Bleed for Me (28 page)

‘Please stop.’

‘I bet he asked about your boyfriends. Teased you. “If only I were twenty years younger . . . ” He said you were beautiful. He made you
feel
beautiful. You weren’t just another student and he wasn’t just another teacher. It was more than that. He didn’t treat you like a child. And when he put his hands on your shoulders, or whispered something in your ear, your heart was beating faster than a kitten’s.’

Sienna won’t look at me now. Head bowed, I can see only the top of her scalp and faint traces of dandruff along the parting.

‘He was grooming you, Sienna. He knew you were vulnerable.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she groans.

‘You went to his house to babysit and you saw him with Natasha and Bil y. He drew you into the warmth of his family and you saw how close they were. You envied what they had. You wanted to be just like Natasha.’

Her head rocks from side to side in denial.

‘And then one night Gordon kissed you and held you and told you how much he loved you, but it had to be a secret. Nobody could know. Not yet. Not ever. His face was close and his lips were pushing against yours. His tongue was there, lapping at the space between your teeth. He didn’t want sex. He took things slowly, touched you, praised you, his breath in your ear. “You want this. You need this. You’l like this. Nobody understands what we have . . . Let me show you how special you are to me. And you can show me how special I am to you.”’

A tear lands on Sienna’s clasped hands. It hovers on her knuckles and then slides between her fingers.

‘Afterwards you felt ashamed and embarrassed, but Gordon made you feel as though you were being prudish and uptight. When you didn’t want to do it again, he got cold and sarcastic, but then he apologised. “You don’t understand how much I love you,” he said. “How I’d die if you stopped loving me.”’

Another tear slides down her cheek.

‘Soon you were meeting him after school and on weekends. Sometimes you stayed the night when you babysat and he would sneak into your room. Did he ever take you away?’

She gives a slight nod of the head.

‘But you had to be careful. There could be no notes or text messages or phone cal s. You always spoke face to face and you were careful not to be seen alone. You met him that Tuesday afternoon? Where did he take you?’

‘I can’t tel you.’

‘Why?’

‘He’l punish me.’

‘He can’t reach you.’

She lifts her head. Eyes on mine. Flecks of gold in the brown.

‘He can
always
reach me.’

The drive home is through a water-streaked windscreen beneath a sky that looks like torn wal paper. The wipers slap open and closed. Red tail lights flare and fade ahead of me. My Volvo has been repaired but looks like its been coupled together in a breaker’s yard and customised with knocks, bangs and squeaks.

The radio playing: news on the hour.

A false rape allegation made by a teenage girl could have triggered a firebombing in which a family of asylum seekers died, a court was told today. A teenage girl claimed to
have been abducted and sexually assaulted by four Ukrainian men, but later admitted having made up the story because she was frightened of getting into trouble from her parents
for staying out late.

The prosecution alleges that the firebombing of a Bristol boarding house was a payback attack for the alleged rape. Five people died, all members of the same family, including
three sisters aged four, six and eleven. The lone survivor, Marco Kostin, jumped to safety from a second-floor window.

Stacey Dobson, aged seventeen, gave evidence that she’d spent the previous afternoon and evening with Marco Kostin, but later made up a story of being dragged into a van
and sexually assaulted by four asylum seekers. Several men, including Marco Kostin, were arrested but subsequently released without charge.

Twenty-four hours later, Marco Kostin’s house was firebombed while he and his family slept. Three men, including British National Party candidate Novak Brennan, have pleaded
not guilty to charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder with the intent to endanger life.

Brennan allegedly drove the van used in the attack and was later seen celebrating at a bar where one of his co-accused boasted he had been to a ‘Russian barbecue’.

Parking beneath a dripping oak, I run to the door of the terrace, dodging puddles and sheltering beneath my coat. The key turns and the door opens. Even before I step across the threshold I sense a change. It’s not so much a foreign smel as a variation in the air temperature or the pressure. Perhaps I left a window open upstairs. Maybe I’m disconcerted because Gunsmoke isn’t outside, thumping his tail against the back door.

Gently, I place my wal et and car keys on a side table and glance along the passage to the kitchen. There are two doors off to the left. The first opens into the lounge. Nudging it with my foot, I reach for the light switch. Nothing is moved, missing or disrupted.

The gas fireplace has a decorative poker on a brass stand. I pick up the polished brass bar and weigh it in my hand. Backing into the hal way, I move to the next door, the dining room.

Empty.

Again I pause and listen.

Edging along the hal way, I approach the kitchen. Through the window I can see the vague outline of the trees in the garden and the edge of an eighteenth-century brick mil house next door. A flash of lightning fil s in the details. The sink, the kitchen table, three chairs . . . Why not four?

‘Come on in, Professor, it’s just me,’ says a voice. Gordon El is has been sitting in darkness. He rises to his feet and swivels to face me. ‘The door was unlocked. Hope you don’t mind.’

I’m stil holding the poker in my hand. ‘I didn’t leave the door unlocked.’

‘My mistake,’ he says. ‘I found the key under a rock. I’d be more careful about where I hid it next time.’

He’s wearing denim jeans and a dark shirt with faint traces of dandruff or powder on the front. A carmine-coloured scratch weeps on his right cheek, below a bruise. El is sniffs and rubs his nose with the palm of his hand. I can see the dilation in his pupils, which are working hard to retain the light.

‘What were you going to do with that?’ he asks, motioning to the poker.

‘Wrap it around your head.’

‘I didn’t take you for a violent man.’

‘You’re trespassing.’

His lazy half-smile slowly widens. ‘Do I frighten you?’

‘No.’

‘It’s al right to be afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid.’

Moving slowly, he carries his chair to the table. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not very polite.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to stop harassing my wife.’

‘I asked her some questions.’

‘You were out of order. I don’t want you going near her again.’

‘Does she know about Sienna Hegarty?’

El is closes his eyes as though meditating. ‘What’s that young girl been saying?’

‘That you were having sex with her.’

‘She’s lying.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘She’s embarrassed and she’s angry. She tried to kiss me one night after she babysat my boy. I pushed her away and spoke to her harshly. Maybe I hurt her feelings.’

‘That’s not what Sienna says.’

‘Like I said, she’s lying.’

He’s a cocky bastard. I want to wipe the smug grin off his face.

‘You once told me that teaching was a process of seduction. You seduced your students into learning. You seduced Sienna into bed.’

‘No.’

‘She was special to you.’

‘Al my students are special.’

‘Yes, but some are more precious than others. Every once in a while, a girl emerges from the pack and you take a special interest in her. She’s not the best or the brightest or the most beautiful - but she has something that makes her attractive to you. Some weakness you can exploit or an arrogance you want to punish.’

El is shakes his head. ‘It’s her crush, not mine.’

‘I bet you can remember the first time you saw Sienna. You noticed her from a distance at first - coming through the gates or walking in the corridor. She stood out from the other girls.

She was confident. Highly sexualised. Flirtatious. At the same time there was something vulnerable about her. Damaged. You thought maybe she was being abused at home or bul ied at school. You recognised her potential as a plaything.’

‘I recognised her potential as a drama student.’

‘Sienna didn’t even realise that she was being seductive. Young girls often don’t. They pretend. They practise. They make mistakes.’

‘I nurtured her. I know the boundaries.’

‘That’s right. You kept tel ing yourself that you were just doing your job. Pastoral care is so important. She talked about her problems at home . . . the unwanted attentions of her father.

You comforted her. Patted her knee. Squeezed her hand.’

El is bristles. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

‘You began finding ways of getting her alone - isolating her somewhere quiet, somewhere private, somewhere you could show her how much you cared, how you understood, how you wanted to protect her.’

‘You’re sick!’

‘You told her she was beautiful. She believed you.’

‘She’s lying. There isn’t one shred of evidence to support her story.’

‘At first I couldn’t understand how you managed to keep it a secret. And then I remembered seeing you criticise Sienna during the rehearsal. That’s how you removed suspicion - you picked on her, you punished her and she played along.’

‘You’re a pervert!’

‘Oh, I’m not the sick one, Gordon. I know al about you. I know
how
you did it. I know
why
you did it. You were the fat, four-eyed kid at school, who got teased and bul ied and ridiculed.

There’s one in every playground. What did they cal you? Lard-arse? Butterbal ? How much toilet water did you swal ow, Gordon? How many people laughed at you?’

El is is no longer sitting. He’s an inch tal er than I am. Younger. Fitter.

‘I bet there was
one
girl at school who didn’t laugh at you. She was nice. Friendly. Pretty. She didn’t tease you. She didn’t cal you names.’

‘Shut up!’

‘You real y liked her, Gordon. And you thought she might like you.’

El is takes a step out of the shadows into the half-light spil ing from the hal . ‘I told you to shut up!’

‘One day you decided to tel her how you felt; ask her to be your girlfriend. Did you write her a note or send her a Valentine? Then what happened? She laughed. She told the others.

She joined in the tormenting.’

El is rocks forward, his neck bulging and fists clenched.

‘That’s why you target the nice girls, Gordon, the popular ones, the princesses. You’re preying on the girls who wouldn’t look at you at school when you were overweight and short-sighted - the ones who laughed the loudest. You want to punish them. You want to tear them apart. Living things. Young things. I know about your first wife. I know what you did to her. That scratch on your cheek - did Natasha get angry with you? Did she accuse you of seducing another schoolgirl? She should know—’

‘Don’t talk about my wife!’

‘Sienna was pregnant. She was carrying the evidence inside her - the proof. That’s why you tried to kil her.’

His eyes lock on to mine. Ropes of spittle are draining from the corners of his mouth.

‘You’re not very good at this, are you?’ he says, laughing drily.

‘This is not a game.’

His eyes leave mine momentarily and focus on the fire poker in my fist. His nostrils flare and partly close.

‘You want to know?’ he whispers, chal enging me. ‘You
really
want to know?’

‘Yes.’

A strange twisted light appears in his eyes.

‘Yeah, I fucked her. I fucked her every which way, in her pussy, in her arse.’ He steps closer. ‘And guess what, Joe? I fucked your little darling. Charlie was begging for it and I made her bleed. She was moaning under me, saying, “Fuck me harder, Gordon, fuck me harder.”’

What happened next is something that I can’t explain. My vision blurs and the room swims. My fist is holding the poker, which swings savagely, backstroking El is across the side of the head. The back of my hand scrapes against his unshaven skin and his mouth leaves a streak of saliva across my knuckles.

His head snaps sideways and I hit him again from the right, sending him down. El is tries to curl into a bal but I beat his arms and his spine and his kneecaps and shins. With each blow I can feel the metal bar reverberating in my fist, sinking al the way to his bones.

‘This is for Charlie,’ I yel , ‘and this is for my dog!’

He raises his head from the floor and gazes at me uncertainly.

The poker clatters to the floor. Lifting El is by the front of his shirt, I drop him to a sitting position on a chair. His bladder has opened on the floor. My hand is streaked with his blood.

Instead of cowering, he turns his face to mine. Through bloody teeth, he grins. ‘How do you feel?’

I don’t answer him.

He says it again. ‘I fucked your princess, how do you feel?’

I knot my fist in his hair and wrench back his head.

‘I don’t believe you.’

He smiles. ‘Yeah, you do.’

30

The holding cel reeks of vomit and urine and sweat. It’s a smel that can instantly transport me back to another place and time - a different police cel scrawled with comparable pictures of genitalia and profanities aimed at the police and homosexuals.

Sitting on a wooden bench, I lean my head against the wal , listening to doors clanging, toilets flushing and inmates either sobering up or kicking off incoherently down the corridor.

My skin feels dead to the touch and my chest aches as though I’m breathing into lungs ful of wet cotton. Opening and closing my right hand, I wonder if anything is broken.

A drunk is sleeping on the bench opposite. He stole my blanket and tucked it beneath his head, but I’m not going to fight. Now he’s snoring, ending each breath with a long raspberry fluttering of his lips.