Ronnie Cray closes the barn door and drops a plank of wood into place. She’s dressed in jeans, a checked shirt and Wellingtons that are caked in mud. I hear horses inside. Smell them.
‘So this is what you do in your spare time?’
‘Yeah, I shovel horseshit.’
She wipes her hands on her jeans and then eyes Ruiz, who has never been top of her dance card.
‘Mr Ruiz.’
She’s calling him ‘mister’ for a reason - letting him know that he no longer has a police rank.
‘DCI.’
‘You’re looking older,’ she comments.
‘And you’re looking great. That’s the benefit of going braless - it pulls all the wrinkles out of your face.’
‘Now, now, children, play nice,’ I tell them.
‘I’ll be nicer if he tries to be smarter,’ says Cray.
The DCI lights a cigarette, cupping her hands around the flame. The lighter clinks shut and I catch a whiff of petrol.
‘The place is looking good,’ says Ruiz, trying not to be sarcastic.
Cray looks around. ‘It’s a dump.’
‘Yeah, but you’re doing it up.’
‘That’s one of the great traps of buying a place like this. You see all the space and get excited, imagining beautiful lawns and gardens, but then you spend every weekend removing tree stumps and rocks.’
‘When you’re not shovelling shit,’ says Ruiz.
‘Exactly.’
Cray pushes a wheelbarrow to the side of the barn and tosses a bucket of vegetable scraps to the chickens.
‘On my mother’s side I have several generations of women shaped to pull ploughs. My father’s side was a family of pen pushers - delicate as Asians. In the genetic roll of the dice, I got the agricultural build.’
She carries the bucket towards the house. ‘I guess you gentlemen better come inside.’
Scraping mud from her boots and kicking them off, she ducks through a doorway as though imagining herself to be two feet taller. The kitchen is full of French provincial furniture and has copper-bottom pots hanging from the ceiling. A tan cat stretches, circles and resettles on a shelf above the stove. This is the champion ratter that Cray told me about, Strawberry’s mother.
‘Make yourselves comfortable,’ she says, washing her hands. ‘This had better be a social call. It’s Saturday and I’m off-duty.’
Neither of us answers.
‘You want a drink?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ says Ruiz, eyeing the row of liquor bottles on top of the cupboard. ‘Scotch and a splash of water.’
‘I’m offering wine.’
The DCI pulls an open bottle from a shelf and cleans two wine-glasses with a paper towel.
‘How about you, Professor?’
‘I’m OK.’
Ronnie is not the most social of women, which could have something to do with her low regard for people and even lower expectations. Most of her life is a mystery to me, although I know she was married briefly and has a grown-up son. She doesn’t hide the fact that she’s gay, but neither is it open for discussion. I suspect there have been women in her life who got under her skin and into her heart, but now she seems to be closed off, anchored to her memories like a lone sailor who looks out of place on dry land and is only happy on her own.
Lighting another cigarette, she sucks hard into her lungs as if concerned that fresh air without tobacco smoke might damage her health.
‘Sienna Hegarty overdosed yesterday afternoon,’ I tell her.
‘Where did she get the pills?’
‘She stole them from the meds trolley at Oakham House.’
Cray glances at my left hand. My thumb and forefinger are brushing together, rolling an imaginary pill between them.
‘That’s not why you’re here.’
‘I talked to Sienna. She admitted sleeping with Gordon Ellis when she was only thirteen. She was pregnant with his child.’
‘Will she make a statement?’
‘Yes, I think so. There’s something else: Gordon Ellis organised to meet Sienna on the afternoon Ray Hegarty died.’
‘Natasha Ellis gave him an alibi.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘No, but it means that we have to prove otherwise.’
‘Danny Gardiner dropped Sienna on a corner on the Lower Bristol Road, near a minicab office. From there she was taken to an address - she can’t remember the location - and Ellis gave her instructions.’
‘What sort of instructions?’
‘She had to sleep with someone.’
Cray looks at me incredulously. ‘He pimped her!’
‘Gordon Ellis told her it was the final proof that she loved him.’
Cray wipes her face with her sleeve and wrinkles her nose as though smelling an odour rising from her armpit. ‘Who was the john?’
‘She doesn’t remember the address and she didn’t get a name.’
‘So we just have her word for it?’
I borrow a piece of paper and a pen and begin jotting down names and drawing lines between them. Sienna, Gordon Ellis, Caro Regan, Novak Brennan and the Crying Man - all of them can be linked by one or more acts of extreme violence.
Cray doesn’t react. She stubs out the cigarette and reaches for another. ‘You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t stop the presses, Professor.’ She flicks the bottom of the packet and a cigarette pops out. ‘Forty years ago my father changed the spelling of our surname because he didn’t want anyone knowing we were related to Ronnie and Reggie Kray. He was their first cousin. Never met them. But he didn’t want to be associated with a couple of psycho gangsters.’
‘I don’t get your point.’
‘Some links are completely harmless. It’s like six degrees of separation - we’re all linked by only a few steps.’
Ruiz reacts, ‘What sort of bullshit response—’
She cuts him off. ‘Let me finish. You’re probably right about Gordon Ellis - the man got rid of his first wife and married one of his students - but trying to tie him to Novak Brennan is stretching things too far. MI5 has been investigating Brennan for six years. They’ve infiltrated local right-wing organisations and neo-Nazi groups, surveilled meetings, bugged phones, tailed cars and taken photographs. The name Gordon Ellis has never come up.’
‘Ellis and Brennan went to university together.’
‘Fifteen years ago.’
‘What about the Crying Man?’
‘He’s your bogeyman - not mine. Stan Keating didn’t file a police report. Nobody else has complained about this guy.’
Cray takes the harshness out of her tone. ‘If Sienna Hegarty makes a statement I’ll investigate it personally. That’s a promise. But you and I both know what happens next. It’s Sienna’s word against Ellis’s, and he has an alibi. If we charge him with sexual assault, Sienna will have to give evidence. She’ll be cross-examined by his barrister. Her personal life will be scrutinised. Her character will be dissected. Wait till he gets to the murder charge she’s facing . . .
‘Don’t look at me like that, Professor, I’m giving you the good news. A word in the right ear and Ellis gets suspended and investigated by Social Services, the Education Trust and his own union. He’ll have a child protection team crawling up his arse and he’ll spend the next two years fighting his way clear of them. And even if he wins, there won’t be a school in the country that’ll risk employing him.’
Cray reaches across the table and puts her hand on mine. My arm stops trembling.
‘If I were you, Professor, I’d take a step back from all this. You’re facing serious charges and you shouldn’t be talking to Sienna Hegarty. The CPS called me yesterday. You can forget doing a psych report. They’ve appointed someone else. If you really want to help Sienna, tell her to get a good lawyer and to cut the best deal she can.’
‘She needs protection.’
‘I’ll put a guard on her room.’
‘She’s suicidal.’
‘We try to prevent deaths in custody.’
Everything Cray has said makes perfect sense but still I want to rail against it. I’m all for making the best of a bad situation, but this smacks of surrender, not compromise. Lawyers can be pragmatic and so can detectives, but the victims have to live with the outcome.
As we walk away from the house I shake myself, trying to rid myself of the conversation. My worst dread is that it may be contagious.