Darkness Falls

by David Mark

  “Look, Sergeant, this is probably just my lad being silly – our Kieran, he’s not gone in today – teacher training, or something, so he’s with me, and he gets bored the second you switch off his Nintendo, so he went for a bit of a walk in the woods while I was opening up, and…”

  McAvoy hears something in her voice. Something like fear.

  “Carry on, Mrs Menzies…”

  “Well, he’s all for calling 999, but that seems a bit over the top for something that’s probably nothing, but I remembered you and I had your card and you were so nice to talk to…”

  McAvoy rubs his hand over his face, smoothing his beard. He should tell her to call 999, he thinks. Should do things properly…

  “It’s just, our Kieran, he’s really adamant. Is that the right word? Adamant.”

  “Adamant about what, Mrs Menzies?”

  Her words come out in a rush, bats gushing from a cave. “He says he’s found a body. In the woods. There’s a shoe sticking out of a bush. I asked him what he was talking about. A shoe’s a shoe – not a body. And he told me I was daft and explained himself, like. Said that the shoe was attached to a leg, and the leg was half buried under some leaves. He swears blind, Sergeant. And he would have stopped me, wouldn’t he, if he were just being silly? I told him – I said I was ringing you, and he said that was good. He’s got a face like a ghost, Sergeant. Have I done right? I don’t want to go down there. Is this your sort of thing? Have I done right?”

  McAvoy breathes out, slowly. Glances at the clock. It’s 7.58 a.m. he’s on-call this week, primed to go to Hull Crown Court to deliver his evidence if the case against Shane Cadbury goes that far. Chances are, he’ll plead guilty long before that. If he were to phone this one in, deliver it up to Roper on a plate, perhaps he’d get a chance to be involved. To prove himself. He despises himself at once for the thought. If there is a body, it means somebody has suffered. It means grief. Bereavement. Pain. To think of it as an opportunity for advancement is grotesque. He looks down at the floor, ashamed of himself. Feels Roisin move close to him and put her hands in his thick red hair.

  “You did right,” he says, softly. Then: “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  3

  Me.

  Awake… wide awake, eyes like peeled pears… taking stock… remembering, remembering…

  And I’m fumbling in yesterday’s muddied, bloodied trousers for my phone.

  Finger like a knife, stabbing at the numbers.

  Humberside Police Voicebank.

  Two rings, then a click.

  Recorded message.

  Usually handbag snatches and indecent assaults. Enough for a sixty-word news-in-brief on a slow news day. Occasional gem. Maybe the odd grandfather scaring off burglars with a bedside lamp. Once in a while an update on a stalled murder case, a re-appeal for witnesses, an excuse to drag better stories from the archives and give them a polish. New intro, new quote, ten paragraphs of background.

  Always Dave’s voice on the line. Inspector Dave Simmonds, twenty-eight-year force veteran. Skinny lad. Family man. Good mate. Good contact. Always gives me first question at the press conferences. No dress sense. Sponsored by Jack Wolfskin and Gore-Tex. Likes hiking. Yorkshire accent, always friendly. Playing the game.

  “This is Inspector Dave Simmonds in the Humberside Police press office. Good morning. The time is 8.17 on the morning of the 6th of February. If you keep listening I’ve put a few incidents on the media-line for the North Bank. Quiet night on the South. We have a sex attack in Bridlington, an entry by deception in Driffield and a theft of a pedal cycle on Greenwood Avenue in Hull. On a general note I would like to warn yourselves and the public that the roads are exceedingly icy today and already we’ve had reports of people driving too fast for the conditions. Five cars came off the A15 northbound between Barnetby Top and the Humber Bridge before 7 a.m. Nobody injured, thank goodness. I would suggest people only go out in their cars if they absolutely have to. Inspector Pinkney from our road safety division is available for interview. On another note, most of you will be aware that the trial of Shane Cadbury starts today at Hull Crown Court. I have been informed that the entire Butterworth family are going to be there, supported by our family liaison officers. Detective Superintendent Roper intends to be at court for the duration of the trial and either myself or press officer Gemma Tang will also be in attendance. As per usual, we will not be commenting on the case until after the verdict is returned, at which time, photographs of the defendant will be made available. We’re expecting a lot of national press interest so I would suggest local press get there early if you want to guarantee a seat…”

  No mention of bodies in the woods. Too early. People still too dozy at this hour. Not me. I’m wide awake and buzzing. My eyes are bullet holes.

  I pull my shirt off the back of the radiator and slip it on, enjoying the warmth. Patterned black tie still in a noose. Slip it over my head and pull it closed, two buttons down from my collar. Black trousers. Italian leather shoes. Gold chain and chunky identity bracelet. Sovereign ring on my right hand. Quick once-over with the electric razor, careful not to touch the sideburns. Brush my short hair with my hand. I always look more like I should be standing in the dock than sitting at the Press bench.

  Step back…

  Crunch.

  I’ve stepped on crushed glass. I’m standing on a picture. Jess and me, grinning at the camera from the top of Mount Vesuvius, toasting our engagement with a half-bottle of red plonk. Sunny day. Faces gleaming with the exertion of the climb and the heat of the Neapolitan summer. I’m smiling wider than she is. I look good with cut-off jeans and a muscle-shirt, sun-tan and a henna tattoo on my arm. She’s got a bare midriff, a blouse tied beneath her little boobs, and shorts to match mine. Doc Marten boots and a bandana over her black hair. There’s a wisp of smoke climbing up from the volcano’s crater behind us. A German guy with a walking stick took the picture, just after I got up off my knees. We got a round of applause from the other tourists. Jess was embarrassed. I loved it.

  I pick up the picture from beneath the fractured glass. Yesterday I put my fist through it, swept my arms along the mantelpiece, thrust a boot through the vase on the coffee table. An empty bottle of Southern Comfort put paid to the glass presentation case in the alcove, and my model cars are all over the floor. The ornamental Samurai sword that used to be mounted by its side is now embedded three inches into the doorframe. My coat is hanging from its handle. Stuffing is spilling out of the slash-wounds on the sofa. My solitary award for journalism, a giant winged Pegasus on a plinth of open newspapers, ceramic and weighing over a stone, is peeking out from the shattered remains of the television screen. There’s blood on the hardwood floor.

  Clean up later. Not important.

  No food in the kitchen. I’ve let supplies run down. You do when you’re planning to kill yourself.

  Coat on. Powder in one pocket, cash in the other, both pleasantly heavy. Neither have been counted. I feel some strange aversion to dissecting these gifts into numbers and weights, figures and pounds. I don’t want to seem mercenary.

  I grab a notepad from the cupboard by the sofa and thrust it into the waistband of my trousers. Pick a packet of knock-off Polish cigarettes from the pile. Seize my bag. Sling it over a shoulder. Hug my arm to my chest and feel the pleasing weight of the gun in my inside pocket.

  Out the door, down the stairs. I throw a quick glance over my shoulder at the apartment block I call home. Edge of the city centre, opposite a church I’ve never been inside and a theatre that only gets a full house when it’s playing something the audience has seen before. There’s a little courtyard garden up ahead: dead leaves and monochrome rose bushes.

  The ground is greasy under foot, but I grip with my toes through the slick soles of my shoes, and fall into a rhythm. It’s freezing cold, but I’m feeling something, somehow… new. It’s a prickliness across my back and a kind of gentle warmth in my belly. I feel taller. Stronger. Recharged.

>   The gun, clinking against my ribs with every stride.

  And me, thinking: manic and hungry and scared and on fire…

  Six bullets.

  Six shots at happiness.

  4

  The Guildhall clock is halfway through its 9 a.m. carillon as I jog across Alfred Gelder Street towards the Hull Crown Court. Oranges and Lemons, say the bells.

  Sky up above the colour of school socks.

  Rain on the way.

  Couple of vans parked on the kerb, satellite dishes on their roofs. TV lot are here, with their good suits and perfect enunciation and their unnerving ability to look sincere when they’re going live to the studio.

  A honk of a horn: commuters losing their shit as they inch forward in insulting increments, fighting for a space, fighting each other, fighting the world and losing…

  Three photographers in joyless bobble hats are huddling by the steps, looking at the backs of their cameras the way people are starting to look at their phones. I recognise them all. Alan from the Hull Mail greets me with a nod of his head, sending his thick bifocals an inch down his nose. Garry, from the Yorkshire Post, mutters a greeting from between his beard and his hat, and Dean, one of the local freelancers, gives me a smile. They all look chilly and put-upon, but have the air of those who have practiced being cold over the course of the last thirty years, and have learned that moaning is a leisure pursuit and better enjoyed over a pint.

  “Going to be a bumpy ride, this one,” says Alan, blowing out a cloud of smoke. He is cupping his dog-end in his hand, embers towards his palm, as though concealing it from prying eyes.

  I insert myself into the huddle.

  “A week at least,” he continues. “Even Roper’s starting to get jumpy. Reckons Cadbury might plead manslaughter and the CPS will agree.”

  I give a snort and shake my head. “No chance. They’ve got his DNA. They found her in his flat. Houdini couldn’t escape from this one. The family would bloody riot. And Roper doesn’t get jumpy. Cadbury did it.”

  “You know that and so do I, but you know what juries are like. Law of averages, innit? You get twelve people together, one of them’s got to be a fucking idiot. Could be worse. We’ve got a backgrounder ready to go.”

  “He won’t plead,” I say. “He’s nowt to lose.”

  Alan gives me a knowing smile. “You haven’t done your backgrounder, I can tell.”

  “I have,” I say, forcing a smile. “Blinding stuff.”

  “Bollocks. Mum won’t talk, we don’t know Dad, and we’ve all got the same stuff from the victim’s family. What have you got that we haven’t?”

  I try to look as though I’m sitting on a blinding exclusive. “Have to wait and see,” I say, smugly.

  He shakes his head, not buying it. “You’ve got nowt.”

  Somebody in a suit crosses the brick forecourt carrying a briefcase. The three snappers turn, lift their cameras, reel off a couple of shots, and then turn away. In unison, they peer at the tiny digital viewers on the backs of the cameras. Happy, they let them drop.

  “I take it they haven’t arrived yet then?” I ask, lighting a fag, back to the wind.

  Garry shrugs. “Family? Haven’t seen them. Coppers might have sneaked them in the back but I doubt it. They’ve been champion up until now though. Can’t see them suddenly playing silly beggars, unless that lass in the press office has told them to clam up. Anyway, Wendy said she’s going to bring me down a holiday snap of Ella for the backgrounder.”

  “That’s the mum, yeah?”

  Garry nods. “Yeah. Nice lady. She’s keeping the whole family together. Copper told me she hasn’t even cried yet. Not like the dad. He’s aged twenty years since this happened. Honestly, when you see him it breaks your heart.”

  “Him that identified her, wasn’t it?” Alan again. Everybody’s pretending they know more than everybody else. It’s all part of the game.

  Garry looks at him like he’s slow-witted. “No, none of them had to. How could they? Her face was such a mess they had to use dental records and her jewellery. Poor lass. Such a pretty girl.”

  It’s one of those unspoken rules in journalism: an unacknowledged box-ticking exercise that news editors run through when deciding how many column inches to give to a murder, and the ensuing trial. The pretty ones are always front page news. A good family helps too, whatever the hell that is. You really hit the jackpot when they’re pretty, and blue-eyed, and white, and middle class. Those are the stories that really gets Middle England tumescent over its Alpen. As a reporter for the Press Association, I’m above such considerations, but I moonlight with half a dozen different agencies, altering my style and nudging the facts into different shapes depending upon the requirements of the different newsdesks. I can be Daily Star in the morning, Telegraph of an afternoon and Socialist Worker of an evening. It can make a chap with one or two loose wires feel positively schizophrenic.

  “Surprised he didn’t get away with it on an insanity plea. Been in more nut-houses than a hungry squirrel.” Garry again.

  Me, shaking my head. Then, casually, unable to resist showing off: “I’ll be getting chapter and verse on all that later on. Seeing his mother this afternoon.”

  A few whistles and nods of a job well done. “Where d’you find her? Haven’t got a bloody word with her. Told young Tom to fuck off, and we don’t let Tony H near women, as a rule. They tend to call the police.”

  I give a smile and gesture at myself. “Talent and charm, lads.”

  We start to laugh, as Garry snorts and calls me a flash bastard.

  I gesture at the TV crews. “See they’ve made the effort then. Didn’t give a damn when she was missing, did they? Always the same. We do the donkey work then they swoop in with their cheque books out and fuck it all up for the rest of us. I guarantee you they’ll be here for day one, sod off, then back for the verdict.”

  Garry gives a shrug and sucks through his teeth, no doubt searching for a drop of residual Stella Artois. “If it was London they’d have been all over this from the start. Eighteen-year-old girl in a wedding dress cut up in an alleyway 100 yards from her own front door? Kiddy-fiddler in the dock. Would be a bloody swarm of the bastards if it was London.”

  “Some new faces,” I say nodding at two TV people, fiddling with equipment with freezing fingers. One is a black lad in his late twenties, the other a middle-aged woman, wearing a stripy ski hat with tassels hanging down below her matching scarf. I size her up. Londoner. Money.

  “Oh you’ll love this,” says Alan, suddenly gleeful. “They’re with Roper. Supercop’s having a TV documentary made on him.”

  “You’re joking! Christ, he does himself no favours does he?”

  “Aye, one of those fly-on-the-wall jobs. Some satellite channel following the investigation – Roper as the star. We carried a piece on it last week, but a lazy bastard like you won’t have bothered picking up a copy.”

  “Jesus. I bet he’s loving that.”

  “Turning into a proper celebrity, our Douglas. He gets fan mail every time he goes on Crimewatch. Must be hard for him to kick the shit out of suspects when they’re asking for autographs.”

  I stamp on my cigarette butt, and realise that for the last five minutes I’ve felt good. Felt at home. Haven’t thought about the loaded gun in my pocket or the blood on my hands.

  “Reckon I’ll get on inside then. Leave you to freeze to death. You staying long?”

  “Staying for the duration, I think. I’ll check with the desk in a few hours.”

  I give a smile and trot up the steps, pull back the glass door and stride in. There are two security desks, one to the right and one to the left. Jim, the old guy with a grey moustache and a rattly cough that can clear a room, is at the one on the left. He takes the job seriously, so I ignore him and turn right.

  Sally the security guard is smiling as I approach. She’s sweet on me, is Sal. Thirty-one, buxom, with short red hair and glasses, she’s managed to turn me into her ultimate fanta
sy figure in the three years since I first started idly chatting her up. She’s become useful since then, always letting me know if the case I’m after has changed dates or location, or if the families of crime victims have slipped out the back to avoid photographers. She buys me little things once in a while and sends filthy texts when she’s been alone with a bottle of Lambrini, but she’s a decent lass, and worth the hassle. It doesn’t take much to keep her interested, and she never makes me empty my pockets as I pass through the metal detectors. She’s also the only security guard in the building under the age of sixty.

  “Morning, princess,” I say as I breeze through the gates. There are three loud beeps from the metal detector, but nobody says anything. Security is a joke. We reckon the contract has been franchised to Al-Qaeda.

  “Morning, Owen,” she says, blush already creeping out of the top of her navy blue uniform. “Big day – quite the circus. I tried to save you a seat but the usher said it was first-come-first-served.”