Bleed for Me (45 page)

As I get older, friendships become harder to cultivate. I don’t know why that is. Perhaps by middle age most people have enough friends. We have a quota and when it’s fil ed we have to wait for someone to die or retire to get on the list.

Glancing at his watch Ruiz suggests it might be ‘beer o’clock’. He waits while I shower and change before we walk as far as the Fox and Badger where I leave him with his elbows on the bar, gazing at a pint of Guinness turning from a muddy white to a dark brown.

Emma is due out of school. Standing on my own I watch the mothers and grandmothers arrive.

‘Bil y wasn’t at school today,’ says Emma, when she fal s into step beside me. ‘I think he was sick.’ Then she adds, ‘I think I should be al owed more sick days, otherwise it isn’t fair.’

‘You shouldn’t
want
to be sick.’

‘I don’t want to be sick. I just want the sick days.’

Charlie gets home just after four. She doesn’t mention Gordon El is but I know his arrest must have been texted, tweeted and talked about at school. She makes herself toast and jam for afternoon tea.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘You want to talk about anything?’

‘Nope.’

‘Are you sure?’

She rol s her eyes and goes upstairs.

At six o’clock I walk the girls down to the cottage. Julianne is home. She’s showered and changed and is cooking dinner. Her wet hair hangs out over her dressing gown.

‘I saw you today,’ she says. ‘What was Sienna doing in court?’

I don’t know how much I should tel her. Nothing is probably safest.

‘Ronnie Cray wanted to show her something.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t real y tel you.’

Julianne gives me one of her looks. It reminds me of how much she hates secrets. Then she shakes it off, refusing to let me spoil her good mood.

‘Wel , my job is done,’ she says, sounding pleased. ‘Marco finished testifying. He was amazing. They threw everything at him. They tried to confuse him and trick him and say he was lying. It was horrible. I hope the jury saw it. I hope they
hated
that lawyer for what he did.’

‘He was doing his job.’

‘Don’t defend him, Joe. I know you’re a pragmatist, but don’t defend someone like that.’

She takes Emma’s schoolbag from me. I’m standing in the kitchen, which seems to lurch suddenly and I stagger sideways. Julianne grabs me and I straighten.

‘Are you al right?’

‘I’m fine. I haven’t slept.’

Mr Parkinson is shape-shifting on me, messing up my reactions to the medications. The segues between being ‘on’ and ‘off’ my meds have become shorter.

Julianne makes me sit down and begins scolding me about not taking care of myself. At the same time she fil s the kettle and makes me a cup of tea.

Wanting to change the subject, I tel her about Annie Robinson, keeping one eye on the stairs in case Charlie overhears me. At six o’clock we turn on the TV to watch Gordon El is answering questions on the steps of Trinity Road.

‘I can’t believe he real y did it,’ says Julianne. ‘And I let Charlie babysit for him.’

‘You weren’t to know.’

She shivers slightly and her shoulder brushes mine.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I ask.

‘What’s that?’

‘Judge Spencer - what’s he been like?’

She looks at me oddly. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘Do you think he’s favouring one side or the other?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s just a question.’

She studies me momentarily, knowing that I’m holding something back.

‘He’s a grumpy old sod, but he seems pretty fair. He’s very nice to the jury. I think he feels sorry for them. It’s a pretty horrible case . . . seeing those photographs of burnt bodies.’

‘Has he disal owed any evidence?’

‘I don’t get to hear the legal arguments.’

‘What happens now?’

‘The prosecution has finished. The defence begins cal ing witnesses tomorrow.’ Julianne turns down the volume. ‘I just hope they get found guilty and Marco can get on with the rest of his life.’

‘What is he going to do?’

‘He wants to go to London. Friends have offered to put him up and help find him a job. He’s applied for university but that’s not until the autumn.’

For a few moments we sit in silence. Julianne picks at lint from the sleeve of her sweater.

‘Would you like to have dinner with us?’ she asks. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer to go home and sleep?’

‘No.’

She stands and pirouettes away from me before I try to read anything into the invitation. Summoning the girls, she serves dinner and we sit together at the table like a proper family, or like proper families in TV commercials for Bisto and frozen vegetables. It feels familiar. The familiar is what I crave.

It cannot last, of course. Charlie has homework. Emma has bedtime. Julianne says I can read Emma a story but I fal asleep halfway through it. An hour later, Julianne shakes me awake, holding her finger to my lips.

The dishwasher is humming as I come downstairs. The TV turned down low.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about the divorce,’ I say.

Julianne closes her eyes and opens them again, looking in an entirely different direction. She elevates her face. ‘And?’

‘I think
you
think it’s going to change things, but you don’t get rid of baggage, you take more on.’

‘You might be right.’ She doesn’t want an argument.

‘Do you want to remarry?’

‘No.’

‘So why?’

‘I don’t feel married any more.’

‘I do.’

Julianne pushes bracelets up her forearm. ‘Do you know your problem, Joe?’

I know she’s going to tel me.

‘You want everything to
seem
perfect and to
seem
happy and you’re wil ing to let “seem” equal “be”.’

Her admonishment is intimate and so laced with melancholy it leaves me nothing to say.

‘You don’t have to go home,’ she says. ‘You can sleep on the sofa.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re exhausted and some nights I get a little scared on my own.’

‘Scared?’

She slips her hand down my forearm and hooks her fingers under my palm. ‘I can have bad dreams too.’

My head is vibrating. The sensation comes and goes every few seconds. Opening my eyes, it takes me a moment to recognise my surroundings. I am on the sofa in the cottage.

I remember Julianne giving me a pil ow and blankets, watching the news and feeling a sense of helplessness. Problems in Gaza, global warming, the credit crisis, ozone holes, soaring unemployment, casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .

I don’t remember turning off the TV or the hal way light. Julianne must have decided not to wake me. I
do
remember dreaming of Annie Robinson’s breasts encased in a lace bra.

The vibrations begin again. My mobile phone is wedged between my head and the armrest of the sofa.

I press green. It’s Ronnie Cray.

‘Where are you?’

‘What is it?’

‘El is is on the move.’

My mind is issuing orders. My feet take a little longer to obey. Navigating through the darkened house, splashing water on my face, lacing my shoes. Suddenly, al thumbs, I can’t make the loops and knot the laces.

Julianne appears at the top of the stairs in a thin cotton night-dress. The light behind her paints her body in a silhouette that would make a bishop break his vows.

‘What is it?’ she asks.

‘Go back to bed. I have to go.’

‘This is what I don’t like, Joe.’

‘I know.’

Two unmarked police cars are waiting outside. Monk holds open a rear door. Ronnie Cray is inside, talking on her mobile. She hasn’t been to sleep since yesterday.

We travel in silence along Wel ow Road towards Radstock and then take a series of B-roads heading west. Kieran the tech is sitting in the front passenger seat, fiddling with an earpiece and tapping on a keyboard. The surveil ance vehicles are colour-coded dots on a satel ite map displayed on a laptop screen.

Safari Roy over the two-way: ‘Mobile One: We’re two back, keeping visual. He’s indicating right . . . turning on to the B3135.’

‘Copy that.’

Another voice: ‘Mobile Three: I’m two miles ahead on the A39. I can take over at Green Ore.’

Sunrise is an hour away. Cray looks at her watch. ‘How soon can we get a chopper in the air?’

‘Forty minutes,’ says Kieran.

We push on through the ink-dark night, listening to the radio chatter and watching the grid lights of larger towns that dot the landscape. Stil heading roughly west, we pass through Cheddar and Axbridge and dozens of smal vil ages that appear and disappear, each looking the same.

Gordon El is is heading for the North Somerset coast. Every so often he pul s over and waits or doubles back for several miles before turning and resuming his journey. He’s making sure that he’s not being fol owed, perhaps checking number plates. Safari Roy gets worried and drops back further. A tracking device on the Ford Focus wil keep us in touch as long as El is stays with the vehicle.

The eastern horizon is now a yel ow slash and the treetops on the high ground are changing colour. The helicopter is in the air but stil half an hour away. It’s another cal -sign in the chorus of chatter and static on the radio.

El is seems to be slowing down, stil turning at every roundabout and doubling back. He’s on the A38, passing under the M5. At the next roundabout he takes the second exit on to Bridgewater Road and after half a mile turns left towards Berrow and the coast. The landscape is flat and windswept, broken only by occasional vil ages and the Mendip Hil s in the south.

Kieran points to a satel ite image that shows clusters of white boxes along a six-mile beach stretching from Burnham-on-Sea to Brean Down. Caravan sites, chalet parks and holiday cabins are like miniature communities set out in grid pattern with narrow tarmac roads dividing the squares.

The tailing cars are al within a mile of each other as we fol ow the Coast Road through smal vil ages touched now by a morning sun that paints the cottages in pastel colours and turns fields a brighter green.

There are caravan parks on both sides of the road, along the beachfront and spread in neat rows across fields that were once farmland. Some of the caravans have smal gardens, washing lines and faded awnings. Others look closed up and packed away for the winter.

‘Is there a fairground near any of them?’ asks Cray.

‘Brean Leisure Park.’ Kieran points to the satel ite image on screen, which shows up as a series of circles, spiders and snake-like rides, flattened of perspective by the angle of the camera.

The green dot on the screen continues along the Coast Road for another five hundred yards before turning left into a shopping centre. El is slowly circles the deserted car park and pul s up near a pathway leading from the shops to the beach.

He waits, sitting behind the wheel, watching the entrance. A motorbike passes and disappears along the road. One of ours. The other surveil ance teams are hanging back.

The sun has risen above a torn ridge of clouds, bleaching the whitecaps. We’ve stopped moving and parked at the entrance to the fairground, where the rides are tethered and silent. I can hear flags and canvas beating out a rhythm in the breeze.

Minutes pass. The engine ticks over. Cray’s nerves are like guitar strings. I want to ask her about the court case. What did she decide to do? It’s not a subject we can talk about openly.

A woman is walking towards us with her dog. She has tight pink leggings and a mass of dyed black hair that matches the colour of her poodle. Crossing the road, she looks at us suspiciously.

Safari Roy on radio:

‘Target’s moving. He’s out of the car. Taking something from the boot . . . It’s a petrol container. He’s on foot.’

‘Where?’

‘Heading down the beach track.’

‘Stay put. He could double back.’

‘Mobile Two: I have visual contact.’

‘Don’t get too close.’

Cray is sick of looking at dots on a screen. She wants to be outside, on foot, closer.

‘Mobile One: Target’s on the beach.’

‘Mobile Two: I’ve lost visual . . . no, I see him again.’

‘Copy that.’

‘Mobile Three: I’m staying at the car.’

‘Where’s the chopper?’ asks Cray.

Kieran answers, ‘Eight minutes away.’

‘You stil with him, Roy?’

‘I got him.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s cutting over the dunes, back towards the road. You should see him in about ten . . . five . . .’

‘Mobile Two: He’s walking between ’vans.’

Cray over the radio: ‘Nobody move until he identifies the van.’ Then she taps Monk on the shoulder. ‘Get us closer.’

Pul ing on to the Coast Road, we travel a hundred yards and turn into a driveway. The other cars are closing in, sealing off the entrances to the caravan park. I catch a brief glimpse of El is about sixty yards away, walking between caravans. A hooded sweatshirt covers his head. One hand is in the pocket of his dark jeans. The other holds an orange petrol container.

He stops, crouching on his haunches, scanning the park, but his gaze returns to a particular ’van.

Cray has an earpiece nestled in the shel of her ear. ‘Wait for my word.’

I can feel the tightness in my scalp . . . in my bladder. Cray is out of the car, making a scuttling dash to a low brick wal . She peers over the top.

For ten minutes nobody moves. I keep trying to fit Sienna’s recol ections into the real world. She could see the canopy of a merry-go-round, yet the leisure park is a hundred yards away.

El is straightens and reaches into his pocket. Something’s wrong. It’s too easy.

‘It’s not the van,’ I whisper to Cray.

She looks at me.

‘It’s not in the right place. Sienna’s statement.’

‘Maybe he moved it.’

‘Or he knows you’re here.’

‘Bul shit! We were careful.’

‘Sienna didn’t see Bil y that night she woke. El is could have a second van. He’s going to lead you to the wrong one.’

The DCI is staring at me. ‘I can’t let him get inside. What if he has a weapon? I can’t risk a siege situation.’