The Suspect

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 all 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 windmills; they make such a horrible sound.”

She has the key in her hand. It is tied to a small 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 telling you about. He fixed the stone wall and the shingles on the stable. He built the greenhouse and did the planting. Such a hard worker. He took me to see the windmills…”

For a brief moment I feel myself falling, 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 tall, 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 followed 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 comprenderas todavia lo que comprenderas en el futuro. You don’t understand yet what you will 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 wall, 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 call 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, tall, overweight?”

“D.J. didn’t get that close.”

“Do you have someone in your Spanish class called Bobby or Robert or Bob? He’s tall, 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 followed 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 still talking, “Call Simon, please. Don’t do anything silly.”

“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 killed 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. Call 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’ll tell you. I was with Elisa.”

“Well 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 hollow.

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 pulled into the drive.

Book 3