Bleed for Me (5 page)

‘I went looking for her.’

‘Did you chase her?’

‘No.’

Suddenly the door opens and another officer motions him into the corridor. They’re whispering and I pick up only occasional words like ‘body’ and ‘detectives’. Something terrible has happened.

The senior constable reappears and apologises. A detective wil be along shortly to interview me.

‘Can I go home?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘What about my clothes?’

‘They’ve been taken for analysis.’

‘Why?’

‘This is a murder investigation.’

Who? Her boyfriend? Someone else? The senior constable ignores my questions and tel s me to wait for the detectives. His heavy boots squeak on the polished floor as he disappears down the hal way, through a set of swinging doors that flap back and forth before settling to a stop.

I look at my watch. It’s after one a.m. I should cal Julianne. Tel her not to worry. Reaching for my phone, I can’t find a pocket. I’m wearing a hospital gown. My phone, wal et and car keys were in my jacket. Wet. Ruined.

I passed a payphone in the accident and emergency department. I can ask Julianne to bring me some clothes.

Pushing open the door, I try to remember which way I came in. A cleaner is mopping the corridor, pushing a bucket with his foot. I don’t want to step on his wet floor so I turn right, passing the X-ray department and radiology.

I must be going the wrong way. I should go back. Ahead I see a police officer sitting on a chair in the corridor. He’s young - no more than a probationary constable - with blond highlights in his hair.

‘I’m looking for a payphone.’

He points back the way I came.

Glancing through an open door, I spy the same doctor that examined me earlier. He’s standing beside a bed, il uminated by a low light. Sienna looks tiny in the midst of the technology around her, like a modern-day sleeping beauty under a spel . A tube taped to her right arm snakes across the sheets and rises to a bag of fluid hanging from a chrome stand.

‘Can I talk to the doctor?’

‘Who are you?’ asks the constable.

‘I brought her in.’

The obese doctor hears my voice and motions me to enter.

‘How is she?’

‘Sedated.’

The tiredness in his voice seems to drain energy from the air. A monitor beeps softly. He checks the display.

‘She’s dehydrated and has some bruising on her legs and back but nothing explains the semi-catatonic state. There’s no sign of head injuries or internal bleeding. We’re doing a toxicological screen.’

Sienna’s nostrils barely move as she breathes and I notice the faint tracings of blood vessels on her eyelids, which seem to flicker as she dreams. It is the face of a child on the body of a woman.

Her lips are cracked and there are scratches on her cheek. Her hospital gown has fal en open along her thigh to her hip. I want to pul it down to protect her modesty.

Gazing at her arms, I notice a network of fine white scars that run along the inside of her forearms. She’s a cutter. Self-harm. Self-abuse. There is more to Sienna than meets the eye; layers that are hidden from the world. Perhaps that’s why she scratches at her surface, trying to find what lies beneath.

How much do I real y know about her? She’s fourteen, pretty, with brown eyes and pale skin. She likes diet Coca-Cola, jel y cubes, scrambled eggs, Radiohead, Russel Brand, scary movies and has seen
Twilight
eighteen times. She’s al ergic to peanuts and Simon Cowel and eats crumpets by licking the bottom where the honey leaks through.

She obsesses over boy bands,
X Factor
contestants and Robert Pattinson, who she wants to marry, but only after she’s travel ed the world and become a famous actress.

A year ago she came to the terrace carrying a cardboard box. Her cat had caught a bird in the garden, which was stil alive but could no longer fly. The tiny robin lay huddled in a corner of the box, its heart beating crazily.

‘Can’t you do something?’ she asked.

‘It’s too late,’ I told her.

Sienna rested the box on her lap and ran her finger through the soft feathers on the robin’s neck until it died. I had to unhook her fingers from the box and carry it away. By the time I came back into the house Sienna had gone. She never mentioned it again. Not a word.

I know these things because she spent so much time at our place. Sometimes it was like having a third daughter at the dinner table (and again at breakfast) because her mother worked nights and her father travel ed on business and her older siblings had left home.

These are superficial details, which tel me nothing about the
real
person. Occasional y I have watched Sienna and thought I could recognise some secret sadness hidden from the world. It was as if she wore a mask to protect herself - the hardest kind of mask to notice because she had woven it from the most secret parts of herself.

When confronted with danger, people wil normal y fight or flee, but there is another less obvious reaction, which can be just as automatic. They freeze or close down, thinking and moving in slow motion. They shudder, they shake, they gasp, they gulp, but they cannot run or fight or scream. Something happened to Sienna - a violent event that has traumatised her.

The fat doctor turns from the drip stand. He has a nametag. Dr Martinez.

‘She’s not going to wake up for another six hours.’

‘What about her parents?’

‘Her mother is coming.’

‘Shouldn’t you do a rape test?’

‘I need her permission.’

‘You could test her clothes.’

He glances at the constable in the corridor. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be here.’

Sienna’s eyes flutter momentarily and open. She stares at me without any sign of recognition.

‘Hel o,’ I say, trying to sound reassuring.

Her eyes close again.

4

A detective interviews me at four o’clock, wanting the facts, tel ing me nothing. He is not a familiar or reassuring face. He has a strange top lip that curls upwards when he speaks and gives the impression that he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

Final y, I’m given permission to go home. I cal Julianne and ask her to bring me some clothes and a pair of shoes.

‘What happened to yours?’

‘The police took them.’

She doesn’t want to leave the girls alone. Charlie didn’t fal asleep until two and then only in Julianne’s bed, curled up in a bal .

‘What if there’s someone running around the vil age stabbing people?’ asks Julianne.

‘It wasn’t Sienna’s blood.’

‘What happened to her then?’

I can’t explain.

She hesitates, weighing up what to do.

‘I’l get Mrs Nutal to mind the girls. Give me half an hour.’

Mrs Nutal is our next-door neighbour. She’s not technical y
my
neighbour any more, of course, which means I don’t have to put up with her abusing me every time I leave the cottage. In her sixties and unmarried, she seems to blame me personal y for every sin, snub or rebuff she has experienced at the hands of a man. The list must be very long.

I go to the bathroom. Wash my face. Feel a disturbing weight on my shoulders. Why hasn’t Sienna’s mother turned up? Surely the police have found her by now.

I hardly know Helen. We have spoken once or twice to arrange sleepovers for the girls and nodded to each other at the petrol station or in the aisle of the supermarket. Normal y, she’s dressed in cargo pants and old sweaters and seems in a hurry. I’ve met her husband, Ray Hegarty, a few times in the Fox and Badger. He is an ex-copper, a detective who earned a medal for bravery, according to Hector. Now he runs a security company and travels a lot.

Zoe was attacked six months before we arrived in the vil age and Liam Baker had already been convicted of GBH when I was asked to do a pre-sentence report. Some people in the vil age were angry that he didn’t go straight to prison, but most were just happy to be rid of him.

Thirty minutes later, Julianne arrives and waits for me to change.

‘I tried to cal Helen,’ she says, adjusting my col ar and doing up the buttons I’ve missed. ‘Nobody is answering.’

‘She’s probably at work.’

My left arm and leg are twitching involuntarily.

‘What about your medication?’

‘At home.’

She holds my hand, making it go stil . ‘Let’s get out of here.’

In the car, watching the sunrise. Hil s lost in the morning mist. The drive from Bath to Wel ow takes only fifteen minutes. We have lived in the vil age for three and a bit years, having moved out of London at Julianne’s suggestion. Cheaper houses. Good schools. More room. It made sense. It makes less sense now that we’re not together.

The locals are friendly enough. We chat over the tops of cars at the petrol station and queue for milk and bread at Eric Vaile’s shop. They’re decent, conservative, obliging people, but I’l never be one of them. Being single doesn’t help. Marriage is a passport to respectability in a smal vil age. My visa has been revoked.

The sun is ful y up. The cottages and terraces of Wel ow seem whitewashed and scrubbed clean. It reminds me of where I grew up - a pit vil age in the foothil s of Snowdonia - although it wasn’t so much whitewashed as coated in coal dust and ful of mining families with lung diseases.

‘Can we drive past the Hegartys’ place?’

Julianne glances at me, hesitantly, her sharp fringe touching one eyebrow.

‘It won’t take a minute.’

She turns the corner and heads down Bul ’s Hil . Ahead of us there are police cars, five of them. Two of them unmarked but sprouting radio aerials. They are parked outside Sienna’s house, almost blocking the road. In the midst of them I notice a familiar rust-streaked Land Rover. It belongs to Detective Chief Inspector Veronica Cray, head of the Major Crime Investigation Unit. MCIU.

They must have cal ed her at home. Woken her. There are some supermodels who won’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand pounds. DCI Cray doesn’t stir unless someone is dead, defiled or missing.

Julianne’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

‘Can we stop?’ I ask.

‘No.’

‘I want to know what happened.’

She shakes her head.

At that moment Ronnie Cray emerges from the house and lights a cigarette. Through exhaled smoke her eyes meet mine. Diffident. Unsurprised.

We’re past the house now. Julianne drives on.

‘You should have stopped.’

‘Don’t get involved, Joe.’

‘But this is Sienna’s family.’

‘And the police wil handle things.’

There is an edge to her voice. A warning. We’ve been down this road before. We’ve had this argument. I lost.

Three minutes later we pul up outside the terrace. The engine idles and she takes a deep breath.

‘I’m going to let Charlie stay home from school today.’

‘That’s a good idea.’

Softening, she tel s me to get some sleep and to cal her later.

‘I wil .’

Even before I pul out my keys I hear Gunsmoke whining and pawing at the back door. Walking along the passage to the kitchen, I unlock the side door and step into the garden, where the Labrador leaps and cavorts around my thighs, licking at my hands.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come home,’ I say, rubbing his ears.

He frowns at me. I swear. Then he dashes to the rear gate. The rabbits are waiting. Don’t I want to chase them? Hurry up.

First I need to shower and take my pil s - the white one and the blue one. When the twitches are gone, I can hold my hand steady on the razor and lace up my boots. Buttons wil find buttonholes and zippers wil close easily. The body tremors are under control, although occasional y my left arm wil launch itself upwards in my own Mexican wave.

In the six years since I was diagnosed, I have come to an understanding with Mr Parkinson. I no longer deny his existence or imagine that I’m the stronger man. Recognising this truth was a humbling experience - like bowing to a higher power.

My condition is not advanced yet, but every day is a balancing act with my medication, requiring meticulous timing. Too much Levadopa and I’m rocking, dipping and diving, incapable of crossing a room without visiting every corner. Too little and I grind to a stuttering halt like an engine without oil.

Exercise is recommended, which is why I walk every morning. Shuffle rather than stride. Not in al weathers. I avoid the rain. Dragging a sweater over my head, I step outside and pul the door shut. A tractor rumbles up Mil Hil Lane pul ing a box trailer. The driver is Alasdair Riordan, a local farmer. His forearms are vibrating on the wheel.

‘Did you hear the news?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Ray Hegarty is dead. They say his wee girl stabbed him. Fancy that, eh?’

Breath glides out of him in a pale cloud. He shakes his head and releases his foot from the clutch, jerking into motion. This passes as the longest conversation I’ve ever had with Alasdair Riordan - a man of few words and fewer thoughts.

Gunsmoke has already disappeared down the hil , doing forward reconnaissance through the undergrowth, sniffing at trees and holes in the ground. When I reach the bridge I see the police tape laced around tree trunks and snaking along the banks of the river. I remember finding Sienna and carrying her this far. It seems like weeks ago. It was less than twelve hours.

In a field on the far side, Gunsmoke lopes after a skittering rabbit that is far too nimble, jinking left and right before disappearing down a hole. He did once catch a rabbit, which seemed to surprise him so much that he let it go again. Maybe he’s opposed to blood sports, which would make him a curiosity in these parts.

Occasional y, he comes back to me, loping down the hil , pink tongue flapping, awaiting instructions. He gazes up at me as though I am the wisest of the wise. If only my children were so in awe of my intel igence. Reassured, he takes off again, sniffing at every cowpat and clump of grass.

Gunsmoke has made the past couple of years easier. He doesn’t judge me like I judge myself. He’s gets me out of bed. Makes me exercise. Eats my leftovers. Babysits Emma and initiates conversations with people.