6
Three hours ago I came up with a plan. It wasn’t my first. I worked my way through about a dozen, looking at all the fundamentals, but each had a fatal flaw. I have enough of those already. My ingenuity has to be tempered by my physical limitations. This meant jettisoning anything that requires me to abseil down a building, overpower a guard, short-circuit a security system or crack open a safe.
I also shelved any plan that didn’t have an exit strategy. That’s why most campaigns fail. The players don’t think far enough ahead. The endgame is the boring bit, the mopping-up operation, without the glamour and excitement of the principal challenge. Therefore, people get frustrated and only plan so far. From then on they imagine winging it, confident in their ability to master their retreat as skillfully as their advance.
I know this because I have had people in my consulting room who cheat, steal and embezzle for a living. They own nice houses, send their children to private schools and play off single-figure handicaps. They vote Tory and view law and order as an important issue because the streets just aren’t safe anymore. These people rarely get caught and hardly ever go to prison. Why? Because they plan for every outcome.
I am sitting in the darkest corner of a car park in Liverpool. On the seat beside me is a waxed paper shopping bag with a pleated rope handle. My old clothes are inside it and I’m now wearing new charcoal gray trousers, a woolen sweater and an overcoat. My hair is neatly trimmed and my face is freshly shaved. Lying between my legs is a walking stick. Now that I’m walking like a cripple, I might as well get some sympathy for it.
The phone rings. I don’t recognize the number on the screen. For a split second I wonder whether Bobby could have found me. I should have known it would be Ruiz.
“You surprise me, Professor O’Loughlin…” His voice is all gravel and phlegm. “I figured you for the sort who would turn up at the nearest police station with a team of lawyers and a PR man.”
“I’m sorry if I disappoint you.”
“I lost twenty quid. Not to worry— we’re running a new book. We’re taking bets on whether you get shot or not.”
“What are the odds?”
“I can get three to one on you dodging a bullet.”
I hear traffic noise in the background. He’s on a motorway.
“I know where you are,” he says.
“You’re guessing.”
“No. And I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Tell me.”
“First you tell me why you killed Elisa.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
Ruiz draws deeply on a cigarette. He’s smoking again. I feel a curious sense of achievement. “Why would I kill Elisa? That’s where I spent the night on the thirteenth of November. She was my alibi.”
“That’s unfortunate for you.”
“She wanted to give a statement, but I knew you wouldn’t believe her. You’d drag up her past and humiliate her. I didn’t want to put her through it all again…”
He laughs the way Jock often does, as though I’m soft in the head.
Talking over the top of him, I try to keep the desperation out of my voice. I tell him to go back to the beginning and look for the red edge.
“His name is Bobby Morgan— not Moran. Read the case notes. All the pieces are there. Put them together…”
He’s not listening to me. It’s too big for him to comprehend.
“Under different circumstances I might admire your enthusiasm, but I have enough evidence already,” he says. “I have motive, opportunity and physical evidence. You couldn’t have marked your territory any better if you’d pissed in every corner.”
“I can explain…”
“Good! Explain it to a jury! That’s the beauty of our legal system— you get plenty of chances to state your case. If the jury doesn’t believe you, you can appeal to the High Court and then the House of Lords and the European Court of Human sodding Rights. You can spend the rest of your life appealing. It obviously helps pass the time when you’re banged up for life.”
I press the “end call” button and turn off the phone.
Leaving the car park, I descend the stairs and emerge on street level. I dump my old clothes and shoes in a trash can, along with the travel bag and the soggy scraps of paper from my hotel room. As I head along the street, I swing my cane in what I hope is a jaunty, cheerful way. The shoppers are out and every store is bedecked with tinsel and playing Christmas carols. It makes me feel homesick. Charlie loves that sort of stuff— the department store Santas, window displays and watching old Bing Crosby movies set in Vermont.
As I’m about to cross the road, I spot a poster on the side of a newspaper van: MANHUNT FOR CATHERINE’S KILLER. My face is underneath, pinned beneath the plastic ties. Instantly I feel like I’m wearing a huge neon sign on my head with the arrow pointing downward.
The Adelphi Hotel is ahead of me. I push through the revolving door and cross the foyer, fighting the urge to quicken my stride. I tell myself not to walk too quickly or hunch over. Head up. Eyes straight ahead.
It’s a grand old railway hotel, dating back to a time when steam trains arrived from London and steamships left for New York. Now it looks as tired as some of the waitresses, who should be at home putting curlers in their hair.
The business center is on the first floor. The secretary is a skinny thing called Nancy, with permed red hair and a red cravat around her neck that matches her lipstick. She doesn’t ask for a business card or check if I have a room number.
“If you have any questions, just ask,” she says, keen to help.
“I’ll be fine. I just need to check my e-mails.” I sit at a computer terminal and turn my back to her.
“Actually, Nancy, you could do something for me. Can you find out if there are any flights to Dublin this afternoon?”
A few minutes later she rattles off a list. I choose the late-afternoon shuttle and I give her my debit card details.
“Can you also see about getting me to Edinburgh?” I ask.
She raises an eyebrow.
“You know what head offices are like,” I explain. “They can never make a decision.”
She nods and smiles.
“And see if there’s a sleeper available on the Isle of Man ferry.”
“The tickets are nonrefundable.”
“That’s OK.”
In the meantime, I search for the e-mail addresses of all the major newspapers and gather the names of news editors, chief reporters and police roundsman. I start typing an e-mail using my right hand, pressing one key at a time. I tuck my left hand under my thigh to stop it trembling.
I start with proof of my identity— giving my name, address, National Insurance number and employment details. They can’t think this is a hoax. They have to believe that I am Joseph O’Loughlin— the man who killed Catherine McBride and Elisa Velasco.
It is just after 4:00 p.m. Editors are deciding the running order for stories in the first edition. I need to change tomorrow’s headlines. I need to knock Bobby off his stride— to keep him guessing.
Up until now he’s always been two, three, four steps ahead of me. His acts of revenge have been brilliantly conceived and clinically executed. He didn’t simply apportion blame. He turned it into an art form. But for all his genius, he is capable of making a mistake. Nobody is infallible. He kicked a woman unconscious because she reminded him of his mother.
