A Bad Death: A DS McAvoy Short Story
Page 7
He takes a breath and enjoys the fleeting sensation of victory. He widens his eyes as he looks at himself in the rear-view mirror, gesturing at his own reflection the way he would to a friend; a wordless camaraderie, as if in acknowledgement that the afternoon has been more demanding than it should have been.
He winds down the window and sticks his head out, examining the road. It’s in poor repair and the last of the snow has been turned into muddy slush by vehicles with tyres the width of tree trunks. He can smell the familiar tang of turnips and livestock, fuel and wet earth. He knows from his notes that Shepton Farm is a big operation, but apart from the distant hum of a generator it looks quiet now. There are a few lights on in an outbuilding beyond the main house and he can make out the glare of a single bulb shining above what he takes to be the front door. He moves the car forward and the farm comes into focus. It’s an impressive structure: Grade II listed and two hundred years old. It’s long, rectangular, a double door in the centre of what would have been the original building. Two large bay windows protrude on either side. The farmhouse has been extended since it was first constructed and McAvoy can see a long, one-storey building running away towards the treeline. It is the largest of the buildings on the satellite images that McAvoy had called up on his laptop in a Starbucks at a motorway service station, while talking through his meeting with Owen with the two women in his life. There is a modern, three-bedroom house around a quarter of a mile from the main house and the space in between is taken up with covered outbuildings and cattle sheds. The property is bordered on all sides by quality arable land, though it still looks more like the dairy farm it used to be.
With the house on his right, McAvoy heads for a courtyard area lit by large halogen spotlights. He feels a moment’s uncertainty. It could almost be called fear. He does not chide himself for it. He has spent too much time alone in the dark, facing people who wish him harm, not to experience disquiet at situations that resonate on that same sinister frequency. He remembers his promise to Pharaoh and Roisin that he would be careful. McAvoy still hasn’t processed his thoughts about the meeting with Owen. He thought, for a moment, that Owen wanted him to proceed; to look further into the death of his young friend. But then his temper frayed and he spat such bile upon him that McAvoy half expected the other man’s saliva to start eating through his clothes. As he drove away, hands gripping the steering wheel too tightly, he hadn’t known what to do next. Should he walk away? What did Owen actually want him to do? As he went north, he started to think a little more rationally. Owen needed to protect himself. When he lunged across the table it was for the benefit of the camera and the guards. Perhaps that was the reason he was so cryptic. What had he said that might have had two meanings? Stuff about herbs and condiments. Horoscopes. Something about the dead man’s arms and asking Roisin.
McAvoy hits the brakes as he pulls into the forecourt, jerking forward in his seat. A large, battered Toyota Hilux is blocking his path, parked at an angle across the road. Through the open window, McAvoy can hear the hum of a generator and the sound of raised voices.
He opens his car door and climbs out. His foot goes straight into a puddle of dirty water. Cursing, he hops forward, reaching into his pocket for his warrant card as he makes his way past the parked car. He raises a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the lights, and stops short as he looks at the scene before him. A large man with a completely bald head has his fists around the overalls of a middle-aged man. They are almost nose to nose and the bigger man is baring his teeth, eyes bulging, spit on his chin. On the floor is an older man. One wellington boot apparently came off as he fell backwards and it sticks out of the mud, comically, as he flounders, trying to pull himself up using the metal sides of a wheelbarrow full of plastic bags.
‘Humberside Police,’ says McAvoy, instinctively. ‘Let go of him.’
The big man turns to McAvoy with a glare. ‘Fuck off, copper. I’m gonna bite his fucking eyes out.’
‘No, you’re not,’ says McAvoy, taking a step forward and reaching into his long coat. In his pocket is his asp, the extendable baton that can prove lethal in the hands of a man of McAvoy’s size, and which he has never allowed himself to use.
‘Get off me,’ squeals the man being held by his clothes. ‘Just take your stuff and go!’
The big man looks McAvoy up and down. McAvoy can see him weighing up the situation. He seems the sort of man who would love to hurt a copper, but when the copper in question looks like McAvoy, there may be merit in strategic retreat.
A sudden honk from the parked car causes McAvoy to jump and the noise snaps the tension. The big man pushes the man in overalls down to the ground and steps over his sprawled frame. He grabs two black bin-liners from the wheelbarrow and turns his back on the two men.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ asks McAvoy, shocked at his brazenness. ‘You just carried out an assault in full view of an officer of Humberside Police.’
‘Leave it,’ comes a small voice to McAvoy’s right. The older man is pulling himself up, mud on his face and clothes. ‘It was just a bit of fun. No harm done.’
The big man looks at McAvoy and winks. McAvoy would put his age at early forties. There is a large tattoo on his neck of some kind of demonic creature, which is considerably more attractive than the face of the man himself. He has waxy, fleshy cheeks and a chipped front tooth, frog-like eyes and a mouth that doesn’t shut all the way.
‘See, Officer,’ says the man. ‘No problems.’
McAvoy wants to stop him but isn’t sure what he can really do. The victims look as if they don’t want any more trouble and while McAvoy is willing to try and restrain him, he has no idea how many other passengers there may be in the car.
‘What’s your name?’ asks McAvoy, fixing him with a hard look.
‘What’s yours?’ ask the big man, through a smile.
‘Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy,’ says McAvoy, and instantly realises he only admitted this because he didn’t want to be seen to back down.
‘I’ll remember that,’ says the big man.
‘Is that a threat?’ asks McAvoy, cocking his head.
‘Couldn’t threaten a police officer,’ the big man says. ‘That would be naughty. See you when I see you.’
McAvoy holds his ground and the man walks past him and climbs into the driver’s seat of the car. McAvoy makes a mental note of the number plate. As the car’s headlights blaze into life, he gets a glance at the passenger. He’s shorter. Younger. Probably no more than twenty-five. He’s looking at McAvoy curiously, eyebrows furrowed. He has his seat pushed back as far as it will go. In the moment before the car pulls away, McAvoy clocks the black band and plastic face of an electronic tag strapped to his ankle.
McAvoy hears a thunk of metal on metal as the Hilux reverses out of the courtyard and clips the side of his own car. He winces and gives a half-hearted ‘hey’, but another dint in his battered people-carrier doesn’t seem to matter. He turns to the two men, opening his hands in a way that suggest he wants answers, now.
‘It was nothing,’ says the older man as he tries to get his foot back into his wellington boot, supporting his weight on the shoulder of the other man, who looks at McAvoy with an expression somewhere between defiance and relief.
‘What the hell was all that?’ asks McAvoy. ‘More importantly, who was it?’
The older man seems to gather himself a little. He’s in his sixties. He looks as if he was a big guy once but age has withered him. His thin, grey hair has receded back to the crown and there are patches of grey and specks of red on his upper lip and chin that suggest difficulty with his morning shave. There is a wateriness to his eyes. He is wrapped up against the cold wind which swirls around him and whips up tiny peaks on the surfaces of the dirty puddles.
‘Ron Erskine,’ says the man, extending his left hand and withdrawing it again when he sees how dirty it is. ‘This is my place. Don’t trouble yourself, Officer. Just a bit of argy-bargy.’
This man is in his thirties. He’s not actually all that small. He just appeared so next to his attacker. He’s got a broad chest and large forearms and big, broken hands. He flashes a look at Erskine, who gives a tired nod of assent.
‘Dan Prince. Foreman. Blokes call me Goalpost, if that matters.’ He gives a little shake of his head, aware he’s rambling. ‘Thanks for that. He’s a big bugger.’ He looks at McAvoy, up and farther up. ‘So are you. Honestly, it was nothing.’
McAvoy glares at the pair of them, knowing they have decided on their story and are sticking to it. He pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes out.
‘My name’s McAvoy,’ he says, treating the one fact he is sure about like a lifejacket. ‘I’m with the Serious and Organised Unit within Humberside Police. As part of our enquiries, we have a few extra little questions about the death of William Blaylock. Nothing major but any help you can give me would be appreciated.’
Erskine and Prince both suddenly look like children who have just been told that instead of going to Disneyland, they’re going to spend a fortnight getting hosed down in a cellar.
‘That’s done!’ says Erskine, aghast. ‘The inquest was yesterday. All sorted. I wasn’t to blame. That’s done!’
‘It’s been hard,’ says Prince, nodding at his boss. ‘Can’t we just let it go?’
As they continue their protestations, McAvoy leans forward and looks into the wheelbarrow. When the big man lifted out the bin-liners, some of the contents spilled out. In the half-light, McAvoy makes out a bottle of nail varnish and a small, clear vial of what looks like anti-bacterial hand-sanitiser.
Erskine sees him looking and manoeuvres his body between McAvoy and the wheelbarrow. He gives a mollifying shrug, sagging a little.
‘Sorry, sorry, I know you’re just doing your job. Look, this has been shit, y’know? I had to pay for a solicitor in case anything was said about it being my fault. Felt like a weight had been lifted. It’s done, isn’t it? You’re not reopening it or something.’
McAvoy feels a wave of pity for him. He softens his face. ‘Mr Erskine, we just want to get to the bottom of certain matters. Mr Blaylock’s name has come up in in connection with other investigations and I am trying to tick a few boxes to show we’ve done things right.’
McAvoy isn’t sure whether he’s telling the truth but decides not to analyse his words too carefully in case he finds out he is lying. He nods at the wheelbarrow. Tries to lighten the mood.
‘Not your shade, I wouldn’t have thought.’
Erskine looks confused. ‘Sorry?’
‘The nail varnish. Thought it should be Farmer Green.’
Erskine twitches a grin. It sits there, false and forced. ‘Just clearing out the Ponderosa,’ he says, and something flickers in his face as he says it. ‘The Lodge, like.’
McAvoy wonders whether he should press him, whether the man he saw is an aggrieved husband who has unearthed some kind of affair between his partner and Prince or Erskine. He feels almost relieved to have a theory.
‘What is it you need?’ asks Prince, rubbing dry mud off his hands.
‘I’ve seen your statements about the day Mr Blaylock died. Is there anything you wish to add?’
‘Like what?’ asks Erskine.
‘I’m just a little perturbed by how the auger got him where it did.’
Erskine looks exasperated, as if he has been over this too many times. ‘It was just pure bad luck. He shouldn’t have been in the building with the power tools in the first place but I’m too soft for my own good. So’s Dan. We’ve never had any bother with the inmates. They’re good workers. Good lads, though you can’t help wondering what they’re in for. We get some rough buggers out here but the lads from the prison are more grateful for the job than the students and halfwits we used to get through the agency. Cheaper, too. Don’t know where we’d be without them.’
‘Quiet here today,’ says McAvoy, looking at his watch. ‘Not even five.’
‘Not much to be doing.’ Prince shrugs. ‘December’s a quiet month. We still have a few dropped off by the prison bus but they help me on a bit of upkeep and general maintenance rather than planting or picking. We did sprouts last year. You should have seen the place last December. Bloody manic it was. Didn’t plant them this year. Good decision.’
‘The building where the incident occurred,’ says McAvoy. ‘That’s some way from the main farm, yes?’
‘It’s a big spread,’ says Erskine. ‘I’ve owned it twenty-seven years and bought four new plots in that time. Two hundred and seventy acres in total. Outbuildings all over.’
‘And why was Mr Blaylock in that particular building at that time?’
‘It was a hot day. Bloody baking, to be honest. He went in to cool off. It’s nice and shaded. Can’t blame the lad for wanting to get out of the heat.’
‘So he was hiding there, effectively? Bunking off?’
Prince grins. ‘Boys will be boys.’
‘And then he, what, just picked up an enormous drilling machine and started playing with it?’
‘We think he’d seen me using it,’ says Prince, a little too loudly. ‘Probably wanted to try it. It’s got a hell of a kick, though. Just horrible luck.’
‘His friend,’ says McAvoy. ‘The one who found him. He gave evidence that suggested there was some delay between his discovery and calling the emergency services.’
‘No mobile signal out there,’ says Erskine. ‘Had to call from the house. Wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. He was long since dead.’
McAvoy considers this. Looks at the two men with just enough doubt in his expression to make them feel uneasy.
‘Could I see the building where it happened?’
Prince is clearly about to blurt out a reason why not, when Erskine says that yes, of course McAvoy can see it.
‘Bit of a hike,’ says Erskine. ‘My old knees are bugging me but Dan can run you out, yeah?’
Prince looks less than pleased, but he does a good job of covering it up. ‘Wait there,’ he says, and turns and walks across the forecourt.
‘Nice home,’ says McAvoy, companionably, as they wait. ‘Nice place to raise kids.’
‘Kids are all grown up,’ says Erskine. ‘Nice when they were little, though.’
‘You live here with your wife?’
He shakes his head. His lips become a line. ‘She’s not so well. Early-onset Alzheimer’s. She’s only sixty-seven. Bloody horrible illness. She’s in a nice place out near York. Expensive, but she’s happier there.’
McAvoy closes his eyes. Such horrors terrify him. He has always had a parent’s fear of the bruises on his children’s legs turning out to be leukaemia, or that the headaches he suffers are signs of a growing tumour. Roisin helps him overcome such paranoia, though while he agrees with her there is no point worrying, he cannot help but think he’s right to be cautious.
A moment later, Prince returns on a large quad bike. McAvoy has to fight against the grin that threatens to explode. He hasn’t been on a quad for years. Wishes the kids were here to see. He fishes a business card out of his pocket and hands it to Erskine.
‘I’d like you to call me if there’s anything you think I should know,’ he says, and then, pointedly: ‘Anything at all.’
Erskine gives a little nod and turns away, picking the items out of the wheelbarrow and stuffing them in his pocket. McAvoy swings a leg over the back of the quad and holds on to the hard plastic at the rear of the padded seat.
‘Your coat will get filthy,’ says Prince.
‘Part of the job,’ says McAvoy.
Prince turns the throttle and performs a smooth U-turn in the courtyard, then guns the bike past the nearest outbuilding and on to a road that is almost swamp-like. McAvoy holds on tight and feels the mud spatter against his trouser legs as they head past a
row of trees; their branches bare and stark, as if they have been drawn against the purple sky with a stick of charcoal.
After only a minute on the quad, a small outbuilding comes into view. From the front, it is the basic shape of an open envelope. As Prince pulls up outside, McAvoy can see that the roof and the cement between the bricks are in poor repair. The door has a new padlock on it but the wood is so old it bows at the top and the bottom. A slim man could almost slip through the gap.
Prince climbs from the quad and pulls a large bunch of keys from his pocket. He walks to the door and as he starts fumbling with the lock, McAvoy looks around him. They are half a mile from the house. At the rear of the building, the trees give way to an old privet hedge, marking a boundary line long since forgotten. The muddy track beneath his feet continues on, out towards what he takes, in this light, to be a row of greenhouses.
‘What’s farther on?’ asks McAvoy, getting his phone from his pocket and pulling up the satellite image. It shows another row of structures and what looks like a prisoner-of-war camp made of glass. He notes, as he puts his phone away, that he has a perfectly good signal.
‘Nurseries,’ says Prince, opening the door and pocketing the padlock. ‘Glasshouses. Bloody boiling in the summer. That’s where he was working the day of the accident. Like I say, sweaty doesn’t cover it. The lads would take it in turns to go and cool down. I won’t lie to you, we sometimes gave them a few beers and stuff. I know they were convicts and there are rules but they were good workers and after a bit you start just thinking of them as blokes, y’know? You don’t even want to hear their names because once you’ve got that, you start Googling to try and find stuff out. Only hard bit was keeping order. The regular staff all had mobiles and there were a few cross words when they refused to let the prisoners use them. Saw one little scrawny fella go for one of our leading hands with a cucumber in one hand and a lettuce knife in the other. It’s all part of the business, I suppose. Sometimes feels like I’m in a Dickens novel.’