Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

Instead I want to be the guy who looks at a pretty woman on the footpath and imagines making love to her; the guy who embraces life and lives it on fast forward; the guy who kisses often, hugs shamelessly and treats every day like the briefest of love affairs.

Why can’t I be that guy?

We’re driving out of Edinburgh towards the coast. Ruiz is playing music on the car stereo, something bluesy with rolling guitar chords that rattle the speakers in the doors. Closing my eyes, I can picture endless fields of sugar cane in the American South rather than bleak Scottish hillsides. Opening them again I see the wind lifting white plumes from the waves and trees that are bent and twisted like arthritic old men.

‘You thinking about Caro Regan?’ he asks.

‘I’m thinking about Gordon Ellis.’

‘He strike you as the killing kind?’

‘Not until now.’

My mind goes back to the murder scene. Ray Hegarty wasn’t expected home that night. Ellis could easily have known that Helen Hegarty worked nights and that Sienna was on her own. Knowledge and opportunity are not enough to place him in Sienna’s room or put a weapon in his hand.

‘What are the chances?’ I say out loud.

Ruiz glances at me. ‘The chances of what?’

‘Ray Hegarty saw his daughter kissing Gordon Ellis and complained to the school. A week later he’s dead. A coincidence?’

‘Coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous.’

‘You don’t believe in God.’

‘Exactly. An affair with a schoolgirl is a motive for murder. It could destroy his career and end his marriage. A man like that had a lot to lose.’

‘Is it enough to kill?’

‘I’ve seen people kicked to death for fifty pence and a packet of pork scratchings.’

Forty minutes later we pull through stone gates into a shooting club. Cyprus trees line the long drive. Flags flap noisily against flagpoles. Workmen are erecting scaffolding around a stone clubhouse that clings to the hillside like a limpet on a rock.

Frank Casey is mid-sixties with white wispy hair that spills from beneath a woollen cap and the sort of wide blue eyes that deepen with age. We watch him break open a shotgun, plug two shells in the chambers and snap it closed again before tucking the gun against his shoulder and gazing along the barrel.

‘Pull!’

Two clay discs launch into the air flying left to right. The shotgun leaps in his hands and each disc disappears in a cloud of dust that disperses in the wind.

Casey pulls yellow ear-muffs to his neck and turns, cracking the shotgun again. Most of the shooting bays are empty.

‘Do Ah know you?’ he asks.

‘I used to be a DI in the Met. Vincent Ruiz. This is Joe O’Loughlin.’

Casey shakes our hands. ‘How long you been out?’ he asks Ruiz.

‘Five years.’

‘Ah been out two. Hypertension was going tae put me in a box. Should have done it sooner. My wife wouldn’t agree. She’s going off her head, having me around.’

His accent is a blend of Glaswegian and something less harsh on the ear. Reaching into his pocket, he produces a small silver flask.

‘Fancy a wee snort?’

‘I’m good,’ says Ruiz. I shake my head.

‘Suit yourselves.’ Casey tips up the flask and swallows noisily.

‘So what can Ah do for you gentlemen?’ he asks, resting the gun over his forearm.

‘We wanted to ask about Gordon Ellis,’ I say. ‘He used to call himself Gordon Freeman.’

‘Aye.’ Casey studies me momentarily over the top of his flask. ‘Ah did know a man called Gordon Freeman, but why would you want tae talk about him?’

‘You handled the investigation into his wife’s disappearance.’

‘Aye, Ah did.’

‘We’re looking into a murder down south. A teenage girl is accused of killing her father.’

‘And you think Gordon Freeman is involved?’

‘He’s a possible suspect.’

Casey’s eyes keep returning to Ruiz as he speaks. ‘So this is not an official police request?’

‘No. We’re investigating this on behalf of the young girl who’s been charged.’

Casey presses his thumb to the centre of his forehead. ‘How old is the wee lass?’

‘Fourteen.’

He nods knowingly. ‘Do you fish, Vincent?’

‘No.’

‘How about you, Joe?’

‘No.’

‘The thing with fish, you see, is they exhibit two drives - fear and hunger. The large eat the small. They even eat their own - starting with those youngsters that are nae paying attention at fish school. Know what Ah’m saying?’

The answer is no, but I don’t want to interrupt him.

‘Gordon Freeman, or whatever he calls himself - he eats the young. He finds the weakest and picks them off. The youngest and the prettiest and the happiest - he devours them bit by bit.’

Two more shooters have walked down the path from the clubhouse. They take a bay at the far end of the range and put on vests with pockets for shotgun shells.

Casey presses his hand to his lower spine as though relieving himself of a sharp pain in his back.

‘Gordon is the one that got away. The one Ah wish Ah’d caught.’

He glances at Ruiz, his face suddenly tired and his eyes shivering.

‘We found Caro’s car parked at the railway station. A suitcase was missing from the house wi’ some of her clothes, but she didnae leave a note or tell her family.

‘It took the Regans three months before anyone took them seriously. By that time the trail had gone cold. The CCTV footage wasnae kept, so we had tae rely on witnesses. We interviewed passengers on the trains and filmed a reconstruction - had an actress wearing Caro’s clothes and put it on TV - but naebody came forward.’

‘What did Gordon say?’

‘He claimed Caro was having an affair and had run off with her boyfriend.’

‘So what do you think happened?’

‘Me? Ah think Caro Regan is dead. Mah guess is he weighted down her body and dumped it in an abandoned pit. Countryside is dotted with them - old silver mines and coalmines - we dinnae have a register of all of them.’ His mouth constricts to a pucker. ‘We tried to break him. We pulled him in, followed him, pieced together his movements, but came up with fuck-all. The bastard has ice water in his veins. He’s a genuine fucking sociopath, you know what Ah’m saying? Clever. No remorse. Two years after she disappeared, Gordon applied for a divorce.’

‘He had a new girlfriend.’

‘Aye.’

Casey takes another swig from his flask.

‘There’s no way Caro Regan would have left home without her son. It was Billy’s birthday the next day. She’d bought him a rocking horse. What mother leaves her son the day before his birthday?’

Casey closes his eyes. His eyebrows are so pale they’re almost invisible.

‘Ah didnae get to meet Caro Regan, but Ah think Ah would have liked her. Ah talk to her sometimes, you know, in mah head. You probably think Ah’m mental.’

‘Only if she talks back,’ I tell him.

He grins. ‘When Ah talk tae Caro, Ah ask her where she is now, but she doesn’t know the answer. Maybe that’s what they mean by Purgatory - trapped between Heaven and Hell. Ah knew her mother, you know. Philippa was a fine-looking girl when she was younger. You wouldnae know it now, but take mah word for it.’

There is a click in his throat and an exhalation of breath like he’s blowing out a match. He raises his face to the sky. Sniffs at the air.

‘Gordon had a caravan. We found the receipt for when he bought it, but we couldnae find it.’

‘Maybe he sold it,’ says Ruiz.

‘It’s still registered in his name.’

‘Is it important?’