by David Mark
He likes it when Roisin calls him a maverick. He’s never imagined himself as such, but somehow she’s right. He is the loose cannon. He is the one who does things his own way. By doing things properly, by the book, deliberately, methodically, legally, he’s become a trouble-maker, and been pushed to one side.
He takes a swig of carrot and coriander soup. It’s got chilli in it and makes his nose run and his cheeks flush, but he can feel it warming him through. Doing him good. Lifting the damp, corpse-tainted air of the Country Park from his raw lungs.
He’s used to the cold, of course. Accustomed to it. His skin has been toughened by two decades of working the land. But the weather in this city chills him to the bone. It makes his marrow seem soggy with ice water. The air, laced with a grey, insidious mist, makes him cough and his eyes drip and seems to sap the strength and stoop the shoulders. A year after arriving in Hull, with baby Fin just a few months old, he wonders how long it is since he last saw sunlight. Wonders what this place is doing to him. To his family. He feels like a figure in a still-damp water-colour. Sees the people around him in greys and washed-out swirls of dirt. It sometimes feels like living inside a rain-cloud. It’s a hard place to find the motivation to be different.
To do your job.
To get on.
To shine.
Even the victims seem somehow accepting.
People cudgelled in the street.
Grandads beaten up for asking a teenager to get off their front wall.
The owners of burgled homes and firebombed restaurants.
All seem to have a shadow in their eyes that suggests they knew it had been only a matter of time. That everybody gets it, at some point. That it could have been worse.
There’s a weariness to this city. A lethargy. He sees it as a man made old by hard work: coughing up lumps of gristle and weak with emphysema, limbs riddled with arthritis and only bitter memories in its eyes.
He finishes the soup, and mops the bowl with a hunk of Roisin’s home-made bread. Thanks her, in his mind. Pictures her smile. Spends a moment enjoying the image of her and Fin, picking herbs, rolling pastry, seasoning the meal that he won’t be home in time to eat.
Turns back to the computer screen and flicks through the files in front of him. Cross references database after database. Does everything he has been asked to do. Completes every pointless task. Watches the windows grow dark and the reflection in the glass more vivid. Tries not to glance at the clock on the wall. It’s not his way to criticise. Even when he returns home long after his loved ones have gone to bed, he climbs in beside them and holds them tight, and thanks God for what he has. The ethic was drummed into him by his father, on the croft they farmed at Wester Ross in the far North of Scotland. Five hectares of land and a white-washed stone cottage half an hour’s walk from the nearest B-road. A childhood spent preparing to take over, of letting his hands grow used to the feel of feed buckets biting into his palms, of frost crystals splintering beneath his Wellington boots, of being too cold to breathe and too tired to stand, and knowing that only by keeping going, and sewing, planting, feeding, slaughtering, would his family be able to eat. Then boarding school. A new life, with a mother who didn’t know what to do with him and a stepdad who offered nothing but money. He’s never fitted in anywhere since. Not at university. Not out there in the big wide world. And he can’t go home again. Not now. Not after what happened when he chose the old family croft as a safe place to disappear with the teenage traveller with whom he had fallen desperately in love. Not after the bad men came, and left blood on the whitewashed walls.
After a while, he looks up from the computer for the screen-break that the clock in the corner of the monitor is telling him he is due. He blinks and casts his eyes around the long, empty office. Messy desks. Dusty computers, rarely switched on. Evidence bundles and rain-spattered files spilling off desks and under tables.
He wonders where they are. Which avenues Roper is following up. Who’s in the frame. Whether they’ll even bother to tell him.
A flash of anger followed by customary reproach and regret….
Roper.
The man who charged Shane Cadbury with the murder of a young girl. A girl whose stench is still in McAvoy’s nostrils. Whose decomposing flesh seems to be continuing its ruination inside his throat. Whose smell masks the scent of his wife’s perfume, his son’s freshly-washed hair. Whose face seems to stare at him from every computer screen and newspaper, notice board and magazine rack.
A face he didn’t see, the first time they met, because her head had been removed by the butcher who stood there beside him.
Shane Cadbury.
A look of longing upon his ugly, moonish face ….
The phone begins to ring in Roper’s empty office at the far end of the room, and McAvoy instinctively keys in the number into the pad that transfers the call to his own phone.
“Humberside Police CID. Can I help you?”
The line is crackly. Hard to make out, as if the person at the other end of the receiver is outside, buffeted by angry winds.
“Doug, that you?”
“Detective Superintendent Roper is unavailable. Might I be able to help?”
“Doug? Doug, I’m losing you …”
“Sorry, this is a terrible line, might I be able to ring you back …”
“Doug, look, it’s Paul Gosling. Tech unit for Thames Valley. I just heard the news. I’m sure you’re up to your eyes with this double murder so I’ll keep it brief….”
McAvoy hears another roar of wind. Tries again to interrupt but is drowned out.
“The Cadbury case, yeah? I heard it’s all systems go. What did you do with the tech report?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The tech report. About the mobile number? The ghost messages the lads did for you? Was it nothing, after all? I wouldn’t be asking, but they were wondering if you’d got to the bottom of it. They aren’t cheap these boffins so I hope they were worth your while. We don’t normally follow-up, but the Butterworth case affected everybody. Even down here. Getting the right man means a lot to everybody ….”
McAvoy finds himself breathing harder.
Ella: like fingers down his throat.
He reaches into his pocket for his twisted handkerchief pouch, fat at one end like a comet, an elastic band wrapped around the crushed spices Rosin picked and mixed for him, when he first began to complain that the smell of Ella’s memory wasn’t going away.
He breathes it in.
Loses himself for a second in rosemary, sage, marjoram, picked with hands that can make him feel wonderful, safe, beloved .….
“It was just that with the other stuff we were surprised you went with the murder charge, but look I know you know what you’re doing …”
McAvoy sits and stares, listening to the wind whistle down the phone, wondering if the gale will mask his Scottish brogue. If he can sound as swish and glamorous as the man whose face is more famous than the villains he catches. Wonders if he should. If it’s right. If he’s letting curiosity get the better of him. Indulging himself. If he’s guilty of conceit for daring to second guess such a decorated officer.
But her remembers Shane Cadbury’s face.
And Roper’s, that night.
When he had found her, on the bed, in the bloodied gown.
He remembers that feeling, that certainty, unequivocal and deafening.
He didn’t kill her.
Took her, but didn’t stick the knife in.
“Paul,” he says, talking through the handkerchief and the herbs. “Can you send that report to me again ….?”
16
3pm. Hessle Foreshore.
Three clapped out motors and an ice cream van spread out on the concrete car park.
Wind.
Rain.
The bleakest of mid-winters. Each gust of wind more pissed off and miserable than the last.
The sun giving up and letting the grey clouds and the darkness swallow
it whole and pull it, inexorably, below the brown waters and the white caps and the frothing waves.
The street lights and headlamps opening their eyes.
Waiting.
Watching.
Drinking it in.
Looking at the Humber. My old friend. A strip of shingly beach and then the muddy waters. A shimmer to the brown surface today, as though somebody has jostled a cup of cold coffee.
The Humber Bridge overhead. Tonnes of metal twisted into a thing of beauty, its peaks and troughs precise and perfect, resembling a reading on a heart monitor.
The door creaks open on the other car, three spaces to my left, and Tony H gets out. He walks towards me, neck sunk into the collar of his dirty cream mac. Eyes darting. Hands in his pockets. Naturally shifty. He once appeared before a judge to explain a story he had written and was ordered to bring his transcript of an interview. He produced perfect shorthand notes on beer mats and the backs of bank statements. He can write in his pocket with a stub of pencil-lead under his fingernail. Everything is a prop for Tony. He can wrap Hull around himself like candy floss around a stick. He’s a fucking rat. Feral, and fag-stained. My mate.
He raps on the roof of the car before he pulls open the passenger door.
“Fucking hell, it’s pissing down.” He throws himself down hard on the passenger seat. He crushes an old burger box and puts his boots all over my cuttings collection, but doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“All right, Rat-boy?” I say, pulling out a cigarette. “It’s funny, but your mum’s dry as a bone when I fuck her. Still, she does insist on up the arse.”
Pleasantries exchanged, I offer Tony a fag and he accepts. He pulls a Hamlet box from a pocket and slips the cigarette inside.
“What are the headlines, mate?”
He sinks back into the seat and stretches his legs, arching his back like a yawning cat, then he begins rummaging in his pockets. Eventually he finds a Gregg’s chicken and ham pasty. The bag is grease-stained, and gives off no steam. The coat was probably manufactured around the pasty.
Tony gives a little yelp of triumph as he roots in the bag, and takes a big bite.
“Right, I’ve spoken to the desk and the young lad’s been keeping an eye on the trial. Nowt better than we’ve already got. The mum’s going to be giving evidence first thing tomorrow. Then Lewis. Choudhury’s going to eviscerate him. No steer yet on whether Cadbury’s going to give evidence. Fucking big bugger, wasn’t he? Could snap a girl like Ella in half with those big shovel-hands of his. How he’s pleading not guilty I don’t fucking know. Funny one, this, ain’t it? Was looking back at my notes and I reckon you and me couldn’t have been that far off when it happened. Remember, when all that stuff about Two-Jags came out and we were outside the gates waiting for a chat with his missus, freezing to death. He might have walked right past us. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Anyway, we splashed on this morning’s opening. Not bad stuff. I saw yours on the wires. Decent write. So much to squeeze in the intro, wasn’t there? The family must have been stapled to their seats not to storm the cells and rip his bastard head off. I don’t know how much they know about his past but when it comes out we’re looking at more fireworks. How many times has he been banged up for sex crimes? Fucking nonce. Shagging little girls for years.”
He finishes the pasty and looks around at the mess in the car. “Owt to drink?” he asks.
“Should be an old Lucozade under your chair. I might have pissed it in once or twice though.”
“Nectar,” he says and reaches under his seat. His hand emerges with the bottle and he twists the top off. There is no hiss. He takes a glug, gives a shrug, and ploughs on. “Right, this bollocks up at the Country Park. I’ve spoken to my guy and he reckons it’s going to be a fucking blinder. Roper was kind enough to give me a steer. It’s looking like a drug deal gone wrong. They haven’t got an ID for either of them yet, but it shouldn’t be long before it’s all formal. One of them’s got needle tracks up his arm and the other’s got ‘dealer’ written all over him.”
“So have they killed each other, then?” I ask, all innocence.
“Doesn’t look like it,” says Tony H, lighting a Hamlet. “Early doors, but the science boys reckon the gunshot victim died almost instantly. That means somebody else must have battered the other one’s brains in. He’s a big fucker though, so we might be looking for a hard case.”
I stare out through the glass, unsure what face to pull. In my head, the arcade-game and slot-machine jingle; metal on metal on metal. This is how my brain responds to the absence of my medication. Audible hallucinations. Nausea. Strange, high, keening diphthongs of sound felt but not truly heard. I can taste blood. Taste metal. It feels as if my mouth is full of bullets.
Tony gives me a look and raises an eyebrow. Our quid pro quo relationship requires me to give him something useful, and at the moment I’ve got nothing. I try and finesse some bullshit; to shake glitter onto a turd.
“I’ve had a chat with one of my tame sergeants and got pretty much the same,” I say, stifling a cough as I breath in a lungful of Tony’s cigar. “But it looks like they might have the killer’s car on CCTV. There’s a camera in the trees in the car park, and there’s no way that whoever did this went there on foot.”
Tony nods, and rubs a finger across his yellow teeth. There’s a squeaking sound, like a snooker cue being chalked, and he looks down at the digit. He rubs whatever he’s found on the under-side of the passenger seat. “Yeah, I heard something like that. Apparently, they’ve found one car abandoned a few streets away that might belong to the guy who had his face smashed in. The bloke who got shot probably took the fucking bus. Fucking chav bastard. I suppose if he was high enough, he might have flown.”
We fall into silence and stare at the water, brooding on how to take the next step with minimal effort. We’re supposed to be competitors, but work better as a team. I always keep something back when we meet up for our clandestine, grubby little chats, but he does the same to me. There’s always been something between us, a weird bond of drink and debauchery.
“What’s your next move then?” he asks, absent-mindedly pulling up his shirt to examine his chest. He licks his finger and gives his nipple a rub. It’s yellow, like a spot. “I’m hoping for a name by 5-ish. Roper is going to call me, so I’ll let you know.”
“I reckon I might go for the CCTV angle. See if I can find out where the tape is stored and get a look-see.”
“Happy fucking hunting. Roper will have this locked down pretty quickly. He’s got his 100 per cent clean-up record to think about.”
“Is he still claiming 100 percent?”
“Aye, he’s found a way of ignoring that debacle last year. He’ll still tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s never lost a case.”
Tony looks momentarily bitter. We both know the case he’s talking about: an attack on a Hessle Road prostitute that was almost unprecedented in its savagery. Caron Cross. 63. Every bone in her face was smashed. She looked like a rotten apple when they found her, but she pulled through. A city council contractor, Denis Johnstone, was charged within days. He was in the area at the time of the attack, been spotted on CCTV moments later, and his wife had given evidence that he had come home covered in blood, but Johnstone’s defence team managed to convince the jury that he had actually been busy beating somebody else up at the time. The crime he admitted to was nasty, but not as barbaric as the Hell that was visited on Caron. There was a lot of evidence to suggest that the investigation team had known about the other incident and tried to shush it up, and Roper’s reputation took a hit. It’s the only crease in his Armani suit, but it does piss him off. It pisses off Tony a good deal more. He’s been keeping Caron’s bed warm since she got out of hospital.
“What’s the rest of the day got in store, then?” he asks, fishing for that little bit more than he’s ever likely to reel in.
“Remember, I’m seeing Cadbury’s Mam? And I’d better pop in at my sister’s, give myself
a dose of misery.”
“Things no better, are they not?” he asks, shaking his head, and for a moment, genuinely concerned. “Such a shame. She’s a lovely lass. I know I’ve only met her a couple of times but she seemed such a sweetie. Shame you can’t just blow that fucking landlord’s head off.”
“It’s not just her landlord, mate,” I say, grabbing the steering wheel, hard. My knuckles go white beneath my gloves. “It’s her fucking dealer too. She’s shagging him, y’know? Reckons he’s her boyfriend, gonna make it all better. Called Beatle, or some such shit. They all need fucking doing. You met him that night in Sailmakers, when we were trying to get some food down Kerry and she was pretending she was clean. He wasn’t happy. Ugly prick in tracksuit bottoms and a baseball cap.”
“Maybe. Dunno. Don’t think he rings a bell. Be nice to put him out of the picture the way the Yanks do, though, eh? This is England though, Owen. If we were in America you could nip down the corner shop and buy a fucking Uzi. Do the both of them. And Choudhury. Christ, you could clear out half the baggage in your life. Cheer yourself up a bit.” He laughs, and scratches at his cheek. Delicate flakes of skin float into the air. One settles on the dashboard. I half-expect it to begin evolving before my eyes. A few million years, and Tony’s DNA could be approaching that of a human being.
I smile at him, and blink, to distort the look in my eyes. “I bet it’s more difficult than you think.”
“I dunno, mate,” he continues. “The Americans seem to just point and pull the trigger. We’ve got to content ourselves with glassing people. That’s what makes this country wonderful.”