Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

I’m staggering, falling to my knees, frantically trying to stay upright. My head keeps bobbing and weaving but it’s not one of Mr Parkinson’s cruel jokes. The pain has arrived, a dull throbbing, growing in intensity, screaming at me to stop. It’s as if someone has driven a heated metal rod into my chest and is jerking it from side to side.

My shirt is sodden, sticking to my body. I look up and around, frightened. Through the forest of legs, I can’t see Marco. Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he’s running. Julianne must be close. I see her first. They’re together.

In that instant, I recognise Guilfoyle’s hooded sweatshirt. His right hand comes out of his pocket. The blade is flush against his forearm. He’s moving at pace through the crowd.

I try to yell, but it comes out as a groan. Guilfoyle is only a few paces away, passing Marco on his knife-hand side, his arm in motion, using his momentum to drive the blade beneath his ribs, aiming for the heart.

At that moment a girl in a pink skirt and candy-striped leggings loses her helium balloon. Marco spins on one foot and tries to catch the trailing string. The blade slides through his shirt and into his flesh, but the angle is wrong.

Guilfoyle knows it. The speed of the thrust has carried him two paces from Marco and he turns. Julianne has seen him. She screams, open-mouthed, terrified. Head down, hands in his pockets, Guilfoyle carries on, pushing through the crowd.

Marco drops to his knees, holding his side. I can’t see him any more. People are stepping around me and over me. A woman trips over my legs and almost falls. She has tight blue jeans and a huge arse. Another face, upside down. Her husband - he’s wearing an AC/DC T-shirt.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

I can’t answer.

‘That’s blood!’ says his wife.

‘He’s been shot,’ says someone else.

‘Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

‘Who shot him?’ asks another voice.

‘It could have been a sniper.’

‘A sniper! Where?’

‘There’s a sniper!’

It’s like watching a rock being thrown into a tranquil pond, rippling outwards. People scatter. Yelling. Running. Falling down. Dragging children. Fighting to get away. There are cries and yells and scuffles.

Now I see Julianne clearly. She’s safe. I feel a quickening torque of my heart. She takes off Marco’s shirt. Blood is leaking over the waistband of his underwear and jeans.

At the far end of Merchant Street a black Range Rover pulls up. Carl Guilfoyle jumps into the passenger seat. I glimpse a woman behind the wheel. Rita Brennan.

Ruiz is charging after them. He runs like a front-rower with his head down and knees lifting, everything happening below the waist. He grabs the driver’s door and pulls it open. Rita Brennan accelerates and the door swings out and back in again. Ruiz grabs at the wheel and wrenches it down. Moments later I hear the crunch of metal on metal but can’t see what happened.

There are police sirens. Growing louder.

The pain in my chest is overtaking every other sense. My fingers are cold, my skin clammy. Nothing feels like it is happening to bring help. Where are the paramedics? Someone get a doctor.

Julianne looks up and sees me. I wish I could smile bravely, but I’m scared and I’m shaking.

She’s with me now. Kneeling.

‘Where?’

I lift my arm. She can see the puncture wound below my rib cage. The hole seems to be breathing. She takes off her trench-coat and presses it to the spot.

‘That’s going to stain,’ I tell her.

‘I’ll soak it.’

Straddling me, she presses her fingers against my ribs, keeping pressure on the wound. Her eyes are shining. She’s not supposed to cry.

‘I need you to stay awake, Joe.’

‘I’m just closing my eyes for a second.’

‘No, you stay awake.’

‘You were right,’ I tell her. ‘I should have protected you and Charlie.’

She shakes her head as a signal that I’m not supposed to talk about this now.

‘How’s Marco?’

‘He’s going to be OK.’

My heart is no longer battering. It’s slowing down.

‘I’m just going to have a little rest.’

‘Don’t! Please.’

‘Sorry.’

Julianne lowers her head to my chest and it feels like we’ve slipped back through the years since we separated and she’s listening to the same heartbeat that serenaded her to sleep for twenty years.

‘Don’t be angry with me,’ she whispers.

‘I’m not angry.’

My lips are pressed into her dark hair.

I remember the last time we made love. I had come home late and Julianne was asleep or only half awake. Naked. She rolled on top of me in the darkness, performing the ritual half-blind, but practised. Rising and descending inch by inch, accepting my surrender. I thought at the time that it didn’t feel like make-up sex or new-beginning sex. It was goodbye sex, a dying sigh drawing colour from the embers.

If that has to be the last time then I can live with that, I think, opening my eyes again.

‘Charlie is going to be OK,’ I say.

Julianne raises her face to look at me. ‘I know. It just makes me a little sad because you two are so alike.’

‘You think she’s like me?’

‘I know you both too well.’

She runs her finger down my right cheek, tracing the scratches.

‘Who did this to you?’

‘The woman who killed Ray Hegarty.’

‘It wasn’t Sienna.’

‘No.’

I have a student waiting to see me outside my office. His name is Milo Coleman and I’m supposed to be overseeing his psychology thesis, which would be a lot easier if I had something to oversee.

Milo, one of my brighter students, has spent the past four months trying to decide the subject of his thesis. His most recent suggestion was to pose the question whether loud music in bars increased alcohol consumption. This only slightly bettered a proposal that he study whether alcohol made a woman more or less likely to have sex on a first date.

I told him that while I appreciated how diligently he would research such a subject, I doubted if I could get it past the university’s board of governors.

Opening my office door, I don’t find him waiting on the row of chairs in the corridor. Instead he’s chatting to Chloe, an undergrad student who answers the phones in the psychology department. Milo is dressed in a James Dean T-shirt, low-slung jeans and Nike trainers. Chloe likes him. Her body language says so - the way her shoulders pull back and she plays with her hair.

‘When you’re ready, Milo,’ I announce.

Chloe gives him a look that says, Next time.

‘Professor O’Loughlin, how’s it hanging?’

‘It’s hanging just fine.’

‘I heard about you being stabbed and I was, like, shocked, you know. I mean, that’s a heavy scene.’

‘Yes, Milo, very heavy.’

He takes a seat opposite my desk, leans forward, elbows on his knees. A long fringe of hair falls across one eye. He brushes it aside, tucking it girlishly behind his ear. Smiling quietly. Beaming.

‘I think I’ve got it: the big idea.’

‘Hit me with it.’

‘Well, I went to see a comedy night last week and I was watching this black dude telling jokes, really edgy stuff, racist, you know. He’s telling nigger jokes and all these white people in the audience are laughing and cheering. I got to wondering what effect racial humour has on prejudice.’

Milo looks at me nervously. Expectantly. Hopefully.

‘I think it’s a great idea.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. How are you going to do it?’

Milo gets to his feet, pacing the room while he lays out his ideas for a cognitive study involving an audience and a series of questions. He’s energised. Animated.