Blood Tears

by Michael J Malone

  ‘Oh, Ray. It’s you! What have you done to your hair?’ She takes my hands and I pull her into the flat. We sit on the settee facing each other. Her line of sight keeps sliding up to my head. A smile creeps into her expression and before I know it we are both laughing. The release I feel from this is enormous, like Charles Atlas has gone and sat on someone else’s shoulders. I sober up first, the last few mouthfuls of laughter drying to a dust that coats my tongue.

  ‘I’m so sorry about this Theresa, but I needed you to know…’

  ‘Sssh, Ray,’ she presses a finger against my lips.

  ‘But…’

  She squeezes herself against me. I can’t help but notice the press of her breasts against my chest. A certain part of my anatomy notices it as well.

  ‘As long as you’re okay,’ she says, while I try to clear my head. Which is pretty difficult considering my blood flow is going in a southerly direction. Well, they do say that danger is an aphrodisiac.

  ‘You believe me. Don’t you?’

  ‘I was with you. Remember? You were in my bed for most of that night.’

  ‘Most of it?’

  ‘Well, you arrived late. And…’ She paused as if fighting against the blush that was working its way up her neck towards her face.

  ‘And what?’ I aim for a neutral tone. And miss. She has given this a lot of thought.

  ‘Och it’s nothing, Ray.’

  ‘It’s not nothing. You’ve had some doubts about me.’

  ‘No, no, no. It’s just… you are in the papers and everything.’ She shifts in her seat, pushes her hair behind her ear. ‘I’d be mad not to go over everything. Put yourself in my position, Mr Policeman. Would you not wonder, if only for a moment or two?’

  ‘Of course I would,’ I say. That’s what I love about Theresa. She doesn’t stay on the defensive for long. ‘Sorry. You were saying…’

  ‘Right. I was saying nothing really. Just that you were doing your sleepwalking thing.’

  Me? Sleepwalking?

  ‘We fell asleep at one point, after you did your stud muffin thing.’ Her smile sent a charge of heat direct to my groin. Another quality I love about Theresa; she loves sex. ‘Then I woke up and saw you standing over me. Like you had been sleepwalking .’ She held her hand to her chest. ‘I don’t mind telling you that it freaked me out a little.’ A small laugh. ‘But you have done it before.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Yeah. A couple of weeks earlier. I caught you in the kitchen. You were even spookier that time. Fully dressed as well.’

  ‘Seriously?’ This was too weird. ‘What was I doing?’

  ‘Standing at the sink. Looking out into the garden. You wouldn’t have seen much, it was pitch black.’ She pursed her lips as if searching for an apt phrase. ‘Your eyes were open. And yet when I touched your shoulder you turned to face me as if I had just woken you up.’

  ‘Did I say anything?’

  ‘No. You just wore this expression of complete bewilderment. So I took your hand and guided you back to bed. Where I helped you take your clothes off and shagged you rotten.’

  We both laugh though our joy sounds as shallow as a minute old puddle.

  ‘Were there any other times?’

  ‘No. Well, not that I noticed anyway.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Dunno. I thought you were aware of it afterward and that you didn’t want to talk about it.’ She held my hand. ‘You did look like you had seen a ghost. And you quickly learn that if Ray McBain isn’t in the mood for talking, that nothing is going to open him up.'

  ‘I’m sorry, Tess. Must’ve been horrible for you.’

  ‘Look at you,’ she squeezes my hand. ‘Up to your neck in shit and you’re worried about me?’ She straightens her spine and sets the line of her jaw. ‘I’ll phone the police. Tell them about you and me.’ She turns to look out of the window and then looks back at me. ‘But it doesn’t need to go public does it?’

  ‘Your husband wouldn’t need to know, unless your alibi didn’t clear me and they decided to have their day in court. In which case you would be called as a witness. But you’re not doing it. I got myself hooked in this mess and I refuse to drag you into it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She tilts her head to the side.

  ‘If I hadn’t tried to conceal my name from a list of… Theresa, do we have to go through this right now? What about the phone calls?’

  ‘Ah. The phone calls.’ Her expression hardens.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What the hell were you trying to do? Get me a quickie divorce?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I mean, c’mon, Ray. The deal was no phone calls.’

  I’m not apologising again. I cross my arms, ‘I’m sorry.’ You held out for a while there, Ray. ‘What did you tell whatsisname?’

  ‘I told him that I’d met you one night when I was with the girls and you got me confused with one of them. Poor sap loves me that much, he believes everything I say.’ Her expression is one of regret. She looks away from me out of the window.

  ‘Thanks.’ Relief softens the pull of my shoulders. That’s one less thing to worry about. I slump back on to the sofa. ‘How long have you got?’

  She looks at her watch, ‘He’s away to Newcastle for the day. Said he’d be back around nine. So we’re safe for a couple of hours.’ She curls into me and lays her head on my chest.

  The smell of her hair is intoxicating. It is lightly damp. Everything in the world that is feminine is bound up in these dark brown fibres. I slide my cheek slowly down the brown silk and breathe the scent in to the back of my throat.

  She pats the bulge in my tracksuit, ‘Don’t even think about it, big boy.’

  ‘You know you want to.’ I laugh. If she doesn’t, I think I’m going to burst. Her finger traces the outline of my penis through the fabric. She then cups my balls.

  ‘Mind you, if I don’t empty these first I’m not going to get much sense from you. Where’s the bedroom?’

  We’re lying on the bed, Theresa curled on her side, me spooning her from the back. We fucked twice. I came within seconds each time. Feel as if I’m sixteen again. I tried to apologise for not seeing to her pleasure first but the words came out sounding anything but sorry. It is difficult to speak properly when synapses are sparking all over your body.

  Despite everything that has been going on, at this moment I feel fulfilled. Cars are swishing past in the rain outside, the police are charging around hoping to lock me up for a murder I didn’t commit, and I’m wearing nothing but a smile, sharing a silk sheet with a beautiful woman.

  As if she were an exotic creature, I lift her hair out of the way to lick at her bare shoulders. Kissing her pale skin just where back meets neck, I wonder, is there any place in the world softer than this? A note of pleasure escapes from her mouth. Her buttocks spark at my groin. Her skin should be cloned, packaged and sold under the brand “Heaven”. She moves her cheeks against me and once certain of my arousal, reaches back and guides me home. This time we are making love and it feels… so right. This is a sensation that is so new to me I stop thrusting.

  ‘Don’t stop, Ray. I’m close,’ she breathes.

  ‘I love you,’ I hear myself say.

  ‘I love you too. I love you too.’ She pushes her back against me.

  ‘No, Theresa. I love you.’

  She stops and turns around to face me, her eyes searching mine. She puts a hand on either side of my face and kisses me. ‘One night when she was drunk, my mother gave me a great piece of advice. She said don’t believe a man who tells you they love you when they’ve got a hard-on.’ She reaches down, wraps her fingers round it and gives it a hard squeeze.

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘No you don’t, Ray. You don’t do love.’ She sits up and pulls the sheet around her, uncomfortable with this turn of events. ‘You… you’re mistaking gratitude for love. You’re thinking, “The daft bitch believes me, I’ll fall in love with h
er”.’ A tear gathers size on her lower lashes and escapes to glide down her cheek. ‘Don’t do this to me, Ray,’ she whispers.

  ‘Theresa. I’m not making this up.’ I’m up on my knees. ‘Last night when I was in my cell, to comfort me, to help me sleep, I thought of you. Now when we made love… I’ve never felt anything like that. It was like I’d connected.’

  Her eyes full and moist, her lips thin and cupped in a shape that spells NO. As in, no, don’t love me.

  ‘We’re not about love, Ray. We have fun. Have a laugh. You go off and do your thing and I go back to my husband.’

  ‘Tell me you don’t love me too.’

  ‘I do love you. I’ve always loved you. But I clocked you straight away. Mr Terrified of Commitment. Mr Married to the Job. Don’t you see? I put you in a box marked S.E.X. I know how to cope with you when you’re in that box.’ She wipes a tear from her eyes with the corner of the sheet, ‘Don’t tell me you love me, Ray. ’Cos that would give me hope and “never” is much easier to deal with.’

  She jumps from the bed and pulls her clothes on. Numb, I watch her dress.

  ‘Can I call you?’ I ask as she leaves the room.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she wails as she runs for the front door.

  As I listen to her feet drum out of the flat and the slam of the door, I feel like I’ve found something new and amazing. And then flushed it down the drain. Why did I open my big mouth? Couldn’t I just have savoured the feeling, tasted it for a while longer before opening her up to the possibilities? I turn around, kneel on the floor and push my face into the pillow where her head had rested. Her scent rises from the fabric. The corner of the top sheet is still moist with her tears.

  Chapter 24

  Allessandra’s right arm is aching. She has been on the phone to her mother for thirty minutes, doing the dutiful daughter thing and wondering how a light item like a mobile phone can be such hard work to hold to the side of her head.

  ‘Are you even listening to me, Allessandra?’

  ‘Of course, Mum.’ Allessandra lies and prays that her mother isn’t going to test her.

  ‘What was I talking about then?’

  Allessandra quickly reviews a list of her mother’s favourite topics, can’t decide which and opts for a piece of passive aggression.

  ‘You were saying that I don’t see enough of my husband and therefore it’s no surprise I don’t get pregnant and then how you much prefer talking to your other daughter ’cos at least she knows the difference between a crochet hook and a knitting needle.’

  ‘Darling, how can you say that? I would never question the hours you keep at work and I love both my daughters equally.’

  Her mother sounds stung and Allessandra feels a charge of guilt.

  ‘Of course you do, Mother.’ No you don’t. You leech life equally from both daughters. But you prefer the one that isn’t up to her armpits in human scum.

  While her mother continues her monologue Allessandra looks out of the car window at the red stone of Bethlehem House and wonders yet again at the kind of childhood that Ray would have had within its walls. She really shouldn’t complain about her own mother. At least she knew she was loved.

  It had been suggested that, as she had initially come here with Ray, she should visit again. She told no-one about her second visit.

  ‘Try and find out what kind of boy McBain was,’ Campbell asked her. ‘Background details could be important in this case.’

  So here she is again and not looking forward to it. Mother Mary is so small, how can she be so damn scary? If I could put up with my own mother for life I can speak to the wee nun again for five minutes, she thinks.

  ‘Very good, Mum,’ she says. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, but I am working.’

  ‘Right, okay. No need to be so rude. Where did you young girls learn to be so abrupt?’

  ‘Bye Mum. I’ll call you later. Okay?’ But Allessandra is talking to herself by now. Fair enough, she thinks, I deserved that.

  In the convent, with Mother Superior, Allessandra wonders at the title. Aren’t nuns supposed to be about servitude and humility? What’s so humble about the word “superior” being in your job title?

  The older woman is sitting at a table across from her, hands clasped as if in prayer on the table before her. A set of glass rosary beads tumbles from her hands like spilled and frozen holy water.

  ‘What can we do for you today, DC Rossi?’ Her expression is certain in its serenity.

  ‘Tell me again about Ray McBain while he was under your care.’

  ‘There have been more deaths, I hear?’ Mother asks, her short fingers working at the beads. She is looking for information, but Allessandra isn’t about to give her any. Stick to asking the questions, she reminds herself.

  ‘From what you know of Ray, is he capable of such terrible acts?’

  ‘He was eleven going on twelve when he left here. A lot of time for society to warp the mind of a weak young boy.’

  ‘Didn’t the Jesuits say that if you gave them the boy until the age of seven, they would give you the man?’ Allessandra isn’t about to let this old woman get the better of her, but she still wishes that she had managed to edit her tone before that left her mouth.

  A wry smile is the only response Mother allows herself to show. ‘Even the Jesuits would have struggled with a boy like Ray.’

  ‘How so?’ asks Allessandra, wondering why this woman makes her feel so uncomfortable. Sure, she has a strong personality, but she has devoted her life to her beliefs and has tried to make a difference to countless children’s lives. So what is it about her that makes Allessandra want to go straight to a voodoo shop, buy a doll, some large pins and a nun’s outfit?

  ‘I’ve had a lot of children in my care over the years. I remember each and every one.’ She smiles, and in that smile Allessandra reads of a woman who wanted to be a mother to her own children, but to whom this joy had been refused. That she had to look after the children other women had produced was a cross she had to bear. Allessandra guesses that it’s a look she has perfected over the years. ‘Most were troubled. All were in pain. And with the help of the good Lord I did my very best.’ Only the crucifix is showing from her rosary, the beads are all bundled tightly in her hands. ‘Ray was more troubled than most. I told you about the stalking. There was also the sleepwalking.’ Her eyes are fixed on Allessandra’s but her gaze is years in the past. ‘Gave me a fright, the little monkey. He was standing over me one night. Just standing there like a zombie. And me in my pyjamas. Holy Mother of God, I’d never heard of such a thing, a child in the nuns’ quarters. He got a good clout and dragged off to his bed. Took a month for my poor heart to recover.

  ‘And there was the bed-wetting. A sure sign of a soul in torture, if you ask me. We’d have made him kneel in prayer till his knees bled if it would have made any difference.’

  A wee cuddle might have worked better, thinks Allessandra.

  ‘This stigmata thing in the papers… what do you fine police people make of that, I wonder?’

  ‘I can’t say too much, Mother. The investigation is still in its infancy.’ Allessandra answers while being taken aback at the abrupt change in direction.

  ‘I caught Ray with a red pen one day. Fashioning a wound on the palm of each hand.’

  Allessandra sat forward.

  Mother holds her hands to her heart while her mind continues with the connection.

  One of the tabloid nicknames for Ray was “The Stigmata Killer”. Shock enlarges her features.

  ‘What could I have done? If I had taken more time with him, could lives have been saved?’

  Allessandra shakes her head. She isn’t going to give this room in her mind. Ray isn’t a killer. He had been a broken boy who has turned his life around and become an effective member of society.

  ‘When I pulled the pen out of his hand, he just looked at me. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the little blasphemer couldn’t understand what he had done wrong. Blasphemy, I warned him,
will see you at the gates of Hell. But I want to help people too, he said. Can you believe it? I want the same pain as Jesus and the saints, he cried. You’ll get bread and butter for tea, you little heathen, I told him.’ She pauses. ‘The same pain as Jesus. I ask you.’ She shakes her head, her sadness a tangible thing, tinged with regret. She opens her mouth to say something else. Thoughts linger in the screen of her eyes but remain unexpressed. Thoughts that made her eyes widen in remembered shock. She pauses, gives a small shake of her head as if she has just stopped herself from saying something. ‘The boy was deeply flawed, Miss Rossi. It’s no surprise that the man has turned out this way.’

  Chapter 25

  I’ve been in Kenny’s flat for a month now. A month in which two more dead bodies have been found. Two more dead bodies that have been mutilated in the same manner as Connelly. The killer did well to wait until I was at large again before he got busy. And in typical McBain fashion I have alibis that would struggle to stand up in court: a career criminal and his minder.

  It’s been a long month for other reasons. A month of daytime TV, tinned tuna and grilled chicken. A month of talking to no-one but Calum, the walking wall. A month of excruciating boredom. A month of change. When I look in the mirror I barely recognise myself. I feel like a candle that’s been held too close to the flame: the weight has melted off me. Add the bleached, cropped hair and a trim wee goatee beard and you have a new man.

  Sanity has arrived in the form of exercise. Me, Ray McBain, a born again jogger. Who would have thought it? I did a bit of jogging when I was a young copper. Really enjoyed it. You kind of get indoctrinated into it when you go to the police training college at Tulliallan. They have a real hard-on for the physical benefits of exercise and in particular the pastime of running. While you are at the college they get you out in your jogging shoes every day. They made a real point of only bringing in fit young men and women, when I joined. Kind of a waste of time when you see how many develop Fat Bastarditis later in their careers.