by David Mark
Millions of pounds in regeneration money has been thrown at this estate but it’s still got more anti-social behaviour orders per square mile than anywhere else in the city and a fair number of weddings and christenings are planned around court dates. It’s a place where the only way to get rid of unwanted furniture is to put it in the garden with a ‘for sale’ sign.
Helen Tremberg rubs a hand over her face. She smells talcum powder, antiseptic wipes, egg mayonnaise and bleach. Her olfactory bulb is used to such assaults but today’s battering veers close to grievous bodily harm. She shudders. Unearths a packet of extra-strong mints and crunches through two like a horse with a sugar lump, allowing the aroma to fill her head and numb her tongue. She rummages in the pocket of her suit jacket and finds her vanity mirror. Flips it open and gives herself the once-over. Passable. Still not pretty but far from undesirable. Brown bobbed hair, broad shoulders and gentle eyes. Tiny silver studs in her ears. A baggy roll-neck jumper hiding her shape. She’s still conscious of the baby-weight. Probably always will be.
Helen is sitting at a round table in the deserted bar. The place shouldn’t be open but she spotted the caretaker and persuaded him to let her inside. He’d been happy for the company. Happy to help the police. Happy to tell her that while a lot of people on this estate thought all coppers should be burned alive, he would definitely piss on one if they were on fire.
‘I’m sorry about that. It was just, you know . . . not something I ever thought I’d see . . .’
Helen looks up into the pale, pinched face of the young police community support officer. She can’t be much more than twenty-five. Frizzy ginger hair, Celtic skin and freckles. Red eyes and nose from the cold and the tears. She’s sorted herself out a little in the toilets of this glorified community centre but there is no mistaking the fact that she looks shaky and scared.
‘Don’t give it a second thought,’ says Helen, patting the chair opposite and pushing the packet of mints towards her. ‘It would be more worrying if it didn’t upset you. Bloody hell, you saw something awful. There’s no training can prepare you for that. I just wish I could tell you that you’ll never see anything like it again. I’m afraid by the time you retire you’ll be able to eat a full fried breakfast from a tray while watching a post mortem.’
The PCSO manages a smile. Her name is Vicki. She wanted to be a social worker when she left university but didn’t quite get the grades and couldn’t seem to get her foot in the door. Worked in a bar of an evening and an office during the day before her mum showed her an advert in the paper. Reckoned she would make a good PCSO. Reckoned it was perfect for her. It’d allow her to help people and build up her confidence. The advert had been placed to attract people with ‘excellent communication skills and experience of dealing with difficult situations’. Vicki wasn’t sure she qualified on either front, but telling her mum she was too nervous to apply led to one of those difficult situations, and the experience of it led Vicki to fill in the damn form. She hadn’t been entirely sure she even wanted the job when she went for the first of the interviews but has now been in the role for over a year and is enjoying it, truth be told. She likes the uniform and the camaraderie. She’s making some headway with the local teens. Some of the mums know her by name. It was the proudest moment of her life when a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl sought her out and asked her advice on what to do about the baby she thought she might be carrying. Vicki didn’t know what advice to give, but she knew that by asking, the girl was demonstrating that Vicki was, in some way, a person whose opinion might count. That felt good. She’s recently begun to consider applying for the regular police service. She can see herself as a community police officer, can see the attraction of getting villains off the street and helping nice people lead nicer lives.
She was still feeling that way until the early hours of this morning, when she forced the door of the property on Ryehill Grove and found the body of Raymond O’Neill.
‘You’ve done great,’ says Helen warmly, using the tone and body language that her former boss Trish Pharaoh seems to manage so effortlessly. Helen feels a bit of a fraud. She’s not great at flattery. Gets a bit embarrassed by the whole affair.
‘I wasn’t sick,’ says Vicki, with some pride. ‘Well, I was a bit, but not at the scene. There’s no contamination, I was careful.’
Helen smiles. Pulls out her notebook. ‘You did great,’ she says again, and makes a mental note to come up with a better platitude if she is ever called upon to do this again.
‘He called me a cunt, once,’ says Vicki, looking down at the grey-blue carpet and flicking at something with her clumpy black boot. ‘O’Neill, I mean.’
Helen decides not to make a note. She nods. ‘From what I’ve heard, he used that word the way most people use punctuation.’
‘He was horrible,’ says Vicki. ‘I don’t mean he was horrible enough to deserve that, but . . .’
‘Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t,’ says Helen, candidly. ‘That’s not for us to worry about. Now, I really need a bit of focus from you, okay, Vicki? You’ve done great. I mean, brilliant. It must have been awful, seeing that. But you’ll feel better when you’ve got your statement down on paper. There’s no rush for that. All I need from you is the bare bones, okay? I’m not the expert on this estate. You are. I don’t know very much about Raymond O’Neill. You know more than I do. So, fill in the blanks.’
Helen takes another mint from the packet. Gets another whiff of her lunch and her six-month-old baby. She has to fight back the smile that threatens to erupt on her face whenever she thinks of the child. Tells herself not to be soppy when she’s supposed to be working. Of course, she isn’t actually supposed to be working. Not according to the rota. Helen has been back from maternity leave for just under a month and found herself temporarily seconded to the Drugs Squad under the command of the unit’s new boss, Shaz Archer. Helen has always detested the snotty cow but is now almost obsessive in her loathing. She hates the fact that Archer is now a DCI. As if she didn’t already have everything! Archer should be here now, getting her hands grubby on the Preston Road estate. But Archer has an important polo match today. She’s somewhere down in the stockbroker belt, riding her pony and swinging her mallet and drinking Pimm’s with blonde, toothy girls and tall men with ancestral quiffs and floppy lips. Helen isn’t part of that crowd. Isn’t part of any crowd, really. What she is, is a bloody skivvy. She should be watching the Grand Prix with her dad and little Penelope, wrist-deep in a bag of chocolates, wearing jogging pants and slipper-socks and dozing, gently, in a room that smells of gravy. Instead she’s here, doing Archer’s job, talking about a scumbag whose murder sounds as though it should be celebrated with fireworks and an open-top bus parade.
‘Is DCI Archer going to be coming down personally?’ asks Vicki, and there is something a little like awe in her voice. Archer is fast becoming a pin-up girl for a certain type of impressionable youngster. She’s stunningly good-looking and tough as discount steak, with an arrest record that a lot of coppers would kill for. The Hull Daily Mail recently ran a four-page spread on this glamorous face of local policing, painting a picture of a dedicated and determined young woman whose story should be made into a TV crime drama. They made out that she was a feminist’s dream and a slap in the face to chauvinists – conveniently forgetting that they wouldn’t have bothered giving her any publicity if she hadn’t been all fake tits and shiny teeth.
Helen lets her distaste show on her face. ‘I think I’ll be doing the legwork here,’ she says, icily. ‘DCI Archer is having a bikini wax in the morning and needs time to emotionally prepare.’
Vicki gives a confused smile. Looks disappointed and trembly-lipped.
Helen has her pen poised over a page full of notes she scribbled on the drive over from North Lincolnshire an hour ago. She found plenty of information online about O’Neill. The local papers were full of him last February and the reports about his trial were a useful précis of his criminal life to date. Helen already feels as though w
hoever killed him has not robbed the world of one of its great thinkers.
Raymond’s extended family was the terror of the Preston Road estate. At his last court hearing, he revealed that he was the father of seventeen children (that he knew about) by eleven different women. The jury heard details of thirty-eight previous convictions, for everything from drunk and disorderly to heroin dealing. At fifty-eight, he had spent a total of fourteen years in various prisons. He had never worked, but somehow managed to own a house, a luxury static caravan and a speedboat. He also had a newborn baby, which was the reason he was spared jail for his latest misdemeanour. He had broken the wrist of a woman who tried to intercede while he was in the process of stamping on his girlfriend’s stomach outside a pub on Priory Road. He told the court he was too drunk to remember what had happened but that he had ‘probably just lashed out’.
The victim was only twenty-four, a classroom assistant who had just put a deposit on her first home. She was two years older than O’Neill’s girlfriend, who refused to give a statement or make a fuss about her own injuries. Such things were par for the course. The judge showed unexpected leniency to O’Neill, who pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and had been expecting a stretch inside. His family erupted with delight when the judge declared he was going to suspend his prison sentence and allow him home to help care for his child. The cries of the victim’s family were lost among the roar from the collected O’Neills, and while the local papers went crazy with indignation, the national press treated him like some sort of celebrity. He posed for photographs with as many of his kids as could be gathered together and revelled in his role as a cheeky scoundrel who had beaten the system.
This morning, O’Neill’s body was found in a boarded-up house on Ryehill Grove. The door was kicked open by PCSO Vicki Fry. She found Raymond O’Neill laid out on his belly with so many cracks in the back of his bald head that it looked like crazy paving. The stench climbed down her throat like fingers of fog.
‘Why were you there?’ asks Helen, and tries to keep her tone inquisitive rather than accusatory. ‘He’d never been reported missing.’
Vicki looks down at her feet. A blush creeps out of the collar of her uniform. It reminds Helen of McAvoy. Most things do.
‘There was a bit of talk on the estate that he’d done a runner but his family weren’t the sort to call the police. But from the state of him he must have been there for weeks. Months, maybe. We certainly hadn’t heard from him since the end of February when he got free. What’s that – fifteen months? He must have been there the whole time. House hadn’t been occupied in a good couple of years.’
Helen stops writing. Indicates she should slow down and start from the beginning.
‘I’d worked the night shift,’ says Vicki, taking a breath. ‘A few of us have volunteered to do some of the less sociable shifts. We go out with the regulars. I finished at eight this morning. Midway through the shift, a patrol car radioed to say there was a drunk lass on Southcoates Lane, puking in the gutter and posing a risk. I was partnered up with a PC and we weren’t far away so we went and checked it out. She was off her face but not unpleasant. I got her some water and checked she was okay and she said she had money for a taxi so we called one for her. Waited with her until it came. She sobered up enough to give us her name and address and then she started asking us why we hadn’t found O’Neill. Started giving us this stuff about him and his family being the scum of the earth and that the world was better off without him. Then she came out with it. Said that the lad her neighbour buys his weed off had been spreading it about that his body was in a house on Ryehill. He’d been in there, looking for copper. Found a body and recognised him. I asked her why he didn’t report it and she just shrugged and said he wanted to keep his head down. Then her taxi turned up.’
Helen sits, waiting for more.
‘The officer you were with,’ she says, carefully. ‘He didn’t suggest bringing her in for a statement?’
Vicki looks wretched, as though she doesn’t want to get anybody into trouble. She pulls a face.
‘She was drunk. He said it was just bullshit. Said we had her name and address if we needed it.’
Helen raises her eyebrows. ‘You didn’t support that view?’
‘I thought it was worth investigating,’ says Vicki, looking back at the floor. ‘So I popped down there after my shift. There are half a dozen empty houses. I didn’t think it would take a moment to check it out. So I had a look in the windows. Tried the doors. I opened the letter box at one of them and the smell hit me. Rotting meat and something else. Something like vegetation. Like a fish-tank that hasn’t been cleaned. There was no mistaking it. I kicked the door in. There he was.’
There is silence in the bar save for the sound of Helen’s pen scratching on the page. She deliberately keeps her eyes down in case the young officer is crying again.
‘You called it in?’ asks Helen. ‘Immediately? You weren’t concerned about getting into trouble? Not exactly procedure, is it?’
Vicki rubs her thumb against the palm of her hand, as if pushing in a drawing pin. ‘I thought that wasn’t as important as getting people there. I thought I couldn’t get into trouble for doing what I thought was best.’
Helen says nothing. She has found out to her cost just how naïve a perspective Vicki currently enjoys. She is about to press her for more when the phone rings. Her first instinct is to panic that something is wrong with Penelope. Then she realises the ringtone is not the one she has programmed for her father, who is currently babysitting. She answers with her name and rank, hoping that she is about to be told that DCI Archer has fallen from her horse and been fatally brutalised by a stallion. Instead, she hears the voice of Bernard Reardon, the lead science officer at the crime scene on Ryehill Grove. He’s a quiet, hardworking and professional man who has never made a pass at Helen or been disciplined for making inappropriate comments. As such, Helen does not expect him to rise much higher in the service.
‘DC Tremberg,’ he says. ‘I’m right in thinking you are looking after things in DCI Archer’s absence, yes?’
Helen rolls her eyes and gives a little laugh. ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ she says, sighing. ‘But yes, I’m down the road at the Freedom Centre, talking to the officer who found the body. You need me to come up?’
‘Probably not,’ says Reardon. ‘Not much to be gained, really. I’ll have the photos with you before the end of the day. We’re a little strained for resources, what with Professor Jackson-Savannah being otherwise engaged.’
‘He’s back, is he? Oh goody.’
‘Yes and no. He’s currently at the beck and call of DSU Pharaoh and her sergeant. I’m pleased we got this one and not the other. Young girl, so I’m told.’
Helen chews on her thumbnail and wonders, for a moment, what kind of case her old unit has landed. She curses Shaz Archer for requesting her transfer to the Drugs Squad, and for a moment, she once again questions the cold bitch’s motivations. Shakes away her suspicions.
‘Poor cow,’ says Helen automatically. ‘Is he okay? Actually, sorry, forget that, just tell me your initial thoughts.’
Reardon pauses for a moment, probably about to give his usual warning that nothing he is going to say should be considered fact and that she would be better served waiting for the complete report. Then he gives an audible shrug. He knows there’s no way Helen will leave it at that.
‘If the body in question is indeed Raymond O’Neill, we can say with certainty that he suffered a great deal before his death. He was tied up, gagged and beaten. It’s hard to say at this stage but some degree of care has been taken to preserve the body. We’ll have to analyse the organic material but from the lividity it certainly seems he’s been there for several months and if that is the case, I’d have expected us to be fighting bluebottles and scooping him up with a spoon. It was professionally done. That’s all I can tell you until we get things properly processed. I will email yourself and DCI Archer as soon as I hav
e more, but it may not be till the early hours.’
‘I’ll probably be awake,’ Helen says absently.
‘I heard you were now a mum,’ says Reardon, emotionlessly. ‘Good sleeper? Happy to be back?’
Helen realises the questions are automatic and not really in search of an answer. She makes some vague responses then thanks him for his time, ends the call and turns back to Vicki.
‘It was definitely O’Neill, then?’ asks Vicki, nodding slightly. ‘And he was killed?’
‘Seems like it. They hurt him badly.’
Vicki digests this. Looks around, like a schoolgirl about to say a swear word.
‘He was a horrible man,’ she says, conspiratorially. ‘When he was freed after hurting that poor woman, even the real hard cases on the estate thought it was disgusting. He was a proper bastard.’
Helen considers her notes. She fills her mind with a mixture of memories and imaginings. Sees him. McAvoy. His sad eyes and scarred skin; an oak tree whose branches are both shadow and shield. She has a constant desire to impress him. Remembers the feeling that fizzed through her when he brought her flowers and some of his wife’s home-made remedies, and first took the baby in his colossal, broken hands.
Beautiful, he had said, and her head had filled with images of Scottish kings and warrior poets and she had felt absurdly pleased that her child measured up.
The memory fragments as her phone beeps and the crime scene photos begin to fill up her inbox. She has to suppress a shudder as she opens the first image. Whoever killed Raymond O’Neill was no amateur. And they had clearly enjoyed their work.
Chapter 4
8.01 p.m.
The sky is darkening over Hull’s Old Town.
Blue lights, fluorescent coats and flickering tape are strobing and spinning at the entrance to Bowlalley Lane. This is the part of Hull that has barely changed in centuries. It’s all high buildings, old bricks, and cobbles like freshly baked loaves. A hundred yards away on Whitefriargate, men in blue shirts and girls in short dresses are drinking lager and clinking glasses and trying to pretend that the sunshine is going to come back. Their whispers join the car engines, the breaking bottles, the pleas for spare change, the pigeons rustling in the trees around Trinity Square and the echo of the bells of St Mary’s Church. They catch the breeze and rush down this man-made valley, echoing off the boarded-up offices and cut-price studio flats and soaking into the bones and bricks of this battle-scarred city.
