Suspect (24 page)

The cabbie is pleased to be rid of me. I stand on the footpath and stare at my house. The only light is a glow from the kitchen window, down the side path.

My key slips into the lock. As I step inside I see Julianne silhouetted against a rectangle of light at the far end of the hal . She is standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Why didn’t you cal me? I would have picked you up…”

“I didn’t want Charlie to come to the police station.”

I can’t see the look on her face. Her voice sounds OK. I put down my tennis things and walk toward her. Her cropped dark hair is tousled and her eyes are pouchy from lack of sleep. As I try to put my arms around her, she slips away. She can hardly bear to look at me.

This is not just about a lie. I have brought police officers into her house, opening cupboards, looking under beds, searching through her personal things. Our neighbors have seen me in handcuffs. Our garden has been dug up. She has been interviewed by detectives and asked about our sex life. She has waited for hours in a police station hoping to see me, only to be turned away— not be the authorities but by me. Al of this and not one phone cal or message to help her understand.

I glance at the kitchen table and see a scattered pile of newspapers. The pages are open at the same story. PSYCHOLOGIST ARRESTED IN MCBRIDE MURDER PROBE reads one headline.

CELEBRITY SHRINK DETAINED says another. There are photographs of me sitting in the backseat of a police car with Simon’s coat over my head. I look guilty. Put a coat over Mother Teresa’s head and
she
would look guilty. Why do suspects do it? Surely it would be better to smile and wave.

I slump into a chair and look through the stories. One newspaper has used a telephoto shot of me perched on the roof of the Marsden, with Malcolm strapped in the harness in front of me. A second photo shows me covered in the coat. My hands are cuffed on my lap. The message is clear— I have gone from hero to zero.

Julianne fil s the electric kettle and takes out two mugs. She is wearing dark leggings and an oversized sweater that I bought for her at Camden Market. I told her it was for me, but I knew what would happen. She always borrows my sweaters. She says she likes the way they smel .

“Where’s Charlie?”

“Asleep. It’s nearly eleven.”

When the water boils, she fil s each mug and jiggles the tea bags. I can smel the peppermint. Julianne has a shelf ful of different herbal teas. She sits opposite me. Her eyes rest on me without any emotion. She slightly rotates her wrists, turning her palms up. With that one smal movement she signifies that she is waiting for me to explain.

I want to say it was al a misunderstanding but I’m afraid it wil sound trite. Instead I stick to the story— or what I know of it. How Ruiz thinks I had something to do with Catherine’s murder because my name was in her diary when they fished it out of the canal; and how Catherine came to London for a job interview to be
my
secretary. I had no idea. Meena arranged the short list. Catherine must have seen the advertisement.

Julianne is a step ahead of me. “That can’t be the only reason they arrested you.”

“No. The telephone records show that she cal ed my office on the evening she was kil ed.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No. I had an appointment with Jock. That’s when he told me about… you know what.”

“Who answered the cal ?”

“I don’t know. Meena went home early.”

I lower my eyes from her gaze. “They’ve dredged up the sexual assault complaint. They think I was having an affair with her— that she threatened to destroy my career and our marriage.”

“But she withdrew the complaint.”

“I know, but you can see how it looks.”

Julianne pushes her cup to the center of the table and slips off her chair. I feel myself relax a little because she’s no longer staring at me. Even without looking at her, I know exactly where she is— standing at the French doors staring through her reflection at the man she thought she knew, sitting at the table.

“You told me you were with Jock. You said you were getting drunk. I knew you were lying. I’ve known al along.”

“I did get drunk, but not with Jock.”

“Who were you with?” The question is short, sharp and to the point. It sums up Julianne— spontaneous and direct, with every line of communication a trunk route.

“I spent the night with Elisa Velasco.”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“Yes.”

“You had sex with a prostitute?”

“She’s not a prostitute anymore.”

“Did you use a condom?”

“Listen to me, Julianne. She hasn’t been a prostitute for years.”

“DID… YOU… USE… A… CONDOM?” Each word is clearly articulated. She is standing over my chair. Her eyes swim with tears.

“No.”

She delivers the slap with the force of her entire body. I reel sideways, clutching my cheek. I taste blood on the inside of my mouth and hear a high-pitched ringing inside my ears.

Julianne’s hand is on my thigh. Her voice is soft. “Did I hit you too hard? I’m not used to this.”

“I’m OK,” I reassure her.

She hits me again, this time even harder. I finish up on my knees, staring at the polished floorboards.

“You selfish, stupid, gutless, two-timing, lying bastard!” She is shaking her hand in pain.

I’m now a big clumsy unmoving target. She beats me with her good fist, hammering on my back. She is screaming: “A prostitute! Without a condom! And then you came home and you fucked me!”

“No! Please! You don’t understand…”

“Get out of here! You are not wanted in this house! You wil
not
see me. You wil
not
see Charlie.” I crouch on the floor, feeling wretched and pathetic. She turns and walks away, down the hal way to the front room. I pul myself up and fol ow her, desperate for some sign that this isn’t the end.

I find her kneeling in front of the Christmas tree with a pair of garden shears in her hand. She has neatly lopped off the top third of the tree. It now looks like a large green lampshade.

“I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Please listen to me.”

“Why? What are you going to say to me? That you love me? That she meant nothing? That you
fucked
her and then you
made love
to me?” That’s the difficulty when arguing with Julianne. She unleashes so many accusations at once that no single answer satisfies them col ectively. And the moment you start trying to divide the questions up, she hits you again with a new series.

She is crying properly now. Her tears glisten in the lamplight like a string of beads draped down her cheeks.

“I made a mistake. When Jock told me about the Parkinson’s it felt like a death sentence. Everything was going to change— al our plans. The future. I know I said the opposite. It’s not true. Why give me this life and then give me this disease? Why give me the joy and beauty of you and Charlie and then snatch it away? It’s like showing someone a glimpse of what life could be like and in the next breath tel ing them it can never happen.”

I kneel beside her, my knees almost touching hers.

“I didn’t know how to tel you. I needed time to think. I couldn’t talk to my parents or friends, who were going to feel sorry for me and give me chin-up speeches and brave smiles. That’s why I went to see Elisa. She’s a stranger, but also a friend. There’s good in her.”

Julianne wipes her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater and stares at the fireplace.

“I didn’t plan to sleep with her. It just happened. I wish I could change that. We’re not having an affair. It was one night.”

“What about Catherine McBride? Did you sleep with her?”

“No.”

“Wel why did she apply to be your secretary? What would make her think you would ever give her a job after what she put us through?”

“I don’t know.”

Julianne looks at her bruised hand and then at my cheek.

“What do you want, Joe? Do you want to be free? Is that it? Do you want to face this alone?”

“I don’t want to drag you and Charlie down with me.”

My maudlin tone infuriates her. She bunches her fists in frustration.

“Why do you always have to be so fucking sure of yourself? Why can’t you just admit you need help? I know you’re sick. I know you’re tired. Wel , here’s a news flash: we’re al sick and we’re al tired. I’m sick of being marginalized and tired of being pushed aside. Now I want you to leave.”

“But I love you.”

“Leave!”

“What about us? What about Charlie?”

She gives me a cold unwavering stare. “Maybe I stil love you, Joe, but at the moment I can’t stand you.”

4

When it is over— the packing, the walking out the door and the cab ride to Jock’s doorstep— I feel like I did on my first day at boarding school. Abandoned. A single memory comes back to me, with al the light and shade of reality. I am standing on the front steps of Charterhouse as my father hugs me and feels the sob in my chest. “Not in front of your mother,” he whispers.

He turns to walk away and says to my mother, “Not in front of the boy,” as she dabs at her eyes.

Jock insists I’l feel better after a shower, a shave and a decent meal. He orders takeout from his local Indian, but I’m asleep on the sofa before it arrives. He eats alone.

In the motley half-light, leaking through the blinds, I can see tinfoil trays stacked beside the sink, with orange-and-yel ow gravy erupting over the sides. The TV remote is pressing into my spine and the weekly program guide is wedged under my head. I don’t know how I managed to sleep at al .

My mind keeps flashing back to Julianne and the look she gave me. It went far beyond disappointment. Sadness is not a big enough word. It was as though something had frozen inside her. Very rarely do we fight. Julianne can argue with passion and emotion. If I try to be too clever or become insensitive she accuses me of arrogance and I see the hurt in her eyes. This time I saw only emptiness. A vast, windswept landscape that a man could die trying to cross.

Jock is awake. I can hear him singing in the shower. I try to swing my legs to the floor but nothing happens. For a fleeting moment I fear I’m paralyzed. Then I realize that I can feel the weight of the blankets. Concentrating my thoughts, my legs grudgingly respond.

The bradykinesia is becoming more obvious. Stress is a factor in Parkinson’s disease. I’m supposed to get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly and try not to worry about things.

Yeah, right!

Jock lives in a mansion block overlooking Hampstead Heath. Downstairs there is a doorman who holds an umbrel a over your head when it rains. He wears a uniform and cal s people

“Guv” or “Madam.”

Jock and his second wife used to own the entire top floor, but since the divorce he can only afford a one-bedroom apartment. He also had to sel his Harley and give her the cottage in the Cotswolds. Whenever he sees an expensive sports car he claims it belongs to Natasha.

“When I look back it’s not the ex-wives that frighten me, it’s the mothers-in-law,” he says. Since his divorce he has become, as Jeffrey Bernard would say, a sort of roving dinner guest on the outside looking in and a fly on the wal of other people’s marriages.

Jock and I go a lot further back than university. The same obstetrician, in the same hospital, delivered us both on the same day, only eight minutes apart. That was on the eighteenth of August 1960, at Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital in Hammersmith. Our mothers shared a delivery suite and the OB had to dash back and forth between the curtains.

I arrived first. Jock had such a big head that he got stuck and they had to pul him out with forceps. Occasional y he stil jokes about coming second and trying to catch up. In reality, competition is never a joke with him. We were probably side by side in the nursery. We might have looked at each other, or kept each other awake.

It says something about the separateness of individual experience that we began our lives only minutes apart but didn’t meet again until nineteen years later. Julianne says fate brought us together. Maybe she’s right. Aside from being held upside down and smacked on the ass by the same doctor, we had very little in common.

I can’t explain why Jock and I became friends. What did I offer to the partnership? He was a big wheel on campus, always invited to the best parties and flirting with the prettiest girls. My dividend was obvious, but what did he get? Maybe that’s what they mean when they say people just “click.”

We long ago drifted apart political y and sometimes moral y, but we can’t shake loose our history. He was best man at my wedding and I was best man at both of his. We have keys for each other’s houses and copies of each other’s wil s. Shared experience is a powerful bond, but it’s not just that.

Jock, for al his right-wing bluster is actual y a big softie, who has donated more money to charity than he settled on either of his ex-wives. Every year he organizes a fund-raiser for Great Ormond Street and he hasn’t missed a London Marathon in fifteen years. Last year he pushed a hospital bed with a load of “naughty” nurses in stockings and suspenders. He looked more like Benny Hil than Dr. Kildare.