‘Are we talking about Sugar Ray Hegarty?’ asks Ruiz. ‘Worked out of Bristol CID?’
‘You knew him?’
‘We helped each other out once or twice.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Old school.’
‘Fair?’
‘And hard.’
Ruiz gazes into his pint, as if saying a silent prayer. ‘Typical, isn’t it? You survive a career like his and all the terrible shit happens after you’re out. I remember his daughter getting crippled by that sadistic fuck - what was his name?’
‘Liam Baker.’
‘Yeah, him.’
Ruiz wants to know the details of Ray Hegarty’s death, taking down correct spellings and looking for inconsistencies. Sienna’s laptop is missing and her room had been searched.
‘Anything else taken in the house?’
‘Nothing.’
I can see his mind working. What could a teenage girl have on her computer that was worth stealing?
‘What about the son?’
‘Lance didn’t get on with his father, they were always fighting, but I don’t think he could have done this.’
‘Why?’
‘Cutting someone’s throat is personal. It’s hands-on. It takes courage. Anger. Lance was frightened of his old man.’
Ruiz nods.
‘You might want to take a look at a school teacher: Gordon Ellis.’
‘What’s his story?’
‘He teaches music and drama at a secondary school. Lives locally. Married. One child. I think Sienna confided in him; she might have told him about the abuse, but when I mentioned his name, she clammed up and wouldn’t talk about him.’
‘You hit a raw nerve?’
‘It might be nothing. About ten days before the murder, Ray Hegarty had an argument outside his house with someone who dropped Sienna home. The police haven’t been able to ID the driver, but it could have been Gordon Ellis. Sienna used to babysit for Ellis and according to Helen Hegarty, Ray saw the two of them kissing. Sienna denied it, but Hegarty made a complaint to the school. I don’t know if the two events are related, but Gordon Ellis has since accused Sienna of harassing him with phone calls.’
Ruiz pats his pockets and his coat rattles. He used to be a smoker, but now he sucks on boiled sweets that will rot his teeth instead of his lungs.
‘Who’s heading the investigation?’
‘Ronnie Cray.’
‘She still rolling her own tampons?’
Political correctness is not one of Ruiz’s strong suits. He once told me that being politically correct was like pretending you could pick up a dog turd by the clean end.
‘I thought you weren’t going to help the police out any more,’ he says.
‘This is different.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Sienna Hegarty is Charlie’s best friend.’
Ruiz nods and leans back as our meals arrive. Tucking a paper serviette into his collar, he rubs his knife and fork together and tucks in. As he chews he mulls over the information.
‘So I’ll run a few checks. See what I can find out.’ Then he puts on a West Country accent. ‘Maybe I’ll drive down your way and spend a few days in your neck of the woods.’
‘I’ll tell all the single women in town what a stud you are.’
‘I believe that memo has already been sent.’
The rest of our lunch is spent swapping stories of family and trying to outdo each other in the dysfunctional relatives stakes. In truth, whenever I talk to Ruiz I don’t feel so badly about my own parents. His mother suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. The only thing she remembers with any clarity is the war and every embarrassing detail of Ruiz’s childhood, which she repeats in a megaphone voice whenever he visits her.
‘Do our children talk about us like this?’ he asks.
‘Probably.’
My mobile is vibrating. I pull it out and stare at the screen, not recognising the number.
‘Professor O’Loughlin?’
‘Yes.’
‘You might remember me - Dr Martinez. I treated Sienna Hegarty when they brought her into hospital.’
A pause. In the background I can hear the sound of the hospital PA system.
‘You asked me about a rape test and I said I couldn’t perform one without her parents’ permission.’
‘Yes.’
‘There was evidence of rough sex, which might have been rape. And there’s something else. She miscarried.’
The statement fizzes inside my brain like an aspirin disappearing in a glass of water.
Dr Martinez continues, ‘She must have lost the foetus on the night she came in.’
‘How many weeks was she?’ I can’t recognise my own voice.
‘I ran a blood pregnancy test for levels of hCG. The hormone level doubles every two days for four weeks after conception. Given her levels and the amount of blood we found on her clothes, I’d say she was in her first trimester - at least four weeks, no more than ten.’
He stops talking. The silence stretches out.
‘Are you still there?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing, but since you’d asked . . .’
‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’
He’s about to hang up when something occurs to me. ‘Would she have known?’ I ask.
‘She was late. Most women know their cycles.’
There was no evidence of a pregnancy test found at the house, but Sienna would most likely have destroyed the test kit.
Closing the phone, I stare at the screen as the light fades. Ruiz is watching me from the opposite side of the table.
‘She was pregnant,’ I whisper. ‘She miscarried on the night of the murder.’
‘Can they do a paternity test?’
‘Not without the foetus.’
17
Just south of Reading, I pull into a motorway service centre and park among the long-haul trucks and tourist coaches. Hiking across the parking lot, I enter a brightly lit lobby full of fast-food outlets and shops.
The men’s room is cavernous but I still have to queue for a urinal. The men around me are truckers in plaid shirts or football strips hung over beer guts. One of them hauls up his jeans and saunters off like a man who has marked his territory.
My left hand is trembling. My bladder won’t do as it’s told. I stand and stare at the wall. Someone has scrawled a message in marker pen above the urinaclass="underline" ‘Express Lane: five beers or less.’
Nothing is happening. The queue is getting longer.
‘Are you gonna piss or just piss me off ?’ says a trucker with a wallet chained to his belt.
‘I’m sorry. I won’t be a moment.’
He grunts and says something to the person next to him. They laugh. It’s not going to happen now. That’s one of the problems with my medication. I used to piss like a racehorse. Now I squirt and dribble.
Outside the restroom I put in a call to Trinity Road Police Station. Ronnie Cray is in a meeting. Monk answers her phone. Certain people don’t match their voices, but Monk’s comes from deep in his chest and seems to rumble down the line as if he’s standing in a tunnel.
‘Danny Gardiner?’
‘What about him?’
‘Did you interview him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sienna was pregnant.’
I can hear Monk exhale slowly.
‘The boss isn’t here.’
‘Can you take me?’
Monk hesitates momentarily. We’ll meet at Danny Gardiner’s house.
I have the rest of the journey to consider the implications of Sienna’s pregnancy. I think back to the afternoon I collected her and Charlie from school. Sienna had seemed distracted and upset. I thought she was annoyed about the rehearsal and being made to stay behind. Even so, she skipped into her boyfriend’s arms, kissing his lips, sliding her hand down his back.