and the ugly,” he says, with a note of triumph in his voice. “We are the sum of our parts or the part of our sums. You say this isn’t a game, but you’re wrong. It’s good versus evil. White versus black. Some people are pawns and some are kings.”
“Which are you?” I ask.
He thinks about this. “I was once a pawn but I reached the end of the board. I can be anything now.”
Bobby sighs and gets to his feet. The conversation has started to bore him. The session is only half an hour old but he’s had enough. It should never have started. Eddie Barrett is going to have a field day.
I follow Bobby into the outer office. A part of me wants him to stay. I want to shake the tree and see what falls off the branches. I want the truth.
Bobby is waiting at the lift. The doors open.
“Good luck.”
He turns and looks at me curiously. “I don’t need luck.” The slight upturn of his mouth gives the illusion of a smile.
Back at my desk, I stare at the empty chair. An object on the floor catches my eye. It looks like a small carved figurine— a chess piece. Picking it up, I discover it’s a small wooden whale carved by hand. A key ring is attached with a small eyelet screw on the whale’s back. It’s the sort of thing you see hanging from a child’s satchel or schoolbag.
Bobby must have dropped it. I can still catch him. I can call downstairs to the foyer and get the receptionist to have him wait. I look at the clock. Ten minutes past four. The meeting has started upstairs. I don’t want to be here.
Bobby’s sheer size makes him stand out. He’s a head taller than anybody else and pedestrians seem to divide and part to let him through. Rain is falling. I bury my hands in my overcoat. My fingers close around the smooth wooden whale.
Bobby is heading toward the underground station at Oxford Circus. If I stay close enough, hopefully I won’t lose him in the labyrinthine walkways. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I guess I want answers instead of riddles. I want to know where he lives and who he lives with.
Suddenly, he disappears from view. I suppress the urge to run forward. I keep moving at the same pace and pass a liquor store. I catch a glimpse of Bobby at the counter. Two doors farther on I step inside a travel agency. A girl in a red skirt, white blouse and wishbone tie smiles at me.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m just looking.”
“To escape the winter?”
I’m holding a brochure for the Caribbean. “Yes, that’s right.”
Bobby passes the window. I hand her the brochure. “You can take it with you,” she suggests.
“Maybe next year.”
On the pavement, Bobby is thirty yards ahead of me. He has a distinctive shape. He has no hips and it looks as though his backside has been stolen. He keeps his trousers pulled up high, with his belt tightly cinched.
Descending the stairs into the underground station, the crowd seems to swell. Bobby has a ticket ready. There is a queue at every ticket machine. Three underground lines cross at Oxford Circus. If I lose him now he can travel in any one of six different directions.
I push between people, ignoring their complaints. At the turnstile I place my hands on either side of it and lift my legs over the barrier. Now I’m guilty of fare evasion. The escalator descends slowly. A stale wind sweeps up from the tunnels, forced ahead of the moving engines.
On the northbound platform of the Bakerloo line, Bobby weaves through the waiting crowd until he reaches the far end. I follow him, needing to be close. At any moment I expect him to turn and catch sight of me. Four or five schoolboys, human petri dishes of acne and dandruff, push along the platform, wrestling each other and laughing. Everyone else stares straight ahead in silence.
A blast of wind and noise. The train appears. Doors open. I let the crowd carry me forward into the carriage. Bobby is in my peripheral vision. The doors close automatically and the train jerks forward and gathers speed. Everything smells of damp wool and stale sweat.
Bobby gets off the train at Warwick Avenue. It has grown dark. Black cabs swish past, the sound of their tires louder than their engines. The station is only a hundred yards from the Grand Union Canal and perhaps two miles from where Catherine’s body was found.
With fewer people around I have to drop farther back. Now he’s only a silhouette in front of me. I walk with my head down and collar turned up. As I pass a cement mixer on the footpath, I stumble sideways and put my shoe into a puddle. My balance is deserting me.
We follow Blomfield Road alongside the canal until Bobby crosses a footbridge at the end of Formosa Street. Spotlights pick out an Anglican church. The fine mist looks like falling glitter around the beams of light. Bobby sits on a park bench and looks at the church for a long time. I lean against the trunk of a tree, my feet growing numb with the cold.
What is he doing here? Maybe he lives nearby. Whoever killed Catherine knew the canal well: not just from a street map or a casual visit. He was comfortable here. It was his territory. He knew where to leave her body so that she wouldn’t be found too quickly. He fitted in. Nobody recognized him as a stranger.
Bobby can’t have met Catherine in the hotel. If Ruiz has done his job he will have shown photographs to the staff and patrons. Bobby isn’t the sort of person you forget easily.
Catherine left the pub alone. Whoever she was supposed to meet had failed to show. She was staying with friends in Shepherd’s Bush. It was too far to walk. What did she do? Look for a taxi. Or perhaps she started walking to Westbourne Park Station. From there it is only three stops to Shepherd’s Bush. The walk would have taken her over the canal.
A London Transport depot is across the road. Buses are coming in and out all the time. Whoever she met must have been waiting for her on the bridge. I should have asked Ruiz which part of the canal they dredged to find Catherine’s diary and mobile phone.
Catherine was five foot six and 134 pounds. Chloroform takes a few minutes to act, but someone of Bobby’s size and strength would have had few problems subduing her. She would have fought back or cried out. She wasn’t the sort to meekly surrender.
But if I’m right and he knew her, he might not have needed the chloroform— not until Catherine realized the danger and tried to escape.
What happened next? It isn’t easy carrying a body. Perhaps he dragged her onto the towpath. No, he needed somewhere private. Somewhere he’d prepared in advance. A flat or a house? Neighbors can be nosy. There are dozens of derelict factories along the canal.
Did he risk using the towpath? The homeless sometimes sleep under the bridges or couples use them for romantic rendezvous.
The shadow of a narrow boat moves past me. The rumble of the motor is so low that the sound barely reaches me. The only light on the vessel is near the wheel. It casts a red glow on the face of the helmsman. I wonder. Traces of machine oil and diesel were found on Catherine’s buttocks and hair.
I peer around the tree. The park bench is empty. Damn! Where has he gone? There is a figure on the far side of the church, moving along the railings. I can’t be sure it’s him.
My mind sets off at a run, but my legs are left behind. I finish up doing a perfect limp fall. Nothing is broken. Only my pride hurts.
I stumble onward and reach the corner of the church where the iron railings take a ninety-degree turn. The figure is staying on the path but moving much more quickly. I doubt if I can keep up with him.
What is he doing? Has he seen me? Jogging slowly, I carry on, losing sight of him occasionally. Doubt gnaws at my resolve. What if he’s stopped up ahead? Perhaps he’s waiting for me. The six lanes of the Westway curve above me, supported by enormous concrete pillars. The glow of headlights is too high to help me.
Ahead I hear a splash and a muffled cry. Someone is in the canal. Arms are thrashing at the water. I start running. There is the faint outline of a figure beneath the bridge. The sides of the canal are higher there. The stone walls are black and slick.
I try to shrug off my overcoat. My right arm gets caught in the sleeve and I swing it around until it comes
