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

by David Mark

  Here, now, Helen feels a pulse of exhilaration beating inside her. She imagines telling McAvoy what she has found. Imagines telling Pharaoh. She needs to digest it all. Needs to make sense of it, to figure out how a charming, softly spoken vigilante has been killing people with impunity for God knows how long.

  Helen picks up her phone and checks her messages. Calls Vicki back and pulls over at once.

  ‘Vicki? Hi, this is Helen. Yeah.’

  The PCSO sounds as though she has been running. She’s breathless. Her voice sounds small.

  ‘Helen, hi. How’s things?’

  ‘Not bad,’ says Helen, hoping that the other officer has rung for more than a chat. ‘Did something occur to you about O’Neill?’

  Vicki’s pause lasts almost ten seconds. And then she starts blurting it all out.

  ‘Honest, I swear if I’d remembered this the other day I’d have told you, but, look, I was watching a bit of telly tonight. Mum had taped a programme and I was having some food and fast-forwarding and there was a bit of the local news at the start of the programme. And look, I don’t normally watch the news. But this guy was on. And I remember speaking to him. He’d done a bit of work at the Freedom Centre, fixing some of the flooring in the function room.’

  ‘Go on,’ prompts Helen, with a finger in her ear.

  ‘Raymond O’Neill was drinking in the bar area with one of his lads and a couple of mates,’ says Vicki, still talking too fast. ‘They were celebrating.’

  ‘Celebrating?’

  ‘Him getting released.’

  ‘So this was last February?’

  ‘Must have been. Anyway, there was a bit of a to-do. Nothing major, a bit of bother.’

  ‘Vicki, you can tell me.’

  The PCSO sighs. ‘You know I told you he called me a c-word? This was the day. There was a nice family drinking in the bar and Raymond and his mate were being really loud and swearing and it caused a bit of an argument. We were in the neighbourhood. We came in and tried to calm things down. Ray was really in my face but that was just Ray. The man who was on the news tonight – he was watching it all. I spoke to him when it all calmed down. He said Ray was an animal. I told him he didn’t know the half of it. Told him about Ray getting released from prison. I swear, I never thought of it again until tonight. Remember, we didn’t know Ray was missing so at the time it didn’t seem relevant. But when I saw him interviewed and realised who he was . . .’

  Helen manages to convince Vicki she has done a great job. Calms her with kind words that seem to flow naturally from her tongue. Her heart is racing as she hangs up. Her knuckles are white around the steering wheel; the words scored into her open notebook have penetrated a dozen pages. She doesn’t know what she thinks or what she should hope for. Can’t remember if she came out with any decent platitudes before she hung up.

  She opens a text from Ben Neilsen.

  Hannah Kelly’s body has been found outside McAvoy’s house.

  Helen’s hands go to her face. She can picture the devastation in his eyes. Can imagine the fire and ice in his gut.

  She starts to call him. Stops herself. Starts again.

  He’s quiet when he answers. Quieter than usual. Manages his name and a breath.

  ‘Sarge, I heard . . .’

  ‘Thanks for ringing,’ he says, and sounds grateful. ‘Not very nice here at the moment.’

  ‘No. Shit, Sarge, I’m so sorry.’

  The phone rustles by her ear. She can hear McAvoy readjusting his own phone, brushing it against the grey and ginger bristles on his cheeks. She wonders if they are damp. Whether he has cried or is holding it all in to fuel the promises she knows he makes to the dead and those left behind.

  ‘How did you get on?’ he asks. ‘Are you okay? You’re not still on the road, are you? What about Penelope?’

  Helen keeps her eyes on the road. Realises that despite herself, she is smiling.

  ‘There’s so much to tell you. We’re on to something, I swear.’

  McAvoy grunts his interest and approval and seems to be making up his mind about something. Finally, he comes out with it.

  ‘There’s been a development with the Ava Delaney case. We’ve found DNA at the scene. It belongs to Reuben Hollow.’

  Helen turns to look at the road signs as he says it. Sees her eyes widen in the darkened glass of the driver’s window.

  ‘Hollow? Christ, wait until you hear what I just found out . . .’

  McAvoy makes a noise as she recounts the contents of her conversation with Vicki Fry. Helen wishes she were better at reading his sounds.

  ‘Can you make yourself available first thing tomorrow? I know it’s a lot to ask. But I could use a steady pair of hands. And I want to hear how your interviews went.’

  Helen gives a proper smile then bites it back.

  ‘What are you thinking? Hollow was still inside when the girl died, wasn’t he? And what about Hannah? Were there any similarities? I mean, psychologically. Sorry for asking, it’s just . . .’

  She hears McAvoy sigh. It’s not a dismissive or disappointed sound. He’s just too full of questions and sadness to contain it.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ says Helen, trying to cover up and cursing herself for rambling on.

  ‘Thanks again, Helen. Kiss Penelope goodnight for me.’

  He ends the call. She can almost feel the soft, powerful pressure of his thumb upon the button of his phone.

  She turns off her music and drives home in silence. Makes a promise to herself that tonight, she will hold Penelope extra tight.

  Knows, to her very bones, that for every knight in shining armour, there are a million dragons to slay.

  Chapter 20

  Wednesday morning, 7.14 a.m.

  Pharaoh didn’t sleep much last night. Got a couple of hours of absolute blackness before waking in a tangle of twisted sheets and sprawled-out children. It took her a few moments to realise which bedroom she was in. The middle two children had pushed their beds together and made a nest of eiderdowns and pillows. They’d told her they’d made her a soft cocoon where she could do something about the bags under her eyes. She’d hugged them both and taken up the offer. Hadn’t even felt them climbing in beside her when they tiptoed up the stairs. When she woke, her mouth had tasted of wine and garlic, cigarettes and lip-gloss. The room was spinning from the drink and her tiredness. She could have just slumped back on the pillows. Could have fought her way back to sleep. But she chose to check her messages. Chose to read what McAvoy had sent her. Chose to let him enter her thoughts.

  Pharaoh knows that she’s doing something silly.

  Here, now, pushing her sports car too fast through the fog on the grey road that winds through green and yellow fields towards the coast.

  Here, on the road to Reuben Hollow’s home.

  She feels light-headed. Muzzy around the edges. Her thoughts feel somehow slurred. She has never been an enthusiastic user of recreational drugs but does remember the feeling of smoking sticky black resin behind the Spar with a couple of older lads when she was a teen. Wonders if she has somehow ingested something. Could Sophia have slipped something into her morning coffee? Pharaoh grimaces at herself for even thinking it. Hates being a copper sometimes. Hates what it makes her imagine.

  Rubbing her eyes, she plays with the blowers on the dashboard. Tries to remove some of the mist from the windscreen. It makes no difference. The condensation is outside the car, thick and grey as old mashed potato. She keeps seeing shapes emerging from the gloom. Half expects a flock of bats to encircle the car. She feels twitchy. On the verge of something. She feels as though there are angry birds inside her skull, pecking their way out as if through a pie crust in a nursery rhyme.

  Pharaoh eases her foot off the accelerator. The fog still hasn’t lifted, though it is thinning out as she leaves Hull behind her. She has the radio on low but is barely listening to the breakfast show. She heard the news at 7 a.m. as she drove through the quiet, mist-wreathed streets, head
ing east through the city centre. A young woman’s body found at Hessle Foreshore. Speculation that it might be missing Howden resident Hannah Kelly. Police refusing to rule out a link between her death and the discovery of a body in Hull’s Old Town. Some soundbites from a defeated candidate for the role of police commissioner, smugly spreading fear over the rise in violent crime.

  Pharaoh wants to close her eyes, to pull over and go to sleep in a lay-by. She wouldn’t give a damn if a lorry flattened her car with her in it. She feels like a stranger to herself. Knows that she has been unravelling for months now. She’s always liked a drink but for the past year or two she’s needed one to soften her world. Has felt as if she is staring into bright sunshine whenever the pleasant shade of red wine and vodka have left her system. She knows when it began. She made a deal that cost her far more than she gained. Compromised what she believed in and made a pact with a very bad man. Her oldest friend is still walking with two sticks because of it. People are dead. She was not to blame, and she tidied it all up better than anybody else could have, but Pharaoh feels as though she let the devil inside her and has been drinking as if trying to drown him.

  She hears her phone vibrate inside her handbag. Knows instinctively that it will be McAvoy again. He needs to talk to her. Needs advice. There have been significant forensic discoveries. Helen Tremberg has unearthed some connections that need a senior detective’s input. But more than anything, is she okay? That was what he’d asked, over and over, in the messages she scrolled through with mounting panic in her chest. She wonders what he is demanding of her now. Has she eaten? Does she need a uniform to come and drive her into work?

  Pharaoh chews on her cheek. Checks the rear-view mirror and looks away quickly when she catches her own eyes. She looks wrecked. She’s still wearing the same things as yesterday. Hasn’t washed her hair. Didn’t even remember to splash her perfume on when she left the house. She smells of stale cigarettes and sweat-dampened clothes.

  Something brown and sleek bounds across the road and Pharaoh has to swerve to avoid it. She gets a glimpse of spindly back legs and a flash of white tail. Takes a breath as adrenaline floods her and feels beads of perspiration prickle on her forehead and chest. She slows down. Turns right and goes through the village, past the pub where Hollow interrupted a pleasant day’s drinking by beating the crap out of three little bastards.

  She turns the car onto the bumpy track through the trees. She can’t make up her mind whether she likes the feeling of being enveloped in nature. It could be a peaceful place, this. Could be secluded and private. A fairy-tale cottage of flowers and trees, birds and wild herbs. But she cannot get past the feeling of being swallowed. Of being somehow folded within something. Sees the forest as a single living organism, closing around her as if she had alighted on the leaves of a Venus fly-trap.

  She winds the window down. Breathes in the smell of damp grass and sawn timber, bluebells and dew. Breathes in and shivers as the cool air chills the sweat that clings to her skin.

  ‘What are you doing, Trish? What are you bloody doing?’

  Her voice cracks as she speaks. She wishes she had something to drink.

  She slows down as she nears the cottage. Spots the gravestones to her left. The flowers have yet to wake under the caress of the sun. Their petals are folded inwards like the wings of birds. A plume of smoke drifts upwards from the chimney that juts from the red tiles. The downstairs curtains are open but the ones in the upper floor are closed. She stares up at them for a time. Imagines him, sleeping beneath white sheets. Wants to press her face into the pillows and breathe in his scent. Wants him to push her face down into sheets that stink of them both.

  Pharaoh grimaces again. Rubs her forehead. Drops her chin to the steering wheel and closes her eyes. She has always known what to do, always been on top of things. Right now she feels so lost that she fears she will never find herself again.

  Should she call McAvoy? She knows that he will give her some small comfort. His voice will soothe her. He’ll tell her what she wants to hear. She’s a good copper who did her job. Mistakes were made but none malicious. She just needs to hold it together a little while longer and things will work themselves out. He’ll help her. She’s done it for him often enough.

  ‘Detective Superintendent?’

  Pharaoh jumps as she hears her name. Looks up to see Delphine Hollow walking towards her through the long grass. She’s wearing a man’s dressing gown and green wellington boots. Her hair is ruffled at the back and she is looking at Pharaoh with a half-smile on her face. Pharaoh pushes her hair back and takes off her seat belt, opens the door. Puts her right boot down on a clump of pretty flowers. Disentangles herself from the car and stands up straight.

  ‘Were you looking for Dad? He’s out the back, sawing wood. He’ll have his earphones in so there’s no point ringing him. He shouldn’t be long. We have felling rights to a small portion of the woods, you see. Dad hates chopping them down but there’s no point being a sculptor if you haven’t got anything to sculpt with. He’ll come in looking like he’s been bereaved, you see if he doesn’t.’

  Pharaoh spots the mug of tea in the girl’s hand. Delphine sees her looking.

  ‘Shall I make you a cup? You must be exhausted. Have you been down at Hessle? I heard it on the news. Awful, isn’t it?’

  Pharaoh walks around from the far side of the car and stands in front of the girl. She’s good-looking, in a rumpled sort of way. Has a tomboyish quality that suggests mucky knees and dirty fingernails. She smells of the outdoors. With her naughty eyes and freckles she looks the way a cartoonist would draw an independent spirit.

  ‘Coffee would be lovely,’ says Pharaoh, and is surprised at how soft her voice sounds. She’s not a quiet person. Isn’t used to having her words drowned out by song thrushes and bees.

  ‘We were both sorry you couldn’t stay for dinner last night,’ says Delphine, beckoning her towards the house. ‘Dad’s a great cook.’

  ‘Is there anything he can’t do?’ asks Pharaoh, distractedly, as she picks her way around the headstones. ‘You sound like his publicist.’

  Delphine turns and throws Pharaoh a big broad smile. ‘He’s not much good at maths. And if he puts a shelf up I guarantee it will fall down.’

  ‘Really?’ Pharaoh feels oddly pleased by this. She’s good at putting up shelves.

  ‘Yeah, he can carve you some stunning shelves but ask him to drill a hole and put up a bracket and he’ll go white as a sheet. He can’t do his tax returns either. Starts fretting about them around six months before they’re due. Mum used to do that for him, apparently.’

  Delphine leads them into a low-roofed kitchen. The ceiling is striped with chunky old timbers and painted a cheerful shade of yellow. There are jam jars of herbs and flowers on the windowsill and dirty plates in the deep sink. A long wooden table stands in the centre of the room, set for two. The room is rich with a pungent aroma, medicinal and earthy, sharp and aniseed.

  Pharaoh looks down for something to wipe her feet on. Stops short as she reads the names on the gravestones beneath her feet.

  ‘Don’t let them put you off,’ says Delphine cheerfully as she fills the kettle and puts it on the old-fashioned stove. She takes a box of matches from her dressing-gown pocket and lights the burner. The smell of smoke briefly eclipses the combined scents of the herbs.

  ‘Unusual,’ says Pharaoh, stepping lightly across the headstones and leaning against the table.

  ‘It’s a better way to recycle than washing out Marmite jars,’ says Delphine, scooping coffee into a striped mug. ‘They’d all fallen down and we needed a new floor. Dad and me did it together. Aramis was very good at offering words of encouragement.’

  Pharaoh hears the note of sadness in the girl’s voice. Were she feeling more like herself she would already be giving her a hug. She’s a tactile person, able to motivate her officers with nothing more than a squeeze on the arm or a pat on the arm. Right now, she feels as though she would turn to stone
if she touched anybody.

  ‘You must miss him,’ says Pharaoh. ‘I’m sorry; that sounds silly. I just mean I’m sorry you had to go through that.’

  Delphine gives a nod of thanks. Scoops sugar into Pharaoh’s mug without asking.

  ‘I miss him, of course I do. I miss Mum too. I’ve still got Dad though and it pays to be grateful, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s got you too,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Seems like you’re a good team.’

  Delphine beams, delighted at the compliment. ‘It was horrible when I was here all by myself.’

  Pharaoh looks away. Reads the inscription on the flags beneath her feet. Alice Mainprize. Died in 1873, aged just twenty-six.

  ‘I wasn’t having a go,’ says Delphine, suddenly realising how her words could have been construed. She pulls a face of self-reproach. ‘He’s back now, isn’t he? You had to investigate. People can’t just drop down dead without some kind of authority getting involved. That’s the way of the world.’

  ‘You’ve got a good head on your shoulders for somebody so young,’ says Pharaoh, taking the coffee from her outstretched hand. ‘I guess you had to grow up quickly.’