“A coincidence is just a couple of things happening simultaneously.”
She rolls her eyes. “Spoken like a true psychologist.”
It has been three days since I handed Ruiz the letter and I saw the look on his face that was a mixture of self-satisfaction and suspicion. He had picked up the single page and envelope by the corners and slipped each into a plastic ziplock bag.
I haven’t said anything to Julianne but I think the police are watching me. An unmarked police car was parked outside the office yesterday. I saw two detectives talking to the receptionist at the front desk. At lunchtime I went Christmas shopping in Tottenham Court Road and they were there again.
A part of me felt like walking up to them and introducing myself. I wanted them to
I can’t be bothered with cat-and-mouse games. It is inconceivable that I could be a suspect. Why are they wasting their time and resources on me? Yet as skeptical as I am, I feel the same imperative to explore Catherine’s death. I want to empty drawers, peer under sofas and turn things upside down until I find the answers.
Bobby Moran intercepts me as I cross the lobby. He looks even more disheveled than normal, with mud on his overcoat and papers bulging from his pockets. I wonder if he’s been waiting for sleep or something bad to happen.
Blinking rapidly behind his glasses, he mumbles an apology.
“I have to see you.”
I glance over his head at the clock on the wall. “I have another patient…”
“Please?”
I should say no. I can’t have people just turning up. Meena will be furious. She could run a perfectly good office if it weren’t for patients turning up unannounced or not keeping appointments. “That’s not the way to pack a suitcase,” she’d say and I’d agree with her, even if I don’t completely understand what she means.
Upstairs, I tell Bobby to sit down and set about rearranging my morning. He looks embarrassed to have caused such a fuss. He is different today— less grounded, living in the here and now.
He is dressed in his work clothes— a gray shirt and trousers. The word Nevaspring is sewn onto the breast pocket. I write a new page for notes, struggling to loop each letter, and then look up to see if he’s ready. That’s when I realize he’ll never be entirely ready. Jock is right— there is something fragile and erratic about Bobby. His mind is full of half-finished ideas, strange facts and snatches of conversation.
“Why did you want to see me?”
Bobby stares at a spot on the floor between his feet. “You asked me about what I dream.”
“Yes.”
“I think there’s something wrong with me. I keep having these thoughts.”
“What thoughts?”
“I hurt people in my dreams.”
“How do you hurt them?”
He looks up at me plaintively. “I try to stay awake… I don’t want to fall asleep. Arky keeps telling me to come to bed. She can’t understand why I’m watching TV at four in the morning, wrapped in a duvet on the sofa. It’s because of the dreams.”
“What about them?”
“Bad things happen in them— that doesn’t make me a bad person.”
He is perched on the edge of the chair, with his eyes flicking from side to side.
“There’s a girl in a red dress. She keeps turning up when I don’t expect to see her.”
“In your dream?”
“Yes. She just looks at me— right through me as though I don’t exist. She’s laughing.”
His eyes snap wide as though spring-loaded and his tone suddenly changes. Spinning around in his chair, he presses his lips together and crosses his legs. I hear a harsh feminine voice.
“Now Bobby don’t tell lies.”
— “I’m not a blabbermouth.”
“Did he touch you or not?”
— “No.”
“That’s not what Mr. Erskine wants to hear.”
— “Don’t make me say it.”
“We don’t want to waste Mr. Erskine’s time. He’s come all this way…”
— “I know why he’s come.”
“Don’t use that tone of voice with me, sweetie. It’s not very nice.”
Bobby puts his big hands in his pockets and kicks at the floor with his shoes. He speaks in a timid whisper, with his chin pressed to his chest.
— “Don’t make me say it.”
“Just tell him and then we can have dinner.”
— “Please don’t make me say…”
He shakes his head, his whole body moves. Raising his eyes to me, I see a flicker of recognition.
“Do you know that a blue whale’s testicles are as large as a Volkswagen Beetle?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“I like whales. They’re very easy to draw and to carve.”
“Who is Mr. Erskine?”
“Should I know him?”
“You mentioned his name.”
He shakes his head and looks at me suspiciously.
“Is he someone you once met?”
“I was born in one world. Now I’m waist-deep in another.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had to hold things together, hold things together.”
He’s not listening to me. His mind is moving so quickly that it can’t grasp any subject for more than a few seconds.
“You were telling me about your dream… a girl in a red dress. Who is she?”
“Just a girl.”
“Do you know her?”
“Her arms are bare. She lifts them up and brushes her fingers through her hair. I see the scars.”
“What do these scars look like?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does!”
Tipping his head to one side, Bobby runs his finger down the inside of his shirtsleeve from his elbow to his wrist. Then he looks back at me. Nothing registers in his eyes. Is he talking about Catherine McBride?
“How did she get these scars?”
“She cut herself.”
“How do you know that?”
“A lot of people do.”
Bobby unbuttons his shirt cuffs and slowly rolls the sleeve along his left forearm. Turning his palm up, he holds it out toward me. The thin white scars are faint but unmistakable.
“They’re like a badge of honor,” he whispers.
“Bobby, listen to me.” I lean forward. “What happens to the girl in your dream?”
Panic fills his eyes like a growing fever.
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you know this girl?”
He shakes his head.
