Bleed For Me (joseph o'loughlin)

by Michael Robotham

  Twenty-four hours later, Marco Kostin’s house was firebombed while he and his family slept. Three men, including British National Party candidate Novak Brennan, have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder with the intent to endanger life.

  Brennan allegedly drove the van used in the attack and was later seen celebrating at a bar where one of his co-accused boasted he had been to a ‘Russian barbecue’.

  Parking beneath a dripping oak, I run to the door of the terrace, dodging puddles and sheltering beneath my coat. The key turns and the door opens. Even before I step across the threshold I sense a change. It’s not so much a foreign smell as a variation in the air temperature or the pressure. Perhaps I left a window open upstairs. Maybe I’m disconcerted because Gunsmoke isn’t outside, thumping his tail against the back door.

  Gently, I place my wallet and car keys on a side table and glance along the passage to the kitchen. There are two doors off to the left. The first opens into the lounge. Nudging it with my foot, I reach for the light switch. Nothing is moved, missing or disrupted.

  The gas fireplace has a decorative poker on a brass stand. I pick up the polished brass bar and weigh it in my hand. Backing into the hallway, I move to the next door, the dining room. Empty.

  Again I pause and listen.

  Edging along the hallway, I approach the kitchen. Through the window I can see the vague outline of the trees in the garden and the edge of an eighteenth-century brick millhouse next door. A flash of lightning fills in the details. The sink, the kitchen table, three chairs . . . Why not four?

  ‘Come on in, Professor, it’s just me,’ says a voice. Gordon Ellis has been sitting in darkness. He rises to his feet and swivels to face me. ‘The door was unlocked. Hope you don’t mind.’

  I’m still holding the poker in my hand. ‘I didn’t leave the door unlocked.’

  ‘My mistake,’ he says. ‘I found the key under a rock. I’d be more careful about where I hid it next time.’

  He’s wearing denim jeans and a dark shirt with faint traces of dandruff or powder on the front. A carmine-coloured scratch weeps on his right cheek, below a bruise. Ellis sniffs and rubs his nose with the palm of his hand. I can see the dilation in his pupils, which are working hard to retain the light.

  ‘What were you going to do with that?’ he asks, motioning to the poker.

  ‘Wrap it around your head.’

  ‘I didn’t take you for a violent man.’

  ‘You’re trespassing.’

  His lazy half-smile slowly widens. ‘Do I frighten you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s all right to be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  Moving slowly, he carries his chair to the table. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not very polite.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to stop harassing my wife.’

  ‘I asked her some questions.’

  ‘You were out of order. I don’t want you going near her again.’

  ‘Does she know about Sienna Hegarty?’

  Ellis closes his eyes as though meditating. ‘What’s that young girl been saying?’

  ‘That you were having sex with her.’

  ‘She’s lying.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘She’s embarrassed and she’s angry. She tried to kiss me one night after she babysat my boy. I pushed her away and spoke to her harshly. Maybe I hurt her feelings.’

  ‘That’s not what Sienna says.’

  ‘Like I said, she’s lying.’

  He’s a cocky bastard. I want to wipe the smug grin off his face.

  ‘You once told me that teaching was a process of seduction. You seduced your students into learning. You seduced Sienna into bed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was special to you.’

  ‘All my students are special.’

  ‘Yes, but some are more precious than others. Every once in a while, a girl emerges from the pack and you take a special interest in her. She’s not the best or the brightest or the most beautiful - but she has something that makes her attractive to you. Some weakness you can exploit or an arrogance you want to punish.’

  Ellis shakes his head. ‘It’s her crush, not mine.’

  ‘I bet you can remember the first time you saw Sienna. You noticed her from a distance at first - coming through the gates or walking in the corridor. She stood out from the other girls. She was confident. Highly sexualised. Flirtatious. At the same time there was something vulnerable about her. Damaged. You thought maybe she was being abused at home or bullied at school. You recognised her potential as a plaything.’

  ‘I recognised her potential as a drama student.’

  ‘Sienna didn’t even realise that she was being seductive. Young girls often don’t. They pretend. They practise. They make mistakes.’

  ‘I nurtured her. I know the boundaries.’

  ‘That’s right. You kept telling yourself that you were just doing your job. Pastoral care is so important. She talked about her problems at home . . . the unwanted attentions of her father. You comforted her. Patted her knee. Squeezed her hand.’

  Ellis bristles. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

  ‘You began finding ways of getting her alone - isolating her somewhere quiet, somewhere private, somewhere you could show her how much you cared, how you understood, how you wanted to protect her.’

  ‘You’re sick!’

  ‘You told her she was beautiful. She believed you.’

  ‘She’s lying. There isn’t one shred of evidence to support her story.’

  ‘At first I couldn’t understand how you managed to keep it a secret. And then I remembered seeing you criticise Sienna during the rehearsal. That’s how you removed suspicion - you picked on her, you punished her and she played along.’

  ‘You’re a pervert!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not the sick one, Gordon. I know all about you. I know how you did it. I know why you did it. You were the fat, four-eyed kid at school, who got teased and bullied and ridiculed. There’s one in every playground. What did they call you? Lard-arse? Butterball? How much toilet water did you swallow, Gordon? How many people laughed at you?’

  Ellis is no longer sitting. He’s an inch taller than I am. Younger. Fitter.

  ‘I bet there was one girl at school who didn’t laugh at you. She was nice. Friendly. Pretty. She didn’t tease you. She didn’t call you names.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘You really liked her, Gordon. And you thought she might like you.’

  Ellis takes a step out of the shadows into the half-light spilling from the hall. ‘I told you to shut up!’

  ‘One day you decided to tell her how you felt; ask her to be your girlfriend. Did you write her a note or send her a Valentine? Then what happened? She laughed. She told the others. She joined in the tormenting.’

  Ellis rocks forward, his neck bulging and fists clenched.

  ‘That’s why you target the nice girls, Gordon, the popular ones, the princesses. You’re preying on the girls who wouldn’t look at you at school when you were overweight and short-sighted - the ones who laughed the loudest. You want to punish them. You want to tear them apart. Living things. Young things. I know about your first wife. I know what you did to her. That scratch on your cheek - did Natasha get angry with you? Did she accuse you of seducing another schoolgirl? She should know—’

  ‘Don’t talk about my wife!’

  ‘Sienna was pregnant. She was carrying the evidence inside her - the proof. That’s why you tried to kill her.’

  His eyes lock on to mine. Ropes of spittle are draining from the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’ he says, laughing drily.

  ‘This is not a game.’

  His eyes leave mine momentarily and focus on the fire poker in my fist. His nostrils flare and partly close.<
br />
  ‘You want to know?’ he whispers, challenging me. ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A strange twisted light appears in his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I fucked her. I fucked her every which way, in her pussy, in her arse.’ He steps closer. ‘And guess what, Joe? I fucked your little darling. Charlie was begging for it and I made her bleed. She was moaning under me, saying, “Fuck me harder, Gordon, fuck me harder.”’

  What happened next is something that I can’t explain. My vision blurs and the room swims. My fist is holding the poker, which swings savagely, backstroking Ellis across the side of the head. The back of my hand scrapes against his unshaven skin and his mouth leaves a streak of saliva across my knuckles.

  His head snaps sideways and I hit him again from the right, sending him down. Ellis tries to curl into a ball but I beat his arms and his spine and his kneecaps and shins. With each blow I can feel the metal bar reverberating in my fist, sinking all the way to his bones.

  ‘This is for Charlie,’ I yell, ‘and this is for my dog!’

  He raises his head from the floor and gazes at me uncertainly.

  The poker clatters to the floor. Lifting Ellis by the front of his shirt, I drop him to a sitting position on a chair. His bladder has opened on the floor. My hand is streaked with his blood.

  Instead of cowering, he turns his face to mine. Through bloody teeth, he grins. ‘How do you feel?’

  I don’t answer him.

  He says it again. ‘I fucked your princess, how do you feel?’

  I knot my fist in his hair and wrench back his head.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He smiles. ‘Yeah, you do.’

  30

  The holding cell reeks of vomit and urine and sweat. It’s a smell that can instantly transport me back to another place and time - a different police cell scrawled with comparable pictures of genitalia and profanities aimed at the police and homosexuals.

  Sitting on a wooden bench, I lean my head against the wall, listening to doors clanging, toilets flushing and inmates either sobering up or kicking off incoherently down the corridor.

  My skin feels dead to the touch and my chest aches as though I’m breathing into lungs full of wet cotton. Opening and closing my right hand, I wonder if anything is broken.

  A drunk is sleeping on the bench opposite. He stole my blanket and tucked it beneath his head, but I’m not going to fight. Now he’s snoring, ending each breath with a long raspberry fluttering of his lips.

  I don’t know the time. They took away my wristwatch, along with my belt and shoelaces. Occasionally, there are footsteps outside and the hinged observation flap opens. Eyes peer at me. After several seconds, the hatch shuts and I go back to staring at the ceiling light, contemplating the bad luck and bad choices that have brought me here. Where did it come from - the violence that rose up inside me?

  I am an intelligent, rational, civilised man, yet the blood on my shirt says otherwise. What I did was stupid. Reckless. Wrong. Yet I don’t regret it. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him.

  Taking off my shirt, I roll it into a ball and put it beneath my head, resting my arm across my eyes.

  I can hear Ronnie Cray’s voice before she arrives like an elephant entering a phone box. I expect her to have me released. Instead I’m taken from the holding cell to an interview suite. She pulls up a chair. ‘Were you trying to kill him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You might want to rephrase that.’

  ‘OK. No.’

  ‘He says there was no provocation. He says you harassed his wife and when he came to complain you attacked him.’

  ‘He broke into my house.’

  ‘There was no sign of forced entry.’

  ‘He found the key.’

  ‘He said you invited him inside.’

  ‘This is ridiculous! Ellis seduced Sienna Hegarty. He was grooming other girls.’ I can’t bring myself to mention Charlie. ‘His first wife disappeared four years ago. Her name was Caro Regan—’

  ‘I know all about Caro Regan,’ says Cray.

  The statement silences me.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised, Professor, and don’t treat me like some wet-behind-the-ears probationary constable who doesn’t know shit from Shinola. I checked on Gordon Ellis the moment his name came up in the Hegarty investigation. I pulled his file and I interviewed him.’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘He had an alibi. Natasha Ellis says her husband was home all evening.’

  ‘She’s covering for him.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I talked to Sienna. She was seeing Ellis.’

  ‘Did she name him?’

  ‘I’m naming him.’

  ‘You and I both know that’s not the same thing. Unless she makes a statement, there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘She’s fourteen.’

  ‘Teenage girls develop unhealthy infatuations with teachers all the time. Sometimes they convince themselves it’s love. Sometimes they convince themselves it’s reciprocated.’

  ‘She was pregnant. Ellis was the father.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it’s a theory. That’s the difference between you and me, Professor. I deal in facts and you deal in theories. We checked Ellis’s DNA against the semen stains found on Sienna Hegarty’s sheets. No match. And you asked DS Abbott to look at her email accounts and phone server. There wasn’t a single email or text message either to or from Gordon Ellis. No love letters or notes or photographs. Nobody saw them together or overheard them talking . . .’

  ‘Danny Gardiner saw them.’

  ‘And Ellis will say he was taking Sienna to see her therapist.’

  ‘Ray Hegarty complained to the school.’

  ‘It was investigated and discounted.’

  ‘This is bullshit!’

  Cray rises from her chair and paces the room. ‘You’re going about this all wrong, Professor. I know that Gordon Ellis is a human toilet - maybe he deserved a beating - but you’re too close.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Sienna is your daughter’s best friend. You’re emotionally involved.’

  ‘You think I’m being irrational.’

  ‘You just beat a man half to death.’

  ‘Someone ran me off the road. Someone killed my dog. Someone has been following me.’

  Even as the words come out, I realise that I’m sounding paranoid rather than making my case.

  Cray shrugs, blinks. ‘So you pissed someone off. I can see how that might happen. You’re being charged with malicious wounding.’

  ‘He broke into my house!’

  ‘He was unarmed and you used unreasonable force.’

  She turns towards the door and bangs twice.

  ‘You want me to tell your wife or can you handle that yourself ?’

  ‘Don’t do me any favours.’

  My sarcasm grates on her. ‘Suit yourself. You’ll appear in court in the morning. Get yourself a lawyer.’

  The drunk is talking in his sleep, arguing with his addiction. Lying on my wooden bench, I can taste my self-loathing. I’ve been fingerprinted, photographed and had my buttocks pried apart in a strip search. I have joined the faceless, uneducated and inept, locked up in a police cell, humiliated and belittled. If ever there was a benchmark to indicate how far my life has unravelled, this is it.

  Gordon Ellis was sleeping with Sienna and Ray Hegarty found out. Did that warrant killing him? Motives come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe Sienna and Ellis organised the killing together. Both had reasons to want Ray Hegarty out of the way.

  The weight of the day is like a fever and my mind keeps drifting. Every part of me seems to ache with exhaustion, even the roots of my hair. Sleep is a blessing.

  At some point in the hours that follow, my head and arms begin jerking uncontrollably. My medication has worn off and Mr Parkinson, a
cruel puppeteer, is tugging at my strings and twisting my body into inhuman shapes.

  Hammering on the cell door with the flat of my hand, I wait. Nobody responds. The drunk rolls over and tells me to be quiet. I hit the door again.

  I can feel my limbs jerking and my body contorting in a strange dance, without music or any discernible rhythm. My head dips and sways, my arms writhe, my legs twitch, moving constantly. The drunk opens one eye and then the other. Wider. He scrambles away and stands in the corner. Crossing himself, suddenly religious.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, man? You having a heart attack?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You possessed.’

  ‘I have Parkinson’s.’

  The hatch opens. A young constable peers into the cell.

  ‘He’s fucking possessed,’ yells the drunk.

  ‘I need my pills,’ I explain.

  ‘Get him out of here! He’s scaring me.’

  ‘I have Parkinson’s.’

  The young constable tells me to sit down. ‘We’re not allowed to issue medications.’

  ‘They’re prescribed . . . in my coat.’

  ‘Step back from the door, sir.’

  ‘You’ll find a white plastic bottle. Levodopa.’

  ‘I’ll warn you one more time, sir, step away from the door.’

  With every ounce of willpower, I stop myself moving. I can hold the pose for a few seconds, but then I start again.

  ‘A phone call. Let me make a phone call.’

  The young constable tells me to wait. Ten minutes later he returns. I’m allowed a call.

  The first name in my head is Julianne’s, but nobody answers. Charlie’s voice is on the recorded message. It beeps and I start to speak but realise I don’t know what to say. I put down the receiver and call Ruiz.

  ‘What’s up, wise man? You sound like shit.’

  ‘I’m in jail.’

  ‘What did you do - forget to take back a library book?’

  ‘I beat up Gordon Ellis.’

  I have to wait until he stops laughing.

  ‘I’m glad you think it’s funny.’