by David Mark
It has occurred to McAvoy that perhaps the room itself was bugged. Perhaps Sabine is an innocent party who will be as appalled and disgusted as he is to learn that his confessions had been taped. But he fancies not.
McAvoy turns the car to the right, onto a silent side road, then quickly right again onto Finch Park. Sabine’s bungalow is the first house on the left; a small, neat property with a separate garage and unusually petite windows that make the building look as if it were designed by a child with crayons and graph paper.
He sees her even before he has parked the car. She’s sitting on the front step, lit by the light that spills out from her open front door. She’s holding a glass and wearing a dressing gown, and even in this light McAvoy can see tears on bruised cheeks.
McAvoy steps from the car. Sees her recognize him. Sees her drop her head.
“You taped me,” he says softly as he walks up the drive. “You taped our sessions.”
Sabine raises her head. She looks exhausted. She’s been slapped. Her cheeks are red and there is a dark patch above one eye.
Sabine just nods. Takes a sip from the glass.
McAvoy stands over her.
“You know you’re finished,” he says. “You must know that.”
She shrugs. Implies that she truly couldn’t give a damn. Sniffs, noisily, and raises the glass again with a hand that shakes.
“Was it money?”
Sabine says nothing. Then she mutters something that might be an apology.
“Sabine, please . . .”
“My husband,” she says at last. She raises her head. Looks at him with eyes that swim in salt water. “He knocked a cyclist off their bike last year. Got sent to prison.”
McAvoy looks confused. “I don’t understand . . .”
“He’s a teacher,” she says. “He’s not strong. He’s got another year to go. At least.”
McAvoy rubs a hand through his hair. He slides down to a seated position, his buttocks on the cold paving stones, his back against the wall. He takes the glass from Sabine and takes a sip. It’s vodka. He hates the stuff, and hands it back.
“When did they get in touch?”
“Not long ago,” she says, her voice cracking. “Not long after you were referred to me. They showed me pictures. E-mailed me photos of Graham. That’s my husband. Well, we’re not really married. That’s why I got cleared to provide services for the police. He didn’t show up on the background checks.”
“They wanted you to tape me?”
“Not at first,” she says. “They just wanted to know what made you tick. Then they told me I had to call a certain number at the start of our sessions. To ask you about your secrets. What you felt guilty about. What you loved.”
McAvoy scrapes his boot along the stone. Kicks a pebble and watches it disappear into a flower bed. He draws his knees up, hugging them to his chest. He shivers, despite the clammy warmth of the night.
“You did as you were told?”
“I didn’t push,” she says. “I sort of hoped you wouldn’t speak. You’d kept quiet . . .”
“And then I just blurted it out,” he says so softly he can barely hear his own voice. “I gave them everything.”
“They called tonight. Told me I’d done my bit. Said Graham would be left alone. They said you were getting your message tonight.”
She sounds as if she is about to say more, but she closes her mouth and looks away.
“Do you still have the numbers?” he asks. “The pictures they sent you?”
She shakes her head. “They told me to destroy them.”
“And the person you spoke to?”
She frowns. “Well-spoken. Quite wordy, like a solicitor or a politician. Very calm. Not old but not young.”
McAvoy stares up at the sky. The moon has disappeared, throttled by the fist of cloud.
“We could get your phone records. See what numbers you called. We could keep Graham safe . . .”
Sabine shakes her head again.
“I just want this to stop,” she says. “I thought they might have hurt you. I can’t think straight. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t look at the kids . . .”
“They hurt my family,” says McAvoy. “I can’t allow that. How do I begin to allow that?”
Sabine looks sick. Looks like she wants to smash the glass and draw one of the shards across her vein.
They sit in silence for a time. McAvoy’s anger is now just a hot rock in his guts. He’s trying to think clearly. He has no doubts that the people who did this are the same outfit that Colin Ray has been chasing. He knows they are well-connected, powerful, and dangerous. They think they have him in their pocket. They have dirt on Roisin, and dirt on him. With a phone call they could end his career. With a call to Roisin, they could end his marriage. But he doesn’t know what they will use their leverage for. He’s not actively investigating them. He’s not on Colin Ray’s team. He’s hunting a killer and hasn’t thought of organized crime in months. He fancies that he has time on his side. He needs to keep Roisin out of harm’s way until he can find Angelo Caneva. He needs to stop a killer before he can make sense of tonight’s events.
McAvoy makes a decision. In the morning, he will tell Roisin and Mel to take the kids and return to the old house on Kingswood. It’s not much of a hiding place, but they still have a few days before they have to give the keys back, and he’ll feel happier knowing they are somewhere that will take a little more finding and where there are plenty of neighbors to shout for help. Caneva is a priority. Pharaoh has taken over the reins of the investigation once more and declared him the prime suspect. He was released from custody a few years back and is no longer under the supervision of the probation service. The last place he was registered as living was in a flat in Coventry, but that was some time ago and since then he has dropped off the grid. His father is refusing to answer his phone. Tomorrow, McAvoy hopes to visit Angelo’s sister, Maria. Neilsen is trying to get a current address, and tomorrow Pharaoh will alert the media to the fact they are trying to find him. Things are going the right way. McAvoy’s intuition and detective work have provided the breakthrough and he should be feeling proud of himself. But all he can see is the blood on Roisin’s face and the terror in his son’s eyes as he hugged his daddy.
“Did they tell her?” asks Sabine. “Your wife?”
McAvoy shakes his head. “They just let me know they knew. I might have to tell her.” He corrects himself. “I am going to tell her.”
“She sounds a strong woman. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“There are different types of wrong,” he says, the words hanging in the air.
Sabine manages a little smile. “Do the police really believe that?”
McAvoy looks at her, and then inside himself. Sees what he is becoming.
“I don’t know what I believe. I don’t know what I am.”
• • •
It is just gone two a.m. Dr. Olivia Pradesh can smell antiseptic and rubber on her long dark hair as the wind blows it across her pale, delicate features. The storm that will soon engulf Hull has already broken here and a fine rain drives at an angle across the car park on a sharp breeze.
She fumbles in her bag for car keys. The bag may be designer but she treats it like a canvas sack, dumping everything in the same central compartment. She rummages inside it as she winces into the rain, turning her head so her dark hair billows behind her. She closes her hand around her phone and takes a quick glance at the screen. A couple of missed calls and a text asking her if she fancies the trip to Prague that some of her old university friends are planning over the next bank holiday. She remembers that she was supposed to call some detective constable from East Yorkshire but fancies he will have gone to bed by now. She’ll do it in the morning. She’ll reply about Prague, too. She needs to recharge her batteries. Needs a toasted sandwich and a
glass of milk, then a few hours on the sofa under a crocheted blanket.
Dr. Pradesh is forty-four years old. She’s fit and slim and though her mother is of Indian descent, her coloring does not expose her heritage the way her name does. She’s an attractive woman. Her hair has always been jet-black, but these days she has to use a dye to mask the gray roots. She’s wearing a tweed jacket over a purple blouse, with a short, fawn-colored skirt and soft leather boots. A string of pearls bounce around in her cleavage as she crosses the car park. They feel cold on her skin and she reaches inside her blouse to pull them free. Her hands betray her profession. Her skin is scrubbed painfully clean; her nails short and neatly trimmed.
As the rain plasters her hair to her face, she plunges her hand back into the bag and closes her fist around the keys. She moves around to the far side of her unassuming Audi and reaches out to open the driver’s-side door.
As she closes her fingers around the handle, something slams into her back. She feels the wind go out of her at the same moment as her middle and index fingers dislocate and mangle upon impact with the cold, wet metal of the car.
Dr. Pradesh manages to shout, but something strikes her left cheek.
Suddenly, she is semiconscious; her face in a puddle, one ear and eye submerged.
For a moment there is utter blackness. Dead air. She raises herself, unsteadily, on one arm. She hears tires, squealing across the concrete. Sees a dark vehicle slam to a halt in front of her. Then she is being dragged up by her coat collar.
She hears her pearls snap.
Sees them dance as hailstones on the ground.
The doors of the van are pulled open. She feels a clump of her hair come loose as she is slammed against something hard, and the impact wakes her instincts. She shouts. Lashes out. Tries to turn so she can see who is doing this to her. Then there is a fist in her gut and she is being pushed back onto the hardboard floor of the vehicle. She kicks out again. Feels pain as the van doors slam against her ankles. She draws them up and begins to shout afresh.
For a moment, her screams ring out, loud despite the whistling wind and driving rain. Somebody must have heard! Somebody must see!
She looks around, frantic now. Tries to get a sense of her bearings. Then a scream is ripped from her throat. At her side is a corpse. The skin has taken on a greenish tinge, like moss on an alabaster statue. The eyes are sunken; the mouth locked in a grimace of pain. She throws herself backward, desperate to get her face away from the body before the stench crawls into her nose, but she is too late.
She smells decay.
Corruption.
Dead flesh.
Sobbing now, she wriggles onto her side and kicks at the corpse, trying to push it as far away as she can. Her booted feet go through the dead creature’s torso as if she is stamping on a cardboard box.
And then she is thrown forward. The van is moving, fast and reckless. She tumbles, hits the van doors, and one swings open with the impact.
She glimpses fresh air.
The dark, rain-lashed night.
She takes a step, as if to throw herself through the door, but a sudden jolt of the van pitches her back and the door swings shut. Her head hits wood. She tastes blood in her mouth. And then her eyes see nothing but gold stars and spinning blackness.
The body beside her slides on the wooden floor as the van slews left. The vehicle hits a speed bump and now both doors swing open.
Slowly, unseen by the driver, watched only by the streetlights and the stars, the corpse slithers toward the exit.
The vehicle’s wheels hit a pothole, and the rotten body teeters over the lip of the van.
And as the driver accelerates, the dead thing finally slips free.
Organs and innards and compressed gases explode in a damp spray as the long-dead sack of rancid meat collides with the unyielding ground.
Angelo Caneva’s dead, rotten, staring eyes watch the vehicle disappear into the distance.
Steam rises from his ruptured guts, disappearing into the air like a cartoon ghost.
EIGHTEEN
5:05 a.m. Great Horton Road in Bradford.
It’s too early to knock on a stranger’s door, so McAvoy sweats and shivers in his minivan outside a row of grubby shops, waiting for the sun to come up. He hopes that when it does, the windows of the vehicle will stop reflecting his features back at him. He doesn’t like what he sees. He’s wearing yesterday’s clothes and Roisin’s blood, and feels as feverish and pestilent as the skies he left behind when he set off for West Yorkshire two hours ago. He’s unshaven and his face looks puffy and sore. His right hand, limp in his lap, is bruised across the knuckles. He’s lost a fingernail, grabbing one of the Turks, and his mid-finger is throbbing beneath the bandage.
Well-connected.
Powerful.
Ruthless . . .
He can’t stop thinking about the outfit that turned Sabine. Can’t stop wondering what the hell to do next. He should be concentrating on the investigation. Should be thinking about Hoyer-Wood and Angelo Caneva.
Here, now, he can barely remember their names.
He looks at the clock. Still too bloody early.
The cup of coffee he bought from a petrol station an hour ago has gone cold, but he sips at it anyway, for something to do. He watches a spider industriously building a web around the wing mirror of the minivan. It’s working hard. It’s doing its job. It seems to know what it’s doing and what’s expected of it. He finds himself envying the little bastard.
He flicks on the radio. Starts listening to an early-morning phone-in show on Radio 4, and switches off when he finds himself agreeing with everybody.
McAvoy knows there is nothing to stop him knocking on Maria Caneva’s door immediately. He’s a policeman investigating three murders, and her brother is the prime suspect. She hasn’t responded to any phone messages. But to McAvoy, waking the poor woman up at this hour just seems too damn obnoxious and uncivilized. He doesn’t want to be that kind of man. And besides, he’s not ready for it. Doesn’t know what noise will come out when he opens his mouth to speak. He doesn’t feel like a policeman. He feels like a thug and a coward who has been manipulated and outplayed. There is so much guilt clogging his guts he feels as though he has been stuffed full of mud and stones.
Roisin, I’m so sorry . . .
His wife will wake up this morning with black eyes and bruised lips. His son will have nightmares for days. Mel may take the matter out of his hands entirely and tell his colleagues what happened.
More than that, Adam Downey might come back.
He has no fucking clue what to do.
5:06.
5:07.
5:08 . . .
At just after six a.m., McAvoy rubs a hand through his hair and scratches at his crown. His fingernails come away dirty. His patience frays then snaps and he steps out of the minivan into the cool air of the morning. He drops his bag and spills papers and pens on the damp stone of the pavement. Feels vomit rise in his throat as he bends forward to start picking things up. Winces as his phone falls from his pocket. He looks at the image on the cracked screen. At Roisin and his children. Two smiles and one wet, pink baby face. He wants to press the picture to his face. Wants to breathe them all in and be made better by their nearness.
He makes fists. Closes the driver’s-side door. Locks it. Pulls his bag over his shoulder and sorts himself out. Steps over a cracked paving slab and nearly loses his footing on a discarded kebab.
Maria Caneva lives down Bartle Lane. The electoral register indicates that she lives alone, though given that it’s a student neighborhood he can’t rule out that she rents out a room or two to somebody studying at the nearby university.
He turns off the main road and walks softly toward the small, bare-brick property. McAvoy tries not to think anything too detrimental about Bradford. The areas he has seen a
re dirty, rubbish-strewn, and ugly. Most of the shops carry signs written in a language he presumes to be Urdu, but he feels far too Caucasian and guilty when he starts thinking about the socioeconomic reasons for the neighborhood’s current state and usually stops himself before he can think anything negative. It’s a community of halal butchers and general stores, where watermelons in damaged crates pile up outside graffiti-covered storefronts displaying posters for English newspapers long since defunct. He would think of it as a rough neighborhood if not for the unexpected flashes of class. Halfway up the main road is a glitzy, brightly lit restaurant that would not look out of place in London’s West End, and most of the cars parked outside the takeaway shops and budget electrical stores carry Mercedes badges. It’s an area McAvoy struggles to understand, and he’s grateful he’s not a policeman here.
McAvoy finds the right door. Composes himself. Licks his palm and smoothes his hair down. Rubs his lips. Closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing.
He knocks, politely, on Maria Caneva’s door, then begins to count to ten in his head.
After just a few seconds the door is opened by a plump young woman in her mid-twenties. She’s wearing a pink dressing gown and has a pair of glasses on top of her head. Brown hair is pulled back from a plain but not unattractive face, and though she looks surprised to be answering the door at this hour her expression is not unwelcoming.
“I thought you were the milkman,” she says by way of greeting.
McAvoy shows her his warrant card. Gives a courteous, closed-mouth smile, and introduces himself.
“Are you Maria Caneva?”
She nods.
“I would like to talk to you about your brother.”
Her face falls, but an expression that may be relief also flashes over her features.
“What’s he done now, silly sod?”
“Could I come in?”
“Please.”
Maria lets him inside. The door opens straight into an untidy living room. On the sofa that sits beneath the large front window there are pillows and a quilt. In front of it is a coffee table covered in haphazardly opened letters, food wrappers, and empty coffee cups. The TV is an old-fashioned and boxy affair that sits on a dusty glass cabinet, and the electric fire looks sad and unlit inside a slate-and-breeze-block fireplace. There are books and old newspapers piled in one corner of the room and DVD cases in another. It’s not a nice room, but Maria makes no apologies as she kicks the duvet behind the sofa and indicates McAvoy should sit.