Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin)

by Michael Robotham

  ‘Who dropped you off?’

  ‘Gordon and another man.’

  ‘Another man?’

  ‘His eyes looked like they were bleeding.’

  ‘Where did they take you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was a big house. Old. It smelled funny.’ She rocks forward, breathing through her mouth. ‘It was horrible. I had to have . . . I had to let him . . . he did things to me. Gordon said it would prove how much I loved him.’

  I can hear the wetness in her throat as she swallows. At the same time, a shudder goes through her body like tension leaving a metal spring.

  ‘What happened afterwards?’

  ‘Gordon drove me back to his house but we couldn’t go inside because Natasha was home. He said it turned him on - knowing what another man had done to me. He took off my clothes and we had sex in the car but he was rough. He hurt me. I told him to be careful.’

  ‘Did you tell him you were pregnant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He swore and shoved me away. He was yelling at me, saying I’d tricked him, saying I got pregnant on purpose. He told me to get rid of the baby. An abortion. That’s when I ran away. I ran home.’

  Sienna looks at me blankly, too numb to cry. Touching her upper arm with my palm, I feel the coolness of her skin. She leans against me, pushing her face under my chin. Motionless in my arms, she remains curled up, her skirt pulled tight over her knees.

  The patchwork quilt has slipped down, uncovering her feet. A dark stain runs over her right foot. It looks like a birthmark or a lesion. Then I notice that it’s shining and viscous, soaking into the sheet beneath her.

  ‘What have you done?’ I whisper, unhooking my arms and raising her skirt up her calves and over her knees, which are slick with blood.

  Sienna’s eyes are closed as though she’s fallen asleep, but she’s still conscious.

  ‘Don’t tell Mum,’ she murmurs.

  Twin lacerations on her inner thighs are swollen and leaking. She has cut from the edge of her panties towards her knees, probably using a razor blade wrapped in a tissue.

  I glance around the room. Where did she hide her implements?

  ‘You need stitches.’

  ‘I’ll be OK.’

  ‘You need to go to hospital.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

  Her eyes are closing.

  ‘Have you taken something, Sienna?’

  She doesn’t answer. I shake her gently. ‘Did you take something? ’

  In a sing-song voice, ‘White pills, yellow pills and long green pills.’

  ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘I stole them,’ she sings. ‘From the trolleys and from bedside tables.’

  She’s talking about Oakham House.

  Flinging open the door, I yell down the stairs, ‘Call an ambulance! ’

  Sienna opens her eyes just long enough to give me a pitying look. ‘They’re never going to let me out now, are they?’

  I grab her top sheet and rip it into bandages to wrap around her thighs. I need to know what she took. What drugs?

  Sliding sideways down the wall, Sienna rests her head against a pillow and mumbles, ‘He told me not to write a note. He said too many suicides spend too much time composing letters, trying to find words. “You could die of old age, trying to write a note,” he said. “You just have to do it.”’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘He said to do it like Juliet, but I couldn’t. So I did it like Romeo.’

  37

  Gordon Ellis is laughing at me, mocking me with his bloodstained teeth and reptilian smile. I keep picturing Sienna’s bloody thighs and seeing her eyes roll back into her head.

  Hurting him won’t be sufficient. I want to feed him broken glass. I want to see spittle fly from the corners of his mouth. I want to see him suffer like she’s suffering.

  After following the ambulance to the hospital, I continue driving. Sick. Dry-mouthed. Fists clenched on the wheel. A mantra playing in my head: ‘She’s just a kid. A child. He used her. He poisoned her mind.’

  Rage consumes me. Rational thinking has been replaced by a single linear idea that runs on tracks like a bullet train, hurtling towards a single destination.

  Parking the Volvo, I push open the groaning door and walk to the rear. Pulling out a tyre jack, I slam the boot closed. Sienna’s face is melting in front of me. Her eyes are closing. Her thighs are sticky.

  Julianne is divorcing me. My eldest daughter thinks I’m a failure. My life’s going to shit, but I should have stopped this. I should have seen this coming. Predators like Ellis don’t stop. They never relinquish control. They invest too much time and effort in grooming a victim.

  Bounding over the gate, I walk towards the house. Tunnel vision. Halfway up the path and Ruiz appears in front of me. I try to step around him but he won’t let me pass. His lips are moving, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.

  Then I feel my left arm being twisted up my back, followed by the searing pain that spreads from my shoulder socket to the base of my spine. His leg swings into the back of my knees and I stagger forward crashing into a garden bed.

  Ruiz falls with me, knocking the wind from my lungs. I try to roll away, but he wraps his arm around my neck in a chokehold.

  ‘Enough now!’ he warns me, squeezing my neck.

  ‘S’OK.’

  ‘Concede.’

  ‘OK.’

  A bubble of exhaustion breaks inside me. Rage leaks away.

  ‘I’m going to let go,’ says Ruiz.

  ‘OK.’

  His arm slips away. He pulls me up to my knees, but I don’t have the strength to stand.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

  ‘I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘Sienna took an overdose. She tried to kill herself.’ I stare at my muddy hands. ‘Ellis told her to do it. He wants her dead.’

  ‘How?’

  My throat swells. ‘I don’t know. She told me that Ellis could always reach her. I didn’t believe her.’

  Ruiz drags me to my feet. ‘So you decided to confront Ellis. You came here to give him another beating - or were you gonna kill him this time?’

  He pushes me away in disgust. ‘What sort of idiot . . . you couldn’t count your balls and get the same answer twice. You’re on remand. I lodged my house as surety. You’re not allowed within a thousand fucking yards of Gordon Ellis and yet here you are - breaking the law. They can lock you up. Forget about that - they can take away my house!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He shoves me in the chest, pushing me towards the car. ‘Get in the fucking car.’

  ‘I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘Do as you’re told.’

  I glance at the house. Natasha Ellis is standing at the window, holding the curtains aside. She looks like a child looking outside at a rainy day. We’ve made a mess of her garden.

  Ruiz opens my car door. ‘Get inside and drive.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll follow.’

  ‘What were you doing here?’

  ‘Watching Gordon Ellis.’

  I start the engine and pull away from the kerb. By the time I reach the end of the street, Ruiz’s Mercedes is in my rear mirror, a 280E with two-tone wheels and a bright red paint job. Think pride. Think joy.

  My anger has subsided but the black hole survives within me, still and even, sucking in the light. Ellis can’t get away with this. He can’t destroy another life.

  The air in the hospital feels dirty and recycled. Ruiz has gone to get tea at the canteen, leaving me sitting at a table, staring at spilled sugar and an old coffee ring.

  Sienna is in a stable condition. Doctors have pumped her stomach to get rid of any pill fragments and given her activated charcoal to bind the drugs in her stomach and intestines, reducing the amount absorbed into her b
lood.

  She overdosed on TCAs - antidepressants that are the drug of choice for treating depression. The lethal dose is eight times the therapeutic dose, which makes it a risky drug to have around someone like Sienna.

  Shutting my eyes, I let exhaustion slide over me like a prison blanket. My mind wants to curl up and sleep. Maybe I can wake up without any blood on my hands.

  Gordon Ellis did this. It was classic grooming behaviour. He drew Sienna close and then pushed her away, constantly keeping her off balance. He praised her then belittled her, withheld his affection and then doled it out in token amounts until she began to question herself. She surrendered her body and then her self-esteem. She slept with someone because he told her to. She took an overdose because he told her to. This was the ultimate demonstration of his control and of his arrogance.

  Normally a predator focuses on the weak, but Ellis wanted a challenge. He chose someone adventurous and outgoing, a risk taker. He took a bright, vibrant young teenager and bent her, broke her, remade her and then broke her again.

  Ruiz has returned. He puts a mug of tea in front of me and begins spooning sugar.

  ‘I don’t take any.’

  ‘You do today.’

  He wants to hear the story. I start at the beginning and tell him about the funeral and visiting Sienna. As the details emerge, so do the questions. Ellis has a caravan somewhere down the coast. It could be the same caravan he had in Scotland when his wife disappeared. The police could never find it.

  Sienna couldn’t remember where they went. She said that she slept most of the weekend and Gordon told her that she had food poisoning. Most likely he drugged her. He could also have drugged Natasha when he had sex with Sienna in their house. Sedatives, barbiturates, date-rape drugs, what did he use?

  Ellis covered his tracks. He didn’t leave notes or send text messages or emails. When he picked Sienna up after school she had to hide beneath a blanket on the back seat and turn off her mobile. He dropped her off at her therapy sessions with Robin Blaxland and picked her up again afterwards.

  Helen Hegarty appears in the canteen. She’s wearing a beige jumper and slacks. Leaving Ruiz, I make my way between the tables, standing uncomfortably as she searches her handbag for tissues.

  ‘How is she?’

  Helen’s eyes focus past me. The skin around her mouth twitches. ‘They put her in a coma. They say it’s going to help her.’

  Lance Hegarty comes out of a nearby men’s room. He shoves me into a table. Obscenities and spittle roll off his tongue. ‘Are you satisfied? You won’t be happy until she’s dead.’

  Ruiz moves swiftly to intercept, stepping between us.

  Lance’s lips pull back from his teeth. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Ruiz speaks softly. ‘Lower your voice, son, and show people some respect. I’m asking you nicely.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  Lance swings a punch from his waist but Ruiz has been expecting it. Knocking it aside with his left arm he sinks a short sharp jab into the softness of the younger man’s belly. The anger in Lance’s eyes changes to surprise. He doubles over, winded, and Ruiz lowers him into a chair, apologising to Helen.

  ‘Maybe you should go,’ she says helplessly.

  Lance squeaks, still trying to suck in a breath.

  We retreat, leaving mother and son in the empty cafeteria. I can hear them arguing as the lift door closes behind us.

  ‘Other people’s families,’ mutters Ruiz.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They should serve as a warning.’

  38

  Ronnie Cray closes the barn door and drops a plank of wood into place. She’s dressed in jeans, a checked shirt and Wellingtons that are caked in mud. I hear horses inside. Smell them.

  ‘So this is what you do in your spare time?’

  ‘Yeah, I shovel horseshit.’

  She wipes her hands on her jeans and then eyes Ruiz, who has never been top of her dance card.

  ‘Mr Ruiz.’

  She’s calling him ‘mister’ for a reason - letting him know that he no longer has a police rank.

  ‘DCI.’

  ‘You’re looking older,’ she comments.

  ‘And you’re looking great. That’s the benefit of going braless - it pulls all the wrinkles out of your face.’

  ‘Now, now, children, play nice,’ I tell them.

  ‘I’ll be nicer if he tries to be smarter,’ says Cray.

  The DCI lights a cigarette, cupping her hands around the flame. The lighter clinks shut and I catch a whiff of petrol.

  ‘The place is looking good,’ says Ruiz, trying not to be sarcastic.

  Cray looks around. ‘It’s a dump.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re doing it up.’

  ‘That’s one of the great traps of buying a place like this. You see all the space and get excited, imagining beautiful lawns and gardens, but then you spend every weekend removing tree stumps and rocks.’

  ‘When you’re not shovelling shit,’ says Ruiz.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Cray pushes a wheelbarrow to the side of the barn and tosses a bucket of vegetable scraps to the chickens.

  ‘On my mother’s side I have several generations of women shaped to pull ploughs. My father’s side was a family of pen pushers - delicate as Asians. In the genetic roll of the dice, I got the agricultural build.’

  She carries the bucket towards the house. ‘I guess you gentlemen better come inside.’

  Scraping mud from her boots and kicking them off, she ducks through a doorway as though imagining herself to be two feet taller. The kitchen is full of French provincial furniture and has copper-bottom pots hanging from the ceiling. A tan cat stretches, circles and resettles on a shelf above the stove. This is the champion ratter that Cray told me about, Strawberry’s mother.

  ‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ she says, washing her hands. ‘This had better be a social call. It’s Saturday and I’m off-duty.’

  Neither of us answers.

  ‘You want a drink?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ says Ruiz, eyeing the row of liquor bottles on top of the cupboard. ‘Scotch and a splash of water.’

  ‘I’m offering wine.’

  The DCI pulls an open bottle from a shelf and cleans two wine-glasses with a paper towel.

  ‘How about you, Professor?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  Ronnie is not the most social of women, which could have something to do with her low regard for people and even lower expectations. Most of her life is a mystery to me, although I know she was married briefly and has a grown-up son. She doesn’t hide the fact that she’s gay, but neither is it open for discussion. I suspect there have been women in her life who got under her skin and into her heart, but now she seems to be closed off, anchored to her memories like a lone sailor who looks out of place on dry land and is only happy on her own.

  Lighting another cigarette, she sucks hard into her lungs as if concerned that fresh air without tobacco smoke might damage her health.

  ‘Sienna Hegarty overdosed yesterday afternoon,’ I tell her.

  ‘Where did she get the pills?’

  ‘She stole them from the meds trolley at Oakham House.’

  Cray glances at my left hand. My thumb and forefinger are brushing together, rolling an imaginary pill between them.

  ‘That’s not why you’re here.’

  ‘I talked to Sienna. She admitted sleeping with Gordon Ellis when she was only thirteen. She was pregnant with his child.’

  ‘Will she make a statement?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. There’s something else: Gordon Ellis organised to meet Sienna on the afternoon Ray Hegarty died.’

  ‘Natasha Ellis gave him an alibi.’

  ‘And you believe her?’

  ‘No, but it means that we have to prove otherwise.’

  ‘Danny Gardiner dropped Sienna on a corner on the Lower Bristol Road, near a minicab office. From there she was taken to an address -
she can’t remember the location - and Ellis gave her instructions.’

  ‘What sort of instructions?’

  ‘She had to sleep with someone.’

  Cray looks at me incredulously. ‘He pimped her!’

  ‘Gordon Ellis told her it was the final proof that she loved him.’

  Cray wipes her face with her sleeve and wrinkles her nose as though smelling an odour rising from her armpit. ‘Who was the john?’

  ‘She doesn’t remember the address and she didn’t get a name.’

  ‘So we just have her word for it?’

  I borrow a piece of paper and a pen and begin jotting down names and drawing lines between them. Sienna, Gordon Ellis, Caro Regan, Novak Brennan and the Crying Man - all of them can be linked by one or more acts of extreme violence.

  Cray doesn’t react. She stubs out the cigarette and reaches for another. ‘You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t stop the presses, Professor.’ She flicks the bottom of the packet and a cigarette pops out. ‘Forty years ago my father changed the spelling of our surname because he didn’t want anyone knowing we were related to Ronnie and Reggie Kray. He was their first cousin. Never met them. But he didn’t want to be associated with a couple of psycho gangsters.’

  ‘I don’t get your point.’

  ‘Some links are completely harmless. It’s like six degrees of separation - we’re all linked by only a few steps.’

  Ruiz reacts, ‘What sort of bullshit response—’

  She cuts him off. ‘Let me finish. You’re probably right about Gordon Ellis - the man got rid of his first wife and married one of his students - but trying to tie him to Novak Brennan is stretching things too far. MI5 has been investigating Brennan for six years. They’ve infiltrated local right-wing organisations and neo-Nazi groups, surveilled meetings, bugged phones, tailed cars and taken photographs. The name Gordon Ellis has never come up.’

  ‘Ellis and Brennan went to university together.’

  ‘Fifteen years ago.’

  ‘What about the Crying Man?’

  ‘He’s your bogeyman - not mine. Stan Keating didn’t file a police report. Nobody else has complained about this guy.’