Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

‘All my students are special.’

‘Yes, but some are more precious than others. Every once in a while, a girl emerges from the pack and you take a special interest in her. She’s not the best or the brightest or the most beautiful - but she has something that makes her attractive to you. Some weakness you can exploit or an arrogance you want to punish.’

Ellis shakes his head. ‘It’s her crush, not mine.’

‘I bet you can remember the first time you saw Sienna. You noticed her from a distance at first - coming through the gates or walking in the corridor. She stood out from the other girls. She was confident. Highly sexualised. Flirtatious. At the same time there was something vulnerable about her. Damaged. You thought maybe she was being abused at home or bullied at school. You recognised her potential as a plaything.’

‘I recognised her potential as a drama student.’

‘Sienna didn’t even realise that she was being seductive. Young girls often don’t. They pretend. They practise. They make mistakes.’

‘I nurtured her. I know the boundaries.’

‘That’s right. You kept telling yourself that you were just doing your job. Pastoral care is so important. She talked about her problems at home . . . the unwanted attentions of her father. You comforted her. Patted her knee. Squeezed her hand.’

Ellis bristles. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

‘You began finding ways of getting her alone - isolating her somewhere quiet, somewhere private, somewhere you could show her how much you cared, how you understood, how you wanted to protect her.’

‘You’re sick!’

‘You told her she was beautiful. She believed you.’

‘She’s lying. There isn’t one shred of evidence to support her story.’

‘At first I couldn’t understand how you managed to keep it a secret. And then I remembered seeing you criticise Sienna during the rehearsal. That’s how you removed suspicion - you picked on her, you punished her and she played along.’

‘You’re a pervert!’

‘Oh, I’m not the sick one, Gordon. I know all about you. I know how you did it. I know why you did it. You were the fat, four-eyed kid at school, who got teased and bullied and ridiculed. There’s one in every playground. What did they call you? Lard-arse? Butterball? How much toilet water did you swallow, Gordon? How many people laughed at you?’

Ellis is no longer sitting. He’s an inch taller than I am. Younger. Fitter.

‘I bet there was one girl at school who didn’t laugh at you. She was nice. Friendly. Pretty. She didn’t tease you. She didn’t call you names.’

‘Shut up!’

‘You really liked her, Gordon. And you thought she might like you.’

Ellis takes a step out of the shadows into the half-light spilling from the hall. ‘I told you to shut up!’

‘One day you decided to tell her how you felt; ask her to be your girlfriend. Did you write her a note or send her a Valentine? Then what happened? She laughed. She told the others. She joined in the tormenting.’

Ellis rocks forward, his neck bulging and fists clenched.

‘That’s why you target the nice girls, Gordon, the popular ones, the princesses. You’re preying on the girls who wouldn’t look at you at school when you were overweight and short-sighted - the ones who laughed the loudest. You want to punish them. You want to tear them apart. Living things. Young things. I know about your first wife. I know what you did to her. That scratch on your cheek - did Natasha get angry with you? Did she accuse you of seducing another schoolgirl? She should know—’

‘Don’t talk about my wife!’

‘Sienna was pregnant. She was carrying the evidence inside her - the proof. That’s why you tried to kill her.’

His eyes lock on to mine. Ropes of spittle are draining from the corners of his mouth.

‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’ he says, laughing drily.

‘This is not a game.’

His eyes leave mine momentarily and focus on the fire poker in my fist. His nostrils flare and partly close.

‘You want to know?’ he whispers, challenging me. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Yes.’

A strange twisted light appears in his eyes.

‘Yeah, I fucked her. I fucked her every which way, in her pussy, in her arse.’ He steps closer. ‘And guess what, Joe? I fucked your little darling. Charlie was begging for it and I made her bleed. She was moaning under me, saying, “Fuck me harder, Gordon, fuck me harder.”’

What happened next is something that I can’t explain. My vision blurs and the room swims. My fist is holding the poker, which swings savagely, backstroking Ellis across the side of the head. The back of my hand scrapes against his unshaven skin and his mouth leaves a streak of saliva across my knuckles.

His head snaps sideways and I hit him again from the right, sending him down. Ellis tries to curl into a ball but I beat his arms and his spine and his kneecaps and shins. With each blow I can feel the metal bar reverberating in my fist, sinking all the way to his bones.

‘This is for Charlie,’ I yell, ‘and this is for my dog!’

He raises his head from the floor and gazes at me uncertainly.

The poker clatters to the floor. Lifting Ellis by the front of his shirt, I drop him to a sitting position on a chair. His bladder has opened on the floor. My hand is streaked with his blood.

Instead of cowering, he turns his face to mine. Through bloody teeth, he grins. ‘How do you feel?’

I don’t answer him.

He says it again. ‘I fucked your princess, how do you feel?’

I knot my fist in his hair and wrench back his head.

‘I don’t believe you.’

He smiles. ‘Yeah, you do.’

The holding cell reeks of vomit and urine and sweat. It’s a smell that can instantly transport me back to another place and time - a different police cell scrawled with comparable pictures of genitalia and profanities aimed at the police and homosexuals.

Sitting on a wooden bench, I lean my head against the wall, listening to doors clanging, toilets flushing and inmates either sobering up or kicking off incoherently down the corridor.

My skin feels dead to the touch and my chest aches as though I’m breathing into lungs full of wet cotton. Opening and closing my right hand, I wonder if anything is broken.

A drunk is sleeping on the bench opposite. He stole my blanket and tucked it beneath his head, but I’m not going to fight. Now he’s snoring, ending each breath with a long raspberry fluttering of his lips.

I don’t know the time. They took away my wristwatch, along with my belt and shoelaces. Occasionally, there are footsteps outside and the hinged observation flap opens. Eyes peer at me. After several seconds, the hatch shuts and I go back to staring at the ceiling light, contemplating the bad luck and bad choices that have brought me here. Where did it come from - the violence that rose up inside me?

I am an intelligent, rational, civilised man, yet the blood on my shirt says otherwise. What I did was stupid. Reckless. Wrong. Yet I don’t regret it. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him.

Taking off my shirt, I roll it into a ball and put it beneath my head, resting my arm across my eyes.

I can hear Ronnie Cray’s voice before she arrives like an elephant entering a phone box. I expect her to have me released. Instead I’m taken from the holding cell to an interview suite. She pulls up a chair. ‘Were you trying to kill him?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You might want to rephrase that.’

‘OK. No.’

‘He says there was no provocation. He says you harassed his wife and when he came to complain you attacked him.’