6
As I open the office door I’m aware of a presence in the room. The chrome-faced clock above the filing cabinet shows half past three. Bobby Moran is standing in front of my bookcase. He seems to have appeared out of thin air.
He turns suddenly. I don’t know who is more startled.
“I knocked. There was no answer.” He drops his head. “I have an appointment,” he says, reading my thoughts.
“Shouldn’t that be with your lawyer? I heard you were suing me for slander, breach of confidentiality and whatever else he can dredge up.”
He looks embarrassed. “Mr. Barrett says I should do those things. He says I could get a lot of money.”
He squeezes past me and stands at my desk. He’s very close. I can smell fried dough and sugar. Damp hair is plastered to his forehead in a ragged fringe.
“Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see you.” There is something threatening in his voice.
“I can’t help you, Bobby. You haven’t been honest with me.”
“Are you always honest?”
“I try to be.”
“How? By telling the police I killed that girl?”
He picks up a smooth glass paperweight from my desk and weighs it in his right hand, then his left. He holds it up to the light.
“Is this your crystal ball?”
“Please, put it down.”
“Why? Scared I might bury it in your forehead?”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
“After you.” He points to my chair. “Why did you become a psychologist? Don’t tell me. Let me guess… A repressive father and an overprotective mother. Or is there a dark family secret? A relative who started howling at the moon so they locked her away?”
I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how close he is to the truth. “I’m not here to talk about me.”
Bobby glances at the wall behind me. “How can you hang that diploma? It’s a joke! Until three days ago you thought I was someone completely different. Yet you were going to stand up in court and tell a judge whether I should be locked up or set free. What gives you the right to destroy someone’s life? You don’t know me.”
Listening to him I sense that for once I am talking to the real Bobby Moran. He lobs the paperweight onto the desk where it rolls in slow motion and drops into my lap.
“Did you kill Catherine McBride?”
“No.”
“Did you know her?”
His eyes lock onto mine. “You’re not very good at this, are you? I expected more.”
“This is not a game.”
“No. It’s more important than that.”
We regard each other in silence.
“Do you know what a serial liar is, Bobby?” I ask eventually. “It is someone who finds it easier to tell a lie rather than the truth, in any situation, regardless of whether it is important or not.”
“People like you are supposed to know when someone is lying.”
“That doesn’t alter what you are.”
“All I did was change a few names and places— you got the rest of it wrong all by yourself.”
“What about Arky?”
“She left me six months ago.”
“You said you had a job.”
“I told you I was a writer.”
“You’re very good at telling stories.”
“Now you’re making fun of me. Do you know what’s wrong with people like you? You can’t resist putting your hands inside someone’s psyche and changing the way they view the world. You play God with other people’s lives…”
“Who are these ‘people like me’? Who have you seen before?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bobby says dismissively. “You’re all the same. Psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, tarot card readers, witch doctors…”
“You were in hospital. Is that where you met Catherine McBride?”
“You must think I’m an idiot.”
Bobby almost loses his composure, but recovers himself quickly. He has almost no physiological response to lying. His pupil dilation, pore size, skin flush and breathing remain exactly the same. He’s like a poker player who has no “tells.”
“Everything I’ve done in my life and everyone I have come into contact with is significant; the good, the bad 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.