Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

Opening a new ‘album’ I discover two photographs where I don’t recognise the context. Charlie is lying on a large bed, playing with a young boy. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, she is lying on her front, resting on her elbows. The collar of the T-shirt dips open at her neck, revealing little yet I still find it disconcerting.

The next image shows her lying on her back with the little boy balanced on her knees. I wonder who took the shots. Someone she felt comfortable with. Someone she trusted.

Looking at them, I can imagine Charlie as a young woman, a mother, married with a family. It’s strange because, normally, I still picture her as being a little girl in her Dalmatian pyjamas and red cowboy boots, putting on ‘shows’ in the garden.

Clicking off the site, I close the lid of the laptop, sending it back to sleep.

Shepparton Park School. Mid-morning. The headmaster Derek Stozer is a tall, slope-shouldered man with a lumpy body and the makings of a comb-over. I’ve only met him twice - including at a prize-giving day when he mumbled through his formal welcome speech and made fifteen minutes last longer than a wet weekend in Truro.

His secretary, Mrs Summers, is like an over-protective wife who dotes on him.

‘You should have called for an appointment,’ she says. ‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘Of course, I’m sorry.’

‘What’s the nature of your inquiry?’

‘It’s personal.’

She blinks at me, expecting more. I smile. She’s not happy. Leaning across her desk, she whispers into an intercom. Eventually, I am escorted down a carpeted corridor, past honour boards and trophy cabinets.

Derek Stozer rises from his chair and hitches his trousers before shaking my hand.

‘Professor O’Loughlin, how can I help you? Is this about Charlotte?’

‘No.’

‘Oh?’ He gazes at me along his nose.

As soon as I mention Sienna Hegarty his mood changes and he mumbles something that might be ‘terrible business’ or could be ‘ermine fizziness’. He points to a chair and resumes his own.

‘I’ve been asked to examine Sienna and to prepare a psych report for the court. In the course of interviewing her family, I became aware that Ray Hegarty made a complaint to the school a week before he died. I believe it related to a member of your staff. I’ve since learned that this same member of staff has complained about harassing phone calls from Sienna.’

The headmaster doesn’t react immediately. After a moment of reflection, he clears his throat. ‘From time to time parents and students have issues with teachers. It’s not uncommon.’

‘Mr Hegarty claimed he saw this particular member of staff kissing his daughter.’

There is a longer silence. Mr Stozer stands and stretches his legs, wandering between the window and his desk, clasping his hands behind his back.

‘Mr Hegarty was mistaken. I have talked to the member of staff involved, who assures me that nothing untoward occurred. This member of staff admitted failing to appreciate that a student had developed a crush on him. It was a harmless infatuation. The member of staff immediately distanced himself from the girl and submitted a report.’

‘Did he kiss her?’

‘No, that’s not what happened.’

‘What did happen?’

‘I am led to believe that the girl tried to kiss him. He spurned her advances and reported the matter immediately. I was aware of the incident before Mr Hegarty raised it with me.’

‘Sienna was his babysitter.’

‘And he should never have allowed this. It was a mistake. He admitted as much. It was a failure of judgement.’

‘You investigated?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did you talk to Sienna?’

‘I organised an internal review of the staff member’s actions and performance. I delegated the task to a senior member of staff - the school counsellor.’

‘Miss Robinson?’

‘She’s trained to talk to students about delicate issues.’

Why didn’t Annie tell me any of this?

Mr Stozer continues: ‘Sienna denied anything had happened. She said her father was mistaken.’

‘And you believed her?’

‘Yes, Mr O’Loughlin, I believed her. And I believed Mr Ellis and I believed Miss Robinson.’

The last statement is delivered with far more authority than I thought Stozer capable of.

‘I don’t see what relevance any of this has,’ he adds. ‘Sienna Hegarty was a model student. She wasn’t being bullied. She wasn’t struggling academically. She enjoyed coming to school. She was a healthy, happy teenager—’

‘If Sienna was so healthy and happy, why did Miss Robinson suggest she see a therapist?’

‘Many young girls experience problems when they go through adolescence - I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. I’m led to believe that Sienna Hegarty was having difficulties at home.’

‘But not at school?’

‘If you’re trying to suggest that her state of mind or her actions had anything to do with this school, I would take serious issue . . .’

He doesn’t finish the statement but the steel in his voice seems to stiffen his resolve. Marching to the door, he turns and says, ‘I have a staff meeting to attend, Professor. If you have any more questions I suggest you put them in writing to the school governors.’

When I cross the river, I don’t turn on to Wells Road but continue along the south bank until I reach Lower Bristol Road. Keeping to the inside lane, I drive slowly and try to pick out the signs on the cross streets.

Danny Gardiner said he dropped Sienna on the corner of Riverside Road and Lower Bristol Road. I pull up a little past the intersection, parking in the forecourt of a used-car dealership. A balmy wind, smelling of the river, sends litter swirling in the gutters.

There are shops and businesses on both sides of the road - a video store, a fish and chip shop, a British Gas showroom, a hairdresser, a florist, sex shop, a minicab office and an off-licence. According to Danny Gardiner this was the first time he’d ever dropped Sienna here.

‘Spare some change, guv?’

A stick-thin black man in a woollen hat holds out his hand with a fingerless glove. Nearby is a shopping trolley of his possessions. I fumble in my pocket. Find a pound. He looks at the coin as though it’s an ancient artefact.

‘You lost?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘You have a good day.’

‘You too.’

Stepping around his shopping trolley, I push open the door of the hair salon. A young woman in her mid-thirties is washing a customer’s hair in a sink.

‘Excuse me.’

‘What do want, petal? I don’t do men’s hair.’

Moving closer, I show her a passport-sized photograph of Sienna. I’ve folded the strip of images so that only one is showing.

‘Have you seen this girl?’

She dries her hands on a towel and studies it for a moment.

‘Who is she?’

‘A friend of my daughter’s.’

‘Is she missing?’

‘She’s in trouble. Do you work on Tuesdays? She was here a couple of weeks ago - about six o’clock, wearing a black dress.’

The hairdresser shakes her head. ‘Don’t remember her.’

‘Thanks anyway.’

I step outside. The flags are snapping above the car dealership. Next door at the florist shop, a dark-haired woman in jeans and a flannel shirt is moving buckets of flowers, arranging them to best effect. I show her Sienna’s photograph but she says that she closes early on Tuesdays.

‘Maybe you’ve seen her on other days?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says, looking at me suspiciously.

I move from business to business, hoping somebody might remember Sienna. She looked quite striking in her flapper dress, still wearing her stage make-up. The sex shop is closed up, barricaded behind metal shutters. A sign says it opens late, seven days a week.