by David Mark
“We were half-asleep and wide-awake at the same time,” says Ashleigh. “You know when a light goes on and you sort of can’t see properly? But we smelled the petrol. And we saw the lighter. And you only had to look between his legs to know what he wanted.”
Hoyer-Wood had ordered Johnny back against the bedroom wall. He told him he was going to do him a good turn. He was going to let the children carry on sleeping.
“He pulled the covers back,” says Ashleigh, eyes closed. “I had a nightie on, and he poured more petrol on me. It stung. Stung my eyes. Then he told Johnny that if he moved, we would both go up like fireworks. The house would burn down. His kids would die. He told him to stay still like a good boy, and enjoy the show.”
Johnny Cromwell had never been the type to apply logic to a situation. He was a straight-ahead kind of man who had taken his fair share of beatings but handed out plenty more. He had looked at the naked man lying on top of his wife, parting her thighs, and he had reacted instinctively. He’d moved. He’d hit Sebastien Hoyer-Wood so hard in the face that he broke his own hand. And then Hoyer-Wood had dropped the lighter.
“He got himself more than me,” says Ashleigh, her fingers brushing the scarring at her hairline. “I went up, like. My nightie caught fire. There was a whoosh of flame. I don’t know how I knew to do it, but I flung myself on the floor and rolled, like they do on the movies. I put myself out. Then I looked up and the curtains were blowing and there was glass everywhere and he’d gone out of the fucking window . . .”
McAvoy looks across at Ashleigh Cromwell. She’s probably in her early forties but looks ten years older. She looks wrung out. It is as if a pretty, vivacious woman has been dehydrated. All of the moisture has gone from her flesh. Her softness has been burned away.
There is silence in the room as Ashleigh wipes her fist across her nose. A low, insistent buzz has started to penetrate McAvoy’s consciousness, and as he looks for the source, a wasp lands on the table between them. Instinctively, he takes Ashleigh’s empty cup and drops it over the creature. It swats, ineffectually, against the plastic.
“Johnny went after him. I ran to see if the kids were okay. They were still sleeping. Then I went out onto the street. Johnny had caught up with him. He was smashing his head off the pavement. I don’t know why I told him to stop. I guess I thought that with Johnny’s record he would do time. I don’t even know if I was thinking at all. I was sore and scared and there was this naked man all bloody and burned in the snow on the Bridlington seafront and the next thing, there are all these people and somebody is putting a coat around me and Johnny is being held back and the police are there . . .”
On the table, the wasp has begun to beat against the plastic. Its tiny tinfoil wings are breaking as it fights, pathetically, in the sticky syrup that pools on the table. McAvoy cannot stand it. He lifts the cup and watches, gratified, as it buzzes angrily away.
“I didn’t save him,” says Ashleigh. “Other people saved him. The people who died.”
She seems to get smaller. Takes her face in her hands.
McAvoy reaches across, his arms rubbing the drips of orange soda into the tabletop. He puts his hand on her bare forearm and she raises her eyes to his.
“You said you thought the killer wanted you, Mrs. Cromwell. Could you tell me what you meant by that?”
Ashleigh sniffs noisily, and raises her eyes to the ceiling. She rubs at her bare arms.
“Johnny and me broke up not long after it all happened,” she says. “I don’t know if it was because of that night or all the other stuff. Johnny was always hard work. He had other women, but I usually forgave him. I had a few other men, though they were usually too shit-scared of Johnny to be tempted. I was a bit more of a catch then as well. Johnny got himself into more trouble. He stopped coming home. We split up, then he got sent down for glassing some bloke. I don’t even know what it was about. The kids and me moved away. The oldest has her own place, but my son and me are doing okay.”
“You live locally?” asks McAvoy.
“Scunthorpe,” she says. The steel town is half an hour away, over the bridge. Not too far from Barton where Yvonne Dale died. McAvoy wonders if it matters.
“I have a sister there,” explains Ashleigh. “We wanted a fresh start. She runs a newsagents and I work there with her. We’re doing okay.”
McAvoy licks his lips, unsure how to ask. “Hoyer-Wood,” he says gently. “He wasn’t sent to prison. He could be said to have got away with it . . .”
Ashleigh looks as if she has just cracked an out-of-date egg onto her tongue. She looks like she wants to spit.
“Me and coppers have never got on,” she says. “I never expect much of them, but I thought he’d have done a stretch. The copper in charge, George Goss—he said the bastard had been doing it for years. He reckoned they’d put him away for nigh on life. Then his posh mates got involved and next thing he was living it up in some plush mental asylum. I don’t know how I felt, really. I knew he was suffering, so that was something. I sometimes wondered if Johnny would have got sent down if he’d killed him. I sometimes wonder why I told him to stop. I wonder a lot of things, but I keep it all inside, most of the time. Then something brings it back. Like now.”
McAvoy waits. He rubs at the sticky patch on his skin and watches the wasp as it crawls up the pale green wall. “How did you know to ask for me?”
“George Goss,” says Ashleigh, looking at the floor. “When I heard about the murders, I rang for him. They told me he was retired. They put me through to CID and some bloke said he could get a message to George if it was important. I said it was and George rang me. Told me that I should speak to you. Said you were okay.”
McAvoy shakes his head, embarrassed. “The murders,” he says. “What do you know about the people involved?”
Ashleigh gives him an angry look, and for an instant McAvoy sees the animated features of the woman she once was. There is a light in her eyes and a flame appears to have been lit behind her pale skin.
“I didn’t know the paramedic, but I remember the two women and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they’re all connected.” She says this with an accusing tone. “I work in a newsagents. I read the Scunthorpe Telegraph. I don’t watch the news. But you hear, don’t you? Somebody told somebody else and then my sister told me to read one of the other papers. I can’t believe you haven’t told people they’re linked. I thought you might not know, but George says you already know about Hoyer-Wood and what happened . . .”
McAvoy raises his hands defensively. “That decision was made at a senior level,” he says neutrally. “Myself and the senior investigating officer are trying to change the thinking on that. We’re trying to get in touch with anybody who may be at risk. I’m sure an officer would have been in touch with yourself at some point . . .”
Even as he says them, he senses that his words will not give Ashleigh much new faith in the police.
“Too late for me, Mr. McAvoy. He already bloody got to me. That’s why I’m here.”
McAvoy looks at her, trying to make sense of her words. Behind her, the wasp appears to lose its grip on the wall. It tumbles and lands on the cold floor, where it twitches and spins until, finally, the whispered buzzing comes to a halt.
“I don’t understand,” he says, and wonders if he should have these words etched on his gravestone.
Ashleigh takes the can of drink and raises it to her lips. It shakes in her hand. The can is empty, but she makes a show of swallowing.
“A year ago,” she says quietly. “Maybe a little more. It happened again. I woke up with a fucking man sitting in my bedroom.”
The room suddenly seems smaller. The chill of this desolate, enclosed space seems to wrap itself around McAvoy like a damp shroud. He has to fight not to openly shiver.
“I’m not some wimpy lass,” says Ashleigh, as if this is an important point. “I
can punch my weight. I don’t cry all the bloody time like a baby. I’ve been through stuff, but I’ve done my best to put it behind me. But when I woke up and there was a man in my bedroom, I thought my heart was going to stop. It was like it had never gone away.”
McAvoy closes his eyes. Tries to imagine what went through her mind and then stops himself when it becomes too painful to endure.
“Was he . . . ?”
“Naked? No. Didn’t have the light on, either. He was just a shape at the end of the bed. A weight. I’m not tall and I sleep with my feet drawn up, but I stretched out and felt this lump. I thought I might have left the laundry basket at the foot of the bed or something daft like that, but then the weight shifted. I opened my eyes and could tell there was somebody there. Looking back, I suppose I might have thought it was my son, but it didn’t feel like that. He felt wrong somehow. I knew. Knew it was happening again.”
McAvoy scratches his head, hard enough to hurt. “What happened?”
“I’m not a screamer,” she says. “I shout, if I do anything. But I didn’t even do that. I just sat up and asked if there was somebody there, and then he spoke. Just sitting there, on the end of the bed. He spoke, like we were friends or family and he wanted a chat.”
McAvoy can find no better way to express his feelings than by swearing. “Fucking hell.”
“He said it was my fault. People like me. We’d saved him. Hoyer-Wood could have died that night, but people like me had saved his life. He said he wanted to punish me. People like me.”
“Did he have a weapon? Fuel? A flame?” asks McAvoy.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “It was dark and I was trying not to wet myself. But even though I was bloody terrified, I was angry at him for what he said.”
“What did you say to him?” McAvoy asks.
“I told him that I’d suffered at that bastard’s hands more than anyone. That if he thought I had somehow saved his life out of fear or compassion, he was out of his mind. I told him that I wished Hoyer-Wood dead every fucking day, and that if he had the chance he should find the crippled bastard and kill him—not me. Not people who had suffered enough.”
McAvoy pictures it. Pictures Ashleigh, scared yet defiant, talking to a voice in the darkness.
“Did he hurt you?”
Ashleigh gives what could be called a laugh. “He started to snivel,” she says, eyes wide. “Started to fucking shake. Said he was lost. Said he wanted to put things right but didn’t know what to do. He even started to say sorry . . .”
McAvoy rubs at his eyebrow. Licks his teeth and tastes elderberry cordial and chocolate on his tongue.
“What happened, Ashleigh?”
“I put the light on,” she says, eyes closed again. “And he ran.”
“You saw him?” asks McAvoy, sitting forward. “You saw his face?”
Ashleigh shrugs. “Maybe. A shape. Half a face.”
“And you never called the police?”
She shakes her head. “I never told anybody. Not until now. I thought whoever it was had changed their mind. They were confused. Upset. They could have killed me as I slept, but they didn’t. Then all this started. I knew you had to know. So I’m telling you.”
McAvoy is about to speak when a knock on the interview room door breaks the silence. A moment later, Helen Tremberg enters holding a sheet of paper. To McAvoy, she looks ill. She’s pale and there is dark under her eyes. She looks like she has been vomiting and there are sweat patches under the arms of her white blouse.
“A word, Sarge?”
McAvoy gestures at Ashleigh. Tries to suggest with his gaze that now is not a good time. He looks across the table at the short red-headed woman who has endured more than anybody should have to. She is not looking at him. She is looking at the piece of paper trailing loosely from Helen Tremberg’s hand.
Abruptly, Ashleigh stands and darts toward the door. She grabs the paper from Helen’s hand and seems to crumple. She reaches out to the table, and McAvoy grabs her before she can fall.
She looks at him, uncertainty and confusion in her eyes. She brandishes the piece of paper; the printout of a ten-year-old mug shot.
“Him,” she says, stabbing a finger onto the page. “It was fucking him!”
McAvoy looks at the page and then up at Helen, who is opening and closing her mouth wordlessly.
He takes the page. Looks at the image of a teenage boy.
Locks eyes with Angelo Caneva.
SIXTEEN
7:48 p.m.
Sodium streetlights, the neon of a kebab shop, and the faint cigarette glow of an unfamiliar sun.
A taxi office, just off Hull’s Hedon Road. Knackered cars parked on double-yellow lines and a drunk pissing against the graffiti and chipboard of the boarded-up convenience store next door.
Inside the office, Adam Downey is leaning forward to snort a line of high-quality cocaine off the glossy front cover of a porno magazine. He’s laid out the line on the thigh of a black woman. He likes the effect. Better yet, he likes the sudden rush that is thumping up his nose and eyeballs and into his brain, filling him with a sudden fervor and fury and causing him to emit a strange animal growl as he raises his head to the ceiling and feels the drugs fill his system.
Downey has never been the sort of drug pusher to sample too much of his own product. He likes to smoke a spliff while watching a movie, and one of the girls he sees regularly has pretty toes that look extra-special when holding a nice fat joint out for him to take a puff upon. But he hasn’t done much cocaine. Truth be told, he’s a little frightened of it. Despite making his living by selling the white powder in bulk, he’s seen too many people come to depend upon it to want to start sticking too much of it up his nose. Besides, the product that passes through his hands is a little too pure. Once it’s been through a few dealers and been cut with glucose and a little bicarbonate of soda, he might consider the occasional line to help him stay awake or better enjoy a night out. But the idea of waking up and reaching for a tinfoil fold of the stuff makes him feel uncomfortable.
Adam Downey has decided to make an exception tonight.
Half an hour ago, the telephone rang in the taxi office. It was the voice that Downey has come to fear. He’d told him the name of the woman who had taken his money. Told him she was a copper’s wife. Told him what he had to do. Downey had agreed, even as his insides turned to water. He’d thought he was just dealing with some pikey bitch. He’d thought that his boys could have a fun time with her and that would be the end of it. He’d entertained visions of sticking a few extra quid in her knickers when they were done, so she knew there were no hard feelings save the one in his pants. Now the evening’s entertainment has become overloaded with risk. He’s heard about the copper she’s married to. Heard the rumors.
Downey is worried, even though he has three good men to lend a hand. Two Turks and Big Bruno are going to watch his back. They are each formidable and reliable. Bruno, in particular, is an intimidating specimen. He’s a black guy with a Hull accent. He has long dreadlocks and wears shorts all year round. He has muscles on top of muscles, rippled like storm clouds across his skin, and Downey knows that despite his deep laugh and playfulness with the other drivers, Bruno has a violent side. He’s killed before. Downey saw it happen. Saw Bruno smash a thirty-pound dumbbell over the head of an enforcer who made the mistake of inviting him into his home to discuss a peaceful resolution to their differences.
Downey stares up at the ceiling and opens his jaw to its full capacity. He bounces his legs, feeling tightness in his toes. He stands and looks at himself in the mirror that covers one full wall of the tiny space. It faces a desk that carries an old computer and a stack of unread paperwork. He examines himself. He’s dressed for the occasion, in a baggy white T-shirt with a designer tattoo pattern across the chest. He’s wearing tight jeans that sag, fashionably, at the arse, with slip-on
shoes and no socks. He’s accessorized effectively, with diamond earring and expensive watch. He looks good, and the bruises add an air of menace to the pop star image he tends to portray. He stares into his own eyes. Tells himself he can do this. He has men at his disposal. He just beat a serious charge.
You’re beautiful, mate. You’re the prince of the fucking city . . .
As the drugs course through his system, he begins to feel untouchable. Begins to question his orders. He’s been told to give McAvoy a message, but not in the way he had wanted to. He is under instructions not to hurt her. The voice had told him that the organization has other plans for McAvoy. Downey’s not to hurt her. Not to make a scene.
Fuck them!
The cocaine emboldens him. He had been looking forward to making that bitch cry. He’d been dreaming about closing his hand around that tiny throat; crushing those full lips until they burst like ripe fruit. He turns and spits on the floor. He looks at his hands and sees that they are trembling. He closes them into fists. His nose is running, so he rubs it with the back of his hand. His movements are frantic. He is surprised to learn that his dick has gone hard. He wants to do this. Wants it to happen now. Wants her in front of him, begging . . .
Downey pushes open the door to the main office, where Bruno and the Turks are sitting in mismatched chairs. He grunts. Tells them it’s time. They stand up without saying a word. The Turks had signed up for the job even before learning what it was. He’d just told them he needed backup and there was cash in it for them. They’re a curious pair. Memluk is the taller of the two at just over six feet. Tokcan is a quiet lad who has fallen in love with Fruit Pastilles since arriving in England, and always seems to be chewing. Neither are more than thirty. They’re tanned and unshaven, dark-haired and fit. They both liked Hakan. They know that, somehow, the woman they are going to visit tonight was responsible for his disappearance, and are looking forward to taking out their frustrations. Downey realizes he should tell them the plan has changed. They’re not to hurt her. Not to make a fuss. But he finds himself unable to.