Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

We’ve arranged to meet at a pub on the river, not far from where he lives. The Blue Anchor is tucked in the shadows of Hammersmith Bridge where patrons can watch the rowers skim across the water and tourist boats chug west towards Hampton Court.

Whitewashed with a blue trim, the pub has nautical paraphernalia on the walls and Van Morrison on the sound system. Ruiz is waiting at the bar. He’s a big man with big hands. One of them is wrapped around a pint glass.

‘Professor.’

‘Vincent.’

‘A shirt like that deserves a drink.’

It’s another of Emma’s choices.

‘What would happen if I had matching trousers?’ I ask.

‘I’d have to make a citizen’s arrest. Don’t look at me like that - I don’t make the rules.’

Ruiz is in a good mood, telling jokes and stories. We shoot the breeze about family and rugby. He’s on the committee of his local rugby club, which had a winning season.

We’ve spent a lot of meals like this but mostly when Julianne was still with me. Ruiz would flirt with her shamelessly and call her high maintenance, while she treated him like a naughty schoolboy who refused to grow up.

We order. The waitress suggests the special, a vegetarian lasagne. Ruiz tells her he didn’t fight his way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian. He orders the rump steak. Medium rare. Mashed potatoes with butter not oil. Pepper sauce on the side.

The waitress turns to me. Her name is Polly.

‘I’ll have the Ploughman’s.’

She looks relieved. Ruiz orders another beer. He’s dressed in casual trousers and a sweatshirt. I seem to remember him making a promise when he left the Met that he would never wear a tie again unless it was to a rugby dinner or a funeral.

‘So how’s Julianne?’

‘She’s interpreting - working on a big trial.’

Ruiz waits for something more, sensing it, but I don’t want to talk about Ho-ho-ho Harry Veitch.

‘So why are you really here?’

‘I need your help.’

‘You’re in trouble.’

‘No.’

I tell him about Sienna and her father, trying to keep the emotion out o my voice by sticking to the facts. Even so, I can hear myself defending her, putting the best possible spin on the evidence.

Ruiz keeps his head down as he listens.

‘What makes you so sure she’s innocent?’ he asks.

‘She says she didn’t do it.’

‘Everybody lies.’

‘There was somebody else in the house. They stood behind the door in the bedroom. They were waiting.’

He looks straight through me, keeping his thoughts to himself. ‘Any other suspects?’

I mention Sienna’s boyfriend Danny Gardiner and her brother Lance, who had no alibi for the night of the murder.

‘Are we talking about Sugar Ray Hegarty?’ asks Ruiz. ‘Worked out of Bristol CID?’

‘You knew him?’

‘We helped each other out once or twice.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Old school.’

‘Fair?’

‘And hard.’

Ruiz gazes into his pint, as if saying a silent prayer. ‘Typical, isn’t it? You survive a career like his and all the terrible shit happens after you’re out. I remember his daughter getting crippled by that sadistic fuck - what was his name?’

‘Liam Baker.’

‘Yeah, him.’

Ruiz wants to know the details of Ray Hegarty’s death, taking down correct spellings and looking for inconsistencies. Sienna’s laptop is missing and her room had been searched.

‘Anything else taken in the house?’

‘Nothing.’

I can see his mind working. What could a teenage girl have on her computer that was worth stealing?

‘What about the son?’

‘Lance didn’t get on with his father, they were always fighting, but I don’t think he could have done this.’

‘Why?’

‘Cutting someone’s throat is personal. It’s hands-on. It takes courage. Anger. Lance was frightened of his old man.’

Ruiz nods.

‘You might want to take a look at a school teacher: Gordon Ellis.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘He teaches music and drama at a secondary school. Lives locally. Married. One child. I think Sienna confided in him; she might have told him about the abuse, but when I mentioned his name, she clammed up and wouldn’t talk about him.’

‘You hit a raw nerve?’

‘It might be nothing. About ten days before the murder, Ray Hegarty had an argument outside his house with someone who dropped Sienna home. The police haven’t been able to ID the driver, but it could have been Gordon Ellis. Sienna used to babysit for Ellis and according to Helen Hegarty, Ray saw the two of them kissing. Sienna denied it, but Hegarty made a complaint to the school. I don’t know if the two events are related, but Gordon Ellis has since accused Sienna of harassing him with phone calls.’

Ruiz pats his pockets and his coat rattles. He used to be a smoker, but now he sucks on boiled sweets that will rot his teeth instead of his lungs.

‘Who’s heading the investigation?’

‘Ronnie Cray.’

‘She still rolling her own tampons?’

Political correctness is not one of Ruiz’s strong suits. He once told me that being politically correct was like pretending you could pick up a dog turd by the clean end.

‘I thought you weren’t going to help the police out any more,’ he says.

‘This is different.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Sienna Hegarty is Charlie’s best friend.’

Ruiz nods and leans back as our meals arrive. Tucking a paper serviette into his collar, he rubs his knife and fork together and tucks in. As he chews he mulls over the information.

‘So I’ll run a few checks. See what I can find out.’ Then he puts on a West Country accent. ‘Maybe I’ll drive down your way and spend a few days in your neck of the woods.’

‘I’ll tell all the single women in town what a stud you are.’

‘I believe that memo has already been sent.’

The rest of our lunch is spent swapping stories of family and trying to outdo each other in the dysfunctional relatives stakes. In truth, whenever I talk to Ruiz I don’t feel so badly about my own parents. His mother suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. The only thing she remembers with any clarity is the war and every embarrassing detail of Ruiz’s childhood, which she repeats in a megaphone voice whenever he visits her.

‘Do our children talk about us like this?’ he asks.

‘Probably.’

My mobile is vibrating. I pull it out and stare at the screen, not recognising the number.

‘Professor O’Loughlin?’

‘Yes.’

‘You might remember me - Dr Martinez. I treated Sienna Hegarty when they brought her into hospital.’

A pause. In the background I can hear the sound of the hospital PA system.

‘You asked me about a rape test and I said I couldn’t perform one without her parents’ permission.’

‘Yes.’

‘There was evidence of rough sex, which might have been rape. And there’s something else. She miscarried.’

The statement fizzes inside my brain like an aspirin disappearing in a glass of water.

Dr Martinez continues, ‘She must have lost the foetus on the night she came in.’

‘How many weeks was she?’ I can’t recognise my own voice.

‘I ran a blood pregnancy test for levels of hCG. The hormone level doubles every two days for four weeks after conception. Given her levels and the amount of blood we found on her clothes, I’d say she was in her first trimester - at least four weeks, no more than ten.’

He stops talking. The silence stretches out.

‘Are you still there?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing, but since you’d asked . . .’

‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’