Dark Winter (9781101599891)

by Mark, David

  Spink pauses. Waves a hand, tiredly.

  “McAvoy, son, it’s not like that. It should be, yeah. By Christ it would be nice if the whole world felt your outrage. If people couldn’t eat or sleep or function until the balance had been redressed and the evil expunged by some act of good, or decency, or justice, or whatever you want to call it. But they don’t. They read about something horrible and they say it’s awful and they shake their heads and say the world’s going to the dogs and then they put the telly on and watch Coronation Street. Or they go in the garden for a game of football with the kids. Or they head down the pub and have a few jars. And I know that it makes you sick, son. I know that you see people going about their daily business and it makes you angry and nauseous and empty inside that people are capable of such callousness and heartlessness when they should be focusing on the dead, but if you spend your life waiting for things to change, you’re going to die a disappointed man.”

  Spink stops. Gives his head a little shake. Turns away.

  McAvoy sits in silence. He tugs at the little patch of hair beneath his lower lip. Pulls it until it begins to come out. There’s an anger in him. An indignation at being read, at being analyzed, at being judged by a man he barely knows and who has the temerity to call him “son.”

  McAvoy opens his mouth and shuts it again. He wipes a hand across his face.

  “Colin Ray’s got evidence, son. It might not match what’s in your gut and it might just hurt like hell, but unless you’ve got any of that big bag of natural justice you want to sprinkle, then Russ Chandler’s the man that can be tried, and maybe even convicted of murder.”

  McAvoy glares at him. “Do you think he did it?”

  After a moment of trying to stare him out, Spink looks away. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  McAvoy spits again.

  He stands up. Takes a gulp of cold, fresh air.

  Towers over the other man.

  “It matters what I think.”

  He says it through gritted teeth, but finds himself twitching into a smile, as the elation of realization of acceptance seems to carbonate his blood, to fill his skull with endorphins and energy.

  “It fucking matters.”

  There’s an art to walking in snow. Novices grip too hard with their feet, arching their soles, digging in with their toes, and are on their knees rubbing cramped-up calves within a hundred paces. Others are too cautious, taking large strides, stepping onto patches of what seems like firm ground. They slip on iced concrete. Tumble, holding bruised shins—ankles twisting inside unsuitable shoes.

  McAvoy walks as he was taught. Head down. Watching the ground for changes in the texture of the snow. Hands at his sides, ready to shoot out and break his fall.

  He was born into a landscape harsher than this mosaic of tended grass and firm pavements, overlaid with six inches of white. He grew up on terrain scarred with crevices, with cracks, with loose shingle and shale, all concealed for eight months of the year by the relentless snowfall.

  He sometimes remembers the noise the sheep made when they stumbled and snapped a leg. Remembers the silence, too, in the moments after he ended their suffering. Slit their throats with a pocket knife. Pinched their mouths and nostrils closed with a gloved hand.

  Remembers the artfulness with which his father could snap a neck. His acceptance of the necessity of his actions, laced with a resolute determination to take no pleasure in them.

  Remembers, too, the damp eyes his father had turned upon him. The tenderness with which he had reached down and stroked the wool. The way he raised his hand to his nose and breathed in the damp, musky scent of a ewe he had reared from birth, and whose neck he had snapped to end her pain.

  The man at Holy Trinity Church had that same look in his damp blue eyes. So did the man who carved his name in Angie Martindale. Who sat, crying, for an age before embarking on his work.

  Energized, blood pumping, thoughts racing in his mind, McAvoy considers a killer.

  “Is that what you’re doing? Putting them out of their misery? Are you ending their suffering? Are you asking me to end yours?”

  McAvoy stops. Lost in his thoughts, he has taken the wrong path from the park.

  His phone begins to ring. Number withheld.

  “Aector McAvoy,” he says.

  “Sergeant? Hi, this is Jonathan Feasby. I got a message to call . . .”

  McAvoy wracks his brains. Puts the events of the past twenty-four hours into some sense of order. Feasby. The reporter from the Independent. The guy he’d e-mailed about the aid worker in Iraq.

  “Mr. Feasby, yes. Thanks for getting back in touch.”

  “No problem, no problem.” His voice is breezy. Southern-sounding. Cheerful, considering the weather and the hour.

  “Mr. Feasby, I’m involved in the investigation into Daphne Cotton’s murder, and I believe you may have some information that would be relevant to the inquiry.”

  McAvoy listens as the reporter gives a whistle of surprise. “Me? Well, yeah, if I can. Hull, though, isn’t it? I’ve never even been to the North East.”

  “Hull isn’t in the North East, sir. It’s in the East Riding of Yorkshire.”

  “Right, right.”

  “Are you aware of the case I’m referring to?”

  “Not her name, no. But I just Googled ‘Hull’ and ‘murder’ and ‘McAvoy’ and got myself about a billion hits. Process of elimination, I’m assuming it’s the current one. Poor girl in the church, yes? Terrible.”

  McAvoy nods, even though nobody can see.

  “Mr. Feasby, I want to talk to you about an article you wrote some time ago. It concerned an Anne Montrose. She was injured in an incident in Northern Iraq. I understand you were the freelance writer hired by the Independent to cover the incident . . .”

  There is silence at the other end of the line. Pressing his ear to the phone, McAvoy fancies he can hear the sound of mental gears clashing.

  “Mr. Feasby?”

  “Erm. I’m not sure I remember the case,” says Feasby. He’s lying.

  “Sir, I have a decent relationship with the local press, and my colleagues make fun of me for my belief in human nature. If I talk to you off the record, will it stay that way?”

  “I’m one of the last reporters who believes in such a concept.”

  “Well, I’m one of the last men in the world who believes that a promise means something, and I promise you I won’t be pleased if the contents of this conversation appear in print.”

  “I understand. How can I help you?”

  “I’m working on a theory that perhaps the man who killed Daphne Cotton may be targeting other people who have survived near-death experiences. That perhaps he or she is finishing off something that they view as an unacceptable escape from the Reaper’s scythe. I am trying to work out who might be next on their list, if such a list exists. Anne Montrose fits the criterion. She was a survivor in an incident in which everybody else involved died. I want to know what happened to her after the story you wrote. I want to know that she’s safe.”

  There is silence at the other end of the phone. McAvoy listens out for scribbling.

  “Mr. Feasby?”

  “This is two blokes chatting, yes? I haven’t been read any rights.” Feasby’s voice has lost its lightness. He sounds pensive. Almost afraid. “I’m not intending to incriminate myself or anybody else here . . .”

  “I understand.”

  The reporter lets out a whistled breath. “Look, it probably doesn’t mean much to you, but when I say that I’ve never done this before . . .”

  “I believe you.”

  McAvoy isn’t sure whether he does or he doesn’t, but knows how to sound sincere.

  “Well, the only time I’ve ever taken money not to publish a story was when I tried
to follow up on Anne Montrose. I had the opportunity to write one more bloody follow-up on one more bloody victim of one more bloody day of that bloody war. And I had the chance to write nothing. To call in a favor with my news desk and bury the whole thing . . .”

  “How? Why?”

  “I had the chance of a way out.”

  McAvoy pauses. He tries to clear his head.

  “After I wrote the story about the explosion, about what happened to her, a man came to see me,” he says, and his voice sounds far away.

  “Go on.”

  “He was the boss of a company that was making money in the cleanup operation. Rebuilding communities. Building schools and hospitals. And he said that if I did him a favor, he’d do me one in return.”

  “And the favor?”

  “Not another word on Anne. The newspaper would get full exclusives on everything that his company did from this point onward . . .”

  “And you?”

  Feasby sighs. “An honorary position on the board of his company.”

  “You took it?”

  “On paper I was a marketing consultant, helping his firm establish its media relations strategy . . .”

  “And in reality?”

  “I never wrote a word. Drew a salary for a few months, then went back to what I was good at.”

  “You weren’t curious?”

  McAvoy imagines Feasby spreading his palms wide. “I’m a reporter.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t think I should really be telling you any more until I’ve had a good hard think about what you really need to know.”

  McAvoy pauses. He wonders if the reporter is fishing. Whether he is expecting the promise of an exclusive in exchange for his information.

  His phone beeps in his ear. More from impulse than any conscious desire, he switches lines and answers.

  “Mr. McAvoy? This is Shona Fox from Hull Royal Infirmary. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. It’s about your wife. I’m afraid there have been complications . . .”

  And nothing else matters anymore.

  21.

  McAvoy didn’t sleep for the first twenty-seven hours. Didn’t eat. Managed two sips of water from a cloudy plastic beaker, then coughed them back up onto his stinking rugby shirt, mucus trailing from his eyes and nose.

  Outside, Hull froze.

  The excitement of a possible white Christmas gave way to fear at the harshness and severity of the conditions. The snow landed on hard ground. Froze. Fell again. Froze. The sky was a gray pencil sketch. Clouds broiled, rolled, twisted, curdled—like snakes moving inside a black bag.

  The city stopped.

  Later, McAvoy would tell his daughter that it was she who finally broke the winter’s spell. That it was only when she opened her eyes that the clouds parted and the snow ceased its frenzied dance. That it was she who cost Hull its first white Christmas in a generation. She who brought out the sun. It would be a lie. But it would be a lie that made his daughter smile. A lie that allowed him to remember the first few days of her life with something other than a dull throb of agony.

  He hears movement behind him.

  Turns.

  “Get back in that bed . . .” he begins.

  “Well, I’m still a bit tender, but if you want me that badly . . .” says Roisin, her face pale, her eyes dark. She’s wearing a baggy yellow nightie and has a pink band holding her unwashed, greasy hair back from her face. She seems shapeless, somehow. He has grown so used to the bulge of her stomach pressing at her clothes.

  “Roisin.”

  “I’m bored, Aector. I need some kissing.”

  He sighs. Rolls his eyes indulgently.

  “Come here,” he says.

  Unsteadily, she crosses to where her husband sits, his massive bulk crammed into a wooden, high-backed orange chair. He’s facing the window, but the curtains, with their nauseating greens and browns, are closed. She winces as she slides herself onto his knee, then drops her head to press her own clammy forehead into the mess of untended ginger curls upon his crown.

  “You smell,” she says, and there’s a muffled smile to her voice.

  McAvoy, for the first time in days, snorts a laugh. “You’re not exactly a bowl of potpourri yourself.”

  She raises her head. He feels her small, moist hand upon his cheek, turning his face upward, angling him into her gaze.

  For a moment they simply stare, a thousand conversations rendered pointless by the ferocity and tenderness of their connection.

  “I was so scared,” she says, and although they are all but alone, she whispers this admission, as if afraid that it will be used against her.

  “Me, too,” says McAvoy, and his truth seems to make her stronger. She leans down and kisses him. They kiss for an age. Break away only to smile at each other, to grin at the silliness of it all. To share a gleeful, knowing little glance, in the direction of the foot of the bed.

  Lilah Roisin McAvoy was born on December 15 at 6:03 a.m.

  Roisin had gone into labor almost as soon as McAvoy left the house, angrily reacting to Tom Spink’s text, thundering through the blizzard in the minivan with its ready-packed maternity bag in the boot.

  She had tried to call him. Willed him to answer his telephone. Focused all her energies on reaching out through the cold miles between them. To come home. To help her.

  Eventually, her cries woke Fin. It was he who persuaded her to ring 999. He who said that sometimes Daddy had to work and couldn’t be there when other people wanted it. He who held her hand in the ambulance as the paramedics talked behind their hands about the volume of bleeding, the ice and snow on the roads, their belief that they should get time and a half for working nights in these conditions.

  Roisin had tried to hold on. Tried to hold the baby in until the nurses reached her husband. But Lilah wanted out. Slithered out amid a gory rainbow of blood and mucus and was scooped up by a bald, bespectacled Nigerian doctor, who carried her away to a waiting, scrubbed table, and performed complicated maneuvers upon her tiny frame.

  To Roisin, it seemed as if he were trying to breathe life into a dead bird.

  She had turned away. Closed her eyes. Waited to be told the worst.

  And then she heard the cry.

  Lilah was four hours old, pink and wrinkled, with a breathing tube taped to the side of her face and oversized socks and mittens on her hands, before her father pressed his red, sweaty, tear-streaked face up against the plastic incubator and made the first of the thousand apologies he would stutter throughout the first few hours of her life.

  When he took her from the nurse, she fitted perfectly in the palm of his hand.

  Fin laughed at that. Asked if he had ever been that small. McAvoy told him no. That his sister had been so desperate to see him, she had come into the world early. That he was a big brother now, and it was his job to protect her.

  Fin nodded solemnly. Gave her a wet, inelegant kiss upon the head. And then returned to the room full of grubby donated toys, where he had been playing with a three-wheeled fire truck at the exact moment his sister began her wailing.

  “She still sleeping?” asks Roisin.

  “Out like a light. Just like her mum.”

  “We’ve had a busy couple of days.”

  “Yes.”

  She tenses, as if preparing to vacate her husband’s knee, and then relaxes, as she acquiesces to his firm hands and sinks back into his embrace.

  “Let her sleep.”

  “We nearly lost her, Aector. If she’d died . . . if she hadn’t woken up . . .”

  He feels her begin to shiver, and holds her tighter, shushing her sobs.

  After a time, he again asks her the question he had blurted out through bubbles of snot when he raced into her room three da
ys ago, snow billowing from his coat, a security guard dragging at either arm, almost waterskiing behind him as he barreled along the polished green linoleum.

  “Will you ever forgive me?”

  She answers him now, as she had then, with a perfect white smile. And for a precious moment, McAvoy feels so happy, so perfect, so loved and rewarded, that it crosses his mind to stop his own heart. To die happy.

  This time, when she moves, McAvoy lets her. She stands. Winces again. Reaches out and pulls open the curtains. “Bloody hell.”

  They are four stories up, enjoying one of the few private rooms on the maternity unit of Hull Royal Infirmary. The vantage point affords them a view of a city rendered almost faceless. Its landmarks, its idiosyncrasies, its character, all mute and anonymous beneath a thick covering of white. The streets are largely deserted. Roisin cranes her neck. Looks down at the car park. It is virtually empty. Half a dozen large 4x4s are parked here and there across the wide open space, like islands on a vast ice rink. The hospital is down to a skeleton staff. Those who were at work when the snow began to fall have largely stayed here. Those who were at home and who have a car capable of staying right-side-up have made it in, but the conversations on the eerily quiet wards and corridors revolve around how they will get home again, whether the car will even start when they ease themselves back behind the wheel.

  “We’re best off in here,” says McAvoy, pulling himself out of the chair.

  McAvoy leans past her and looks out of the window. Gives a wry smile as he sees the small huddle of frail old men and fat middle-aged women, coats over their pajamas, puffing desperately on cigarettes at the entrance to the car park, sucking the smoke into their lungs like diabetics gorging on insulin.

  McAvoy looks down at the floor. He becomes suddenly aware of the mobile phone in his pocket. Feels it giving off waves of energy. Feels his fingers begin to twitch as he becomes overwhelmed by a need to switch it on. To plug himself back in. To find out what he’s missed these past three days of pain and prayer.