The Dark Winter dam-1

by David Mark

  McAvoy nods. He remembers little about the politics of the disagreement. Can only summon up hazy television footage of atrocities and brutality. Innocents, sprayed with bullets and chopped down with blades.

  ‘Is the machete significant?’ asks McAvoy. ‘That’s the weapon of choice out there, isn’t it?’

  ‘The boss asked the same thing,’ says Nielsen. ‘We’re looking into it.’

  ‘And are they are a church-going family? How did she become a server?’

  ‘Apparently she was that way inclined when she arrived. Her family were very religious. She had seen some horrors over there but it hadn’t put her off. Her mum, her new mum, took her to Holy Trinity just for a day out when she first arrived, and she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It became a big part of her life. Her mum says she’d never been so proud as the day she became an acolyte.’

  McAvoy tries to get a mental picture of Daphne Cotton. Of a young girl, plucked from horror, decked out in a white robe and allowed to hold the candle during the honouring of her God.

  ‘Have we got a picture?’ he asks softly.

  Helen jogs back to her desk and returns almost instantly with a colour photocopy of a family snap. It shows a smiling Daphne, sandwiched between her two short, plump, greying adoptive parents. The background shows Bridlington sea front. The skies are eerily and unusually blue. The image seems almost too glossy and perfect. McAvoy wonders who took the snap. Which poor passer-by captured the image that would come to define this tragic girl. McAvoy takes his own mental picture. Memorises the snap. Makes this smiling, happy girl his vision of Daphne Cotton. Superimposes it onto the bloodied, broken corpse. Makes her human. Makes her death the tragedy it needs to be.

  ‘So, she was a regular at church, yes?’

  ‘Three nights a week and twice on Sundays.’

  ‘Big commitment.’

  ‘Huge, but she was a clever girl. Never let it get in the way of her homework. She was a straightA student, according to her mum. We haven’t spoken to her teachers yet.’

  ‘Which school?’

  ‘Hessle High. Walking distance from home. She’s due to break up on Tuesday for the Christmas holidays.’

  ‘We need to speak to her friends. Her teachers. Everybody who knew her.’

  ‘That’s what Sophie and me are dividing up, Sarge,’ says Tremberg, pulling an appeasing face. It is as if she is trying to tell an ageing father not to worry — that it’s been taken care of.

  ‘Right, right,’ says McAvoy, trying to slow himself down. To restore order in his mind.

  ‘Shall we get your statement down, now, Sarge? Best get it out of the way. Tomorrow will be a nightmare.’

  McAvoy nods. He knows that in reality, the only thing he is bringing to this investigation is a witness statement and a glorified filing system. But he’s got a foot in the door. A chance to do some good. To catch a killer. He lets his mind drift back to this afternoon. To the chaos and bloodshed in the square. To that moment when the masked man appeared from the doorway of the church, and looked into his eyes.

  ‘Is there anything distinctive, Sarge?’ asks Nielsen, although there is no real hope in his voice. ‘Anything you’d recognise again?’

  McAvoy closes his eyes. Lets the masked face swim in his vision. Blocks out the cold, snow-filled air and the screams of the passers-by. Lets his memory focus in on one moment. One picture. One scene.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, with the sudden sense that the memory is important. ‘There were tears in his eyes.’

  He stares into the blue irises of the mental image. Fancies he can see his own reflection on the wet lenses. His voice, when it emerges from his dry mouth, is but a breath.

  ‘Why were you crying? Who were you weeping for?’

  CHAPTER 5

  It sits to the north of the city, the east of everything else — three left turns and a right from the edge of the new estate; thrown up for first-time buyers by builders following plans that could have been designed by a child with a page of graph paper and a box of Monopoly houses.

  Three bedrooms. Chessboard tiles. A back yard, with a nine-slab patio propped up on reclaimed railway sleepers. All decorated to the drab, lifeless taste of a landlord who made the purchase through an agent, and has yet to visit.

  Home, thinks McAvoy, bones weary, drowsily parking the people-carrier on the kerb and watching his wife, framed like a film star through the square front window, swaying with his son in her arms, and waving to Daddy.

  It’s late. Too late for Fin to still be up. He must have taken his nap around tea-time. He’ll be awake all night, eager to bounce on Mummy and Daddy’s bed, to try on Daddy’s shoes and stomp around on the lino in the kitchen, squashing imaginary monsters.

  She’s done this for him. Settled the lad for a nap so that he’ll be awake and fresh and ready to make Daddy feel better when he finally gets home from the station, thoughts made heavy and dull by the relentlessness of the assault with which they have battered his skull.

  Roisin opens the door for him and McAvoy doesn’t know who to kiss first. He opens his arms and takes them both in. Feels the hard pressure of Fin’s head on one cheek. Roisin’s lips, soft and warm and perfect, on the other. Holds them both. Feels her hand stroke his back. Takes their warmth inside himself. Senses her breathing him in, in return.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and whether it’s addressed to her or the boy or the universe in general, he would not be able to say.

  Eventually he pulls away. Roisin takes a step backwards to allow him into the little lobby at the foot of the stairs. As he pushes the door closed behind him, he turns and knocks the same picture from the wall that he has dislodged almost nightly since they moved into this, their first proper home, two years ago. They giggle, sharing the joke, as he stoops to pick it up, and awkwardly hangs it back on the hook. It’s a pencil sketch of a hillside, done in a shaky hand. It meant a lot to McAvoy once, back when images of his childhood had been the emblem of his happy times. It doesn’t matter so much now. Not since Fin. Not since her.

  She’s beautiful, of course. Slim and dark-haired, her skin an almost sand-blown tan that betrays her heritage. Mucky, his dad had said when he first saw her, but he hadn’t meant it in a bad way.

  She’s wearing a tracksuit that hugs her figure and her hair tumbles to her shoulders. She’s only wearing a small pair of hoops in her ears today. She used to have row upon row, climbing up both ears, but Fin developed a liking for pulling at them and so she has limited her adornment in recent months. It is the same with the gold that dazzles at her throat. She wears two chains. One bears her name in copperplate: a gift from her father when she turned sixteen. The other is a simple pearl, a captured raindrop, that McAvoy presented her with on their wedding night as an extra present, in case his heart hadn’t been enough.

  Without being asked, she hands Fin to his father. The child beams, opens his mouth like a capital O and then begins aping McAvoy’s facial expressions. They frown, grin, pretend to cry, aim monster-like bites at one another, until they are laughing and Fin is wriggling with excitement. McAvoy puts him down and the child runs off with his bow-legged cowboy gait, adorable in his blue jeans, white shirt and tiny waistcoat, chattering to himself in the made-up language that McAvoy wishes he better understood.

  ‘You waited,’ he says to his wife as he looks around the living room. Roisin had been planning to put up the Christmas decorations today. They have a plastic tree and a box of baubles, half a dozen cards to stretch on a wire over the fake-coal fireplace, but they remain in the cardboard container by the kitchen door.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been any fun without you,’ she says. ‘We’ll do it another day. As a family.’

  McAvoy takes off his coat and throws it over the back of an armchair. Roisin comes forward for another hug, the better to feel his body without the impediment of his bulky waterproof. The top of her head comes up to his chin, and he leans forward to kiss it. Her hair smells of baking. S
omething sweet and festive. Mince pies, perhaps.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m later than I said,’ he begins, but she shushes him and pulls his mouth to hers. He tastes cherries and cinnamon in her kisses, and they stand, framed in the window, mouth on mouth, until Fin runs back into the living room and begins whacking his father on the leg with a wooden cow.

  ‘Grandpa sent it for me,’ says Fin, holding up the toy as his father peers down. ‘Cow. Cow.’

  McAvoy takes it from his son’s grip. Examines it. He recognises the workmanship. Can picture his father, wood shavings on his glasses, knife and rock-hammer held by white hands sheathed in fingerless gloves, sitting at the table, mouth ajar, concentrating on every minute detail, breathing life into wooden toys.

  ‘Was there a letter?’

  ‘Just the usual,’ says Roisin, not looking up. ‘Hopes he’s getting big and strong. Eating his vegetables. Being a good boy. Hopes to meet him one day soon.’

  McAvoy’s father addresses all of his correspondence to the boy. He has not spoken to his only son since a falling out around the time Roisin fell pregnant, and McAvoy knows him to be stubborn enough to go to his grave without ever making amends. Were he to think unkindly of his father, he would wonder who the daft old sod thought was going to read the letters to his four-year-old grandson, but he has trained himself to blink such traitorous thoughts away.

  McAvoy feels the toy’s smooth edges. Tries to soak up some of the wisdom and experience of the old man through the things he holds in his hand, but no answers come. He hands it back to his son, who runs away again. McAvoy watches him go, then turns to Roisin, his eyes full of guilt.

  ‘You went towards the screams, Aector. You did what you would always do.’

  ‘But what does it say about me? That I would seek out a stranger rather than protect my son?’

  ‘It says you’re a good man.’

  He stares around his living room. It’s all he wants. His wife in his arms, his child playing at his feet. He breathes heavily and slowly, savouring every mouthful of these moments. And then he catches the scent. The tang. Faint. Almost imperceptible among the spices and soap of his family, his home. It’s like a moth fluttering at the very edge of vision. That whiff. Of blood. For an instant he imagines Daphne Cotton. Tries to get an image of what her father will be enduring. Lets his heart reach out. To feel a connection and offer up warmth.

  He raises his arm and pulls Roisin back down into an embrace.

  Hates himself for the warmth that spreads through him: for being damnably happy, as an innocent girl lies dead on a slab.

  CHAPTER 6

  8.04 a.m. Roper’s old room at Queen’s Gardens.

  A commotion of cops.

  Buttocks perched on desks; feet on swivel chairs, backs lounging against bare walls. A collection of untucked shirts and two-for-one supermarket ties. Nobody’s smoking, but the room smells of nicotine and beer.

  McAvoy, in the middle, sitting properly on a hardbacked seat, notebook on his lap, tie tight at a throat scrubbed pink and raw by vigorous, punishing hands.

  Trying to keep his feet still on the threadbare carpet. Listening to a dozen conversations at once and finding none he would know how to join.

  Six hours’ sleep and a good breakfast that wouldn’t go down.

  It’s still sitting there; a weight in his chest; every breath a wheeze that tastes of scrambled egg and granary bread. There’s a flask of hot water and peppermint leaves in the bag at his feet, but he’s afraid to unscrew it in this cramped, busy room, for fear of releasing the aroma. He could not stomach the comments. Could not stand to be remarkable. Not here. Not now.

  He glances at his watch. Late, he thinks.

  ‘Right, boys and girls,’ says Pharaoh, clapping her hands as she enters the room. ‘I’ve been up since five, I’ve had no fucking breakfast and in a minute I’ve got a press conference with a bunch of wankers who want to know how we’ve allowed a teenage girl to be killed at Christmas. I would like to be able to tell them that the person who did it is a nutter and that we’ve caught him, but I can’t. We haven’t caught him, so that’s not going to happen. Nor do we know that he’s a nutter.’

  ‘Well, I know I wouldn’t ask him to babysit, ma’am.’ This from Ben Nielsen, to laughs and nods.

  ‘Nor would I, Ben, but I’d pick him before you. Remember, I’ve got a teenage daughter.’

  Laughs and whoops. A polystyrene cup chucked at a grinning Ben Nielsen.

  ‘What I mean,’ continues Pharaoh, pushing her hair out of her eyes, ‘is that we don’t know this was random. We don’t know if it’s somebody who hates the church, somebody with a grudge against the clergy. We don’t know if Daphne Cotton was the intended victim. Why did he wear a balaclava? Why disguise himself if he were just a random attacker? And the weapon. What’s the significance of the machete?’

  ‘Are we thinking race hate?’ This from Helen Tremberg, to an accompanying chorus of moans.

  ‘We’re thinking everything, my love. We haven’t flagged it as race hate, but the very fact that it was a black girl means that it has to be considered.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  Colin Ray speaks for all of them. They know what this means. Race crimes are a recipe for headlines and headaches. It’s kid gloves and placards all the way; the clamour for a resolution comes not just from the public and the pressure groups, but from the top brass, still sensitive about a decade of bad publicity spawned when a black prisoner died in the custody suite. The video footage aired at the subsequent investigation — and replayed almost constantly across the news channels — showed four officers standing around chatting while the lad took his last, rasping breaths on the cold, tiled floor at Queen’s Gardens nick.

  ‘So, this is goldfish-bowl time,’ concludes Pharaoh. ‘We need this solved quickly, but we need to remember we’re being watched. We’re talking national news. People don’t like having their Christmases ruined by murder, and they need us to make them feel safe again. This happened about nineteen hours ago, and that gives this murderous fucker a good head start. The public appeal will be on the news by nine, which means a lot of you will have the fun and games of answering the phones. The calls will be coming through to this room. And yes, the tech monkeys will be wiring them up within the next half hour. There’ll be no shortage of nutters, people, but every piece of information is important. Every name needs to be checked.’

  She stops her flow momentarily, and her eyes seek out McAvoy. She gives him a nod.

  ‘Now I know you’re all technical wizards, but on the off-chance that you’re not, McAvoy here is going to show you how his brand-spanking-new database works.’

  There are groans. A chorus of swear words.

  ‘Now now, children,’ she smiles. ‘I’ve been on inquiries where the floor has caved in under the weight of paperwork, so if McAvoy’s system helps us keep a better track of what we’re doing, then it’s something we need to be using. Personally, I feel like I’ve got something of a head start, given that I once got to level three on Sonic the Hedgehog, but the rest of you might need a catch-up course.’

  McAvoy joins in the laughter. Looks up and gets a grin and the tiniest of winks from Pharaoh.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ she adds, ‘McAvoy has seen this bloke. He could have been a victim himself, if he hadn’t used his forehead to block the blow.’

  There are more laughs, but they feel somehow more warm and inclusive, and McAvoy is almost tempted to take a bow and add a witticism of his own. Pharaoh interrupts before he can.

  ‘Right, you should all know what you’re doing for the next couple of hours. We need witness statements. We need CCTV footage of every inch of that square. Where did he go when he left the church? And most important, we need to know everything there is about Daphne Cotton. We need to unpick her life. We’ll have the PME results by lunchtime, toxicology by tonight. Just bring your A-game, people. None of us want to live in a city where you can chop up a girl in church and get away with i
t. It’s Christmas, after all.’

  She gives the troops a grin. And then she’s barging back out of the room, a dervish of perfume and jangling jewellery, her soft palms touching shoulders and forearms, investing faith and belief in her team.

  They sit in silence for a moment, each officer lost in his or her own thoughts.

  Eventually, DCI Colin Ray turns and opens the blinds. It’s night-time black beyond the glass, and the window reflects a shambolic semi-circle of squatting, lounging, disordered men and women; scratching heads and blowing through steepled palms.

  The officers get a glimpse of themselves; a sharp, unexpected vision of who and what they are. Each sees the truth of themselves: their imperfections, their one-dimensional, cold, crumpled, actuality.

  Of all the men and women staring into their own faces, only Aector McAvoy feels no compulsion to look away.

  They have been answering phones for six hours now. Beyond the dusty, grime-encrusted windows, the sky has almost completed its subtle transition from deep grey to soft black. Above, the clouds continue to hang low and fat, but the worst of the snow is another few days away. They might get a white Christmas this year, though McAvoy, who experienced nothing else in his youth, is only excited by the prospect because he knows it will make his wife and child smile.

  He and Helen Tremberg are the only two actual police officers in the room. A community support officer is sitting at one of the spare desks and Gemma Tang, the pretty Chinese press officer, is leaning over the large table by the window, crossing out large sections of a press release. She’s model-beautiful, with a backside that Ben Nielsen has frequently imagined bouncing coins off. McAvoy is giving himself eyestrain trying not to look.

  In ones and twos, the officers have drifted away from the major incident room. Trish Pharaoh and Ben Nielsen are at the morgue, witnessing the post-mortem exam. The two most junior detectives are collecting witness statements from those members of the congregation too shaken up to speak coherently yesterday. Sophie Kirkland took a phone call just before lunch from a pub landlady whose security cameras had captured a fleeting image of a man in black roughly five minutes after the attack took place. She’s taken two uniformed officers with her to search the local area for clues.