Michael Robotham - Suspect

Strangely, he didn't want to be cured. He could have removed all clocks from his house or gone digital, but there was something about the voices that he found reassuring and even comforting. His wife, by all accounts, had been a fusspot and a well-organized soul, who hurried him along, writing him lists, choosing his clothes and generally making decisions for him.

Instead of wanting me to stop the voices he needed to be able to carry them with him. The house already had a clock in every room, but what happened when he went outside?

I suggested a wristwatch, but for some reason these didn't speak loudly enough or they babbled incoherently. After much thought, we went shopping at Gray's Antique Market and he spent more than an hour listening to old-fashioned pocket watches, until he found one that quite literally spoke to him.

The clock I hear ticking could be the knocking of the Land Rover's engine. Or it could be the doomsday clock-seven minutes to midnight. My perfect past is fading into history and I can't stop the clock.

Two police cars pass me on the road out of Hatchmere, heading in the opposite direction. Mel must have finally given them Erskine's address. They can't know about the Land Rover-not yet, at least. The little old lady with the photographic memory will tell them. With any luck she'll recount her life story first, giving me time to get away.

I keep glancing in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see flashing blue lights. This will be the opposite of a high-speed police chase. They could overtake me on bicycles unless I can find fourth gear. Maybe we'll have one of those O. J. Simpson moments, a slow-motion motorcade, filmed from the news helicopters.

I remember the final scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Redford and Newman keep wisecracking as they go out to face the Mexican army. Personally I'm not quite as fearless about dying. And I can't see anything glorious about a hail of bullets and a closed coffin.

Lucas Dutton lives in a redbrick house in a suburban street, where the corner shops have disappeared and been replaced by drug dealers and brothels. Every blank wall is covered in spray paint. Even the folk art and Protestant murals have been spoiled. There is no sense of color or creativity. It is mindless, malicious vandalism.

Lucas is perched on a ladder in the driveway unbolting a basketball hoop from the wall. His hair is even darker, but he's thickened around the waist and his forehead is etched with frown lines that disappear into bushy eyebrows.

"Do you need a hand?"

He looks down and takes a moment to put a name to my face.

"These things are rusted on," he says, tapping the bolts. Descending the ladder he wipes his hands on his shirtfront and shakes my hand. At the same time he glances at the front door, betraying his nerves. His wife must be inside. They will have seen the news reports or heard the radio.

I can hear music coming from an upstairs window: something with lots of thumping bass and shuffling turntables. Lucas follows my eyes.

"I tell her to turn it down, but she says that it has to be loud. Sign of age, I guess."

I remember the twins. Sonia was a good swimmer-in the pool, in the sea, she had a beautiful stroke. I was invited to a barbecue one weekend when she must have been about nine. She announced that she was going to swim the Channel one day.

"It'll be much quicker when they build the tunnel," I'd told her.

Everyone had laughed. Sonia had rolled her eyes. She didn't like me after that.

Her twin sister, Claire, was the bookish one, with steel-framed glasses and a lazy eye. She spent most of the barbecue in her room, complaining that she couldn't hear the TV because everyone outside was "gibbering like monkeys."

Lucas is folding up the ladder and explaining that "the girls" don't use the hoop anymore.

"I was sorry to hear about Sonia," I say.

He acts as though he doesn't hear me. Tools are packed away in a toolbox. I'm about to ask him what happened, when he starts telling me that Sonia had just won two titles at the national swimming championships and had broken a distance record.

I let him talk because I sense he's making a point. The story unfolds. Sonia Dutton, not quite twenty-three, dressed up for a rock concert. She went with Claire and a group of friends from university. Someone gave her a white pill imprinted with a shell logo. She danced all night until her heartbeat grew rapid and her blood pressure soared. She felt faint and anxious. She collapsed in a toilet cubicle.

Lucas is still crouched over the toolbox as though he's lost something. His shoulders are shaking. In a rasping voice, he describes how Sonia spent three weeks in a coma, never regaining consciousness. Lucas and his wife argued over whether to turn off her life support. He was the pragmatist. He wanted to remember her gliding through the water, with her smooth stroke. His wife accused him of giving up hope, of thinking only of himself, of not praying hard enough for a miracle.

"She hasn't said more than a dozen words to me since-not all together in a sentence. Last night she told me that she saw your photograph on the news. I asked her questions that she answered. It was the first time in ages…"

"Who gave Sonia the tablet? Did they ever catch anyone?"

Lucas shakes his head. Claire gave them a description. She looked at mug shots and a police lineup.

"What did she say he looked like?"

"Tall, skinny, tanned… he had slicked-back hair."

"How old?"

"Mid-thirties."

He closes the toolbox and flips the metal catches, before glancing despondently at the house, not yet ready to go inside. Chores like the basketball hoop have become important because they keep him busy and out of the way.

"Sonia would never have taken a drug knowingly," he says. "She wanted to go to the Olympics. She knew about banned substances and drug tests. Someone must have slipped it to her."

"Do you remember Bobby Morgan?"

"Yes."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Fourteen… fifteen years ago. He was only a kid."

"Not since then?"

He shakes his head and then narrows his eyes as if something has just occurred to him. "Sonia knew someone called Bobby Morgan. It couldn't have been the same person. He worked at the swimming center."

"You never saw him?"

"No." He sees the curtains moving in the living room. "I wouldn't stick around if I were you," he says. "She'll call the police if she sees you."

The toolbox is weighing down his right hand. He swaps it over and glances up at the basketball hoop. "Guess that'll have to stay there a bit longer."

I thank him and he hurries inside. The door shuts and the silence amplifies my steps as I walk away. I used to think Dutton was conceited and dogmatic, unwilling to listen or alter his point of view when it came to case conferences. He was the sort of autocratic, nitpicking public servant who is brilliant at making the trains run on time, but fails miserably when it comes to dealing with people. If only his staff could be as loyal as his Skoda-starting first time on cold mornings and reacting immediately to every turn of the steering wheel. Now he has been diminished, lessened, beaten down by circumstances.

The man who gave Sonia the tainted white tablet doesn't sound like Bobby but eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Stress and shock can alter perceptions. Memory is flawed. Bobby is a chameleon, changing colors, camouflaging himself, moving backward and forward, but always blending in.

There is a poem that my mother used to recite to me-a politically incorrect piece of doggerel-called "Ten Little Indian Boys." It started off with ten little Indian boys going out to dine, but one chokes himself and then there were nine. All nine little Indian boys stay up late, but one oversleeps and then there are eight…