Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

‘If you want my advice,’ he adds, ‘you need to keep getting laid.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s pretty self-explanatory.’

‘You think sex will cure me?’

‘Sex is messy, sweaty, noisy, clumsy, exhausting and exhilarating, but even at its worst . . .’

He doesn’t finish the statement. Instead he looks at me closely. ‘So who is she?’

‘Who?’

‘Your bit on the side.’

I want to deny it, but he grins, showing me the boiled sweet between his teeth.

‘How did you know?’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘Is it written on my forehead?’

‘Something like that. Who is she?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘Suit yourself.’

We lapse into silence. I’m thinking of Annie Robinson. I can still see the freckles on her shoulders and feel her breath on my face. One arm lay across my chest and her breasts were pressed against my ribs. I always feel empty after sex, sad and happy at the same time.

‘Hey, did I tell you,’ says Ruiz, ‘I heard a guy being interviewed the other night on one of those sex-therapy shows. The interviewer asked him to describe in one word the worst blowjob he ever had. You know what he said?’

‘What?’

‘Fabulous.’

Ruiz’s face splits into a mess of wrinkles and his eyes glitter. We’re laughing again. He’s happy now.

Wind buffets the plane as it takes off and rises above the clouds. Rain silently streaks the windows.

By the time I get home it’s after nine. The house is dark. Quiet. Opening the front door, I turn on the hall light and walk through to the kitchen expecting to hear Gunsmoke thumping his tail against the door.

He must be in the laundry. Perhaps he didn’t hear me. Opening the back door, I call his name. He doesn’t come bounding down the path, licking at my hands. The old rubber mattress he uses is unoccupied.

Retrieving a torch from the laundry, I search the yard. Maybe he dug a hole beneath the fence or somebody could have opened the back gate. When he was a puppy he got out of the yard and went missing for a day. One of the neighbours found him sitting by the bus stop, waiting for Charlie to get home from school. He must have followed her scent.

A noise. I stop moving and listen. It’s a soft whimpering sound from the direction of the compost bin. The torch beam sweeps cautiously across the ground and picks out something shiny in the grass. My fingers close around it - the tag from Gunsmoke’s collar.

I call his name. The whimpering grows louder.

I see him then. His front legs are hog-tied and his neck is pinned to the tree by an arrow that sticks out at a right angle. Torchlight gleams on his matted fur, slick with blood.

His head lolls forward. Instead of eyes he has weeping wounds. Acid or household cleaner has been poured across his face, dissolving fur and flesh, blinding him permanently.

Dropping to my knees, I put my arm around his neck, cradling his head, trying to take pressure off the arrow which is holding his body upright. How in God’s name is he still alive?

He swings his head to the left and licks my neck. A groan deep inside reveals how much he must be hurting.

Gunsmoke, my dog, my walking companion, my housemate, my hopeless guard dog . . . Why would someone want to hurt him?

Leaving him for a few moments, I go to the shed and pull out a hacksaw from the box beneath the bench. Gently, I put my hand between the Labrador’s body and the tree, feeling for the arrow. Then I use the hacksaw to cut through the shaft.

Wrapping Gunsmoke in a blanket, I carry him through the house to the car.

What car? The Volvo is still at the workshop.

On the verge of tears, I sit on the front step with the Labrador’s head on my lap. Fumbling for my mobile, I call directory enquiries and ask for an animal hospital. The nearest one is in Upper Wells Way, about three miles away. I count the rings and then it clicks to an answering machine - a recorded message gives the business hours and an emergency number.

I don’t have a pen. I repeat the number to myself, trying not to forget it.

I hear it ringing. A woman answers.

‘I need your help. Someone shot my dog.’

‘Shot him?’

‘With an arrow.’

‘Hold on, I’ll get my husband.’

I can hear her calling to him and he shouts back. Under my breath I’m whispering, ‘Please hurry. Please hurry. Please hurry.’

‘This is Dr Bradley. Can I help you?’

I try to speak too quickly and start choking on a ball of saliva that’s gone down the wrong way. I’m coughing in his ear.

‘Is there a problem?’ he asks again.

‘The problem is someone tortured my dog and shot him through the neck with an arrow.’

Questions need answering. Where is the arrow now? How much blood has he lost? Is he conscious? Are his eyes fixed and dilated?

‘I can’t see his eyes. They poured something caustic into them. He’s blind.’

The vet falls silent.

‘Are you still there?’

‘What’s your address?’

Dr Bradley is on his way. I lean my head back on the door and wait, feeling for Gunsmoke’s heartbeat. Slow. Unsteady. He’s in so much pain. I should put him down, end his misery. How? I couldn’t . . .

Growing up I was never allowed to have a dog. I was away at boarding school most of the time so my parents couldn’t see the point. I remember one summer finding a Jack Russell cross trapped on a ledge above the incoming tide. We’d rented a house near Great Ormes Head, overlooking Penrhyn Bay, and after lunch one day my sisters took me for a walk to the lighthouse.

I ran on ahead because they were always stopping to pick wild-flowers or to look at the ships. I heard the dog before I saw it. I lay on my stomach and peered over the edge of Great Orme, holding on to clumps of grass in my fists. Foaming white water spilled over jagged rocks, swirling into the crevices and evacuating them again. Grassy banks divided the crumbling rock tiers, which dropped at irregular intervals to a narrow shingle beach. On one of the lower tiers, I noticed a small dog, huddled on a ledge about twenty feet above the waves. He had a white face with black markings like a pirate patch over one eye.

I ran back to the holiday house. My father, God’s-Personal-Physician-in-Waiting was enjoying an afternoon siesta, sleeping beneath The Times on a hammock in the garden. He didn’t appreciate being woken, but came grudgingly. My pleas for him to hurry washed over him like water.

The girls had gathered on the headland, talking over each other and offering advice until my father bellowed at everyone to be quiet while he tried to think.

Tow-ropes were collected from the garage and a harness fashioned from an old pair of trousers. I was the lightest. I was to go down the slope. My father wrapped the rope around his waist and sat with his back to the headland, bracing his legs apart, digging in his heels.

‘Go down slowly,’ he said, motioning me onwards.

It wasn’t the thought of falling that scared me. I knew he wouldn’t let go. I was more worried about the dog. Would it bite me? Would it squirm out of my arms and fall into the waves?

The Jack Russell did none of these things. I could feel it shivering as I opened the buttons of my shirt and pushed it inside. I yelled out and felt the pressure on my waist. The rope dragged me upwards while I clung to tufts of grass and used rocks as footholds.

The Jack Russell was soon tearing around our garden, chasing after ribbons and balls. I wanted to keep him. I figured I’d earned the right. But my father sent two of my older sisters into Llandudno where they put up notices in the cafés and at the supermarket and the post office.

Two days later an old woman came and collected her dog, whose name was Rupert. By then, emotionally if not technically, he belonged to me. She offered a reward - ten pounds - but my father said it wasn’t necessary.