by David Mark
She wishes the ladder weren’t here. Wishes, too, that the shadows of the tall trees didn’t look so much like prison bars. She wants it to be pretty. To be perfect. Things are going to be better soon. Better for both of them.
The ladybirds land afresh on Hannah’s bare skin. She looks up and frowns again at the ladder. Half hidden among the trees, it leads up to a rectangular wooden construction surrounded by chicken wire. He told her it was a “hide” – a place to conceal oneself to observe the animals. It doesn’t look very inviting. To Hannah it looks like the steps to the gallows and she does not want that thought to enter the man’s mind when he arrives. She wants him to feel nothing but freedom. To feel relief. And then to kiss her. God, how she wants that. They have talked their way through physical acts but he has never done more than push her hair behind her ear or tuck the label back in her sweatshirt. The time hasn’t been right. There have been too many obstacles. He can’t give himself to her when he belongs to so many others. She’s heard every excuse and wept at each of them, without ever really believing him.
But fate smiles on heroes. The gods intercede on behalf of those with goodness in their heart. That’s what she tells herself. It’s what he told her too, before she started to piss him off with her texts and letters and her hints and gentle threats. But how else can he see it? This is their chance. The opportunity he needs to get away. And she wants to hold his hand as he runs. She knows he’s cross at her. She feels bad about that. Wishes she hadn’t had to push quite so hard. But it will be worth it. She knows she can make him happy. Knows how their future will be.
The sound of a car engine from the nearby road causes her to stiffen where she sits. But the driver doesn’t even pause. He’s not here yet. Might be a little while. She doesn’t mind waiting. It’s nice here, among the trees. The little church where they first met is almost visible over the brow of the hill. She can hear the trickle of the tiny river. Can hear the birds among the nettles. Fancies she can even hear the badgers snoring in the sett beneath her feet. She likes to think of the animals asleep down there. Can picture them in her mind’s eye, snuggled up on crocheted blankets in front of their warm, open fire. Amends the mental picture, in deference to the warmth of the day. Lets out a nervous giggle at the thought of badgers in bikinis, lounging in deckchairs and sipping fancy drinks with long straws . . .
Hannah daydreams for a while. Feels the sweat trickle down the back of her thighs. Crosses and uncrosses her legs. She hopes he appreciates this. She’s done it all for him. She’s always been such a clean girl. Always brushed her teeth twice a day and showered in the morning. She’s shaved her armpits twice a week since adolescence. For him, for them, she has allowed herself to become some kind of cavewoman. She scratches at her armpits. Shudders at the sensation of curly hair. Sniffs her fingers and recoils. Onion skins and unwashed tights. She’d have been bullied for this, at school. Bullied at work, too. And at home. They love her, the bullies. Seem to look at her the way ladybirds look at aphids.
She turns her thoughts back to him. To what she’s done. It’s a strange way to win a man. But she would be the first to admit she does not have much experience of the opposite sex. Has had to do her reading.
Give him what he wants. That seems to be the advice on the glossier websites. Give him what he wants then take it away again. She hadn’t liked that. Wouldn’t like it done to her. She’d had to dig further. Had to get down deep into the nature of desire. Of ownership. Has learned some interesting new words.
‘We’re all Palaeolithic, under a varnish of sophistication. We’re cavemen in socks. Take away the iPods and the SodaStreams and we’re just cavemen and it’s all still about lust and meat, territory and revenge.’
He’d said that to her the very first day. Had blown her mind with new ways of thinking, even if she’d had no idea what a SodaStream was.
Hannah wonders if he will always want it like this or whether some years from now he will have altered his peculiarities sufficiently for her to be allowed to shave, both above and below.
With a start, she realises she has not done as instructed. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her mobile phone. She is under instruction to destroy it: to take out the battery and bury the parts in separate graves. She stuffs her fingernails into the crack at the back of the expensive mobile, and pauses. She needs to see it again. Needs to see what he did for her, what brought them here.
Deftly, naughtily, Hannah finds the video clip. It looks strange, sitting there among the footage of her friend’s birthday party and photographs of horses. It doesn’t look like it belongs.
She presses play. Watches again with grim satisfaction as the man in the video spits up teeth and begs to be allowed to live. His face is half in shadow and half caked in blood. He’s barely human. His cheekbone is sort of caved in and one eye is so puffy that it looks like the cleft in a shapely arse. The thought pleases her. Makes her giggle, as if she has just done something mischievous. The bleeding man’s voice is full of snot and tears. It sounds thick and gloopy and puts her in mind of fresh batter mixture being stirred with a wooden spoon. He struggles to get his words out. He looks like he’s in more pain than he can endure. It’s still not enough for Hannah. But he does get his words out, in the end. It’s an apology, of sorts. An acceptance of what he has done and a request for forgiveness. Hannah had given it, but enjoyed making him wait. Had liked knowing she could give the man his life, or signal his death.
Her man had given her that power.
He had taken away her bad dreams. Hannah has never been a brave kind of girl. She’s always met friends outside the pub rather than walk in on her own. Would turn to liquid if she found herself on a country footpath and saw a man coming the other way. After him, that had gone away. She knew she had a protector. Knows, here and now, that she can kill anybody she likes. All she has to do is make up a story. She won’t, of course. She’s a good girl. But it’s nice to know she can.
She could have left things simple, of course. Should have, really – that was the deal. Could have said thank you and moved on. But he had given her a glimpse of something she wanted to possess. And what she wanted, above all things, was him.
He was kind in his rejections. Told her about the obstacles in their path and not to think too highly of him. He was no good for her. Too old. Too full of bitterness and anger and a blackness that would only swallow her up if she came too close. He said he had simply done what needed to be done but he could not give himself to her. Would not even try. So she had pushed. Pushed hard.
Hannah pulls her hair back from her face. She wants to tie it up but he has told her he likes it down. She wants to be perfect for him. Wants to be a vision so stunning and sexy that he’ll know, on sight, that he has made the right decision. That he doesn’t need the others. And then he’ll tear at her clothes and bury his face in her scents and she’ll spill her blood on the forest floor and he’ll move inside her so deeply that it will feel as though they are breathing through the same lungs and pumping blood through the same heart and reaching their climax through one body, here, among the ladybirds and the shadows and the pretty white flowers . . .
The sound of a branch snapping causes Hannah to spin where she sits. The figure is lost in the shade of the tall trees and the glare of the sun as it bleeds through the leaves and the ears of corn that sway in the field beyond the path.
Hannah half stands, wishing she had heard him coming; wishing she’d had the time to compose herself; to lie seductively on the ground and expose the changes she has made to her body just to please him.
She starts to speak. Gives a half-giggle and shakes her head as a ladybird lands upon her lip.
The figure moves forward and Hannah’s smile drops from her face like sunlight behind cloud.
‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t . . . Where? . . . Look . . .’
And then she sees the knife.
Instinct takes over. Hannah turns to flee. She lunges forward, slipping on her bag, and her
dress catches on a gnarled stub of tree root. A long branch whips at her hair and face. Her foot goes into the opening to the badger sett and she feels her ankle twist so violently she half wonders if she has been captured by a snare. It feels for a moment as if she is being pulled into the ground. She cannot find her feet. They slip inside her uncomfortable boots and she feels a toenail tear. She yelps as she tries to stand, and then her face is being pushed into the nettles and the briars, the dead leaves and the earth, and she is shouting for help, for mercy, for forgiveness; one hand suddenly coming free as she twists herself onto her back, revealing the matted hair in the hollow under her arms and the rivulets of sweat that run through the dirt on her skin onto her bra-less chest.
At first she thinks she has been punched. She feels a hard thrust to her bottom rib. She shouts in pain but finds she has no voice. And there is wetness upon her skin. It feels like she has spilled wine on her clothes. She can feel leaves and bracken sticking to her skin. And now there is a weight on her wrists. She is being pinned down, even as the strength pumps out of her onto the forest floor, so that when the sharp, precise pain shoots through her underarms and into her every nerve-ending, she has no way to express it. She just lies on her back, staring through the trees at the distant sun, watching the world fragment into lines and swirls and ladybirds and feeling the figure above her stick a long sharp blade into her guts again, again, again . . .
PART ONE
1
Monday, 2 May, this year
The kiss is sticky. Inelegant. A sensation not unlike biting into a ripe peach.
He feels her hands on his back, her cold fingers applying gentle pressure on each of his vertebrae as if his spine were a clarinet.
Small, neat teeth clamp playfully on his lower lip.
She moves as shadow, insinuating herself into the gap between his broad left arm and the sleeping child he holds so protectively in the crook of his right.
‘Let it go, Aector. Just for a moment. Please.’
Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy pulls his wife close. Feels her settle in his grasp with the same spirit of contentment as the little girl who snoozes against his chest. He strokes the soft skin of her taut, tanned belly and feels her shudder and laugh as he finds her ticklish places.
Her giggling gives their embrace an oddly teenage air; turns this coming together of experienced and familiar mouths into something inarticulate and clumsy. Lips overspill. Take in chin and neck. He feels the blast of air from her nostrils as she exhales, hungrily, into his open face; snorts his breath in a grunt of wanting; tongue like a spoon scraping a yoghurt pot . . . and then she is pulling away, rising like smoke, leaving a fading ghost of scent in the warm air around his flushed cheeks. He breathes deep. Catches the scent of sun-cream and citrus, of outdoor food and wine. Her skin lotion and cigarettes. He wants her, as he always wants her. Wants to wash himself, lose himself, in her movements, her affection . . .
And then he feels her. Hannah. The missing girl. Reaching upwards, through the bones and the splinters and the deep dark earth. Her fingers grabbing at his trouser legs. He feels suddenly cold in his chest and hot in his belly. e HMakes fists around his wife’s hair and ignores her gasp of pain and surprise. Pushes her head back and buries his face in her neck; making a cave for the thudding din of his thoughts.
She’s here. Here, beneath your feet. Here, waiting for you . . .
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and his refined Scottish accent is dry as ancient bone.
‘I like it,’ says Roisin, placing a kiss on her daughter’s forehead, and then stretching to plant a similar smooch on McAvoy’s nose. ‘I can handle a bit of the rough stuff. But let her go for a little while, eh, my love? Just try.’
It is bank holiday Monday, just after 4 p.m. A bright spring day. Nap time for Lilah. Above them, the bluest of skies and a round, orange sun. Viewed as a photograph, the image would suggest darting swallows, fat bluebottles. In truth, this valley with its muddy, root-twisted footpath, its gorse bushes and cow-parsley, its dandelions and wild garlic, channels a wind that cuts like steel. Even McAvoy, inured to the harshest of elements during a childhood battling hail and snow on his father’s Highland croft, suppresses a shiver as the wind tugs at his sweat-dampened fringe. Shivering, they retreat into the shadow of the small, squat church that stands to their rear to find comfort among the headstones and the lichen-covered memorials. Enjoy the distant haze of bluebells, curling around the trunks of adolescent trees like tendrils of cerulean smoke.
The trio hold one another in silence as a chilly gust, unimpeded in its rush from the North Sea, tumbles down the valley. It shakes loose a maelstrom of apple blossom from the overhanging branches. Petals cascade like snow, landing in Roisin’s jet-black hair and tickling her skin.
‘It’s pretty here,’ says Roisin. ‘I’ve always thought that if people are going to go missing or get murdered, they should do so in pretty places. It makes it much nicer for me and the bairns.’
‘Don’t,’ says McAvoy, shutting his eyes tight, like a child turning his face away from a spoonful of something unpleasant. ‘What if she’s here, Roisin? Under our feet, right now. What if we’ve already stepped on her face?’
Roisin shakes her head and reaches down to pick a daisy. He loves her ability to do something so simple and innocent. Loves that she indulges him his obsession. Has made space in their relationship for the missing girl.
‘There are worse places to be left alone,’ she says, and starts plucking petals from the flower. ‘He loves me, he loves the dead lass, he loves me, he loves the dead lass . . .’
McAvoy isn’t sure whether to chide her for insensitivity or kiss her for being so adorable. It is a dilemma he faces most days. Were he not a policeman he doubts he would care much either way. But McAvoy was a policeman in his soul long before he put on the uniform and even today, as acting senior officer on call, he cannot forget that at any moment his phone could ring and inform him of another horrible thing done in the name of passion, revenge or desire. He carries his job with him at all times. Feels the burden within him, and without, like a rucksack full of bricks whose weight only diminishes when he takes his wife and child into his embrace.
Beneath his grey woollen coat, McAvoy has squeezed his considerable bulk into a dark blue suit, complete with yellow shirt and old school tie. His suits are specially made, bought off the internet from a supplier specialising in men of stature. McAvoy has stature to spare. He is a conservative 6 foot 5 inches. He has a rugby-player physique and a handsome, scarred face topped with unruly ginger hair. Grey hairs have begun to speckle his beard and the darkness beneath his eyes betrays the things he has seen. He would look like a nightclub bouncer were it not for the gentleness around his cow-eyes and the freckles that spray across his pink-and-white cheeks.
Roisin, ten years his junior and made all the more elfin by her proximity to her towering husband, wears tight black jeans and a designer sweatshirt beneath the burgundy leather jacket she opened with such excitement on Christmas morning two years ago and has barely taken off since. McAvoy knows that despite the cold, Roisin would be wearing something more revealing were it not for her self-consciousness over the scarring on her legs. She used to love showing off her skin every time the sun pushed its face through the clouds. But an accident two years ago ripped holes in her shins. Left her perfect legs looking like somebody had carved their initials to the bone.
McAvoy looks around him. Marvels at the absence of company. He had not really expected to find an army of Japanese tourists in the grounds of St Ethelburga’s church but imagined there would be at least a couple of ramblers and a picnicker or two. Instead, he and his family have Great Givendale to themselves. It has a timeless quality, this place, in this moment. He fancies that he and Roisin could be plucked from their own time, transplanted to a different century and the view would remain unchanged. Reckons they would be unaware they had tumbled through the ages until the locals turned up and started jabbing him with pitchf
orks and suggesting that both the witch and the giant be burned without delay. In truth, the little church to McAvoy’s rear was only built in 1849 and in times gone by, the geese that are busy having a noisy argument down by the tear-shaped pond would be surrounded by onions and sitting in a pot.
‘I don’t mind,’ says Roisin, softly, as she settles back against the wooden bench and nods at his shirt pocket. ‘You can tell me again. I won’t snore. And if you argue, I’m hitting you.’
McAvoy considers protesting but his left bicep is already sore from the repeated punches she gave him while driving here, and he doesn’t think he can take another of her “love-taps” without making a girlish noise. Roisin does not know her own strength.
McAvoy unfolds the rectangle of paper and waves it at a butterfly that seems to have taken a liking to Lilah’s brightly coloured summer dress. He looks again at the tangle of lines and smudges of forest that make up his satellite map of the area around Pocklington, on the road from Hull to York, where East Yorkshire becomes North Yorkshire and the house prices start to rise.
Lets himself think of her. Hannah. The missing girl. The young lassie who was just beginning to live . . .
The Serious and Organised Crime Unit of Humberside Police has been searching for Hannah Kelly since August of last year. Since that time, McAvoy has got to know this rural landscape pretty well. Has snagged his clothes on just about every briar and branch. He knows she’s here somewhere. He just doesn’t know where to dig. Doesn’t know whether it’s wrong to bring his family here for picnics. He shivers at the thought that he missed something while lost in a daydream about walking through these woods with his wife and children.