Suspect (46 page)

As usual the Detective Inspector gets off on the wrong foot by cal ing the triage nurse “sweetheart” and tel ing her to get her “priorities sorted.” She takes her annoyance out on me, shoving her fingers between my ribs with unnecessary zeal. I feel like I’m going to pass out.

The young doctor who stitches up my lip has bleached hair, an old-fashioned feather cut and a necklace of crushed shel s. She has been on holiday somewhere warm and the skin on her nose is pink and peeling.

Ruiz has gone upstairs to keep tabs on Bobby. Not even an armed guard outside the surgery and a general anesthetic is insurance enough for him to relax. Maybe he’s trying to make amends for not believing me sooner. I doubt it.

Lying on a gurney, I try to keep my head stil as I feel the needle slide into my lip and the thread tug at the skin. Scissors snip the ends and the doctor takes a step back, appraising her handiwork.

“And my mother told me I’d never be able to sew.”

“How does it look?”

“You should have waited for the plastic surgeon but I’ve done OK. You’l have a slight scar, just there.” She points to the hol ow beneath her bottom lip. “Guess it’l match your ear.” She tosses her latex gloves into a bin. “You stil need an X-ray. I’m sending you upstairs. Do you need someone to push you or can you walk?”

“I’l walk.”

She points to the lift and tel s me to fol ow the green line to radiology on the fourth floor. Half an hour later Ruiz finds me in the waiting room. I’m hanging around for the radiologist to confirm what I already know from viewing the X-rays: two fractured ribs, but no internal bleeding.

“When can you make a statement?”

“When they strap me up.”

“It can wait til tomorrow. Come on, I’l give you a lift home.”

A twinge of regret elevates me above the pain. Where is home? I haven’t had time to contemplate where I’l spend tonight and the night after that. Sensing my quandary, Ruiz murmurs,

“Why don’t you go and listen to her? You’re supposed to be good at that sort of thing.” In the same breath he adds, “There’s no frigging room at my place!” Downstairs, he continues bossing people around until my chest is strapped and my stomach is rattling with painkil ers and anti-inflammatories. I float along the corridor, fol owing Ruiz to his car.

“There is one thing that puzzles me,” I say, as we drive north toward Camden. “Bobby could have kil ed me. He had the blade at my throat, yet he hesitated. It was as though he couldn’t cross that line.”

“You said he couldn’t kil his mother.”

“That’s different. He was scared of her. He had no trouble with the others.”

“Wel , he doesn’t have to worry about Bridget anymore. She died at eight o’clock this morning.”

“So, that’s it. He has no one left.”

“Not quite. We found his half brother. I left a message for him, tel ing him Bobby was in hospital.”

Uneasiness washes over me, inching upward, like an incoming tide.

“Where did you find him?”

“He’s a plumber in north London. Dafyyd John Morgan.”

Ruiz is shouting into the two-way radio. He wants cars sent to the house. I’m shouting too— trying to reach Julianne on a mobile, but the line is engaged. We’re five minutes away, but the traffic is murder. A truck has run a red light at a five-way intersection, blocking Camden Road.

Ruiz is weaving onto the pavement, forcing pedestrians to scatter. He leans out of the window. “Dumbassfuck! Dickhead! Go, go! Just fucking move!” This is taking way too long. He has been inside my house— inside my wal s. I can see him standing in my basement, laughing at me. And I remember his eyes when he watched the police digging up the garden, the lazy insolence and his half smile.

Now it makes sense. The white van that fol owed me in Liverpool; it was a plumber’s van. The magnetic mats had been taken off the doors, making it look nondescript. The fingerprint on the stolen four-wheel drive didn’t belong to Bobby. And the drug dealer who gave Sonia Dutton the adulterated Ecstasy matched the description of D.J.— Dafyyd— one in the same.

At the narrow boat, Bobby knocked on the deck before opening the hatch. It wasn’t his boat. The workroom was ful of tools and plumbing equipment. They were D.J.’s diaries and notes.

Bobby torched the boat to destroy the evidence.

I can’t sit here waiting. The house is less than a quarter of a mile away. Ruiz tel s me to wait, but I’m already out of the door, running along the street, dodging between pedestrians, joggers, mothers with toddlers, nannies with prams. Traffic is backed up in both directions as far as I can see. I hit “redial” on the mobile. The line is stil engaged.

There had to be two of them. How could one person have done it al ? Bobby was too easy to recognize. He stood out in a crowd. D.J. had the intensity and the power to control people.

He didn’t look away.

When it came to the moment of truth, Bobby couldn’t kil me. He couldn’t make that leap, because he’d never done it before. Bobby could do the planning, but D.J. was the foot soldier.

He was older, more practiced, more ruthless.

I vomit into a trash can and keep running, passing the local liquor store, the betting shop, a pizzeria, discount store, pawnbroker, bakery and the Rag and Firkin Pub. Nothing is coming quickly enough. My legs are slowing down.

I round the final corner and see the house ahead of me. There are no police cars. A white van is parked out front with the sliding side door open. Hessian sacks cover the floor…

I fal through the front gate and up the steps. The phone is off the hook.

I scream Charlie’s name, but it comes out as a low moan. She is sitting in the living room, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. A yel ow Post-it note is stuck to her forehead. Like a new puppy she throws herself at me, crushing her head to my chest. I almost black out with the pain.

“We were playing a game of Who Am I?” she explains. “D.J. had to guess he was Homer Simpson. What did he choose for me?” She lifts her face to mine. The note is curling at the edges, but I recognize the smal , neat block print.

YOU’RE DEAD.

I find enough air to speak. “Where’s Mum?”

The urgency in my voice frightens her. She takes a step back and sees the bloodstains on my shirt and the sheen of sweat. My bottom lip is swol en and the stitches are crusted with blood.

“She’s downstairs in the basement. D.J. told me to wait here.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s coming back in a minute, but he said that ages ago.”

I push her toward the front door. “Run, Charlie!”

“Why?”

“RUN! NOW! Keep running!”

The basement door is shut and wet paper towels have been pushed into the doorjamb. There is no key in the lock. I turn the handle and gently pul it open.

Dust is swirling in the air— the sign of leaking gas. I can’t yel and hold my breath at the same time. Halfway down the steps, I stop to let my eyes adjust to the light. Julianne is slumped on the floor beside the new boiler. She’s lying on her side, with her right arm under her head and her left reaching out as though pointing to something. A dark fringe has fal en over one eye.

Crouching next to her, I slip my hands under her arms and drag her backward. The pain in my chest is unbelievable. White dots dance in front of my eyes like angry insects. I stil haven’t taken a breath, but the time is close. I take the stairs one at a time, dragging Julianne upward and sitting down heavily after each exertion. One step, two steps, three steps…

I hear Charlie coughing behind me. She takes hold of my col ar, trying to help me, pul ing when I pul .

Four steps, five steps…

We reach the kitchen and Julianne’s head bounces off the floor as I set her down. I’l apologize later. Hauling her over my shoulder, I roar in pain, and totter down the hal way. Charlie is ahead of me.

What is the trigger? A timer or a thermostat, the central heating, a refrigerator, the security lights?

“Run, Charlie. Run!”

When did it grow dark outside? Police cars fil the street with flashing lights. I don’t stop this time. I scream one word, over and over. I cross the road, dodge the cars and get to the far end of the street before my knees buckle and Julianne fal s onto the muddy grass. I kneel beside her.

Her eyes are open. The blast begins as a tiny spark in the midst of her deep brown irises. The sound arrives a split second later, along with the shock wave. Charlie is thrown backward.

I try to shield them both. There is no orange bal like you see in the movies, only a cloud of smoke and dust. Debris rains down and I feel the warm breath of fire drying the sweat on my neck.

The blackened van lies upside down in the middle of the street. Chunks of roofing and ribbons of gutters are draped over trees. Rubble and splintered wood covers the road.

Charlie sits up and looks at the desolation. The note is stil stuck to her forehead, blackened at the edges, but stil legible. I pul her against my chest, holding her close. At the same time, my fingers close around the yel ow square of paper and crush it within my fist.

The nightmares of my recent past stil see me running— escaping the same monsters and rabid dogs and Neanderthal second-row forward— but now they seem more real. Jock says it is a side effect of the levodopa, my new medication.

The dosage has halved in the past two months. He says I must be under less stress. What a comedian!

He phones me every day and asks if I fancy a game of tennis. I tel him no and he tel s me a joke. “What’s the difference between a nine-month pregnant woman and a
Playboy
centerfold?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nothing, if her husband knows what’s good for him.”

This is one of the cleaner ones and I risk tel ing Julianne. She laughs, but not as loudly as I do.

We’re living in Jock’s flat while we decide whether to rebuild or buy a new place. This is Jock’s way of trying to make amends, but he hasn’t been forgiven. In the meantime, he’s moved in with a new girlfriend, Kel y, who hopes to be the next Mrs. Jock Owen. She wil need a harpoon gun or a cast-iron prenup to get him anywhere near an altar.

Julianne has thrown away al his gadgets and the out-of-date frozen meals in the freezer. Then she went out and bought fresh sheets for the beds and new towels.

Her morning sickness is over, thankful y, and her body is getting bigger each day (everything except her bladder). She is convinced we’re having a boy, because only a man could cause her so much grief. She always looks at me when she says this. Then she laughs, but not as loudly as I do.

I know she’s watching me closely. We watch each other. Maybe it’s the disease she’s looking for or perhaps she doesn’t trust me entirely. We had an argument yesterday— our first since nursing things back together. We’re going up to Wales for a week and she complained that I always leave my packing until the last possible minute.

“I never forget anything.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“You should do it earlier. It’s less stressful.”

“For who?”

“For you.”

“But I’m not the one who is getting stressed.”

After tiptoeing around her for five months, grateful for her forgiveness, I decided to draw a gentle line in the sand. I asked her, “Why do women fal in love with men and then try to change them?”

“Because men need help,” she replied, as if this were common knowledge.

“But if I become the man you want, I won’t be the man I am.”

She rol ed her eyes and said nothing, but since then she’s been less prickly. This morning she came and sat on my lap, putting her arms around my neck and kissing me with the sort of passion that marriage is supposed to kil . Charlie said “Yuck!” and hid her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“You guys are French kissing.”

“What do you know about French kissing?”

“It’s when you slobber over each other.”

I rubbed my hand across Julianne’s stomach and whispered, “I want our children never to grow up.”

Our architect has arranged to meet me at the hole in the ground. The only thing left standing is the staircase, which goes nowhere. The force of the blast sent the concrete floor of the kitchen through the roof and blew the boiler into a yard two streets over. The shock wave shattered almost every window on the block and three houses have had to be demolished.

Charlie says she saw someone at a first-floor window just before the blast. Anyone on that floor would have been vaporized, say the experts, which might explain why they didn’t find so much as a fingernail or a fiber or a stray tooth. Then again, I keep asking myself, why would D.J. stick around once the gas had been turned on and the timer set to fire the boiler? He had plenty of time to get out, unless he planned this as a final act in every sense of the word.

Charlie doesn’t understand that he could have done these things. She asked me the other day if I thought he was in heaven. I felt like saying, “I just hope he’s dead.” His bank accounts haven’t been touched in two months and nobody has seen him. There is no record of him leaving the country, applying for a job, renting a room, buying a car or cashing a check.