by David Mark
She’s not touching the mobile phone to her ear, and she is holding it with the cuff of her blouse. It’s an unconscious thing. The phone is her own. She’s not trying to reduce the chances of leaving evidence. She just somehow doesn’t want her skin to be tainted by this phone call. She wants as little of herself as possible to be involved.
She speaks again. Wants to bite her tongue in half as she does so.
“So, you can see why I thought you should be told.”
The young woman at the other end of the line sounds confused and afraid. Helen can’t blame her. She should be.
“The other officer made it clear that I was really helping out by making a statement. I didn’t want to. I just wanted it to be over and done with. It was horrible, y’know? My dad warned me about setting up my own place, but I thought nobody would want to rob a place like this. And I didn’t go through the pockets. I don’t do that. I’m trying to run a professional business and . . .”
Helen lets her talk. Melanie Langley seems a nice girl. Helen finds it hard to imagine her kicking a robber in the bollocks. Reckons she has a friend she can rely on for that sort of thing.
“The thing is, there have been some complications. Legal issues. I won’t bore you with the details, but the thing is, Adam Downey has been released on bail. Obviously we are very keen to secure a conviction in this matter and I shouldn’t even be calling you, but I feel I have a duty to your safety. Adam Downey is a very dangerous man with dangerous friends. I’m deeply concerned that if you don’t withdraw your statement, he may take it upon himself to ensure that you do.”
Mel stays silent for a moment, then there is a snuffling noise. “How can this be happening? I didn’t . . . I mean, it wasn’t even . . . Please, what should I do?”
Helen presses her lips together. She feels tears drip onto her collarbone. She is disgusting herself more every second she stays on the line. She knows she should confess all to Pharaoh. To McAvoy. She knows that she did nothing wrong. Not until now. But she cannot bear the thought of that video being seen. And more, the man who called her had known so much. He had seemed so absolutely certain when he told her how easily her career could be smashed. In the past couple of days she has told herself that perhaps she is doing Mel a favor by persuading her to withdraw her statement. She has no doubts that Downey’s employers will stop her from talking one way or another. Yet she still finds herself abhorrent. She can smell the stench of corruption on her skin. It is choking her. Inside the little car, with its misted windows, her senses are full of her own vile lies and it makes her want to gasp for air.
“Miss Langley, I would get in a great deal of trouble if it was discovered I was making this call. My advice would be to call the investigation team and simply tell them you are no longer sure what you saw. Then perhaps you should spend a few days somewhere else. Do you have a friend you could stay with? Your parents?”
Mel just snivels. She doesn’t deserve this.
“Miss Langley, I have to go. I hope you understand that if the situation changes, we will of course require you to tell a court what you saw. But at this moment, your safety is paramount. I hope I won’t need to be in touch again.”
She ends the call, then opens the car door and throws up all over the rutted concrete. She’s barely eaten, so the vomit is just acid and water. She sticks her fingers down her throat and tries to bring up more.
Through tears, with the taste of acid and lies on her tongue, Tremberg looks across the car park. Between two vehicles, she can see Aector McAvoy talking to a short, hard-faced woman beside a little car. McAvoy starts leading her into the station. He has an arm on her elbow, as if she is a refined old lady who needs a little help with the steps. Looking at him, the smell of vomit in her nostrils, she realizes how much she wants to be like him. He doesn’t manipulate. Doesn’t strategize. He won’t have thought to ingratiate himself with the woman by taking her arm. He won’t be trying any psychological tricks. He’ll have taken her arm because it’s the right thing to do. It’s what she needs, in this place, at this time. Helen wouldn’t have thought to do that, and if she had, she’d have been too unsure of herself to see it through. She wants to be a good policewoman. She wants to catch villains. But nothing feels as clear as it used to. Her own investigation is currently stalled: Ray’s suspension left her small team of detectives with little or no direction. Shaz Archer looks like a lost puppy without her mentor. She’s spending most of her time on her mobile phone, talking to Colin and trying to find out what is going on.
As she heaves spittle onto her dowdy shoes and feels the hot emptiness in her belly, Helen is overcome with a need to prove her worth. She needs to remind herself that she is a good person who has simply been trapped into doing a terrible thing. She wipes her mouth and pops a piece of chewing gum onto her tongue, then checks her reflection in the rearview mirror and manages to take some of the darkness from under her eyes with a stick of concealer. She sniffs, then steps over the vomit and crosses the now-empty car park. She uses her electronic card to open the doors, then heads for the major incident room.
Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together . . .
As she enters, Ben Neilsen is in the middle of an extravagant stretch. His shirt is riding up to reveal a belly with a Hollywood six-pack. He’s a keen sportsman who hits the gym twice a day, though his stamina seems to be used for bedroom athletics rather than anything on a playing field. He’s very good with the ladies. Helen looks at him and has to swallow down spittle and bile as she realizes that such a man could easily be put to use by Downey’s employers. She has begun to think of them as talent spotters. Businessmen adept at spotting rising stars. Without realizing it, she has mentally christened them “Headhunters.”
“All right, Hell’s-Bells? You bored?”
Helen manages a smile. Neilsen looks a little wide-eyed, as if he has been staring too long at a computer screen.
“We’re a rudderless ship, Ben,” she says sarcastically. “Without Colin’s example and leadership, we’re lost in a fog. I thought I’d see if I could be of any use to you.”
Neilsen raises a suggestive eyebrow, then laughs. Nothing will ever happen between him and Helen. They’re friends, and she knows too many of the places that his penis has been to want to go near it herself.
Neilsen smiles, sitting forward in his chair. He leafs through the pile of papers on his desk then hands a list of names to Helen.
“The big man’s asked me to look into those buggers. The family of the shrink who looked after Hoyer-Wood. You know where we’re at with that, do you?”
“I’m in the dark, Ben.”
Neilsen quickly fills her in. She nods as he outlines McAvoy’s theory.
“And the pathologist says that’s feasible, yes? That her chest could have been caved in by repeated compressions? Like CPR? Fuck, that’s awful.”
Neilsen nods. “Aye, our killer’s not squeamish. So, can I leave those names with you? It would be a big help.”
Helen is already jotting down important names, dates, times, and places from the brief synopsis Neilsen has just given her. She needs this. Needs to work. Needs to atone. She crosses to her own workstation and starts bringing up databases. For the next forty minutes, the incident room is silent, save for the occasional groan or muttered phone call from Neilsen.
Soon, Helen is lost in work, her face lit by the light of the computer monitor. She acquaints herself with Caneva’s children. His daughter, Maria, is now twenty-eight years old and lives in West Yorkshire, alone. She has one police caution to her name, having been involved in a protest about the building of an incinerator in a Holderness village. A Google search shows that she has been active in several campaign groups for environmental issues and is a registered nurse. She has a Facebook page, but has not used it for several months and only has a dozen friends on it. Her profile picture is a photograph of a cat. Helen makes a note of
her discoveries but fancies she has drawn a dead end. She turns her attention to Maria’s younger brother, Angelo.
A moment later, Helen is nervously jiggling her legs and tapping a pen on her teeth. She wonders if she has struck gold. Angelo Caneva was sentenced at sixteen years old to a stretch in a young offenders institute in North Wales; half an hour from Chester, where his father now lives. He was sentenced for petrol-bombing a minibus, but had been getting into steadily worse trouble with the police over the previous eighteen months. The family lived in London at that point. His decline in behavior coincided with his mother’s suicide.
Helen pulls up a web browser and tries to find any court reports on the inquest into his mother’s death. She finds only a few In Memoriams that mention her name, and one paragraph in a London newspaper that said a verdict of suicide had been recorded.
Helen pulls a face. She wants more. The details of the court case are sketchy, and she can’t find any newspaper reports on the case because Angelo’s name would not have been mentioned in any press cuttings due to his status as a minor. She examines the date of the sentence. Notes that it was passed at a Crown Court rather than a Youth Court. She alters the boundaries of her web search. Finds the local paper for that region. Keys in a few choice words and waits for something to happen.
Helen lets herself smile for the first time in days. Angelo Caneva was jailed almost a decade ago for petrol-bombing a minibus carrying patients from a local private medical facility to physiotherapy at a nearby spa. It does not take Helen long to ascertain that Hoyer-Wood was a patient at that facility, at that time. Nobody was hurt in the incident, which occurred more than a hundred miles from Angelo’s London home, but the charge was arson with intent to endanger life. The boy’s solicitor offered little mitigation. He said his client had refused to cooperate in the preparation of reports, and could only tell the court that Angelo had been slowly declining since the death of his mother. He told the court the boy had been a clever and diligent pupil at a high-class boarding school before his expulsion for continued misbehavior, and that his father was struggling with business debts and the responsibility of raising two teenagers alone. The judge had given Angelo six years.
Helen feels suddenly hungry. She nips to the vending machine and comes back with two packets of crisps and a can of pop. She has almost forgotten the phone call to Mel. Has almost put Mark and Downey and the Headhunters from her mind. She feels like a detective.
Her mouth full of crisps, Helen punches a phone number into the landline on her desk and finds herself speaking to the hassled receptionist at the young offenders institute near Wrexham where Angelo Caneva was an inmate. After introducing herself and stressing that she is part of a murder inquiry, she manages to get the chief warden on the line. He has a Liverpool accent and sounds less busy than his colleague. Helen tells him what she wants. Who she is. Asks him if he remembers Angelo Caneva.
“Quiet boy? Yes, I remember Angelo. Didn’t really fit in. We had problems.”
Helen tries to keep the excitement from her voice. “Were you chief warden then?”
“No, senior warden. Angelo was nice enough, though he looked soft compared to some of the lads we get. He had the hard time you’d expect, really. He liked books and drawing and just being left alone. Took him a while to warm up, but he got the hang of doing time. Served just over three years, I think. Never went to mainstream prison. Is he in trouble again?”
Helen bites her lip, not knowing whether she should give too much away. “We would love to speak to him in connection with the current inquiry. He’s not a suspect, you understand. He just might be able to shed some light on a few things.”
The chief warden makes a noise that suggests he’s thinking. “I wish I had more to tell you. His file won’t have much more in it. He did a couple of courses while he was with us. Took his exams, now I remember. Got good grades, considering. Earned his stripes with the lads in a couple of scraps. Was popular by the time he left. I thought he’d probably go into something useful. He did a City and Guilds course in something or other. Might have been plastering. I’ll check and get back to you. I do remember he was always in a world of his own. Always had his mind somewhere else. I hope he’s got himself sorted out, Constable. We always expect the worst, but Angelo seemed to have more about him . . .”
Helen leaves her contact details and hangs up. She rubs her nose and it makes a squeaking sound. She notices her phone is ringing in her bag, but decides to ignore it. She doesn’t want to be distracted from this feeling. She clicks back to the Police National Computer and looks into the eyes of Angelo Caneva’s mug shot. He’s young. Small. Dark-haired and frightened. But there is something else in his eyes. Something that could be called determination.
Helen prints the image. She is about to cross to the printer when the phone on her desk begins to ring. Impatiently, she snatches up the receiver and barks her name.
“Constable Tremberg” comes from a familiar voice. “Please don’t ignore my calls. I could be in distress and require your assistance.”
The joy of the previous moment dissipates as the color drains from Helen’s face. She sinks into her chair.
“I did what you asked,” she hisses, spittle hitting the receiver.
“Indeed you did, and your services are hugely appreciated. I understand that Miss Langley is busy recanting her blasphemies as we speak. No, I am seeking your assistance in one more matter. You may not be currently aware, but one of my well-informed young uniformed constables told us some days ago that, when he was apprehended, Mr. Downey was spitting and cursing with regard to having had his money taken by a girl of decidedly Romany appearance. I am not of the opinion that Miss Langley could be described in said terms. No, I require a little clarification from yourself regarding the identity of this unknown creature.”
Helen feels herself begin to shake. Jesus, no . . .
“I am not a great believer in happy accidents. I don’t find the idea of serendipity to be reliable. But sometimes the universe does play along. I’m referring to McAvoy. Like yourself, Detective Constable, he will soon become a little more manageable. And it would seem Sergeant McAvoy has a wife who caused considerable embarrassment and distress to our Mr. Downey.”
Helen leans forward. Rests her head on the cool corner of the desk. She can feel herself coming apart.
“Don’t,” she says softly. “Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re planning, don’t go near her. You don’t have any idea what you would be starting.”
From the other end of the line comes a faint laugh.
“So, you concur. The young Mrs. McAvoy is indeed the person to whom we should be addressing our petition for recompense. Thank you, Detective Constable. Now, please do not trouble yourself any further. I can assure you that your contributions to our cause have been appreciated. The funds deposited in your bank account will remain there as a gesture of gratitude. Do not be foolish enough to warn your superior about the information we have in our possession. The fates have actually succeeded in saving Mrs. McAvoy from our original plan. Mr. Downey will not be pleased, but Mrs. McAvoy will be grateful her identity has become known to us. I am an adaptable man. But I guarantee you that our plans will become more severe in execution should you go running to her husband with your stories. I thank you for your time.”
Helen holds the phone to her ear long after the call is terminated. She feels part of herself leave her body and die in the hot, static-laden air. Then she wipes her face with the heel of her hand and manages to stand up. She needs to find McAvoy. She needs to help him catch a killer. She just hopes that she can look him in the eye.
• • •
It’s cold in the interview suite. Despite being a small, airless space, the walls have shielded the little room from the heat of the day. The walls are damp and the air cool. The hairs on Ashleigh Cromwell’s arms rise as she crosses them on the chilly rubber surface of
the desk.
McAvoy sits down opposite her and hands her the can of fizzy pop she had asked for, along with a see-through plastic cup. She takes it gratefully and pours herself a drink. She watches the bubbles bounce on the surface, then drains it. She closes her eyes, trying to compose herself. McAvoy lets her take her time. He sits back in the chair, content to wait.
Ashleigh Cromwell had been living with her husband and children for more than ten years when Sebastien Hoyer-Wood had taken a shine to her that winter day in Bridlington fourteen years ago. She was no holidaymaker. The house where he tried to rape her was the family home, on a quiet street near the seafront. She’d seen him looking at her a few hours before the attack. She and her husband, Johnny, were having a drink in one of the boozers off the promenade. He’d stared. Stared until her husband had asked him what he was looking at.
“He seemed out of place,” says Ashleigh. “Everybody knew Johnny. He was a bit of a character. He was a tough man and everybody knew we were a couple. The way he was looking . . . it just wasn’t . . . Johnny gave him a look to say clear off, and he did. We just laughed about it. It didn’t matter. He was just a bloke. It didn’t seem to matter.”
It had mattered that night, of course. Sebastien Hoyer-Wood had got into their house.
Ashleigh plays with the empty cup. She’d told McAvoy on the way in that she didn’t like coppers. Didn’t like police stations or telling tales. She seems uncomfortable here, as though she is being interviewed under caution. McAvoy is trying to put her at her ease. She looks at him before she speaks again, as if to thank him for his patience. Then she takes a breath, and stumbles on.
“I reckon he sneaked in when Johnny was having a fag with the back door open. They found his clothes, later on. He’d been naked when he came in. Must have hidden somewhere in the house until we went to bed. My kids were there. That’s the bit that I can’t get past. My kids . . .”
Shortly before midnight, Ashleigh and Johnny Cromwell were woken by Sebastien Hoyer-Wood pouring petrol over their sleeping bodies. The bedroom light was switched on and a naked man in a surgical mask told them to take a deep breath. To sniff the air. To look at what he had in his hand.
