by David Mark
“Did I wake you?” asks McAvoy, indicating the pillow and trying not to mention how much of her fleshy thighs he can see as she planks down and draws her legs up underneath her.
She looks puzzled, then realization dawns. “Oh, I sleep down here most nights. There’ve been burglaries. I haven’t got much to take, but I don’t like sleeping up there. Every time I hear a noise I think there’s somebody in the living room.”
McAvoy looks around him.
“Have you lived here long?”
“A few years. I’ve never really got round to doing it up the way I want. I just rent, so if I spent too much tarting it up it would just be money down the drain.”
“And you live alone?”
Maria makes a show of sticking out her lower lip. “Young, free, and single. Apart from the ‘young.’ Or the ‘free.’”
McAvoy plays with his collar. He’s suddenly very aware of how he looks. He gets out his notebook, placing his warrant card down on the sofa beside him as he does so. Maria looks at it again and her mouth opens wide.
“Oh, you’re McAvoy? I’m sorry, I was half asleep. Didn’t catch on . . .”
McAvoy takes his card and looks at it himself, as if for confirmation. “I’m sorry?”
“You got the transcripts okay, yes? I wasn’t sure I’d spelled it right.”
McAvoy feels a little lost, but he now understands how Hoyer-Wood’s psychotherapy sessions ended up in his hands and why the envelope was postmarked West Yorkshire.
“You sent them?”
Maria nods innocently. She seems to be waking up a bit now. She reaches down beside her and finds a can of pop. She sips at it and smiles.
“I spoke to Dad after you visited him,” she says. “He called me. He doesn’t very often, but I think talking to you had shaken him up a bit. He said what you wanted. What was happening.”
McAvoy looks at her. She seems utterly without guile. She’s a bright, open person, and McAvoy feels himself warming to her. As she comes alive, she seems to examine him more closely. He feels her looking at the bruises on his knuckles. The bandages. The blood and bruises.
“I’m sorry, have you been trying to get me on the phone?” she asks, raising a hand to her mouth. Her hands are cleaner than the room, with short, clipped nails. “I’m only on a pay-as-you-go phone and it’s off most of the time. I’m a nurse, you know that, yes? My bosses play merry hell with me because I’m such a bugger to get hold of. Dad does, too.”
She says it all brightly. McAvoy wants to push.
“You and your dad are close?”
Maria shrugs. She seems about to speak and then stops herself. She closes her eyes and then stands. “I’m going to make a coffee. Do you want one?”
McAvoy doesn’t know what to say. He just looks down at his notebook and stays quiet as she rolls her large rear end off the sofa and plods into the kitchen. He hears cupboards opening and a kettle boiling. Hears a fridge opening and closing and then she is back in the room, carrying two glasses of steaming brown coffee.
“No cups,” she says apologetically. “Hold it by the top or you’ll burn your fingers.”
She hands McAvoy the glass of hot liquid and he sips it, scalding his tongue. He puts it down as Maria plonks herself back on the sofa next to him. She spills coffee on her bare leg but doesn’t seem to notice. Then she looks at him so hard that he wonders if she is trying to imprint a thought on the inside of his skull.
“Angelo,” she says at last. “He’s in trouble again, yeah? I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong.”
McAvoy licks his thumb and dabs at a spot of blood on the back of his hand. “What am I thinking?”
“You’re thinking Angelo has killed these people, aren’t you?”
McAvoy spreads his hands. “We’re open-minded. But he has questions to answer. This is a murder investigation that is very closely linked to Sebastien Hoyer-Wood. I feel like I’m swimming through treacle, but the one thing I’m certain of is that somebody is punishing the people who saved Hoyer-Wood’s life. Yesterday I spoke to a lady who was there the night Hoyer-Wood should have died and who tells me that Angelo broke in to her house with plans to kill her. Angelo has spent time inside. He has a record. The picture we’re getting is of a dangerous man . . .”
Maria pulls the band from her hair as McAvoy talks and places it over her wrist. She pushes her hair back from her face and rearranges it into the same style it was before. She doesn’t look worried. Just distracted.
“He’s not dangerous,” she says. “Not really. He’s just been through a lot.”
McAvoy sighs. “Do you know where he is?”
Maria considers him. “You’ve read what I sent you, yes?”
McAvoy nods. “How did you get the transcripts, Miss Caneva? And why did you send them to me?”
For a time, the small, untidy room is quiet save for the sound of the city coming to life beyond the glass. Steel shutters are being drawn up. Car engines are beginning to purr. A letter box bangs noisily as a newspaper is pushed through it too hard.
Maria finishes her drink. She pulls her legs up afresh. She scratches at her face and makes all the little adjustments that seem to help her decide what to say.
“You know what happened, yeah? You’ve read them properly?”
“All of them. Every word.”
“You believe him? Sebastien?”
It’s a strange question, but McAvoy answers it. “They helped me put some of the pieces together.”
“I’ve had those transcripts for years, Sergeant. That man had an effect on all our lives. When you’re young you ask questions. You need explanations. There was all sorts on Dad’s computer, growing up. Angelo and me could quote you most of those sessions word for word.”
McAvoy shakes his head. Decides to be honest. “Maria, I’m lost . . .”
She gives him an indulgent smile. “I do prattle, don’t I? The funny thing is, I’ve often wondered what I would do if I ever had to tell a policeman about this. I didn’t imagine I’d be in my dressing gown in a place like this. It’s funny. The whole thing’s just funny.”
As McAvoy looks into Maria’s cheerful, pleasant face, he realizes he is talking to somebody damaged. She is too lighthearted. Too sparkly. She’s suffered and endured. She’s survived, but at a cost to some part of herself. He wonders what she allows herself to feel. He’s suddenly too hot, and yet the hairs on his arms are rising and he feels himself about to shiver.
“Angelo went off the rails when Mum was poorly,” she says. “Got into trouble more and more often. Our lives were different then. We had money, for a start. We were very London in our outlook. We’d kicked up a right fuss about the times we’d spent at that bloody place.”
“You mean your dad’s hospital?”
She snorts. “Hospital? It was a factory. A moneymaking machine. The government was throwing money at private healthcare in those days. Dad always did have an eye for a few quid.”
“Living there must have been hard . . .”
“We never really lived there,” she says, looking at the dirty sole of one foot. Her actions are childlike, and put McAvoy in mind of Fin’s school friends.
“No?”
“Weekends and holidays,” she says, licking her finger and rubbing the dirt from the knuckle of her big toe. “It was pretty, but Mum was never mad keen on us going up there too often. There was plenty of security and there really shouldn’t have been any risks, but Mum said it was no place for kids. Even so, Dad got his way. He usually did. It was okay, to be honest. Mum would take us shopping or down to Hull or over to York or wherever. We didn’t mind too much.”
McAvoy wonders what she is trying not to blurt out. He decides to steer the conversation.
“Sebastien Hoyer-Wood,” he says gently. “Tell me.”
Maria gives a high, girlish laugh.
It’s a near hysterical sound but there are no tears. She just giggles, as if the name is funny.
“We knew that him and Dad were friends at university. We knew he’d got into trouble because he was ill. We knew Dad was helping him get better, and we didn’t have any reason to doubt it when Dad said there was nothing to be scared of about having him in the house from time to time.”
“How did your Mum feel about your father having these sessions in the family home?”
Maria flashes teeth, then shrugs. “She never said.”
McAvoy waits for more. When nothing comes, he moves closer to her. Tries to hold her gaze.
“Maria, what is it you want me to know? You sent me those transcripts . . .”
She turns around on the sofa, kneeling up, and pulls the curtains aside to look at the street. McAvoy can no longer see her expression but he can hear her words.
“When we met Sebastien he was in a wheelchair. He couldn’t talk very well. He was in a lot of pain. He was a cripple, though you couldn’t use that word around Dad. I’m a couple of years older than Angelo, you know that, yes? We’d do impressions of him. It’s cruel, isn’t it? But Dad would have him in his study and they’d be talking, and sometimes Angelo and me would go and listen at the door or go outside and look through the window. Sebastien saw us, once. He was in his wheelchair, looking out the window. Dad had his back to us. He couldn’t see what we were doing. Angelo was pulling this face and being silly and I was laughing, and we saw that Sebastien was watching. We were so embarrassed. We felt really bad. He didn’t look sad, though. Not Sebastien. He looked like he was smiling. Like he found it funny. It was creepy, but it stopped us watching the sessions anymore . . .”
McAvoy wishes he could see her face. Wishes he could better read this strange young woman.
“After it all happened, our family was never the same,” she says, quieter now. “It affected us all. Mum got sick. Angelo closed down. I don’t know what happened to me. Dad started to lose everything. I needed answers. So did Angelo. It wasn’t hard to get Dad’s transcripts off his computer. I think he knows I took them, but at least it spared him having to talk to us about any of what happened. When he told me you wanted to see them, I think he was trying to wriggle out of breaking the rules. I think he knew I would send them to you. I’m pleased I did. You seem nice.”
McAvoy just stays silent.
“You know what Angelo got sent down for, don’t you? He was in a dark place. He’d started getting high. Sniffing glue, if you can believe that. It was easier for him to get his hands on than the hard stuff. He always looked young. Nobody would sell to him. He was a bit of a softy, really. Didn’t make friends very easily. And he was an angry sod in his teens. He blamed Sebastien for what was happening to us. The money. The way he felt. Mum. He must have found out which hospital Sebastien was in from some of Dad’s paperwork. Either way, he disappeared from home for a few days and then Dad got a call to say he’d been arrested. He’d thrown a milk bottle full of petrol and rags at a hospital minibus. Petrol-bombed it. We knew immediately which patient he’d been aiming at. The first question I asked wasn’t whether Angelo was okay. It was whether he’d got him.”
Maria turns back, smiling.
“In a way, he did get him. The stress of it brought on a massive stroke. Sebastien ended up worse than he had been before. Proper vegetable.”
She bursts out laughing, and McAvoy finds himself smiling out of politeness. He wants to put a hand on hers and make her tell him the bit that matters most, but there is something so brittle about the mask she wears that he fancies any contact would break her.
“The last transcript,” he says, as kindly as he can. “It was missing from the bundle you sent me.”
Maria looks serious for a moment. “I couldn’t send that. I wanted to. I wanted you to understand about Sebastien. I wanted to help you. But I couldn’t just send that to a stranger. That was where our lives changed. It would be like mailing somebody a broken heart . . .”
McAvoy stays silent. Just looks at her and hopes she’ll choose to help him.
“He wasn’t crippled by the end,” she says quietly. “Sebastien.”
“I’m sorry?” says McAvoy as he feels his heart begin to race.
“When he was first arrested and they nearly killed him and those interfering bastards saved his life. He was hurt. He was crippled. But you have to remember, he was a medical man. A physiotherapist. He knew just what to do and how much to show the people who were looking after him. He was months ahead of where he should have been, but we didn’t know that until he stood up and put a knife to Dad’s throat.”
McAvoy closes his eyes.
“That last session,” says Maria into the cloth of the sofa. “The alarm went off over in the main hospital while Sebastien was still at our house in Dad’s office. We don’t know if Sebastien set it up or just took advantage of the situation. Either way, Angelo and Mum and me were in the living room watching TV when the door of Dad’s office burst open and Sebastien came out with a knife to Dad’s throat. We screamed. We didn’t know what to do. He was the cripple. He couldn’t walk. Couldn’t talk in much other than grunts and dribble. And now he had a knife to Dad’s throat and was standing in our living room.”
McAvoy rubs his hand across his forehead, pushing the sweat back into his hair.
“What happened?”
“You know what happened.”
There is no gentle way to ask the question, but McAvoy still manages to drop his voice to a whisper. “He raped your mother, didn’t he?”
Maria gives a little snort of laughter. She shakes her head.
“He’d have liked to. Would have liked to take his turn with all of us. The way he looked at us.”
She stops and looks away.
“He’d have fucked Dad if it wasn’t that he seemed to get so much pleasure from ripping his heart out.”
There is silence in the room. McAvoy tries not to picture the scene she has placed in his head but the image is too vivid; the colors and shapes in his mind too intense. He sees it all too clearly.
“Jesus,” he breathes.
“He knew how to play us all,” says Maria softly. “Knew we wouldn’t move. He made us sit there. Made his wife and children watch as he held a knife to Dad’s throat. He just laughed in Dad’s face. He’d have started doing jumping jacks if he thought it would have helped him make his point. Dad just seemed to deflate. It was like we saw something leave his body. He just seemed to crumble, there in front of us, when he realized he had been played all along. We just sat there crying as Sebastien told Dad everything. The names. The places. All his victims. And Dad, openmouthed and wet-eyed and pitiful, losing all faith in himself and knowing, in his soul, just what he had exposed his family to.”
McAvoy says nothing. Just listens to his own breathing.
“It was the fire that ended it,” says Maria, pulling at the flesh below her chin and staring up at the ceiling. “We smelled smoke. Saw flames. We heard people banging on the door. Sebastien reacted first. Dropped to the floor like he’d fallen from his wheelchair. And then there were people in the room and we were being evacuated to safety and Dad was telling us not to talk.”
“Why didn’t he say anything?”
Maria looks at him kindly. “His reputation. The reputation of the hospital. He’d said Sebastien was ill. Said he could make him well. He would have been exposed as a fucking idiot.”
“But after all these years . . .” begins McAvoy, before a sudden flash of temper takes him. “I went to see him. Your father. He stuck to his story. Told me Sebastien had been ill . . .”
Maria rubs her cheeks. “He’s taught himself to believe what he wants to. We don’t talk about it. Nobody ever talked about it. Not even Mum when she was dying. That’s probably why Angelo and me had to do our own digging. We were so angry. Our whole lives seemed so broken
and it was all Sebastien’s fault. We dug up everything we could on him. Found Dad’s files. When we learned that he should have died that night in Bridlington it was like our hearts had been ripped out. What happened to us shouldn’t have happened. Sebastien should have died. He should never have entered our lives.”
“But the people who saved him . . .”
Maria waves McAvoy’s protests away. “I know, they were innocent. When I heard about their deaths I was sad. This was never supposed to happen. It was just a fantasy. A way to make ourselves feel better.”
“But Angelo made it real.”
Maria sucks the inside of her cheek, then slowly shakes her head. “Angelo was sent to a young offenders institute. It was rough for him. Really rough. He was a posh boy. He suffered. Suffered torments you wouldn’t believe. We didn’t exactly lose contact, but when I went to see him it was so hard for both of us that the visits got less and less. When he was released I didn’t even know about it. Then he turned up on my doorstep. I barely recognized him. He was scarred and tattooed and looked like death. He had a baby with him, if you can believe that. He came in and we talked and he told me he was trying to sort his life out. Said the baby was his brother’s, then giggled. I think he was high again. We talked some more and I gave him some money and my phone number and he went away. I know you think he killed these people, but I remember him as a kid and he just wouldn’t have that in him. I sent you those transcripts so you’d know more about the man responsible for everything. Responsible for our lives . . .”
McAvoy is about to speak again when his mobile begins to buzz. He looks anguished, but pulls the gadget from his pocket, and is pleased to see that it’s a call from Pharaoh rather than any bad news from home.
