Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

He’s about to hang up when something occurs to me. ‘Would she have known?’ I ask.

‘She was late. Most women know their cycles.’

There was no evidence of a pregnancy test found at the house, but Sienna would most likely have destroyed the test kit.

Closing the phone, I stare at the screen as the light fades. Ruiz is watching me from the opposite side of the table.

‘She was pregnant,’ I whisper. ‘She miscarried on the night of the murder.’

‘Can they do a paternity test?’

‘Not without the foetus.’

Just south of Reading, I pull into a motorway service centre and park among the long-haul trucks and tourist coaches. Hiking across the parking lot, I enter a brightly lit lobby full of fast-food outlets and shops.

The men’s room is cavernous but I still have to queue for a urinal. The men around me are truckers in plaid shirts or football strips hung over beer guts. One of them hauls up his jeans and saunters off like a man who has marked his territory.

My left hand is trembling. My bladder won’t do as it’s told. I stand and stare at the wall. Someone has scrawled a message in marker pen above the urinal: ‘Express Lane: five beers or less.’

Nothing is happening. The queue is getting longer.

‘Are you gonna piss or just piss me off ?’ says a trucker with a wallet chained to his belt.

‘I’m sorry. I won’t be a moment.’

He grunts and says something to the person next to him. They laugh. It’s not going to happen now. That’s one of the problems with my medication. I used to piss like a racehorse. Now I squirt and dribble.

Outside the restroom I put in a call to Trinity Road Police Station. Ronnie Cray is in a meeting. Monk answers her phone. Certain people don’t match their voices, but Monk’s comes from deep in his chest and seems to rumble down the line as if he’s standing in a tunnel.

‘Danny Gardiner?’

‘What about him?’

‘Did you interview him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sienna was pregnant.’

I can hear Monk exhale slowly.

‘The boss isn’t here.’

‘Can you take me?’

Monk hesitates momentarily. We’ll meet at Danny Gardiner’s house.

I have the rest of the journey to consider the implications of Sienna’s pregnancy. I think back to the afternoon I collected her and Charlie from school. Sienna had seemed distracted and upset. I thought she was annoyed about the rehearsal and being made to stay behind. Even so, she skipped into her boyfriend’s arms, kissing his lips, sliding her hand down his back.

Danny Gardiner told police that he’d dropped Sienna on a street corner in Bath only thirty minutes later. Where did she go? Three hours are missing from the timeline.

Danny lives with his mother in Twerton on the western outskirts of Bath where most of the older houses are clustered around St Michael’s Parish Church. The newer estates have encroached on to farmland and already I see white pegs marking out more plots of land.

Monk is waiting in an unmarked police car.

‘What did Cray say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You didn’t tell her.’

‘I’m doing you a favour.’

Nobody answers the door. Monk knocks again. Then we wait. The sky is low and grey, smelling of woodsmoke and rain.

A white hatchback pulls into a parking space ahead of us. A woman in her fifties emerges, dressed in a tour guide’s uniform. She collects a bag of groceries from the boot and walks to the house, cursing as she drops her keys.

‘Mrs Gardiner?’ I ask.

‘Who wants to know?’

The door swings inwards and a long-haired dog that could have a head at either end dances around her stockinged legs, yapping.

She turns, waiting for an answer.

‘We’re looking for Danny.’

‘He’s talked to you lot already.’

‘Not to me.’

Her blue-grey eyes examine me quickly and then settle on Monk, gazing at him as though he’s sprouted from magic beans in her front garden. ‘Lordy, your mother must have gone cross-eyed having you. How tall?’

‘Six-four last time I measured.’

‘I think you’ve grown since then, love. You should have played basketball.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She has stepped inside the hallway. The house smells of damp dog, air freshener and dope. Mrs Gardiner lifts her shopping bags over the threshold, using one hand to hold the collar of the dog.

‘I haven’t seen Danny since yesterday.’

‘His car is outside,’ says Monk.

‘Must have taken the bus,’ she replies.

‘That’s too bad. We’ll have to tow the car. Forensic boys want to pull it apart. Tell him we’ll put it back together again . . . best we can.’

Two beats of silence follow before Danny bursts out of a bedroom, barefoot, bare-chested, wearing low-slung jeans. Marijuana smoke wafts in his wake.

‘Not me fucking car! I just finished paying it off.’

Danny reaches the front door and bounces off Monk’s chest.

‘The car’s fine. We just need to ask you a few questions.’

‘I answered your questions.’

‘More of them.’

‘Fuck off!’

Mrs Gardiner clips him around the ear. ‘Mind your language.’

Danny nurses the side of his head where three studs decorate the cartilage above his ear.

‘I suppose you’d better come in then,’ says Mrs Gardiner. ‘Carry them bags, Danny.’

We follow her along a hallway into a tired-looking kitchen, with red-painted cupboards and a fridge that doubles as a noticeboard. She begins unpacking her groceries while Danny pulls a bottle of soft drink from a bag. She tells him to get a glass. He rolls his eyes.

‘What’s he done now?’ she asks Monk.

‘We want to ask him about his girlfriend.’

‘A girl? That’s all he thinks about - girls. You should see the state of his bed sheets.’

Danny gives her a murderous look.

‘Lazy, just like his dad. Spends his time tinkering with cars. Not really a proper job, is it?’ Mrs Gardiner sizes Monk up again. ‘How tall you say you were, Detective?’

‘Six-four.’

‘I’ve got a job for you. Won’t take a minute.’

‘I’m needed here.’

‘Don’t take two of you to talk to Danny. Call it a community service.’

Mrs Gardiner is halfway down the hall, motioning him to follow. Monk glances at me, hoping to be rescued, and then reluctantly accepts his fate.

Danny relaxes now that his mother is no longer orbiting.

‘Do you remember me?’ I ask.

Danny shakes his head.

‘I saw you outside Sienna’s house last Wednesday morning.’

He screws up his face. ‘Wasn’t me.’

‘You legged it when I tried to talk to you. Almost ran me down in that car of yours. That’s one of the problems with having a distinctive-looking car, Danny. You think it makes a bold statement, but it sticks out like a turd in a punchbowl.’

Danny is working his tongue around his cheek as though counting his teeth. His hair sticks up at odd angles and I can see traces of pimple cream dabbed on his forehead. For all his brazen defiance, he doesn’t look particularly tough or aggressive. He has small hands. Delicate features.

‘Tell me about Sienna Hegarty.’

‘What about her?’

‘Is she your girlfriend?’

‘She’s a friend.’

‘She’s underage.’

‘So what?’

‘How old are you, Danny?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Don’t you know any horny girls your own age?’

‘I get my share.’

‘So why Sienna?’

‘Listen, I’m not shagging her, OK, and if she says I am then she’s a lying cow. We’re mates.’

‘Mates?’

‘Yeah. We hang out together. I drive her around the place. Drop her off.’