The Dark Winter

by David Mark

  Takes another drink, then makes a mental note to slow down. She doesn’t know where her next drink is coming from. Doesn’t know about her next meal, either, but doesn’t care quite so much.

  ‘You all right then, Angie love?’ asks Bob as Dean returns to the beer fridges and begins noisily stocking them with bottles of Carlsberg.

  ‘Bearing up, sweetheart. Bearing up.’

  ‘You’re an early bird today.’

  ‘Had some shopping to do. Thought I’d treat myself.’

  ‘You deserve it, love. Nice to see you.’

  She looks at her latest benefactor. He’s in his late forties and not much taller than her. He’s wearing knock-off designer jeans, scuffed at the knees, and mucky white trainers, with a blue fleece under a faded brown suede jacket that has distinct charity shop credentials. He’s not a bad-looking man. Shaggable, if that’s what it takes. She tends to take a pragmatist’s view of her fleeting unions. Decides on a whim whether to endure a bit of sweat and sticky knickers in the name of a few more pints.

  ‘You had your hair done, Ange?’

  ‘No, love. Got caught in the snow. Just dried curly.’

  ‘It’s cute. Ringlets, like. Very angelic.’

  ‘That’s me, Bob. Little angel.’

  They smile and chink glasses, and she takes another gulp, suddenly confident another drink will be forthcoming. Once, she would have recoiled at the thought of comparing herself to one of the Lord’s chosen seraphim, but when God abandoned her, she let Him leave, and the cross she wears around her neck is the only reminder of the fact she was once a church-going Christian who prayed only for safety and sufficiency, and offered her soul in return.

  She swallows the liquor.

  She’s made something of an art form out of this. There are half a dozen pubs on her daily circuit, and she can usually wangle two or three drinks in each one. She always buys her first drink in each, but rarely has to dig into her purse for the ones that follow. If she’d ever taken up the offer of the posttraumatic stress counselling, she might have analysed her need to spend so much of her time in pubs, in an environment that almost claimed her life. But Angie doesn’t have time for introspection. She found out what was inside her when the man with the knife began his work. And she’d seen nothing she wanted to see again.

  ‘Looking dapper yourself, Bob,’ she says, placing a hand on the back of his. ‘Pleased you came in. Was just me and the old boys for the past hour.’

  Bob gives her a grin. ‘I’m meeting Ken in the Bear, if you want to join us. He’s all right, is Ken.’

  Angie gives him a ‘maybe’ kind of grin, but she’s pretty sure she’ll pass. Although there’s a small chance Bob and Ken will compete for who can be more chivalrous when it comes to keeping her glass full, there’s a better chance that the crowd of old boys who buy her drinks in the Bear will take exception at seeing her with the lads best known for drinking in Wilson’s, and keep their wallets closed next time she puts a hand on their thigh and tells them they’re looking smart.

  The door bangs again and Angie looks round. She and Bob are the only customers left. She doesn’t remember seeing any of the old boys go and heard no goodbyes, but her thinking is fuzzy enough at the edges that, if asked, she couldn’t swear how many punters there were when she came in. She remembers a big boy, reading a newspaper, and perhaps old Arthur, with his thick glasses and polyester trousers, but was that today or yesterday? She doesn’t even have time to begin wondering whether it matters before she’s decided that it doesn’t.

  ‘Did you hear about John? Silly bastard.’

  ‘No, love. Go on. I love a story.’

  She sits and listens to Bob as he begins to tell her about what John did in the Red Lion on Saturday night, and doesn’t even have to make a show of finishing her drink to earn herself another one. Halfway down it, she begins to feel the urge for a smoke, but fancies she can keep it at bay. In the next pub on her circuit, she’ll head straight to the beer garden and make a show of looking in her handbag for her cigarettes until one of the smokers takes pity on her and offers a fag. Then she can save her own for this evening. Smoke them in front of the telly while drinking supermarket vodka and using up her free minutes texting saucy messages to the landlord of the White Hart, who can’t seem to get through a late shift without baring his soul about how he and his wife are only together for the kids, and that it’s a woman like her, a real woman, who should be in his bed.

  She doesn’t know what he sees in her. What any of them see in her. At forty-three years old, she’s not exactly pin-up material, though she does wear her purple leggings, denim skirt and loose-fitting jumper from the sale rail at Asda with a certain sassiness that, when added to the red lipstick, dark hair and large, dangly earrings, make her oddly easy on the eyes. She’s tactile, too. Flirty and friendly. A good listener, apparently, though she rarely says anything other than ‘you deserve better’ or ‘she doesn’t know she’s born’ when roped into conversations about the failings of her gentlemen’s other halves.

  It wasn’t always like this, of course. Angie Martindale was a miracle, once. The doctors said so. Police. Press, too, even though she was never named in any of the reports. She was the one who got away. The survivor. The one he couldn’t kill. She hasn’t reached the stage in her alcoholism where she will tell the story in exchange for drink but there are times, when her glass is empty and nobody is giving her the eye, that she feels like unfolding one of the newspaper clippings she keeps in her handbag and telling Grimsby’s hardcore drinkers that in a pub like this, a decade and a half ago, she was brutalised and raped by a man whom a judge called ‘evil’ and whose dead blue eyes still stare through her on the nights she falls asleep too sober.

  Her telephone vibrates in the pocket of her denim skirt. She apologises to Bob for the interruption and pointedly silences the phone.

  ‘You could have taken it,’ says Bob, trying to hide his big silly grin when he realises she’s rejected the call, just so she can continue to chat.

  ‘I’m talking to you, Bob,’ she says, softening her body language slightly. She’s used this trick plenty of times before. Made her gentlemen feel special, just by setting her alarm for half-hour intervals and then hanging up on whosoever had the temerity to disturb her while engrossed in conversation with the most fascinating man in the world.

  She does deliver, of course. She can’t get by on suggestiveness alone. On occasion, when she thinks they’ve earned it or she’s simply too bloody miserable to face going home alone, she’s invited back the occasional gentleman. Let him slobber his way on top of her and into her. Endured a few minutes of uncomfortable weight and awkward pounding, in a way that is at once her own punishment and her beau’s reward. It doesn’t happen as often, these days. She’s become less happy with the notion of people seeing her own private space. Perhaps it is since she let the flat go to seed. The increase in her drinking has coincided with a marked downturn in the presentability of her home, though halfway up a multi-storey block, it was never palatial.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to tag along?’

  ‘Next time. You’ve got my number. Text me later and I’ll see what I’m up to.’

  He gives another big grin. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘I’ll probably just be at home, all by my lonesome.’

  ‘Well we can’t have that. Can we?’

  ‘No, love.’

  He kisses her cheek before he leaves. She feels his rough stubble against her skin and the tickle of his moustache against her eyelashes. Wonders if he’ll want to taste her down below, like these bloody modern men always seem to. Whether his moustache will tickle her thighs. Whether he’ll want the light on. Whether he’ll mention the scars.

  Slowly, carefully, she steps down from the bar stool. Leans over and gathers up her shopping bags. Some cheap cooked meat from the butchers. Some liver. Six white rolls. Bottle of vodka. Twenty Richmond Superkings.

  ‘You off, Angie? Place will be dead wi
thout you.’

  Dean has finished loading the bottle fridge and is standing behind the beer pumps, watching the door. It’s been a quiet lunchtime, and he doesn’t see business picking up again until tea. He gets a set wage, so doesn’t wish too fervently for a sudden rush, but his shift passes quicker when he’s busy and the owner gives him disapproving looks when the weekly takings aren’t what he has expected. There are even fewer excuses at Christmas, when, according to Wilson, people have got no excuse not to be pissed.

  ‘Think I’ll go and put my feet up,’ she says, smiling and feeling pleasantly unsteady on her feet. ‘Taped a Miss Marple last night. Might give my brain a workout.’

  ‘You enjoy yourself, love. You deserve it.’

  She gives him a different kind of smile from the one she reserves for her gentlemen. It’s genuine. The sort of smile she used to display without thinking. The fleeting, happy grin she once flashed at the man who carved his initials on her vagina before sticking a twelve-inch bread knife through her ribs and fucking her while she lay bleeding on the tiled floor of a pub toilet.

  ‘Probably be in tomorrow,’ she says. ‘You working?’

  ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  As she heads for the door a cold draught of air works its way up her body and concentrates itself on her bladder. She looks back at Dean and giggles. ‘Call of nature, I think. First of the day.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know where you keep it,’ he says good-naturedly. ‘Must be a camel somewhere in your family.’

  ‘Ooh, you charmer,’ says Angie, putting her shopping bag on top of the nearest table and heading for the toilet.

  ‘I meant it as a compliment,’ shouts Dean as she pushes open the door, but she’s already out of range, and he pulls a face as he realises he might have upset her. Fears he’s put his foot in it and that it may cost him a drink or two to make amends. He decides to get it over with and stoops to grab an empty glass.

  He’s halfway to the floor when the blow comes.

  There is an instant of crushing, mind-numbing pain to the back of his neck, and then he is flat on his face; a crumpled heap of unconsciousness lying on his belly by the beer fridges, one unmoving hand comically positioned inside a half-full box of salt and vinegar crisps.

  Dean doesn’t hear the man stepping over his body and walking over to the front door.

  Doesn’t hear the soft ‘snick’ as the bolt is slid home or the soft sound of black boots on wooden floor as they cross the room.

  Doesn’t hear the door to the toilets creak open, the sound of a blade being drawn slowly from inside a leather sleeve.

  Doesn’t hear the screaming begin …

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘You’re sure?’ bellows McAvoy, one finger wedged in his ear to blot out the squeal of the engine and the hum of the tyres on the concrete road. ‘Well how hard did he knock?’

  Tremberg changes down to fourth gear, trying to ease an extra 5mph from the one-litre engine. She finds what she’s looking for, and despite the protestations of the smoking metal beneath the bonnet, pushes the accelerator almost through the floor.

  ‘No … I can’t say for certain, but there’s a strong chance …’

  Tremberg looks across from the driver’s seat at McAvoy.

  She finds herself examining the back of his hand. It’s all she can see of him, gripping the mobile phone which he is pressing too hard to the side of his skull. The knuckles look as though they’ve been broken several times. They seem to represent the sum total of what she knows about him. That he has inflicted harm, and taken it. That the warm, protective palm and fingers in which she pictures him cradling his handsome son and beautiful wife can be turned over and balled, to create a fist capable of extraordinary, self-destructive damage.

  ‘Kick the door in,’ he’s yelling. Then: ‘I don’t care. Trust me.’

  Why should they? she thinks. They don’t know you. I barely knew you until this morning. I barely know you now.

  McAvoy slams the phone down. ‘No answer at her flat,’ he says, looking up at her from under a cowlick of damp, ginger hair, with eyes that are veined red and shining. ‘They’ve tried the neighbours and no answer. Won’t kick the door in without permission …’

  He tails off. To Tremberg, it looks as though he is fighting with himself. Trying not to acknowledge that, throughout his career, he, too, has done things the right way. Waited for the order. Done as he was asked.

  ‘So, where?’ she asks, her eyes back on the road.

  McAvoy says nothing. He appears to be biting the skin on his wrist, gnawing distractedly at it like a dog with a bone.

  It’s getting dark beyond the glass. There are flakes of snow in the air.

  She asks again: ‘Where first?’

  They are approaching the industrial estate that marks the Grimsby boundary. The area smells of fish and industry, and the road beneath the tyres, with its concrete surface, is almost soporific in its brain-rattling vibration.

  McAvoy lowers his arm back to his lap. Appears to make a decision.

  ‘The uniformed officer says one of the neighbours reckons she’s usually down Freeman Street from lunchtime. One of the pubs. Couldn’t say which …’

  ‘Freemo?’

  ‘If that’s what you call it. This is your part of the world, not mine.’

  Somehow, Tremberg manages to coax another 10mph out of her hatchback, taking the needle to eighty as she screeches around the first roundabout on two wheels and roars up the flyover past the docks. She knows this area. Was a beat constable here.

  ‘What do we know about her?’ she yells, cruising past the fish-processing plant with her right foot hard to the floor. ‘What does she drink?’

  McAvoy looks at her as if she’s insane, then gives a flustered shrug and picks up his notepad from his lap. He looks at the unfinished sentences and cryptic keywords he scrawled in shorthand during his hasty chat with the desk sergeant at Grimsby Central, as well as the vague details that Sergeant Linus found on the database and telephoned across within ten minutes of Tremberg and McAvoy running for the car park and spinning the wheel hard in the direction of the bridge.

  ‘She’s on benefits,’ he reads out. ‘Eligible after the attack. Admitted to Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital for a drunk and disorderly incident outside the Fathom Five …’

  ‘Fathom Five? Closed down last year.’

  ‘There’s nothing else here!’ shouts McAvoy, re-reading his notes in the hope that he’ll see something new. A clue. An indication of what to bloody do next.

  Tremberg bites her lip, swinging the car hard to the right at the latest in a seemingly endless chain of roundabouts that leads into the town centre. ‘Call Sharon at the Bear,’ she says triumphantly. ‘If Angela drinks down Freemo, she’ll know her.’

  Grateful for something to do, McAvoy dials the first of the directory inquiries numbers that he can remember. Listens for what seems like an age as the Asian voice at the other end of the line reads off the welcome script. ‘The Bear,’ he yells. ‘Freeman Street. Grimsby.’

  Tremberg winces as she hears him repeat it.

  ‘No,’ he’s bellowing. ‘Just put me through. Put me through.’

  A moment later he gives her a nod. It’s ringing.

  ‘Hello? Is that the landlady? Ms …? Sharon? I’m ringing from Humberside Police. I urgently need to contact a lady who might be one of your regulars. Angela Martindale …’

  Tremberg takes her eyes off the road for a full ten seconds, watching McAvoy’s face drift through different stages of anger and frustration. She can imagine what the woman at the other end of the line is saying. Knows full well that she thinks she’s doing Angie a good turn. That she’s sticking by her regulars. Telling the Old Bill where to get off.

  Without thinking, she reaches across and takes the phone from her sergeant. ‘Sharon,’ she barks into the receiver. ‘This is Helen Tremberg. I arrested Barry the Bailiff when he cracked Johnno with his car-lock. Remember? Right, we need t
o find Angie Martindale now. I swear to God, if you find out we’ve nicked her for anything on the back of what you’ve told us, I’ll pay for your beer order from my own pocket for the next twelve months. Right.’ She nods. ‘Good, love. Good.’

  She hands the phone back to McAvoy. ‘One of her regulars said he was nattering with her in Wilson’s an hour or so back. Top of Freeman Street. Serves Bass.’

  ‘Does she have a means of contacting—’

  ‘Freemo,’ says Tremberg, as she turns sharply right past the Grimsby Telegraph building and onto a rundown shopping street strung with dismally outdated Christmas lights. ‘The place where dreams are made.’

  In a blossoming darkness punctuated by neon signs and winking headlights, the boarded-up shop fronts and graffiti-covered corrugated shutters strike McAvoy as something transplanted from the Eastern bloc. He is used to this misery in Hull. This is a new town. A new imagining of recession and poverty, of apathy and pained acceptance. It hurts him to his heart.

  ‘Top of the street,’ says Tremberg again.

  They see the swinging signs and ruined facades of three different pubs on their right as they pass the yawning entrance to the fish market. McAvoy tastes the air, expecting cod, haddock, perhaps turbot. Finds nothing. Not the salt of the sea. He can smell nothing but chips and petrol fumes. See nothing but snow and darkness, streetlights and shadowy shop doorways.

  ‘That’s Sharon’s place,’ says Tremberg as they pass a bar with a whitewashed front and black-painted double doors, inside which huddle half a dozen smokers, stamping feet, hand-rolling cigarettes, watching the traffic and spitting as far as the kerb.

  ‘Lights are on,’ says Tremberg, motioning ahead at a building on their right, sandwiched between a charity shop and a bakery. ‘Good sign.’

  She slows the car and pulls into a parking bay outside the bar. Closes her eyes for a second before killing the engine. Looks up and slowly turns her head. McAvoy is staring over her shoulder at the closed front door.