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

by David Mark

  McAvoy finds the line that has been nagging at him, glimpsed months before and stored alongside so much else.

  He thought she was a foreigner because she hadn’t shaved her armpits.

  McAvoy feels the ground lurch. Feels sick.

  He imagines a killer, bent over the pretty girl who has haunted his days and nights. His imagination fills with mixed horrors and memories as Hannah blends with Ava in his mind. He sees her killer taking a blade to her as she screams and squirms. Sees dirty fingers at her throat and her innocent brown eyes popping and exploding as he throttles her and her blood pours over her white dress and into the dirt and leaves of the forest floor . . .

  McAvoy stands a little too quickly. Takes a step back. Doesn’t know what he has found but knows it matters. Looks back at the screen in a bid to fill himself with anything other than the images that are tumbling, over and over, in the eye of his imagination.

  Looks at the horse and remembers the faintest whiff of something he was told, years ago.

  He shushes Andy and starts dropping witness statements on the floor. Finds the number again.

  McAvoy uses his softest, most compassionate voice as he introduces himself. He does not do it for effect. He can only imagine what Mrs Winter is going through, the sadness and terrible rage that must fill her every time she looks at her daughter. McAvoy asks his questions quickly. Apologises if it sounds strange. Apologises for asking her the same questions she answered once before. He stands, silently for a moment, as Mrs Winter goes away to check out his request. A moment later she is back. His face changes as he tells her not to apologise. Not to blame herself. She was under too much pressure at the time to be able to recall a stranger’s name on a random document.

  He hangs up and turns to Andy.

  ‘The horse,’ he says, under his breath. ‘Hannah didn’t know the rider. She didn’t know Alice Winter. She used to own Alfie. It says in the equine passport.’

  ‘The what, Sarge?’

  ‘She wouldn’t . . .’ he says, half to himself. ‘She might want him hurt but she wouldn’t know how to make it happen. She’s not like that.’ Frantic, erratic, McAvoy pushes his damp fringe out of his eyes and moves the keyboard to his side of the desk. He feels a vague sense of disappointment and has to fight with himself to feel something else. He’s found a link but he wishes to God he’d found something else.

  He pulls up the crime scene photos from the hit and run that killed the horse. Grimaces. Logs in to the Hull Daily Mail site and navigates his way through the photo archive.

  White and pink carnations, left among the wildflowers and the bigger bouquets. A scribble in a looping, girlish hand he knows like his own. Three kisses and a love-heart. He’d been too damn overwhelmed to think of this before. Too full of tears and loss and grief for a girl he never met.

  I never forgot you. You’ll always be in my heart.

  ‘That was what first brought her out there,’ says McAvoy, bright-eyed, red-faced. He turns and looks at the silly, sweet girl on the whiteboard. ‘She’d gone to say goodbye to her old pony.’

  Chapter 12

  ‘Looks like a volcano has erupted,’ says Hollow, looking in the rear-view mirror.

  Hull is behind them. They’re heading up the coast, through fields of lurid yellow rapeseed and damp green grass.

  Pharaoh turns in the passenger seat and looks out of the back window. The sky above the city is an avalanche of dirty grey. She understands his meaning. It does look as though something has erupted. She half expects to see ash falling like snow.

  ‘First time I came to Hull it had seven different skies,’ he says, in response to her silence. ‘Every direction I looked there was another season. Stand on the Humber Bridge some time and look around you. It’s breathtaking. You need a glove on one hand and suncream on the other.’

  ‘That explains the bloke in the flip-flop and the snow-shoe,’ says Pharaoh, turning back to the road.

  Hollow glances over at her and smiles, then turns his attention back to the road.

  Pharaoh feels a strange blurry emptiness inside her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, and she always knows. She wonders if she’s sickening for something. She’s uncomfortably warm. Can feel sweat beading on her forehead and in the small of her back. Her feet feel slippy inside her boots and her hair is starting to go curly. She wishes he would put some music on. She can hear her own breathing, even over the hum of the tyres on the quiet road.

  ‘You ever come out this way before?’ asks Hollow. He gives a self-deprecating smile. ‘Before me, I mean.’

  Pharaoh shakes her head. ‘I’ve passed through, on the way up to Bridlington. Went to Hornsea a couple of years back to see a suspect. Real big fat bastard. Looked like he’d been carved out of discount ham.’

  Hollow laughs. It’s a warm, guileless sound.

  ‘You should be on the stage,’ he says.

  ‘As what? Freak show performer?’

  ‘You’re funny, I mean.’

  ‘Funny looking.’

  ‘Funny in loads of ways. And yeah, a bit funny peculiar.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’re not like other people. It’s a good thing. I tell my daughter the importance of individuality. You’re a hell of an individual, Trish.’

  ‘Did I tell you that you could call me Trish?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you can. But just not, y’know, in front of anyone.’

  ‘I think I may have called you Trish in one of our interviews.’

  ‘You actually called me “Princess” at one point. That went round the station like a stomach virus, I can tell you.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m sure I meant it affectionately.’

  ‘People don’t tend to be very affectionate when they’re being interviewed in connection with a man’s death.’

  ‘I had nothing to fear. I knew I hadn’t done anything.’

  ‘Yes, you had. You kicked him and he banged his head and he died.’

  ‘I kicked him because he came for me.’

  ‘Because you beat up his son.’

  ‘Because his son attacked my daughter.’

  ‘And your daughter didn’t provoke them? Angel, is she?’

  ‘She’s the whole world. She’s everything I’m not. She’s wonderful. Better than all of us. Don’t you feel that way about your children?’

  ‘What are you saying? That I don’t love my kids?’

  ‘No. I can see you love your kids. I can see you love your job.’

  ‘You’re a fucking clairvoyant, aren’t you? What else can you see about me?’

  ‘That you’re lonely. That you get scared sometimes. Scared that if you let go a little, the world will collapse.’

  ‘You don’t know a damn thing about me.’

  ‘I thought about you a lot. Every day in prison. Every night. Did you like what I made for you?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that. Were you taking the piss out of me?’

  ‘No. It helped me feel closer to you.’

  ‘Why did you want to feel close to me? I put you in prison.’

  ‘You didn’t want to. In a different place, a different time, we could have been friends.’

  ‘Do you know how much trouble I’m in because of you? You came to my house! You’re sending me sculptures of me with my clothes off! You’re talking about me on the news. I’m a serious career officer. I’m not a simpering little girl. What am I doing here?’

  ‘You need to get away. To get to know me a little more. To know I shouldn’t be in prison. It might make it feel a bit better when you’re getting shouted at.’

  ‘People don’t shout at me. I do the shouting. They cower and wait for me to stop.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen you in action. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Don’t start . . .’

  ‘I’ve never seen such passion in a person. You’re like the sky over Hull; a hundred different kinds of powerful and sublime.’

  ‘You tal
k so much shit. Do you know how many women came forward to give statements about your character when we arrested you? Bloody dozens. I’ve met your sort before. You’re a charmer, I can see that. But don’t think I’m going to fall for you. I’m here to investigate a murder.’

  ‘Remembered that, have you?’

  ‘Don’t smile at me like that.’

  ‘You’re smiling too.’

  ‘I’m not. That’s a wince. That’s . . .’

  ‘I like you smiling at me.’

  ‘Tell me about Hannah. I mean Ava. Ava Delaney.’

  ‘Who’s Hannah?’

  ‘Somebody else. A missing girl. Vanished last year. My sergeant thinks she’s dead.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Looks like it. Sad case. We may never know what happened to her. I can take that. He can’t. Everything hurts him. He carries it all.’

  ‘Sounds a good man.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a fucking saint. Tell me about Ava.’

  ‘That’s the girl from the papers, yes?’

  ‘You know it is.’

  Hollow closes one eye, as if thinking. A solitary bird sings a repetitive, two-note refrain that sounds pleasant for about ten seconds, and then becomes as annoying as a ticking clock.

  ‘I want to be honest with you, Trish,’ says Hollow, looking at her in a way she is not used to. ‘If I tell you something that I should probably keep to myself, will it help you trust me? That’s what I want most. I want you to trust me.’

  Pharaoh is suddenly grateful for the bird in the trees. It allows her to look past him and say something that will lighten the mood.

  ‘I would love it if people told the truth,’ she says. ‘And shot that fucking bird.’

  ‘I saw her at Hull Royal last year,’ says Hollow, looking directly into her eyes. ‘I probably shouldn’t mention it, given all the bother I’ve been through, but if it helps you I’ll tell you. She was in there with some lad. Delphine had a horrible migraine and I was panicking that it was something more sinister and took her to get checked out. That girl was on a trolley in the corridor, curled up like a puppy. She looked tiny. A lad was with her. Young. Short hair. Bit dirty-looking. He might have been her boyfriend.’

  Pharaoh rubs her hands together. Her palms are clammy.

  ‘You spoke to her?’

  ‘She was asleep. I just glimpsed her.’

  ‘And yet you remembered her face.’

  ‘I know faces. I’m a sculptor, remember.’

  ‘Part-time, the way we heard it,’ says Pharaoh, with a little nastiness. ‘More of a carpenter and handyman, according to some.’

  ‘People say horrid things. If they said something like that to my daughter I’d tell her to blame jealousy. Never listen to bullies.’

  ‘Do you remember the date you took her to the hospital?’

  ‘I can find it. I’ll check. Last summer, before you turned my life to crap. Oh, here we are.’

  Hollow turns the car onto a muddy, uneven driveway. Tall, silver-green trees form a triumphal archway. Light gutters in the space between the leaves and the tangled branches. Patterns dance on Pharaoh’s face and clothes and skin.

  A hundred yards from the main road, the woods thin out. The car emerges in a clearing, where Hollow’s house sits like something from a nursery rhyme. It’s an old-fashioned, tumbledown affair with exposed brickwork and old timbers. A paradise, of sorts. Rusty trampoline and home-made swing in the front garden. Wildflowers scattered in the tall grass, thrown like handfuls of paint. Disordered headstones, mossed over and illegible, half sunk beneath nettles and cow parsley, flaxweed and bluebells. Beehives, long since abandoned, their wood a shade of green that makes Pharaoh think of corruption and decay. She listens and hears the chirrup of starlings and the tic-tic-tic of the cooling car.

  Pharaoh summons up what she can remember about the place. It used to be a chapel. Belonged to a landowner who used it as a place of private reflection. His reflection failed to pay off his gambling debts and the chapel was sold along with the rest of his estate 160 years ago. It’s passed through many hands since then. Spent years abandoned and derelict. It was bought by a charity in the 1970s. The architect meant something to them, though the name meant nothing to Pharaoh. They tried to restore it but ran out of money. Sold it to one of their members, who started repairs then got sick and had to sell. It ended up in the hands of a family named Fox. Terry Fox was a writer, of sorts. A former Oxbridge professor, he had family money and was happy to spend his share of it on turning the run-down old building into somewhere he could drink wine, grow vegetables and put his feet up. He converted it into a home, though it was never a particularly comfortable place for his family to live. He retained the narrow windows and stone floors. Kept the centuries-old font as a feature in the guest bedroom. Installed a heating system that worked for roughly three days every winter. Kept the graveyard, too. His kids grew up playing football and picnicking among the headstones. Their father found it rather quaint. Mum was too mashed on home-made wine and cannabis to give much of a damn either way.

  Pharaoh looks around her as she climbs from the vehicle. The breeze is cool and the sweat on her skin turns instantly chill. She shivers, but hides it. Concentrates on recalling the details of the complex family tree. Professor Fox’s daughter, Marissa, was living here when she met Reuben Hollow. She was thirty-five. Bohemian. Had travelled the world and not learned very much about it. She made a living selling home-made jams and flavoured oils, though in truth, it was the last of Daddy’s money that paid the bills. She had two children. Delphine was just two when the twenty-two-year-old Reuben entered her life. Aramis was a year younger. Pharaoh pictures a feral little thing in biodegradable nappies and hand-knitted romper suits that made his skin itch. Reuben had just left art college. He’d got a decent enough degree. Didn’t know what he was going to do with it. Agreed to spend a summer working for the family of a friend from university. Bumped into Marissa in a pub in Old Ellerby and found her captivating. Wooed her. Wed her. Nursed her when she got ill. Raised her children. Took what work he could and put his own stamp on the house. Marissa died of cirrhosis of the liver when Delphine was eleven. Reuben was both mum and dad from then on.

  ‘This way,’ says Reuben, sticking his hands in his pockets. A hand-rolled cigarette is smouldering between his lips.

  Pharaoh lights one of her own black cigarettes. Looks around her again and wonders how she would have felt growing up here. It’s not quite sinister but it does have a timeless, otherworldly quality. The world could end and the residents of this ramshackle house would likely experience no interruption to their lives. It’s completely sheltered from the road. A thousand trees stand sentinel between its residents and the nearest neighbours. It’s a cool, quiet, secluded place. A person could either find peace here, or lose their fucking mind.

  The gypsy caravan is a red-painted, bow-topped affair. It looks like something from a painting. The shafts for the horse are a gaudy yellow and the net curtains across the leaded windows are brilliant white.

  Pharaoh has seen all this before. Hollow walked her around the crime scene months ago. Showed where he was when Wayne Mathers attacked him. Showed where he fell. He’d expected it all to go away soon after. Had never thought he would go to prison.

  ‘We’re not going in the house?’ asks Pharaoh, as Hollow opens the doors at the rear of the caravan and starts filling the old tin kettle from the tap that sticks out of the leaf-covered ground.

  A tip of logs and twigs is already made up at the centre of a circle of blackened stones.

  ‘Delphine will be doing homework,’ says Hollow, as he strikes a blade against a piece of flint and lights a piece of bog cotton that he has taken from his pocket. It smoulders in his hand. He places it at the base of the twigs and blows on it gently. The fire comes to life.

  ‘She’s an angel,’ says Pharaoh, unsure whether to sit, stand or walk home.

  ‘Can I get you tea? There’s loads of old wine from Marissa’s d
ad’s time. Or I have lager, if that’s your thing.’

  ‘Tea will be fine. No, fuck it. Lager, please.’

  Hollow reaches into the wagon and grabs a small bottle of lager from the tub of cold water beneath one of the sofa beds. He rubs the moisture off the side onto his shirt. Chucks it to Pharaoh. She catches it and opens it in a frothy spray. Takes a deep swallow. Looks at him, sitting there on the steps of the caravan with a fag between his lips and an earring in his ear and that bloody twinkle in his eyes. She wonders if she’s being charmed. Hates that she might be.

  ‘What am I doing here, Mr Hollow?’ she asks. ‘Really.’

  He looks at her for a long moment. Stares into her so intensely that she wonders if he is viewing her thoughts like a show-reel. She burns under his gaze. Feels like she is trying to out-stare the sun.

  ‘I’ve wanted to talk to you properly since we met,’ he says, taking a long pole from the rusted wheel of the gypsy wagon and poking at the fire. ‘Come and sit down. You’re safe. I promise.’

  ‘I know I’m safe. Do I strike you as a scared person?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yeah, just for the laugh.’

  ‘Not scared, no. Sad, maybe. Overwhelmed, perhaps. How’s your daughter?’

  ‘Sophia? Fine. Shaken up. I should say thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Fuck off. I saw blood on your hand. You hit one of them, didn’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to say.’

  ‘Well, thanks. But please, don’t come to the house. My husband . . .’

  ‘Yeah, you keep him quiet.’

  ‘I didn’t have any reason to tell you about him.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He had an aneurysm. Pressure of work. Pressure of a lot of things. I don’t like talking about it.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man, to have you care for him.’

  ‘I don’t care for him.’

  ‘He lives with you.’

  ‘He lives in the garage. He doesn’t even try to get better. He’s not my husband.’