Michael Robotham - Suspect

"So it was an accident?"

"That's what it looked like at first. Everyone figured a spark from the welder had ignited the acetylene tank. There might have been a hole in the hose, or some other fault. Maybe gas had accumulated in the tank he was welding."

"What do you mean 'at first'?"

"When they peeled off Lenny's shirt they found something written on his chest. They say every letter was inch-perfect-but I don't believe that-not when he was writing upside down and left to right. He used a welding torch to burn the word 'SORRY' into his skin. Like I said, he was a man of very few words."

I don't remember leaving the Tramway. Eight pints and then I lost count. The cold air hit me and I found myself on my hands and knees leaving the contents of my stomach over the broken rubble and cinders of a vacant block.

It seems to be a makeshift car park for the pub. The country-and-western band is still playing. They're doing a cover of a Willie Nelson song about mothers not letting their children grow up to be cowboys.

As I try to stand something pushes me from behind and I fall into an oily puddle. The four teenagers from the bar are standing over me.

"Ya got any money?" asks the girl.

"Piss off!"

A kick is aimed at my head but misses. Another connects with my abdomen. My bowels slacken and I want to vomit again. I suck in air and try to think.

"Jesus, Baz, you said nobody gets hurt!" says the girl.

"Shut the fuck up! Don't use names."

"Fuck you!"

"Leave it out, you two," argues the one called Ozzie, who is left-handed and drinks rum and cola.

"Don't you start, dickhead." Baz stares him down.

Someone takes my wallet out of my jacket.

"Not the cards, just the cash," says Baz. He's older-in his early twenties-and has a swastika tattooed on his neck. He lifts me easily and pushes his face close to mine. I smell beer, peanuts and cigarette smoke.

"Hey, listen, toss-bag! You're not welcome here."

Shoved backward, I land against a wire fence topped with razor wire. Baz is toe to toe with me. He's three inches shorter and solid like a barrel. A knife blade gleams in his hand.

"I want my wallet back. If you give it back to me I won't press charges," I say.

He laughs at me and mimics my voice. Do I really sound that frightened?

"You followed me from the pub. I saw you in there playing pool. You lost the last game on the black."

The girl pushes her glasses up her nose. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick. "What's he mean, Baz?"

"Shut up! Don't fucking use my name." He starts to hit her, but she shoots him a fierce glance. The silence lingers. I don't feel drunk anymore.

I focus on the girl. "You should have trusted your instincts, Denny."

She looks at me, wide-eyed. "How do you know my name?"

"You're Denny and you're underage-thirteen maybe fourteen. This is Baz, your boyfriend, and these two are Ozzie and Carl…"

"Shut the fuck up!"

Baz shoves me hard against the fence. He can sense he's losing the initiative.

"Is this what you want, Denny? What's your mum going to say when the police come looking for you? She thinks you're staying at a girlfriend's house, doesn't she? She doesn't like you hanging out with Baz. She thinks he's a loser, a no-hoper."

"Make him stop, Baz." Denny covers her mouth.

"Shut the fuck up!"

No one says anything. They're watching me. I take a step forward and whisper to Baz. "Use your white cells, Baz. I just want my wallet."

Denny interrupts, on the verge of tears, "Just give him his fucking wallet. I want to go home."

Ozzie turns to Carl. "C'mon."

Baz doesn't know what to do. He could carve me up like a wisp of smoke, but now he's on his own. The others are already disappearing, loose-limbed and hooting with laughter.

He pushes me hard against the fence, pressing the knife to my neck and his face next to mine. His teeth close around my earlobe. White heat. Pain. Ripping his head to one side, he spits hard into a puddle and shoves me away.

"There's a little souvenir from Bobby!"

He wipes blood from his mouth and tosses my wallet at my feet. Then he swaggers away and kicks at the door of a parked car. I'm sitting in water, braced against the fence. In the distance I see navigation lights blinking from the top of industrial cranes on the far side of the Mersey.

Slowly, pulling myself upright, I try to stand. My right leg buckles and I fall to my knees. Blood leaks in a warm trail down my neck.

I stumble to the main road but there is no traffic. Glancing over my shoulder, I worry about them coming back. Half a mile down the road I find a minicab office with metal grille over the door and windows. The inside is saturated with cigarette smoke and the smell of takeout food.

"What happened to you?" asks a fat man behind the grille.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. The bottom part of my ear is missing and my shirt collar is soaked with blood.

"I got mugged."

"Who by?"

"Kids."

I open my wallet. The cash is still there… all of it.

The fat man rolls his eyes, no longer concerned about me. I'm just a drunk who got into a fight. He radios for a car and makes me wait outside on the footpath. I glance nervously up and down the street, looking for Baz.

A souvenir! Bobby has some charming friends. Why didn't they take the money? What was the point? Unless they were trying to warn me off. Liverpool is a big enough place to get lost and small enough to get noticed, particularly if you start asking questions.

Slumped on the backseat of an old Mazda 626, I close my eyes and let my heart slow. Sweat has cooled between my shoulder blades, making my neck feel stiff.

The minicab drops me at University Hospital where I wait for an hour to get six stitches in my ear. As the intern wipes the blood from my face with a towel, he asks if the police have been informed. I lie and say yes. I don't want Ruiz knowing where I am.

Afterward, with a dose of acetaminophen to dull the pain, I walk through the city until I reach Pier Head. The last ferry is arriving from Birkenhead. The engine makes the air throb. Lights leak toward me in a colorful slick of reds and yellows. I stare at the water and keep imagining that I can see dark shapes. Bodies. I look again and they vanish. Why do I always look for bodies?

As a child I sometimes went boating on the Thames with my sisters. One day I found a sack containing five dead kittens. Patricia kept telling me to put the sack down. She was screaming at me. Rebecca wanted to see inside. She, like me, had never seen anything dead except for bugs and lizards.

I emptied the sack and the kittens tumbled onto the grass. Their wet fur stood on end. I was attracted and repelled at the same time. They had soft fur and warm blood. They weren't so different from me.

Later, as a teenager, I imagined that I would be dead by thirty. It was in the midst of the Cold War when the world teetered on the edge of an abyss, at the mercy of whichever madman in the White House or the Kremlin had one of those, "I-wonder-what-this-button-does?" moments.

Since then my internal doomsday clock has swung wildly back and forth much like the official version. Marrying Julianne made me hugely optimistic and having Charlie added to this. I even looked forward to graceful old age when we'd trade our backpacks for suitcases on wheels, playing with grandchildren, boring them with nostalgic stories, taking up eccentric hobbies…

The future will be different now. Instead of a dazzling road to discovery, I see a twitching, stammering, dribbling spectacle in a wheelchair. "Do we really have to go and see Dad today?" Charlie will ask. "He won't know the difference if we don't show up."

A gust of wind sets my teeth chattering and I push away from the railing. I walk from the wharf, no longer worried about getting lost. At the same time I feel vulnerable. Exposed.