Bleed For Me

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 yellow rain jackets are walking beneath the fuselage of a jet, loading luggage and food trolleys.

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 lollies rattles against the inside of his teeth. He tucks the tin into his jacket pocket. Some people have smells and some have sounds. Ruiz rattles when he walks and creaks when he bends.

I tell 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 Ellis 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. Ellis 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 recall 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 still wrong.

‘How is Julianne?’ asks Ruiz.

‘Fine.’

‘You’re still 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’ll take me back?’

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

‘You’re still 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 will 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. All she ever really 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 pollute, 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 occasionally seasoned with shit but still edible. Ruiz has learned to fill 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 will 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 still 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 tell 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 hall 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 call 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 followed 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 collar.

I call his name. The whimpering grows louder.

I see him then. His front legs are hog-tied and his neck is pinned to the tree by an arrow that sticks out at a right angle. Torchlight gleams on his matted fur, slick with blood.

His head lolls forward. Instead of eyes he has weeping wounds. Acid or household cleaner has been poured across his face, dissolving fur and flesh, blinding him permanently.

Dropping to my knees, I put my arm around his neck, cradling his head, trying to take pressure off the arrow which is holding his body upright. How in God’s name is he still alive?

He swings his head to the left and licks my neck. A groan deep inside reveals how much he must be hurting.

Gunsmoke, my dog, my walking companion, my housemate, my hopeless guard dog . . . Why would someone want to hurt him?

Leaving him for a few moments, I go to the shed and pull out a hacksaw from the box beneath the bench. Gently, I put my hand between the Labrador’s body and the tree, feeling for the arrow. Then I use the hacksaw to cut through the shaft.

Wrapping Gunsmoke in a blanket, I carry him through the house to the car.

What car? The Volvo is still at the workshop.

On the verge of tears, I sit on the front step with the Labrador’s head on my lap. Fumbling for my mobile, I call directory enquiries and ask for an animal hospital. The nearest one is in Upper Wells Way, about three miles away. I count the rings and then it clicks to an answering machine - a recorded message gives the business hours and an emergency number.

I don’t have a pen. I repeat the number to myself, trying not to forget it.

I hear it ringing. A woman answers.

‘I need your help. Someone shot my dog.’

‘Shot him?’

‘With an arrow.’

‘Hold on, I’ll get my husband.’

I can hear her calling to him and he shouts back. Under my breath I’m whispering, ‘Please hurry. Please hurry. Please hurry.’

‘This is Dr Bradley. Can I help you?’

I try to speak too quickly and start choking on a ball of saliva that’s gone down the wrong way. I’m coughing in his ear.

‘Is there a problem?’ he asks again.

‘The problem is someone tortured my dog and shot him through the neck with an arrow.’

Questions need answering. Where is the arrow now? How much blood has he lost? Is he conscious? Are his eyes fixed and dilated?

‘I can’t see his eyes. They poured something caustic into them. He’s blind.’

The vet falls silent.

‘Are you still there?’

‘What’s your address?’

Dr Bradley is on his way. I lean my head back on the door and wait, feeling for Gunsmoke’s heartbeat. Slow. Unsteady. He’s in so much pain. I should put him down, end his misery. How? I couldn’t . . .

Growing up I was never allowed to have a dog. I was away at boarding school most of the time so my parents couldn’t see the point. I remember one summer finding a Jack Russell cross trapped on a ledge above the incoming tide. We’d rented a house near Great Ormes Head, overlooking Penrhyn Bay, and after lunch one day my sisters took me for a walk to the lighthouse.

I ran on ahead because they were always stopping to pick wild-flowers or to look at the ships. I heard the dog before I saw it. I lay on my stomach and peered over the edge of Great Orme, holding on to clumps of grass in my fists. Foaming white water spilled over jagged rocks, swirling into the crevices and evacuating them again. Grassy banks divided the crumbling rock tiers, which dropped at irregular intervals to a narrow shingle beach. On one of the lower tiers, I noticed a small dog, huddled on a ledge about twenty feet above the waves. He had a white face with black markings like a pirate patch over one eye.

I ran back to the holiday house. My father, God’s-Personal-Physician-in-Waiting was enjoying an afternoon siesta, sleeping beneath The Times on a hammock in the garden. He didn’t appreciate being woken, but came grudgingly. My pleas for him to hurry washed over him like water.

The girls had gathered on the headland, talking over each other and offering advice until my father bellowed at everyone to be quiet while he tried to think.

Tow-ropes were collected from the garage and a harness fashioned from an old pair of trousers. I was the lightest. I was to go down the slope. My father wrapped the rope around his waist and sat with his back to the headland, bracing his legs apart, digging in his heels.

‘Go down slowly,’ he said, motioning me onwards.

It wasn’t the thought of falling that scared me. I knew he wouldn’t let go. I was more worried about the dog. Would it bite me? Would it squirm out of my arms and fall into the waves?

The Jack Russell did none of these things. I could feel it shivering as I opened the buttons of my shirt and pushed it inside. I yelled out and felt the pressure on my waist. The rope dragged me upwards while I clung to tufts of grass and used rocks as footholds.

The Jack Russell was soon tearing around our garden, chasing after ribbons and balls. I wanted to keep him. I figured I’d earned the right. But my father sent two of my older sisters into Llandudno where they put up notices in the cafés and at the supermarket and the post office.

Two days later an old woman came and collected her dog, whose name was Rupert. By then, emotionally if not technically, he belonged to me. She offered a reward - ten pounds - but my father said it wasn’t necessary.

The woman drove away with Rupert and later she left a bag of turnips and a marrow on our doorstep. I hated turnips. Still do. But my father made a big point of me eating them. ‘You earned them,’ he said. ‘It’s your reward.’

Gunsmoke’s head has dropped off my lap. His tongue touches my hand but he doesn’t have the strength to lick it.

A van pulls into Station Street, moving slowly as it searches for a house number. The name of the pet hospital is painted on the side, beneath a cartoon dog with a bandaged head and a paw in a sling.

Dr Bradley opens the rear doors. Grabs his bag. The sight of Gunsmoke catches him by surprise. Something else in his eyes: uncertainty.

He crouches next to me, puts a stethoscope on Gunsmoke’s chest. Listens. Moves it. Listens again. His eyes meet mine, full of a sad truth. All I need to know.

‘You couldn’t have saved him,’ he says. ‘His injuries . . . it’s best this way.’

His hand touches my shoulder. A lump jams in my throat.

‘Do you want me to take care of the body?’

‘No. I can handle it. Thank you for coming.’

The van does a three-point turn. He waves goodbye.

Grunting with the effort, I lift Gunsmoke in my arms and carry him through the house again, setting him down on the old rubber mattress he uses as a bed. Then I take a shovel from the shed and clear the leaves near the compost bin, picking out a spot between the flowerbeds.

I don’t know how long it takes to dig the grave. A couple of times I stop and lean on the shovel. My medication is wearing off and my left side keeps locking up, sending me sideways. I’m fine if I keep digging, but as soon as I stop it begins to show. When the hole is deep enough, I wrap Gunsmoke in his favourite blanket and lower him down, almost collapsing on top of him when I overbalance.

‘Too many treats, old friend, no wonder you couldn’t catch those rabbits.’

I’m not a prayerful man or a believer in an afterlife for animals (let alone humans) so there is nothing to say except goodbye before I shovel the first clods on his body. When I finish, I scatter leaves across the turned earth and put the shovel back in the shed. Then I go inside and pour myself a drink and sit at the kitchen table, too tired to climb the stairs, too angry to sleep.