by David Mark
McAvoy considers the man. He can see that he is holding himself in check. There is a strangulated quality to his voice, as though something is constricting his throat. It is grief and pain and suffering, and it will be there until the day he dies.
‘I won’t say that lashing out wouldn’t help,’ says McAvoy gently. ‘It might, for a moment. But getting arrested would just cause more problems and pain. So resist, if you can.’
Les looks up from the task at hand. Everything about him screams grief. There is a stillness to him, an economy of movement, that suggests he is calcifying before McAvoy’s eyes.
‘She’s here, then?’ asks Les, looking at McAvoy with eyes the same colour as his daughter’s. ‘Have they cut her up yet?’
McAvoy doesn’t know how to respond. He feels like shuddering at the stark language but can’t help but admire Les’s unwillingness to find sweeter words for what is being done to his child. McAvoy knows himself guilty of trying to sweeten brutal news with euphemistic descriptions. He has heard himself say ‘lost the fight’ and ‘slipped away’ to desperate people, when what he meant was ‘died’.
‘Dr Jackson-Savannah has concluded his examination,’ says McAvoy, forcing himself to look directly at Les as he says it. ‘We’ll have his findings soon.’
‘Knife, was it?’ asks Les, and his face quivers slightly as his mind hands him a show-reel of horrors. He bites on his lip again. ‘Or were she strangled? Those seem to be the ways to kill young lasses. I read the papers. That’s how young girls die in this country. Stabbed or strangled.’
Once again, McAvoy doesn’t know what to say. The rules and regulations insist he cannot share details of the investigation. In the eyes of the law, Les Kelly is still a suspect. In time, members of McAvoy’s team will need a breakdown of his movements around the time of Hannah’s disappearance. But here, now, he looks like a sculpture of dust and tears.
‘I know you can’t say,’ mutters Les, saving McAvoy from needing to speak. ‘I probably shouldn’t be here anyways. Just felt the urge to be near her. Silly, isn’t it? You’d have thought I’d be used to the absence, but something made me come here. It was good of you to tell me personally she’d been found. Hard, like. Hard to hear. And I could tell it were hard to say.’
McAvoy plays with his empty cup. He didn’t tell Les where Hannah had been found. Just that a body matching her description had been located. Les won’t be allowed to see what’s left of her unless he truly begs and pleads, and McAvoy doubts he is that kind of man. Hannah was a late arrival for him and his wife. He was often mistaken for her grandfather when he picked her up from school. He spent his younger years in the Merchant Navy before getting a job as a boilerman at a tyre factory near Stoke, where Hannah grew up. Good, solid family. Semi-detached house and two cats. Hannah’s room still looks just as she left it when she went off to university.
‘Your wife?’ asks McAvoy, tactfully. ‘Has she come up with you? Did you request the family liaison officer I recommended?’
Les shakes his head. ‘She’s home. A friend of ours is with her. She’s already shed most of her tears, like. We always knew she weren’t coming back. When you called last night . . . I don’t know . . . it was almost like relief. But it weren’t relief.’ Les grimaces, angry at himself for not being able to articulate it properly. ‘She were such a bloody sweetheart,’ he says, and his face tightens, as though bracing himself for a punch. His eyes dampen for a moment but by effort of will, tears do not fall. ‘She were never any bother to us. Such a good girl. I think I told her off no more than half a dozen times in her life and even then it weren’t for owt bad.’ He smiles at a sudden memory. ‘When she were seven they had one of those assemblies at school about feeding the starving in Africa. It really hit home with our Hannah. They had to bring in shoeboxes of stuff that could be sent over to these poor villagers who didn’t have much to their name. Do you know what Hannah sent them? My wife’s jewellery! She reckoned they could sell it and buy food. I only found out when the school phoned me and said they wanted to double-check that we had said it was okay. I went bloody spare at her but she was just upset that she wasn’t going to be allowed to help. How do you get cross at somebody like that? Honestly, she were pure gold.’
McAvoy enjoys the smile on Les’s face as he loses himself in the memory. He wants to put an arm on the older man’s shoulder but fears that any physical contact would shatter him.
‘You look like you sound,’ says Les, out of nowhere.
‘Yes?’
‘The wife said you had a voice for poetry, whatever that means. I thought you sounded like a football manager. Whatever. We’re grateful for you keeping us informed. All the calls. I’ve spoken to a few coppers in my time and they don’t all cover themselves in glory when they deal with people. It were good of you. You didn’t have to. So thanks.’
McAvoy wonders if he should say something. Decides not to. Watches as Les picks up the half-dozen hand-rolled cigarettes and tucks them into the leather wallet. He puts the pouch back in his trousers.
‘I’ll light up outside,’ he says, as if his earlier threat may have been playing on McAvoy’s mind. ‘I’m sure you’re doing something important, anyway. Thinking, or something. I just wanted to shake your hand. Don’t really know what to do now. You think that will change?’
McAvoy looks into Les’s eyes and sees Hannah. Sees the same blue irises he has stared into a thousand times. Wonders how it would look if he, the policeman, were the first to break down and sob.
‘There’s no advice I can offer you,’ he says, wishing there were. ‘Some people take comfort in justice. I can promise you, I will do everything in my power to make sure you get that.’
Les considers him. Nods. ‘I know you will, son. I could tell that from the first time I spoke to you. I can see it in your eyes now. I’m not angry yet. Is that strange? I did my anger when she vanished. Tied meself up in knots imagining what might have happened. It were hard when you told us she’d got herself all dolled up for some bloke. That were never her style. But they get older, don’t they? And she were such a romantic. Whoever took her, they picked a girl from the pages of a fairy tale. I can’t let myself imagine what she felt in those last moments. I can’t. What if she were looking for me, eh? Looking for her dad to come and save her?’
Les sniffs. Locks his jaw and grimaces, as if trying to suck the disloyal tears back into his eyes. ‘You think they’ll let me see her?’ he asks, wiping his nose with his hand.
McAvoy softens his face. Shakes his head. ‘You don’t want to remember her that way.’ Something passes between them. Les reads McAvoy’s meaning. Nods as he bites his lip.
McAvoy considers him for almost a full minute before speaking again. He has to know.
‘Did Hannah ever mention a man named Reuben Hollow?’ he asks.
Les appears to think about it. ‘Bloke on the telly? Just got released? No. Not that I can think of.’ His gaze hardens. ‘Why? He involved?’
McAvoy pushes on. ‘Her horse. Alfie. We think that’s what led her to the Great Givendale area the first time.’
Les nods. ‘She loved that bloody nag. Cost a fortune to stable but we’d never have sold him. It were her suggestion when she went off to university. Said he needed full-time love. She sold him to some lady she found on the internet. It broke her heart when she heard he’d died.’
McAvoy tries not to let his body language change. ‘You knew about Alfie’s death?’
‘Oh, aye. She rang the wife in tears. She were sick to her stomach. Course, she never said where it happened or anything. All we could do was comfort her and say the usual stuff about him being in a better place. Some bloke joy-riding, wasn’t it? Aye, well, the wife suggested she lay some flowers or something and Hannah liked that . . .’
He stops. Seems to recall something.
‘She met a bloke,’ he says quietly. ‘Rang the wife in a fit of giggles. Said she’d talked it through with some nice man. Sat in the church grounds and ha
d a natter. It made her feel better.’
McAvoy makes a conscious effort not to look agitated. ‘You never mentioned that before,’ he says, trying not to make it sound like a reprimand. ‘We asked about significant men in her life.’
‘That weren’t significant,’ says Les, a flash of annoyance in his voice. ‘How do we know what significant means? She phoned every day and there was always something to report. She just said she’d met a nice man who made her feel a bit better. The wife teased her a bit, but all in fun.’ He screws up his face as if trying to drag forth a memory. ‘The wife asked her if he was husband material. You know, was he a doctor or a lawyer or something? She laughed it off.’
McAvoy waits for more. Watches Les fight through imaginings and recollections.
‘Did she say what he did?’ asks McAvoy, trying damned hard not to put the word into Les’s head.
‘Sculptor,’ says Les, nodding. ‘Something that didn’t pay much. Said he were a nice man and he was a sculptor and he was proper upset to hear about that prick who got away with killing her horse.’
McAvoy closes his eyes. Reaches out and claps Les’s hand.
‘He put her in a cart of flowers outside my house,’ says McAvoy softly. ‘Laid her out like a princess. If you have to think of her dead, think of her like that. But please, Les, try and think of her alive. Alive and pretty and full of smiles.’
He pushes his chair back from the table and turns to nod his thanks to the cashier. Notices the price list stuck to the wall. Does some mental arithmetic and works out that she undercharged him. He puts a pound coin on the cash register and gives a weak smile in the face of her protests. Walks from the hospital with his shoulders stooped and an ache in his gut.
Outside, into the silence of a city shrouded in grey.
Chapter 24
‘You’re sure you won’t get in trouble, darling?’
McAvoy would like to turn his head so he can answer Roisin properly but the country road to Market Weighton is too windy for him to take his eyes off it. He just gives a tight-lipped smile. Keeps his eyes on the strip of blurred grey that cuts through the damp green fields and the hazy air. Tries to order his thoughts over the sound of tyres on tarmac, and his daughter’s pleasant babbling from the back seat.
‘I don’t really mind,’ he says. ‘Not this time.’
‘You’re turning into a maverick,’ teases Roisin, reaching across to stroke his face with the back of her soft, tanned hands.
‘Me? Yeah, I’m a regular rebel.’
‘I like it when you’re a bit of a baddy.’
‘Aye. I know.’
It’s mid-afternoon. The fog is less thick here. It seems to be reserving its intensity for Hull. Here, 15 miles north of the city boundary line, it manifests itself as a misty rain; the droplets too fine to fall as raindrops should. McAvoy doesn’t know whether to turn on the windscreen wipers or whether that will just make things worse. He tries anyway. Watches the blades smear dirt and flies and moisture across the glass of the sensible Volvo that he bought for its safety features, and has yet to persuade himself to like. He should be alone on this drive. Alone, or with another copper. Shouldn’t have brought his wife and child. He knows already what a defence barrister would make of his actions. But McAvoy’s thoughts are a tangle of guilt and rage. He suddenly finds his devotion to duty laughable. Finds his conscience a risible indulgence. He can barely bring himself to speak in case he finds himself shouting, can hardly hear what Roisin is saying above the sound of rubber on tarmac and the dull hum of Radio Humberside dribbling from the radio and bringing the local house prices down with each fresh bulletin.
‘I’ll be quiet,’ says Roisin with a sigh. She pouts, petulantly. Leans her head against the window. Stares out at the trees. ‘Dead rabbit,’ she says, pointing.
‘It was just sleeping,’ says McAvoy, driving around the sad little grey carcass and trying to be himself.
‘In the middle of the road? Dangerous.’
‘He’s a dangerous rabbit. Proper hard. Kicked the shit out of a badger in his younger days.’
Roisin giggles. Puts her hand on her husband’s as it vibrates on the gear stick. ‘Do I have to stay in the car? I could help. You can be good cop and I can be fecking horrible cop.’
McAvoy strokes her fingers with his thumb. Looks down at the mobile phone in his lap. The sat-nav function says he’s nearly there.
‘You can’t get out of the car, Roisin. It wouldn’t look right. You just keep your head down.’
Roisin pouts again. ‘You’re no fun.’
She had called him as he was leaving the hospital. Told him he sounded too sad to be on his own. Told him she couldn’t stand looking out of the window at the coppers and reporters, gawpers and wankers who have taken up residence on the grass outside their home. She met him by the ice-cream van at Hessle Foreshore, dressed in a red leather jacket and painted-on jeans; holding Lilah’s hand and looking forward to a drive in the country with Daddy.
McAvoy looks at the phone again. Still nothing from Tremberg. Nothing from Pharaoh, either. His head hurts from everything he’s trying to keep inside it. He had needed Roisin as if she were medicine. Picked her up from home and decided that he would be a better policeman if she were by his side. She’d held him close when she got in the car. Told him that she’d had a tricky morning but she’d left Trish a message and that everything would be fine now she had got things off her chest. He hadn’t pushed too hard, though he had felt jittery at the thought of Roisin and Pharaoh having conversations he was not there to referee. Besides, his head had been too full of Pharaoh and the way she spoke to him to focus on his wife’s peculiar behaviour. His cheeks burn at the injustice of it. He knows Pharaoh’s been concealing something from him. He would not object to secrecy from any other senior officer but he thought he had proven himself to her. Thought they were more than boss and minion. He will never be less than grateful for all she has done for him but cannot help but feel betrayed. Somehow, Hollow has got a hold on her. She is not behaving like she should. He knows that the drink is starting to take its toll but thought the woman he knew was still in control. He cannot help but wonder whether Hollow has seduced her. He hates the thought. Gags on it. Shakes his brain as it offers up a more distressing question: why hasn’t he told her about Hollow’s connection to Hannah? Why does he feel so compelled to prove his theory to himself before proving it to her?
‘There might be more to it than you know,’ says Roisin, tactfully. She would love to criticise Pharaoh just for the sheer fun of getting one over on her, but in truth, she knows her to be a good copper and an even better person. ‘She’s a superintendent, Aector. She had a good career even before you came along. She wouldn’t have got there by allowing herself to be fooled by every charmer.’
McAvoy shakes his head. ‘We had good evidence. She blocked us. Made it clear he was off limits.’
‘He’s been in all the papers,’ says Roisin. ‘He’s made her life difficult. She knows about this stuff. Maybe she’s right when she says you have to play it carefully.’
McAvoy snaps his head to the left. Temper flickers in his eyes.
‘What is it about him? He’s got you all under his spell.’
Roisin looks hurt and McAvoy immediately regrets his words. He tries to say sorry but the word turns to ash upon his tongue.
‘I’m not under his spell,’ says Roisin quietly. ‘I didn’t even like him. He had something missing in his eyes.’
‘I don’t even know why he was there,’ says McAvoy, slowing down as the sat-nav tells him his destination is on the right. ‘He shouldn’t even know where she lives, but that’s today’s world for you – two clicks on a mouse and you know everything about everybody.’
Roisin seems about to speak. Seems about to confess something she has withheld. But McAvoy is turning the car into a gap in the line of trees, pulling into a large parking area where three cars are parked in a loose fan-tail. The doors are open and music is pumping
out of the central vehicle, a souped-up Subaru with an exhaust pipe the width of a fire hydrant. The other two vehicles are sporty hatchbacks. This seems to be a place where the Volvo will not blend in.
‘Which one is he?’ asks Roisin, nodding at the youths who are lounging, languidly, on the bonnets of the vehicles.
‘Curly hair. Afro-style, but mucky blond. Probably wearing a tracksuit.’ McAvoy is reading from his notes. For all of his personal involvement in the hunt for Hannah Kelly, he has not yet had the pleasure of meeting David Hogg. He phoned the local police sergeant before setting off. Found out where Hogg was likely to be at this time of day. The sergeant had been a solid, dependable character who had been absolutely honest with McAvoy. ‘Little shit,’ he’d said. ‘Better off in the ground. If you get the chance, run over his fucking head.’
McAvoy parks the Volvo. Turns to shush Lilah, who has started whimpering at the sound of house music.
‘Wankers,’ says Roisin, shaking her head. ‘It’s such a lovely place. Make them turn it down.’
McAvoy looks around him, peering through the car windows. Green hills roll gently upwards both before him and behind. Behind the grey, a cold blue light strives to be seen. An unfinished triangle of geese arrows artfully across the distant cloud.
He looks at the youths that loiter around the vehicles. Can see four lads and a couple of young girls.
Drops his eyes.
Car tyres have pulped leaves and blossom into the gravel.
‘You will stay put, yes? It won’t take long. I just need to try.’
Roisin grins. ‘Leave me your phone. I’ll play Angry Birds.’
McAvoy climbs from the car. He makes sure to walk with a straight back. Makes sure they can see just how damn big he is. Covers the distance in half a dozen strides. Gives a jerk of his head; a northerner’s hello.