Bleed for Me (32 page)

Right now I feel as though my mind is slipping. My emotions have been manipulated and my reason distracted. It’s like watching a magician using sleight of hand, cleverly drawing my attention away so that I don’t see the ‘palm’ or the ‘ditch’ or the ‘steal’.

I can make a connection between Gordon El is, Ray Hegarty and Sienna, but I don’t know what glue holds them together. And where does the Crying Man come into this, or Lance Hegarty? Someone kil ed my dog. Someone ran me off the road. Gordon El is gave me a strange look when I mentioned Gunsmoke. It was like he didn’t understand.

I have to go back to the beginning and question everything, but right now I’m too tired to think. I’m dirty, unshaven, exhausted and I want a shower. I want a bed. I want to square things with Julianne and Charlie.

Ruiz drops me at the terrace and does a three-point turn, heading back into Bristol. Seeing Novak Brennan again has reignited something inside him - an instinct that never leaves a detective, even a retired one.

Opening the door of the terrace I get a flashback of last night. The reminders are smeared across the kitchen floor - a trail of blood showing where Gordon El is sat holding his head, where he pissed his pants, where he grinned at me with his bloodstained teeth. Fil ing the sink with hot soapy water, I begin mopping and rinsing, twisting the towel and watching the pink wash run between my fingers.

The answering machine is flashing:

Bruno Kaufman:

Joe, this is beyond the pale. You’ve now missed two lectures and two staff meetings - do you want to keep this job? Your students are complaining that you’re not answering their
emails. Call me. Have an explanation.

Clunk!

Annie Robinson:

Listen, you prick! I’m not some pimply-faced teenager sitting by the phone. I’m old enough to deserve some respect. If you don’t want to see me, fine! But at least have the
decency to call or tell me to my face. Thanks for nothing!

Clunk!

I wince. It’s not like I’m ducking to avoid a bul et or a rock, it’s an internal shudder - the sort of wince you get when you spend a night with a woman and don’t fol ow it up.

Annie isn’t the first woman to produce this reaction in me. That dubious honour belongs to Brenda, a girl my parents employed to clean our house one summer when I was home from boarding school. I saved up my pocket money so I could look at Brenda’s breasts. She charged me fifty pence a time and double if I wanted her to lift her skirt and pul her knickers up tightly, leaving little to my imagination.

Brenda lived in the local vil age and had a brother, Jonathan, who was my age. It was Jonathan who first told me about the mechanics of sex, but it wasn’t until Brenda gave me a personal guided tour of female anatomy that I believed it was possible for Tab A to fit into Slot B.

I wince when I think of Brenda because of the sadness in her eyes and because five years later, I teased and cajoled and promised that I loved her as she slipped her knickers down in the backseat of a car (which the ever-wil ing girl had done many times before) and al owed me to lose my virginity. Brenda wanted to be close to someone and this was the only way she knew how.

Annie Robinson is sweet, wel -meaning, good-natured and slightly damaged - or maybe I should say bruised. The sound of her voice makes me wince. It tel s me everything I need to know.

At three o’clock I pick Emma up from school. She has a sticker on her jumper that says ‘Best Counter’.

‘I can count to sixty-one,’ she announces proudly.

‘That’s very good, but what comes next?’

‘Sixty-two.’

‘So you can count higher.’

‘I can, but the teacher wanted me to stop. I think she was getting bored.’

When I laugh, Emma gets cross. She doesn’t like people laughing unless she understands why.

As soon as she gets to the terrace she goes looking for her Snow White dress.

‘It’s in the wash,’ I tel her.

‘When wil it be out of the wash?’

‘Not for a long time.’

‘You can put it in the dryer.’

‘It wil shrink.’

She looks at me doubtful y and then opens the washing machine. ‘You haven’t even started.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

Eventual y she searches through the dirty washing until she finds the dress and puts it on, ignoring the chocolate and bolognaise stains.

Charlie arrives at about four, dropping her bag in the hal way.

‘How are things?’ I ask.

‘Guess.’

She blows a strand of hair from her eyes, but doesn’t look at me.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Let me think. That’s right, my father is an idiot, that’s about it.’

‘That’s not very polite, Charlie.’

‘I was going to cal you an arsehole, so “idiot” is far more polite.’

Slumping angrily on to the sofa, she picks up the remote and flicks aggressively through the channels without taking any notice of what she’s ignoring.

‘I can explain.’

‘It’s al over the school. You beat up Mr El is and put him in hospital. He’s everyone’s favourite teacher - which makes me as popular as swine flu. I’m going to have to leave school, leave the country, change my name.’

‘I think you’re overdramatising this.’

‘Am I?’ I can hear the hated tone in her voice.

‘Gordon El is said things about you.’

‘What things?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does. Tel me!’

‘He said that he’d slept with you.’

‘And what - you believed him and beat him up! I babysat his little boy, Dad. I didn’t sleep with anyone - that’s just stupid. Gordon wasn’t even there . . .’

‘Don’t cal him Gordon.’

She shoots me a look.

‘I know things about him, Charlie.’

‘And you don’t trust me - is that it?’

‘That’s not it.’

‘So what were you doing - defending my honour?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

Charlie looks at me dismissively.

‘What’s going to happen when I bring a boyfriend home? Are you going to beat him up too? Maybe you want to beat up my footbal coach - he’s a bit of a lech. And what about the creep on the bus who’s always perving at me? You could beat him up.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not the one who’s being ridiculous. I’m starting to understand why Mum left you.’

The statement cuts through the hard spots, right to the soft centre where it hurts the most. Charlie senses that she’s gone too far, but she doesn’t take it back, which hurts even more.

Brushing past me, she pul s on her coat.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out.’

‘Where?’

‘Away from you.’

The door closes and I tel myself that she’l forgive me eventual y and grasp what happened. And then I realise that I don’t want her to understand. I don’t want her to know what Gordon El is said and how much I wanted to kil him. I want to
stop
her knowing things like that.

‘Can I watch TV?’ whispers Emma.

She’s standing in the doorway. How much did she hear?

‘Come on in, Squeak, I’l find you something to watch.’

A few hours later I take Emma for a walk, looking for Charlie. Letting myself into the cottage, I find her riding boots missing from the laundry. She’s across the lane in Haydon Field where she stables her mare in the barn.

Slipping inside, I watch as Charlie throws a quilted pad on Peggy’s back, smoothing it down. I help her lift the saddle from the railing and set it in place. Charlie ducks under Peggy and buckles the strap, pul ing it tight.

Inserting her boot into the left stirrup, she swings herself upwards and looks down at me.

‘I’m sorry for what I said.’

‘I deserved it.’

A braided ponytail hangs beneath her riding hat. ‘You don’t have to worry about me and boys.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I have a horse.’

She laughs, kicks her heels and bolts away, thundering across the field, her hair flying and jodhpurs clinging to her young body. In every sense she’s getting further and further away from me.

34

Norman Mailer said there were four stages in a marriage. First the affair, then the marriage, then children and final y the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

That night Julianne visits me and hands me the papers. I’ve just taken two sedatives and drunk a large Scotch, desperate to sleep. The alcohol and the Valium are starting to work when she appears, pushing past me at the front door and striding into the kitchen. She spies the bottle of Scotch and it seems to confirm her suspicions.

Calmly and dispassionately, she tel s me about her decision. She wants me to understand that she has thought this through very careful y. She might use the term ‘long and hard’ but my mind is fuzzy. I feel as though I’m floating on the ceiling, looking down at myself, hearing myself trying to explain.

‘Gordon El is broke in here and said things about Charlie - terrible things - I just sort of snapped.’

‘Snapped?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t snap, Joe. You never snap.’

‘I know, but this was different.’

‘Did you want to kil him?’

I hesitate. ‘Yes.’

She is quiet a long time, staring into space, her lips pressed into thin straight lines. I keep waiting for her to speak. ‘Is that how little you think of us?’

‘What?’

‘Is that how little we mean to you?’ I can see anger climbing into her face. ‘You tried to kil someone. What if you’re sent to prison? What sort of father wil you be then? We’re not living in the Middle Ages, Joe, men don’t chal enge each other to duels. They don’t bash each other’s heads in.’

She flicks hair from her eyes. I can see the twin furrows above her nose. Charlie has them, too. I want to defend myself, but the drugs have turned my brain to treacle.

Julianne sighs and hands me the divorce papers. ‘It’s time to move on, Joe.’

‘What does that mean exactly?’

‘What does what mean?’

‘Moving on. You see, I don’t think we move at al . We run up and down on the spot and the world moves under us. Days, weeks, months, pass beneath our feet.’

‘So you’re saying we’re like hamsters on a wheel?’

‘Going nowhere.’

Julianne scoffs at this and tel s me to grow up. Looking at her hands more than my face, she asks me to sign the papers, saying something about it being both our faults. We got engaged too young and too quickly - six months and three days after our first date.

‘This isn’t about love any more, Joe. You joke about your Parkinson’s. You pretend nothing has changed. But you’re sadder. You’re self-absorbed. You obsess. You monitor every twitch and tremor. You’re like an archaeologist piecing together his own remains, finding bits and pieces but nothing whole. It breaks my heart.’

Her face is drifting in and out of focus. I concentrate on the tiny vein pulsing on her neck just below where her hair curls and touches her skin. Her heart never stops beating. Mine feels like it’s slowly breaking or grinding to a halt like an engine without oil.

I remember our wedding day, standing at the altar, saying, ‘I do.’ After we kissed I wanted to punch the air and yel , ‘Hey! Look at me! I got the girl.’

On my side of the congregation were doctors and surgeons and my mates from university. Julianne’s side was ful of her hippy friends, painters, sculptors, poets and actors. My father cal ed them the ‘Three P’s’ - potheads, pissheads and pil -heads.

‘Are you listening to me, Joe?’ she asks.

‘Can we talk about this tomorrow?’

‘There’s nothing else to talk about.’

‘Please? I’m exhausted. I just need to sleep.’

She nods and stands. I feel unsteady on my feet.

‘Don’t hate me, Joe.’

‘I could never do that.’

She puts some dishes in the sink and tel s me to go upstairs to bed.

‘Stay with me,’ I ask, ‘just for a few minutes.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

My fingers touch her hair and I want to press my body against hers and put my lips against the pulsing vein in her neck. She opens her mouth to say something but changes her mind.

‘Stay.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Just five minutes.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘If I stay it wil only make things worse.’

‘For you or for me?’

‘For both of us.’

As she opens the door, I see Annie Robinson on the doorstep about to ring the bel . Her eyes go wide and she rocks unsteadily on her feet.

‘Oh!’

‘I’m just leaving,’ says Julianne. ‘Annie, isn’t it?’

Annie giggles nervously. ‘I’m sorry - I laugh when I get embarrassed. It also happens when I drink.’ She leans forward and whispers, ‘I’ve been to the pub.’

‘That’s OK,’ says Julianne.

Annie looks at me accusingly. ‘I left messages for you.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve been real y busy.’

‘Were you busy ignoring me or just beating up Gordon El is? I was coming round to slap you in the face, but now I’m too drunk.’

‘I wasn’t ignoring you.’

‘Maybe I’l just puke in your garden instead.’

Julianne looks even more uncomfortable.

Annie stumbles slightly and Julianne has to steady her. Annie apologises. ‘Don’t mind me - I made the mistake of fucking your husband.’

Julianne flinches.

Annie giggles. ‘This is pretty surreal, isn’t it?’

That’s not the word I’d use, but I’m not going to quibble. Succumbing to the pil s and booze, I can barely keep my eyes open.

Julianne steps around Annie and hurries down the street, disappearing quickly from sight.

‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ I ask.

Annie’s nostrils flare and her voice changes. ‘You’re an arsehole!’

‘I’ve been told that already today - or maybe I was an idiot. I can’t remember now. I’m just so tired.’

‘Are you stil sleeping with your wife?’

‘No.’

I can’t see Annie clearly any more. She says something about feeling ashamed and humiliated.

‘I only came round to give you some information.’

‘Information?’

‘About Gordon El is - we were at university together, remember? I was looking through some of my old photographs and I found something.’