by David Mark
McAvoy and Pharaoh have no prejudices about the people who make their homes here. Would not register a moment’s disquiet about leaving their children here overnight. But the properties on Surbiton Close do not represent the wider community. This is a neighbourhood of architectural monstrosities. More than 90 per cent of the homes are boarded up. Most have ‘Water Off’ signs spray-painted on the walls, though whether this is a useful message from a contractor or an obscure instruction to unwelcome visitors is anybody’s guess.
This is a place of weeds and broken glass. Holes have been torn in the steep tile roofs where chancers have punched through in an attempt to steal the copper from the derelict homes. The white-painted wooden porches that were intended to make this development look modern and Scandinavian have rotted in the face of the elements and turned the colour of dead and bloated skin. The windows are shuttered and the pebble-dash is flaking off like burned bark.
There are only a handful of occupied properties and they are squat, cramped affairs. The interlinked terraced homes look as drab as Monopoly houses. Jez Gavan and his partner have burrowed in at number 17 like ticks in a dog’s back leg. His home overlooks a car park of pitted tarmac and dead grass. The bulbs in the lampposts have long since been smashed and it takes an effort to find the house. Then it takes a few curse words and an authoritative tone of voice before anybody answers the repeated bangs on the cracked blue paint of the front door. An upper window is thrown open and a woman with a head the size of a normal person’s torso bellows something discouraging at them as they stand and wonder whether anybody here would notice the advent of the apocalypse.
Mrs Gavan has no interest in the police or their business. Tells them she’s paid as much council tax as she’s willing to and has no time for any more of the local authority’s bullshit. Doesn’t want to hear from no Jehovah’s Witnesses either. And if they’re here to complain about her daughter Beth, they’ve come to the wrong house. She’s got pregnant by a Kosovan and moved to Dewsbury. McAvoy handles the negotiations. Uses his softest voice and saddest eyes and holds Trish Pharaoh back as she prepares to put her boot to the door. Eventually the woman consents to waddle downstairs and throw open the door. She glowers out from beneath bushy eyebrows and greasy hair and rubs a fat, tattooed hand over her clammy features as she masticates a lump of something neither officer cares to identify. She’s wearing a massive T-shirt with a picture of a teddy bear on the front and the message ‘hug me’ on the back.
‘Couldn’t get my bloody arms around you,’ mutters Pharaoh as the woman stomps off back upstairs to rouse her man, giving them a glimpse of a backside with so many pockmarks Pharaoh wonders aloud whether she’s ever been blasted in the buttocks with a shotgun.
For twenty minutes they are left in a cluttered living room with two snarling Dobermans and a toddler who seems to be using his nose as a solution to some impending mucus shortage. His finger is so far inside his nasal cavity he seems to be searching for a shortcut to his brain. The respite at least gives McAvoy a chance to work on his technique for sitting down without actually touching anything. He tries not to judge. His childhood home was tidy and uncluttered because they couldn’t afford anything to clutter it with, but at least it was clean. The living room of Jez Gavan’s home looks to have been modelled on an overturned wheelie bin. Bottles, takeaway boxes and a mountain of cigarette butts lean against one wall like a ski slope. A light bulb hangs, naked and filthy, from a flex in the centre of the room and illuminates three inflatable armchairs and a coffee table made from Adidas shoe boxes and a sheet of Perspex. A sheet of tinfoil sits next to a bag of tea-lights and a dirty spoon on the makeshift table, alongside a copy of the Hull Daily Mail and a half-empty packet of Jammie Dodgers.
‘Homely,’ said Pharaoh as she entered the small living room, with its stench of stale tobacco, rubbish bags and damp. ‘Remind me to Google “Dresden” when we get back.’
For the past twenty minutes they have found themselves becoming slowly hypnotised by the pixelated glare coming off the plasma TV on the far wall. The screen is so large that McAvoy has found himself wondering whether the house was built around it.
The investigation is only a couple of hours old and already he feels the weight of it. To search for justice is to wear damp clothes. He feels the chill of Ava’s corpse upon him. Has never shaken off the damp caress of Hannah Kelly. He is a man with two lives. He is able to pursue killers purely because of his wife and children waiting for him. They are his antidote and reason. But the dead slink inside him like shadows. He can feel Ava taking root. Knows that tiny particles of her are lodged within his nostrils, that his shoes carry her dead skin cells. His every breath brings her inside him. He is already building an image of the petite, attractive girl who suffocated on her own puke as somebody pressed a toilet seat across the back of her neck. He can picture her sitting in that tiny flat, stubbing out cigarette after cigarette into a coffee mug overflowing with butts. Can see her playing with her phone and painting her nails and eating chips in bed while watching silly films on the DVD player and supermarket TV that she propped on an overflowing chest of drawers. He has flicked through her music. Felt himself collapse a fraction as he looked at her curling, girlish handwriting and her songs about love, desire and loss. She owned candles and nice wine glasses. Her tea-towel matched her coffee jar. She was somewhere between adult and child; trying to make a home and then letting it tumble into teenage squalor. He pities the forensics officers who must catalogue and test every last fibre of her flat, from the tiny hairs on her razor to the lump of rock on her windowsill.
Pharaoh has been talking. Making comments, under her breath, about the colour of the carpet. Asking whether the yellow stain on the ceiling is from cigarette smoke blown upwards, or piss that has dripped down.
And then Jez Gavan makes his entrance.
House and master suit one another immaculately.
He is dressed in jogging pants and a decade-old Man United shirt stretched so tightly over his gut that McAvoy wonders whether it is painted on. He is every bit as fat as his woman, though where she at least has a face capable of more than one expression, his is so scrunched up and sour McAvoy wants to show him off to Fin and tell him that the old saying is true about what happens when the wind changes. All of his features are gathered together in one little lump in the centre of his bulbous face. It looks like a full English in the centre of a serving platter.
Jez greets them by belching loudly and scratching his short hair so vigorously that it causes a brief halo of dandruff to form around his crown. There is darkness under his eyes and a cigarette paper hanging, unrolled, from his lower lip, like a Post-it note that nobody has taken the time to fill in. He throws himself down on an armchair, sending up a cloud of dust, then sticks both hands down his trousers. He treats both coppers to a smile. Looks appreciatively at Trish Pharaoh’s tits. Gives McAvoy the once-over and clearly decides that the big bugger has muscles like an elephant but all the killer instinct of a dishtowel.
‘What you bastards want?’ he asks, picking up an expensive smartphone from the floor and playing with the buttons. ‘Why’s it always me, eh? Why can’t you find some other poor bastard? How many times do you lot want to fit me up? I ain’t done owt. I’m just an easy collar. I told you before, I’m never speaking to coppers again. I was honest with you. Well, not you. But coppers, yeah? I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was so pissed I couldn’t see. Went in the wrong fucking house, didn’t I? Door was bloody open. Fell asleep on the sofa. No harm done. Silly bitch should lock her door, shouldn’t she? Shouldn’t have come to court. I’ve got fuck all to say to you.’
Pharaoh is patient with him. Gives him a chance to vent a little spleen. She’s never met Gavan before but his record suggests that he knows how this game is played.
‘Can I stop you there?’ she asks, holding up her hands and standing up. ‘You seem to think we’re here to cause you grief. The truth is, we’re not. We’re here because Ava Delaney use
d to be registered as living at this address. And Ava Delaney is now dead. So stop all this bollocks and start paying us some bloody respect, or you’ll be down the cells and bleeding from the nose quicker than you can count to three, which in my estimation is about twenty fucking minutes.’
Jez looks at Pharaoh like a moped driver who has just pulled up at the traffic lights next to three Hell’s Angels on Harley-Davidsons. His unhealthy yellow face turns a shade of grey and his tattooed hands turn to fists as he scratches at the arms of his plastic chair. Eventually, he manages to find the enthusiasm for a strange kind of gulped smile, then barks an order at his woman. A moment later, she brings him a battered metal tin. He rolls a cigarette with dirty fingers. It’s prison-thin; the habit of a man used to conserving his tobacco. It betrays Gavan’s history, his years in a variety of category C prisons and one brief stretch in a category A. He was the least impressive prisoner at HMP Full Sutton. He was sent down for armed robbery, though the charge sounds more glamorous than it was. The gun with which he held up the post office on Sculcoates Lane was plastic and came free with a magazine for primary-age kids. He ended up in the jail for violent and dangerous prisoners because he defended himself when somebody went for him in HMP Doncaster. Half throttled a prison guard who came to break up the fight. Spent the last four weeks of his sentence among killers and rapists before spilling out on parole at the tail end of last year.
‘Ava,’ says Gavan, lighting his cigarette and recovering some degree of composure. He looks at the ceiling as if ruminating. ‘Not sure that rings a bell. Can you give me a bit more?’
Pharaoh gives a little laugh and turns to Jez’s other half. ‘Do you want to give his head a bang or should I?’
Something passes between husband and wife. She gives him a look that suggests she will back him whatever he decides but that in her humble opinion, it would be wise to help.
‘Dead, yeah?’ Gavan asks resignedly. He purses his lips and blows out a cloud of smoke. ‘Fuck, that’s a shame. Pretty girl.’
Pharaoh turns to McAvoy, who is staring at the small boy in front of the TV with his finger up his nose. He doesn’t even appear to have registered the newcomers in his home.
‘Shall we send the little lad to bed?’ asks McAvoy, softly. ‘Not ideal for young ears.’
Mr and Mrs Gavan appear to register the presence of the youngster. ‘Bed now, Dylan,’ says his mum. ‘I’ll be up to say goodnight.’
The little boy unpeels himself from the floor. His pyjamas are clean and he has been sitting on a newspaper. He gives both parents a small smile and says, ‘Love you,’ as he closes the door. McAvoy watches him go.
‘So, Ava Delaney,’ says Pharaoh brightly. ‘And can you roll me a cigarette please? I’m out.’
McAvoy sits quietly on the chair as his boss does what she’s good at. She takes a thin cigarette from Gavan’s hands as if she is receiving a communion wafer. It’s a gesture of appreciation and acceptance. It shows Gavan that she’s not so very different from him and that she does not want to cause him any headaches. It also gives him a view down her cleavage, and a couple of other reasons to want to make her happy.
‘She really dead?’ he asks, lighting her cigarette with a cheap lighter. ‘You’re a DSU. Can’t be a car crash. Can’t be overdose. Somebody must have killed her. Fuck, poor cow.’
Pharaoh nods. Picks a piece of tobacco from her lip. Settles back in the plastic chair and makes herself comfortable. Turns to Jez with a smile.
‘Ava. How did you know her?’
Jez isn’t paying attention. He’s looking up again at the stain on the ceiling. Seems to be picturing the small, dark-haired girl. He shakes his head and turns his attention to McAvoy.
‘You find out who did it, you rip their fucking head off, yeah? She was a stroppy cow but a nice enough lass. Didn’t deserve that.’
‘Could you answer my colleague’s question, Mr Gavan,’ says McAvoy, staring through the short, ratty man’s face and focusing on a spot 100 yards behind the back wall.
‘Aye, aye,’ mutters Gavan, turning back to the warm, open face of Pharaoh. She seems happy enough, smoking her cigarette with her legs crossed and a swoop of dark hair snagged in the hoops of her earrings. Could just as well be reclining in a rocking chair at a big country house after a dinner party.
‘I live over the water,’ she says. ‘Grimsby way. Long way from here. I’ve got daughters. It’s a bit of a trek, to be honest, and it’s getting on for ten p.m. already. So, Jez, if you could just give us the basics I can get home and into my pyjamas and try and get a few hours before this all starts getting horribly intense and shitty in the morning. Be a darling and help us out.’
Jez looks between the two officers and seems to decide that he would rather talk to the sexy DSU than the massive, brooding Scotsman with the broken hands.
‘I hardly know her,’ he says, and his face shows regret. ‘Knew her, I mean. I just did the lass a favour.’
Pharaoh stays quiet. Lets him fill the silence.
‘Look, I got talking to her in the Lambwath. This was months ago. Christmas just gone, that sort of time. You know the Lambwath? Not my normal pub but I was barred from my local so I went to spend my money somewhere else. She was in there with some friends. I don’t know what the occasion was. Birthday or leaving do or something. She was dolled up to the nines. They all were. She didn’t look like the others. Looked like Morticia Addams with all the black she was wearing and the piercings and the eye make-up. But for all that she was a smiley thing. She asked me for a fag and I said I didn’t have any but I’d roll her one. So I did. We had a natter. She told me she was going to have to move away because she couldn’t get a flat. Seemed a shame to me.’
Gavan glances at his wife. Her face is stone.
‘Look, I haven’t always been a good boy,’ he says, looking at McAvoy and trying to find an ally. ‘I thought she were a pretty thing and I’m a sucker for that. She told me she couldn’t get a flat because she had a bad credit history and I said that money talks and if she could put down the first few months’ rent then most landlords wouldn’t worry too much about the credit checks. I own my own home, see?’ He gestures at his living room. ‘I doubted I could be a guarantor for the poor cow but I gave her my address and my number and said she could try and use my name on the forms. Could say she lived here, if she liked. I was just being nice.’
Pharaoh raises an eyebrow. Twinkles a little. ‘You’re a bad puppy,’ she says, in a way that makes Gavan seem to grow two or three inches in height.
‘I wish I hadn’t met the lass, to be honest,’ he says. ‘Right pain in the arse she became. Called me up a week later and said she’d given my number to her landlord in case there were any problems. Said she’d spent her savings getting stuff for the flat and was stony broke. Wanted to borrow a few quid. I’d just got out of the nick and didn’t have enough money for a packet of tobacco. I ignored her. Then she sent a load more, saying she was really in bother and hadn’t eaten and that she had to get a train ticket and all the sob stories people use when they’re trying to fleece you. I’d have changed my number if so many people didn’t have this one. Then her landlord phones me and says she’s behind with the rent and that she’s given them my name! I was proper fucked off. Wasn’t my fucking business, was it? And my wife here puts up with a lot, y’know? I told her about this lass who kept bothering me. She wasn’t happy but it was a weight off my mind.’
Pharaoh looks across at the rotund woman. Gives the tiniest of signals for McAvoy to take over.
‘Worth their weight in gold, a good wife and mother,’ says McAvoy, softly. ‘Jez is a lucky man. You must have reminded him of that when he told you.’
Mrs Gavan sucks her cheek, enjoying the attention and the big man’s wide, sincere eyes.
‘We’ve been here before,’ she says, rolling her eyes and nodding at her errant husband. ‘He’s a sucker for the pretty faces. Always giving lasses money for a taxi or a few quid to get themselves a
pizza on the walk home. Can’t help himself, the silly sod. This Ava took the piss. I believed him when he said nothing had happened – especially when I saw her for myself.’
‘You actually met?’ asks McAvoy, keeping his eyes on hers.
‘In town,’ she says, chattily. ‘Bottom of Whitefriargate. Jez and me were having a drink in the Bonny Boat one Friday night. Don’t normally drink around there but he were treating me. I saw him talking to this tiny little thing with half her head shaved and tattoos and piercings every-bloody-where and I thought I should go and save him from himself. Jez were apologising. Saying he had nothing to give her.’
‘She wanted money,’ cuts in Gavan. ‘She wasn’t insisting or being a cow or anything. Just really pleading. I said I could spare a few quid but she said she needed a few hundred. Would do anything. The missus butted in before I could promise her I’d sell the house and give her the proceeds.’
‘I wasn’t nasty,’ says Mrs Gavan to McAvoy. ‘Just told her that she should have a bit more self-respect. Everybody has problems. What does she think we are, a bloody bank? I sent her on her way. Told Jez to get his number changed and tell her landlord that it was fuck all to do with him.’