Sorrow Bound

by David Mark

  McAvoy takes out his notebook from his waistcoat pocket. He will remember every single detail, but Lavinia seems the sort of person who will consider him taking her words as hugely important, and he holds his pen invitingly over a blank page.

  “Were they walking together, or standing still?”

  Lavinia appears to think. “They were talking. It looked like he’d come from the other direction.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The way they were standing. She had her back to me. He was sort of facing me. It’s the way you’d stand if you’d just bumped into somebody.”

  McAvoy shakes his head slowly, a picture forming in his mind. “This was at the far end of the street, you say. Near the car park where she was found?”

  “Not more than a few feet away from the entrance.”

  McAvoy makes a note, moving the notebook just enough for her to see that he is taking down her words in shorthand—the result of an intensive night class he paid for himself.

  “How long did you watch them for?”

  “It was literally a moment,” says Lavinia sadly. She seems to be wishing she had seen the whole attack and then taken pictures of the killer.

  “And the person she was talking to—it was definitely a man?”

  “Definitely,” says Lavinia.

  “Big? Small? White? Black?” He checks the door and sees PC Pearl lounging in the doorframe. Begins to explain himself to both of them. “These questions are crucial, you understand . . .”

  “I’d say average. White, I’m pretty certain.” Lavinia looks sorry to be able to offer so little.

  “Age?”

  “Not old. Not young, either.”

  “And they were talking. Not arguing?”

  She shakes her head. “They didn’t seem to be. They looked like they had just stopped for a chat.”

  McAvoy closes the notebook around his pen. “Could you show me your room please, Miss Mantell? PC Pearl, could you please ask a uniformed colleague to stand at the point Miss Mantell has described? Thanks.”

  Lavinia looks surprised, but also quite pleased that there is more of this rather exciting aspect of her day still to come. She stands up, straightening her flared pin-striped trousers and white strappy tee. She leads him through the living room door and into an L-shaped kitchen, then up a flight of stairs, covered with posters from foreign films.

  “You like the arts?” he asks as he follows her up.

  She turns back. “I do a lot of work with theater companies, and in a perfect world that’s all I’d do. That, watch films, and smoke cigarettes. Not a perfect world, is it?”

  Lavinia pushes open the door to her bedroom and scurries inside, throwing the duvet over the unmade bed and picking up a few items of laundry from the floor to stuff in a wicker hamper next to an open wardrobe. It’s a bit of a mess, but comfortably so.

  “There,” she says, pointing, rather unnecessarily, at the window. “You have to reach up to blow the smoke out or flick your ash.”

  McAvoy crosses to the window. A young WPC is talking into her radio and crossing to the spot McAvoy has requested. Behind her, he can see the edge of the white forensics tent, and behind that the bridge across the railway lines that would have led Philippa Longman home. He sits on the windowsill and looks out through a single-glazed pane, smears on its surface and dead flies at its edges.

  The WPC has come to a halt as instructed. McAvoy squints. He does not know the brunette officer. Could not, now, pick her out of a lineup. He turns to Lavinia. “Can I borrow you for a moment, Miss Mantell?” He pushes himself back against the wall and invites her to lean past him. He gets a smell of medicated shampoo and Impulse body spray. Could count the freckles on her bare right shoulder, should he so choose. “Describe the officer for me, please.”

  She squints theatrically. “It’s a woman,” she says. “Brownish hair. Young.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I can’t tell you the color of her eyes, no.”

  They both stand, unsure whether to be pleased or not with how the past few minutes have gone. Eventually McAvoy smiles and gives her a card. “An officer will take a formal statement. In the meantime, if you remember anything else, please give me a call.”

  She looks at the card with its variety of numbers. Work. Personal. E-mail. Home.

  “Do you think you’ll catch him?” asks Lavinia, looking up. “It’s not very nice, is it? That sort of thing happening where you live. I mean, you get yobs and joyriders and the odd fight after Hull Fair or football games, but somebody being killed like that? I mean, it could have been me. It could have been anyone.”

  McAvoy holds her gaze, then breaks away and crosses back to the window. “It couldn’t,” he says softly. “He wanted her. She knew him.”

  SIX

  8:48 p.m. Hessle Foreshore.

  A wide strip of gray-brown water, separating East Yorkshire from North Lincolnshire; the bridge overhead a loose stitch of concrete and steel, holding two counties together.

  Aector and Roisin McAvoy: standing on the strip of muddy shingle, smiling indulgently as their son throws dirty pebbles at the rotten timbers sunk deep into the sucking sands.

  He breathes deep. Catches the scent of sunscreen and citrus. Her skin lotion and cigarettes. He wants her, as he always wants her. Wants to wash himself, lose himself, in her movements, her affection . . .

  He breathes in again. And there it is. That faint, chemical tang. The merest whiff of disinfectant and gray steel, still suffusing his skin. The postmortem. The mortuary. That ghastly tapestry of guts and innards made art by the precision of the incisions and stitches.

  If Philippa Longman suffered in her final moments, the wounds are as nought compared to the indignities wreaked upon her corpse by Dr. Gene Woodmansey. He was a lot more tender, more dispassionate about it than whoever tore her rib cage open, but there is no tender way of slicing up human flesh, and McAvoy’s hour at the mortuary had been vile. McAvoy has witnessed postmortem exams before. He saw enough animal corpses and butchered enough cattle in his youth not to be rendered nauseous by the pathologist’s work. He is not the sort of officer who would rather do anything other than visit the mortuary. He has seen fellow officers volunteer to break the news of violent death to the victim’s family rather than visit that anodyne, sterile cathedral of human deconstruction, with its gray walls and floors.

  McAvoy is okay with blood. He had not raised objections when asked by Pharaoh to attend the autopsy on her behalf. But he had never seen a corpse like Philippa’s before. Nor had he seen Dr. Woodmansey give that tiny little shake of the head, that muted exhalation of breath, that suggested, he, too, was at once disgusted and appalled by what had been done to the woman who lay naked and mangled, scrubbed and exposed, upon the metal table before him.

  As he holds his wife and watches his son throw stones into the water, McAvoy pictures the scene that played out before him just a couple of hours ago. Sees himself, wraithlike in his disposable white coat and with blue bags on his shoes, standing back against a wall so joyless in hue that it seems to have been colored in with a pencil. In front of him are two steel tables. Philippa Longman lies upon one—her face having settled into a curiously inhuman, characterless mask; so pale as to be almost translucent. Against the far wall is a hydraulic hoist and steel doors polished to a reflective gleam. To McAvoy’s right are sinks and hoses, a cutting board and specimen bottles. Next to him is a large whiteboard, the names of the recently dead scrawled upon it in doctor’s handwriting. The numbers scribbled in the various columns record the weight of heart, brain, kidneys, lungs, liver, spleen. McAvoy takes them in and wonders what he should feel. Cannot help but picture himself on the slab. Cannot help but imagine Dr. Woodmansey leaning over him, slicing the scalpel around the crown of his skull and lifting his hair away as if he has fallen to a tomahawk blow.

 
As he works, Dr. Woodmansey wears a green apron over green scrubs, topping off the outfit with white wellies and rubber gloves. As she was brought in, Philippa Longman’s body was wrapped in plastic sheeting, evidence bags secured over her hands and feet to preserve any microscopic evidence contained within. As he watched, somber and silent, McAvoy wondered how it felt to be a policeman a half century before. Wondered how he would have fared were he asked to catch a killer without knowledge of skin cells, hair fibers, DNA. As ever, he felt he would come up short.

  Dr. Woodmansey is a short, portly man with close-shaved hair and unashamedly old-fashioned glasses. He is businesslike in his dealings with both the living and the dead. He is not one for small talk. He makes no jokes over the body and appreciates silence as he works. McAvoy likes his manner. Likes that he knows nothing more about the pathologist than the fact he is good at his job.

  “Swing me, Daddy.”

  The vision disappears as Fin gives his father an attention-grabbing kick on the ankle. He smiles at his son, who is a miniature version of his dad—all broad shoulders, red face, and russet hair. McAvoy picks him up and gives him a quick spin around, enjoying the laughter it brings from his wife and his child. The boy is sticky with sweat, and McAvoy can see problems this evening when they try and get him to change out of the Ross County football shirt he has worn every day since it arrived in the post on his fifth birthday. As presents go, McAvoy is not sure that turning a youngster with his whole life ahead of him into a Ross County fan is a tremendous gift. Still, Fin had been pleased, and is busy working on an elaborate thank-you card for his uncle in Aultbea. McAvoy wonders if the boy will still be as grateful when an adult, while he is nursing a consoling pint and wishing that he’d been raised to support Celtic.

  Fin runs off, back to the wooden timbers. McAvoy reaches out for Roisin’s hand. It’s delicate and cold, and he takes it in his great warm paw, pulling her in. She rests her head against his chest, and as one, they sink down onto the pebbles. It’s still horribly muggy and warm and the sky is the color of the pathologist’s cutting tools, but at least here there is enough breeze for them to be able to hold each other without their clothing sticking to their skin.

  “Every night,” says Roisin, raising her head and turning to look back at the row of properties a hundred yards away, across a strip of grass and a quiet road. “We can do this every night, Aector.”

  McAvoy kisses her on the forehead. “You don’t think you’ll get bored with the view?”

  “It changes every day,” she says, looking back at the water. “I’ve never seen it the same twice.”

  She’s right. The Humber is one of the most dangerously unpredictable waterways in the world; a mess of contrary tides and shifting sands. Two millennia ago, the estuary managed to hold the Romans back as they marched north; a litany of slaves losing their lives as they were forced to find a safe channel through the mud and waters. McAvoy has never worked out why they didn’t just go inland fifteen miles and turn right at Goole.

  “And you’re sure it’s what you want? There are those apartments in the Old Town. You’d be near the shops, the museums . . .”

  She reaches down and nips his thigh, then slaps him across his chest. This is her way of telling him to shut up. She has told him endlessly how much she wants this; this house, with its views and big back garden; this place, this life. He believes her. The only part he struggles to comprehend is why she wants to share it with him.

  McAvoy stretches out his leg and gives the baby carrier a little rock. Lilah is sleeping soundly at last. The heat has been too much for her, and every time McAvoy opens her bedroom window, flies, moths, and wasps begin to circle her cot. Her crying had been a torturous and heartbreaking thing, and they had decided to all go for a drive. To get some fresh air. To head for the new house, and indulge in pleasant daydreaming about how their lives will be when they move their stuff in next weekend.

  “Mel says she’ll come,” says Roisin into his chest.

  “To what?”

  “The housewarming, silly. Suzie, too. And a couple of the mums.”

  McAvoy nods. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want a housewarming party. Doesn’t want strangers in his home. But he will have one, and smile as wide as he can muster, to please his wife.

  “The shop’s doing well, apparently. Slow, but it takes time, doesn’t it? And there are loads of shops closing down, so she’s doing well even to be in business, you know?”

  “Aye, it can’t be easy.”

  “She got a big order while I was there. Big bag of suits that needed taking in. I think the bloke had been on some sort of extreme diet. He looked thin but green, and his breath smelled like cat food.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Aye. She’ll be good. She doesn’t mind working hard. I just wish there was somebody to keep an eye on her. It’s rough up there, and she’s not really tough, is she? I might spend some time up there until she’s a bit more settled. I don’t like thinking of her on her own.”

  Roisin met Mel a few months earlier at a salsa class and the two have quickly become close friends. McAvoy finds Mel pleasant enough company, though is never truly pleased when he comes home to find her in his living room, three-quarters of the way through a bottle of red wine and planning to spend the night on his sofa. Roisin always asks him whether he minds her friends staying over. He always tells her it’s fine. Tells her to do whatever she wants. Tells her to enjoy herself, and then he goes upstairs to read a book or fiddle with some new software on the computer in the bedroom. Lets her be. Lets her do whatever the hell she wants as long as she continues to love him.

  “I had a look in the hairdresser next to her shop,” she says. “Nice people. They don’t do nails. I was thinking I might see about offering my services.”

  McAvoy has to force himself not to physically react. In his mind, Roisin has already started work at the salon. She is chatting. Laughing. Living. A sales rep comes in to offer samples. Makes her giggle. Touches her bare shoulder as he leaves. Slips a business card into her hand. She looks at it longingly. Weighs up her options. Pictures her daft, hulking husband and his big stupid face and picks up her phone.

  He feels his heart disintegrating in his chest.

  “That’s a good idea,” he says as brightly as he can muster. “Would do you good. Would you be able to do just a few hours, either side of school runs and stuff?”

  “It’s only a thought at the moment. We’ll see, eh? Anyway, they might want me to have all the certificates. I’m self-taught, aren’t I?”

  McAvoy squeezes her. “You’re naturally brilliant,” he says.

  “You think?”

  “I think.”

  They sit in silence, just loving each other, and for a time McAvoy manages not to picture anything dispiriting or gruesome. Manages not to fill his imagination with Philippa Longman, or the things he had seen being done to her corpse. Manages not to picture what was done to her in her dying moments, in the darkness, on a mattress of cracked stones and smashed glass.

  He lets his mind spin. Presses Roisin closer to him. Tries to be a better man. Suddenly sees himself outside the mortuary, leaning against bare brick, hair plastered to his forehead, strong mints wedged between teeth and cheek, phone to his ear, telling Pharaoh the pathologist’s findings.

  “She had a heart attack while it was happening, guv. Her arteries were furred up and her cholesterol was above average, so the shock of it all sent her into cardiac arrest. By that point, though, she was on the ground and she was getting hit in the chest. There’s a bruise to the back of her head. She went down hard, but not hard enough to knock her out. There’s bruising around the hinge of the jaw that suggests pressure to the lower half of her face. Perhaps a hand, holding her mouth shut. Dr. Woodmansey says she was pummeled with a large flat implement with a soft surface, whatever that may mean. Repeated strikes to the ribs and ches
t. Ribs broke under the stress and punctured inward. Eventually the ribs punctured the lungs and then finally the heart. He says twenty minutes, all in. Twenty minutes, pounding on her chest. No evidence of sexual assault. A few fibers, under her nails. Red and black threads, soft cotton. Some substance, as yet unidentified, but organic. Could be anything, but he’s sending it off for analysis. Should have it back in a couple of days if we fast-track it. Dr. Woodmansey says that it was furious but sustained. Whoever did it would have had blood spray on them but wouldn’t have been covered. Her breath was full of blood particles and the killer would have been in close.”

  Here, now, McAvoy closes his eyes. Tries to put the day’s findings into some kind of order. Tries to work out why somebody would kill Philippa Longman so brutally. Whoever killed her, it was important to them that she suffer. Somebody hated her. Was it a random stranger, hating the world? Or had she done something so terrible that her murderer wanted her to endure that much agony in her dying moments? He thinks of Darren Robb. Tries to imagine the pitiful fat man having that much rage inside of him. He struggles to see it. But he has been wrong before.

  “Did I tell you I met your friend Helen? She was up by Mel’s shop.”

  “Helen Tremberg? Detective constable?”

  “Yeah. Big girl. Nice. Got hurt when you were both in Grimsby . . .”

  “Yes, DC Tremberg. Did you say hello?”

  “Just briefly. She was with some snooty cow.”

  “Detective Inspector Sharon Archer?”

  “I dunno. She just sat there with her hand on the horn.”

  “Yeah, that would be her.”

  McAvoy wonders how he feels about his wife chatting to his work colleagues. Unbidden, a blush rises from his shirt collar up to his cheeks. He imagines her telling Tremberg about their new home. Their plans. He imagines her inviting her to the housewarming. Telling her to bring a friend. Imagines Archer asking her junior officer whom she was talking to. Sees Tremberg spilling her guts. Telling Archer about Aector McAvoy’s traveler wife. About what he did to the men who attacked her when she was young. Fuck. Fuck!