The Suspect

4

Melinda Cossimo answers the door reluctantly. Visitors this late on a Sunday night are rarely good news for a social worker. I don’t give her time to speak. “The police are looking for me. I need your help.”

She blinks at me wide-eyed, but looks almost calm. Her hair is swept up and pinned high on her head with a large tortoise-shell clip. Wispy strands have escaped to stroke her cheeks and neck. As the door closes, she motions me onward, telling me to march straight up the stairs to the bathroom. She waits outside the door while I pass her my clothes.

I protest about not having the time, but she doesn’t react to the urgency in my voice. It won’t take long to wash a few things, she says.

I stare at the naked stranger in the mirror. He has lost weight. That can happen when you don’t eat. I know what Julianne would say: “Why can’t I lose weight that easily?” The stranger in the mirror smiles at me.

I come downstairs wearing a robe and hear Mel hang up the phone. By the time I reach the kitchen she has opened a bottle of wine and is filling two glasses.

“Who did you call?”

“Nobody important.”

She curls up in a large armchair, with the stem of her wineglass slotted between the first and second fingers of her outspread hand. Her other hand rests on the back of an open book, lying facedown across the armrest. The reading lamp above her casts a shadow beneath her eyes and gives her mouth a harsh downward curve.

This has always been a house I associate with laughter and good times, but now it seems too quiet. One of Boyd’s paintings hangs above the mantelpiece and another on the opposite wall. There is a photograph of him and his motorbike at the Isle of Man TT track.

“So what have you done?”

“The police think I killed Catherine McBride, among others.”

“Among others?” One eyebrow arches like an oxbow.

“Well, just one ‘other.’ A former patient.”

“You’re going to tell me that you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Not unless being foolish is a crime.”

“Why are you running?”

“Because someone wants to frame me…”

“Bobby Morgan.”

“Yes.”

She raises her hand. “I don’t want to know any more. I’m in enough trouble for showing you the files.”

“We got it wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just talked to Bridget Morgan. I don’t think Bobby’s father abused him.”

“She told you that!”

“She wanted out of the marriage. He wouldn’t give her a divorce.”

“He left a suicide note.”

“One word.”

“An apology.”

“Yes, but for what?”

Mel’s voice is cold. “This is ancient history, Joe. Leave it alone. You know the unwritten rule— never go back, never reopen a case. I have enough lawyers looking over my shoulder without another bloody lawsuit…”

“What happened to Erskine’s notes? They weren’t in the files.”

She hesitates. “He might have asked to have them excluded.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps Bobby asked to see his file. He’s allowed to do that. A ward can see the write-ups by the duty social worker and some of the minutes of the meetings. Third party submissions like doctor’s notes and psych reports are different. We need to get permission from the specialist to release them…”

“Are you saying that Bobby saw his file?”

“Maybe.” In the same breath she dismisses the idea. “It’s an old file. Things get misplaced.”

“Could Bobby have removed the notes?”

She whispers angrily, “You can’t be serious, Joe! Worry about yourself.”

“Could he have seen the video?”

She shakes her head, refusing to say anything more. I can’t let it go. Without her help my frail improbable theory goes south. Talking quickly, as though afraid she might stop me, I tell her about the chloroform, the whales and the windmills: how Bobby has stalked me for months, infiltrating the lives of everyone around me.

At some point she puts my washed clothes in the dryer and refills my wineglass. I follow her to the kitchen and shout over the whine of the blender as it pulverizes warm chickpeas. She puts a dollop of humus on slices of toast, seasoned with crushed black pepper.

“So that’s why I need to find Rupert Erskine. I need his notes or his memories.”

“I can’t help you anymore. I’ve done enough.” She glances at the clock on the stove.

“Are you expecting someone?”

“No.”

“Who did you call earlier?”

“A friend.”

“Did you call the police?”

She hesitates. “No. I left instructions with my secretary. If I didn’t call her back in an hour she had to contact the police.”

I glance at the same clock, counting backward. “Christ, Mel!”

“I’m sorry. I have my career to think about.”

“Thanks for nothing.” My clothes aren’t quite dry, but I wrestle on the trousers and shirt. She grabs at my sleeve. “Give yourself up.”

I brush her hand aside. “You don’t understand.”

My left leg is swinging as I try to move quickly. My hand is on the front door.

“Erskine. You wanted to find him.” She blurts it out. “He retired ten years ago. Last I heard he was living near Chester. Someone from the department contacted him a while back. We had a chat… caught up.”

She remembers the address— a village called Hatchmere. Vicarage Cottage. I scribble the details on a scrap of paper balanced on the hallway table. My left hand refuses to budge. My right hand will have to do.

All mornings should be so bright and clear. The sun angles through the cracked back window of the Land Rover, fracturing into a disco ball of beams. With two hands on the handle, I force a side window open and peer outside. Someone has painted the world white; turned color into monochrome.

Cursing the stiffness of the door, I shove it open and swing my legs outside. The air smells of dirt and wood smoke. Scooping a handful of snow, I rub it into my face, trying to wake up. Then I undo my fly and pee on the base of a tree, painting it a darker brown. How far did I travel last night? I wanted to keep going, but the headlights on the Land Rover kept cutting out and plunging me into darkness. Twice I nearly finished up in a ditch.

How did Bobby spend the night? I wonder if he’s looking for me or watching Julianne and Charlie. He’s not going to wait for me to figure this out. I need to hurry.

Hatchmere Lake is fringed with reeds and the water reflects the blueness of the sky. I stop at a red-and-white house and ask directions. An old lady, still in her dressing gown, answers the door and mistakes me for a tourist. She starts giving me the history of Hatchmere, which segues into her own life story about her son who works in London and her grandchildren whom she only sees once a year.

I keep thanking her and backing away. She stands at her front gate as I struggle to start the Land Rover. That’s just what I need. She’s probably an expert on cribbage, crosswords and remembering license plates. “I never forget a number,” she’ll say, as she rattles it off to the police.

The engine kindly turns over and fires, belching smoke from the exhaust. I wave and smile. She looks concerned for me.

Vicarage Cottage has Christmas lights strung over the windows and doors. Parked on the front path are a handful of toy cars circled like wagons around an old milk crate. Hanging diagonally across the path is a rust-stained bedsheet with two ends tied to a tree. A boy squats underneath with a plastic ice-cream bucket on his head. He points a wooden stick at my chest.

“Are you a Slytherin?” he says with a lisp.

“Pardon?”

“You can only come in here if you’re from Gryffindor.” The freckles on his nose are the color of toasted corn.

A young woman appears at the door. Her blond hair is sleep-tossed and she’s fighting a cold. A baby is perched on her hip sucking on a small piece of toast.

“You leave the man alone, Brendan,” she says, smiling at me tiredly.

Stepping around the toys, I reach the door. I can see an ironing board set up behind her.

“I’m sorry about that. He thinks he’s Harry Potter. Can I help you?”

“Hopefully, yes. I’m looking for Rupert Erskine.”

A shadow crosses her face. “He doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Do you know where I might find him?”

She swaps her baby onto her opposite hip and does up a loose button on her blouse. “You’d be better asking someone else.”

“Would one of the neighbors know? It’s very important that I see him.”

She bites her bottom lip and looks past me toward the church. “Well, if you want to see him you’ll find him over there.”

I turn to look.

“He’s in the cemetery.” Realizing how blunt the statement sounds, she adds, “I’m sorry if you knew him.”

Without making a conscious decision I find myself sitting down on the steps. “We used to work together,” I explain. “It was a long time ago.”

She glances over her shoulder. “Would you like to come in and sit down?”

“Thank you.”

The kitchen smells of sterilized bottles and porridge. There are crayons and pieces of paper spread over the table and chair. She apologizes for the mess.

“What happened to Mr. Erskine?”

“I only know what the neighbors told me. Everyone in the village was pretty shook up by what happened. You don’t expect that sort of thing— not round these parts.”

“What sort of thing?”

“They say he came across someone trying to rob the place, but I don’t see how that explains anything. What sort of burglar ties an old man to a chair and tapes his mouth? He lived for two weeks. Some folks say he had a heart attack, but I heard he died of dehydration. It was the hottest fortnight of the year…”

“When was this?”

“August just gone. I reckon some folks are feeling guilty because nobody noticed him missing. He was always pottering in the garden and taking walks by the lake. Someone from the church choir knocked on the door and a man came to read the gas meter. The front door was unlocked, but nobody thought to go inside.”

The baby is squirming in her arms. “Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea? You don’t look too good.”

I can see her lips moving and hear the question, but I’m not really listening. The ground has dropped away beneath me like a plunging lift. She’s still talking. “…a really nice old man, people say. A widower. You probably know that already. Don’t think he had any other family…”

I ask to use her phone and need both hands to hold the receiver. The numbers are barely legible. Louise Elwood answers. I have to stop myself from shouting.

“The deputy headmistress at St. Mary’s— you said that she resigned for family reasons.”

“Yes. Her name was Alison Gorski.”

“When was that?”

“About eighteen months ago. Her mother died in a house fire and her father was badly burned. She moved to London so she could nurse him. I think he’s in a wheelchair.”

“How did the fire start?”

“They think it was a case of mistaken identity. Someone put a petrol bomb through the mail slot. The newspapers thought it might have been an anti-Jewish thing, but there was never anything more said.”

A rush of fear becomes liquid on my skin. My eyes fix on the young woman who is watching me anxiously from beside the stove. She is frightened of me. I have brought something sinister into her house.

I make another call. Mel picks up immediately. I don’t give her time to speak. “The car that hit Boyd, what happened to the driver?” My voice sounds strident and thin.

“The police have been here, Joe. A detective called Ruiz…”

“Just tell me about the driver.”

“It was a hit and run. They found the four-wheel drive a few blocks away.”

“And the driver?”

“They think it was probably a teenage joy rider. There was a thumbprint on the steering wheel, but it matched nothing on file.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Why? What’s this got to do…”

“Please, Mel.”

She stumbles over the first part of the story, trying to remember whether it was seven thirty or eight thirty that evening when Boyd went out. It upsets her to think she could have forgotten a detail like this. She worries that Boyd might be growing fainter in her memories.

It was Bonfire night. The air was laced with gunpowder and sulfur. Neighborhood kids, giddy with excitement, had gathered around bonfires built from scrap wood on allotments and waste ground.

Boyd often went out of an evening for tobacco. He went to his local for a quick pint and picked up his favorite blend from a liquor store on the way. He wore a fluorescent vest and a canary-yellow helmet. His gray ponytail hung down his back. He paused at an intersection on Great Homer Street.

Perhaps he turned at the last moment, when he heard the car. He might even have seen the driver’s face in that fraction of a second before he disappeared beneath the bulbar. His body was dragged for a hundred yards beneath the chassis, caught in the twisted frame of his motorcycle.

“What’s going on?” asks Mel. I imagine her wide red mouth and timid gray eyes.

“Lucas Dutton, where is he now?”

Mel answers in a calm, quavering voice. “He works for some government advisory body on teenage drug use.”

I remember Lucas. He dyed his hair; played golf off a low handicap and collected matchbooks and blends of scotch. His wife was a drama teacher. They drove a Skoda and went on holidays to a campground in Bognor. They had twin girls…

Mel is demanding an explanation, but I talk over her. “What happened to the twins?”

“You’re scaring me, Joe.”

“What happened to them?”

“One of them died last Easter of a drug overdose.”

I am ahead of her now, reading a list of names: Justice McBride, Melinda Cossima, Rupert Erskine, Lucas Dutton, Alison Gorski— all were involved in the same child protection case. Erskine is dead. The others have all lost someone close to them. What has this got to do with me? I only interviewed Bobby the once. Surely that isn’t enough to explain the windmills, the Spanish lessons, the Tigers and Lions… Why did he spend months living in Wales, landscaping my parent’s garden and fixing the old stables?

Mel is threatening to hang up on me, but I can’t let her go. “Who put together the legal submission for the care order?”

“I did, of course.”

“You said Erskine was on holiday. Who signed off on the psych report?”

She hesitates. Her breathing changes. She is about to lie.

“I don’t remember?”

More insistent this time. “Who signed the psych report?”

She speaks straight through me, directly into the past.

“You did.”

“How? When?”

“I put the form in front of you and you signed. You thought it was a foster-parent authorization. It was your last day in Liverpool. We were having farewell drinks at the Windy House.”

I moan inwardly, the phone still to my ear.

“My name was in Bobby’s files?”

“Yes.”

“You took it out of the folders before you showed them to me?”

“It was a long time ago. I thought it didn’t matter.”

I can’t answer her. I let the phone fall from my hand. The young mother is clutching her baby tightly in her arms, jiggling him up and down to calm his cries. As I retreat down the steps, I hear her calling her older son inside. Nobody wants to be near me. I am like an infectious disease. An epidemic.