Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy)

by David Mark

  It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when she and the four girls lived in a big house on the outskirts of Grimsby. Her husband made good money and he doted on his daughters. He was a charmer. The love of her life. Handy with his fists but a decent dad and damn good at giving her goosepimples whenever he sniffed her neck or slapped her rump as she bent to load the dishwasher. He liked that she was a strong woman, and that she hit him back. He took her to balls and posh restaurants, gallery openings and his private box at the dog track. She didn’t know he was financing his business with dodgy loans and that he owed the taxman more money than their house was worth. Didn’t find out until he suffered a colossal aneurysm that left him unable to speak or move much below the waist. Trish had got them this place. Trish took care of the court cases and the bankruptcy action and managed to drag herself and the girls through all the unpleasantness without it taking their spirit away. Trish got the garage converted into a bedroom for her husband, where he spends most of his time lying on his crisp sheets, staring at the flickering TV screen and looking like a giant sausage roll. He doesn’t even try to speak now. Just turns his head away when the girls come in. Only seems to get excited when his nurse visits. Silly bastard probably still thinks he’s a catch, probably has fantasies about them running off together, though his motorised wheelchair only has a top speed of 12 mph and he would need to recharge the batteries before they got anywhere near their love nest.

  Pharaoh used to chide herself for thinking harshly of her husband. She knew what he was when she married him and he ran up his debts while trying to give her the life he thought she wanted. It wasn’t his fault his brain burst under the pressure. She just wishes the bastard would either get better or die. It’s a horrible thought but it’s one that she and the girls have almost constantly. She’s not a widow. The girls aren’t orphans. But she doesn’t have a husband and they don’t have a father. They have a salami, hooked up to drips and colostomy bags, dribbling into his pyjamas and grunting chat-up lines to the woman who changes the dressings on his bed sores. Each of the epileptic fits that he has suffered since the aneurysm could be his last. But the bastard’s hanging on. And he can’t do a damn thing to help Trish pay off the one creditor who really isn’t troubled by the fact that the courts have written off the family’s debts. Her husband borrowed money from somebody who wants it back. The letters have been civil and straightforward, sent to her solicitor from a law firm in London. They speak of a client who loaned her husband a considerable sum some years before. They mention the bankruptcy and the debtor’s limited means, and ask that Trish, as his representative, make a sensible offer of restitution. Trish has made an offer but it was not accepted. The creditor was not interested in either a Mars bar or the opportunity to go fuck themselves.

  She pushes open the front door and proceeds through to the lounge. It’s not a bad house. The walls could do with a lick of paint and there is an assortment of stains on the pink carpet but the furniture came with them from their old house and is worth a damn sight more than Pharaoh put down on the forms when she listed the family’s assets. She certainly didn’t mention the fact that the painting of the tall man in the bowler hat, which hangs above the fireplace, is an original by the Beverley artist Fred Elwell, and worth more than she earns in a year. The rest of the wall space is taken up with family photos and various certificates of achievement. Olivia’s diploma from last summer’s drama school almost covers the huge red spray on the wall by the door, wine flung by Pharaoh at her disappearing daughter as the stroppy cow stormed out of the house a few weeks before.

  The middle two girls are on the sofa, staring wide-eyed at the laptop, mesmerised by a succession of teenagers falling off trampolines or bouncing over hedges. ‘All good?’ Pharaoh asks them, warily. ‘I’m not going to find any intestines in the bread bin, am I? And please tell me that Olivia isn’t trying to make a mace again. I’ve told you before, a tin of beans in a sock is dangerous. And besides, chopped tomatoes are cheaper.’

  Pharaoh gets the grin she hoped for, and a grunt about everything being fine now. Olivia is making herself a drink in the kitchen and there is no sign of Sophia, or blood, so Pharaoh treats herself to a sigh of relief and plonks herself down in the armchair. Picks up the remote control and switches on something mindless.

  Oh fuck.

  Him.

  He’s sitting on the comfy chair that the BBC wheels out whenever somebody famous or particularly interesting agrees to appear on Look North.

  His name is Reuben Hollow, and he’s the reason why Trish Pharaoh’s life has recently turned to shit.

  Pharaoh has to admit he looks good. Prison must agree with him. He was never exactly portly but during his time inside he has slimmed down even further and now he has the sort of cheekbones that most teenage girls would sell their parents for. He’s still got the stubble that he kept running his hand through during their interview sessions. Still got the gold earring too, though he’s taken off the flat cap that Pharaoh had presumed was stapled to his head. He’s wearing a collarless shirt and tweedy waistcoat and there is a pendant of some kind peeking through his dark chest hair. His eyes haven’t lost their fire. They’re still an almost unnatural blue; glinting like Arctic water as it captures the sun. Christ, he’s a handsome bastard, thinks Pharaoh.

  And then to herself, don’t you bloody dare.

  The interviewer is doing his best to keep the camera focused on himself but he’s fighting a losing battle. Reuben Hollow is more than photogenic. Pharaoh can almost hear the drool oozing from the interviewer’s earpiece as the directors order the camera to stay fixed on the man who was freed last Thursday when his murder conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.

  ‘You must be feeling very relieved,’ says the interviewer, as the camera pans back to let him have his moment. He’s a weaselly-looking thing. Skinny, with a head too big for his body and hair that looks like it was stuck on at a factory.

  Reuben half smiles. Nods. Closes his eyes, as though thinking of the lyrics to a song.

  ‘It’s been difficult,’ he says softly, in that gentle northern accent that had almost put Pharaoh to sleep in the interview room.

  He pauses for breath before continuing his whispered confession.

  ‘I’d never spent more than a night away from my daughter and the next moment I was looking at a whole life in prison. I expected to be punished, but murder was simply the wrong charge. Thankfully, the Court of Appeal has vindicated that. I just want to get back to spending time with my girl and trying to live our lives. We never asked for any of this. I don’t like the limelight – I live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t like the noise and the chaos of London; even Hull’s too loud for me. I like the sound of the birds and my daughter playing her piano. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I just didn’t have a choice.’

  Pharaoh sucks her teeth and checks her watch. 1.50 p.m. She instinctively reaches for a glass of wine. There isn’t one to hand. She clicks her fingers and says ‘splashy-splishy’ to Samantha, who peels herself off the sofa and pours her mum a large glass of Rioja, which she hands over without a word.

  ‘Why don’t you unfasten another button?’ Pharaoh mutters at the telly. ‘Christ, it’s like you’re about to burst into song. You’re not auditioning, you preening twat.’

  On screen, the interviewer is apologising to his guest.

  ‘We’re about to show some footage that might be distressing to both the viewers and to yourself but which may illustrate why this has been such a complex case. Now, Mr Hollow, am I correct in thinking that you were sitting outside the Duke of York in Skirlaugh, north east of Hull, when the sequence of events began?’

  Hollow nods and looks away, as if it’s all too much to take.

  ‘It had been a hot day,’ he says, quietly. ‘July the twelfth. I’d been working in the sun and felt entitled to a drink. That’s one of the pubs I occasionally pop into. It’s a family place. My daughter feels safe and the cider’s good.’


  ‘And can you tell us, in your own words, what happened?’

  ‘Who else’s bloody words would he use!’ screams Pharaoh, and her daughters decide to take the laptop through to the kitchen.

  ‘It was probably around seven p.m.,’ says Hollow. ‘My daughter had been at a friend’s in the village. She was going to meet me so we could go home together. I’d had a pint and switched to fizzy water, as my receipts from that night will show. I was talking to a friend at the bar when there was a commotion outside. Then somebody I know from the village put their head around the door and said that Del was in trouble.’

  ‘This is your daughter, Delphine?’ asks the interviewer. ‘And she was sixteen, yes?’

  ‘She’s seventeen now,’ says Hollow. ‘Had her birthday while I was in prison.’

  ‘And tell us what you saw as you looked outside.’

  Hollow licks his lips. A flash of something primal flickers on his face, as though a pike has leapt from a lake to grab a butterfly. He seems to be replaying the moment in his head.

  ‘Del was over the other side of the road,’ he says. ‘She was crying and her clothes were ripped. She had blood on her lip and running down her leg from a gash on her knee. And three lads were a few feet away, shouting and swearing. One of them was holding half a dozen small stones in his left hand and tossing another one up in his right. I’m not Sherlock Holmes but it was clear they had assaulted Del.’

  ‘And this is in a town you call home, yes? A pleasant community.’ The interviewer shakes his head, horrified at the world.

  ‘There’s an old boy drinks with me sometimes,’ says Reuben, looking up into the camera. ‘He was having a cigarette outside. He’d seen what was happening and gone over as soon as Delphine appeared. One of the lads pushed him over. Right there, in the street where he’d lived all his life.’

  ‘And the boys responsible were known to you?’

  Reuben laughs a little. ‘They were known to everybody. They were a nuisance. I’d stuck up for them a couple of times when people told me what they were like. We’ve all been young, haven’t we? But they were trouble. One older lad and two seventeen-year-olds. Thought they were something special and loved to show off how tough they were. Somebody had obviously told them about Delphine’s brother and they thought it was okay to hurt her with that. I don’t understand that. Her brother’s death affected Delphine and me in a way I can’t even explain. They thought it was funny to taunt her over it. And when she did what I’d always taught her to do and stuck up for herself, they attacked her.’

  The interviewer nods and the screen fills with grainy CCTV footage, shot from the front of the pub. It shows Reuben Hollow walking calmly to where his daughter is cowering and taking her in his arms. Then the oldest lad throws a stone. It hits Delphine in the small of the back.

  And Reuben goes to work.

  ‘Mr Hollow, I am not a parent myself but I can understand the anger that must have gone through you in that moment. That being said, can you condone such violence?’

  Hollow has to bite back the laugh that threatens to escape his lips. ‘Violence? They attacked my daughter. They mocked the memory of my son. That wasn’t violence. That was a little lesson in manners.’

  The interviewer’s eyes seem to light up. He can see the headline writers having a ball with that one.

  ‘Mr Hollow,’ he continues, ‘we can clearly see in the video that you struck the eldest man, Barry Mathers, full in the face and then kicked him in the ribs when he was on the ground. You also threw seventeen-year-old Dean Day over a garden wall and hit Stewart O’Neill in the ribs so hard that both his feet left the ground.’

  Hollow looks at him, all innocence and charm.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I did. And I would do it again, as any parent would. What has happened to us? Seriously? We let these people bully us. Scare us. I taught my children to stick up for themselves. How do we do that? Well most of the time we turn the other cheek and let it slide. But these boys attacked my daughter.’

  The interviewer seems pleased. He can clearly see the highlights of this chat playing on the national news.

  ‘Now as far as you were concerned, that was the end of it, yes? You and your daughter went home.’

  Hollow nods, and for a moment his blue eyes seem about to fill with tears. Then he regains his composure. Scratches at his stubble.

  ‘I have a gypsy caravan at home,’ he says. ‘Delphine and I sometimes spend our evenings in there. She reads. I carve. Occasionally we sing songs. It’s our little retreat. The first thing we knew about Mathers Senior was when he marched up the steps and tried to take my head off with an axe.’

  On the sofa, Pharaoh shakes her head. The bastard sounds so damn plausible.

  ‘This is Wayne Mathers, the father of the man you assaulted in Skirlaugh?’

  Hollow nods.

  ‘His son told him I’d attacked him for no reason. He came to sort me out. It was dumb luck that I kicked out and he fell backwards down the steps. I didn’t even think he’d hurt himself. He went down with a thud but he got up again. I talked him around and he got in his car and drove off. That was that. It was another fortnight before I was arrested. Another few days until I was charged. My solicitor had no idea that it would be a murder charge. Even then I felt sure a jury would believe me.’

  The interviewer takes a breath.

  Here it comes, thinks Trish. Here it bloody comes . . .

  ‘And it was the statement of Humberside Police Sergeant Alan Cotteril that was the vital evidence during that trial, yes?’

  Pharaoh can’t take any more. She stamps over and switches the telly off at the wall. She wants to smash the damn thing. She knows the story by heart anyway. Mathers suffered a head injury as he fell down the steps. It caused a haemorrhage that put him in a coma and eventually claimed his life. One way of looking at it was that Reuben Hollow had killed him. Pharaoh considered the evidence far too thin for a realistic chance of a murder conviction. Even Shaz Archer thought the best they could get was manslaughter. Then good old Alan Cotteril came forward with a statement. Reuben Hollow had admitted to him en route to the station for interview that he had given Mathers Senior a good hiding. Had smashed his head off the wheel arch of the caravan and didn’t stop until he got an apology. The statement was enough to show intent to kill and the case went forward to the CPS. Hollow was charged with murder. Pharaoh can still remember the look in his eyes. It was hurt and bewilderment and absolute stone-cold despair.

  My daughter, he’d said, over and over, as she read the charge. Who will look after my daughter?

  Despite Cotteril’s statement, not all the jury could be convinced that Hollow was guilty. The judge eventually accepted a majority verdict and Hollow was sent down for life. Then the press started to kick up a fuss. Could a man not defend himself in his own home? Could he not stick a punch on the arseholes who had assaulted his daughter? They painted a picture of a humble, handsome man, fighting for the old ways. He was a sculptor. Lived in a cabin in the woods with his prodigiously clever daughter. He was a looker with the eyes of a poet: gold dust for the tabloids. And when Sergeant Alan Cotteril was found dead in his living room having overdosed on whisky and prescription painkillers, Pharaoh’s life got worse. Next to his body was an open laptop screen. On it, he had written his deathbed confession. Hollow’s confession was pure fiction. Cotteril had made the whole thing up and he knew the truth was all going to come out. Hollow’s case was fast-tracked to the Court of Appeal. Then the Sunday Mirror splashed with a story it had been working on for weeks. Sergeant Alan Cotteril was Wayne Mathers’ cousin through marriage. The link was the worst-kept secret in Skirlaugh and yet nobody had picked up on it. Least of all Trish. The vultures started to circle and their wings blew up a hurricane of shit, all of it heading for her. How had she missed the link? That was what they all wanted to know. Even McAvoy had allowed one disloyal eyebrow to slide towards the ceiling when the revelations surfaced.

  Pharaoh growls at h
erself as she realises she has allowed her thoughts to turn towards her sergeant. For a while she thought about setting up a money box on the mantelpiece to put a pound into every time she allowed the image of his big stupid freckled face to swim into her mind. Then she realised it would cost her too much. If he’d been on the investigation there was no way the link between Cotteril and Mathers would have gone undiscovered. But he’d been on his bloody holidays, smooching and simpering with that pretty little cow of a wife. Pharaoh chides herself again. Be nice. She has nothing against Roisin. Just wishes the bitch was still in protective custody and not around to show up all Pharaoh’s faults. Perfect tits, perfect arse, perfect little wife. If she wasn’t hard as coffin nails and as fiercely protective of Aector as Pharaoh herself, Trish would probably have nutted her by now.

  She drains her red wine and wonders if she should take a shower. Wonders if there are any Easter eggs left in the cupboard. Wonders what she would do if Aector turned up and saw her wearing the shirt that he left here last time he and the family came to stay.

  Wonders, for the thousandth time, if she should just tell Aector the truth about the whole damn business. Whether he would understand.

  Her mobile phone makes the decision for her.

  It’s DC Ben Neilsen, calling from Hull’s Old Town.

  They’ve got a body, Guv.

  Been trying to ring you for ages.

  McAvoy said to call you immediately . . .

  And this one is really fucking sick . . .

  Chapter 3

  6.11 p.m. The Freedom Centre on Hull’s Preston Road