Bleed for Me (23 page)

‘Do you have a chart? I love charts.’

The waitress is a big-boned Polish girl with bleached hair and a nose-stud. I order the poached eggs on sourdough toast on her recommendation. Ruiz looks at me as though I’ve asked to be castrated.

Once she’s gone, he takes out his battered notebook and rests it on the table.

‘Hey, you want to hear a Scottish joke?’

‘Maybe you should avoid Scottish jokes.’

‘Nonsense. The Jocks have a great sense of humour. Look at Gordon Brown.’

The tea arrives and he opens the silver pot and jiggles the bag impatiently. Then he unhooks the rubber band holding his notebook together.

‘You want to ask the questions?’

‘No, you talk.’

He starts with Ray Hegarty. His security business was solvent, the tax returns up to date, with no major debts or lawsuits. Ray was the public face of the company, a bona fide hero, decorated for bravery after he rescued two children from a flooded stormwater drain.

His son, Lance, left school at sixteen, signed to play footbal for Burnleigh. A knee injury ended his career before he turned eighteen. Initial y, Lance tried to find work as an assistant coach, but then he trained as a motorcycle mechanic.

‘The kid has had some problems. Two years ago he was arrested and deported from Croatia with twenty other hooligans after England played a World Cup qualifier. He also has convictions for racial y aggravated assault and low-range drink driving.’

Breakfast is served. Ruiz tucks a paper napkin in the col ar of his shirt and scoops baked beans on to a corner of toast.

‘I came up with nothing on Danny Gardiner. Kid’s clean.’

‘You stil haven’t told me what I’m doing here.’

Ruiz gives me a wry smile. ‘You were right about the school teacher.’

‘Gordon El is?’

‘Yeah, but he wasn’t always cal ed El is. He used to be Gordon Freeman, but three years ago he took his mother’s surname and became Gordon El is.’

‘Is that important?’

‘It helps if you’re running away from something.’

Ruiz is going to tel me the story in his own time. He slurps a mouthful of tea and dabs his lips with a napkin.

‘What do you know about his wife?’

‘Natasha?’

‘Yeah.’

‘El is said they met at school. Childhood sweethearts.’

‘Wel , he wasn’t lying.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Natasha’s maiden name is Stewart. She was thirteen when Gordon El is started teaching at Sorel Col ege. It’s a private girls’ school here in Edinburgh.’

‘She was his student?’

‘Music and drama. I put in a cal to the headmaster and set off a dozen alarm bel s. Twenty minutes later I had a plummy-voiced solicitor on the phone tel ing me to ever so politely fuck off.

‘According to her school yearbook, Natasha left in year nine Gordon El is transferred a year later. She claimed to be nineteen when they married, but her proper birth certificate puts her at three years younger than that.’

‘How old is she now?’

‘Official y, she’s just turned eighteen.’

‘Maybe they hooked up after they both left the school,’ I say.

‘OK, but why lie about Natasha’s age on their marriage certificate? ’

I think back to my meeting with Natasha outside the school. She was picking up Bil y, who is Emma’s age.

‘But she has a son?’ I say.

‘Not her boy,’ replies Ruiz. ‘That’s where it gets real y interesting. ’

Wiping his plate clean with a half-slice of toast, he consumes it in two mouthfuls and finishes his tea. Then he pul s fifteen quid from his wal et. Leaves it on the table.

‘You stil haven’t told me what I’m doing here.’

‘We’re meeting a family. They’re cal ed the Regans. They don’t live far.’

‘Why am I meeting the Regans?’

‘They have a daughter, Carolinda, who was married to Gordon El is.’

‘He’s been married before?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Divorced?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What then?’

‘According to Gordon El is, Caro packed her suitcase and took off. Happens al the time. Some people don’t like waking up every morning and seeing the same old face on the other pil ow, day in, day out. Depresses the shit out of them.’

‘You’re such a romantic. So why did she walk out?’

‘She escaped into the arms of a secret lover, according to El is, only nobody has ever met the gentleman in question.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Caro hasn’t been seen since. She hasn’t contacted her family, hasn’t touched her bank account, hasn’t used a credit card, or applied for welfare, or visited a doctor, or picked up a speeding ticket, or lodged a tax return, or travel ed overseas. She hasn’t sent her kid a Christmas card or a birthday card. Lothian and Borders Police launched an investigation, but it petered out. They couldn’t prove Caro was dead and they couldn’t find any evidence of foul play.’

Ruiz doesn’t have to explain the inference. People disappear al the time. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the nearest station.

Battered wives flee brutality. Children escape abuse. Dodgy businessmen flee the auditors. Criminals change their names and buy vil as on the Costa del Sol.

Ruiz is talking and walking. We weave between narrow al eys and lanes, passing historic pubs, tourist hotels and gift shops with racks of postcards and shelves ful of souvenirs.

Gordon Freeman (now El is) was born in Glasgow in 1974, the son of a portrait painter and a nurse. His father died of lung cancer when Gordon was fourteen. He and his mother moved to Edinburgh where he went to six different schools in four years.

After finishing his A-levels, he studied drama at Keele University and played some minor TV and theatre roles before turning to teaching. He settled in Edinburgh. Married a local girl.

He was handsome, popular and wel respected. And then something happened.

Ruiz has stopped outside a large slate-grey house, converted into flats, rising so suddenly from the footpath that the building appears to be leaning out over the street.

‘Here we are,’ he says, pressing the intercom.

A woman’s voice answers and the door unlocks automatical y. Climbing the stairs, I hear a door open above us. She’s waiting on the landing - a heavy-set woman in a floral dress and cardigan.

Philippa Regan wipes her hands on her dress. Her copper-tinted hair is permed into a mess of tight curls that match the colour of her red-rimmed eyes. She shakes us each by the hand and invites us into the kitchen, apologising for the cold. Turning up the thermostat, she listens as the boiler burps and groans consumptively.

‘Ah cannae get warm any more. That time of year.’

Used teabags have solidified in the sink and a dripping tap rings the same note over and over.

She offers to make tea but doesn’t seem to have the energy. At the same time she glances at the sitting-room door, which is slightly ajar. I can hear the sound of a TV.

‘The professor wants to ask you a few questions about Carolinda,’ Ruiz explains. ‘I told him that you haven’t heard from her in a long time.’

Again Mrs Regan glances at the door.

‘Do you have any children, Professor?’

‘Two. Girls.’

Her generous bust expands as she sighs. ‘Ah know my Caro is dead. Ah know who kil ed her, but Coop doesn’t like me talking about it.’

She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.

‘What happened to Caro?’

‘She didn’t come home. She went to get something for her supper and didn’t come back. That’s what Gordon told us, the murdering bastard!’

The kitchen table shudders beneath her elbows.

‘Ah never trusted him - even when she married him. Ah could tel he was trouble - always looking for something better. Someone better. He treated Caro like a dog he’d rescued from the pound; expecting her to be grateful just because he married her.’

Mrs Regan is going to say something else but the words don’t make it past the lump in her throat. She begins again.

‘Vincent says you’re a psychologist, Mr O’Loughlin.’ She motions to the door. ‘Talk to him. Talk to mah Coop.’

‘What would you like me to say?’

‘He’s nae sleeping and he drinks al day. Ah’m not sure what to do any more.’

My heart strikes a beat for every one of hers.

Over the years I have seen countless people overwhelmed by loss. Each of us reacts differently. Some husbands and wives look straight into each other’s eyes without needing words, while others are like strangers sitting in a dentist’s waiting room. Some men want to beat someone so badly they can’t walk right for a month. Others drink themselves into oblivion. Some pretend nothing has changed.

I can picture Coop and Philippa Regan lying side by side in bed at night. Stil as corpses, peering at the ceiling and wondering if their daughter might stil be alive. That’s the great tragedy of a missing person. The dead are farewel ed, mourned and given a resting place. The missing float in a kind of limbo, leaving family and friends to wonder and hope.

Ruiz pushes open the sitting-room door. It’s dark inside. The blinds are drawn. ‘It’s only me, Coop, come round for a chat.’

The reply is thick with phlegm. ‘Ah’m nae in the mood.’

Mr Regan is sitting in an armchair, his tattooed forearms resting horizontal y at his sides. I can’t see his face in the gloom, but a soiled singlet is stretched over his barrel-chest.

The flicker of a television throws shadows across the room. He’s watching old home movies. On screen, a young girl, barely three, is playing under a sprinkler, running in and out of the spray. The sound is turned down.

Mr Regan raises a glass to his lips. The dark fluid turns to amber as it passes in front of the light.

‘This is Joe O’Loughlin, he’s a friend of mine, Coop,’ says Ruiz. ‘He’s come to ask about Carolinda. Maybe he can help.’

‘He cannae bring her back, can he?’

‘No,’ I reply, feeling a strong impulse to turn and go back down the stairs, along the street, back to the car; as far away as possible.

Coop reaches for a bottle at his feet and refil s his glass. His tattoos seem to move in the light from the television, becoming animated and tel ing stories of drunken nights, tattoo parlours and hangovers.

Ruiz takes a seat opposite him. ‘It’s early to be drinking.’

Coop doesn’t answer. I move further into the room and sit in an armchair beside the TV. Coop gazes past me at the screen, which reflects in his eyes.

‘I wanted to ask about Caro.’

‘Ah’m listening.’

‘What was she like?’

Coop takes a ragged breath and seems to hold it inside.

‘Ah wanted a wee lad,’ he says final y. ‘Ah was sure Caro were going to be a boy. Came as a shock when she came out. Thought something had gone wrong. “It’s a bonnie lass,” Ah said, and Philippa she says, “Are you sure, Coop?” Ah looked again just to be certain.’

The home movie has changed and Caro is singing into a pretend microphone, wearing one of her mother’s dresses, which keeps slipping off her shoulders.

‘Ah watched her grow,’ says Coop. ‘Ah counted her smiles, her steps. She were ten months old when she took her first steps from this chair to that one where you’re sitting. She were always in a hurry. Ah couldn’t get her to slow down. Even when she married, Caro did everything in a hurry. Didn’t like her choice, never trusted him, but Caro loved him. Ah paid for the wedding. Rented a posh place for the reception. Walked her up the aisle. She were a bonnie bride.’

Coop looks at me, questioning. ‘It was mah wee girl’s wedding, but Gordon shoved us away in a corner, treated us like dirt because we weren’t rich or wel connected.’

‘When was that?’

‘Seven years ago now,’ replies Coop. ‘Caro weren’t the same girl after that. Gordon did something to her.’

‘What did he do?’

He shrugs. ‘Ah cannae say for certain, but he took away her smile.’

He turns his glass slowly in his hand.

‘When a bairn loses both parents they become an orphan, but they don’t have a name for parents who lose a child.’

‘No.’

‘Sometimes Ah pray. Ah’m not very good at it. Ah pray that he didn’t leave her body somewhere cold. Ah pray Caro’s in Heaven, which is somewhere she believed in. Cannae say that Ah do.’

The TV screen flickers and new images appear. Caro, aged about ten, riding on a Ferris wheel. Every time it circles close to the ground she waves at the camera, holding her dress between her knees to stop it blowing up.

‘What’s your name?’ asks Coop.

‘Joe.’

‘Ever wondered, Joe, whether the pain of losing a child is equal to the happiness of becoming a father?’

He doesn’t wait for an answer.

‘There’s nae fucking comparison. Becoming a father is about that first step, that first smile, that first word, that first time she rides a bike or climbs a tree or goes to school, her first dance, her first date, her first kiss. You add al those moments together - every birthday, Christmas, every dream - and there’s nae fucking comparison.

‘When you have a child you think your life means something, you know. It’s not like you’ve cured cancer or captained Scotland, but you’ve had a kid. You’ve left something behind.’

His voice has begun to shake and his chest heaves. He bites down hard on his fist.

‘You want to know the worst thing?’ he says, struggling to get the words out. ‘Ah’m angry with her, with Caro. Ah want to scold her, ground her, send her to her room. Ah want to tel her she cannae go out. Ah want to stop her growing up, leaving home, getting married.

‘Ah’m angry because she took over our lives - our day began and ended with hers - we planned her schooling, her holidays, her future. What future? For al that love and pain, this is what we get! What’s the fucking point?’

‘You’l think differently one day, Coop.’

‘What should Ah be thinking?’

‘About your wife out there in the kitchen.’

He nods, looking chastened.

‘Ah used to feel guilty about loving Philippa less after Caro were born.’

‘You loved them both.’

He nods. The image changes again. Caro is grown up, sitting up in a hospital bed, cradling a newborn baby. Hair is plastered to her forehead, but she’s smiling through her tiredness.