Bleed For Me

Epilogue

I have a student waiting to see me outside my office. His name is Milo Coleman and I’m supposed to be overseeing his psychology thesis, which would be a lot easier if I had something to oversee.

Milo, one of my brighter students, has spent the past four months trying to decide the subject of his thesis. His most recent suggestion was to pose the question whether loud music in bars increased alcohol consumption. This only slightly bettered a proposal that he study whether alcohol made a woman more or less likely to have sex on a first date.

I told him that while I appreciated how diligently he would research such a subject, I doubted if I could get it past the university’s board of governors.

Opening my office door, I don’t find him waiting on the row of chairs in the corridor. Instead he’s chatting to Chloe, an undergrad student who answers the phones in the psychology department. Milo is dressed in a James Dean T-shirt, low-slung jeans and Nike trainers. Chloe likes him. Her body language says so - the way her shoulders pull back and she plays with her hair.

‘When you’re ready, Milo,’ I announce.

Chloe gives him a look that says, Next time.

‘Professor O’Loughlin, how’s it hanging?’

‘It’s hanging just fine.’

‘I heard about you being stabbed and I was, like, shocked, you know. I mean, that’s a heavy scene.’

‘Yes, Milo, very heavy.’

He takes a seat opposite my desk, leans forward, elbows on his knees. A long fringe of hair falls across one eye. He brushes it aside, tucking it girlishly behind his ear. Smiling quietly. Beaming.

‘I think I’ve got it: the big idea.’

‘Hit me with it.’

‘Well, I went to see a comedy night last week and I was watching this black dude telling jokes, really edgy stuff, racist, you know. He’s telling nigger jokes and all these white people in the audience are laughing and cheering. I got to wondering what effect racial humour has on prejudice.’

Milo looks at me nervously. Expectantly. Hopefully.

‘I think it’s a great idea.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. How are you going to do it?’

Milo gets to his feet, pacing the room while he lays out his ideas for a cognitive study involving an audience and a series of questions. He’s energised. Animated.

‘So how long do I have?’

‘Start work now and you can update me at the end of November.’

He cocks his head, looking at me with one eye. Milo often looks at me sideways so I never see both his eyes at the same time.

‘That’s only two months.’

‘Sufficient time.’

‘But I got to work out questions. Parameters. Study groups . . .’

This is the other side of Milo’s personality - making excuses, questioning the work involved.

‘Two months is plenty of time. Show me too little and I’ll mark you down as being lazy. Show me too much and I’ll think you’re sucking up to me.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Huh?’

‘You’ve spent four years studying human behaviour. Decide if I’m lying.’

Milo pushes back his fringe. Frowns. Wants to argue.

‘I know what you’re like, Milo. You cruise. You coast. You wear that earring and that T-shirt because you see yourself as a rebel without a cause, channelling the spirit of James Dean. But let me tell you something about Dean. He was the son of a dental technician from Indiana, where he went to a posh school and studied violin and tap dancing.’

Milo looks completely bemused. I put my hand on his shoulder. Lead him to the door. ‘Start your thesis. No more excuses. Show me something by November.’

I watch him disappear along the corridor with his exaggerated slope-shouldered walk. My old headmaster at prep school, Mr Swanson (who looked like God with long white curly hair) would have barked at him, ‘It took a million years for humans to learn to walk upright, Coleman, and you’re taking us back to the trees.’

Coop Regan is sitting nervously on a chair. Dressed in a coat and tie, he has combed his oiled hair across his head and buttoned his jacket as though waiting for a job interview.

This is a completely different man to the one I met four months ago in Edinburgh, hiding away in a dark lounge watching old home movies of his missing daughter. Now clear-eyed and sober, he stands and shakes my hand firmly, holding my gaze.

‘Ah’m sorry to bother you,’ he says, in a voice ravaged by years of smoking. ‘Ah know you’re a busy man.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘We couldn’t go home without saying goodbye.’

‘Where’s Philippa?’

He motions outside. ‘Billy wanted to play. It’s a long old drive home.’

Glancing out the window, I see a young boy running through the trees, being chased by a large woman in a bright green cardigan who is shaped like a fireplug. Philippa has no chance of catching Billy, but she’ll keep on chasing as long as he keeps laughing.

‘Vincent brought us to see you,’ says Coop.

Then I notice Ruiz standing beneath a tree, which has blooms as big as his fists. Billy runs towards him and hides behind him for a moment as though his legs are tree trunks.

‘We’re going to have to watch that one - he’s cheeky like his ma used to be.’

‘You’ll do fine.’

Coop’s chest expands and he stares at his polished shoes. ‘Ah said some things to you before, when you came to see us. Ah blamed Caro for making us love her so much. Ah was going off my head.’

‘I understand.’

Coop nods. ‘Aye, Ah think you do.’

He pulls me into a hug. I can smell his aftershave and the dry-cleaning fluid on his jacket.

Releasing me, he turns and wipes his eyes. I walk him downstairs and say goodbye to Philippa, who is pink-faced and breathless, ten years younger than I remember with her bright red hair pulled back from her round face.

They wave and toot their horn, taking their grandson home. Ruiz lets his eyes wander across the grass to a group of pretty students having a picnic in the shade. For a fleeting moment I glimpse a yearning in him - a longing to be young again - but he’s not a man to look over his shoulder or contemplate what might have been.

It has been two months since I left hospital and three months since the stabbing. The stiletto blade entered beneath my ribs and travelled upwards through my spleen, aiming at my heart. Narrowly missing the chambers and aorta, it punctured my left lung, which slowly collapsed. The slenderness of the blade limited blood loss externally but filled my chest cavity. I needed three blood transfusions and two operations.

I came out of hospital on the same day that Natasha Ellis appeared in Bristol Crown Court charged with the murder of Ray Hegarty and attempted murder of Annie Robinson. These were crimes of passion and crimes of revenge. Natasha thought she was losing Gordon to another schoolgirl lover - someone just like her.

At first she denied the allegations and then tried to strike a deal after Louis Preston found her DNA on a hand-towel at the murder scene.

On that Tuesday evening, Natasha let herself into the Hegarty’s house using a key that she copied from Sienna. She hid behind the teenager’s bedroom door, looking at the reflection in the mirror so she knew exactly what moment to strike.

She was expecting Sienna, but Ray Hegarty arrived home instead. He must have heard a sound and walked upstairs into Sienna’s room. Perhaps he saw Natasha at the last moment as the hockey stick was falling.

She couldn’t risk being recognised or identified so she silenced him, cutting his throat, right to left.

Ronnie Cray said it on that first day - it had to have been someone small to hide behind the door. Somebody left-handed. Somebody who neatly folded the hand-towel in the bathroom.

The amount of blood must have surprised Natasha - how fast it flowed, how far it sprayed, covering her hands and her clothes. Minutes later Sienna came home and saw her father’s bag. She crept quietly up the stairs, wanting to avoid him, but heard a tap running in the bathroom and a toilet flushing.

Running the final steps, desperate to get into her room, Sienna tripped over her father’s body and screamed, scrambling up, leaving her handprint on his shirt. Natasha didn’t react quickly enough to stop Sienna fleeing. However, she quickly saw another away to get rid of her rival. She dropped the Stanley knife into the river close to where Sienna was discovered that night.

Did Gordon know what she’d done? Perhaps. Surely, he suspected, but in a perverse twist the crime reinforced his bond with Natasha because each had to provide an alibi for the other.

Annie Robinson proved to be another hidden danger. She was blackmailing Gordon over his affair with Sienna, extorting money and threatening to destroy his career. Natasha had killed to protect her marriage and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Spiking a bottle of wine with antifreeze, she delivered it to Annie’s flat with a gift card from a grateful cast.

Annie phoned me on the day I got out of hospital. She said that I sounded different.

‘How do I sound?’

‘Like maybe you could forgive me one day.’

She laughed nervously and kept talking.

‘I wanted to come and see you, but I didn’t know how you’d react or what your wife would say. I did a very bad thing, asking Gordon for money. I should have protected Sienna. I should have stopped it.’

There was a long pause. Maybe Annie expected me to disagree or wanted me to make her feel better. I couldn’t do it.

Then she told me about her plans to take long service leave and travel to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. She might even get to Australia.

‘I think I might like Australian men. They’re not so buttoned up.’

‘You think I’m buttoned up?’

‘No, you’re just in love with your ex.’

Novak Brennan and his co-accused go on trial next week at the Old Bailey. The hearing has been transferred to London for security reasons and the Attorney General has promised greater protection for jurors and witnesses.

Marco Kostin will be the star witness again. Julianne visited him twice in hospital before he was taken to a safe house. I don’t know if they’re going to offer him a new identity after the trial, but I wouldn’t blame him for going back to Kiev or trying to start a new life somewhere else.

I have my own court date to contend with. Not as a defendant, thank goodness, the charges against me were dropped. Instead I’m to give evidence against Carl Guilfoyle, who faces two counts of attempted murder, as well as perverting the course of justice and jury tampering. Rita Brennan will be tried alongside him as an accomplice.

The murder of Gordon Ellis is still an ongoing investigation, but Ronnie Cray has Guilfoyle in her sights. She has recommended Safari Roy for a Police Bravery Award, but refused to accept a nomination for herself. The scar on her shoulder will serve as a trophy.

Meanwhile, Judge David Spencer stepped down from the bench very quietly during the summer. There was a paragraph in The Times Law Reports and a small article in the Guardian, but no judicial inquiry or police investigation. He retired with his reputation and pension intact, although a separate diary entry mentioned that he’d separated from his wife of forty years. That can be punishment enough.

The collapse of the so-called race-hate trial was a big news story for a week as the experts and commentators debated again whether trial by jury is an outdated system, akin to asking the ignorant to understand the incomprehensible and decide the unknowable.

I don’t know the answer, but if I were on trial for my life, I would rather put my fate in the hands of twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty than one judge who may have an agenda. Jurors can be colossally ignorant and easily bewildered by the sophistry of lawyers, but I’ll take my chances with the ordinary man and woman because they can tell the difference between justice and the law.

I see Helen Hegarty occasionally in the village, but she still keeps to herself, rarely smiling. She no longer works nights and Zoe has moved home, deferring her university course for a year. Sienna has started at a new school in Bath, but she and Charlie still see each other, one of them struggling to reclaim her childhood while the other is desperate to grow out of hers.

I used to want to stop Charlie growing up. I sought to hold on to the girl who watched Lord of the Rings with me and liked her pizza with extra pepperoni and made fun of the fact that Julianne couldn’t catch a ball. Now I have a more realistic vision of the future, one that isn’t based on a pathological desire to protect my children from people like Gideon Tyler and Gordon Ellis and Liam Baker; as well as bad boyfriends, ignorant bosses, cruel comments, drunk maniacs and intolerant bigots.

Parenthood is a lot like being a trapeze artist, knowing when to let go and watch your child tumble away in mid-air, reaching out for the next rung, testing herself. My job is to be here when she swings back, ready to catch her and to launch her into the world again.

Lately, I’ve become more optimistic that Charlie will be OK. She’ll weather adolescence and a divorce (if it comes to that), and I’ll be around to see her graduate from university, collect the Nobel Prize, fall in love, marry and be blissfully happy.

When I lie awake in the morning, inventorying my tics and twitches, waiting for my medication to click in, I sometimes think of all the things I haven’t done yet. I haven’t slept with a movie star or climbed Kilimanjaro or learned a language other than schoolboy French. I haven’t written a book or run a marathon or swum with dolphins.

Mr Parkinson will not kill me, but I will die with him unless the race for a cure beats his unrelenting progress. Some people think news like this would change their attitude towards life. They have fantasies of self-transformation, of climbing mountains or jumping out of planes.

Not me. You won’t catch me running with the bulls in Pamplona or searching for the source of the Amazon. I’d rather a mundane end than a gloriously brave or stupid one.

In the meantime, I am going to tremble and twitch and spasm into middle age. It’s not that I don’t feel the aching pain of loss. When I see footage of myself from six years ago, standing tall, fighting fit - images of a younger, healthier me - I do feel angry. My strength, balance and dexterity have been compromised. I am half the man I was, searching for the rest.

Maybe I’ll move back to London. Maybe I’ll learn to dance. Maybe I’ll be the guy I dream of being, holding the line on the life that I promised myself.

Some nights I still sit outside the cottage, watching over my family, seeing their shadows behind the curtains - it’s the best show in town and I still have a pretty good seat.

Raising children, I’ve decided, is a lot sadder than I expected. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story.

If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times - their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child . . .

There can be only one.

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