Dark Winter (23 page)

McAvoy turns away.

‘Pharaoh got as far as the Humber Bridge,’ he says. ‘Managed to get across despite the weather warnings. She was at the top of Boothferry Road when her mobile went and
the brass told her not to risk it. To take a few days off. Colin Ray’s got things under control.’

‘She take any notice?’

‘Yes and no. She’s not going to crash the party. Diverted to Priory Road.’

‘How’s she taking it?’

‘About as well as you’d expect. Managed to bite her tongue, but she’s got to be careful how she plays this. If she keeps her head down, it could all work out fine. She’ll have been lead detective on a successful hunt for a killer. If she starts shouting the odds and kicking up a stink, her card will be marked.’

McAvoy realises he’s grinding his bunched fists into his knees. Forces himself to stop.

‘It’s not Russ Chandler,’ he says through his teeth. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking about it. Thinking about nothing else. It’s not him.’

Spink turns to him. Stares into his eyes for a good twenty seconds, as if trying to read the inside of his skull. Seems to scorch the inside of McAvoy’s head with the intensity of his gaze. Then he turns away, as if making a decision.

‘It often isn’t.’

McAvoy pulls a face. ‘What?’

‘It often isn’t, son. You know that better than anyone. You’re going to kill yourself if you carry on like this, lad.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with giving a damn,’ he spits angrily.

‘No, lad. There’s nothing wrong with giving a damn. But the price you pay for it is this. You must see it, you must see the cops who come to work, do a half-decent job, and head
home without a backward glance. You must have seen them toasting questionable results and dodgy convictions. You must have wondered why you can’t be that way.’

‘I just think it matters,’ he begins, and then stops when he feels the words catching in his throat.

‘It does matter, Aector. It matters that a villain gets locked up, because that way, the public can go back to feeling all safe and secure in the knowledge that our boys in blue are up to the challenge of keeping them safe from nutters. That’s why it matters. And it matters to the press, because it sells newspapers. And it matters to the top brass because it makes their crime statistics look peachy. And it matters to the politicians because voters don’t want to live in a society where a young girl can get chopped up in a church during Evensong. And back at the bottom, it matters to coppers, because they don’t want to get it in the neck from their superiors, and because most of them decided to become a police officer in the hope of making some kind of difference to the world. Then there are people like you, son. People who need to matter on some fucking cosmic level. People who need to find justice as if it’s some fundamental ingredient of the universe. As if it’s some naturally occurring mineral that you can drill for and dole out.’

Spink pauses. Waves a hand, tiredly.

‘McAvoy, son, it’s not like that. It should be, yeah. By Christ it would be nice if the whole world felt your outrage. If people couldn’t eat or sleep or function until the balance had been redressed and the evil expunged by some act of good, or decency, or justice, or whatever you want to call it. But they don’t. They read about something horrible and they say it’s
awful and they shake their heads and say the world’s going to the dogs and then they put the telly on and watch
Coronation Street
. Or they go in the garden for a game of football with the kids. Or they head down the pub and have a few jars. And I know that it makes you sick, son. I know that you see people going about their daily business and it makes you angry and nauseous and empty inside that people are capable of such callousness and heartlessness when they should be focusing on the dead, but if you spend your life waiting for things to change, you’re going to die a disappointed man.’

Spink stops. Screws up his eyes. Gives his head a little shake. Turns away.

McAvoy sits in silence. He tugs at the little patch of hair beneath his lower lip. Pulls it until it begins to come out. There’s an anger in him. An indignation at being read, at being analysed, at being judged, by a man he barely knows and who has the temerity to call him ‘son’.

McAvoy opens his mouth and shuts it again. He wipes a hand across his face.

‘Colin Ray’s got evidence, son. It might not match what’s in your gut and it might just hurt like hell, but unless you’ve got any of that big bag of natural justice you want to sprinkle, then Russ Chandler’s the man that can be tried, and maybe even convicted of murder.’

McAvoy glares at him. ‘Do you think he did it?’

After a moment of trying to stare him out, Spink looks away. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

McAvoy spits again.

He stands up. Takes a gulp of cold, fresh air.

Towers over the other man.

‘It matters what I think.’

He says it through gritted teeth, but finds himself twitching into a smile, as the elation of realisation of acceptance seems to carbonate his blood, to fill his skull with endorphins and energy.

‘It fucking matters.’

There’s an art to walking in snow. Novices grip too hard with their feet; arching their soles, digging in with their toes, and are on their knees rubbing cramped-up calves within a hundred paces.

Others are too cautious, taking large strides, stepping onto patches of what seems like firm ground. They slip on iced concrete. Tumble, holding bruised shins – ankles twisting inside unsuitable shoes.

McAvoy walks as he was taught. Head down. Watching the ground for changes in the texture of the snow. Hands at his sides, ready to shoot out and break his fall.

He was born into a landscape harsher than this mosaic of tended grass and firm pavements, overlaid with six inches of white. He grew up on terrain scarred with crevices, with cracks, with loose shingle and shale; all concealed for eight months of the year by the relentless snowfall.

He sometimes remembers the noise the sheep made when they stumbled and snapped a leg. Remembers the silence too, in the moments after he ended their suffering. Slit their throats with a pocket knife. Pinched their mouths and nostrils closed with a gloved hand.

Remembers the artfulness with which his father could snap a neck. His acceptance of the necessity of his actions,
laced with a resolute determination to take no pleasure in them.

Remembers, too, the damp eyes his father had turned upon him. The tenderness with which he had reached down and stroked the wool. The way he raised his hand to his nose and breathed in the damp, musky scent of a ewe he had reared from birth, and whose neck he had snapped to end her pain.

The man at Holy Trinity Church had that same look in his damp, blue eyes. So did the man who carved his name in Angie Martindale. Who sat, crying, for an age before embarking on his work.

Energised, blood pumping, thoughts racing in his mind, McAvoy considers a killer.

‘Is that what you’re doing? Putting them out of their misery? Are you ending their suffering? Are you asking me to end yours?’

McAvoy stops. Lost in his thoughts, he has taken the wrong path from the park.

His phone begins to ring. Number withheld.

‘Aector McAvoy,’ he says.

‘Sergeant? Hi, this is Jonathan Feasby. I got a message to call …’

McAvoy racks his brains. Puts the events of the past twenty-four hours into some sense of order. Feasby. The reporter from the
Independent
. The guy he’d emailed about the aid worker in Iraq.

‘Mr Feasby, yes. Thanks for getting back in touch.’

‘No problem, no problem.’ His voice is breezy. Southern-sounding. Cheerful, considering the weather and the hour.

‘Mr Feasby, I’m involved in the investigation into Daphne Cotton’s murder and I believe you may have some information that would be relevant to the inquiry.’

McAvoy listens as the reporter gives a whistle of surprise.

‘Me? Well, yeah, if I can. Hull though, isn’t it? I’ve never even been to the North East.’

‘Hull isn’t in the North East, sir. It’s in the East Riding of Yorkshire.’

‘Right, right.’

‘Are you aware of the case I’m referring to?’

‘Not her name, no. But I just Googled “Hull” and “murder” and “McAvoy” and got myself about a billion hits. Process of elimination, I’m assuming it’s the current one. Poor girl in the church, yes? Terrible.’

McAvoy nods, even though nobody can see.

‘Mr Feasby, I want to talk to you about an article you wrote some time ago. It concerned an Anne Montrose. She was injured in an incident in Northern Iraq. I understand you were the freelance writer hired by the
Independent
to cover the incident …’

There is silence at the other end of the line. Pressing his ear to the phone, McAvoy fancies he can hear the sound of mental gears clashing.

‘Mr Feasby?’

‘Erm. I’m not sure I remember the case,’ says Feasby. He’s lying.

‘Sir, I have a decent relationship with the local press and my colleagues make fun of me for my belief in human nature. If I talk to you off the record, will it stay that way?’

‘I’m one of the last reporters who believes in such a concept.’

‘Well, I’m one of the last men in the world who believes that a promise means something, and I promise you I won’t be pleased if the contents of this conversation appear in print.’

‘I understand. How can I help you?’

‘I’m working on a theory that perhaps the man who killed Daphne Cotton may be targeting other people who have survived near-death experiences. That perhaps he or she is finishing off something that they view as an unacceptable escape from the Reaper’s scythe. I am trying to work out who might be next on their list, if such a list exists. Anne Montrose fits the criterion. She was a survivor in an incident in which everybody else involved died. I want to know what happened to her after the story you wrote. I want to know that she’s safe.’

There is silence at the other end of the phone. McAvoy listens out for scribbling.

‘Mr Feasby?’

‘If I’m off the record, then so are you, yes?’ Feasby’s voice has lost its lightness. He sounds pensive. Almost afraid. ‘I’m not intending to incriminate myself or anybody else here …’

‘I understand.’

The reporter lets out a whistled breath. ‘Look, it probably doesn’t mean much to you, but when I say that I’ve never done this before …’

‘I believe you.’

McAvoy isn’t sure whether he does or he doesn’t, but knows how to sound sincere.

‘Well, the only time I’ve ever taken money not to publish a story was when I tried to follow up on Anne Montrose. I had the opportunity to write one more bloody follow-up on one
more bloody victim of one more bloody day of that bloody war. And I had the chance to write nothing. To call in a favour with my news desk and bury the whole thing …’

‘How? Why?’

‘I had the chance of a way out.’

McAvoy pauses. He tries to clear his head.

‘After I wrote the story about the explosion, about what happened to her, a man came to see me,’ he says, and his voice sounds far away.

‘Go on.’

‘He was the boss of a company that was making money in the clean-up operation. Rebuilding communities. Building schools and hospitals. And he said that if I did him a favour, he’d do me one in return.’

‘And the favour?’

‘Not another word on Anne. The newspaper would get full exclusives on everything that his company did from this point onwards …’

‘And you?’

Feasby sighs. ‘An honorary position on the board of his company.’

‘You took it?’

‘On paper I was a marketing consultant, helping his firm establish its media relations strategy …’

‘And in reality?’

‘I never wrote a word. Drew a salary for a few months, then went back to what I was good at.’

‘You weren’t curious?’

McAvoy imagines Feasby spreading his palms wide. ‘I’m a reporter.’

‘And?’

‘And I don’t think I should really be telling you any more until I’ve had a good hard think about what you really need to know.’

McAvoy pauses. He wonders if the reporter is fishing. Whether he is expecting the promise of an exclusive in exchange for his information.

His phone beeps in his ear. More from impulse than any conscious desire, he switches lines and answers.

‘Mr McAvoy? This is Shona Fox from Hull Royal Infirmary. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. It’s about your wife. I’m afraid there have been complications …’

And nothing else matters any more.

McAvoy didn’t sleep for the first twenty-seven hours. Didn’t eat. Managed two sips of water from a cloudy, plastic beaker, then coughed them back up onto his stinking rugby shirt, mucus trailing from his eyes and nose.

Outside, Hull froze.

The excitement of a possible white Christmas gave way to fear at the harshness and severity of the conditions. The snow landed on hard ground. Froze. Fell again. Froze. The sky was a grey pencil sketch. Clouds broiled, rolled, twisted, curdled; like snakes moving inside a black bag.

The city stopped.

Later, McAvoy would tell his daughter that it was she who finally broke the winter’s spell. That it was only when she opened her eyes that the clouds parted and the snow ceased its frenzied dance. That it was she who cost Hull its first white Christmas in a generation. She who brought out the sun. It would be a lie. But it would be a lie that made his daughter smile. A lie that allowed him to remember the first few days of her life with something other than a dull throb of agony.

He hears movement behind him.

Turns.

‘Get back in that bed …’ he begins.

‘Well, I’m still a bit tender but if you want me that badly …,’ says Roisin, her face pale, her eyes dark. She’s wearing a baggy yellow nightie and has a pink band holding her unwashed, greasy hair back from her face. She seems shapeless, somehow. He has grown so used to the bulge of her stomach pressing at her clothes.

‘Roisin.’

‘I’m bored, Aector. I need some kissing.’

He sighs. Rolls his eyes indulgently.