store is bedecked with tinsel and playing Christmas carols. It makes me feel homesick. Charlie loves that sort of stuff— the department store Santas, window displays and watching old Bing Crosby movies set in Vermont.

  As I’m about to cross the road, I spot a poster on the side of a newspaper van: MANHUNT FOR CATHERINE’S KILLER. My face is underneath, pinned beneath the plastic ties. Instantly I feel like I’m wearing a huge neon sign on my head with the arrow pointing downward.

  The Adelphi Hotel is ahead of me. I push through the revolving door and cross the foyer, fighting the urge to quicken my stride. I tell myself not to walk too quickly or hunch over. Head up. Eyes
straight ahead.

  It’s a grand old railway hotel, dating back to a time when steam trains arrived from London and steamships left for New York. Now it looks as tired as some of the waitresses, who should be at home putting curlers in their hair.

  The business center is on the first floor. The secretary is a skinny thing called Nancy, with permed red hair and a red cravat around her neck that matches her lipstick. She doesn’t ask for a business card or check if I have a room number.

  “If you have any questions, just ask,” she says, keen to help.

  “I’ll be fine. I just need to check my e-mails.” I sit at a computer terminal and turn my back to her.

  “Actually, Nancy, you could do something for me. Can you find out if there are any flights to Dublin this afternoon?”

  A few minutes later she rattles off a list. I choose the late-afternoon shuttle and I give her my debit card details.

  “Can you also see about getting me to Edinburgh?” I ask.

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “You know what head offices are like,” I explain. “They can never make a decision.”

  She nods and smiles.

  “And see if there’s a sleeper available on the Isle of Man ferry.”

  “The tickets are nonrefundable.”

  “That’s OK.”

  In the meantime, I search for the e-mail addresses of all the major newspapers and gather the names of news editors, chief reporters and police roundsman. I start typing an e-mail using my right hand, pressing one key at a time. I tuck my left hand under my thigh to stop it trembling.

  I start with proof of my identity— giving my name, address, National Insurance number and employment details. They can’t think this is a hoax. They have to believe that I am Joseph O’Loughlin— the man who killed Catherine McBride and Elisa Velasco.

  It is just after 4:00 p.m. Editors are deciding the running order for stories in the first edition. I need to change tomorrow’s headlines. I need to knock Bobby off his stride— to keep him guessing.

  Up until now he’s always been two, three, four steps ahead of me. His acts of revenge have been brilliantly conceived and clinically executed. He didn’t simply apportion blame. He turned it into an art form. But for all his genius, he is capable of making a mistake. Nobody is infallible. He kicked a woman unconscious because she reminded him of his mother.