‘What did Gordon say?’
‘He claimed Caro was having an affair and had run off with her boyfriend.’
‘So what do you think happened?’
‘Me? Ah think Caro Regan is dead. Mah guess is he weighted down her body and dumped it in an abandoned pit. Countryside is dotted with them - old silver mines and coalmines - we dinnae have a register of all of them.’ His mouth constricts to a pucker. ‘We tried to break him. We pulled him in, followed him, pieced together his movements, but came up with fuck-all. The bastard has ice water in his veins. He’s a genuine fucking sociopath, you know what Ah’m saying? Clever. No remorse. Two years after she disappeared, Gordon applied for a divorce.’
‘He had a new girlfriend.’
‘Aye.’
Casey takes another swig from his flask.
‘There’s no way Caro Regan would have left home without her son. It was Billy’s birthday the next day. She’d bought him a rocking horse. What mother leaves her son the day before his birthday?’
Casey closes his eyes. His eyebrows are so pale they’re almost invisible.
‘Ah didnae get to meet Caro Regan, but Ah think Ah would have liked her. Ah talk to her sometimes, you know, in mah head. You probably think Ah’m mental.’
‘Only if she talks back,’ I tell him.
He grins. ‘When Ah talk tae Caro, Ah ask her where she is now, but she doesn’t know the answer. Maybe that’s what they mean by Purgatory - trapped between Heaven and Hell. Ah knew her mother, you know. Philippa was a fine-looking girl when she was younger. You wouldnae know it now, but take mah word for it.’
There is a click in his throat and an exhalation of breath like he’s blowing out a match. He raises his face to the sky. Sniffs at the air.
‘Gordon had a caravan. We found the receipt for when he bought it, but we couldnae find it.’
‘Maybe he sold it,’ says Ruiz.
‘It’s still registered in his name.’
‘Is it important?’
Casey shrugs. ‘We turned over every rock and shook every tree.’
‘What did Ellis say?’
‘He told us he lost the ’van in a poker game. Gordon likes playing the cards and he likes the horses. Spread betting - the work of the devil. Word is that he skipped town owing a loan shark called Terry Spencer fifteen grand.
‘Terry is a reasonably easy-going lad, but he lost patience and sent one of his boys looking for Ellis to remind him of his fiscal responsibilities - know what Ah’m saying? Stan Keating took a flight down south to Bristol and visited Ellis; roughed him up a wee bit, poured acid on his motor, the normal stuff.
‘About a fortnight later Stan was back in Edinburgh, drinking at his regular boozer in Candlemaker Row, when a guy turned up looking for him - an Irishman with weird tattoos on his face. He asked after Stan, who was sitting not twelve feet away, but the barmaid was old school and didnae say a thing.
‘For the next hour the Irishman waited, drinking orange juice and doing a crossword puzzle, cool as you like. Stan was watching him and making phone calls, arranging reinforcements - two brothers, the Lewis twins, good wit’ iron bars.
‘Eventually, the Irishman gets sick of waiting. Stan follows him outside where the Lewis twins are waiting. “You looking for me?” he asks, taking off his gold watch and rolling up his sleeves. The Irishman nodded. “You got fifteen seconds tae state your business,” says Stan.
‘“You paid a visit to a school teacher.”
‘“What’s that got to do wi’ you?”
‘“You made a mistake.”
‘Stan gives a glance over his shoulder at the twins. Smiles. In that split second he discovered the truth about the Irishman. A silver knuckleduster spiked with half-inch nails crushed his windpipe. It was three against one. They didnae stand a chance. The Irishman drove the knuckleduster into one twin’s jaw and took out the other twin with a telescopic baton that broke both his arms.
‘The fight lasted less than thirty seconds. Stan and the twins were on their knees, foreheads bent to the ground, whimpering. Stan’s voice box couldnae be repaired.’
The skin on Ruiz’s face flexes against the bone. ‘How did Gordon Ellis get a friend like that?’
Frank Casey shrugs his shoulders. ‘Ah wouldnae want one.’
‘So what about Terry Spencer?’
‘He got his money eventually. Ellis’s new family probably stumped up the cash, but that’s just a theory.’
‘And Stan Keating?’
‘He drinks in the same pub, but he don’t say much any more. Ah guess you could call him a man of few words.’ Casey rises from the bench and extends his hand. ‘Ah know Ah shouldnae say this, but Ah’m glad Gordon Ellis isn’t mah problem any more. Ah hope you have more luck than we did.’
Resting the shotgun over his shoulder, he shuffles up the cinder path to the rest of his retirement.
It’s mid-afternoon. Bobby’s Bar has a dozen or so drinkers inside and the nicotine-addicted at an outside table. The retired, the unemployed and the unemployable - old men in quilted jackets with awful teeth. It’s like a horror film: Night of the Unsmiling Granddads.
A plaque on the wall tells the story of the place. John Gray, an Edinburgh policeman, died of tuberculosis in 1858 and was buried in the adjacent yard. His dog, a Skye terrier called Bobby, spent the next fourteen years guarding his master’s grave until the dog died in 1872. There’s a statue of Bobby on a plinth outside - another monument to our desire to erect monuments.
The barmaid tries not to react when I mention Stan Keating’s name, but a small twitch in the corner of her mouth tells me she’s lying. Ruiz is already ordering a pint so as not to waste the trip. He hands the barmaid a fiver and waits for his change. Bottles of spirits are like glass organ pipes above his head.
Collecting his pint, he joins me at a table and surveys the bar. A lurid computer game winks and squawks in the corner trying to woo punters into competing unsuccessfully.
‘You know the problem with banning smoking in pubs?’ he asks, sucking an inch off the top of his Guinness.
‘What’s that?’
‘The smell.’
‘Of smoke?’
‘Of farts.’
I wait for an explanation.
‘Take a whiff of this place. Disinfectant and farts. Lager farts and Guinness farts and cider farts. When people could smoke, you couldn’t smell their farts. Now you can.’
‘Farts?’
‘Yeah.’
He takes another huge swallow and wipes his mouth. Then he nods over my shoulder. Further along the bar, one drinker sits on a stool studying a racing guide. A cravat is wrapped around his neck, making him look like an ageing fifties film star.
I sit on the barstool next to him. ‘I’m looking for Stan Keating.’
He doesn’t answer. His jacket has holes in the elbows and his nose is a roadmap of broken capillaries. The racing guide is ringed with red pen marks.
‘I wanted to talk about Gordon Ellis,’ I say. ‘Maybe you know him as Gordon Freeman.’
The barmaid answers, ‘He can’t talk.’
I turn to her. ‘I just need to ask him a couple of questions.’
‘Good luck with that,’ she says, polishing a glass. ‘Mr Keating doesn’t like being disturbed.’
‘Maybe he should tell me that.’
Keating reaches for his pint glass and raises it to his lips. The cravat on his neck slips, revealing a scar that extends from his Adam’s apple down his throat until it disappears beneath the fabric.
‘He can’t talk,’ says the barmaid, ‘unless he’s got his machine.’
‘What machine?’ asks Ruiz, who has taken a stool on the opposite side.
She holds her hand to her neck and silently moves her lips.
Keating lowers the glass and continues reading the form guide.
‘You’re not deaf, though, are you, Stan?’ says Ruiz. ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’ He motions to the barmaid. ‘Same again.’
Keating takes his hand slowly from his pocket. I see the dull gleam of steel as he presses a pencil-shaped device to his neck.
‘Tell them to fuck off, Brenda.’
The words have a buzzing metallic quality, like listening to a Stephen Hawking interview without the pauses between the words.
Brenda wipes a rag along the bar. ‘You heard him, gentlemen.’
Keating lowers the device and goes back to his newspaper.
‘Maybe you don’t understand our motives,’ says Ruiz. ‘We’re investigating Gordon Ellis. We know about his first wife. We know about his gambling debts.’
Keating doesn’t respond. He folds the paper and looks at the clock behind the bar.
Ruiz tries another approach. ‘You got children, Stan? I got two. A boy and a girl. Twins. They’re grown up now, but I still worry about them. Joe here has two daughters. Still young. Gordon Ellis is a nonce. He preys on schoolgirls.’
Keating shifts slightly and reaches for a glass, finishing the dregs before placing it carefully down again.
He prods the amplifier into his neck again, aggressively this time. ‘Ah used to sing. Nothing professional, like, just around the piano in pubs and clubs. Ah’d warm up the crowd before the main act. Ah sung Dean Martin stuff and Bing Crosby. Do you remember Dean Martin?’
Ruiz nods.
‘That boy could croon, drunk or sober, but he preferred to be drunk.’
Keating pauses and takes a gurgling breath. His eyes meet mine in the mirror behind the bar. ‘Ah cannae sing nae more.’
‘Who did this to you?’
‘Go home. There’s nae point coming here.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
The statement hits a nerve and Keating’s nostrils quiver as he sucks in a breath. His ears are like cauliflowers pressed to his scalp.
‘Fuck you,’ he says, mouthing the words silently.
At that moment the door opens and a young woman appears wearing low-cut blue jeans, sockless trainers and a tight-fitting grey T-shirt that rides up to show a strip of smooth abdomen. Her hair is held back with a band and a toddler perches on her hip sucking on a biscuit.
‘Come on, Dad,’ she says. ‘I’m running late.’
Stan Keating folds his paper and turns on his bar stool, finding his feet. His daughter is gazing at Ruiz and me. A breath of concern clouds her eyes.
Keating points to the men’s room.
‘Hurry up then,’ she says.
He pushes through a door and disappears from view. The woman talks to Brenda behind the bar, consciously ignoring us.
‘Who did that to him?’ I ask.
She looks from my face to Ruiz and back again. ‘Are you coppers?’
‘I used to be,’ says Ruiz. ‘We’re trying to help your father.’
‘Let me guess - he won’t talk to you, so now you’re asking me?’
‘Has he ever mentioned someone called Gordon Ellis?’
‘Never heard of him.’
She picks a sodden crumb of biscuit off her chest and wraps it in a tissue. Shifting the toddler on her opposite hip, she tucks the tissue into the tight pocket on her jeans. She’s not wearing a wedding ring.
‘How old is your little one?’ I ask.
She eyes me suspiciously. ‘Just gone two.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Tommy.’
‘Must be hard.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Being a single mum, looking after Tommy and keeping an eye on your dad. Does he live with you?’
‘Yeah.’ She’s anxious now. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m trying to help a girl who’s in a lot of trouble. She’s not much younger than you. Still at school.’
‘What’s that got to do with us?’
‘Your dad went to collect a debt from a man called Gordon Ellis and that’s how he got hurt. We’re trying to find out who did it.’
The toddler is growing heavy in her arms. She sets him down, holding tight to his hand. Then she looks over my shoulder towards the men’s room.
‘My dad fought in the Falklands with the Paras. Battle of Goose Green.’
‘Second Battalion?’ asks Ruiz.
She nods. ‘They gave him a medal and a piece of paper. What good is that?’
‘He fought for his country.’
‘You know he never stops talking about it - the Falklands. Two months out of his whole friggin life and he can’t forget it. Doesn’t want to.’ She looks from face to face. ‘Sometimes I think he wishes he’d never come back.’
The door to the bathrooms swings open. Stan Keating nods goodbye to Brenda. The machine touches his neck and he looks at his daughter. ‘Let’s go.’
I talk to her urgently. ‘Gordon Ellis preys on underage girls. I’m trying to help one of them.’
‘That’s nothing to do with Dad.’
‘Who did this to him?’
She fingers a silver chain around her neck. ‘He’s never said.’
Keating is already out the door. Reaching down, she picks up her little boy whose hands go around her neck.
‘We heard it was an Irishman.’
She shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t know, but he calls him something in his sleep.’
‘What?’
She draws two fingers down her cheeks leaving white lines that fade to pink on her smooth skin.
‘The Crying Man.’
26
Sitting in the departure lounge at Edinburgh Airport, I gaze out the terminal window where sheets of rain sweep across the tarmac. Men in yellow rain jackets are walking beneath the fuselage of a jet, loading luggage and food trolleys.
My flight to Bristol leaves in forty minutes. Ruiz has to wait another hour to get to London.
‘You want one of these?’ he asks, offering me a boiled sweet from a round flat tin.
‘No, thanks.’
One of the lollies rattles against the inside of his teeth. He tucks the tin into his jacket pocket. Some people have smells and some have sounds. Ruiz rattles when he walks and creaks when he bends.
I tell Ruiz about going to the minicab office and seeing an Irishman with tattoos that looked like tears. The same man had been outside the restaurant when I had lunch with Julianne.
‘How does Gordon Ellis get protection from someone like that? He’s a secondary-school drama teacher, not a gangster.’
‘He’s a sexual predator.’
‘Yeah and nobody likes a nonce. Not even hardened crims can abide a kiddie fiddler. Ellis wouldn’t last a month inside. Someone would shank him in a meal queue or hang him from the bars.’
‘Maybe the Irishman doesn’t know he’s a nonce.’
I watch a jet land in a cloud of spray and recall a patient of mine who was so scared of flying she tried to open the door of the plane and jump out. It turned out that she wasn’t scared of flying (or crashing). She was claustrophobic. Sometimes the obvious answer fits perfectly, yet it’s still wrong.
‘How is Julianne?’ asks Ruiz.
‘Fine.’
‘You’re still talking?’
‘We are.’
‘You bumping ugly?’
‘She’s started seeing someone else. An architect.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘I don’t know.’
Silence settles around us and I begin thinking about Harry Veitch. When Julianne and I were together, we used to crack jokes about Harry and the way he always insisted on tasting the wine at restaurants, describing the tannins and bouquet. Maybe I was the one who told the jokes, but I’m sure Julianne smiled.
Then I think about last night with Annie Robinson. For years I couldn’t imagine getting up the courage to show my naked body to another woman. Now it’s happened and I don’t know how to feel.
I want to ask Ruiz if it gets any easier. Marriage. Separation. Possible divorce. He’s been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. At the same time I want to avoid the subject. Live in denial.
‘On
the day she left me, Julianne said that I was sad; that I’d forgotten how to enjoy life. I looked at Coop today - how he’d stopped living after his daughter disappeared, how he’d given up - and I wondered if maybe Julianne was right about me.’
‘You’re not like Coop.’
‘I keep expecting things to go back to the way they were.’
‘It won’t happen. Take it from me.’
‘You don’t think she’ll take me back?’
‘No, I’m saying it’ll never be the same.’
‘You’re still seeing Miranda.’
‘That’s not the same thing. She’s an ex-wife with benefits.’
‘Benefits?’
‘Perfect breasts and thighs that can crush a filing cabinet.’
I shake my head and laugh, which I shouldn’t because it will only encourage him.
Instead he grows serious. ‘Do you know what makes a good detective, Prof? We’re the suspicious ones. We believe that everybody lies. Suspects. Witnesses. Victims. The innocent. The guilty. The stupid. Unfortunately, the very thing that makes us good detectives makes us lousy husbands.
‘When I was married to Miranda, she put up with my moods and my late nights and my drinking, but I know she lay awake sometimes wondering what doors I was kicking down and what lay on the other side. All she ever really wanted was to have me walk through her door - safe and whole.
‘I think maybe she could have lived with the uncertainty if I didn’t leave a part of myself behind every time. We’d be at a restaurant, or a dinner party, or watching TV and she knew I was thinking about work. It got so bad that sometimes I didn’t want to go home. I used to make up excuses and stay in the office. That’s your problem, Joe - you can’t leave it behind.’
I want to argue with him. I want to remind him I no longer have a home to protect or pollute, but Ruiz would just slap me around the head for being pessimistic and defeatist. It’s one of the things I’ve noticed about him since he retired - he’s become far more pragmatic. He can live with his regrets because one by one he has set them to rights or laid them to rest or made amends or accepted the things he cannot change. When you’ve been shot, stabbed and almost drowned, every day becomes a blessing, every birthday a celebration - life is a three-course meal occasionally seasoned with shit but still edible. Ruiz has learned to fill his boots.
Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin) Page 20