Suspect (37 page)

“I didn’t know.”

“It’s only been the last few years. We get up early if the weather is OK. There are some nice walks in Snowdonia.”

“So I hear.”

“Keeps me fit.”

“Good for you.”

He clears his throat and goes looking for a fresh towel. “I suppose you want a shower instead of a bath.” He makes it sound newfangled and disloyal. A true Welshman would use a tin tub in front of the coal fire.

I push my face into the jets of water, hearing it rush past my ears. I’m trying to wash away the grime of the past few days and drown out the voices in my head. This al began with a disease, a chemical imbalance, a baffling neurological disorder. It feels more like a cancer— a blush of wild cel s that have infected every corner of my life, multiplying by the second and fastening on to new hosts.

I lie down in the guest bedroom and close my eyes. I just want a few minutes’ rest. Wind beats against the windows. I can smel sodden earth and coal fires. I vaguely remember my father putting a blanket over me. Maybe it’s a dream. My dirty clothes are hanging over his arm. He reaches down and strokes my forehead.

A while later I hear the ring of spoons in mugs and the sound of my mother’s voice in the kitchen. The other sound— almost as familiar— is my father breaking ice for the ice bucket.

Opening the curtains, I see snow on the distant hil s and the last of the frost retreating across the lawn. Maybe we’l have a white Christmas— just like the year Charlie was born.

I can’t stay here any longer. Once the police find Elisa’s body they wil put the pieces together and come looking instead of waiting for me to turn up somewhere. This is one of the first places they’l search.

Urine splatters into the bowl. My father’s trousers are too big for me, but I cinch in the belt making the material gather above the pockets. They don’t hear me padding along the hal way. I stand in the doorway watching them.

My mother, as always, is dressed to perfection, wearing a peach-colored cashmere sweater and a gray skirt. She thickened around her middle after she turned fifty and has never managed to lose the weight.

She puts a cup of tea in front of my father and kisses him on the top of his head with a wet smacking sound. “Look at this,” she says. “My stockings have a run. That’s the second pair this week.” He slips his hand around her waist and gives her a squeeze. I feel embarrassed. I don’t remember ever seeing them share such an intimate moment.

My mother jumps in surprise and admonishes me for having “crept up on her.” She begins fussing about what I’m wearing. She could easily take the trousers in, she says. She doesn’t ask about my own clothes.

“Why didn’t you tel us you were coming?” she asks. “We’ve been worried sick, especial y after al those ghastly
stories
in the newspapers.” She makes the tabloids sound as attractive as a soggy fur bal deposited on a carpet.

“Wel at least that’s al over with now,” she says sternly, as if determined to draw a line under the whole episode. “Of course, I’l have to avoid the bridge club for a while but I daresay it wil al be forgotten soon enough. Gwyneth Evans wil be insufferably smug. She wil think she’s off the hook now. Her eldest boy, Owen, ran off with the nanny and left his poor wife with two boys to look after. Now the ladies wil have something else to talk about.”

My father seems oblivious to the conversation. He is reading a book with his nose so close to the pages that it looks as though he’s trying to inhale them.

“Come on, I want to show you the garden. It looks wonderful. But you must promise to come back in the spring when the blooms are out. We have our own greenhouse and there are new shingles on the stable roof. Al that damp is gone. Remember the smel ? There were rats nesting behind the wal s. Awful!” She fetches two pairs of Wel ingtons. “I can’t remember your size.”

“These are fine.”

She makes me borrow Dad’s Barbour and then leads the way, down the back steps onto the path. The pond is frozen the color of watery soup and the landscape is pearl gray. She points out the dry stone wal which had crumbled during my childhood, but now stands squat and solid, pieced together like a three-dimensional jigsaw. A new greenhouse with glass panels and a framework of freshly mil ed pine backs onto the wal . Trays of seedlings cover trestle tables and spring baskets, lined with moss, hang from the ceiling. She flicks a switch and a fine spray fogs the air.

“Come and see the old stables. We’ve had al the junk cleared out. We could make it into a granny flat. I’l show you inside.” We fol ow the path between the vegetable patch and the orchard. Mum is stil talking, but I’m only half listening. I can see her scalp beneath the parting of her gray hair.

“How was your protest meeting?” I ask.

“Good. We had more than fifty people.”

“What was it al about?”

“We’re trying to stop that blasted wind farm. They want to build it right on the ridge.” She points in the general direction. “Have you ever heard a wind turbine? The noise is monstrous.

Blades flashing around. The air screaming in pain.”

Standing on tiptoes, she reaches above the stable door to get the key from its hiding place.

The tightness in my chest returns. “What did you say?”

“When?”

“Just then… ‘the air was screaming in pain.’ ”

“Oh, the windmil s; they make such a horrible sound.”

She has the key in her hand. It is tied to a smal piece of carved wood. Unconsciously, my hand flashes out and grips her wrist. I turn it over and the pressure makes her fingers open.

“Who gave you that?” My voice is trembling.

“Joe, you’re hurting me.” She looks at the key ring. “Bobby gave me that. He’s the young man I’ve been tel ing you about. He fixed the stone wal and the shingles on the stable. He built the greenhouse and did the planting. Such a hard worker. He took me to see the windmil s…”

For a brief moment I feel myself fal ing, but nothing happens. It’s like someone has tilted the landscape and I’m leaning into it, clutching the door frame.

“When?”

“He stayed with us for three months over the summer…”

“What did he look like?”

“How can I put it politely? He’s very tal , but perhaps a little overweight. Big-boned. Sweet as can be. He only wanted room and board.” The truth isn’t a blinding light or a cold bucket of water in the face. It leaks into my consciousness like a red wine stain on a pale carpet or a dark shadow on a chest X-ray. Bobby knew things about me, things I dismissed as coincidences. Tigers and Lions, Charlie’s painting of the whale… He knew things about Catherine and how she died. A mind reader. A stalker. A medieval conjurer who disappears and reappears in a puff of smoke.

But how did he know about Elisa? He saw us having lunch together and then fol owed her home. No. I saw him that afternoon. He turned up for his appointment. That’s when I lost him by the canal— close to Elisa’s house.

No comprenderás todavía lo que comprenderás en el futuro
. You don’t understand yet what you wil understand in the end…

Moving suddenly, I stumble and land awkwardly on the path. Scrambling upward, I set off in a limping run toward the house, ignoring my mother’s questions about not seeing the stable.

Bursting through the door, I ricochet off the laundry wal , upsetting a washing basket and a box of detergent on a shelf. A pair of my mother’s knickers catches on the toe of my boot. The nearest telephone is in the kitchen. Julianne answers on the third ring. I don’t give her time to speak.

“You said someone was watching the house.”

“Hang up, Joe, the police are trying to find you.”

“Did you see someone?”

“Hang up and cal Simon.”

“Please, Julianne!”

She recognizes the desperation in my voice. It matches her own.

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“What about the person D.J. chased out of the house— did he get a good look at him?”

“No.”

“He must have said something. Was he big, tal , overweight?”

“D.J. didn’t get that close.”

“Do you have someone in your Spanish class cal ed Bobby or Robert or Bob? He’s tal , with glasses.”

“There
is
a Bobby.”

“What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know. I gave him a lift home one night. He said he used to live in Liverpool…”

“Where’s Charlie? Get her out of the house! Bobby wants to hurt you. He wants to punish me…”

I try to explain but she keeps asking me why Bobby would do such a thing? It’s the one question I can’t answer.

“Nobody is going to hurt us, Joe. The street is crawling with police. One of them fol owed me around the supermarket today. I shamed him into carrying my shopping bags…” Suddenly I realize that she’s probably right. She and Charlie are safer at the house than anywhere else because the police are watching them… waiting for me.

Julianne is stil talking, “Cal Simon, please. Don’t do anything sil y.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Simon’s home number is written on the back of his business card. When he answers I can hear Patricia in the background. He’s sleeping with my sister. Why does that seem strange?

His voice drops to a whisper and I can hear him taking the phone somewhere more private. He doesn’t want Patricia to hear the conversation.

“Did you have lunch with anyone on Thursday?”

“Elisa Velasco.”

“Did you go home with her?”

“No.”

He takes a deep breath. I know what’s coming.

“Elisa was found dead at her flat. She was suffocated with a garbage bag. They’re coming for you, Joe. They have a warrant. They want you for murder.” My voice is high-pitched and shaking. “I know who kil ed her. He’s a patient of mine— Bobby Morgan. He’s been watching me…” Simon isn’t listening. “I want you to go to the nearest police station. Give yourself up. Cal me when you get there. Don’t say anything unless I’m with you…”

“But what about Bobby Morgan?”

Simon’s voice is more insistent. “You
have
to do as I say. They have DNA evidence, Joe. Traces of your semen and strands of your hair; your fingerprints were in the bedroom and bathroom. On Thursday evening a cabdriver picked you up less than a mile from the murder scene. He remembers you. You flagged him down outside the same hotel where Catherine McBride went missing…”

“You wanted to know where I spent the night of the thirteenth? I’l tel you. I was with Elisa.”

“Wel your alibi is dead.”

The statement is so blunt and honest, I stop trying to convince him. The facts have been laid out, one by one, revealing how hopeless my position is. Even my denials sound hol ow.

My father is standing in the doorway dressed in his tracksuit. Behind him, through the open curtains of the living room, two police cars have pul ed into the drive.

1

Three miles is a long way when you’re running in Wel ington boots. It is even farther when your socks have slipped down and gathered in a bal beneath your arches, making you run like a penguin.

Scrambling along muddy sheep tracks and jumping between rocks, I fol ow a partly frozen stream cutting through the fields. In spite of the boots I manage to keep up a good pace and only occasional y glance behind me. Right now I’m doing everything automatical y. If I stop for anything I’m finished.

My childhood holidays were spent exploring these fields. I used to know every copse and hil ock; the best fishing spots and hiding places. I kissed Ethelwyn Jones in the hayloft of her uncle’s barn on her thirteenth birthday. It was my first kiss with tongues and I got an instant hard-on. She leaned right into it and let out a scream, biting down hard on my bottom lip. She wore braces and had a mouth like Jaws in the James Bond films. I had a blood blister on my lip for a fortnight, but it was worth it.

When I reach the A55 I slip beneath the concrete pylons of a bridge and carry on along the stream. The banks grow steeper and twice I slide sideways into the water, breaking thin ice at the edges.

I reach a waterfal about ten feet high and drag myself upward using tufts of grass and rocks as handholds. My knees are muddy and trousers wet. Ten minutes farther on, I duck under a fence and find a track marked for ramblers.