Bleed for Me (25 page)

‘What’s that?’

‘The smel .’

‘Of smoke?’

‘Of farts.’

I wait for an explanation.

‘Take a whiff of this place. Disinfectant and farts. Lager farts and Guinness farts and cider farts. When people could smoke, you couldn’t smel their farts. Now you can.’

‘Farts?’

‘Yeah.’

He takes another huge swal ow and wipes his mouth. Then he nods over my shoulder. Further along the bar, one drinker sits on a stool studying a racing guide. A cravat is wrapped around his neck, making him look like an ageing fifties film star.

I sit on the barstool next to him. ‘I’m looking for Stan Keating.’

He doesn’t answer. His jacket has holes in the elbows and his nose is a roadmap of broken capil aries. The racing guide is ringed with red pen marks.

‘I wanted to talk about Gordon El is,’ I say. ‘Maybe you know him as Gordon Freeman.’

The barmaid answers, ‘He can’t talk.’

I turn to her. ‘I just need to ask him a couple of questions.’

‘Good luck with that,’ she says, polishing a glass. ‘Mr Keating doesn’t like being disturbed.’

‘Maybe he should tel me that.’

Keating reaches for his pint glass and raises it to his lips. The cravat on his neck slips, revealing a scar that extends from his Adam’s apple down his throat until it disappears beneath the fabric.

‘He
can’t
talk,’ says the barmaid, ‘unless he’s got his machine.’

‘What machine?’ asks Ruiz, who has taken a stool on the opposite side.

She holds her hand to her neck and silently moves her lips.

Keating lowers the glass and continues reading the form guide.

‘You’re not deaf, though, are you, Stan?’ says Ruiz. ‘I’l buy you a drink.’ He motions to the barmaid. ‘Same again.’

Keating takes his hand slowly from his pocket. I see the dul gleam of steel as he presses a pencil-shaped device to his neck.

‘Tel them to fuck off, Brenda.’

The words have a buzzing metal ic quality, like listening to a Stephen Hawking interview without the pauses between the words.

Brenda wipes a rag along the bar. ‘You heard him, gentlemen.’

Keating lowers the device and goes back to his newspaper.

‘Maybe you don’t understand our motives,’ says Ruiz. ‘We’re investigating Gordon El is. We know about his first wife. We know about his gambling debts.’

Keating doesn’t respond. He folds the paper and looks at the clock behind the bar.

Ruiz tries another approach. ‘You got children, Stan? I got two. A boy and a girl. Twins. They’re grown up now, but I stil worry about them. Joe here has two daughters. Stil young.

Gordon El is is a nonce. He preys on schoolgirls.’

Keating shifts slightly and reaches for a glass, finishing the dregs before placing it careful y down again.

He prods the amplifier into his neck again, aggressively this time. ‘Ah used to sing. Nothing professional, like, just around the piano in pubs and clubs. Ah’d warm up the crowd before the main act. Ah sung Dean Martin stuff and Bing Crosby. Do you remember Dean Martin?’

Ruiz nods.

‘That boy could croon, drunk or sober, but he preferred to be drunk.’

Keating pauses and takes a gurgling breath. His eyes meet mine in the mirror behind the bar. ‘Ah cannae sing nae more.’

‘Who did this to you?’

‘Go home. There’s nae point coming here.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

The statement hits a nerve and Keating’s nostrils quiver as he sucks in a breath. His ears are like cauliflowers pressed to his scalp.

‘Fuck you,’ he says, mouthing the words silently.

At that moment the door opens and a young woman appears wearing low-cut blue jeans, sockless trainers and a tight-fitting grey T-shirt that rides up to show a strip of smooth abdomen. Her hair is held back with a band and a toddler perches on her hip sucking on a biscuit.

‘Come on, Dad,’ she says. ‘I’m running late.’

Stan Keating folds his paper and turns on his bar stool, finding his feet. His daughter is gazing at Ruiz and me. A breath of concern clouds her eyes.

Keating points to the men’s room.

‘Hurry up then,’ she says.

He pushes through a door and disappears from view. The woman talks to Brenda behind the bar, consciously ignoring us.

‘Who did that to him?’ I ask.

She looks from my face to Ruiz and back again. ‘Are you coppers?’

‘I used to be,’ says Ruiz. ‘We’re trying to help your father.’

‘Let me guess - he won’t talk to you, so now you’re asking me?’

‘Has he ever mentioned someone cal ed Gordon El is?’

‘Never heard of him.’

She picks a sodden crumb of biscuit off her chest and wraps it in a tissue. Shifting the toddler on her opposite hip, she tucks the tissue into the tight pocket on her jeans. She’s not wearing a wedding ring.

‘How old is your little one?’ I ask.

She eyes me suspiciously. ‘Just gone two.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Tommy.’

‘Must be hard.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Being a single mum, looking after Tommy and keeping an eye on your dad. Does he live with you?’

‘Yeah.’ She’s anxious now. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m trying to help a girl who’s in a lot of trouble. She’s not much younger than you. Stil at school.’

‘What’s that got to do with us?’

‘Your dad went to col ect a debt from a man cal ed Gordon El is and that’s how he got hurt. We’re trying to find out who did it.’

The toddler is growing heavy in her arms. She sets him down, holding tight to his hand. Then she looks over my shoulder towards the men’s room.

‘My dad fought in the Falklands with the Paras. Battle of Goose Green.’

‘Second Battalion?’ asks Ruiz.

She nods. ‘They gave him a medal and a piece of paper. What good is that?’

‘He fought for his country.’

‘You know he never stops talking about it - the Falklands. Two months out of his whole friggin life and he can’t forget it. Doesn’t want to.’ She looks from face to face. ‘Sometimes I think he wishes he’d never come back.’

The door to the bathrooms swings open. Stan Keating nods goodbye to Brenda. The machine touches his neck and he looks at his daughter. ‘Let’s go.’

I talk to her urgently. ‘Gordon El is preys on underage girls. I’m trying to help one of them.’

‘That’s nothing to do with Dad.’

‘Who did this to him?’

She fingers a silver chain around her neck. ‘He’s never said.’

Keating is already out the door. Reaching down, she picks up her little boy whose hands go around her neck.

‘We heard it was an Irishman.’

She shrugs. ‘I wouldn’t know, but he cal s him something in his sleep.’

‘What?’

She draws two fingers down her cheeks leaving white lines that fade to pink on her smooth skin.

‘The Crying Man.’

26

Sitting in the departure lounge at Edinburgh Airport, I gaze out the terminal window where sheets of rain sweep across the tarmac. Men in yel ow rain jackets are walking beneath the fuselage of a jet, loading luggage and food trol eys.

My flight to Bristol leaves in forty minutes. Ruiz has to wait another hour to get to London.

‘You want one of these?’ he asks, offering me a boiled sweet from a round flat tin.

‘No, thanks.’

One of the lol ies rattles against the inside of his teeth. He tucks the tin into his jacket pocket. Some people have smel s and some have sounds. Ruiz rattles when he walks and creaks when he bends.

I tel Ruiz about going to the minicab office and seeing an Irishman with tattoos that looked like tears. The same man had been outside the restaurant when I had lunch with Julianne.

‘How does Gordon El is get protection from someone like that? He’s a secondary-school drama teacher, not a gangster.’

‘He’s a sexual predator.’

‘Yeah and nobody likes a nonce. Not even hardened crims can abide a kiddie fiddler. El is wouldn’t last a month inside. Someone would shank him in a meal queue or hang him from the bars.’

‘Maybe the Irishman doesn’t know he’s a nonce.’

I watch a jet land in a cloud of spray and recal a patient of mine who was so scared of flying she tried to open the door of the plane and jump out. It turned out that she wasn’t scared of flying (or crashing). She was claustrophobic. Sometimes the obvious answer fits perfectly, yet it’s stil wrong.

‘How is Julianne?’ asks Ruiz.

‘Fine.’

‘You’re stil talking?’

‘We are.’

‘You bumping ugly?’

‘She’s started seeing someone else. An architect.’

‘Is it serious?’

‘I don’t know.’

Silence settles around us and I begin thinking about Harry Veitch. When Julianne and I were together, we used to crack jokes about Harry and the way he always insisted on tasting the wine at restaurants, describing the tannins and bouquet. Maybe I was the one who told the jokes, but I’m sure Julianne smiled.

Then I think about last night with Annie Robinson. For years I couldn’t imagine getting up the courage to show my naked body to another woman. Now it’s happened and I don’t know how to feel.

I want to ask Ruiz if it gets any easier. Marriage. Separation. Possible divorce. He’s been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. At the same time I want to avoid the subject. Live in denial.

‘On the day she left me, Julianne said that I was sad; that I’d forgotten how to enjoy life. I looked at Coop today - how he’d stopped living after his daughter disappeared, how he’d given up - and I wondered if maybe Julianne was right about me.’

‘You’re not like Coop.’

‘I keep expecting things to go back to the way they were.’

‘It won’t happen. Take it from me.’

‘You don’t think she’l take me back?’

‘No, I’m saying it’l never be the same.’

‘You’re stil seeing Miranda.’

‘That’s not the same thing. She’s an ex-wife with benefits.’

‘Benefits?’

‘Perfect breasts and thighs that can crush a filing cabinet.’

I shake my head and laugh, which I shouldn’t because it wil only encourage him.

Instead he grows serious. ‘Do you know what makes a good detective, Prof? We’re the suspicious ones. We believe that everybody lies. Suspects. Witnesses. Victims. The innocent.

The guilty. The stupid. Unfortunately, the very thing that makes us good detectives makes us lousy husbands.

‘When I was married to Miranda, she put up with my moods and my late nights and my drinking, but I know she lay awake sometimes wondering what doors I was kicking down and what lay on the other side. Al she ever real y wanted was to have me walk through
her
door - safe and whole.

‘I think maybe she could have lived with the uncertainty if I didn’t leave a part of myself behind every time. We’d be at a restaurant, or a dinner party, or watching TV and she knew I was thinking about work. It got so bad that sometimes I didn’t want to go home. I used to make up excuses and stay in the office. That’s your problem, Joe - you can’t leave it behind.’

I want to argue with him. I want to remind him I no longer have a home to protect or pol ute, but Ruiz would just slap me around the head for being pessimistic and defeatist. It’s one of the things I’ve noticed about him since he retired - he’s become far more pragmatic. He can live with his regrets because one by one he has set them to rights or laid them to rest or made amends or accepted the things he cannot change. When you’ve been shot, stabbed and almost drowned, every day becomes a blessing, every birthday a celebration - life is a three-course meal occasional y seasoned with shit but stil edible. Ruiz has learned to fil his boots.

‘If you want my advice,’ he adds, ‘you need to keep getting laid.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s pretty self-explanatory.’

‘You think sex wil cure me?’

‘Sex is messy, sweaty, noisy, clumsy, exhausting and exhilarating, but even at its worst . . .’

He doesn’t finish the statement. Instead he looks at me closely. ‘So who is she?’

‘Who?’

‘Your bit on the side.’

I want to deny it, but he grins, showing me the boiled sweet between his teeth.

‘How did you know?’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘Is it written on my forehead?’

‘Something like that. Who is she?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘Suit yourself.’

We lapse into silence. I’m thinking of Annie Robinson. I can stil see the freckles on her shoulders and feel her breath on my face. One arm lay across my chest and her breasts were pressed against my ribs. I always feel empty after sex, sad and happy at the same time.

‘Hey, did I tel you,’ says Ruiz, ‘I heard a guy being interviewed the other night on one of those sex-therapy shows. The interviewer asked him to describe in one word the worst blowjob he ever had. You know what he said?’

‘What?’

‘Fabulous.’

Ruiz’s face splits into a mess of wrinkles and his eyes glitter. We’re laughing again. He’s happy now.

Wind buffets the plane as it takes off and rises above the clouds. Rain silently streaks the windows.

By the time I get home it’s after nine. The house is dark. Quiet. Opening the front door, I turn on the hal light and walk through to the kitchen expecting to hear Gunsmoke thumping his tail against the door.

He must be in the laundry. Perhaps he didn’t hear me. Opening the back door, I cal his name. He doesn’t come bounding down the path, licking at my hands. The old rubber mattress he uses is unoccupied.

Retrieving a torch from the laundry, I search the yard. Maybe he dug a hole beneath the fence or somebody could have opened the back gate. When he was a puppy he got out of the yard and went missing for a day. One of the neighbours found him sitting by the bus stop, waiting for Charlie to get home from school. He must have fol owed her scent.

A noise. I stop moving and listen. It’s a soft whimpering sound from the direction of the compost bin. The torch beam sweeps cautiously across the ground and picks out something shiny in the grass. My fingers close around it - the tag from Gunsmoke’s col ar.

I cal his name. The whimpering grows louder.