He sighs triumphantly.
“What were you doing on Hammersmith Bridge?”
“I was lying down, listening to the windmills.”
“When you came into the hospital you kept saying that you wanted to wash the blood off your hands.”
He remembers, but says nothing.
“How did you get blood on your hands?”
“It’s normal enough to hate. We just don’t talk about it. It’s normal enough to want to hurt people who hurt us…”
He’s not making any sense.
“Did you hurt someone?”
“You take all those drops of hate and you put them in a bottle. Drop, drop, drop… Hate doesn’t evaporate like other liquids. It’s like oil. Then one day the bottle is full.”
“What happens then?”
“It has to be emptied.”
“Bobby, did you hurt someone?”
“How else do you get rid of the hate?” He tugs at the cuffs of his flannel shirt, which are stained with something dark.
“Is that blood, Bobby?”
“No, it’s oil. Haven’t you been listening to me? It’s all about the oil.”
He stands and takes two steps toward the door. “Can I go home now?”
“I think you should stay here for a while,” I say, trying to sound matter-of-fact.
He eyes me suspiciously. “Why?”
“Last night you suffered some sort of breakdown, or memory lapse. You might have been in an accident or had a fall. I think we should run some tests and keep you under observation.”
“In a hospital?”
“Yes.”
“In a general ward?”
“A psych ward.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “No fucking way! You’re trying to lock me up.”
“You’ll be a voluntary patient. You can leave anytime you want to.”
“This is a trick! You think I’m crazy!” He’s yelling at me. He wants to storm out, but something is keeping him here. Maybe he has too much invested in me.
I can’t legally hold him. Even if I had the evidence I don’t have the power to section or detain Bobby. Psychiatrists, medical doctors and the courts have such a prerogative, but not a humble psychologist. Bobby’s free to go.
“And you’ll still see me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He buttons his coat and nods his approval. I walk with him down the corridor and we share a lift. “Have you ever had absences like this before?” I ask.
“What do you mean, ‘absences’?”
“Gaps in your memory where time seems to disappear.”
“It happened about a month ago.”
“Do you remember which day?”
He nods. “That hate had to be emptied.”
The main doors of the hospital are open. On the front steps Bobby turns and thanks me. There is that smell again. I know what it is now. Chloroform.
14
Chloroform is a colorless liquid, half again as dense as water, with an etherlike odor and a taste forty times sweeter than sugarcane. It is an important organic solvent mainly used in industry.
The Scottish physician Sir James Simpson of Edinburgh was the first to use it as an anesthetic in 1847. Six years later the English physician John Snow gave it to Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold, her eighth child.
A few drops on a mask or a cloth are usually enough to produce surgical anesthesia within a few minutes. The patient awakens in 10–15 minutes, groggy but with very little nausea or vomiting. It is highly dangerous and causes fatal cardiac paralysis in about one in 3,000 cases…
Closing the encyclopedia, I slip it back onto a shelf and scribble a note to myself. Why would Bobby Moran have chloroform on his clothes? What possible use would he have for an industrial solvent or an anesthetic? I seem to remember that chloroform is sometimes used in cough medicines and anti-itching creams, but the quantities aren’t enough to create the unique odor.
Bobby said he worked as a courier. Maybe he delivers industrial solvents. I will ask him at our next session, if Major Tom is in touch with ground control by then.
I can hear banging coming from downstairs in the basement. D.J. and his apprentice are still working on the boiler. Apparently our entire internal plumbing system was put together by a maniac with a fetish for bending pipes. The inside of our walls looks like a modern sculpture. God knows how much it’s going to cost.
In the kitchen, having poured a coffee, I sit next to Charlie at the breakfast bar. She props her library book against a box of cereal. My morning paper is resting against the orange juice.
Charlie is playing a game— mimicking everything I do. When I take a bite of toast, she does the same. When I sip my coffee, she sips her tea. She even cocks her head the same way I do when I’m trying to read newsprint that has disappeared into the fold of the paper.
“Are you finished with the marmalade?” she asks waving her hand in front of my face.
“Yes. Sorry.”
“You were away with the pixies.”
“They send their regards.”
Julianne emerges from the laundry, brushing a stray strand of hair from her forehead. The tumble dryer is rumbling in the background. We used to have breakfast together— drinking plunger coffee and swapping sections of the morning paper. Now she doesn’t stop for long enough.
She packs the dishwasher and puts my pill in front of me.
“What happened at the hospital?”
“One of my patients had a fall. He’s OK.”
She frowns. “You were going to do fewer emergency calls.”
“I know. Just this once.”
She takes a bite from a quarter of toast and starts packing Charlie’s lunch box. I smell her perfume and notice that she’s wearing new jeans and her best jacket.
“Where are you off to?”
“I have my seminar on ‘Understanding Islam.’ You promised to be home by four o’clock for Charlie.”
“I can’t. I have an appointment.”
She’s annoyed at me. “Someone has to be here.”
“I can be home by five.”
“OK, I’ll see if I can find a sitter.”
I call Ruiz from the office. In the background I can hear the dredging equipment and the sound of running water. The moment I announce myself I also hear a telltale electronic click. I contemplate whether he’s recording our conversation.
“I wanted to ask you something about Catherine McBride.”
“Yeah?”
“How many stab wounds were there?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Did the pathologist find any traces of chloroform?”
“You read the report.”
“There wasn’t any mention of it.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It’s probably not important.”
He sighs. “Say, let’s do a deal. Stop ringing me up asking bullshit questions and I’ll waive that unpaid parking fine of yours.”
Before I can apologize for troubling him, I hear someone calling his name. He grunts a thanks-for-nothing and hangs up. The man has the communication skills of a mortician.
Fenwick is lurking in my waiting room, glancing at his gold Rolex. We’re going to lunch in Mayfair at his favorite restaurant. It is one of those places that gets written up in the Sunday supplements because the chef is temperamental, handsome and dates a supermodel.
I’m never quite sure what these lunches are about. Usually, he’s trying to convince me to invest in a property deal or a start-up biotech company. He has absolutely no concept of money or, more important, of how little most people earn and the size of their mortgages.
Today Fenwick is trying extra hard to be affable. The waiter arrives and Fenwick delivers precise instructions as to how he wants his meal prepared, right down to suggesting oven temperatures and whether the meat should be tenderized in advance. If the waiter has any sense he’ll make sure these instructions never reach the kitchen.