Ruiz doesn’t have to explain the inference. People disappear all the time. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the nearest station. Battered wives flee brutality. Children escape abuse. Dodgy businessmen flee the auditors. Criminals change their names and buy villas on the Costa del Sol.
Ruiz is talking and walking. We weave between narrow alleys and lanes, passing historic pubs, tourist hotels and gift shops with racks of postcards and shelves full of souvenirs.
Gordon Freeman (now Ellis) was born in Glasgow in 1974, the son of a portrait painter and a nurse. His father died of lung cancer when Gordon was fourteen. He and his mother moved to Edinburgh where he went to six different schools in four years.
After finishing his A-levels, he studied drama at Keele University and played some minor TV and theatre roles before turning to teaching. He settled in Edinburgh. Married a local girl. He was handsome, popular and well respected. And then something happened.
Ruiz has stopped outside a large slate-grey house, converted into flats, rising so suddenly from the footpath that the building appears to be leaning out over the street.
‘Here we are,’ he says, pressing the intercom.
A woman’s voice answers and the door unlocks automatically. Climbing the stairs, I hear a door open above us. She’s waiting on the landing - a heavy-set woman in a floral dress and cardigan.
Philippa Regan wipes her hands on her dress. Her copper-tinted hair is permed into a mess of tight curls that match the colour of her red-rimmed eyes. She shakes us each by the hand and invites us into the kitchen, apologising for the cold. Turning up the thermostat, she listens as the boiler burps and groans consumptively.
‘Ah cannae get warm any more. That time of year.’
Used teabags have solidified in the sink and a dripping tap rings the same note over and over.
She offers to make tea but doesn’t seem to have the energy. At the same time she glances at the sitting-room door, which is slightly ajar. I can hear the sound of a TV.
‘The professor wants to ask you a few questions about Carolinda,’ Ruiz explains. ‘I told him that you haven’t heard from her in a long time.’
Again Mrs Regan glances at the door.
‘Do you have any children, Professor?’
‘Two. Girls.’
Her generous bust expands as she sighs. ‘Ah know my Caro is dead. Ah know who killed her, but Coop doesn’t like me talking about it.’
She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.
‘What happened to Caro?’
‘She didn’t come home. She went to get something for her supper and didn’t come back. That’s what Gordon told us, the murdering bastard!’
The kitchen table shudders beneath her elbows.
‘Ah never trusted him - even when she married him. Ah could tell he was trouble - always looking for something better. Someone better. He treated Caro like a dog he’d rescued from the pound; expecting her to be grateful just because he married her.’
Mrs Regan is going to say something else but the words don’t make it past the lump in her throat. She begins again.
‘Vincent says you’re a psychologist, Mr O’Loughlin.’ She motions to the door. ‘Talk to him. Talk to mah Coop.’
‘What would you like me to say?’
‘He’s nae sleeping and he drinks all day. Ah’m not sure what to do any more.’
My heart strikes a beat for every one of hers.
Over the years I have seen countless people overwhelmed by loss. Each of us reacts differently. Some husbands and wives look straight into each other’s eyes without needing words, while others are like strangers sitting in a dentist’s waiting room. Some men want to beat someone so badly they can’t walk right for a month. Others drink themselves into oblivion. Some pretend nothing has changed.
I can picture Coop and Philippa Regan lying side by side in bed at night. Still as corpses, peering at the ceiling and wondering if their daughter might still be alive. That’s the great tragedy of a missing person. The dead are farewelled, mourned and given a resting place. The missing float in a kind of limbo, leaving family and friends to wonder and hope.
Ruiz pushes open the sitting-room door. It’s dark inside. The blinds are drawn. ‘It’s only me, Coop, come round for a chat.’
The reply is thick with phlegm. ‘Ah’m nae in the mood.’
Mr Regan is sitting in an armchair, his tattooed forearms resting horizontally at his sides. I can’t see his face in the gloom, but a soiled singlet is stretched over his barrel-chest.
The flicker of a television throws shadows across the room. He’s watching old home movies. On screen, a young girl, barely three, is playing under a sprinkler, running in and out of the spray. The sound is turned down.
Mr Regan raises a glass to his lips. The dark fluid turns to amber as it passes in front of the light.
‘This is Joe O’Loughlin, he’s a friend of mine, Coop,’ says Ruiz. ‘He’s come to ask about Carolinda. Maybe he can help.’
‘He cannae bring her back, can he?’
‘No,’ I reply, feeling a strong impulse to turn and go back down the stairs, along the street, back to the car; as far away as possible.
Coop reaches for a bottle at his feet and refills his glass. His tattoos seem to move in the light from the television, becoming animated and telling stories of drunken nights, tattoo parlours and hangovers.
Ruiz takes a seat opposite him. ‘It’s early to be drinking.’
Coop doesn’t answer. I move further into the room and sit in an armchair beside the TV. Coop gazes past me at the screen, which reflects in his eyes.
‘I wanted to ask about Caro.’
‘Ah’m listening.’
‘What was she like?’
Coop takes a ragged breath and seems to hold it inside.
‘Ah wanted a wee lad,’ he says finally. ‘Ah was sure Caro were going to be a boy. Came as a shock when she came out. Thought something had gone wrong. “It’s a bonnie lass,” Ah said, and Philippa she says, “Are you sure, Coop?” Ah looked again just to be certain.’
The home movie has changed and Caro is singing into a pretend microphone, wearing one of her mother’s dresses, which keeps slipping off her shoulders.
‘Ah watched her grow,’ says Coop. ‘Ah counted her smiles, her steps. She were ten months old when she took her first steps from this chair to that one where you’re sitting. She were always in a hurry. Ah couldn’t get her to slow down. Even when she married, Caro did everything in a hurry. Didn’t like her choice, never trusted him, but Caro loved him. Ah paid for the wedding. Rented a posh place for the reception. Walked her up the aisle. She were a bonnie bride.’
Coop looks at me, questioning. ‘It was mah wee girl’s wedding, but Gordon shoved us away in a corner, treated us like dirt because we weren’t rich or well connected.’
‘When was that?’
‘Seven years ago now,’ replies Coop. ‘Caro weren’t the same girl after that. Gordon did something to her.’
‘What did he do?’
He shrugs. ‘Ah cannae say for certain, but he took away her smile.’
He turns his glass slowly in his hand.
‘When a bairn loses both parents they become an orphan, but they don’t have a name for parents who lose a child.’
‘No.’
‘Sometimes Ah pray. Ah’m not very good at it. Ah pray that he didn’t leave her body somewhere cold. Ah pray Caro’s in Heaven, which is somewhere she believed in. Cannae say that Ah do.’
The TV screen flickers and new images appear. Caro, aged about ten, riding on a Ferris wheel. Every time it circles close to the ground she waves at the camera, holding her dress between her knees to stop it blowing up.
‘What’s your name?’ asks Coop.
‘Joe.’
‘Ever wondered, Joe, whether the pain of losing a child is equal to the happiness of becoming a father?’
He doesn’t wait for
an answer.
‘There’s nae fucking comparison. Becoming a father is about that first step, that first smile, that first word, that first time she rides a bike or climbs a tree or goes to school, her first dance, her first date, her first kiss. You add all those moments together - every birthday, Christmas, every dream - and there’s nae fucking comparison.
‘When you have a child you think your life means something, you know. It’s not like you’ve cured cancer or captained Scotland, but you’ve had a kid. You’ve left something behind.’
His voice has begun to shake and his chest heaves. He bites down hard on his fist.
‘You want to know the worst thing?’ he says, struggling to get the words out. ‘Ah’m angry with her, with Caro. Ah want to scold her, ground her, send her to her room. Ah want to tell her she cannae go out. Ah want to stop her growing up, leaving home, getting married.
‘Ah’m angry because she took over our lives - our day began and ended with hers - we planned her schooling, her holidays, her future. What future? For all that love and pain, this is what we get! What’s the fucking point?’
‘You’ll think differently one day, Coop.’
‘What should Ah be thinking?’
‘About your wife out there in the kitchen.’
He nods, looking chastened.
‘Ah used to feel guilty about loving Philippa less after Caro were born.’
‘You loved them both.’
He nods. The image changes again. Caro is grown up, sitting up in a hospital bed, cradling a newborn baby. Hair is plastered to her forehead, but she’s smiling through her tiredness.
‘That’s our lad, Billy,’ says Coop, motioning to the screen. ‘We don’t get tae see him any more. Gordon will nae bring him home and he won’t let us take Billy for a holiday. We’re his grandparents. He shouldn’t be allowed to keep him from us.’
‘How old was Billy when Caro disappeared?’
‘Almost two. Caro dropped round to see us the day before Billy’s birthday. She had to sneak over because Gordon didn’t like her coming round here.’
‘Why?’
Coop shrugs. ‘Ah think he wanted to control her.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
‘Ah could see it.
‘When Caro disappeared, what happened?’
‘Gordon said she just up and left him. Walked out. He told the police that Caro had a lover, but that were a lie.’
Coop’s whole body jerks and the Scotch spills over his fingertips. He licks the liquid from his hand and wrist.
‘Did the police interview Gordon?’
‘Aye.’
‘Do you know the name of the officer in charge?’
‘Frank Casey. He’s retired now.’
The TV screen flickers and new images appear. Caro, aged about thirteen, is riding a pony that seems impossibly large, cantering between jumps, and she waves as she passes the camera. Coop’s whole body rocks forward as she approaches each jump, as if he’s riding with her.
It’s the emptiness inside him that’s the hardest. The voice he’ll never hear again. I have almost lost a child. I have almost lost a wife. I can imagine it. I can remember each moment with a clarity that overwhelms the senses. Words get trapped in my windpipe. Sweat prickles. Guts twist.
People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn’t. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope.
We leave the flat. Ruiz walks ahead of me, fists bunched, as though wanting to hurt somebody. I’m still thinking about what Coop said about life leading somewhere or meaning something. Mine doesn’t. I am living in a kind of limbo, a lull in proceedings. I am waiting for my wife to have me back - when I should be seizing every day and living it like it could be my last.
I’m like a guy stranded in a traffic jam, who wonders what the hold-up is and whether anyone is hurt and if I’ll make it home in time to watch I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
Instead I want to be the guy who looks at a pretty woman on the footpath and imagines making love to her; the guy who embraces life and lives it on fast forward; the guy who kisses often, hugs shamelessly and treats every day like the briefest of love affairs.
Why can’t I be that guy?
25
We’re driving out of Edinburgh towards the coast. Ruiz is playing music on the car stereo, something bluesy with rolling guitar chords that rattle the speakers in the doors. Closing my eyes, I can picture endless fields of sugar cane in the American South rather than bleak Scottish hillsides. Opening them again I see the wind lifting white plumes from the waves and trees that are bent and twisted like arthritic old men.
‘You thinking about Caro Regan?’ he asks.
‘I’m thinking about Gordon Ellis.’
‘He strike you as the killing kind?’
‘Not until now.’
My mind goes back to the murder scene. Ray Hegarty wasn’t expected home that night. Ellis could easily have known that Helen Hegarty worked nights and that Sienna was on her own. Knowledge and opportunity are not enough to place him in Sienna’s room or put a weapon in his hand.
‘What are the chances?’ I say out loud.
Ruiz glances at me. ‘The chances of what?’
‘Ray Hegarty saw his daughter kissing Gordon Ellis and complained to the school. A week later he’s dead. A coincidence?’
‘Coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous.’
‘You don’t believe in God.’
‘Exactly. An affair with a schoolgirl is a motive for murder. It could destroy his career and end his marriage. A man like that had a lot to lose.’
‘Is it enough to kill?’
‘I’ve seen people kicked to death for fifty pence and a packet of pork scratchings.’
Forty minutes later we pull through stone gates into a shooting club. Cyprus trees line the long drive. Flags flap noisily against flagpoles. Workmen are erecting scaffolding around a stone clubhouse that clings to the hillside like a limpet on a rock.
Frank Casey is mid-sixties with white wispy hair that spills from beneath a woollen cap and the sort of wide blue eyes that deepen with age. We watch him break open a shotgun, plug two shells in the chambers and snap it closed again before tucking the gun against his shoulder and gazing along the barrel.
‘Pull!’
Two clay discs launch into the air flying left to right. The shotgun leaps in his hands and each disc disappears in a cloud of dust that disperses in the wind.
Casey pulls yellow ear-muffs to his neck and turns, cracking the shotgun again. Most of the shooting bays are empty.
‘Do Ah know you?’ he asks.
‘I used to be a DI in the Met. Vincent Ruiz. This is Joe O’Loughlin.’
Casey shakes our hands. ‘How long you been out?’ he asks Ruiz.
‘Five years.’
‘Ah been out two. Hypertension was going tae put me in a box. Should have done it sooner. My wife wouldn’t agree. She’s going off her head, having me around.’
His accent is a blend of Glaswegian and something less harsh on the ear. Reaching into his pocket, he produces a small silver flask.
‘Fancy a wee snort?’
‘I’m good,’ says Ruiz. I shake my head.
‘Suit yourselves.’ Casey tips up the flask and swallows noisily.
‘So what can Ah do for you gentlemen?’ he asks, resting the gun over his forearm.
‘We wanted to ask about Gordon Ellis,’ I say. ‘He used to call himself Gordon Freeman.’
‘Aye.’ Casey studies me momentarily over the top of his flask. ‘Ah did know a man called Gordon Freeman, but why would you want tae talk about him?’
‘You handled the investigation into his wife’s disappearance.�
�
‘Aye, Ah did.’
‘We’re looking into a murder down south. A teenage girl is accused of killing her father.’
‘And you think Gordon Freeman is involved?’
‘He’s a possible suspect.’
Casey’s eyes keep returning to Ruiz as he speaks. ‘So this is not an official police request?’
‘No. We’re investigating this on behalf of the young girl who’s been charged.’
Casey presses his thumb to the centre of his forehead. ‘How old is the wee lass?’
‘Fourteen.’
He nods knowingly. ‘Do you fish, Vincent?’
‘No.’
‘How about you, Joe?’
‘No.’
‘The thing with fish, you see, is they exhibit two drives - fear and hunger. The large eat the small. They even eat their own - starting with those youngsters that are nae paying attention at fish school. Know what Ah’m saying?’
The answer is no, but I don’t want to interrupt him.
‘Gordon Freeman, or whatever he calls himself - he eats the young. He finds the weakest and picks them off. The youngest and the prettiest and the happiest - he devours them bit by bit.’
Two more shooters have walked down the path from the clubhouse. They take a bay at the far end of the range and put on vests with pockets for shotgun shells.
Casey presses his hand to his lower spine as though relieving himself of a sharp pain in his back.
‘Gordon is the one that got away. The one Ah wish Ah’d caught.’
He glances at Ruiz, his face suddenly tired and his eyes shivering.
‘We found Caro’s car parked at the railway station. A suitcase was missing from the house wi’ some of her clothes, but she didnae leave a note or tell her family.
‘It took the Regans three months before anyone took them seriously. By that time the trail had gone cold. The CCTV footage wasnae kept, so we had tae rely on witnesses. We interviewed passengers on the trains and filmed a reconstruction - had an actress wearing Caro’s clothes and put it on TV - but naebody came forward.’
Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin) Page 19
