The Suspect

9

Another Monday afternoon and Bobby is late again. Meena gives him the curt, cold treatment. She wanted to go home early.

“I would hate to be married to your secretary,” he says, before checking himself. “She’s not your wife is she?”

“No.”

I motion for him to sit down. His buttocks spread out to fill the chair. Tugging at the cuffs of his coat, he seems distracted and anxious.

“How have you been?”

“No thanks, I’ve just had one.”

I pause to see if he realizes that his answer makes no sense. He doesn’t react.

“Do you know what I just asked you, Bobby?”

“Whether I want a tea or coffee.”

“No.”

A brief flicker of doubt crosses his face. “But you were going to ask me about the tea or coffee next.”

“So you were reading my mind?”

He smiles nervously and shakes his head.

“Do you believe in God?” he asks.

“Do you?”

“I used to.”

“What happened?”

“I couldn’t find him. He’s supposed to be everywhere. I mean, he’s not supposed to be playing hide-and-seek.” He glances at his reflection in the darkened window.

“What sort of God would you like, Bobby— a vengeful God or a forgiving one?”

“A vengeful God.”

“Why?”

“People should pay for their sins. They shouldn’t suddenly get forgiven because they plead they’re sorry or repent on their deathbed. When we do wrong we should be punished.”

The last statement rattles in the air like a copper penny dropped on a table.

“What are you sorry for, Bobby?”

“Nothing.” He answers too quickly. Everything about his body language is screaming denial.

“How does it feel when you lose your temper?”

“Like my brain is boiling.”

“When was the last time you felt like this?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Who made you angry?”

“Nobody.”

Asking him direct questions is pointless, because he simply blocks them. Instead I take him back to an earlier point and let him build up momentum like a boulder rolling down a hill. I know the day— November 11. He missed his appointment that afternoon.

I ask him what time he woke. What did he have for breakfast? When did he leave home?

Slowly I move him closer to the point where he lost control. He had taken the Tube to the West End and visited a jeweler in Hatton Garden. He and Arky are getting married in the spring. Bobby had arranged to pick up their wedding rings. He argued with the jeweler and stormed out. It was raining. He was running late. He stood in Holborn Circus trying to hail a cab.

Having got this far, Bobby pulls away again and changes the subject.

“Who do you think would win a fight between a tiger and a lion?” he asks in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Why?”

“I’d like to know your opinion.”

“Tigers and lions don’t fight each other. They live in different parts of the world.”

“Yes, but if they did fight each other, who would win?”

“The question is pointless. Inane.”

“Isn’t that what psychologists do— ask pointless questions?”

His entire demeanor has changed in the space of a single question. Suddenly cocky and aggressive, he jabs his finger at me.

“You ask people what they’d do in hypothetical situations. Why don’t you try me? Go on. ‘What would I do if I was the first person to discover a small fire in a movie theater?’ Isn’t that the sort of question you ask? Would I put the fire out? Or go for the manager? Or evacuate the building? I know what you people do. You take a harmless answer and you try to make a sane person seem crazy.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I know.”

He’s talking about a Mental Status Examination. Clearly, Bobby has been evaluated before, yet there’s no mention of it in his medical history. Each time I put pressure on him, he reacts with hostility. It’s time to crank it up a notch.

“Let me tell you what I know, Bobby. Something happened that day. You were pissed off. You were having a bad day. Was it the jeweler? What did he do?”

My voice is sharp and unforgiving. Bobby flinches. His hackles rise.

“He’s a lying bastard! He got the engraving wrong on the wedding bands. He misspelled Arky’s name, but he said it was my mistake. He said I gave him the wrong spelling. The bastard wanted to charge me extra.”

“What did you do?”

“I smashed the glass on his counter.”

“How?”

“With my fist.”

He holds up his hand to show me. Faint yellow-and-purple bruising discolors the underside.

“What happened then?”

He shrugs and shakes his head. That can’t be all. There has to be something more. He talked of punishing “her”— a woman. It must have happened after he left the shop. He was on the street, angry, his brain boiling.

“Where did you first see her?”

He blinks at me rapidly. “Coming out of a music store.”

“What were you doing?”

“Queuing for a taxi. It was raining. She took my cab.”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t remember her.”

“How old was she?”

“I don’t know.”

“You say that she took your cab— did you say anything to her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What did you do?”

He flinches.

“Was she with anyone else?”

He glances at me and hesitates. “What do you mean?”

“Who was she with?”

“A boy.”

“How old was he?”

“Maybe five or six.”

“Where was the boy?”

“She was dragging him by the hand. He was screaming. I mean, really screaming. She was trying to ignore him. He dropped like a dead weight and she had to drag him along. And this kid just kept screaming. And I started wondering, why isn’t she talking to him? How can she let him scream? He’s in pain or he’s frightened. Nobody else was doing anything. It made me angry. How could they just stand there?”

“Who were you angry at?”

“All of them. I was angry at their indifference. I was angry at this woman’s neglect. I was angry with myself for hating the little boy. I just wanted him to stop screaming…”

“So what did you do?”

His voice drops to a whisper. “I wanted her to make him stop. I wanted her to listen to him.” He stops himself.

“Did you say anything to her?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“The door of the cab was open. She pushed him inside. The kid was thrashing his legs. She gets in after him and turns back to get the door. Her face is like a mask… blank… you know. She swings her arm back and bang! She elbows him right in the face. He crumples backward…”

Bobby pauses and then seems about to continue. He stops himself. The silence grows. I let it fill his head— working its way into the corners.

“I dragged her out of the cab. I had hold of her hair. I drove her face into the side window. She fell down and tried to roll away, but I kept kicking her.”

“Did you think you were punishing her?”

“Yes.”

“Did she deserve it?”

“Yes!”

He’s staring directly at me— his face as white as wax. At that moment I have an image of a child in a lonely corner of a playground, overweight, freakishly tall, the owner of nicknames like Jellyass and Lardbucket; a child for whom the world is a vast and empty place. A child seeking to be invisible, but who is condemned to stand out.

“I found a dead bird today,” Bobby says, absentmindedly. “Its neck was broken. Maybe it was hit by a car.”

“It’s possible.”

“I moved it off the path. Its body was still warm. Do you ever think about dying?”

“I think everyone does.”

“Some people deserve to die.”

“And who should be the judge of that?”

He laughs bitterly. “Not people like you.”

The session overruns but Meena has already gone home to her cats. Most of the nearby offices are locked up and in darkness. Cleaners are moving through the corridors, emptying wastebaskets and chipping paint off the baseboards with their carts.

Bobby has also gone. Even so, when I stare at the darkened square of the window, I can picture his face, soaked in sweat and spotted with the blood of that poor woman.

I should have seen this coming. He is my patient, my responsibility. I know I can’t hold his hand and make him come to see me, but that’s no consolation.

Bobby was close to crying when he described being charged, but he felt more sorry for himself than for the woman he attacked.

I struggle to care about some of my patients. They spend ninety quid and gaze at their navels or whine about things they should be telling their partners instead of me. Bobby is different. I don’t know why.

At times he seems totally incapacitated by awkwardness, yet he can startle me with his confidence and intellect. He laughs at the wrong places, explodes unexpectedly and has eyes as pale and cold as blue glass.

Sometimes I think he’s waiting for something— as though mountains are going to move or all the planets will line up. And once everything is in place he’ll finally let me know what’s really going on.

I can’t wait for that. I have to understand him now.

At five I’m outside trying to push against the tide of people washing toward the underground stations and bus stops. I walk toward Cavendish Square and hail a cab as it starts to rain again.

The desk sergeant at Holborn Police Station is pink-faced and freshly shaven, with his hair slicked down over his bald crown. Leaning on the counter, he dunks biscuits into a mug of tea, spilling crumbs onto the breasts of a page-three girl.

As I push through the glass door, he licks his fingers, wipes them down his shirt and slides the newspaper under the counter. He smiles and his cheeks jiggle.

I show him a business card and ask if I could possibly see the charge sheet for Bobby Moran. His good humor disappears.

“We’re very busy at the moment— you’ll have to bear with me.”

I look over my shoulder. The charge room is deserted except for a wasted teenage boy in torn jeans, trainers and an AC/DC T-shirt, who has fallen asleep on a wooden bench. There are cigarette burns on the floor and plastic cups copulating beside a metal wastebasket.

With deliberate slowness, the sergeant saunters toward a bank of filing cabinets on the rear wall. A biscuit is stuck to the backside of his trousers and the pink icing is melting into his rump. I allow myself a smile.

According to the charge sheet Bobby was arrested in central London eighteen days ago. He pleaded guilty at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court and was bailed to appear again on December 24 at the Old Bailey. Malicious wounding is a Section 20 offense— assault causing grievous bodily harm. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

Bobby’s statement is typed over three pages, double-spaced, with the corrections initialed in the margins. He makes no mention of the little boy or his argument with the jeweler. The woman had jumped the queue. For her troubles, she suffered a fractured jaw, depressed cheekbone, broken nose and three busted fingers.

“Where do I find out about the bail conditions?”

The sergeant leafs through the file and runs his finger down a court document.

“Eddie Barrett has the brief.” He grunts in disgust. “He’ll have this downgraded to actual bodily harm quicker than you can say ring-a-ding-ding.”

How did Bobby get a lawyer like Eddie Barrett? He’s the best-known defense solicitor in the country, with a genius for self-promotion and the ability to produce the perfect sound bite on the courthouse steps.

Eddie made his name a few years back by spearheading a class action against the Maastricht Treaty to stop the British government from ditching the pound. During the case he took to wearing Union Jack waistcoats and was rumored to have a tattoo of Her Majesty above his heart. Another rumor said he had no heart.

“How much was the bail?”

“Five grand.”

Where would Bobby find that sort of money?

I glance at my watch. It’s still only five thirty. Eddie’s secretary answers the phone and I can hear Eddie shouting in the background. She apologizes and asks me to wait. The two of them shout at each other. It’s like listening to a domestic fight. Eventually, she comes back to me. Eddie can give me twenty minutes.

It’s quicker to walk than to take a taxi to Chancery Lane. Buzzed through the main door, I climb the narrow stairs to the third floor, weaving past boxes of court documents and files, which have been stacked in every available space.

Eddie is talking on the phone as he ushers me into his office and points to a chair. I have to move two files to sit down. Eddie looks to be in his late fifties but is probably ten years younger. Whenever I’ve seen him interviewed on TV he’s put me in mind of a bulldog. He has the same swagger, with his shoulders barely moving and his ass swinging back and forth. He even has large incisor teeth, which must come in handy when ripping strips off people.

When I mention Bobby’s name Eddie looks disappointed. I think he was hoping for a medical malpractice case. He spins his chair and begins searching the drawer of a filing cabinet.

“What did Bobby tell you about the attack?”

“You saw his statement.”

“Did he mention seeing a young boy?”

“No.”

Eddie interrupts tiredly. “Look, I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot here, Madonna, but just explain to me why the fuck I’m talking to you. No offense.”

“None taken.” He’s a lot less pleasant up close. I start again. “Did Bobby mention he was seeing a psychologist?”

Eddie’s mood improves. “Shit no! Tell me more.”

“I’ve been seeing him for about six months. I also think he’s been evaluated before but I don’t have the records.”

“A history of mental illness— better and better.” He picks up a ringing telephone and motions for me to carry on. He’s trying to conduct two conversations at once.

“Did Bobby tell you why he lost his temper?”

“She took his cab.”

“It’s hardly a reason.”

“You ever tried to get a cab in Holborn on a wet Friday afternoon?” He half chuckles.

“I think there’s more to it than that.”

Eddie sighs. “Listen, Pollyanna, I don’t ask my clients to tell me the truth. I just keep them out of jail so they can go and make the same mistakes all over again.”

“The woman— what did she look like?”

“A fucking mess if you look at the photographs.”

“How old?”

“Mid-forties. Dark hair…”

“What was she wearing?”

“Just a second.” He hangs up the phone and yells to his secretary to get him Bobby’s file. Then he rifles through the pages, humming to himself.

“Mid-thigh skirt, high heels, a short jacket… mutton dressed as lamb if you ask me. Why do you want to know?”

I can’t tell him. It’s only half an idea.

“What’s going to happen to Bobby?”

“Right now he faces prison time. The crown prosecution service won’t downgrade the charges.”

“Jail isn’t going to help him. I can do you a psych report. Maybe I can get him into an anger management program.”

“What do you want from me?”

“A written request.”

Eddie’s pen is already moving. I can’t remember the last time I could write that fluidly. He slides it across the desk.

“Thanks for this.”

He grunts. “It’s a letter not a kidney.”

If ever a man had issues. Maybe it’s a Napoleon complex or he’s trying to compensate for being ugly. He’s bored with me now. The subject no longer interests him. I ask my questions quickly.

“Who put up the bail?”

“No idea.”

“And who phoned you?”

“He did.”

Before I can say anything else, he interrupts.

“Listen, Oprah, I’m due at a Law Society drinks party and I need a pee. This kid is your nutcase; I just defend the sorry fuck. Why don’t you take a peek inside his head, see if anything rattles and come back to me. Have a terrific day.”