Darkness Falls - DS Aector McAvoy Series 0.5 (2020)

by David Mark

  There is a solid meaty thump, and then the pressure is gone; the figure on my chest suddenly absent; the pain dissipating like blood beneath rain.

  And I’m on my knees, retching, massaging my throat. Through blurred, watery eyes, I see him. See Tony pulling himself to his feet. He’s reaching inside his dirty, sodden coat.

  Pulling out the murder weapon.

  It’s a kukri: a curved blade used by the Ghurkhas of the Nepalese Armed Forces. Pictures of it have been appearing in the Hull Mail for months. Tony wrote most of the articles.

  I stare. Glassy-eyed at the weapon. See Ella Butterworth’s blood on the blade.

  I turn at the sound behind me.

  He’s sprawled out like a fallen statue, trying to find his feet on the sloping, slippery surface, a look of panic on his broad face…

  McAvoy.

  For a second, Tony seems unsure which direction to advance, whether to finish off the copper who pulled him from his prey, or gut me, his best friend, before I can get my breath.

  McAvoy finds his feet and hauls himself up, emerging from the puddles and the dirt and the leaves. He’s big enough to snap Tony in two. Seems almost big enough to pull one of the oaks from the ground and smash it on the murderer’s ratty head.

  “Stop,” he shouts.

  He’s holding the gun in a massive white fist. The barrel shakes and trembles. There is absolute terror in his eyes.

  I drink him in. Focus my whole being on the vision of the earnest policeman, with his red hair and his cheap suit and the look of willingness in his eyes. Among the pain and the hate, I feel compassion. Sorrow, for what it must be like to tread the path of righteousness when darkness and light are such imposters. He doesn’t belong here in the blood and filth where people like Tony and me wade.

  And I know, to my very bones, that it is not in McAvoy’s nature to pull the trigger.

  Tony laughs. Gives me a glance and a wink, as if we’re still old pals in the press room making fun of the new boy. Then he runs at McAvoy.

  He slashes down with the kukri. McAvoy raises his hands in a boxer’s stance and the blade hits the metal of the gun. It falls from his hand. He steps back and loses his footing as Tony hacks at him. The blade digs into his collarbone like an axe into firewood. Tony has to yank it hard to get it free. McAvoy is falling onto on his back, a look of broken-hearted bewilderment upon his big, trusting face. Tony chops down again.

  McAvoy jerks like a dying fish as the rainbow of thick blood arcs upwards and patters onto the earth.

  I feel the fight run out of me. Feel nothing but an overwhelming sadness as I watch the dying, gulping breaths of the only good man I’ve ever known.

  Tony turns back to me, his face crimson, eyes wide and terrible.

  He picks up the gun.

  He points it at my chest.

  Gives a shrug that could almost be apology.

  Pulls the trigger.

  The bullet thuds into the tree trunk and Tony yells as he totters off balance. McAvoy’s shove in the back of the knees has cost him his shot.

  I watch the gun as it pinwheels through the rain and bounces off a branch to nestle on a pillow of sycamore leaves. I sprint forward, planting my feet in the blood and rain and earth and dive for the weapon: my damp hands clutching at the metal. I turn, triumphant. Focus on the man who has taken everything from me.

  Tony stands, motionless. Slowly, he looks down at McAvoy. Changes his grip on the kukri. Something flickers in his gaze: a flash of teeth and tail: shadows and blood. He lurches forward, ready to plunge the blade into McAvoy’s heart as if planting a flag in hard earth.

  I pull the trigger.

  Tony’s mouth opens as his eyes turn black and for a moment he has the look of a shark, crashing upwards through sea and spray to close his jaws around something fragile. Then his knees give way.

  He collapses amid the mulch of the clearing, a dark stain spreading outwards from the ruination beneath his belly, as he clutches himself and hisses on the forest floor. Blood seeps through his fingers through the ragged, hanging wound between his legs.

  For a moment, there is just the sound of pain, and running blood, and the savage swish of the branches overhead.

  Then I’m crawling to where McAvoy kneels, one hand pressed to the gash at his collarbone. His face is a mess: more meat than skin.

  “Is he dead?” McAvoy asks, and the effort seems to lighten his skin tone by several shades. He is the colour of dirty chalk.

  “No,” I say, trying to work out which wound to press my hands to. “Not yet.” “You didn’t kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t think I’m a killer. Not really”

  McAvoy’s breathing begins to sound unnatural. He blinks, furiously, as the rain hits his staring eyes. I wonder what the big man can see, here in this place between life and death.

  “You’ll be okay,” I say, and hope that it’s true. “Where’s your phone? Your radio?”

  McAvoy says nothing, and I realise I’m scrabbling through his pockets, like a battlefield magpie searching the pockets of the dead. I find his phone in the inside pocket of his jacket. Pull it out with fingers dripping blood. I dial 999. Look down at the dying policeman and wonder if Doug Roper will give a damn.

  We sit in the rain, wind tearing at our skin, our wounds, listening to Tony’s sobs.

  After a while, I hold up McAvoy’s phone. The picture on the screensaver is a beautiful, dark-haired girl with hooped earrings and too much lip-gloss. If I knew her name I would call her.

  I press my hand to the ugly trench of ruptured skin on McAvoy’s front. Feel splintered bone. A thought, quick as a whip. A sudden, selfish, disloyal question: what will happen to me? Only McAvoy believed me. Only McAvoy could help me clear my name. But McAvoy is dying. And Doug Roper wants me in the ground.

  I take a moment for myself. Think of all the lives taken, the broken bones, the grief-weighted tears; the good people corrupted by the bad and the bad people masquerading as agents of justice. And I realise it’s all lies. All pretence. All fiction. There’s just us. Just people. And we’re fucking awful.

  I feel a hand gripping my arm. There’s strength there. Immense strength. I look down and he’s glaring up at me, his face all blood and beard and desperate, tear-filled eyes.

  He shakes his head.

  “No,” he growls. “Not here. Not like this. Not without her…”

  And like a great wounded bear, he begins to haul himself to his feet. He drapes an arm around my shoulders and I stagger under the weight of him. He stands. Arches his back. Straightens his tie, even as the blood pours down his front.

  He says it again. “No.”

  He fumbles in his pocket. Hands me a small plastic recording device, and nods, meaningfully.

  I press ‘play’.

  Roper’s voice.

  Tinny, but unmistakable.

  “Fuck truth, son. Fuck it all. Fuck you, and Owen Lee and fuck Ella Butterworth. Silly slag probably had it coming. Maybe Tony H stabbed her. Maybe he didn’t. I don’t care. There’s enough on Cadbury to make it stick, so that’ll do. And Owen? Armed and dangerous, isn’t he? He won’t see the morning. Done me a good turn and drowned the chap who was becoming a problem. Didn’t even use the gun, which is fucking ungrateful, given what a bitch it was to get him out of the station with in his grubby mitt. Tony’s my friendly face at the Hull Mail. He’s useful. He might have some demons, but haven’t we all? And as for you, laddo? You’re out of my department. You can go where you fucking like, but it’s not even funny watching you waste your time anymore.”

  HE STARES PAST ME. Whatever he sees, whatever image his mind is projecting, it brings a flash of smile to his face.

  And I can do nothing but hold him, and feel his blood mingle with mine.

  65

  Lights flashing, sirens blaring, ambulance pulling up as close to the entrance to the woods as the driver can
manage: its crew leaping out in green overalls, dragging equipment, barking instructions, questions, cursing the rain…

  Police cars. Roper’s Jag in the lead, tyres screeching on the tarmac. A cameraman sitting in his passenger seat. Roper driving. Face stone.

  The press. Satellite dishes on roofs. Reporters in fleet cars. Photographers. Journalists, tucking shirts into their trousers and pulling Wellingtons from car-boots.

  I turn away.

  Watch the procession.

  They see us, and run forward in a scrum. The uniformed officers try to marshal the press, but this one’s too big, and they’re greeted with universal suggestions to fuck off.

  The guns are on the table in front of us. Knife, too.

  On the floor at our feet, Tony Halthwaite, grey with pain and loss of blood, rolling in the gutter, one arm handcuffed to the leg of the picnic table, red palm turned upwards, still spitting pink froth onto his chin, chewing at his face as he gutters the word “slags” over and over and over …

  Elbowing his way to the front, young blonde copper bustling people out of the way, comes Roper.

  “Owen Lee,” he begins, when he’s sure that his documentary crew are behind him. “I am arresting you…”

  Me and McAvoy, pale and bloodied, turn to one another and give a smile, which turns into a laugh. “Well done,” I say. “You got me.”

  He snarls, flustered. Begins again. “I am arresting you …”

  “You’re not, pal,” I say. “McAvoy here’s already done it.”

  “What?” Roper’s trying to stay calm, but a vein in his head is starting to pulse.

  The faces in the crowd are starting to turn to him. One or two people I recognise are twitching into smiles.

  “I’m going to come quietly,” I say. “Unlike your missus, who’s a real screamer.”

  There are sniggers at that, and I fancy, for a moment, that the sun is starting to peek through a hole in the cloud. I wince in the unfamiliar wink of golden light, and just as suddenly, it’s gone.

  “McAvoy,” he says, unsure which mask to wear. He smiles. Frowns. Plays along, gives up. “Sergeant, please explain…”

  McAvoy gives a sigh through pursed lips, then peers through a space in the crowd. Another car has pulled up. A uniformed senior officer steps out. Chief Constable material, by the look of him.

  Heads turn.

  We stand. McAvoy’s arm on mine, his grip just solid enough to make sure I don’t say anything smart. He needn’t. I’m out of ammo.

  The man comes through the crowd, other uniforms on either side. I recognise the face. Long, haughty, and utterly joyless. Top cop. Head of Humberside Police.

  Roper looks confused. Lost. The ground beneath his feet is splintering.

  “Sergeant McAvoy,” says the senior officer, with a nod. He seems uncomfortable in the glare of the press.

  “Sir, things are very much in hand…” begins Roper, but falls silent with a glare from his commanding officer.

  The cameras catch it all.

  “And this is Owen Lee?”

  I nod. Don’t know if I should extend my hand.

  “In the car,” he says and his officers move forward. I put my wrists up and allow myself to be cuffed. I smile while they do it.

  “Sir, this has been my investigation,” says Roper, and he’s a petulant child. Cameramen rub raindrops from lenses. I’m led through the crowd to the squad car. Behind me, I hear Tony groaning as the paramedics begin tending him.

  The uniforms suddenly get the situation into some semblance of order and start to move the press back.

  I slide into the warm car, and shiver as I lay my head back. I’m suddenly dog-tired, but I can’t help wishing I was with the pack, covering this, as it happens to somebody else.

  Another copper slides in beside me. Doesn’t even look in my direction.

  Outside, the Chief Constable is talking to Roper. Supercop’s head is bowed. Anger is radiating off him.

  I just nod. Chew the inside of my cheek for a while. Rub tiredness from my face with muddy, bloody hands.

  I look out at Roper again, and wish I could catch his eye. There might be something in them, at last.

  He doesn’t turn around. I can only see the face of his young puppet. The blonde copper who wanted to be my friend and who beat the shit out of me in a prison cell. The lad who looks baffled and scared, and who’s standing on his own.

  And then I lean back and close my eyes.

  Feel the pleasant constriction of the cuffs on my wrists.

  The knowledge I have nowhere to be and nobody to kill.

  And I think of Jess.

  I don’t doubt she’ll forgive me, and I hope she won’t have to wait for me for very long.

  Kerry.

  I can feel nothing but sadness, there. Nothing but empty, cold pain. I couldn’t save her. I helped her fall. Sadness, that on the day my Dad heard he’d lost his daughter, he’ll hear his son has been arrested for murder.

  Ella.

  Just regret. That we never met. That I could not know her in life, the way I have understood her in death.

  And then we’re moving.

  Out of the car park. Past the cameras and the flashbulbs.

  The rain somehow less ferocious on the windowpane.

  Up at the sky.

  Six spears of sunlight forming a constellation in the canopy of grey.

  EPILOGUE

  Four months later,

  June, 2012

  It’s a ghastly day. Although the fog has not taken this part of the east coast in its fist, the sky is an endless smear of grey and the air is speckled with a misty rain; a billion tiny raindrops hovering like flies. Despite this, it’s warm. Sweaty. The sky may be the colour of white clothes washed alongside a funeral shroud, but the air has a moist pestilence about it, as though a great damp beast has been laid invisibly over the city. Roisin McAvoy feels perfectly within her rights to lay out on a sun-lounger in the front garden of her terraced house on the Kingswood estate.

  Standing at the sink, staring through the window and more than enjoying the view, Aector McAvoy wonders whether his wife is breaking any laws in looking so extraordinarily beautiful. She’s wearing a leopard-print bikini, pulled down to avoid tan-lines, and she’s holding a baking tray to ensure that the occasional moments of sunlight help her fill in the gaps in her tan. She has earned this moment. She rarely considers what she does or not deserve, but her husband has made it plain that whatever she wants, she has earned.

  Inside the little semi-detached on the Kingswood estate, Aector McAvoy, alive despite his best efforts, is thinking about his mum. He has spoken to his mother four times in the past five years – once to tell her about the birth of her grandson, and the others to put her mind at rest about rumours of his demise. She had been pleased about Fin. Hadn’t been aware, on any of the other occasions, that he had been in any kind of danger. You’re a policeman, she had said, as if this explained everything. Isn’t that what happens? McAvoy had found himself agreeing with her. Played down his injuries. Asked after her health and that of her husband and stepchildren. She had, in turn, asked after ‘the Irish girl and the baby’. McAvoy had kept his temper. Were he to lose it, he would never find it again.

  He considers his son. The lad is asleep. Dead to the world, snoring contentedly. He’s going to be a big brother soon. He needs his rest.

  It’s June, 2012. McAvoy has been on sick leave since February. In the immediate aftermath of his encounter with Tony Halthwaite, his heart stopped twice. McAvoy would love to be able to tell his wife that he saw white light and perfection. He did not. In the moments between life and death he saw Ella Butterworth. Saw the girl taken before her time. Somehow, the wounds she sustained in Tony Halthwaite’s attack, had been repaired. She was peaceful. She was serene. There was a moment’s connection, as she evaporated into fragments. And then there was only Aector McAvoy, half dead on the damp floor of the Humber Bridge Country Park. He’d been given the chance to becom
e something else. Something other. To pass on and be done with the complications of life and the people within it. He’d fought for life as if he were drowning. He does not know what lies beyond, but unless it contains Roisin and Fin, it holds no attraction.

  He sits at the kitchen table. The radio is playing one of his favourites. It’s Roll Away Your Stone by Mumford and Sons. There’s a new album out soon. Roisin knows a guy who knows a guy who robbed a guy. There will be tickets for the new tour in his car when his birthday arrives next month. He’ll be 30-years-old. A third of the way through his life, and still no fucking clue what it’s all about.

  He looks at the phone on the kitchen table as if it were a bomb. It is almost twenty minutes since he hung up on the newly appointed Detective Superintendent Patricia Pharaoh. She wants him on her team. She’s taking over the rebranded Major Crimes Unit. It will be known as Serious and Organised. He feels as though he fits both descriptions well enough to qualify.

  The door swings open. Roisin is glorious: glazed in sweat and suncream. Her sunglasses, knock-off Pradas, reflect McAvoy back upon himself. Barefoot, she crosses to where he sits. Slides, guilelessly, onto his lap, and drapes herself around him like a scarf.

  “Tell me,” she says, into his ear. “I can take it.”

  He swallows. Gooseflesh rises upon his exposed flesh. He feels her press her forehead to his. Feels her make him well, the way she has made him well these past months.

  “Serious and Organised,” he says, his lips brushing her earlobe. “She says she trusts me. Understands.”

  He hears her laugh against his neck. “The one with the blue eyes and the big tits? Yeah, she’s seen something in you, no doubt.”

  “They’re all gone,” he says, quietly. “The whole team. Roper’s lot. Scattered to the four winds. Stace. Slater. All the DCs. All gone.”

  “Fresh start,” says Roisin. “New beginnings.”

  “It’s still on the table,” says McAvoy. “The offer. Full pension. Disability payout…”

  “And what would you be, if not this?” asks Roisin, quietly. “What would you be for?”