The Dark Winter

by David Mark

  ‘Not another word on Anne. The newspaper would get full exclusives on everything that his company did from this point onwards …’

  ‘And you?’

  Feasby sighs. ‘An honorary position on the board of his company.’

  ‘You took it?’

  ‘On paper I was a marketing consultant, helping his firm establish its media relations strategy …’

  ‘And in reality?’

  ‘I never wrote a word. Drew a salary for a few months, then went back to what I was good at.’

  ‘You weren’t curious?’

  McAvoy imagines Feasby spreading his palms wide. ‘I’m a reporter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I don’t think I should really be telling you any more until I’ve had a good hard think about what you really need to know.’

  McAvoy pauses. He wonders if the reporter is fishing. Whether he is expecting the promise of an exclusive in exchange for his information.

  His phone beeps in his ear. More from impulse than any conscious desire, he switches lines and answers.

  ‘Mr McAvoy? This is Shona Fox from Hull Royal Infirmary. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. It’s about your wife. I’m afraid there have been complications …’

  And nothing else matters any more.

  CHAPTER 21

  McAvoy didn’t sleep for the first twenty-seven hours. Didn’t eat. Managed two sips of water from a cloudy, plastic beaker, then coughed them back up onto his stinking rugby shirt, mucus trailing from his eyes and nose.

  Outside, Hull froze.

  The excitement of a possible white Christmas gave way to fear at the harshness and severity of the conditions. The snow landed on hard ground. Froze. Fell again. Froze. The sky was a grey pencil sketch. Clouds broiled, rolled, twisted, curdled; like snakes moving inside a black bag.

  The city stopped.

  Later, McAvoy would tell his daughter that it was she who finally broke the winter’s spell. That it was only when she opened her eyes that the clouds parted and the snow ceased its frenzied dance. That it was she who cost Hull its first white Christmas in a generation. She who brought out the sun. It would be a lie. But it would be a lie that made his daughter smile. A lie that allowed him to remember the first few days of her life with something other than a dull throb of agony.

  He hears movement behind him.

  Turns.

  ‘Get back in that bed …’ he begins.

  ‘Well, I’m still a bit tender but if you want me that badly …,’ says Roisin, her face pale, her eyes dark. She’s wearing a baggy yellow nightie and has a pink band holding her unwashed, greasy hair back from her face. She seems shapeless, somehow. He has grown so used to the bulge of her stomach pressing at her clothes.

  ‘Roisin.’

  ‘I’m bored, Aector. I need some kissing.’

  He sighs. Rolls his eyes indulgently.

  ‘Come here,’ he says.

  Unsteadily, she crosses to where her husband sits, his massive bulk crammed into a wooden, high-backed orange chair. He’s facing the window but the curtains, with their nauseating greens and browns, are closed. She winces as she slides herself onto his knee, then drops her head to press her own clammy forehead into the mess of untended ginger curls upon his crown.

  ‘You smell,’ she says, and there’s a muffled smile to her voice.

  McAvoy, for the first time in days, snorts a laugh. ‘You’re not exactly a bowl of potpourri yourself.’

  She raises her head. He feels her small, moist hand upon his cheek, turning his face upwards, angling him into her gaze.

  For a moment they simply stare, a thousand conversations rendered pointless by the ferocity and tenderness of their connection.

  ‘I was so scared,’ she says, and although they are all but alone, she whispers this admission, as if afraid that it will be used against her.

  ‘Me too,’ says McAvoy, and his truth seems to make her stronger. She leans down and kisses him. They kiss for an age. Break away only to smile at one another, to grin at the silliness of it all. To share a gleeful, knowing little glance, in the direction of the foot of the bed.

  Lilah Roisin McAvoy was born on 15 December at 6.03 a.m.

  Roisin had gone into labour almost as soon as McAvoy left the house, angrily reacting to Tom Spink’s text; thundering through the blizzard in the people carrier with its ready-packed maternity bag in the boot.

  She had tried to call him. Willed him to answer his telephone. Focused all her energies on reaching out through the cold miles between them. To come home. To help her.

  Eventually, her cries woke Fin. It was he who persuaded her to ring 999. He who said that sometimes Daddy had to work and couldn’t be there when other people wanted it. He who held her hand in the ambulance as the paramedics talked behind their hands about the volume of bleeding, the ice and snow on the roads, their belief that they should get time and a half for working nights in these conditions.

  Roisin had tried to hold on. Tried to hold the baby in until the nurses reached her husband. But Lilah wanted out. Slithered out amid a gory rainbow of blood and mucus and was scooped up by a bald, bespectacled, Nigerian doctor, who carried her away to a waiting, scrubbed table, and performed complicated manoeuvres upon her tiny frame.

  To Roisin, it seemed as if he was trying to breathe life into a dead bird.

  She had turned away. Closed her eyes. Waited to be told the worst.

  And then she heard the cry.

  Lilah was four hours old, pink and wrinkled, with a breathing tube taped to the side of her face and oversized socks and mittens on her hands, before her father pressed his red, sweaty, tear-streaked face up against the plastic incubator and made the first of the thousand apologies he would stutter throughout the first few hours of her life.

  When he took her from the nurse, she fitted perfectly in the palm of his hand.

  Fin laughed at that. Asked if he had ever been that small. McAvoy told him no. That his sister had been so desperate to see him, she had come into the world early. That he was a big brother now, and it was his job to protect her.

  Fin nodded solemnly. Gave her a wet, inelegant kiss upon the head. And then returned to the room full of grubby, donated toys, where he had been playing with a three-wheeled fire truck at the exact moment his sister began her wailing.

  ‘She still sleeping?’ asks Roisin.

  ‘Out like a light. Just like her mum.’

  ‘We’ve had a busy couple of days.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She tenses, as if preparing to vacate her husband’s knee, and then relaxes, as she acquiesces to his firm hands and sinks back into his embrace.

  ‘Let her sleep.’

  ‘We nearly lost her, Aector. If she’d died … if she hadn’t woken up …’

  He feels her begin to shiver, and holds her tighter, shushing her sobs.

  After a time, he again asks her the question he had blurted out through bubbles of snot when he raced into her room three days ago, snow billowing from his coat, a security guard dragging at either arm, almost water skiing behind him as he barrelled along the polished green linoleum.

  ‘Will you ever forgive me?’

  She answers him now, as she had then, with a perfect white smile. And for a precious moment, McAvoy feels so happy, so perfect, so loved and rewarded, that it crosses his mind to stop his own heart. To die happy.

  This time, when she moves, McAvoy lets her. She stands. Winces again. Reaches out and pulls open the curtains.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  They are four storeys up, enjoying one of the few private rooms on the maternity unit of Hull Royal Infirmary. The vantage point affords them a view of a city rendered almost faceless. Its landmarks, its idiosyncrasies, its character, all mute and anonymous beneath a thick covering of white. The streets are largely deserted. Roisin cranes her neck. Looks down at the car park. It is virtually empty. Half a dozen large 4x4s are parked here and there across the wide open space, like islan
ds on a vast ice rink. The hospital is down to a skeleton staff. Those who were at work when the snow began to fall have largely stayed here. Those at home, with a car capable of staying right-side-up, have made it in, but the conversations on the eerily quiet wards and corridors revolve around how they will get home again; whether the car will even start when they ease themselves back behind the wheel.

  ‘We’re best off in here,’ says McAvoy, pulling himself out of the chair.

  McAvoy leans past her and looks out of the window. Gives a wry smile as he sees the small huddle of frail old men and fat middle-aged women, coats over their pyjamas, puffing desperately on cigarettes at the entrance to the car park; sucking the smoke into their lungs like diabetics gorging on insulin.

  McAvoy looks down at the floor. He becomes suddenly aware of the mobile phone in his pocket. Feels it giving off waves of energy. Feels his fingers begin to twitch as he becomes overwhelmed by a need to switch it on. To plug himself back in. To find out what he’s missed these past three days of pain and prayer.

  ‘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 some day. 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 line-up 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 brings the phone up to his face. 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 centre 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 sombre 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 tell-tale 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 coma 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. And 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 number.

  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 centre. 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.’

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 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 colour of quicksilver.

  The track veers left. McAvoy follows it.

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