Dark Winter (9781101599891)

by Mark, David

  “Roisin, do you mind if I . . .”

  She’s smiling. She gives the briefest of nods.

  McAvoy stops at his daughter’s cot. Rubs his big, rough fingers against her soft, fleshy cheek. Apricots, he thinks. She has cheeks like apricots.

  Forty-three missed calls.

  Seventeen text messages.

  A voicemail service filled to capacity.

  McAvoy stands in the doorway of the maternity unit, listening to the drone of voices.

  Finds the call he has been looking for.

  “Sergeant, McAvoy, hi. Erm, this is Vicki Mountford. We met the other day to discuss Daphne. Look, this might not be important, but . . .”

  McAvoy listens to the rest of the message. Pinches the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb.

  Calls her back.

  She answers on the second ring.

  “Miss Mountford, hi. Yes, sorry. Vicki. I got your message. You mentioned that somebody else might have been aware of Daphne’s essay. Is that right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she begins. “Well, I was talking to my sister, like I said in my message. It was a day or so after you and I talked. And anyway, I was telling her what we talked about and told her all about what had happened to Daphne, and we were just gabbing about it and saying how creepy and terrible it all was, and then she remembered having told her bloke about it. Well, after I put the phone down she called me back and put me onto him, and he sounded really sheepish, and anyway, long story short, he remembers having a few drinks one night and telling a couple of blokes about this poor lass who’s wound up in Hull and wrote this gorgeous essay about all the horrible things that had happened to her and how it would make a brilliant book . . .”

  McAvoy closes his eyes. He’s nodding, but saying nothing. Already he knows where this is going.

  “And this was where?”

  “Southampton,” she says, and from the wonder with which she says the word, she might as well be saying “the moon.” “He’d gone there for a job interview. He’s your eternal student, is Geoff.”

  “And?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” she says. “Geoff doesn’t remember how it came up or what led to it, but this guy he got talking to was really interested. Said he was a writer. Well, Geoff’s got a bit of a fancy for writing a book someday. So he sort of chatted this guy up. Told him what he knew, not that there was much. And he forgot about it, like. Until . . .”

  McAvoy gives a cough. Suddenly feels horribly hungry. Finds himself longing for sugar.

  “Until?”

  “He logged on to the Hull Mail website a couple of days ago. The day I rang you. And he saw the man who’s been charged. This Chandler. This writer. And . . .”

  “And it’s the same man?”

  There’s silence again, but McAvoy can hear the nod.

  He says nothing for a moment, then takes Geoff’s details. Tells her she’s done the right thing. That he’ll get an officer to take a formal statement from her sister’s boyfriend and that perhaps the lad will have to view an identity parade. Considers, for a moment, the difficulties of assembling a lineup of one-legged drunks.

  When he hangs up, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the dark glass front doors of the maternity unit.

  Notes that he is smiling.

  It’s beginning to sink in now.

  Colin Ray’s case is just waiting to be stamped on, and he knows exactly where to start.

  He raises the phone again. Rings the CID office at Priory Road, where he knows there will be nobody around to answer. Leaves a message explaining that Roisin has been ill. That he hasn’t been able to get away from her bedside to phone in. That he’s going to be away until at least after Christmas.

  Hangs up, slightly short of breath.

  He’s covering his tracks now. Nobody at the CID office will think to check the time and date of the message. They’ll just jot it down and eventually remember to pass it on to the brass. If it ever comes to an investigation, he’ll be covered.

  And he’s bought himself a few days in which to find out who really killed Daphne Cotton.

  He raises the phone again. Rings the number that has just been breathed softly into his answering service.

  It’s answered on the third ring.

  “Bassenthwaite House.”

  McAvoy rubs a hand over his face and is surprised to discover that he is perspiring. Wonders whether this is a fool’s errand. Whether this private medical center on the edge of the Pennines has anything to do with any of this. Whether Anne Montrose matters. Whether she could be next. Whether he’s just fucking wrong and Russ Chandler is indeed the man behind these deaths.

  “Hello. This is Detective Sergeant Aector McA . . .” He’s met with a bright, heard-it-all-before “hello.”

  “It’s concerning a private patient of yours. An Anne Montrose. I understand she’s on your neuro ward receiving long-term care?”

  There is silence at the other end of the line.

  “One moment, please.”

  Then he is placed on hold, and spends a good five minutes listening to a classical piece that, were he to really push himself, he would remember as being one of Debussy’s more somber works.

  Suddenly, a deep, male, upper-class voice snaps a curt “hello.” He announces himself as a Mr. Anthony Gardner. By way of job title, he brushes over a word that might be “liaison.”

  “Mr. Gardner, yes. It’s regarding an Anne Montrose. I have reason to believe that she may be a patient of yours.”

  After the briefest of pauses, Gardner clears his throat. “You know I can’t tell you that, Detective.”

  “I appreciate your obligations to your patients, sir, but there is a chance that Miss Montrose may be in danger. It would be a huge help to an ongoing murder investigation if I was able to speak to a member of her family.”

  “Murder?” Gardner’s voice loses its composure. McAvoy feels oddly pleased that, even in these times, the word retains its ability to shock.

  “Yes. You may have read about the case. A young girl was killed in Holy Trinity Church in Hull last Saturday. And the same person may be responsible for several other killings . . .”

  “But I’m sure I read that somebody had been charged over that,” he says. McAvoy hears the telltale tapping of fingers on a keyboard. He wonders if the hospital exec is logging on to a news site.

  “We have several loose ends to tie up, sir,” says McAvoy, with as much sinister foreboding as he can muster.

  Gardner says nothing, so McAvoy plays a trump card.

  “You may also have read that one of the victims was burned alive while in a hospital bed, sir.”

  There is silence for a time. McAvoy hopes Gardner is considering the cost of being unhelpful. Wonders if he is weighing the angry phone call he may receive if he gives out patient details without going through the proper channels against the shit-storm that will descend if one of his patients gets herself immolated.

  At last, Gardner gives a sigh. “Can you leave me your number, Detective? I’ll phone you right back.”

  McAvoy thinks about saying no. At protesting that he’ll stay on the line while Gardner does what he needs to do. But his approach seems to be working, and he doesn’t want to push things hard enough to make them fail. Not yet. So he leaves his number and hangs up.

  Paces for a while. Texts Tom Spink and Trish Pharaoh. Tells them Roisin is much better. That Lilah is thriving. Asks about Helen Tremberg.

  His mobile rings. Anthony Gardner, sounding like he’s giving out the combination to his safe, is curt and quiet, as though afraid to be heard. He’s on the phone less than twenty seconds, but he gives McAvoy what he needs.

  McAvoy gives a little nod to himself. Says nothing as he hangs up and immediately dials another n
umber.

  The call goes to voicemail.

  “This is Sergeant McAvoy. Many thanks for those details. I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot the other day, but I appreciated your change of heart. You were right. Anne Montrose is indeed a patient at that center. And you won’t be surprised to learn who’s paying the bills. I think there may be a story in all this. Give me a call if you’re interested.”

  He ends the call. Counts to twenty. Enough time for Feasby to listen to the message. To mull it over. To give a sigh and give in to his hack instincts . . .

  McAvoy’s phone rings.

  “Sergeant,” comes a voice. “This is Jonathan Feasby.”

  22.

  The clock on the dashboard reads 1:33 p.m. It’s getting dark. Perhaps it never got light.

  McAvoy is eighty miles from home, somewhere that the road signs claim to be the heart of Brontë country.

  In the distance, the moors of West Yorkshire scream with bleak foreboding. Although the grass is damp and green, he would only be able to draw this picture with charcoal. It is a rain-lashed, empty, and menacing landscape, fighting against a constant wind beneath skies the color of quicksilver.

  The track veers left. McAvoy follows it.

  He steers the car through black wrought-iron gates onto a graveled drive. The driveway opens onto a large forecourt, which borders an immaculate green lawn, lush with dew and fine rain.

  Against the darkening sky sits the house. Broodingly wealthy and eccentrically frayed around the edges.

  “Take it easy,” he says to himself, as a prickling patch of sweat forms between his shoulder blades. Wishes he looked more like a police officer. In his stinking rugby shirt, threadbare jeans, and increasingly ragged designer coat, he looks more like a tramp who’s robbed a fancy-dress shop.

  A movement behind him makes him turn. Another car is pulling into the driveway.

  McAvoy does his best to fasten his shirt by its one remaining button but concedes defeat as it comes off in his hand.

  He approaches the other vehicle, which is occupied by two men. One is perhaps in his fifties. He has graying hair and sharp, hawklike features. The other is a younger man. Big, with a GI Joe–style crew cut.

  He spins as a sound comes from the house.

  A curvy, middle-aged woman in an expensive dress, black raincoat, and leather boots emerges from the large oak double doors beneath the granite portico at the front of the house. She has blond hair running to gray, cut into a layered bob. She is striking, though there is a sagginess to her face that suggests a melted beauty, that if she could just be twisted tight from the scalp, she would be vivacious and desirable once more.

  The older man comes round from the driver’s side. He is wearing a pair of jeans, an expensive pink shirt, and a tweed jacket beneath a padded coat. A pair of glasses hangs on a chain around his neck, and his face is so closely shaven that the skin looks raw and painfully abraded.

  He extends a hand as he approaches, and a gold watch glitters at his wrist. He jerks his jaw out a little, as if to say hello. “You McAvoy?”

  “Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. Humberside Police Serious and Organised Crime Unit. Lieutenant Colonel Montague Emms, I presume?”

  The other man gives a grin. “Not anymore,” he says. “Not the rank, anyway. I’m still Montague Emms, but I hate that, so call me Sparky. Everybody else does. Even the lad Armstrong, here.”

  Emms extends a hand. McAvoy finds a calloused, rough palm and fingers. Gives a subtle roll of his thumb upon the back of the proffered hand and feels a set of knuckles that have been broken and inexpertly set.

  Emms gestures in the direction of the house. “Shall we?”

  The woman in the doorway retreats inside as they approach. Emms makes a show of having forgotten something obvious and turns back to the soldier. “Get your stuff, son. The boys will be back soon to show you where you’re going. There’s a barn and stables down that track to your left if you want to keep warm.”

  He turns back to McAvoy before Armstrong can even snap off a salute.

  “New recruit?” asks McAvoy as they pass through the doors.

  “Possibly,” says Emms, who, up close, is taller than McAvoy has realized. He walks with a straight back and firm, confident steps.

  “Lovely place,” says McAvoy conversationally as they pause in the hallway. A few steps ahead, the woman is opening a wooden door set in an oak-paneled wall. She smiles at them both, pushes the door back as far as it will go, and then steps back.

  “Guess we’re going in my study,” says Emms lightly. “That’s the wife, by the way. Ellen. Looks after me. Don’t know where I’d be without her.”

  “I’ve got one of those,” says McAvoy, before he can help himself.

  “A good woman’s worth her weight in gold,” says Emms, and the two exchange a look that suggests they share a wisdom and truism that not many other men have learned. McAvoy finds himself warming to the man.

  “Right, I’ll just go rustle us up a pot of tea. You make yourself comfortable in my study, and I’ll be back in a jiff. Tea, yes? You don’t strike me as a coffee drinker.”

  “Is that racial stereotyping, sir?” asks McAvoy, with enough of a smile to show he’s joking.

  “Ha!” says Emms, throwing his head back.

  Emms is still laughing as he strides away, turning left at a door opposite the study and leaving a trail of muddy boot prints on the wooden floor.

  McAvoy has to bow his head slightly as he enters the study. The house must be at least three centuries old, and he knows from experience that doorways then were built for a smaller race.

  It’s a modest rectangular room, with a large sash window taking up almost the whole of the far wall. Two computers and three telephones sit on an antique desk, which is littered with typed documents and what looks like haphazardly folded architectural blueprints.

  On the desk, in an ornate gold frame, is a pen-and-ink drawing. McAvoy has to squint to make it out. A face or a form? A landscape? It seems to have been scribbled and scrawled, but upon closer inspection he sees that each line has been individually etched. It is a bewildering piece of haphazard beauty that McAvoy wishes he better understood.

  The light from the window is insufficient to illuminate the room, so McAvoy reaches up and flips an old-fashioned metal light switch. The bulb flickers into life.

  McAvoy finds himself staring at an entire wall of photographs. Squares of corkboard have been nailed up, and their surfaces are adorned with snaps of smiling, grinning men in military fatigues. McAvoy examines the images. There must be hundreds of men here. Sitting on tanks. Giving thumbs-up on dusty, sun-baked runways. Overloaded with packs and guns, helmets and radio equipment, lounging in the backs of open-top Jeeps or stripped to the waist and greasy with exertion, a football between their legs and sand on their boots. Some of the images must be thirty years old. In some, the mustaches of the officers and the poor, grainy quality of the images put McAvoy in mind of footage he has seen of the Falklands War. He wishes he’d done more research on Emms’s military career before he asked Feasby to arrange this meeting. Wishes he knew what the fuck he was doing here.

  “Ah, my wall of shame,” says Emms, making McAvoy turn round sharply as he emerges in the doorway holding two mugs of tea. McAvoy doesn’t know why, but he’d rather expected a pot on a tray, positioned between elegant cups and saucers. Instead, into his hand is thrust a mug bearing a company logo. Magellan Strategies.

  “I was just admiring . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” says Emms, happily enough. “Those are the boys and girls who’ve served under me. Mostly boys, if I’m honest. And not all of them. But as many as I could find. Ellen thinks I’m daft. Tells me that I should have pictures of the grandchildren up in here, but I can’t bring myself to take them down.”

  “You m
ust miss it.”

  “Soldiering? Yes and no. I did twenty-eight years. Enough to scratch any itch. And I’m still on the scene, as it were. Still got plenty to keep me busy.”

  “You set up the company when you were discharged, did you?”

  “Just about. Made the right contacts while I was working toward retirement, so to speak. But things just landed right. And it’s not just me, you understand. I had partners at first. Board of directors now we’re established. All very proper and aboveboard. I don’t even think they need me anymore. I’ve got an honorary title and they still ask me to oil a few wheels, but we’re not doing so badly.”

  “You’re still involved in recruitment, though?” asks McAvoy, gesturing back toward the door, where he imagines Armstrong to be standing rigidly at attention, as the fine rain that has begun to drift past the window soaks him to the skin.

  “Oh, he’s the son of an old pal of mine,” says Emms, plonking himself down in an armchair and taking a swig of tea. “Didn’t really take to the regular army. Some don’t. He lost a couple of mates first tour. Insurgents. Opened fire while him and two pals were handing out sweets to a bunch of kids. Armstrong ran. His mates didn’t. There was a video on the Internet for a while of what happened to them. The worst. Not a mark on Armstrong but it hurt him. Pointlessness of it, you see? I’ll never understand it myself, and we make a living as experts in these places. Managed to get him a discharge and we’re going to try him out. I’ve got our assistant head of recruitment up here this weekend with a couple of the other new boys. They’re out on a training run right now.”

  “You didn’t let Armstrong in the house,” says McAvoy, turning away from the photographs to fix Emms with a deep stare.

  “If your wife looked like mine, would you fill your house with soldiers?” Emms says it with a laugh, but McAvoy can tell he is serious.

  “Good point,” he says.

  After a pause, Emms shrugs and appears ready to get down to business. “So,” he says, as McAvoy takes a seat in a wooden chair. “You wanted to talk about Anne.”