The Suspect jo-1

by Michael Robotham

  The engine starts up. The pistons rise and fall, then settle into a steady rhythm. I see Bobby’s legs through the portholes and feel the boat pitch as he steps along the sides, casting off the lines.

  I glance toward the galley and saloon. If I move quickly I might be able to get ashore before he comes back to the wheelhouse. I try to stand and knock over a rectangular frame leaning against the wall. As it topples, I manage to catch it with one hand. The painting is frozen momentarily in the light leaking through the curtains: a beach scene, bathing sheds, ice-cream stalls and a Ferris wheel. On the horizon, Charlie’s stout, gray whale.

  I fall backward with a groan, unable to make my legs obey me. They belong to someone else.

  The narrow boat rocks again as the footsteps return. He has cast off the bowline. The engine is put into gear and we swing away from the mooring. Water slides along the hull. Pulling myself upward, I ease the curtain open a few inches and lift my face to the porthole. I can only see the treetops.

  There is a new sound— a whooshing noise, like a strong wind. All the oxygen seems to disappear from the air. Fuel runs along the floor and soaks into my trousers. Varnished wood crackles as it burns. Fumes sting my eyes and the back of my throat. On my knees, I crawl down the boat into the gathering smoke.

  Pulling myself through the u-shaped galley, I reach the saloon. The engine is close by. I can hear it thudding on the far side of the bulkhead. My head hits the stairs and I climb upward. The hatchway is locked from the outside. I slam my shoulder against it. Nothing moves. My hand feels heat through the door. I need another way out.

  The air feels like molten glass in my lungs. I can’t see a thing, but I can feel my way. On the benches in the workroom my fingers close around a hammer and a sharp, flat chisel. I retreat along the boat, away from the seat of the blaze, ricocheting off walls and hammering on the portholes with the hammer. The glass is reinforced.

  Against the bulkhead in the cabin there is a small storage door. I squeeze through, flopping like a stranded fish until my legs follow me. Oily tarpaulins and ropes snake beneath me. I must be in the bow. I reach above my head and feel the indentation of a hatch. Running my fingers around the edge, I search for a latch, then try wedging the chisel into a corner and swinging the hammer, but the angle is all wrong.

  The boat has started to list. Water has invaded the stern. I lie on my back and brace both my feet against the underside of the hatch. Then I kick upward… once, twice, three times. I’m screaming and cursing. The wood splinters and gives way. A square of blinding light fills the hold. I glance back as the petrol in the cabin ignites and a ball of orange flame erupts toward me. At the same moment, I drag myself upward into daylight, rolling over and over. Fresh air embraces me for a split second and then water wraps itself around me. I sink slowly, inexorably, screaming inside my head, until I settle in the silt. I don’t think about drowning. I’ll just stay down here for a while where it’s cool and dark and green.

  When my lungs start to hurt, I reach upward, grasping for handfuls of air. My head breaks the surface and I roll onto my back, sucking greedily. The stern of the boat has slipped under. Drums in the workroom are exploding like grenades. The engine has stopped, but the boat is turning slowly away from me.

  I wade toward the bank, with mud sucking at my shoes and pull myself upward using handfuls of reeds. I ignore the outstretched hand. I just want to lie down and rest. My body twists. My legs bump over the edge of the canal. I am sitting on the deserted towpath. Giant cranes are silhouetted against gray clouds.

  I recognize Bobby’s shoes. He reaches under my arms and grabs me around the chest. I’m being lifted. His chin digs into the top of my head as he carries me. I can smell petrol on his clothes or maybe on mine. I don’t cry out. Reality seems far away.

  A scarf loops around my neck and is pulled tight, with a knot pressing into my windpipe. The other end is tied to something above me, forcing me up onto my toes. My legs jerk like a marionette because I can’t get any purchase on the ground to stop myself from choking. I squeeze my fingers inside the scarf and hold it away from my throat.

  We are in the courtyard of an abandoned factory. Wooden palettes are stacked against a wall. Sheets of roofing iron have fallen in a storm. Water leaks down the walls, weaving a tapestry of black-and-green slime. Bobby shifts away from me. His face is damp with sweat.

  “I know why you’re doing this,” I say.

  He doesn’t answer. He strips off his suit jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt as if there is business to be taken care of. Then he sits on a packing crate and takes out a white handkerchief to clean his glasses. His stillness is remarkable.

  “You won’t get away with killing me.”

  “What makes you think I want to kill you?” He hooks his glasses over his ears and looks at me. “You’re a wanted man. They’ll probably give me a reward.” His voice betrays him. He isn’t sure. In the distance I can hear a siren. The fire brigade is coming.

  Bobby will have read the morning papers. He knows why I confessed. The police will have to reopen every case and examine the details. They will cross-reference the times, dates and places, putting my name into the equation. And what will they discover? That I couldn’t have killed all of them. Then they’ll begin to wonder why I confessed. And maybe— just maybe— they’ll put Bobby’s name into the same equation. How many alibis can he have tucked away? How well did he cover his tracks?

  I have to keep him off-balance. “I visited your mother yesterday. She asked about you.”

  Bobby stiffens slightly and the pattern of his breathing quickens.

  “I don’t think I’ve met Bridget before, but she must have been very beautiful once. Alcohol and cigarettes aren’t very kind to the skin. I don’t think I met your father either, but I think I would have liked him.”

  “You know nothing about him.” He spits the words.

  “Not true. I think I have something in common with Lenny… and with you. I need to take things apart— to understand how they work. That’s why I came looking for you. I thought you might help me figure something out.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “I’ve got most of the story now— I know about Erskine and Lucas Dutton, Justice McBride and Mel Cossimo. But what I can’t fathom is why you punished everyone except the person you hate the most.”

  Bobby is on his feet, blowing himself up like one of those fish with the poisonous spikes. He shoves his face close to mine. I can see a vein, a faint blue pulsing knot above his left eyelid.

  “You can’t even say her name, can you? She says you look like your father but that’s not entirely true. Every time you look in the mirror you must see your mother’s eyes…”

  A knife is gripped between his fingers. He holds the point of the blade against my bottom lip. If I open my mouth it will draw blood. I can’t stop now.

  “Let me tell you what I’ve worked out so far, Bobby. I see a small boy, suckled on his father’s dreams, but polluted by his mother’s violence…” The blade is so sharp I don’t feel a thing. Blood is leaking down my chin and dripping onto my fingers, still pressed against my neck. “He blames himself. Most victims of abuse do. He thought of himself as a coward— always running, tripping, mumbling excuses; never good enough, always late, born to disappoint. He thinks he should have been able to save his father, but he didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late.”

  “Shut the fuck up! You were one of them. You killed him! You mind-fucker!”

  “I didn’t know him.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. You condemned a man you didn’t know. How arbitrary is that? At least I choose. You haven’t got a clue. You haven’t got a heart.”

  Bobby’s face is still inches from mine. I see hurt in his eyes and hatred in the curl of his lips.

  “So he blames himself, this boy, who is already growing too quickly and becoming awkward and uncoordinated. Tender and shy, angry and bitter— he can’t untangle these feelings.
He hasn’t the capacity to forgive. He hates the world, but no more than he hates himself. He cuts his arms to rid himself of the poison. He clings to memories of his father and of how things used to be. Not perfect, but OK. Together.

  “So what does he do? He withdraws from his surroundings and becomes isolated, making himself smaller, hoping to be forgotten, living inside his head. Tell me about your fantasy world, Bobby. It must have been nice to have somewhere to go.”

  “You’ll only try to spoil it.” His face is flushed. He doesn’t want to talk to me, but at the same time he’s proud of his achievements. This is something he has made. A part of him does want to draw me into his world— to share his exhilaration.

  The blade is still pressing into my lip. He pulls it away and waves it in front of my eyes. He tries to make it look practiced, but fails. He isn’t comfortable with a knife.

  My fingers are growing numb holding the scarf away from my windpipe. And the lactic acid is building in my calves as I balance on my toes. I can’t hold myself up much longer.

  “How does it feel to be omnipotent, Bobby? To be judge, jury and executioner, punishing all those who deserve to be punished? You must have spent years rehearsing all of this. Amazing. But who were you doing it for, exactly?”

  Bobby reaches down and picks up a plank. He mumbles at me to shut up.

  “Oh, that’s right, your father. A man you can hardly remember. I bet you don’t know his favorite song or what movies he liked or who his heroes were. What did he carry in his pockets? Was he left- or right-handed? Which side did he part his hair?”

  “I told you to SHUT YOUR MOUTH!”

  The plank swings in a wide arc, striking me across the chest. Air blasts out of my lungs and my body spins, tightening the scarf like a tourniquet. I kick my legs to try to spin back. My mouth is flapping like the gills of a stranded fish.

  Bobby tosses the plank aside and looks at me as if to say, “I told you so.”

  My ribs feel broken, but my lungs are working again.

  “Just one more question, Bobby. Why are you such a coward? I mean it’s pretty obvious who deserved all this hatred. Look at what she did. She belittled and tormented your dad. She slept with other men and made him a figure of pity, even to his friends. And then, to top it all off, she accused him of abusing his own son…”

  Bobby has turned away from me, but even the silence is speaking to him.

  “She ripped up the letters he wrote to you. I bet she even found the photographs you kept and destroyed them. She wanted Lenny out of her life and out of yours. She hated hearing his name…”

  Bobby is growing smaller, as if collapsing from the inside. His anger has turned to grief.

  “Let me guess what happened. She was going to be the first. You went looking for her and found her easily enough. Bridget had never been the shy, retiring type. Her stilettos made big footprints.

  “You watched her and waited. You had it all planned… every last detail. Now was the moment. The woman who had destroyed your life was just a few feet away, close enough for you to put those fingers around her throat. She was right there, right there, but you hesitated. You couldn’t do it. You were twice her size. She had no weapon. You could have crushed her so easily.”

  I pause letting the memory live in his mind. “Nothing happened. You couldn’t do it. Do you know why? You were scared. When you saw her again you became that little boy, with his trembling bottom lip and his stutter. She terrified you then, and she terrifies you now.”

  Bobby’s face is twisted in self-loathing. At the same time he wants to wipe me from his world.

  “Someone had to be punished. So you found your child protection files and the list of names. And you set about punishing all those responsible, by taking away what each of them loved most. But you never lost the fear of your mother. Once a coward, always a coward. What did you think when you discovered she was dying? Has her cancer done the job for you, or has it robbed you?”

  “Robbed me.”

  “She’s dying a terrible death. I’ve seen her.”

  He explodes. “It’s not enough. She is a MONSTER!”

  He kicks at a metal drum, sending it spinning across the courtyard. “She destroyed my life. She made me into this.”

  Spittle hangs from his lips. He looks at me for validation. He wants me to say, “You poor bastard. It is all her fault. It’s no wonder you feel like this.” I can’t give him that. If I sanction his hatred there is no way back.

  “I’m not going to give you any bullshit excuses, Bobby. Terrible things happened to you. I wish it could have been different. But look at the world around you— there are children starving in Africa; jets are being flown into buildings; bombs are being dropped on civilians; people are dying of disease; prisoners are being tortured; women are being raped… Some of these things we can change, but others we can’t. Sometimes we just have to accept what happened and get on with our lives.”

  He laughs bitterly. “How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. You know it is.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s true.” He is staring at me, unblinkingly. His voice is a low rumble. “There is a lay-by on the coast road through Great Crosby— about eight miles north of Liverpool. It’s on the dual carriageway, set back from the road. If you drive in there after ten o’clock at night, you will sometimes see another car parked up. You put on your indicator— either left or right, depending on what you want— and you wait for the car in front to respond with the same indicator. Then you follow it.”

  His voice is ragged. “I was six when she first took me to the lay-by. I just watched the first time. It was in a barn somewhere. She was laid out on a table like a smorgasbord. Naked. There were dozens of hands on her. Anyone could do what they wanted. She had enough for all of them. Pain. Pleasure. It was all the same to her. And every time she opened her eyes she looked directly at me. ‘Don’t be selfish, Bobby,’ she said. ‘Learn to share.’ ”

  He rocks slightly, back and forth, staring straight ahead, picturing the scene in his mind. “Private clubs and swingers bars were too middle class for my mother. She preferred her orgies to be anonymous and unsophisticated. I lost count of how many people shared her body. Women and men. That’s how I learned to share. At first they took from me, but later I took from them. Pain and pleasure— my mother’s legacy.”

  His eyes are brimming with tears. I don’t know what to say. My tongue has grown thick and prickly. My peripheral vision has started to fail because I can’t get enough oxygen to my brain.

  I want to say something. I want to tell him that he isn’t alone. That a lot of people fret through the same dreams, yell into the same emptiness and walk past the same open windows and wonder whether to jump. I know he’s lost. He’s damaged. But he still has choices. Not every abused child turns out like this.

  “Let me down, Bobby. I can’t breathe properly.”

  I can see the back of his square neck and his badly trimmed hair. He turns in slow motion, never looking at my face. The blade sweeps above my head and I collapse forward, still clutching the remnants of the scarf. The muscles in my legs go into spasm. I taste concrete dust, mingled with blood. There are more loose planks leaning against one wall and industrial sinks against another. Where is the canal from here? I have to get out.

  Lifting myself onto my knees, I start crawling. Bobby has disappeared. Metal shavings dig into my hands. Broken concrete and rusting drums are like an obstacle course. As I reach the entrance I can see a fire engine beside the canal and the flashing lights of a police car. I try to shout but no sound emerges.

  Something is wrong. I’ve stopped moving. I turn to see Bobby standing on my coat.

  “Your fucking arrogance blows me away,” he says, grasping my collar and lifting me to my feet. “You think I’d fall for your cereal-box psychology. I’ve seen more therapists, counselors and psychiatrists than you’ve had crappy birthday presents. I’ve been to Freudians, Jungians, Adlerians, Rogerians�
� you name it— and I wouldn’t give any of them the steam off my piss on a cold day.”

  He puts his face close to mine once more. “You don’t know me. You think you’re inside my head. Shit! You’re not even close!” He places the blade under my ear. We’re breathing the same air.

  A flick of his wrist and my throat will open like a dropped melon. That’s what he’s going to do. I can feel the metal against my neck. He is going to end this now.

  At that moment I picture Julianne looking at me across her pillow, with her hair mussed up from sleep. And I see Charlie in her pajamas smelling of shampoo and toothpaste. I wonder if it’s possible to count the freckles on her nose. Wouldn’t it be a terrible thing to die without trying?

  Bobby’s breath is warm on my neck— the blade is cold. His tongue comes out, wetting his lips. There is a moment of hesitation— I don’t know why.

  “I guess we both underestimated each other,” I say, inching my hand inside my coat pocket. “I knew you wouldn’t let me go. Your kind of vengeance isn’t negotiable. You’ve invested too much in it. It’s the reason you get up in the morning. That’s why I had to get off that wall.”

  He wavers, trying to work out what he hasn’t prepared for. My fingers close around the handle of the chisel.

  “I have a disease, Bobby. Sometimes I have difficulty walking. My right hand is OK, but see how my left arm trembles.” I hold up the limb that no longer feels as if it belongs to me. It draws his gaze like a birthmark on someone’s face or a disfiguring burn.

  With my right hand I drive the chisel through my coat into Bobby’s abdomen. It strikes his pelvic bone and twists, puncturing the transverse colon. Three years at medical school are never wasted.

  Still holding my collar, he falls to his knees. I swing around and hit him as hard as I can with my fist, aiming for his jaw. He puts his arm up, but I still manage to connect with the side of his head, throwing him backward. Everything has slowed down. Bobby tries to stand but I move forward a pace and catch him under the chin with a clumsy but effective kick that snaps his head back.