Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

The truth drops into the stillness. This must be Rita, Novak’s sister.

Strands of hair fall across her face and I find myself trying to find her eyes in the shadows, wondering how much she remembers from the streets of Belfast at the age of twelve. Her face has a haunted look that I’ve seen before in children’s homes and consulting rooms. Beaten. Broken. Cautious. Young rape victims don’t wear the soft, gentle, confident expressions that say, ‘Isn’t it great to be me’. Instead they are eternally vigilant, but not even that can save them from hurt. It’s in their faces.

Judge Spencer has ordered a recess. He stands and the courtroom follows. Novak Brennan turns from the dock and makes eye contact with Rita. Something passes between them, less of a smile than an understanding. It’s as though Novak has touched her in some way, squeezing her shoulder or patting her hand. Her face flushes with affection. Novak is led away.

At the same moment a door opens in the public gallery. A man appears, waiting for Rita. Tall with slick black hair that gleams under the overhead lights, he’s dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, but it’s not his clothes that make him stand out. The bones of his face are like metal scaffolding beneath his skin and inky tears drip from his eyes and down his cheeks,

This is the man Stan Keating described. The man I saw at the minicab office and outside the restaurant. Ruiz has seen him too. Although he doesn’t physically react, I can almost sense him mentally stepping back and shrinking slightly.

The door closes. They’ve gone.

Ruiz hasn’t moved.

‘You going to follow him?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘I’ll find out who he is.’

‘And then what?’

‘I’ll try to leave him alone.’

I once had a patient, an actor, who invited all his family and friends for a drink on his eighty-second birthday at a pub near Vauxhall Bridge in London. ‘The drinks are on me,’ he said, putting money on the bar, along with a letter addressed to the gathering.

At some point during the evening, he slipped away and a fisherman found his body next morning floating in the Thames.

He’d written: I didn’t like the thought of spending my last years lying in bed, surrounded by my children and grandchildren feeling they must sit by my old wrecked body until my last gasp.So I hope you will understand and raise a glass and give me a cheer for catching the tide tonight.

There’s something noble about an exit like that, but I doubt if I’d have the courage or the conviction. Somebody still had to find his body and retrieve it - strangers who didn’t deserve a shitty day.

I used to think I wouldn’t care about losing control of my body, as long as my mind remained strong. A psychologist losing his mind is like a painter losing his sight or a composer his hearing. You could call it a tragic irony, but only if you believe in fate or that God has a sick sense of humour.

Right now I feel as though my mind is slipping. My emotions have been manipulated and my reason distracted. It’s like watching a magician using sleight of hand, cleverly drawing my attention away so that I don’t see the ‘palm’ or the ‘ditch’ or the ‘steal’.

I can make a connection between Gordon Ellis, Ray Hegarty and Sienna, but I don’t know what glue holds them together. And where does the Crying Man come into this, or Lance Hegarty? Someone killed my dog. Someone ran me off the road. Gordon Ellis gave me a strange look when I mentioned Gunsmoke. It was like he didn’t understand.

I have to go back to the beginning and question everything, but right now I’m too tired to think. I’m dirty, unshaven, exhausted and I want a shower. I want a bed. I want to square things with Julianne and Charlie.

Ruiz drops me at the terrace and does a three-point turn, heading back into Bristol. Seeing Novak Brennan again has reignited something inside him - an instinct that never leaves a detective, even a retired one.

Opening the door of the terrace I get a flashback of last night. The reminders are smeared across the kitchen floor - a trail of blood showing where Gordon Ellis sat holding his head, where he pissed his pants, where he grinned at me with his bloodstained teeth. Filling the sink with hot soapy water, I begin mopping and rinsing, twisting the towel and watching the pink wash run between my fingers.

The answering machine is flashing:

Bruno Kaufman:

Joe, this is beyond the pale. You’ve now missed two lectures and two staff meetings - do you want to keep this job? Your students are complaining that you’re not answering their emails. Call me. Have an explanation.

Clunk!

Annie Robinson:

Listen, you prick! I’m not some pimply-faced teenager sitting by the phone. I’m old enough to deserve some respect. If you don’t want to see me, fine! But at least have the decency to call or tell me to my face. Thanks for nothing!

Clunk!

I wince. It’s not like I’m ducking to avoid a bullet or a rock, it’s an internal shudder - the sort of wince you get when you spend a night with a woman and don’t follow it up.

Annie isn’t the first woman to produce this reaction in me. That dubious honour belongs to Brenda, a girl my parents employed to clean our house one summer when I was home from boarding school. I saved up my pocket money so I could look at Brenda’s breasts. She charged me fifty pence a time and double if I wanted her to lift her skirt and pull her knickers up tightly, leaving little to my imagination.

Brenda lived in the local village and had a brother, Jonathan, who was my age. It was Jonathan who first told me about the mechanics of sex, but it wasn’t until Brenda gave me a personal guided tour of female anatomy that I believed it was possible for Tab A to fit into Slot B.

I wince when I think of Brenda because of the sadness in her eyes and because five years later, I teased and cajoled and promised that I loved her as she slipped her knickers down in the backseat of a car (which the ever-willing girl had done many times before) and allowed me to lose my virginity. Brenda wanted to be close to someone and this was the only way she knew how.

Annie Robinson is sweet, well-meaning, good-natured and slightly damaged - or maybe I should say bruised. The sound of her voice makes me wince. It tells me everything I need to know.

At three o’clock I pick Emma up from school. She has a sticker on her jumper that says ‘Best Counter’.

‘I can count to sixty-one,’ she announces proudly.

‘That’s very good, but what comes next?’

‘Sixty-two.’

‘So you can count higher.’

‘I can, but the teacher wanted me to stop. I think she was getting bored.’

When I laugh, Emma gets cross. She doesn’t like people laughing unless she understands why.

As soon as she gets to the terrace she goes looking for her Snow White dress.

‘It’s in the wash,’ I tell her.

‘When will it be out of the wash?’

‘Not for a long time.’

‘You can put it in the dryer.’

‘It will shrink.’

She looks at me doubtfully and then opens the washing machine. ‘You haven’t even started.’

‘I’ve been busy.’

Eventually she searches through the dirty washing until she finds the dress and puts it on, ignoring the chocolate and bolognaise stains.

Charlie arrives at about four, dropping her bag in the hallway.

‘How are things?’ I ask.

‘Guess.’

She blows a strand of hair from her eyes, but doesn’t look at me.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Let me think. That’s right, my father is an idiot, that’s about it.’

‘That’s not very polite, Charlie.’