Bleed for Me (35 page)

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 El is 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.

Normal y a predator focuses on the weak, but El is wanted a chal enge. 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 tel him about the funeral and visiting Sienna. As the details emerge, so do the questions. El is 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?

El is 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 rol 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 pul 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 bel y. 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, stil 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 Wel ingtons that are caked in mud. I hear horses inside. Smel 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 cal ing 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 pul s al the wrinkles out of your face.’

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

‘I’l 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 al 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 shovel ing 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 pul ploughs. My father’s side was a family of pen pushers - delicate as Asians. In the genetic rol 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 tal er. The kitchen is ful 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 cal . 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 pul s 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 tel her.

‘Where did she get the pil s?’

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

Cray glances at my left hand. My thumb and forefinger are brushing together, rol ing an imaginary pil between them.

‘That’s not why you’re here.’

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

‘Wil she make a statement?’

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

‘Natasha El is 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 El is gave her instructions.’

‘What sort of instructions?’

‘She had to sleep with someone.’

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

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

Cray wipes her face with her sleeve and wrinkles her nose as though smel ing 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 El is, Caro Regan, Novak Brennan and the Crying Man - al 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’l 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 spel ing 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 al linked by only a few steps.’

Ruiz reacts, ‘What sort of bul shit response—’

She cuts him off. ‘Let me finish. You’re probably right about Gordon El is - 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, surveil ed meetings, bugged phones, tailed cars and taken photographs. The name Gordon El is has never come up.’

‘El is 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.’

Cray takes the harshness out of her tone. ‘If Sienna Hegarty makes a statement I’l investigate it personal y. That’s a promise. But you and I both know what happens next. It’s Sienna’s word against El is’s, and he has an alibi. If we charge him with sexual assault, Sienna wil have to give evidence. She’l be cross-examined by his barrister. Her personal life wil be scrutinised. Her character wil be dissected. Wait til he gets to the murder charge she’s facing . . .

‘Don’t look at me like that, Professor, I’m giving you the good news. A word in the right ear and El is gets suspended and investigated by Social Services, the Education Trust and his own union. He’l have a child protection team crawling up his arse and he’l spend the next two years fighting his way clear of them. And even if he wins, there won’t be a school in the country that’l risk employing him.’

Cray reaches across the table and puts her hand on mine. My arm stops trembling.

‘If I were you, Professor, I’d take a step back from al this. You’re facing serious charges and you shouldn’t be talking to Sienna Hegarty. The CPS cal ed me yesterday. You can forget doing a psych report. They’ve appointed someone else. If you real y want to help Sienna, tel her to get a good lawyer and to cut the best deal she can.’

‘She needs protection.’

‘I’l put a guard on her room.’

‘She’s suicidal.’

‘We try to prevent deaths in custody.’

Everything Cray has said makes perfect sense but stil I want to rail against it. I’m al for making the best of a bad situation, but this smacks of surrender, not compromise. Lawyers can be pragmatic and so can detectives, but the victims have to live with the outcome.

As we walk away from the house I shake myself, trying to rid myself of the conversation. My worst dread is that it may be contagious.

39

Sunday morning, on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend. Ruiz is stil asleep in the spare room. His feet are sticking out from beneath a Night Garden duvet and a pyramid of stuffed animals that col apsed during the night. I can picture him wrestling teddy bears in his sleep and subduing them with his breath.

I make coffee and breakfast. The smel wakes him and he appears downstairs wearing just his Y-fronts and a singlet.

‘I thought you’d be a boxer man,’ I tel him.

‘What’s wrong with these?’

‘They’re man briefs.’

‘They’re Y-fronts.’

‘If you say so.’

He looks at himself over his stomach. ‘I’ve always worn Y-fronts. ’

‘Good for you.’

‘They’re comfortable.’

‘I’m sure they are. A lot of body builders and cowboys wear them.’

Ruiz gives me a pitying look. ‘You’re a weird fucker.’

‘Where are you going? I got breakfast ready.’

‘I’m getting dressed.’

While we eat he talks me through what he did yesterday afternoon after we left Ronnie Cray’s farm. He began by staking out the minicab company - hoping to get a glimpse of the Crying Man.

‘He didn’t show up, but something occurred to me while I was watching the place. A lot of the drivers were picking up young women dressed to the nines - short skirts, high heels, lots of face paint. They’d drop these girls at an address and then wait for them.’

‘For how long?’

‘An hour - sometimes more.’

‘And you have a theory?’

‘Smel s like sex.’

‘Escorts.’

I think back to the girl I saw waiting at the minicab office when I was showing Sienna’s photograph around. Mid-twenties and dressed to kil , yet unsmiling and cold. I’ve seen the look before in my consulting room and when I’ve lectured groups of prostitutes about staying safe on the streets.

Ruiz takes the last rasher of bacon from the pan. ‘Sienna was dropped on the same corner. Maybe it was a commercial transaction - somebody ordered a young girl and the escort service provided one - courtesy of Gordon El is.’

‘But what does El is get out of it?’

‘Money. Favours.’

‘He’s interested in schoolgirls not prostitutes.’

‘What then?’

I think about Sienna - the stolen pil s, the suicide attempt - there isn’t a court in the land that wil grant her bail after what’s happened. Gordon El is reached her once and could risk it again because Sienna is so vulnerable and easily to manipulate. She’s also his weakest link.

Ruiz licks his fingers. ‘I stil don’t understand how he did it.’

‘Did what?’

‘How did El is get to Sienna? She was in a secure unit.’

‘Maybe he cal ed her.’

‘Phone cal s are monitored and can be traced. Visitors have to be registered.’