by David Mark
I flip the wheel on the Zippo and there is an explosion of light and power as my world is turned red, orange and vermillion.
It takes me a moment to realise that the blaze of light was accompanied by sound, and came not from my hand. I hold the lighter aloft, my movements slow and sluggish, as though wading through syrup. Everything has slowed down, become heavy, drugged.
Inexorably, as though the thought is carrying a burden, I realise I am not alone.
There are lumps in the darkness, lumps of flesh and bone.
The shapes become figures, human figures. They are real. More tangible and touchable than my visions.
And like a face forming in flame, one of the lumps becomes a man. His arm is outstretched, a shadow, a blot of richer darkness against the black. He is holding something in his hand. The other shape is shorter, lower down. A few feet away from where I stand, open mouthed.
He is sagging slowly, falling like a building, collapsing in on himself. I expect him to shatter on impact as he hits the forest floor.
Then the standing man is turning, looking at me, as I hold my tiny flame. His arm drops and I hear an intake of breath, and a curse of exclamation as the flame is extinguished. There is another explosion of light and sound and something whistles past my cheek. I jerk my face away but there is a heat that rocks me and, in an instant of adrenaline, wakes my will to live.
My senses are suddenly alive as the tumblers of understanding start to fall into place and I realise that I am being shot at, alone in the dark; that a stranger is about to rob me of my grand gesture, and end my life in a way I have not condoned.
I am suddenly very much alive. Alive and angry.
I have fantasised about my death for so long that my life has become precious to me, the one thing I control and own, and I will not have it defiled by another.
Instinct and fury take me over and I am suddenly charging forward, lunging at the spot of darkness where I last saw the figure. I roar and leap, arms outstretched, a wounded tiger, and collide with a block of flesh.
Legs and arms entangle.
Hot breath, chaos and confusion and a hand pushing against my face.
We are tumbling now, rolling in the dirt, enmeshed in one another. The man is strong, all wiry muscles beneath the bulk of his clothes. He is on top of me but I have his wrists and we are flailing at one another. He is stronger than me, too strong, and pulls an arm free, bringing his fist down in my face. There is a meaty thud which only angers me further and I bring my knee into his back. He pitches to the side and I roll free, kicking out at the darkness. Then a flash of face, like a sliver of moon, flits by close to my own, a glimmer of snarling white, and there is fist in my gut and I am on my back again, pinned under his weight, gazing up as this stranger throttles me with gloved hands.
I am lying on another mound of flesh and clothes, fighting for life on a mattress of death.
My hands scrabble in the mud and dirt, rake through wet leaves as the pressure builds in my throat. His face is close to mine, his mouth open, teeth bared… Then I feel it, hard and metallic.
Raw, cold power.
I grab the object with my hand and swing it hard against his head.
There is a grunt. A moment of incomprehension. Then he slumps forwards and falls to my side.
And I am on top of him now, astride his chest, holding the gun in my hand, pointing at this stranger’s face as he lays unconscious in the dirt and darkness. I’m panting, breath as heavy as the wind.
Gripping the gun between hands that don’t shake.
Hands that feel strangely comfortable around the sturdy handle.
I look down at the two mounds of skin and cloth. The one I have fought with is still breathing. He is about my age, and scruffy, unshaven, with curly hair. Rough. The other is younger. Spotty and pock-marked. A third eye stares out from the unlined whiteness of his forehead, clotted with blood and matching his lifeless gaze.
I retire from myself, and allow the thing within me to take over. I see myself search the older man, tentatively pushing a hand into the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
I pull out a rolled-up freezer-bag of white powder, and a wad of cash, thick as a Brontë novel.
In the space of but a moment, my life, and death, everything has changed. Everything! The fates that have thwarted me, that for so long pissed on the enthusiasm that used to blaze within me, have interceded at the last, and hauled me back. For as I strolled towards my death, they handed me a chance to change it all. As I prepared to throw myself into oblivion, the world decided it was a more interesting place with me in it. The fates conspired, and handed me all I ever asked for – a fighting chance to change things. I am a man who does not value his life, and who longs for death. I am a man without belief, and unencumbered by conscience. I am suicidal with a bellyful of rage and regret and agony and misery and so much fucking hate, and now, with a weapon. I feel like I’ve found a magic lamp. A man can truly change his stars – with a gun, a packet of powder and a wad of cash.
I look at the gun, slide the clip from the butt, and count out six bullets. Some of the grooves in the clip are empty and I catch the tang of smoke and cordite as I hold it to my face.
So many memories.
Each bullet glints in the darkness, a wicked, gold-toothed smile.
And suddenly I am laughing, laughing in the dark, as I slide the clip back into the gun, and pocket it. I feel around on the ground for a suitable rock, and raise it above my head as the future stretches away like some beautiful white road or a sliver of silver moonlight, promising exotic journeys and a blissful destination.
The universe has given me six shots at happiness, and I’m going to take them.
Blessed and pardoned for what I’m going to do.
I’m not going to waste a shot now.
I bring the rock down.
And it begins.
2
Aector McAvoy jerks awake, sitting up so quickly that it seems for a moment as if the bed has been travelling at speed before coming to an abrupt stop. He pitches forward, grabbing at nothing, a single word trapped in his throat.
“No!”
He claws at the chill, dark air. Raises a big, sweat-greased palm to his forehead. Shivers, gasping for breath.
“No,” he says, again, as he catches the lingering scent – that trace of spoiled meat and dead lilies, rotten fabrics and sour, unwashed skin.
He lowers his hand and presses it to his big, bare chest. Feels his heart, banging, banging, thudding against his ribcage like a lunatic nutting the door of a padded cell.
“Christ,” he whispers, and glances around in the darkness, instinctively afraid that one of the other boarding school boys will report his blasphemy. He swallows, drily, and gets a hold of himself. He’s home. He’s in his own bed. It’s been fifteen years since he last slept in the bunks of the posh private school that his mum’s new husband sent him off to when he became an imposition. He’s a grown man. A police officer. A sergeant. Decorated for bravery. He’s a husband. A father. He’s a big, strong man and he doesn’t need to be afraid. And she’s here, beside him, beautiful as sunlight, even in the dark. She pours into him like honey.
“Roisin…”
He feels her fingers, cold and soft; her warm breath on the side of his face. He feels her press her forehead to his shoulder; rub her face against his arm as if blotting an impression onto the canvas of his skin. Gradually, his breathing slows. The dark room becomes familiar.
Here.
Hull.
Home.
The little semi-detached on the new-build estate at the north of the city. The half-finished bedroom: gaudy patterned wallpaper and fairy lights, a big pink-and-white wardrobe groaning under the weight of sparkly shoe boxes.
Her. His Roisin – the same way he is so very much her Aector. His wife. Stroking his skin. Whispering to him. Telling him that it’s OK, she’s here; that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
And then he is lying back d
own, his head on her stomach, her hands in his hair, and she’s singing, softly, in the voice that fills him with honey.
“In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty…”
Movement, in the bed. Then Fin McAvoy, three years old and built like a bread oven, is wriggling up to where Mummy and Daddy are snuggling, and he’s giggling to himself as he slithers up his mum’s small, warm frame and thuds against the enormity of his dad: six foot six of muscles, pale skin and red hair.
“Mammy singing?” he asks.
“Trying to,” says Roisin, softly. “Trying a few things, Sonny-Jim. Trying it on with your father, as it happens, but there’s no chance of that now you’ve stuck your oar in.”
“Me not got an oar.”
“Daddy has,” a giggle in her voice. “Daddy could row us home with it.”
“Mummy silly. We are home. This is home.”
“Yeah, Mummy silly. Mummy really fancies a giggle. Wants to lay on her back and laugh until she shakes.”
“Daddy would like that too.”
Fin McAvoy has only just turned three but he knows that Mammy sometimes says things that are funny, and rude, and that make Daddy blush. It’s too dark to tell if this is one of those times, but he knows that beneath the blankets, they’re holding each other close and that they are smiling, brightly, into the dark.
“Daddy have nightmare?” he asks, gently.
McAvoy nods. Sits up. Reaches out and finds his son and pulls him closer, pressing their heads together as if transferring a thought. “Just a dream, son. They’re silly things, dreams.”
“I have dreams,” confides Fin. “Like Daddy.”
“Everybody dreams,” says McAvoy, and presses his head into his son’s curls, blocking out the last trace of the scent that plagues him. “Some people remember them perfectly. Others don’t. I don’t really remember mine. They fade away really quickly. I just get funny feelings for a while afterwards.”
Fin looks at his father solemnly, nodding his understanding. “Was it the lady?”
McAvoy freezes, his mind filling with pictures as the fading dream surges back to fill his vision. Suddenly his whole world is her: his nostrils clogged with the smell of spoiled meat, his vision nothing but torn silk and sticky blood. He wraps his arms around Fin. Holds his son until the moment passes.
They have been getting worse, these visions. As the court case has inched closer he has found himself thinking more and more of the dead girl he had so hoped to find alive. Has found himself thinking of Shane Cadbury – the plump, slow-witted sex-pest who had plunged a knife into her again and again and laid her out in his bed like a trophy. He has never truly felt clean since that day. He knows that scents are particular, that each aroma is made of tiny fragments of a source. Each time he smells Ella Butterworth, he remembers that she drifted inside him. She has done more than climb under his skin. She has made herself a part of him. Her body, corrupted, defiled, is within him. She is his responsibility.
Roisin rolls over and flicks on the bedside lamp. She looks at them both, sleepily. Her dark hair hangs in thick curtains across her tanned, delicate face. She’s still wearing her fake eyelashes and last night’s make-up and lip gloss, making her look at once dishevelled and glamorous. McAvoy smiles, helplessly, as she stares into him, radiating a love and desire that finds its mirror image in the intensity of his own, doe-eyed gaze. They have been married for three years and still they take one another’s breath away.
“Mummy’s got no pyjamas on, Daddy.”
“ I noticed that, son. That fact really did catch my attention.”
“We have breakfast?”
“I think it’s too early for breakfast, Fin.”
Roisin snuggles in to the two loves of her life. Whispers something in Fin’s ear that makes him giggle. Then he slithers out of bed and runs, heavy-footed, towards his bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“What did you offer him?” smiles McAvoy, as she climbs astride him, grinning, her sparkling fingernails forming a garnet necklace upon his chest.
“He gets an ice lolly for breakfast,” she murmurs, breathily.
“That’s a high price to pay,” says McAvoy, distractedly, as his world becomes paradise. “Am I worth it…”
“Priceless,” whispers Roisin, closing her eyes.
*
An hour later, and McAvoy is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea from a mug the size of tankard. He’s wearing a battered rugby shirt with a pair of pyjama trousers, and staring somewhat vacantly through the rain-spattered kitchen window towards the little garden at the back of the house. To McAvoy, a Highlander, this is the Kingswood estate. To Hull residents, it is North Bransholme – a continuation of what was once the biggest council estate in Europe and a name laden with negative connotations. It’s a typical new-build: small, near-identical properties lining a seemingly endless parade of cul-de-sacs and quiet roads. It’s not the sort of place that either McAvoy or Roisin would call their forever home, but it suits them for now.
They hope this year will finally give them the second child they have been yearning for. Roisin has endured a succession of miscarriages. The doctors cannot understand why and have tactfully suggested they celebrate their child and curtail their attempts for a larger family. Roisin won’t hear of it. She is from a Traveller family and has always imagined herself having lots of children, just like her own mum and dad. She has only just turned twenty-one and still entertains visions of having five or six kids running around her feet by the time she hits thirty. McAvoy, a decade her senior, would give her the moon if she asked for it, but each new pregnancy terrifies him as much as he delights in his wife’s happiness.
His instinct is to protect her – to do everything he can to spare her from any harm, to insist she go to bed and stay there, doing nothing, and to remove all potential harm from her life. But she will not hear of it. She is a strong, fierce, independent Traveller who won’t so much as allow her husband to dry the dishes or make himself a cup of tea, despite his protestations that he wants to do his share. She has her code and he respects it, even while beating himself up each day, feeling guilty right through to his bones that he is some unreconstructed Neanderthal, sitting with his feet up while his pretty, too-young wife vacuums under his feet and brings him home-baked cakes from the kitchen. He has voiced these concerns to Roisin, who habitually responds by laughing at him, calling him an idiot, and then kissing him hard enough to dislodge a tooth. She loves him fiercely. Loves him harder than he ever imagined himself being loved.
He drains his tea. Looks through the open kitchen door to where Fin, in his dressing gown, is sitting watching a wildlife programme while eating a Rocket lolly. McAvoy smiles. Remembers the bargain that Roisin struck with their son, and luxuriates for a moment in the memory of her. She’s upstairs, singing to herself in the shower. He can just make out the soft lullaby of her voice. He wonders whether Fin would be OK for a little while – whether she would appreciate him coming to soap her back, and knows at once that she would. They are addicted to one another.
“Daddy…”
McAvoy returns from his daydream to find Fin holding out his mobile phone. It’s the work one – the one that rarely rings. It has been charging in the living room.
McAvoy feels his cheeks begin to burn. He feels as though he has been caught out – interrupted doing something he shouldn’t have been. He has always blushed. He’s the only copper he knows whose face colours at the merest mention of naughtiness or impropriety. The beard covers the worst of it, but bare-cheeked he flushes scarlet. Roisin, who was only a child when they first met, is of the opinion that it is the sweetest thing she has ever seen. McAvoy, who has endured three decades of taunts, is less keen.
“Hello, Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy, Major Crime Unit…”
Saying it aloud makes him feel rather proud and a total fraud all at once. For the past few months he has been a member of the elite unit led by Detective Superintendent Doug Roper. It
is a position he requested, cashing in his one favour with the Divisional Commander, earned by virtue of finding the body of Ella Butterworth and detaining the man who killed her. He had been under the impression that Roper was the best of the best, and wanted to learn from somebody with one of the most impressive clearance rates in the service. But Roper has side-lined him with a series of secondments – loaning him out to other departments or lumbering him with dispiriting admin tasks. McAvoy is by no means too proud to do what he is asked and has taken to filling in his worksheets in triplicate in case the originals are lost, but he is beginning to feel paranoid that Roper is doing more than teaching him the importance of due diligence. He feels deliberately excluded. Roper didn’t pick him, and Roper doesn’t want him. These past months he has been ping-ponging between departments – cyber-crime, domestic violence, fraud. He has become a master at databases and spreadsheets and has felt more like an accountant than a police officer. He hasn’t complained, has just got his head down and done his best, but this is not the job he hoped to do when he quit university and applied to join Cumbria Constabulary at the age of twenty-two.
“Hello? Are you the big chap? Scottish? Came to visit us when we had the break-in? You left a card. Sorry, sorry, should have said. Sharon Menzies. I run the tea room at the Humber Bridge. You came and gave us some leaflets…”
McAvoy remembers her. Forties. Brunette. A warm sort: welcoming, kind – the sort who fosters troubled kids and manages to get them through their GCSEs and doesn’t let people say she’s an angel because she’s got no time for that sort of touchy-feely nonsense. He’d been sent by the Assistant Chief Constable to give a talk on crime prevention after a couple of scallywags broke in to one of the units at the Country Park. She’d refused his offers to pay for his own cup of tea and slice of lemon drizzle cake. Shit, he’d known that would come back to haunt him…
“Mrs Menzies, yes. This is DS McAvoy. How are you? I recall you saying your husband hadn’t been well. Sciatica, was it? Hope he’s doing better…”
He glances up as Roisin enters the kitchen, wrapped up snug in a leopard-print dressing gown and Ugg boots. She’s towelling her hair dry, smiling at him. She smiles well, a dazzle in her eyes that outshines her bright white teeth. She always seems pleased to see him. He has to look away. She looks so young. Too young, he thinks. He has never reconciled himself to their age difference. She was seventeen when she climbed into his bed. He was twenty-six, and had just broken up with a woman ten years his own senior. He has spent endless hours analysing what it all means. Roisin, always able to put him back together again, has told him time and time again that he has nothing to reproach himself for. She wanted him and she made it happen. She’d loved him from day one, and wasn’t going to wait another moment. He proposed the minute she told him she was expecting their son. Trudged onto a halting site on the outskirts of Doncaster and asked Papa Teague for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Him. A copper. A fucking copper! The wedding had been small. Papa Teague had given his blessing to the union but he was damned if he was going to show off about it.