Dark Winter (9 page)

Vicki looks torn between the desire to cry and to spit. She is enraged and grief-stricken. ‘Bastard,’ she says.

Again, McAvoy nods. He’s unsure what to do next. He wants to ring Trish Pharaoh and tell her, as procedure dictates. But procedure dictated he stay in the office and man the phones, and he had side-stepped that the second he had answered Vicki’s call.

‘It’s like somebody was trying to finish off what was started all those years ago,’ says Vicki, staring into her latest empty glass. She glances up and stares at him, hard. ‘Who would do that?’

In her eyes, he is a policeman. A man who can offer explanations. To make sense of it.

He wishes he were worthy of such respect.

His thoughts are consumed by Daphne Cotton’s words. By the simple, beautiful, untouched innocence of a mind that had not been contorted by the indignities witnessed by her body.

Suddenly, he wants to hurt whoever did this. He hates himself immediately, but he knows it to be true. That this crime is unforgivable. He takes comfort in the acknowledgement. The acceptance that, if he is hunting evil, he must be on the side of good.

About three car lengths away, on the opposite side of the car park, Trish Pharaoh is leaning on the bonnet of a silver Mercedes, her face cupped in her hands. She looks like a teenage girl watching TV. Her face is set in a playful smirk, and despite the harsh weather, her make-up is perfect.

‘Get in the car,’ she says. She pulls open the passenger door and then walks the long way round to the driver’s side. She climbs inside, flashing fleshy thigh and a toned calf that disappears into tight biker boots.

For a moment, McAvoy doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know why she’s here. Was she checking up on him? Is he going to get booted off the case? He rubs a hand over his face and crosses the car park with the most dignified walk he can muster.

He slips inside the Mercedes and the scent of expensive perfume takes him in a claustrophobic embrace. He smells mandarin oranges and lavender.

‘Comfy?’ she asks, but he detects no malice.

He catches sight of himself in the darkened glass of the
driver’s door and realises how ridiculous he looks, crammed into this tiny car.

‘I got your message,’ she says, pulling down the vanity mirror above the steering wheel so she can check her eye make-up as she talks. ‘Gave Helen Tremberg a ring. She said you were meeting the informant here. I thought I’d tag along.’

McAvoy has to work hard to stop himself from pushing all the air out of his lungs. Relief floods him.

‘I, I just concluded the interview, actually, ma’am,’ he says apologetically. ‘She’s at a jazz night inside and will still be there—’

She waves a hand to stop him, gives a shrug. ‘I love that accent,’ she says, half to herself. ‘I did a stint in Edinburgh, you know. Best Practice initiative or some such nonsense. Some idea my old boss had about a prostitute tolerance area. Never got off the ground. Maybe ten years ago now. I was a detective sergeant. That your era?’

McAvoy scratches his forehead, miming thinking. ‘Erm …’

‘My son does that,’ laughs Pharaoh, looking at him. ‘Or he strokes his chin. It’s so sweet.’

Another blush explodes in McAvoy’s cheeks. ‘How old is he?’

‘Ten,’ she says, and takes her eyes off the mirror. She stares into the middle distance, looking at nothing.

‘Still got the terrible teens ahead,’ says Pharaoh, picking a piece of fluff off her tights and blowing it off her palm with pursed, wet lips. ‘The things we see in this job, they’re going to have a hard time getting out of the house, let alone getting into trouble. Can’t wait.’

‘I’m sure it won’t be that bad,’ he replies, uncertain what else to say. He doesn’t know whether she has any help from a husband. Finds himself marvelling at the way she has juggled life and career. ‘My boy’s a few years away from all that.’

She turns her head and looks at him. ‘You’ve got another on the way, haven’t you?’

He can’t help but let the smile split his face. ‘Two months to go,’ he says. ‘She’s bigger than she was with Fin, but the pregnancy hasn’t been so hard. It was hellish before …’ he stops himself, sensing a trap ahead. ‘I won’t be taking any paternity time, ma’am. If this looks like being a lengthy investigation, you’ve got me for as long as you need.’

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

‘Hector,’ she says, and then gives a soft laugh. ‘Sorry. It’s Aector, isn’t it? With a cough in the middle? I’m not sure I’ve got the slaver to be able to say it the Gaelic way every day. Can you handle Hector?’

‘It’s fine,’ he says.

‘Hector, if you don’t take paternity leave I’ll wring your bloody neck. You’re entitled to it, you take it.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing, you wally.’ She laughs again. ‘Hector, can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course, ma’am.’

She squeezes his thigh in a friendly, comforting way as she looks up into his eyes. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘McAvoy, we like a gentle giant but there’s a fine line between not using your size to take advantage, and being a complete bloody pansy.’

McAvoy blinks a few times.

‘A pansy?’

‘Say it,’ she says.

He looks away, trying to keep his voice even. ‘Say what?’

‘Tell me what you’ve been itching to tell us all since we got here.’

He forces himself to look into her eyes.

‘I don’t know …’

‘Yes you do, Hector. You want to tell me to read your file. To ask around. To find out what you did.’

‘I …’

‘Hector, I’ve known you for, what, six months? Maybe a bit longer? How many conversations have we had?’

He shrugs.

‘Hector, every time I give you a job to do you look at me with this expression somewhere between an eager-to-please puppy and a bloody serial killer. You look at me like you’ll do whatever I ask, and you’ll do it better than everybody else. And that’s a very endearing quality. But there’s this other bit peering out from behind all that which says, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know what I did?”’

‘I’m sorry if that’s the impression I give, ma’am, but—’

‘I met Doug Roper, Hector.’

McAvoy visibly flinches at the name.

‘He was a sexist, vicious bastard, and for every hanger-on who wanted to be part of his gang or ride his coat-tails, there were a dozen more who thought he was a total prick.’

‘I’m not allowed …’

‘… to talk about it? I know, Hector. We all know. We know that Doug did something very bad, and that you were the one
who found out about it. We know that you took it to the brass. That you were promised the earth, and that Roper would swing. And we know that they lost their nerve, let him swan off without a stink, and that you were left as the poor bastard in the middle, in a CID team that was disintegrating faster than a snowball in a microwave. How am I doing so far?’

McAvoy stays silent.

‘I don’t know what they promised you, Hector. I very much doubt it’s what you’ve got. It must be hard, eh? Must eat away at you, people knowing, but not knowing.’ She makes a claw of her hand and presses it to her heart. ‘Must get you here.’

‘You’ve no idea,’ he says softly, and when he looks up, her face is close to his. He sees his own reflection swim on her eyes. Overcome by this moment, he finds himself leaning in …

She pulls back abruptly and looks back up at the mirror, withdrawing her hand from McAvoy’s thigh to flick away an invisible eyelash from her cheek.

‘So,’ she says, smiling brightly. ‘That’s about enough of that. I was going to have this chat with you a few months ago, but you know how it is, finding the time …’

‘Well I appreciate it, ma’am.’ His heart is thundering.

She eases down the electric window and a pleasing cold draught fills the car. She closes her eyes and seems to enjoy its sensation on her skin as she angles her face towards the fresh, cool air.

McAvoy does the same with his own window. Feels his damp fringe flutter on the breeze.

They sit in silence for a moment. McAvoy tries to find something to do with his hands. He reaches into his pocket
and pulls out his phone. Realises it’s been switched off since before he interviewed Vicki Mountford. He turns it on, and the tinkling sound that accompanies its welcome screen sounds irritatingly loud in the confines of the car. Immediately, the voicemail begins to ring. He holds it to his ear. Two messages. One, from Helen Tremberg, warning him that Trish Pharaoh has been asking about his whereabouts and might be tagging along on the Mountford interview. And one from Barbara Stein-Collinson. The sister of the dead trawlerman:

Hello, Sergeant. I’m sorry to ring you on a Sunday. I just thought you should be aware that I’ve heard from the TV people who were with Fred when he died. It all seems, I don’t know, a bit wrong, somehow. Maybe it’s nothing. Could you perhaps give me a call, if you find a moment? Many thanks
.

McAvoy closes his phone. He knows he’ll call her back. Will listen to her concerns. Make the right noises. Tell her he’ll do what he can.

‘Anything?’ asks Pharaoh.

‘Maybe,’ he says, and truly isn’t sure. ‘A favour I did for the ACC. Wife of one of the Police Authority faces. Her brother’s been found dead. Old trawlerman. Was busy making a documentary about the trawler tragedies of 1968. Looks like he chucked himself over the side, seventy miles off Iceland. They found him in a lifeboat. I had to break the news.’

‘Poor bugger,’ she says thoughtfully. It’s the police officer’s mantra.

‘I’ll follow it up in my own time …’

‘Oh, McAvoy, give it a rest.’ Her voice has absorbed a touch of steel.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Look, McAvoy,’ she says, and she seems suddenly short-tempered. ‘People don’t know what to make of you. You’re either going to be a future chief constable or end up under a bridge drinking Special Brew. They can’t read you. They just know you’re a big softie who could break them in half and who cost Humberside’s most notorious copper his job. Those are facts that require some qualification, do you understand?’

McAvoy’s thought are fireworks, exploding in his vision. He can smell the blood rushing in his head.

‘Why now?’ he manages. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I got your message about this witness. At the time, I was fielding calls from the press, from the top brass, from the DCs and uniform. I was trying to get something out of Daphne’s mum, and trying not to get tears on the family album. Then I listened to my messages, and the only one that was calm, precise, unemotional and bloody interesting was yours. So I felt a surge of warmth for you, my boy. I decided to show you a little love.’ She smiles again. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts.’

McAvoy realises he’s been holding his breath. When he lets it out, he fancies that he feels himself growing lighter. He is overcome with affection for Pharaoh. Filled with a desire to repay her faith.

‘It was worth the trip,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘Vicki Mountford, I mean.’

‘Enlighten me,’ she says.

Without thinking about it, McAvoy removes his hat and begins to unhook his bag from his shoulder. Midway, he stops
and cocks his head, looking at his superior officer with a half-smile of his own. And for the first time in as long as he can remember, he decides to act on impulse.

‘Do you like jazz?’ he asks.

The notice is a mess of faded black on white, tagged with purple scrawls and unfinished signatures.

THE PLAYING OF BALL GAMES IS NOT ALLOWED

Visitors to Hull’s Orchard Park estate might wonder who will enforce the order. Rows of houses stand empty, boarded up for demolition. Many are darkened to the colour of bruised fruit by smoke and demolition dust. Others are doorless. Windowless. Standing sentry over front lawns of mud and broken brick made into minefields of broken glass.

Few of the homes are inhabited.

This was the place to be, once upon a time. The old Hull Corporation had a waiting list of families desperate to move into this new community of solid houses, friendly shopkeepers and neatly tended lawns. Even when the high-rises started to climb into the skies in the sixties, it was still an address that smacked of honest, hard-working men and house-proud women. Poor, but with a front step you could eat your dinner off.

Not now. Thirty-odd years ago, the fishing industry died. The government gave it up. Handed it over to the Europeans and told them to have a ball. Told the Brits to be grateful they’d had it for so long. Told thousands of fishermen to fuck off home.

During the 1970s, the sons of the East Coast’s trawlermen, of its fish merchants, of its market traders and seamen,
became the first generation in three centuries to find there was no living to be made from the ocean. No living to be made anywhere, unless you had the O levels and a Surrey accent. They signed on. Drank away their benefit cheques. Spawned children who followed Mam and Dad’s example as they grew into teenagers who spent their evenings stealing cars and trashing bus shelters, breaking into pharmacies and knocking-up teenage girls in the petrol-stinking lock-ups. Orchard Park began to die.

Ten years ago, Hull Council accepted what its people already knew. The city was on the bones of its arse. Its population was shrinking. Anybody with the cash moved to the surrounding towns and villages. Its graduates simply passed through on their way to more prosperous cities. Mortgage companies started offering easy cash to council tenants, who bought themselves two-up-two-down semis in any one of the new, identikit estates that were cropping up on the outskirts of the city. By the year 2000, there were 10,000 empty homes in Hull, and most of them were on Orchard Park. Wholesale demolition began.

There are still proud homeowners here and there. Amid the black teeth and rotted gums of the burned-out and vandalised houses stands the occasional white-painted molar. The lawns are rich green. The earth, coffee-brown. Hanging baskets dangle next to double-glazed doors curtained with lace. These are the homes of the people who will not leave. Who believe Orchard Park will be saved. That the bad element will move on. That the high-rises will fall. That the properties they spent their life savings to purchase will soon become a steal.