Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin)

by Michael Robotham

  London has changed in the past two years. People have changed. I thought it would be something violent and shocking that altered this city - an outrage like the July 7 bombings or our version of 9/11 - but it was something else: a financial meltdown, a banking crisis triggered on the far side of the world by poor people who couldn’t repay their loans.

  As I get near the Thames I can smell the mud flats and brine. I’m visiting a friend - a former detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police called Vincent Ruiz, who retired five years ago.

  Broad like a bear with a busted nose and booze-stained cheeks, Ruiz has had three marriages and three divorces. World-weary and fatalistic, I sometimes think he’s a walking, talking cliché - the heavy-drinking, womanising ex-detective - but he’s more complicated than that. He once arrested me for murder. I once rescued him from himself. Friendships have flourished on less.

  We’ve arranged to meet at a pub on the river, not far from where he lives. The Blue Anchor is tucked in the shadows of Hammersmith Bridge where patrons can watch the rowers skim across the water and tourist boats chug west towards Hampton Court.

  Whitewashed with a blue trim, the pub has nautical paraphernalia on the walls and Van Morrison on the sound system. Ruiz is waiting at the bar. He’s a big man with big hands. One of them is wrapped around a pint glass.

  ‘Professor.’

  ‘Vincent.’

  ‘A shirt like that deserves a drink.’

  It’s another of Emma’s choices.

  ‘What would happen if I had matching trousers?’ I ask.

  ‘I’d have to make a citizen’s arrest. Don’t look at me like that - I don’t make the rules.’

  Ruiz is in a good mood, telling jokes and stories. We shoot the breeze about family and rugby. He’s on the committee of his local rugby club, which had a winning season.

  We’ve spent a lot of meals like this but mostly when Julianne was still with me. Ruiz would flirt with her shamelessly and call her high maintenance, while she treated him like a naughty schoolboy who refused to grow up.

  We order. The waitress suggests the special, a vegetarian lasagne. Ruiz tells her he didn’t fight his way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian. He orders the rump steak. Medium rare. Mashed potatoes with butter not oil. Pepper sauce on the side.

  The waitress turns to me. Her name is Polly.

  ‘I’ll have the Ploughman’s.’

  She looks relieved. Ruiz orders another beer. He’s dressed in casual trousers and a sweatshirt. I seem to remember him making a promise when he left the Met that he would never wear a tie again unless it was to a rugby dinner or a funeral.

  ‘So how’s Julianne?’

  ‘She’s interpreting - working on a big trial.’

  Ruiz waits for something more, sensing it, but I don’t want to talk about Ho-ho-ho Harry Veitch.

  ‘So why are you really here?’

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘You’re in trouble.’

  ‘No.’

  I tell him about Sienna and her father, trying to keep the emotion out o my voice by sticking to the facts. Even so, I can hear myself defending her, putting the best possible spin on the evidence.

  Ruiz keeps his head down as he listens.

  ‘What makes you so sure she’s innocent?’ he asks.

  ‘She says she didn’t do it.’

  ‘Everybody lies.’

  ‘There was somebody else in the house. They stood behind the door in the bedroom. They were waiting.’

  He looks straight through me, keeping his thoughts to himself. ‘Any other suspects?’

  I mention Sienna’s boyfriend Danny Gardiner and her brother Lance, who had no alibi for the night of the murder.

  ‘Are we talking about Sugar Ray Hegarty?’ asks Ruiz. ‘Worked out of Bristol CID?’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘We helped each other out once or twice.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Old school.’

  ‘Fair?’

  ‘And hard.’

  Ruiz gazes into his pint, as if saying a silent prayer. ‘Typical, isn’t it? You survive a career like his and all the terrible shit happens after you’re out. I remember his daughter getting crippled by that sadistic fuck - what was his name?’

  ‘Liam Baker.’

  ‘Yeah, him.’

  Ruiz wants to know the details of Ray Hegarty’s death, taking down correct spellings and looking for inconsistencies. Sienna’s laptop is missing and her room had been searched.

  ‘Anything else taken in the house?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I can see his mind working. What could a teenage girl have on her computer that was worth stealing?

  ‘What about the son?’

  ‘Lance didn’t get on with his father, they were always fighting, but I don’t think he could have done this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cutting someone’s throat is personal. It’s hands-on. It takes courage. Anger. Lance was frightened of his old man.’

  Ruiz nods.

  ‘You might want to take a look at a school teacher: Gordon Ellis.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘He teaches music and drama at a secondary school. Lives locally. Married. One child. I think Sienna confided in him; she might have told him about the abuse, but when I mentioned his name, she clammed up and wouldn’t talk about him.’

  ‘You hit a raw nerve?’

  ‘It might be nothing. About ten days before the murder, Ray Hegarty had an argument outside his house with someone who dropped Sienna home. The police haven’t been able to ID the driver, but it could have been Gordon Ellis. Sienna used to babysit for Ellis and according to Helen Hegarty, Ray saw the two of them kissing. Sienna denied it, but Hegarty made a complaint to the school. I don’t know if the two events are related, but Gordon Ellis has since accused Sienna of harassing him with phone calls.’

  Ruiz pats his pockets and his coat rattles. He used to be a smoker, but now he sucks on boiled sweets that will rot his teeth instead of his lungs.

  ‘Who’s heading the investigation?’

  ‘Ronnie Cray.’

  ‘She still rolling her own tampons?’

  Political correctness is not one of Ruiz’s strong suits. He once told me that being politically correct was like pretending you could pick up a dog turd by the clean end.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to help the police out any more,’ he says.

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Sienna Hegarty is Charlie’s best friend.’

  Ruiz nods and leans back as our meals arrive. Tucking a paper serviette into his collar, he rubs his knife and fork together and tucks in. As he chews he mulls over the information.

  ‘So I’ll run a few checks. See what I can find out.’ Then he puts on a West Country accent. ‘Maybe I’ll drive down your way and spend a few days in your neck of the woods.’

  ‘I’ll tell all the single women in town what a stud you are.’

  ‘I believe that memo has already been sent.’

  The rest of our lunch is spent swapping stories of family and trying to outdo each other in the dysfunctional relatives stakes. In truth, whenever I talk to Ruiz I don’t feel so badly about my own parents. His mother suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. The only thing she remembers with any clarity is the war and every embarrassing detail of Ruiz’s childhood, which she repeats in a megaphone voice whenever he visits her.

  ‘Do our children talk about us like this?’ he asks.

  ‘Probably.’

  My mobile is vibrating. I pull it out and stare at the screen, not recognising the number.

  ‘Professor O’Loughlin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You might remember me - Dr Martinez. I treated Sienna Hegarty when they brought her into hospital.’

  A pause. In the background I can hear the sound of the hospital PA system.

  ‘You asked
me about a rape test and I said I couldn’t perform one without her parents’ permission.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was evidence of rough sex, which might have been rape. And there’s something else. She miscarried.’

  The statement fizzes inside my brain like an aspirin disappearing in a glass of water.

  Dr Martinez continues, ‘She must have lost the foetus on the night she came in.’

  ‘How many weeks was she?’ I can’t recognise my own voice.

  ‘I ran a blood pregnancy test for levels of hCG. The hormone level doubles every two days for four weeks after conception. Given her levels and the amount of blood we found on her clothes, I’d say she was in her first trimester - at least four weeks, no more than ten.’

  He stops talking. The silence stretches out.

  ‘Are you still there?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing, but since you’d asked . . .’

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’

  He’s about to hang up when something occurs to me. ‘Would she have known?’ I ask.

  ‘She was late. Most women know their cycles.’

  There was no evidence of a pregnancy test found at the house, but Sienna would most likely have destroyed the test kit.

  Closing the phone, I stare at the screen as the light fades. Ruiz is watching me from the opposite side of the table.

  ‘She was pregnant,’ I whisper. ‘She miscarried on the night of the murder.’

  ‘Can they do a paternity test?’

  ‘Not without the foetus.’

  17

  Just south of Reading, I pull into a motorway service centre and park among the long-haul trucks and tourist coaches. Hiking across the parking lot, I enter a brightly lit lobby full of fast-food outlets and shops.

  The men’s room is cavernous but I still have to queue for a urinal. The men around me are truckers in plaid shirts or football strips hung over beer guts. One of them hauls up his jeans and saunters off like a man who has marked his territory.

  My left hand is trembling. My bladder won’t do as it’s told. I stand and stare at the wall. Someone has scrawled a message in marker pen above the urinal: ‘Express Lane: five beers or less.’

  Nothing is happening. The queue is getting longer.

  ‘Are you gonna piss or just piss me off ?’ says a trucker with a wallet chained to his belt.

  ‘I’m sorry. I won’t be a moment.’

  He grunts and says something to the person next to him. They laugh. It’s not going to happen now. That’s one of the problems with my medication. I used to piss like a racehorse. Now I squirt and dribble.

  Outside the restroom I put in a call to Trinity Road Police Station. Ronnie Cray is in a meeting. Monk answers her phone. Certain people don’t match their voices, but Monk’s comes from deep in his chest and seems to rumble down the line as if he’s standing in a tunnel.

  ‘Danny Gardiner?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Did you interview him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sienna was pregnant.’

  I can hear Monk exhale slowly.

  ‘The boss isn’t here.’

  ‘Can you take me?’

  Monk hesitates momentarily. We’ll meet at Danny Gardiner’s house.

  I have the rest of the journey to consider the implications of Sienna’s pregnancy. I think back to the afternoon I collected her and Charlie from school. Sienna had seemed distracted and upset. I thought she was annoyed about the rehearsal and being made to stay behind. Even so, she skipped into her boyfriend’s arms, kissing his lips, sliding her hand down his back.

  Danny Gardiner told police that he’d dropped Sienna on a street corner in Bath only thirty minutes later. Where did she go? Three hours are missing from the timeline.

  Danny lives with his mother in Twerton on the western outskirts of Bath where most of the older houses are clustered around St Michael’s Parish Church. The newer estates have encroached on to farmland and already I see white pegs marking out more plots of land.

  Monk is waiting in an unmarked police car.

  ‘What did Cray say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her.’

  ‘I’m doing you a favour.’

  Nobody answers the door. Monk knocks again. Then we wait. The sky is low and grey, smelling of woodsmoke and rain.

  A white hatchback pulls into a parking space ahead of us. A woman in her fifties emerges, dressed in a tour guide’s uniform. She collects a bag of groceries from the boot and walks to the house, cursing as she drops her keys.

  ‘Mrs Gardiner?’ I ask.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  The door swings inwards and a long-haired dog that could have a head at either end dances around her stockinged legs, yapping.

  She turns, waiting for an answer.

  ‘We’re looking for Danny.’

  ‘He’s talked to you lot already.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  Her blue-grey eyes examine me quickly and then settle on Monk, gazing at him as though he’s sprouted from magic beans in her front garden. ‘Lordy, your mother must have gone cross-eyed having you. How tall?’

  ‘Six-four last time I measured.’

  ‘I think you’ve grown since then, love. You should have played basketball.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She has stepped inside the hallway. The house smells of damp dog, air freshener and dope. Mrs Gardiner lifts her shopping bags over the threshold, using one hand to hold the collar of the dog.

  ‘I haven’t seen Danny since yesterday.’

  ‘His car is outside,’ says Monk.

  ‘Must have taken the bus,’ she replies.

  ‘That’s too bad. We’ll have to tow the car. Forensic boys want to pull it apart. Tell him we’ll put it back together again . . . best we can.’

  Two beats of silence follow before Danny bursts out of a bedroom, barefoot, bare-chested, wearing low-slung jeans. Marijuana smoke wafts in his wake.

  ‘Not me fucking car! I just finished paying it off.’

  Danny reaches the front door and bounces off Monk’s chest.

  ‘The car’s fine. We just need to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘I answered your questions.’

  ‘More of them.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  Mrs Gardiner clips him around the ear. ‘Mind your language.’

  Danny nurses the side of his head where three studs decorate the cartilage above his ear.

  ‘I suppose you’d better come in then,’ says Mrs Gardiner. ‘Carry them bags, Danny.’

  We follow her along a hallway into a tired-looking kitchen, with red-painted cupboards and a fridge that doubles as a noticeboard. She begins unpacking her groceries while Danny pulls a bottle of soft drink from a bag. She tells him to get a glass. He rolls his eyes.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ she asks Monk.

  ‘We want to ask him about his girlfriend.’

  ‘A girl? That’s all he thinks about - girls. You should see the state of his bed sheets.’

  Danny gives her a murderous look.

  ‘Lazy, just like his dad. Spends his time tinkering with cars. Not really a proper job, is it?’ Mrs Gardiner sizes Monk up again. ‘How tall you say you were, Detective?’

  ‘Six-four.’

  ‘I’ve got a job for you. Won’t take a minute.’

  ‘I’m needed here.’

  ‘Don’t take two of you to talk to Danny. Call it a community service.’

  Mrs Gardiner is halfway down the hall, motioning him to follow. Monk glances at me, hoping to be rescued, and then reluctantly accepts his fate.

  Danny relaxes now that his mother is no longer orbiting.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ I ask.

  Danny shakes his head.

  ‘I saw you outside Sienna’s house last Wednesday morning.’

  He screws up his face. �
��Wasn’t me.’

  ‘You legged it when I tried to talk to you. Almost ran me down in that car of yours. That’s one of the problems with having a distinctive-looking car, Danny. You think it makes a bold statement, but it sticks out like a turd in a punchbowl.’

  Danny is working his tongue around his cheek as though counting his teeth. His hair sticks up at odd angles and I can see traces of pimple cream dabbed on his forehead. For all his brazen defiance, he doesn’t look particularly tough or aggressive. He has small hands. Delicate features.

  ‘Tell me about Sienna Hegarty.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Is she your girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s a friend.’

  ‘She’s underage.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘How old are you, Danny?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘Don’t you know any horny girls your own age?’

  ‘I get my share.’

  ‘So why Sienna?’

  ‘Listen, I’m not shagging her, OK, and if she says I am then she’s a lying cow. We’re mates.’

  ‘Mates?’

  ‘Yeah. We hang out together. I drive her around the place. Drop her off.’

  ‘And what do you get in return?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Come on, Danny, I wasn’t born yesterday. You’re trying to tell me that you hang out with a hot-looking fourteen-year-old because she’s a mate.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I figured one day, you know . . .’

  ‘One day?’

  ‘She might pay out, you know. When she’s legal?’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sienna was pregnant. You knocked her up.’

  ‘No fucking way!’ His voice grows shrill. ‘I just take her places. Drop her off. I’m not shagging her. Haven’t touched her.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Either tell me the truth, Danny, or Detective Abbott is going to search your room. He’ll find your hash and your porn magazines and whatever else you’re hiding. Then he’ll take you down to the station and put you in a cell downstairs with the drunks and the perverts and the drug addicts. Do you know how long a night lasts in a place like that? By morning you’ll be an old man.’

  Sweat pops out on Danny’s forehead and runs down the side of his nose. He’s trying to look like he doesn’t care, but I can see his mind working.