Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

‘They were left-handed,’ I say.

‘Most likely,’ says Preston. ‘Some people are ambidextrous.’

‘Sienna Hegarty is left-handed,’ adds Cray.

‘Could a teenager have done this?’ I ask.

‘It’s not so much a matter of strength as the sharpness of the blade,’ replies the pathologist.

‘Is there anything else?’ asks the DCI.

‘Hegarty had alcohol in his system.’

‘How much?’

‘A significant amount - it would have slowed his reaction time.’

Preston opens the folder and withdraws a forensic report.

‘We pulled forty-two full or partial prints from the house. Most of them match with the family. We’re looking more closely at those that don’t match. We collected fibres from the rug and the wound, and there might be DNA from the hand-towel in the bathroom. There were old semen stains on the daughter’s bed sheets and also on her underwear. The DNA results won’t be back for another five days.’

I can hear Ronnie’s teeth grinding.

‘Check them against the victim. Then run them through the national database. Tick off the boxes.’

Preston slides Ray Hegarty’s body from view and opens a folder of crime-scene photographs. The first shows Hegarty lying face down, his right cheek resting in a pool of blood. The image is centred on a bloody heel print beside his right knee. The second image is a close-up of Hegarty’s shirt showing handprints between his shoulder blades. Another partial print was found on the right side of the doorframe.

‘The tread design on the heel matches the daughter’s jazz shoes. Size six.’

‘Sienna wasn’t wearing any shoes when I found her,’ I hear myself say.

‘We found them in the river,’ replies Cray.

Taking the first photograph from Preston, I study the position of the body in relation to the heel print. There is a second bloody mark on the opposite side of the body. Not a shoeprint. A knee. ‘Somebody knelt.’

‘To cut his throat?’ asks Cray.

‘No, afterwards.’

Ronnie Cray studies the photograph and hands it back to Preston.

‘So we’re looking for a Stanley knife.’

Preston nods.

The daughter is a cutter. She had a shoebox full of bandages but no blade, which means she hid it somewhere else or got rid of it.

She’s already convinced that Sienna was responsible.

‘I don’t think we should jump to conclusions,’ I hear myself saying. ‘Maybe it was self-defence.’

‘More like an ambush,’ says Cray. ‘She hid behind the door.’

‘ Somebody hid behind the door.’

‘His blood was all over her.’

‘He was twice her size.’

‘Size had nothing to do with it.’

‘She’s fourteen.’

‘I know how old she is, Professor.’ A sharp tone. ‘I hope you’re not making excuses because she’s your daughter’s friend.’

‘And I hope you’re not predisposed against her because Ray Hegarty was your friend. He must have had enemies. You said so yourself.’

Undisguised contempt enters her gaze. I’ve gone too far. Cray doesn’t like having her judgement questioned publicly.

Through clenched teeth: ‘Do you think I want this? I can see what’s going to happen. I can hear the defence warming up. They’re going to trash Ray Hegarty’s reputation. One of the best and bravest officers I ever served with is going to be branded a nonce, a child molester. They’re going to destroy him.’

‘What if it’s true?’

‘Bullshit! There were no defence wounds. No signs of a struggle. No signs of rape.’

‘What about the semen on her sheets?’

‘She had a boyfriend.’

There’s no point in arguing because Cray hasn’t put a foot wrong procedurally. Meanwhile, I’m doing exactly what I tell my students to avoid - I’m ignoring the obvious answer. There’s only one greater sin - embracing it.

Cray hitches up her trousers and I follow her down the corridor, noticing the scribble of purplish veins on the back of her ankles, above her drooping socks.

It’s cold in the underground car park. She pulls open the car door.

‘Was anything missing from the house?’ I ask.

‘A laptop.’

‘Somebody could have taken it.’

‘Or she could have left it at school.’

We’re moving. Cray has a driver, a young policewoman, who glances nervously in the rear-view mirror.

‘Where to, boss?’

‘Trinity Road.’

Freud said that our memories are a repository of traumatic past events, but often these are merely fantasies rather than actualities. They haven’t taken place in the real world, only in our minds, which are vast storehouses for things that never existed and events that never happened. Sometimes I wonder whether my memories are real. If I try to concentrate on them too carefully, they catch in my throat and I struggle for breath.

The nightmares of my recent past involve a former soldier who was trained to unlock secrets by torturing people - a man who knew how to reach inside a mind and pry it apart as if opening the segments of a citrus fruit. This is the man who took my Charlie and wrapped her in a world of darkness.

Sometimes late at night when a car door slams or I hear footsteps on the footpath, I push back the blankets and cross the floor, carefully opening a corner of the curtain. I don’t expect to see Gideon Tyler waiting for me, but I still sense he’s there. Watching. Waiting.

I know why this memory has come back to me now. It’s being here at Trinity Road Police Station, a red-brick fortress surrounded by closing-down sales, blighted tower blocks and crack dens. This is the last place I saw Gideon, smiling at me with a bloody froth on his lips and his tongue rolling across his teeth, painting them red. He challenged me to torture him, begged me with an unearthly smile on his face. I hated this man more than words could describe. I wanted to hurt him, I wanted him dead, but I knew it wouldn’t save Charlie or my marriage.

The incident room is on the third floor. Most people take the stairs because the lift moves slower than a French tractor. Ronnie Cray’s office has no photographs. No certificates. No trophies. Instead there are files stacked against every wall like she’s building a child’s cubby house. Perched on the windowsill is a stuffed parrot, as forgettable as a fairground prize, yet I wonder how she got it. Who in her life gave her such a gift?

Sitting at her desk, she squints as she reads a statement. She needs glasses but won’t get her eyes checked because she refuses to succumb to any sign of diminishing faculties.

More than thirty-six hours have elapsed since Ray Hegarty was murdered. Detectives have gone door to door in the village, while others have tracked down family, friends and colleagues, piecing together his last movements.

Sienna is out of hospital - waiting downstairs in an interview suite.

‘How should I do this?’ Cray asks.

I look at the coffee in my hand, the cup is rattling in the saucer. I need both hands to hold it steady. Over the years I have had dozens of children in my consulting room, many of them damaged, vulnerable and emotionally traumatised, just like Sienna. Even though she may have killed, she has to be treated like a victim, not a perpetrator.

Cray is watching me. Waiting.

‘You talk to her carefully. Slowly. Gently. She’s still an ordinary frightened teenager. She may deny things at first. She will have tried to block them out. But any interview will take her back through every detail. She’ll relive what happened, and that’s going to increase her trauma.’

‘How can I avoid that?’

‘Keep the sessions short. Constantly reassure her that she’s doing well. Be sure of your questions, know what outcome you want, but let Sienna reveal her story in her own way. You can’t treat her like an adult and hammer her with questions or you’ll risk pushing her into a deep psychological breakdown.