Bleed for Me (24 page)

‘That’s our lad, Bil y,’ says Coop, motioning to the screen. ‘We don’t get tae see him any more. Gordon wil nae bring him home and he won’t let us take Bil y for a holiday. We’re his grandparents. He shouldn’t be al owed to keep him from us.’

‘How old was Bil y when Caro disappeared?’

‘Almost two. Caro dropped round to see us the day before Bil y’s birthday. She had to sneak over because Gordon didn’t like her coming round here.’

‘Why?’

Coop shrugs. ‘Ah think he wanted to control her.’

‘Did she tel you that?’

‘Ah could see it.

‘When Caro disappeared, what happened?’

‘Gordon said she just up and left him. Walked out. He told the police that Caro had a lover, but that were a lie.’

Coop’s whole body jerks and the Scotch spil s over his fingertips. He licks the liquid from his hand and wrist.

‘Did the police interview Gordon?’

‘Aye.’

‘Do you know the name of the officer in charge?’

‘Frank Casey. He’s retired now.’

The TV screen flickers and new images appear. Caro, aged about thirteen, is riding a pony that seems impossibly large, cantering between jumps, and she waves as she passes the camera. Coop’s whole body rocks forward as she approaches each jump, as if he’s riding with her.

It’s the emptiness inside him that’s the hardest. The voice he’l never hear again. I have almost lost a child. I have almost lost a wife. I can imagine it. I can remember each moment with a clarity that overwhelms the senses. Words get trapped in my windpipe. Sweat prickles. Guts twist.

People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn’t. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swal ows al hope.

We leave the flat. Ruiz walks ahead of me, fists bunched, as though wanting to hurt somebody. I’m stil thinking about what Coop said about life leading somewhere or meaning something. Mine doesn’t. I am living in a kind of limbo, a lul in proceedings. I am waiting for my wife to have me back - when I should be seizing every day and living it like it could be my last.

I’m like a guy stranded in a traffic jam, who wonders what the hold-up is and whether anyone is hurt and if I’l make it home in time to watch
I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here
.

Instead I want to be the guy who looks at a pretty woman on the footpath and imagines making love to her; the guy who embraces life and lives it on fast forward; the guy who kisses often, hugs shamelessly and treats every day like the briefest of love affairs.

Why can’t I be
that
guy?

25

We’re driving out of Edinburgh towards the coast. Ruiz is playing music on the car stereo, something bluesy with rol ing guitar chords that rattle the speakers in the doors. Closing my eyes, I can picture endless fields of sugar cane in the American South rather than bleak Scottish hil sides. Opening them again I see the wind lifting white plumes from the waves and trees that are bent and twisted like arthritic old men.

‘You thinking about Caro Regan?’ he asks.

‘I’m thinking about Gordon El is.’

‘He strike you as the kil ing kind?’

‘Not until now.’

My mind goes back to the murder scene. Ray Hegarty wasn’t expected home that night. El is could easily have known that Helen Hegarty worked nights and that Sienna was on her own. Knowledge and opportunity are not enough to place him in Sienna’s room or put a weapon in his hand.

‘What are the chances?’ I say out loud.

Ruiz glances at me. ‘The chances of what?’

‘Ray Hegarty saw his daughter kissing Gordon El is and complained to the school. A week later he’s dead. A coincidence?’

‘Coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous.’

‘You don’t believe in God.’

‘Exactly. An affair with a schoolgirl is a motive for murder. It could destroy his career and end his marriage. A man like that had a lot to lose.’

‘Is it enough to kil ?’

‘I’ve seen people kicked to death for fifty pence and a packet of pork scratchings.’

Forty minutes later we pul through stone gates into a shooting club. Cyprus trees line the long drive. Flags flap noisily against flagpoles. Workmen are erecting scaffolding around a stone clubhouse that clings to the hil side like a limpet on a rock.

Frank Casey is mid-sixties with white wispy hair that spil s from beneath a wool en cap and the sort of wide blue eyes that deepen with age. We watch him break open a shotgun, plug two shel s in the chambers and snap it closed again before tucking the gun against his shoulder and gazing along the barrel.

‘Pul !’

Two clay discs launch into the air flying left to right. The shotgun leaps in his hands and each disc disappears in a cloud of dust that disperses in the wind.

Casey pul s yel ow ear-muffs to his neck and turns, cracking the shotgun again. Most of the shooting bays are empty.

‘Do Ah know you?’ he asks.

‘I used to be a DI in the Met. Vincent Ruiz. This is Joe O’Loughlin.’

Casey shakes our hands. ‘How long you been out?’ he asks Ruiz.

‘Five years.’

‘Ah been out two. Hypertension was going tae put me in a box. Should have done it sooner. My wife wouldn’t agree. She’s going off her head, having me around.’

His accent is a blend of Glaswegian and something less harsh on the ear. Reaching into his pocket, he produces a smal silver flask.

‘Fancy a wee snort?’

‘I’m good,’ says Ruiz. I shake my head.

‘Suit yourselves.’ Casey tips up the flask and swal ows noisily.

‘So what can Ah do for you gentlemen?’ he asks, resting the gun over his forearm.

‘We wanted to ask about Gordon El is,’ I say. ‘He used to cal himself Gordon Freeman.’

‘Aye.’ Casey studies me momentarily over the top of his flask. ‘Ah did know a man cal ed Gordon Freeman, but why would you want tae talk about him?’

‘You handled the investigation into his wife’s disappearance.’

‘Aye, Ah did.’

‘We’re looking into a murder down south. A teenage girl is accused of kil ing her father.’

‘And you think Gordon Freeman is involved?’

‘He’s a possible suspect.’

Casey’s eyes keep returning to Ruiz as he speaks. ‘So this is not an official police request?’

‘No. We’re investigating this on behalf of the young girl who’s been charged.’

Casey presses his thumb to the centre of his forehead. ‘How old is the wee lass?’

‘Fourteen.’

He nods knowingly. ‘Do you fish, Vincent?’

‘No.’

‘How about you, Joe?’

‘No.’

‘The thing with fish, you see, is they exhibit two drives - fear and hunger. The large eat the smal . They even eat their own - starting with those youngsters that are nae paying attention at fish school. Know what Ah’m saying?’

The answer is no, but I don’t want to interrupt him.

‘Gordon Freeman, or whatever he cal s himself - he eats the young. He finds the weakest and picks them off. The youngest and the prettiest and the happiest - he devours them bit by bit.’

Two more shooters have walked down the path from the clubhouse. They take a bay at the far end of the range and put on vests with pockets for shotgun shel s.

Casey presses his hand to his lower spine as though relieving himself of a sharp pain in his back.

‘Gordon is the one that got away. The one Ah wish Ah’d caught.’

He glances at Ruiz, his face suddenly tired and his eyes shivering.

‘We found Caro’s car parked at the railway station. A suitcase was missing from the house wi’ some of her clothes, but she didnae leave a note or tel her family.

‘It took the Regans three months before anyone took them seriously. By that time the trail had gone cold. The CCTV footage wasnae kept, so we had tae rely on witnesses. We interviewed passengers on the trains and filmed a reconstruction - had an actress wearing Caro’s clothes and put it on TV - but naebody came forward.’

‘What did Gordon say?’

‘He claimed Caro was having an affair and had run off with her boyfriend.’

‘So what do you think happened?’

‘Me? Ah think Caro Regan is dead. Mah guess is he weighted down her body and dumped it in an abandoned pit. Countryside is dotted with them - old silver mines and coalmines -

we dinnae have a register of al of them.’ His mouth constricts to a pucker. ‘We tried to break him. We pul ed him in, fol owed him, pieced together his movements, but came up with fuck-al . The bastard has ice water in his veins. He’s a genuine fucking sociopath, you know what Ah’m saying? Clever. No remorse. Two years after she disappeared, Gordon applied for a divorce.’

‘He had a new girlfriend.’

‘Aye.’

Casey takes another swig from his flask.

‘There’s no way Caro Regan would have left home without her son. It was Bil y’s birthday the next day. She’d bought him a rocking horse. What mother leaves her son the day before his birthday?’

Casey closes his eyes. His eyebrows are so pale they’re almost invisible.

‘Ah didnae get to meet Caro Regan, but Ah think Ah would have liked her. Ah talk to her sometimes, you know, in mah head. You probably think Ah’m mental.’

‘Only if she talks back,’ I tel him.

He grins. ‘When Ah talk tae Caro, Ah ask her where she is now, but she doesn’t know the answer. Maybe that’s what they mean by Purgatory - trapped between Heaven and Hel . Ah knew her mother, you know. Philippa was a fine-looking girl when she was younger. You wouldnae know it now, but take mah word for it.’

There is a click in his throat and an exhalation of breath like he’s blowing out a match. He raises his face to the sky. Sniffs at the air.

‘Gordon had a caravan. We found the receipt for when he bought it, but we couldnae find it.’

‘Maybe he sold it,’ says Ruiz.

‘It’s stil registered in his name.’

‘Is it important?’

Casey shrugs. ‘We turned over every rock and shook every tree.’

‘What did El is say?’

‘He told us he lost the ’van in a poker game. Gordon likes playing the cards and he likes the horses. Spread betting - the work of the devil. Word is that he skipped town owing a loan shark cal ed Terry Spencer fifteen grand.

‘Terry is a reasonably easy-going lad, but he lost patience and sent one of his boys looking for El is to remind him of his fiscal responsibilities - know what Ah’m saying? Stan Keating took a flight down south to Bristol and visited El is; roughed him up a wee bit, poured acid on his motor, the normal stuff.

‘About a fortnight later Stan was back in Edinburgh, drinking at his regular boozer in Candlemaker Row, when a guy turned up looking for him - an Irishman with weird tattoos on his face. He asked after Stan, who was sitting not twelve feet away, but the barmaid was old school and didnae say a thing.

‘For the next hour the Irishman waited, drinking orange juice and doing a crossword puzzle, cool as you like. Stan was watching him and making phone cal s, arranging reinforcements

- two brothers, the Lewis twins, good wit’ iron bars.

‘Eventual y, the Irishman gets sick of waiting. Stan fol ows him outside where the Lewis twins are waiting. “You looking for me?” he asks, taking off his gold watch and rol ing up his sleeves. The Irishman nodded. “You got fifteen seconds tae state your business,” says Stan.

‘“You paid a visit to a school teacher.”

‘“What’s that got to do wi’ you?”

‘“You made a mistake.”

‘Stan gives a glance over his shoulder at the twins. Smiles. In that split second he discovered the truth about the Irishman. A silver knuckleduster spiked with half-inch nails crushed his windpipe. It was three against one. They didnae stand a chance. The Irishman drove the knuckleduster into one twin’s jaw and took out the other twin with a telescopic baton that broke both his arms.

‘The fight lasted less than thirty seconds. Stan and the twins were on their knees, foreheads bent to the ground, whimpering. Stan’s voice box couldnae be repaired.’

The skin on Ruiz’s face flexes against the bone. ‘How did Gordon El is get a friend like that?’

Frank Casey shrugs his shoulders. ‘Ah wouldnae want one.’

‘So what about Terry Spencer?’

‘He got his money eventual y. El is’s new family probably stumped up the cash, but that’s just a theory.’

‘And Stan Keating?’

‘He drinks in the same pub, but he don’t say much any more. Ah guess you could cal him a man of few words.’ Casey rises from the bench and extends his hand. ‘Ah know Ah shouldnae say this, but Ah’m glad Gordon El is isn’t mah problem any more. Ah hope you have more luck than we did.’

Resting the shotgun over his shoulder, he shuffles up the cinder path to the rest of his retirement.

It’s mid-afternoon. Bobby’s Bar has a dozen or so drinkers inside and the nicotine-addicted at an outside table. The retired, the unemployed and the unemployable - old men in quilted jackets with awful teeth. It’s like a horror film:
Night of the Unsmiling Granddads
.

A plaque on the wal tel s the story of the place. John Gray, an Edinburgh policeman, died of tuberculosis in 1858 and was buried in the adjacent yard. His dog, a Skye terrier cal ed Bobby, spent the next fourteen years guarding his master’s grave until the dog died in 1872. There’s a statue of Bobby on a plinth outside - another monument to our desire to erect monuments.

The barmaid tries not to react when I mention Stan Keating’s name, but a smal twitch in the corner of her mouth tel s me she’s lying. Ruiz is already ordering a pint so as not to waste the trip. He hands the barmaid a fiver and waits for his change. Bottles of spirits are like glass organ pipes above his head.

Col ecting his pint, he joins me at a table and surveys the bar. A lurid computer game winks and squawks in the corner trying to woo punters into competing unsuccessful y.

‘You know the problem with banning smoking in pubs?’ he asks, sucking an inch off the top of his Guinness.