Bleed For Me

doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

Finally, I’m given permission to go home. I call Julianne and ask her to bring me some clothes and a pair of shoes.

‘What happened to yours?’

‘The police took them.’

She doesn’t want to leave the girls alone. Charlie didn’t fall asleep until two and then only in Julianne’s bed, curled up in a ball.

‘What if there’s someone running around the village stabbing people?’ asks Julianne.

‘It wasn’t Sienna’s blood.’

‘What happened to her then?’

I can’t explain.

She hesitates, weighing up what to do.

‘I’ll get Mrs Nutall to mind the girls. Give me half an hour.’

Mrs Nutall is our next-door neighbour. She’s not technically my neighbour any more, of course, which means I don’t have to put up with her abusing me every time I leave the cottage. In her sixties and unmarried, she seems to blame me personally for every sin, snub or rebuff she has experienced at the hands of a man. The list must be very long.

I go to the bathroom. Wash my face. Feel a disturbing weight on my shoulders. Why hasn’t Sienna’s mother turned up? Surely the police have found her by now.

I hardly know Helen. We have spoken once or twice to arrange sleepovers for the girls and nodded to each other at the petrol station or in the aisle of the supermarket. Normally, she’s dressed in cargo pants and old sweaters and seems in a hurry. I’ve met her husband, Ray Hegarty, a few times in the Fox and Badger. He is an ex-copper, a detective who earned a medal for bravery, according to Hector. Now he runs a security company and travels a lot.

Zoe was attacked six months before we arrived in the village and Liam Baker had already been convicted of GBH when I was asked to do a pre-sentence report. Some people in the village were angry that he didn’t go straight to prison, but most were just happy to be rid of him.

Thirty minutes later, Julianne arrives and waits for me to change.

‘I tried to call Helen,’ she says, adjusting my collar and doing up the buttons I’ve missed. ‘Nobody is answering.’

‘She’s probably at work.’

My left arm and leg are twitching involuntarily.

‘What about your medication?’

‘At home.’

She holds my hand, making it go still. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

In the car, watching the sunrise. Hills lost in the morning mist. The drive from Bath to Wellow takes only fifteen minutes. We have lived in the village for three and a bit years, having moved out of London at Julianne’s suggestion. Cheaper houses. Good schools. More room. It made sense. It makes less sense now that we’re not together.

The locals are friendly enough. We chat over the tops of cars at the petrol station and queue for milk and bread at Eric Vaile’s shop. They’re decent, conservative, obliging people, but I’ll never be one of them. Being single doesn’t help. Marriage is a passport to respectability in a small village. My visa has been revoked.

The sun is fully up. The cottages and terraces of Wellow seem whitewashed and scrubbed clean. It reminds me of where I grew up - a pit village in the foothills of Snowdonia - although it wasn’t so much whitewashed as coated in coal dust and full of mining families with lung diseases.

‘Can we drive past the Hegartys’ place?’

Julianne glances at me, hesitantly, her sharp fringe touching one eyebrow.

‘It won’t take a minute.’

She turns the corner and heads down Bull’s Hill. Ahead of us there are police cars, five of them. Two of them unmarked but sprouting radio aerials. They are parked outside Sienna’s house, almost blocking the road. In the midst of them I notice a familiar rust-streaked Land Rover. It belongs to Detective Chief Inspector Veronica Cray, head of the Major Crime Investigation Unit. MCIU.

They must have called her at home. Woken her. There are some supermodels who won’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand pounds. DCI Cray doesn’t stir unless someone is dead, defiled or missing.

Julianne’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

‘Can we stop?’ I ask.

‘No.’

‘I want to know what happened.’

She shakes her head.

At that moment Ronnie Cray emerges from the house and lights a cigarette. Through exhaled smoke her eyes meet mine. Diffident. Unsurprised.

We’re past the house now. Julianne drives on.

‘You should have stopped.’

‘Don’t get involved, Joe.’

‘But this is Sienna’s family.’

‘And the police will handle things.’

There is an edge to her voice. A warning. We’ve been down this road before. We’ve had this argument. I lost.

Three minutes later we pull up outside the terrace. The engine idles and she takes a deep breath.

‘I’m going to let Charlie stay home from school today.’

‘That’s a good idea.’

Softening, she tells me to get some sleep and to call her later.

‘I will.’

Even before I pull out my keys I hear Gunsmoke whining and pawing at the back door. Walking along the passage to the kitchen, I unlock the side door and step into the garden, where the Labrador leaps and cavorts around my thighs, licking at my hands.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come home,’ I say, rubbing his ears.

He frowns at me. I swear. Then he dashes to the rear gate. The rabbits are waiting. Don’t I want to chase them? Hurry up.

First I need to shower and take my pills - the white one and the blue one. When the twitches are gone, I can hold my hand steady on the razor and lace up my boots. Buttons will find buttonholes and zippers will close easily. The body tremors are under control, although occasionally my left arm will launch itself upwards in my own Mexican wave.

In the six years since I was diagnosed, I have come to an understanding with Mr Parkinson. I no longer deny his existence or imagine that I’m the stronger man. Recognising this truth was a humbling experience - like bowing to a higher power.

My condition is not advanced yet, but every day is a balancing act with my medication, requiring meticulous timing. Too much Levadopa and I’m rocking, dipping and diving, incapable of crossing a room without visiting every corner. Too little and I grind to a stuttering halt like an engine without oil.

Exercise is recommended, which is why I walk every morning. Shuffle rather than stride. Not in all weathers. I avoid the rain. Dragging a sweater over my head, I step outside and pull the door shut. A tractor rumbles up Mill Hill Lane pulling a box trailer. The driver is Alasdair Riordan, a local farmer. His forearms are vibrating on the wheel.

‘Did you hear the news?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Ray Hegarty is dead. They say his wee girl stabbed him. Fancy that, eh?’

Breath glides out of him in a pale cloud. He shakes his head and releases his foot from the clutch, jerking into motion. This passes as the longest conversation I’ve ever had with Alasdair Riordan - a man of few words and fewer thoughts.