Darkness Falls - DS Aector McAvoy Series 0.5 (2020)

by David Mark

  “The headlines might disagree,” I say, and my voice catches. I feel tired, suddenly. Tired and cold and empty.

  “I know what you did,” he says, softly. “But you were a child. A child who had access to guns. You had opportunity and motive, and in the eyes of the law, you were too young to know what you were doing. And by God, you’ve suffered enough.”

  “Justice, right?”

  “You’re the only person I can think of who might begin to understand something about what it really means.”

  More silence, save the rain on the stained glass, the drip of water onto stone flags from the hem of McAvoy’s soaked clothes.

  “He wants me to kill him,” I say, and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “The witness. Roper gave me a gun and let me go, and told me to make sure Cadbury went down. Then it’s night-night for me. Prison, maybe. More likely, he knows I’d do myself in and tidy up the loose ends. And, do you know, I’d do it. Go out on a high. Do something that mattered, then end it all.” Owen stops, angry and accusing. “Even that’s gone now. I can’t even help Ella. Can’t even send the right man down…”

  “You can still help make it right,” says McAvoy, staring into me, hard. “I don’t know how to play this game of his. Of Roper’s. But I know you’re a piece. I think I am too. He’s moving us where he wants us. Toying with us like we’re puppets and this city is his stage. You need to get out of the city. Anything happens to the witness, he’ll be straight after you.” He stops, as his thoughts tumble into one another. “The bodies in the woods.”

  I’m so far gone now there’s no turning back. I need to tell somebody. Need to rid myself of all these carcinogenic truths.

  “I did one of them,” I say, flatly. “Prescott. I walked into the middle of it. He’d just killed the younger lad, and then he tried to kill me. I stopped him.”

  He doesn’t react. “What else?”

  I feel myself growing lighter as the weight of the dead lifts from my chest. “There are more. I got caught up in something. I’m still in it. People have died because of it.”

  “Your girlfriend? The one the papers say is missing?”

  “I don’t know if she’s still my girlfriend, but she’s alive. I’m a bastard to live with, mate. Treat her like a trained pet, so she says. It all got too much, and she left me, but she couldn’t get me to leave her thoughts, so she went away. Told me to get in touch when I was ready to be loved. I wasn’t. I went to chuck myself off a bridge and ended up mucky to the eyes in other people’s blood.”

  I realise I’m panting, eyes cold, fingers shaking, lighter than air.

  McAvoy, nodding, sniffing back snot, making fists as he deals with thoughts unfamiliar and anger undirected. He takes a folder from inside his jacket, and starts pulling out pieces of paper. Crime reports. Probation documents. Psychological evaluations. Even a few newspaper clippings. Black and white photocopies of colour photographs. He starts holding them up for me, like props, then laying them out on the pew beside him. He starts talking quickly.

  “I don’t take any notice of hunches. Feelings, even. Maybe if you get an inkling that somebody deserves a closer look than others, you follow it through, but I don’t do things like that. I build. Put the pieces together and see what emerges. I’ve been a detective a few months, and the lads are probably right when they say I know nothing. But I reckon that if there are this many grey areas, then the picture probably isn’t perfect.”

  “Go on.”

  “I took a call, meant for Roper. London technological expert. Asking how he managed to shush up the stuff that didn’t fit. The report on her phone? I suppose it got me thinking. Remember, I’d been there. Seen him. Looked into his eyes when she was still laying on the bed. And it just started from there. This gnawing sensation in my head. A feeling we hadn’t got the right person. That Roper had taken the easy option…”

  “Pretty cut and dry, though, isn’t it?” I say, trying to be a voice of reason. “I mean, they found her in his flat. They’ve got his semen inside her head. You don’t get much more unequivocal than that. Was hardly worth pleading not guilty.”

  “Look, there’s so much stuff here,” he says, mania creeping into his voice as he jabs his finger into the papers. “There are other cases, some solved, some not, going back years. Stabbings of young girls. Did you know Ella had reported a stalker outside her house only a few weeks before this happened?”

  “Tony and me heard something but it was bollocks,” I protest.

  “No, it wasn’t!” He’s hissing through gritted teeth. “I went back through the computer database. Contacted every complainant who logged a call in the windows of time I’d been given. Checked them against the hard copies we keep on file in the basement. There was a discrepancy. On the official log, one log number related to a complaint about a group of yobs making a racket outside a house in North Ferriby. But the sergeant’s log-book, the one that keeps a record of where the different cars are sent, it had the same number for a despatch to a house on Bransholme. A complaint about a prowler. Somebody staring in through the windows at the house. The address matched the Butterworths’. Somebody took it out of the official log. Didn’t want people knowing about it…”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean…”

  “There’s more. The other girls. Look, this is basic stuff. Basic investigative procedure. I put together a profile of what we knew about the murder, up to the point Cadbury claims he found the body. Young, pretty girl. Dark alley. Vicious, frenzied stab wounds. Right handed. Nothing taken. No witnesses. Previous reports of prowler or stalker. The computer started churning out lots of cases, mostly London, some further North, going back to the early 1990s. Some had been put to bed. Solved, so to speak. Druggies put away for losing their temper. Robberies gone wrong. Unhappy or jealous boyfriends. But there were plenty still open. Some where the victim died, some where they didn’t. All young, attractive women. Half a dozen had made previous reports of suspicious characters following them or showing up at their home. Some had received letters, full of fantasy stuff. Grim, sexual stuff. Some had reported having personal items taken. Some had made complaints before the attacks. Others, this all came out afterwards. There was a pattern that nobody else seemed to be following up.”

  “And Ella? She’d had things taken, had she? She’d had messages?” I can feel the ice I’m standing on starting to splinter.

  “Messages, yes. There’s a report in there on her mobile phone. The boffins dug back into the memory and found the ghost of some old messages. Nothing too sinister, just messages that didn’t have a name attached. It was just a number. A pay-as-you go. Things like ‘you look good in yellow’ and ‘that colour brings out your eyes’. The way I read it, this was somebody telling her they were watching…”

  I’m scowling, unsure what I want to be true: feeling my brain protest at being forced to consider new truths so late in the game. “That’s a leap,” I mumble, but I realise that his words are striking home. There’s something in his passion that’s infectious. He doesn’t seem capable of lies.

  “Maybe, but it’s something that needs to be investigated. I’ve been going through the interview boxes and these questions weren’t asked. There was no attempt to ask the family if anything was missing. No contact made with the phone provider.”

  “But if the phone isn’t contract…”

  “But it’s still active! I dialled it. There was no answer, but it’s still in service. There are ways, if you have the resources, to triangulate the signal, to make a sat-nav reference for which phone mast is being used to transmit the signal. There are things that can be done if the investigation is done properly.”

  “What else?”

  “Whoever did this, had to be covered in blood. That means, they can’t have been on the streets for very long after the incident. So they either lived nearby, or were parked nearby. I’ve gone back through the CCTV footage of all the streets within a two-minute walk of the crime scene. I got a list
of all the registered users and whittled that down to the people who aren’t local to the area. Left me with two dozen.” He looks at Owen. “You were one of them. You were there.”

  I smile, tiredly. “So I’m back in the frame?”

  “No, I told you. I believe you.”

  “Who else?”

  “Half a dozen with known form. Two fleet cars from the Hull Daily Mail …”

  “Yeah, we were having a drink. The Prescott thing. A few of us …”

  “I know.”

  “Who else?”

  “Her boyfriend. Jamie.” He stops, almost pained to be saying it.

  “He’s already said, he was having a beer at The Ship…”

  “Then why park there? Two streets from your girlfriend’s house? Why not park outside? Or at the pub?”

  “So your money’s on him?”

  “No! But these are things that should be followed up. Roper’s just trimmed away all the stuff he doesn’t want to hear. That means we have a man in the dock who’s far from innocent but who may not be guilty! This is a hate crime. It has the hallmarks of an obsessive. Somebody who saw a pretty girl, fell for her, stalked her, drove themselves crazy over her, then killed her. Then Cadbury found her. His gift. Took her and did what he wanted. But the person who did it is free. The person who may have done all these girls. There’s a serial obsessive. A serial stalker. A killer! And Roper doesn’t want to know.”

  He falls silent, breathing heavy.

  “So why me?” I ask, at last. “Are you wanting to expose this? Tony’s your man. I don’t know for certain, but I rather doubt my newsdesk are taking my calls.”

  McAvoy opens his mouth to speak. Closes his eyes, as if trying to find the right words written on the inside of his head. He looks ill and frantic. Lost.

  “You can do something,” he says, eventually. “Roper’s got you as one of his pieces. I don’t want you to be. I don’t know the rules of his game, but I know that if you move somewhere he isn’t expecting, it could change everything.” Then, softly. “I know he has to go.”

  “And I’m the man to make that happen? You and me? Are you insane? Look at where I am! At what my future holds...”

  McAvoy folds in on himself. Then, staring at his feet: “All I have are vague ideas. Bits and pieces. He’s Roper. The celebrity copper. He’s got everything sewn up.”

  “And you want me to unpick the stitches? How?”

  He pauses. Looks up at the mural of saints and seraphim. “You could give evidence. Explain what he’s done to you. That he gave you a gun and told you to kill a witness.”

  My face tells its own story.

  “And you think that case would get to trial, do you? Me, accusing Roper of dirty tricks. I’m not in any rush to prolong my life, mate, but I’m not going to let Roper be the one to end it.”

  MCAVOY VISIBLY CRUMBLING, like a statue eroded by the elements. He looks broken. Disappointed. Hollowed out.

  Hears McAvoy, softly, saying: “So what will you do?”

  “I don’t care,” I say, quietly. “I never have, much, but now it’s all boiled down to this, some bits are making sense. I know I need to hold Jess again. After that, whatever happens, happens. A few days back, I was ready to kill myself. End it all. Chuck myself off a bridge rather than let a beautiful girl see I’m as vulnerable and scared and useless as she is. Today, look at me. I got a gift. A second chance, and here I am. Wanted. Hunted. The middle of something I can’t change.”

  “But you can!” He grabs a hold of my words like a branch. “It all comes down to Roper. We get him, we can start looking for some real truth. Real justice.”

  “We? I’ll be in a cell. Or dead. Dead at the hands of a man I can’t stand.”

  McAvoy's suddenly picking up the documents, thrusting them towards me. “Read them,” he’s saying. “There’s a killer who needs to be caught. Look, I can contact another force, start an official investigation. You just have to go on record. You can put it right,” he begins, starting to stand. “Do something good. It might make a difference…”

  “To you.”

  I hear myself panting, feel myself stand, papers clutched to my chest. Files and reports, phone numbers and statements. “This is the way I am. The way I have to be. Always will be.”

  McAvoy stands, raindrops scattering outwards from his wet clothes. “I can make you,” he says, and drops his eyes, as if he’s unaccustomed to dishing out threats and doesn’t want to see how Owen responded to his rookie attempt.

  I stare back, twice as hard. “You can fucking try.”

  “I can arrest you,” he says.

  “And take me where?”

  “I can do this without your help. I just thought I saw something in you that would want to be involved. To put things right. Remove Roper. Do things properly. Find the truth for Ella’s family.”

  “Then you’ve backed the wrong horse,” I say, and I feel like an absolute devil for saying it. I’m breaking McAvoy’s heart here.

  He breathes out, slowly, and the breath seems to contain the ghost of every hope he has held inside him since he saw Ella Butterworth’s corpse.

  Looks at his feet.

  Up at the Heavenly mural.

  “Owen Lee, I am arresting you for the murder of Alfred Prescott…”

  He’s barely said more than his name when I’m pulling the gun from my waistband.

  It’s the twin.

  The one Roper handed me.

  McAvoy freezes as he sees it, words drying in his throat.

  My finger on the trigger: the sound of an onrushing train in my head. Getting closer. Closer

  McAvoy seems about to move, to stagger backwards, to beg for his life, but he holds it in check. He just stands still. Looks at the gun, and me, then the skies. He says a name: Roisin…

  I know that I can’t.

  Instead, I hurl the gun high into the air. McAvoy's head swivels to follow its path and I lunge forward, shove him in the chest and watch as he topples backwards onto the pew.

  Then I’m running. Sprinting: a blur of angels on either side.

  Hearing the gun clatter onto the stone flags.

  Pushing open the wooden double-doors.

  And disappearing into the rain.

  55

  It’s mid-morning by the time I see the sea. It’s a strip of sluggish movement, the colour of fresh-fried chips, reaching up with mucky fingers to tickle the sagging belly of the fat, low clouds.

  Bridlington manages a kind of shabby eloquence when the sun shines. When families from West Yorkshire tell themselves that they don’t need to go abroad to have fun and book themselves into a B&B for a long weekend; their days wrapped up warm on the Demerara-coloured sand or feeding cash into slot-machines; their nights on the promenade, eating chips, sipping tea, daring each other to test their strength on the arcade attractions or to take a ride on one of the feeble big-dippers run by the gypsies down at the harbour. Eating candy-floss and sugar dummies, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

  Here, in winter, the place belongs to the natives. Most of the chip shops and toffee-apple shacks shut up shop. The guesthouse owners nip away for their own holidays to somewhere more appealing. The thick floral curtains are pulled across single-glazed windows and the 'no vacancies' sign is spun. The trawlers that offer boat rides around the bay from Easter to September either tie up or head to middle waters, looking for the crab and lobster that have slowly turned the resort into the biggest shellfish port in Europe without seeming to bring any money to the town.

  The old car glides down gusty roads, polystyrene chip cartons dancing on the wind, past boarded up shops and dilapidated guest-houses bearing names like Avalon and Edelweiss. “Come as guests, leave as friends”.

  Down to the seafront.

  The keening of gulls.

  The insistent rustle of the sea as it pans for shiny pebbles in the shallows.

  Computer games bleeping from the neon-fronted arcades.

  Metal shutters
, banging open, as a smattering of tattooed shopkeepers decide it might be worth trading, even if it’s only for a few hours.

  I park up on the hill. Townhouses and guesthouses, three and four-storeys, gazing out on a view sketched in different shades of brown and grey. Step out onto wet concrete, leaving the crumpled documents on the front seat. I half hope the wind will carry them away as I open the door.

  And then I’m walking down the hill, listening to the tide, the swish of the occasional car as it slices past and throws mucky water up my trouser leg.

  I look at my watch. Mid-morning. We’re meeting in the fancy ice-cream parlour on the promenade. I turn right into the harbour, lighting a cigarette. There’s no cloud as I breath out. The smoke is the same colour as the sky.

  Listening. The hulls of wooden pleasure boats knocking together like chimes. The slap of water against peeling hulls. The shouts of fishermen, unloading empty pots from greasy decks, their luminous waterproofs and rubber-soled boots squeaking on the damp, worm-eaten wood.

  Up the steps, to the promenade. Most of the shops are shut. Only a few kiosks stand open, selling kites and knick-knacks, imitation shells and kiss-me-quick hats, staffed by miserable teenagers texting on mobile phones or grizzled old women who look like they have been standing in the same place their whole lives.

  I try to smile. There’s excitement in me. Exhilaration at the thought of Jess. Her embrace. Her kiss. Fear, too. At opening up. Telling all. Telling her the bits she doesn’t know.

  On, down to the amusements, boots leaving an unbroken trail of chocolate-brown mud on the wet red pavement. The prom is almost deserted. One man studies the tide charts, another trains binoculars on a lonely shoreline bird.

  Down to the ice cream parlour. She’s not there, yet. Three staff members in black T-shirts and trousers stand chatting, one leaning on a broom. Its theme is 1950s America, all polished chrome and mirrors painted with knickerbocker glories. It looks like the cast from Grease should walk through the door and order cherry sodas and thick milkshakes, but the only customers are two old ladies, sipping coffee from mugs that are too heavy for their shaking hands.