‘Be very careful about touching her. She might be upset. You might want to comfort her, but physical contact can be very threatening to a child who has been abused.’
Cray interjects. ‘We don’t know that she was abused.’
‘You have Zoe’s statement.’
‘Given at her second interview - not her first.’
‘You think she’s lying?’
‘I’m just telling you the facts.’
The DCI doesn’t want to get bogged down in claims of sexual abuse. She’s an investigator, not a judge.
I tell her to avoid asking closed questions until later in the interviews, when the detail required is very specific. Until then, invite Sienna to explain. If she says something inconsistent, don’t focus on it. Instead go back later. Importantly, don’t ask the same question twice - she’ll see it as a criticism.
‘What about the crime-scene photographs?’
‘Don’t show her. It’s too early.’
Cray goes over the strategy again until she’s satisfied.
‘I want you in there. She’s a minor. You’re an appropriate adult.’
‘What about her mother?’
‘She chose you.’
‘I won’t hesitate to terminate the interview if you browbeat her.’
Cray nods and gathers her notes. ‘Let’s do this.’
Sienna sits with her hands squeezed between her thighs and her eyes fixed on the table in front of her where a can of soft drink is beading with condensation. She’s wearing jeans and a tailored shirt with dark ballet flats on her feet. The shadows beneath her eyes appear permanent.
When Ronnie Cray enters the interview room, Sienna looks at the detective’s Oxford brogues, polished to a shine. I can see her wondering what sort of woman would wear men’s shoes, ignore make-up and shear her hair to bristle.
Cray pulls up a chair and sits directly opposite, unbuttoning her jacket. Sienna eyes her nervously.
‘I’m going to turn on the tape recorder, Sienna. You can answer all of my questions, some of them or none of them, it’s up to you. But if this ends up in court and you then come up with a perfectly reasonable explanation of what has really happened, the court can choose not to believe what you say, because they will want to know why you didn’t give that version of events here and now in this interview.
‘This is your opportunity to explain what happened. The interview is being tape-recorded and any notes I take will be kept and this information can be given to the court if needs be, whether it goes against you or in your favour. Do you understand?’
Sienna looks at me.
‘You just have to say what you remember,’ I tell her.
‘What if I don’t remember?’
‘Do your best.’
‘OK,’ she says, reaching shakily for her drink.
‘Do you know why you’re here?’ asks Cray.
She nods.
‘You have to speak, Sienna, otherwise we can’t record your answers.’
‘Daddy’s dead.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell us about that night?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Just remember what you can.’
‘I’ve been trying, but it’s like something wiped my memory, you know, like on those TV programmes where people say they were abducted by aliens and given anal probes, which is pretty gross. I’m not saying I was abducted by aliens. I don’t actually believe in little green men from outer space, although one of the doctors at the hospital looked pretty weird. He was fat and had a goatee. You never see fat doctors on Grey’s Anatomy or ER and you don’t see goatees. I think goatees look like women’s lady parts, don’t you?’
Cray looks totally perplexed. Sienna flicks her gaze from the detective’s face to mine, still waiting for an answer.
‘I’ve never thought about it,’ I say.
‘I think about stuff like that all the time.’
‘Can we get back to what happened that night?’ asks Cray.
‘It’s like I said: I can’t remember. My mind doesn’t want to go there. There’s a door that I’m not supposed to open, because I’m not supposed to look. Mum used to hide my Christmas presents on the top of her wardrobe. I wasn’t allowed to look there, but that was good stuff. This is bad.’
‘Bad?’
‘Really bad.’
DCI Cray pulls her chair forward and it makes a screeching sound. Sienna jumps as though someone has slammed a door.
‘Let’s talk about Tuesday, Sienna. Do you remember going to school?’
‘Yes.’
‘You had rehearsals.’
Sienna’s eyes pop open. ‘I need to talk to Mr Ellis.’
‘Mr Ellis?’
‘We have a rehearsal today. And I need to get my dress cleaned.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that.’
‘If something happens to Erin Lewis, I’m her understudy. It should have been the other way around. Erin walks like a giraffe.’ Sienna frowns. ‘That sounds bitchy, doesn’t it? I’m trying to stop that.’
‘They’ve postponed the musical,’ I tell her.
She looks relieved.
‘What happened after the rehearsal?’
Sienna glances at me but doesn’t answer.
‘You met up with your boyfriend.’
‘Yes.’
‘Danny Gardiner.’
She nods.
‘How long have you known Danny?’
‘A while.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
‘He was in Lance’s year at school.’
‘Lance is your brother?’
‘Yeah, Danny used to hang out with Lance. Follow him around. They were both into cars and motorbikes.’
‘Where did you and Danny go on Tuesday?’
‘For a drive.’
‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Now she’s lying.
Cray asks the question again, approaching it from a different angle. Sienna obfuscates and becomes deliberately vague, either covering her tracks or protecting someone.
‘Do these belong to you?’ Cray pulls a plastic bag from beneath the table. It contains a pair of muddy jazz shoes.
Sienna nods.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ says Cray.
‘Yes,’ she answers.
‘Do you own a Stanley knife?’
Sienna shakes her head, but instinctively covers her forearms.
‘We found your box of bandages,’ I say gently. ‘You don’t have to be embarrassed. What sort of blade do you use?’
‘It was one of Daddy’s tools. I found it in the garage.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘It should be in the box.’
‘It’s not there,’ says Cray. ‘Do you know where it is?’
She shakes her head and digs her right thumbnail into the back of her left hand, threatening to break the skin.
‘What time did you get home on Tuesday night?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Did you see your father?’
Sienna shakes her head.
‘But he was there?’
She nods.
‘Where?’
‘In my room.’
I can almost see Sienna’s mind begin to wander. ‘I used to share a bedroom with Zoe, but then she got paralysed and Daddy moved her downstairs. I used to dream about having my own room, but now I wish Zoe were still at home and we shared a room. I’d even put up with her mess and having to share a bunk-bed. When she moved out Daddy bought me a proper bed. He said we didn’t need a bunk-bed any more because Zoe couldn’t climb the stairs.
‘Zoe and Lance hardly ever come home any more. Zoe lives in Leeds with her boyfriend. I’m not supposed to tell anyone that because she doesn’t want Daddy finding out, but I guess that doesn’t matter any more.
‘When Zoe left home she gave me her favourite pair of ear-muffs and her Winnie the Pooh bear, whic
h is humungous.’ She holds her palm out to indicate how high. ‘She won him at a funfair. I can’t remember what she had to do, but she’s pretty good at shooting baskets. She played netball when she was at school - until the you-know-what happened. When she left home she told me I should leave too, as soon as I could. Sooner even.’
‘Why did she say that?’
Sienna reaches towards the table and runs her finger through the ring of condensation left by her soft drink.
‘She was looking out for me.’
‘In what way?’
‘She told me the places that were safe and weren’t safe.’
‘What places weren’t safe?’
‘In the bathroom unless the door was locked, in the car at night, in the shed, on the sofa and even in my new room if I found myself alone.’
Cray straightens, steeling herself, knowing she has to ask the obvious question.
‘Why weren’t they safe?’
Sienna lays her forehead on her arms and closes her eyes. ‘What did Zoe say?’
‘I’m asking you. Did your father ever touch you inappropriately?’
Her voice is muffled. ‘Not for a long time.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It doesn’t matter any more.’
The DCI looks at her silently, her face tired and poached-looking under the halogen lights.
‘Why did you stab your father?’
Sienna’s forehead rolls back and forth on her forearms. Her eyes are closed.
‘He looked like he was asleep. I thought he was trying to scare me by pretending.’
‘Pretending?’
‘To be dead.’
‘Why did you think he was dead?’
‘He was lying on the floor.’
‘Did he try to attack you?’
‘No.’
‘So why did you hit him?’
Sienna’s mind suddenly switches.
‘I should be sad. I’ve tried to cry. I rubbed my eyes really hard to make them go red. I poked them to make them water. I want to be able to cry, but I can’t feel anything.’
‘Tell me about the knife,’ continues Cray.
Sienna doesn’t seem to be listening.
‘Do you think Daddy is in Heaven? I used to talk to Reverend Malouf. He told me God had all the answers, but I couldn’t get my head around Jesus rising from the dead. If he came back, why didn’t he hang around and take his show on the road? Instead he went back to Heaven and let people forget.
‘Daddy used to tell people he was an agnostic, which isn’t the same thing as an atheist but I don’t understand the difference. Reverend Malouf tried to explain it to me once. He said an agnostic is someone who can’t make up his mind and get off the fence.’
‘You’ll have to talk to us eventually. It’s for your own good,’ says Cray.
‘Why do people say things are for my own good?’ answers Sienna, fixing her gaze on the detective. There is something in her voice, so old and so tired, that takes Cray by surprise.
Sienna continues, ‘Mum is crying, Lance is angry, Zoe isn’t here and Daddy is dead. What I do or say doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes it does. We’re giving you a chance to explain.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘You’re avoiding my questions.’
‘I’m avoiding the answers. There’s a difference. You want me to remember things, but I can’t.’
Sienna pulls her knees up towards her, holding her shins tightly. She lets her hair tumble over her face. After a long silence, she finds a voice, small and haunted, belonging to a younger child.
‘Do you know something? When Zoe got crippled she said she was lucky because Daddy stopped trying to touch her. She was his favourite, you know. The sporty one. He was proud of her.’
A groan gets trapped in her throat. Her chest convulses in a flutter of short breaths.
‘I sometimes think that if Daddy’d had a choice, he would have wished it was me in the wheelchair and not Zoe.’
Tears hover and her mouth opens and closes wordlessly. Suddenly she raises her hands and presses them hard against her ears.
‘Can you hear something, Sienna?’ I ask.
‘The rushing sound.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I can’t make it go away.’
She rocks back and forth, digging her nails into her scalp. She’s thinking about the blade. Bleeding. Clearing her mind. Finally she whispers something. I have to lean close to hear the words. It’s a rhyme that she repeats over and over.
‘When I was a little girl about so high,
Momma took a big stick and made me cry.
Now I’m a big girl and Momma can’t do it,
Daddy takes a big stick and gets right to it.’
11
The team of detectives has gathered upstairs. Jackets hang on chairs and shirtsleeves are rolled to half-mast. It’s not a big task force - a dozen at most - mostly men, mid-thirties, ageing rapidly.
‘Twelve is a Biblical number,’ Cray tells me, when I comment on the number. ‘The twelve days of Christmas, the twelve tribes of Israel.’
‘What about the twelve apostles?’
‘I wasn’t going to be that presumptuous.’
She picks up her notes and motions me to follow. ‘I’m lucky to have this many.’
‘Why?’
‘Half my team is babysitting witnesses for the Novak Brennan trial.’
That name again.
‘Has someone threatened the witnesses?’
‘Precautionary measure. It’s a bloody circus - we’ve got the right-wing extremists on the one side and refugee groups on the other. I don’t know who’s worse.’
‘I think you do.’
She grunts. ‘Look, I’m no fan of neo-Nazis or right-wing extremists, but we have a race problem in this country. We have home-grown terrorists blowing themselves up. We have gangs of teenagers killing each other with knives, Asians, blacks, whites . . .’
‘Maybe that’s a social problem, not a race problem.’
‘Makes no difference to me. I’m just sick of putting good officers in situations where every scrote and teenage scumbag on the street has a knife and a grudge.’
‘So where does Novak Brennan come into it?’
‘He’s a politician in search of a crowd. The ignorant, the uneducated, the unemployable; they listen because they want to believe their miserable lives are someone else’s fault. Novak Brennan tells them what they want to hear.’
‘He incites hatred.’
‘He lances the boil.’
The detectives are waiting, mostly pale and hung over. Ronnie Cray introduces me. Suddenly, my left leg stops moving and I’m stuck in front of the whiteboard. Staring at my feet, I concentrate on making my leg lift. It looks like I’m stepping over a tripwire. They are all staring at me with solemn expressions, pitying the poor bastard.
Cray takes over, beginning the briefing. I find a chair and feel their eyes leave me. The DCI outlines developments in the investigation. Sienna’s boyfriend has been interviewed. Danny Gardiner claims that he dropped Sienna on a corner in Bath just before 7 p.m. but he hasn’t given police an alibi for later that night when Ray Hegarty was murdered.
Lance and Zoe Hegarty have also been interviewed. Zoe was in Leeds, but Lance is a possible suspect. He works as a motorcycle mechanic in Bristol. On Tuesday afternoon he left the workshop at five, went to the pub for an hour and then went home by himself. His flatmate was out.
‘We’re bringing Lance in again today,’ says Monk. ‘He’s an aggressive little shit, but I don’t think he’s lying. He couldn’t hide a hard-on in baggy jeans.’
Two hours are still missing from Ray Hegarty’s afternoon and telecom engineers are trying to pinpoint his whereabouts using his mobile phone. The door-to-door inquiries have thrown up several unknown vehicles in the village in the previous few days. Two motorists also reported seeing a blonde-haired girl in a short dress walking down Hinton Hill a
t about 10.15 p.m. That’s about a mile from Wellow. It could have been Sienna.
Monk picks up a spiral notebook and flips a page.
‘A month ago Helen Hegarty claims she saw someone peering into the downstairs window, but they ran off before she could get a good look at them. A while later she found rocks organised in a circle in the garden bed beneath the kitchen window. The soil was compressed like someone had been crouching there. Says she told her husband. He suspected local kids.’
‘Any of the neighbours report similar problems?’ asks Cray.
‘Nope, but one of them, Susan Devlin, says she saw Ray Hegarty arguing with someone outside his house about a week ago. It was about ten o’clock at night. The car had dropped Sienna home.’
‘Maybe it was the boyfriend,’ says Safari Roy, a small tanned detective with black hair parted to reveal his scalp. Roy’s nickname came from his lounge lizard clothes and his love of sunbeds.
‘He drives a Peugeot,’ replies Monk. ‘The neighbour said it was a silver Ford Focus.’
‘Talk to her again,’ says Cray. ‘Get a better description of the driver.’
Monk nods and finally asks the question on everybody’s lips. ‘How did it go downstairs, boss?’
The DCI looks over their heads at a weak shaft of sunlight that has found a way through the building’s defences.
‘She says her father was dead when she arrived home.’
Glances are exchanged between the assembled.
‘Our number one priority is to find the murder weapon,’ says Cray. ‘We’re going to search the house again - every cupboard, crawlspace and cistern; the flowerbeds, the compost bins, the incinerator. The same goes for the river. Retrace her steps. Turn over every rock and leaf. Find the blade.’
One of the officers raises his hand.
‘Are we getting any help?’
‘I’ve got twenty-four uniforms waiting downstairs and two dog teams. Make the time count. They turn back into plods at five o’clock.’
I look at my watch. It’s almost midday. I’ve missed my lecture but can still get to the university and do some work. At the same moment my mobile is singing. Julianne’s number lights up the screen.
Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin) Page 9