Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy)

by David Mark

Helen gathers her thoughts. She has to work out how to proceed. Played right, this could work out okay. If the O’Neill murder is going to Serious and Organised, she could, perhaps, go with it. Catching whoever killed O’Neill is going to take a lot of legwork. It’s the kind of case that will only be solved by good fortune and knocking on doors, and she has no desire to start walking around Preston Road with a picture of the deceased, asking people if they know who smashed a bastard’s skull to pieces. She needs resources. Needs Pharaoh and McAvoy. Needs to get away from Archer before she lets her mouth run away with her.

  Breathe, Helen. Calm down.

  Taking another handful of chocolate buttons, Helen fiddles with her computer. Finds herself on the gossip section of the Daily Mail website. Discovers that an actress she has never heard of is struggling with cellulite and that a footballer’s girlfriend has started bleaching her anus. Helen wonders why these pieces of information are so much easier to remember than passwords and PIN codes. She works her way back to the Hull Daily Mail. Curses Archer and stuffs another chocolate in her mouth. She clicks on the other stories on the news site’s homepage. Reads a little about the death of Ava Delaney. Poor lass. Sounds as though a boyfriend did it. Shouldn’t be that hard to catch. A nice collar. A chance to do something useful. Pharaoh will probably kick him in the bollocks by accident before she cuffs him.

  She clicks on another link. A feature on the growing list of unsolved crimes in the Humberside Police area. One of the losing candidates in the police commissioner election is having a pop about the police not being able to get to the bottom of half a dozen violent incidents over the past year. He mentions Raymond O’Neill and wonders why it took so long for the body to be discovered. Why had nobody been looking for him? How could a body lie undiscovered for so long? Mentions the shoot-out up at Flamborough Head a couple of years back. Bodies have yet to be recovered and the situation adequately explained. And what about the hit and run at Wawne? The debacle over Reuben Hollow. It’s a scathing piece and one that will have the top brass squirming. Helen can’t find many factual inaccuracies in it, though she does feel like mentioning that Pharaoh was doing a bloody good job catching villains until her resources were slashed in two.

  Helen finishes the chocolate. Scowls again. Wonders if she should just bugger off home. Her dad’s looking after Penelope again. Taking her around Tropical World at Cleethorpes. Helen would rather be there. He took Helen there when she was little too. They could take a ride on the little steam train. Maybe eat some fried chicken and go to the soft-play area near the cinema.

  An email alert drags her out of her reverie. She’s set up a filter on her system so that key contacts are automatically flagged as ‘urgent’. This one is top of her list.

  For the next hour, Helen does not take her eyes off the computer screen. Her notes would be illegible to anybody but her, written without looking away from the passages of text that scroll before her eyes; a Spirograph of blue ink on lined paper. Her civilian colleagues return and ask her if she would like something to eat or drink and she waves them away with a dismissive flap of her left hand. They leave her in peace. They like Helen. Everybody likes Helen. She’s tall and strong and funny and committed and she sometimes brings her baby in for them to coo over. Used to be a big-hitter, apparently. Saved the life of a copper’s wife a couple of years ago. Got more scars than a blind carpenter’s thumb, if you believe the rumours . . .

  At around noon, Helen pushes herself back from the computer. She breathes into her hand for a while, her finger hooked over her nose; elbow on the desk, knees touching the underside, biting her lip.

  Helen had almost forgotten that she had requested the information. She phoned it across yesterday afternoon, driving back over to Caistor with the smell of antiseptic and sandwiches on her skin. She asked one of the civilian officers to make a formal request to every force in the country, asking for information on all cases that carried any of the same signatures as O’Neill’s murder. Under Pharaoh, such requests were standard procedure. They had made a similar request of Interpol. She wanted data on violent incidents occurring within a month of the victim being freed from jail or walking out of court without a custodial sentence. She wanted information on any cases where the victim had previous convictions for violent crimes. She wanted information on any cases where the victim was bound and beaten. Any cases where the victim had irritants in their eyes.

  One of the civilian officers put in some hard yards to get the information back to her. Had spent the morning sifting, scrutinising and putting it into something cohesive and understandable. They had done a brilliant job. Helen would offer them a chocolate, were there any left.

  Helen feels her pulse racing. She should take this to Archer. Should throw it in the bitch’s face and tell her that she has missed a golden opportunity to cherry-pick something career-defining. It’s nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with vengeance.

  O’Neill’s killer has done this before.

  Done it well, and often.

  She picks up her phone again and chews on her lip as she wonders whom to call.

  Replaces the receiver and gets her bag.

  She has to be certain. She only has circumstantial evidence and a hunch.

  But she’s pretty sure she’s just identified a serial killer.

  Chapter 11

  ‘You’re looming a bit, Sarge.’

  ‘Sorry. Should I sit?’

  ‘If you like. You’ll still be taller than me though.’

  McAvoy pulls up a swivel chair and eases himself down onto it. Andy Daniells is right. Even seated, he casts a shadow over the constable’s desk.

  ‘This feels a bit like driving in front of your dad,’ says Daniells, as he flicks swiftly and expertly through the swirls of text and colour on the screen. ‘Y’know, where you make sure you check the mirrors properly and don’t run any amber lights.’

  McAvoy smiles a little. He quite likes the thought of Daniells wanting to impress him.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever driven my dad anywhere,’ muses McAvoy. ‘Up the wall, perhaps.’

  ‘Was that a joke, Sarge?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘It was okay. Not terrible. You should make more of them.’

  McAvoy studies the cuffs of his shirt. Roisin and Pharaoh tell him the same thing. Tell him that he can be funny, when he tries. That he should try a little banter with the lads, now and again. It might help. Might make people a bit less wary of him, make him seem less like an old warrior king and more like a functioning human being with a wife and kids and a house by the river. He keeps meaning to try it. Just can’t seem to find the nerve. He feels like a politician who has been instructed by his public relations team to smile more during interviews and who ends up grinning like a Halloween lantern and being ripped to bits on satirical panel shows. Best just keep quiet, he thinks. Don’t take the risk.

  ‘Here we are,’ says Andy. ‘This is where Ava’s boyfriend, David Belcher, died.’

  The screen fills with an image of a stretch of country road. A wall of trees on one side, barbed wire fence and open green fields on the other. Metal railings up ahead, sticking out of a low brick wall. Pylons in the distance. Sky like dirty glass. Orange cones and police tape visible in the corner of the shot. A marker and identification number propped on the tarmac, marking the spot where Belcher’s body went over the wall, through the trees and into the brown water of the slow-moving drainage stream below.

  ‘Mum thinks he was taking a walk to clear his head,’ says Daniells. ‘Mates say he was going to visit a lass. Either way, he left the Waggoners pub in Wawne at a little after ten p.m. He’d gone there with two friends.’

  ‘How? Where did he live?’

  ‘He was living with one of them at a house in Wawne. Do you know Wawne? Tiny place. First village you see if you come out of the Bransholme estate on the back road? Used to be a monastery there, I think. Or an abbey. Actually, why am I telling you? You told me! Ha!’


  McAvoy gestures for Andy to carry on.

  ‘He’d had four pints of Stella and two vodka and Red Bulls by the time he left but it seems he had been drinking at home for most of the day before that. He was pretty far gone. He was in an okay mood. They’d split up, you see.’

  ‘Andy, try and keep this in some sort of order,’ says McAvoy, grimacing. ‘He and Ava were an item, yes?’

  Andy pulls a face, chastened. ‘They started seeing each other last spring. Met in Spiders. Alternative club. All ripped black tights and eyeliner.’

  ‘I know Spiders,’ says McAvoy tiredly. He was called there plenty of times while still in uniform. Saw teenagers dressed as vampires and enough black make-up to stage a minstrels show.

  ‘What did he do for a living?’

  ‘Apprentice joiner. Cottingham firm.’

  ‘Serious relationship?’

  ‘He fell for her hard, according to mates and mum. He’d had a couple of girlfriends before but he was besotted with Ava.’

  ‘Happy relationship?’ asks McAvoy, though he knows, even as he says it, that such a thing is impossible to quantify.

  ‘Seemed so. They were looking at getting a place together. They spent a lot of nights staying over with his mates who had this place in Wawne. Anyway, it didn’t work out.’

  ‘Details, Andy . . .’

  ‘He was a jealous sort. Got his temper up after a few drinks, and anybody who drinks Stella has temper to spare. She was hard work, according to his mates. Used to go into these moods, and they knew she had a history of cutting herself. They weren’t really suited. His mum met Ava once and thought they weren’t right for each other. She said he was a simple lad, but she didn’t mean it nastily. I got what she meant. He wanted a house and a job and Sky TV and a wife and kids. Maybe a fortnight in Majorca once a year. Wanted to drink lager and play football. Ava seems to have wanted more than that. She liked poetry and music and she analysed the world. His mum said she was a moody cow. She messed with his mind a little. Ended it and broke his heart.’

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘It ended last June. They hadn’t been together very long. He didn’t take it well. Really didn’t know if he loved her or hated her. You know how they get.’

  McAvoy almost pushes Andy for more information on what he means by ‘they’ but he feels he already knows. ‘They’ are the men who lose their temper and attack their partners. ‘They’ are the people who take up most of a police officer’s working day. They are the fucking bastards.

  ‘The night he died,’ says McAvoy, staring again at the image on the computer screen, taken by accident investigators last summer. ‘He’d left the pub, worse for drink . . .’

  ‘He had an ex-girlfriend lived in Bransholme. It’s a couple of miles on foot. He’d had a skinful, wanted a shag. Sorry, boss, but that’s what his mates said.’

  McAvoy nods. He’s holding a can of fizzy orange in his hand and realises it’s getting warm. Takes a swig. Licks the stickiness from his lips. Presses the can to his forehead and is half surprised not to hear a sizzle.

  ‘Looks like the vehicle came around this bend,’ says Andy, pointing at the screen, ‘and hit him hard enough to send him over the wall. He was in the water three days before anybody found him. Bloody horrible conditions and even in that space of time he was bloated as hell by the time the forensics boys got their hands on him. The car hit him from behind. No way of knowing what vehicle – there are no paint traces. He hit the wall on his way over. Smashed his kneecap and tibia. Two ribs.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Multiple injuries. There was water in his lungs.’

  ‘He was still alive when he went into the water?’

  ‘Very briefly.’

  McAvoy nods. ‘Any sign it was deliberate?’

  Andy gives an unsatisfactory shrug. ‘No witnesses. Nobody’s come forward. No enemies to speak of.’

  ‘Record?’

  Andy flicks through his notes. ‘Police were called twice to a previous girlfriend’s home. Her mother called us in.’

  McAvoy waits. He feels a headache nagging at his temples, a stiffness in his jaw.

  ‘He was violent?’ asks McAvoy.

  ‘Domineering, you could say. But yeah, he was a bully. He’d grab her wrist and yank her about. Shake her. No punches or slaps but just enough intimidation to show he was in charge.’

  McAvoy looks at the image of Ava on the whiteboard. Recalls the details of her hospitalisation.

  ‘Do we think he bullied Ava?’

  ‘It would explain why she ended the relationship. She doesn’t seem like she’d take that for long. Could explain why she approached Jez Gavan for money. She’d rather be poor than bullied.’

  ‘Was she interviewed after his death?’

  Andy looks sheepish, even though he had nothing to do with the investigation.

  ‘His mum told investigators he had recently ended a relationship but she had no address for Ava, or a surname. There were some attempts to track her down but for whatever reason, they came to nothing.’

  McAvoy tries not to let his disapproval show. Investigations are complex affairs. Information gets lost. Leads are not properly followed up. People go on holiday and forget to finish all the jobs on their to-do list. McAvoy has been on cases so shoddily handled that it seemed they would only make an arrest if somebody walked into the police station with ‘I did it’ written on their hat. Even then, there would be a good chance somebody in the evidence store would lose the hat.

  He looks at Hannah Kelly, glued to the edge of the board like an afterthought.

  ‘Hannah,’ he says, quietly. ‘You said you had something.’

  Andy grins and takes the empty can from his sergeant. Drops it in the full wastepaper basket and makes no move to pick it up when it hits the stack of takeaway boxes and old papers and bounces onto the floor.

  ‘What day did Hannah disappear?’ asks Andy, even though he knows the answer. He wants McAvoy to act as his prompt as he divulges what he has learned.

  ‘August bank holiday.’

  ‘Look at this,’ says Andy, and brings up Hannah’s Facebook profile. It shows a ‘friend’ request, sent on 6 September, from the account of Ava Delaney.

  McAvoy takes a deep breath. Holds himself steady. He’s about to speak when he feels a presence behind him. Hears a familiar voice say a few hellos. He turns and sees Helen Tremberg. She looks agitated. She’s smiling, but it’s her serious smile. He wants to ask her what’s wrong but he feels as though he is moving closer to something. He holds up his hand to ask her for five minutes. She mouths the word ‘canteen’ and heads back the way she has come, a large sweat patch blotting the back of her pale blue blouse. He screws up his eyes. Forces himself to concentrate.

  ‘A week after she vanished,’ he says, turning his attention back to the screen. ‘It was in the papers on the Friday before. How many other friend requests has she received since she vanished?’

  ‘A dozen,’ says Andy. ‘People do that, though. They read about a missing person or a dead person and they try and find them on Facebook. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Any indication Ava had done that before?’

  ‘Once,’ says Andy, with a grin. His fingers move over the keyboard and a memorial page opens up. McAvoy recognises the girl at once.

  ‘The girl David Hogg ran over. Near Great Givendale. The girl on the horse.’

  Andy nods. ‘Smashed into her when she was out on a hack. Horse was called Alfie. Horse dead, girl never going to walk again and has so many head injuries she doesn’t remember her own name, let alone anybody else’s. Hogg’s uncle crushed the car so we couldn’t get him for it. And Hogg got his head kicked in by some third party, if you remember that particularly joyous day.’

  ‘The message that was sent to her phone,’ says McAvoy, impatiently. He knows all this. Knows that a video message was sent to Hannah’s phone from a number registered to David Hogg. Hogg has refused to explain it. McAvoy has scr
ewed himself into the ground trying to get answers from Hogg and his uncle about their connection to Hannah, but without success.

  McAvoy chews on his lip.

  ‘The rider.’ He can’t recall her name so reads it off the screen. ‘Alice Winter. We spoke to her family when Hannah went missing. The proximity between the last place Hannah was seen and the scene of the crash made it seem worth checking out. We know a video was sent to Hannah from Hogg’s phone, but we couldn’t establish any kind of connection. This is like knitting with water. Where are the statements?’

  Andy rummages in the sheaf of printouts by his desk and finds a two-page witness statement in which the distraught mother of Alice Winter explains she has never heard of Hannah Kelly, but wishes them every luck in finding her. It was of no importance, at the time. May still not be.

  McAvoy stares at the printed page, and then at the screen. Alice’s Facebook page is full of horses, just like Hannah’s. It’s sweet and pretty and heart-breaking.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  McAvoy isn’t listening. He’s looking into the eyes of a brown-haired girl in full equestrian show-jumping gear, nuzzling her face into the neck of a handsome brown horse. He looks back at the picture of Hannah on the board.

  ‘Sarge?’

  McAvoy has never taken drugs. Has always been terrified to try. But he suddenly feels an endorphin rush and a bolt of energy as his mind opens like a flower. He takes the case files from Andy’s desk and starts leafing through. Turns back to Ava.

  Three girls. One injured in a random horse-riding accident. One missing. One dead. Two pretty, well-adjusted girls and one a little wilder. Nothing to link all three. Hannah walked into the woods of Great Givendale and disappeared. Ava was killed in the bathroom of her squalid flat by somebody sick enough to scalp her bloody armpit . . .

  He fumbles through the notes. Finds a witness statement, given to a police constable a week after Hannah was last seen, by one of the drinkers outside the Gait. Hannah had waved as she emerged onto the main street, lovely in her tennis dress and Doc Martens. He’d thought she was maybe a foreigner.