The Suspect

2

In the third form, during a holiday in Wales, I took some matches from the china bowl on the mantelpiece to make a campfire. It was near the end of a dry summer and the grass was brittle and brown. Did I mention the wind?

My smoldering bundle of twigs sparked a grass fire that destroyed two fences, a 200-year-old hedgerow and threatened a neighboring barn full of winter feed. I raised the alarm, screaming at the top of my lungs as I ran home with blackened cheeks and smoky hair.

I crawled into the far corner of the loft in the stables, wedging myself against the sloping roof. I knew my father was too big to reach me. I lay very still, breathing in the dust and listening to the sirens of the fire engines. I imagined all sorts of horrors. I pictured entire farms and villages ablaze. They were going to send me to jail. Carey Moynihan’s brother had been sent to reform school because he set fire to a train carriage. He came out meaner than when he went in.

I spent five hours in the loft. Nobody shouted or threatened me. Dad said I should come out and take my punishment like a man. Why do young boys have to act like men? The look of disappointment on my mother’s face was far more painful than the sting of my father’s belt. What would the neighbors say?

Prison seems much closer now than it did then. I can picture Julianne holding up our baby across the table. “Wave to Daddy,” she tells him (it’s a boy, of course), as she tugs down her skirt self-consciously, aware of the dozens of inmates staring at her legs.

I picture redbrick buildings rising out of the asphalt. Iron doors with keys the size of a man’s palm. I see metal landings, meal queues, exercise yards, swaggering guards, nightsticks, pisspots, lowered eyes, barred windows and a handful of snapshots taped to a cell wall.

What happens to someone like me in jail?

Simon is right. I can’t run. And just like I learned in third form, I can’t hide forever. Bobby wants to destroy me. He doesn’t want me dead. He could have killed me a dozen times over, but he wants me alive so I can see what he’s doing and know that it’s him.

Will the police keep watching my home or will they call off the surveillance to focus on Wales? I don’t want that. I need to know that Julianne and Charlie are safe.

The phone rings. Jock has an address for a Bridget Aherne at a hospice in Lancashire.

“I talked to the senior oncologist. They give her only weeks.”

I can hear him unwrapping the plastic from a cigar. It’s early. Maybe he’s celebrating. Both of us have settled for an uneasy truce. Like an old married couple, we recognize the half-truths and ignore the irritations.

“There’s a photograph of you in today’s papers,” he says. “You look like a banker rather than a ‘Most Wanted.’ ”

“I don’t photograph well.”

“Julianne gets a mention. They describe her as being ‘overwrought and emotional when visited by reporters.’ She told them to fuck off.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured, too.”

I can hear him blowing smoke. “I got to hand it to you, Joe. I always took you for a boring fart. Likable enough, but virtuous. Look at you now! Two mistresses and a wanted man.”

“I didn’t sleep with Catherine McBride.”

“Shame. She was good in the sack.” He laughs wryly.

“You should listen to yourself sometimes, Jock.”

To think I once envied him. Look at what he’s become: a crude parody of a right-wing, middle-class chauvinist and bigot. I no longer trust him, but I need another favor.

“I want you to stay with Julianne and Charlie— just until I sort this out.”

“You told me not to go near her.”

“I know.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you. Julianne isn’t returning my calls. I figure you must have told her about Catherine and the letters. She’s pissed off at both of us now.”

“At least call her; tell her to be careful. Tell her to let no one into the house.”