Darkness Falls - DS Aector McAvoy Series 0.5 (2020)

by David Mark

  How do I tell her… How?

  I sense her before she speaks. The air behind me feels suddenly softer. Warmer.

  “Hey you.”

  She’s standing by the sea wall. A sensible purple coat over jeans and sandals, painted nails. Blonde, fluffy hair and hands in pockets. Her face, cold but flushed. Her smile, reaching all the way to her eyes.

  I try to speak but nothing happens, so we just stare at each other, until the wind blows her hair in front of her face and I step forward and brush it behind her ear, resting her cool cheek against my warm palm, and rub the tip of my nose against hers, and then her eyes increase, blur and fill as we move together and goose-pimples appear on her chest, and mine, and we’re kissing.

  And nothing else really matters, for a while.

  56

  McAvoy wonders if this is how killers feel. If, in this raw moment of despair and anger, he is sharing a bond with the men and women it is his job to bring to justice.

  He adds guilt to the cocktail of emotions sloshing in his system and turning his face a flushed and livid red.

  He feels like a creationist being eaten by a dinosaur. All of his beliefs, the anchors that make him what he knows to be a good man, seem suddenly silly and insubstantial in the face of his desire to cause harm.

  Is it just circumstances that turn anger into murder? He thinks of jealous husbands, out to scare, acting in rage, strangling their cheating spouses for a second longer than they intended, and suddenly finding themselves astride a corpse? Thinks of pub fights. Men in drink, pulling a pen-knife from a pocket and sticking it in the belly of the bloke who has spilled their pint and failed to apologise.

  He is seeing in shades of grey, and it scares him.

  Until today, he believed there were murderers and victims. Decent people and evil people.

  He finds his fingers curling themselves into fists.

  He shakes the steam from his eyes. The computer screen keeps blurring. He can feel a migraine edging into his head, encircling his brain with cold, numbing tentacles.

  More than anything in the world, he wants to run home. Sprint down the stairs, take a patrol car, and screech home. Hold her. Hold the baby. Pack a bag and run. Put miles between himself and this place. These people.

  He sits at his neatly ordered desk in the empty CID suite. A civilian officer is doing something with files at the far end of the room, but save for her shuffling of paper, he is alone. The team are either at Roper’s side or hunting the man of the hour.

  The call came through mid-morning. The body of a man thought to be the missing witness from the Cadbury trial found in the plunge pool at a city hotel. Prime suspect, Owen Lee. Recently bailed on suspicion of two other murders. Detective in charge, Doug Roper. Suspect considered armed and dangerous. Firearms officers have been put on alert. Media informed. This is a priority case…

  The men and women in the shiny suits had scrambled. Taken Roper’s individual calls and hustled out of the office, pulling on matching raincoats and picking up umbrellas carrying the insignias of cars they can’t afford. Despatched to likely hideouts. A team of uniforms sent to his home address. Called in moments later to alert the control room to two more bodies. Brains bashed in. Fucking bloodbath…

  Later, the call from the team at the hotel. The suspect’s sister has been found. No pulse. Suspected overdose. Drugs in abundance. Signs she had been assaulted shortly before death…

  McAvoy, in the middle of it all, not moving. Just sitting at his desk, waiting to be given something to do, trying to keep the tears from his eyes and his feet firm on the carpet. Making his tongue bleed as he clamped his teeth upon it. Longing to run. Longing to run.

  He doesn’t know how much of what Owen told him is true. Wonders how many times self-defence will work as mitigation. Whether anybody saw him, standing outside the apartment block, talking to the country’s most wanted murderer in the rain, ushering him into the church. If there were witnesses as Owen fled the scene, putting distance between himself and the duty McAvoy had so believed he would perform.

  Obsession.

  McAvoy knows that is the key to it all. It is the fuel that is keeping him here. Fixing his eyes on the screen. Burning in his gut and belching bile into his mouth.

  How to stop Roper?

  How to stop his lies?

  How to find the killer? The person who took a shine to a pretty girl, frightened her, followed her, and killed her in an alleyway within view of her house. Who left her body to be found by a pervert, who took it as a gift, and used it for his own unspeakable lusts.

  He logs onto websites he has visited time and again. Cross-references long-numbers and statistics, profiles and callouts, with the bundle of paperwork and photocopied notes by his right hand. Spills his mug of cold tea and does not even stop to mop up. Begins picking up the documents in his fist rather than his fingertips. Finds his hands in his hair. His jaw aching as he grinds his teeth, and watches the screen flicker, and wonders what to do, what to do, as the radio fizzles with static, more reports, updates, lies, lies, lies…

  …Attention all units, the trial of Shane Cadbury has been adjourned following the discovery of the body at the hotel. Whether it will resume after the weekend is unknown, but indications are it will be declared a mistrial. The judge has been briefed about developments and the Crown Prosecution Service is holding off on any decision about whether to progress with the case until the involvement of Owen Lee has been fully investigated…

  McAvoy kicks the waste-paper bin and slams his arm on the desk. He doesn’t know who he is any more. Last night he stood dumb as a suspect was beaten in a cell. This morning he sat in the Lord’s house with a killer.

  Roper will stitch it all together again, he thinks. He’ll ensure Owen is either shot, or dismissed as a lunatic and fantasist. He’ll get a retrial for Cadbury, without the hassle of the defence witness. He’ll probably find out about McAvoy’s little meeting with the prime suspect, and then he’ll either put him in his back pocket, or have him go away.

  And Ella’s family will go home and curse the wrong man. They’ll sit in a house surrounded by flowers and cards and her picture, and they’ll loathe Shane Cadbury, when the man who stabbed their daughter, and the man who let him go, are walking around, and preparing to do it again.

  He tries to focus.

  Somebody who knew her.

  Wanted her.

  Fantasised over her and wouldn’t let go.

  Running through suspects in his head.

  Realising he has none.

  All he has is a deeply-held belief that the investigation was carried out improperly. He doesn’t even know who to tell.

  He looks at the phone again, and the number on the paper in front of him.

  He wants to phone her family. Tell them everything. Explain to the Butterworths that they’ve been lied to. That the copper with the dazzling smile is a chancer and a villain, more dangerous than the man the whole police force is hunting.

  Tries typing the mobile phone number into a search engine. Gets gobbledygook and accounts for an Australian air-conditioning firm.

  Puts her name in.

  E-l-l-a B-u-t-t-e-r-w-o-r-t-h

  Page after page of news stories. On-line versions of papers, TV reports, radio bulletins. Snatches of sympathy and opening lines.

  Sees Roper’s name among most of them.

  Puts it in the search engine.

  Profiles and interviews, story after story, case after case. Even an entry on Wikipedia and Who’s Who. Pictures. Sometimes smiling, sometimes overflowing with saccharine concern.

  A fraud, thinks McAvoy. A liar. A conman.

  He scrolls through site after site, sneering at the screen. Finds himself back where he started. The Hull Daily Mail.

  A story by Tony Halthwaite on the search for a missing girl. Disappeared in her wedding dress having spilled wine on it and raced to her auntie’s house for help. Family very concerned. Never done anything like this before. Detective S
uperintendent Doug Roper understood to be personally handling the investigation.

  The picture that accompanies the story is the one that the city would come to know in the weeks and months that followed. That would accompany every update and bulletin. Ella. Captured in a broad smile. Large hooped earrings, halter-neck black top. Flushed cheeks and sparkle in her eyes.

  But it’s not just a headshot. It hasn’t been cropped.

  In this, the first chapter of the Ella Butterworth story, the picture is printed in its entirety. She stands on a stage, in front of the Search For A Star banner, bouquet of flowers in her grip.

  An arm around her shoulders.

  The hand, almost imperceptibly, curving down onto the slope of her breast.

  Family and friends around her, celebrating her triumph in the heats of the talent contest she would never have a chance to win.

  And staring out at him, with a leer, a familiar face.

  57

  She’s done the hard work for me. Told me what she knows. Said it while staring out over the sea wall, hands on the wet brick, eyes on the horizon, filling the air with my misdeeds.

  Blake.

  She’d always known, she said. Dad had mentioned something to her about him having done something bad in the past, and she’d pieced it together from there. Got other bits from Kerry when she was off her face. She just wanted to hear it from me, she said. Have me trust her enough to open up.

  “You were a child,” she says to me, still looking out at the grey waters. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”

  She tells me she understands the demons, too. That I sometimes talk to them in my sleep. That I fight and kick against invisible things in the moments before I give in to unconsciousness. That she’s found my prescriptions, and the pills.

  Always known, she says. Just waiting for me to tell her.

  So I tell her the rest.

  The men in the woods.

  Kerry’s flat.

  Our home, and the Russians.

  The sauna.

  Kerry.

  Roper.

  McAvoy.

  I share it all, between gasps of cigarette smokeWhen she turns to face me, I don’t know whether the water on her cheeks is from her eyes or the sky.

  When she holds me, she’s trembling, but the embrace is strong.

  I didn’t know I needed to be forgiven until she said that she did.

  And then my floodgates open, and the tears that fall from my eyes are twenty years old, and roar to earth with the intensity of a storm

  58

  McAvoy is trying not to run. His shoes are squeaking on the plastic-covered floor as he moves quickly down the corridor and into the darkened PNC room.

  Punches his code into the keypad and steps inside.

  A uniformed officer is sitting at one of the two large terminals. He looks up, gives a gruff “all right?” then returns to his work.

  McAvoy sits down in front of the screen and logs on. He entertains the notion of using somebody else’s ID, but he is past caring. Evidence trails don’t seem to matter. Roper can make things look however he wants to.

  Excitement making his fingers tremble, he puts the name into the database.

  There is a pause. The screen turns black, and McAvoy finds himself digging his nails into his palm and chewing at his cheek.

  Unsure what he wants the criminal record check to find….

  And then it begins.

  A catalogue of mugshots, going back 20 years. Unmistakably, the man in the photograph.

  The familiar face.

  Cautions for shoplifting.

  Affray.

  Then a dwelling burglary.

  Another.

  Threats to kill.

  Indecent exposure.

  Five more, inside two years.

  Burglary.

  Indecent assault on a minor.

  Assault.

  Rape.

  Carrying an offensive weapon.

  A decade of arrest and conviction, and then ten years of almost nothing.

  He’s got better.

  Found out how to do it properly, and not get caught.

  McAvoy looks in his notebook. At the cases in London, and further North.

  The addresses match.

  So does the photo.

  He’s trembling, now. Excited, but angry, too. Angry that this man could have been caught, if only Roper had cared enough to do things properly when Ella’s body was found.

  An obsessive, with a violent past, whose previous addresses match with the dates of the murders and woundings of half a dozen attractive young women.

  Aector McAvoy breathes out, and wonders what to do next.

  He’s just found a killer.

  59

  We stroll hand in hand to the car, no longer caring about the rain, or the vehicles that splash water from the deep muddy kerbs up our trouser legs. We stop once in a while to kiss. For her to ask another question. For me to feel lighter with each truth spilled.

  She’s nodding a lot. Taking it all in.

  It helps, talking about it. Laying it out chronologically. All that has happened since she told me this was my last chance. Since I set off to the bridge to spite her, and smashed a rock through the skull of a man who was trying to kill me.

  “Why this area, though?” she’s asking. “After you got out. Why not start again somewhere else? Why surround yourself with memories of what you did?”

  “Because I didn’t deserve a fresh start. I didn’t deserve to live calmly and peacefully. I needed to be here. So I could never forget. Never put it behind me. Never condone it.”

  “It sounds like those Catholics who whip themselves,” she says, biting her lip. “Who wear those things around their thighs that dig into the skin so they’re always reminded of Jesus’s suffering. Is it like that?”

  “I wear mine on the inside,” I say, looking away, watching the gulls and the waves and feeling my heart race as I dare to believe that she does, truly, understand. That she gets it. Gets me. And it’s not too late to make a difference.

  “But to become a journalist? In the area where you were born?”

  “I’ve only ever been good at a few things, Jess. Boxing, writing, and talking to people. The hospital I was in, it was more like a centre for troubled teens, it had a boxing club and I didn’t have much else to do with my time other than getting back in the ring. I knew I’d never be able to box professionally. Too notorious. But I made it a decent club. Had a proper coach and everything. Ended up with kids who weren’t even residents at the centre coming along for training. And our best boxers started entering competitions. Just little stuff, but I reckoned they deserved some credit so I started sending in match reports to the paper. York Press was the nearest. They liked my style. And I told enough lies to get a freelance job, sending stuff in over the phone, making a few quid. And then when the shrinks reckoned I could go out into the big bad world without shooting anybody, it became a proper job. Nobody was more surprised than me. It was like everything I’d done had been atoned for and forgotten. The world had given me a normal life. A job. A wage. There was only me who didn’t feel like I deserved it. Who kept waiting for the world to give me the skinning I deserved. But it didn’t come. I found you. I found a chance at happiness. All the stuff with dad and Kerry, that was bad, but it wasn’t my punishment. It wasn’t justice, I suppose. And then you got pregnant. And I found my atonement. Our baby died. I poisoned it. And I wasn’t even strong enough to hold you …”

  “No,” she cries, her hands raising to her mouth as though she fears she’ll be sick. “No, Owen, that wasn’t it! That wasn’t your fault. It was nobody’s fault. It just happened.”

  “It happened because of me.”

  “Why not me?”

  “Because you’re an angel. You’re perfect. You’ve never hurt anybody.”

  “I’ve hurt you every day we’ve been together. I haven’t been what the man I love needs. Why wasn’t us losing the baby all down
to me? Why not my fault?”

  “No, Jess, I was poison in you …”

  “You were my goodness, Owen. Even now, you’re the only good man I’ve ever known.”

  I see myself reflecting back in her eyes. They’re the only mirrors I can tolerate.

  We hold each other. Touch each other as if for the first time.

  Eventually, she speaks again.

  “But you must have torn yourself open, not knowing what would happen. Not knowing if you had a real future. Every moment, not knowing if somebody would recognise you from an old picture…”

  “Tony did. He knows. Saw me in the files and told me he knew everything. It was a weird feeling. Like being found out, but being relieved that somebody else knew, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell you. I had a confidante who didn’t share my bed. I could talk to him about it without worrying that I’d scare him away. How could I lay there with you? Telling you about how it felt to pull the trigger. What I’m seeing when the lights go out. How it feels to spend most of your life trying not to flinch when goblins start chucking daggers in your face….”

  She puts a hand on my cheek. Pulls me close. “That’s what love is, Owen. That’s what your kind of love is, anyway. It’s taking somebody else’s sadness. Using everything in your power to make their every moment a perfect one, even if it means making yourself miserable. It’s caring more for somebody else than you do for yourself.”

  I feel myself fragmenting. Coming apart. I can’t see properly, through the tears and the rain and the endless images that spill over one another as I try to make sense of who I am. “I’m a fool,” I say, and it doesn’t seem like enough.

  “You are,” she agrees, and we find it in ourselves to laugh.

  I tell her about Roper. About how he works. What he’s done. Show her my bruises.

  She shakes her head. Reacts as if I’m telling her about an unpleasant boss. Tells me not to worry. That he’s probably jealous. That he’ll get his in the end.

  Then I’m spilling all of it. Tony. Ella.