Darkness Falls

by David Mark

  I think of the funeral, of the bright flowers and the kisses on the cards and the family sitting rigid and regal as the packed crematorium seemed to shudder from the weight of grief in its guts; as the hundreds of mourners, drawn black and grey in savage pencil strokes, wept and wailed and choked back snot as the priest said his words, and how we chuckled, rueful and relieved, as Ella’s sister told stories of mischief past, and how tears ran down cheeks and onto notepads and into microphones as we listened to Robbie Williams’s voice oozing from the stereo as Ella passed behind the purple curtain and into the flames to the sound of her family’s strangled cries, and the words of her favourite song.

  I duck into the toilets. Two suits are at the urinals so I head for the nearest of the three cubicles. Sit down on the plastic seat with my head in my hands. The weight in my pocket clinks against the porcelain. Instinctively I look up, as if there might be a shooting gallery of faces peeping over the door

  I sit back on the toilet seat, back straight against the cistern, and close my eyes, breathing slowly, as though listening to music.

  I hear the voice of the gun. Retrieve it, carefully, as if handling porcelain.

  It’s black. Gleaming. Rubber on the handle, writing on its side.

  For a moment, through the haze of my half-closed eyes, the markings become three distinct words.

  KILL THEM ALL…

  8

  Court One.

  10.26 a.m.

  Four minutes to kick-off.

  Still no sign of Cadbury.

  Families packed in behind me. The hiss of pop bottles opening. The bleep of mobile phones being switched off.

  Hands being held. Words of comfort. Wendy in the front row, next to her husband, Arthur. She, regal in a green suit. Made up. Hair permed. Putting on a show. He, shambolic. Jogging pants and a jumper under two coats. White hair. Face red. Eyes the colour of brie. Puffy. Broken. Decent bunch. Poor but proud. Working class. Real class. Some bitter, some hateful. All missing a piece of themselves. Trapped like spiders beneath a glass by the barriers of their loss. Not touching each other. Torn apart by grief.

  I’m silent. Drinking it in. Second seat from the right, four feet from the glass partition which separates the decent folk from the accused. Burly security guard in a pressed white shirt. No defendant yet.

  Paul from the BBC on my right. Indira from one of the radio stations to my left. Coats still on. Cold inside the courtroom, with its pale walls. Wooden benches and hard seats. Extra seats laid on. We’re crowded in, touching elbows, balancing notebooks on knees. Only six hacks can fit behind the actual press bench. We’re twisted. Swivelling to face the judge’s bench, perched up high at the front. No judge yet.

  Below is the court clerk. Roy. Scouse lad. Knows his stuff. Grey pinstripe under his black gown. Salt and pepper hair peeping out from the sides of his curly wig.

  Flanked by an usher – thirties, brunette and dumpy, looking like Harry Potter in her black cloak, and a logger – ancient, pale suit, Royal Navy tie, lines in his face that he could keep his spare change in – preparing to fall asleep on his court tape recorder.

  Then Choudhury. A blob of silk. Leering over the junior barrister at the bench behind him, and the solicitors behind her. Cricket ball, rolled lasciviously around his palm. A lot of touching. Every word accentuated with a hand on a shoulder or arm.

  A pain in my chest just looking at him.

  Prosecutor at his side. Elegant. Tall. Straight back. Glasses. Must be fifty-plus under the wig. Crisp seam in his black trousers, shine on his black shoes. Reading through his opening statement, glancing back at his junior, a younger man, to check the occasional fact. Limbering up. Ready to go the distance in a case that could make him.

  More solicitors further back. Then coppers. Assistants. Hangers-on.

  Evidence bags stuffed under desks. Files. Bundles of folders, law books, stacked like rocks in a dry-stone wall. Jugs of water and tumblers marbled with limescale.

  Jury benches still empty.

  Different, this time. I’ve covered hundreds of court cases. Become immune. This time, I feel it. We all feel it. The whole city gives a damn, this time.

  Door opens to my right, behind the glass. Heads turn. Voices drop. Another security guard. Fat. Old. As intimidating as lettuce.

  Then comes Cadbury. The man of the hour. The Killer. The Monster. The Chocolate Boy. The Accused.

  Late twenties. Round face. Belly hanging over cheap blue jeans. Short-sleeved white shirt untucked on one side. Stains on the front. Goatee beard and two earrings. Tattoos on his forearms. Hair short and unbrushed. Face blank. Staring ahead. Takes his seat between the security guards.

  Words from behind me. Mutterings of contempt, of raw hatred.

  Wendy and Arthur twisting to see.

  Me in the way. Trapped in the glare. Their stare is a flamethrower. It roars through me like white light. It fixes me into my seat. Strips me bare. I expect my misdeeds to be played out on the wall behind me.

  I sag, exhausted, as they turn away.

  A knock on the door.

  Rat-tat.

  Judge enters. Swish of purple and red. Thin man, stern faced. No nonsense. Street map of capillaries splashed across his nose. Takes his seat. Glances at the papers on his desk. Business-like nod. Already spent half an hour talking to the barristers in his chambers. Refused to be delayed by legal argument. Wants to start today. Finish Friday.

  Looks up.

  Ready to rock and roll.

  “Gentlemen. Shall we have the jury in?”

  More bustle. Ushers banging through side doors. Shouts from other rooms. Judge talking. Me staring at the rich splatter-pattern on the curve of my boot. Picking at it with a fingernail.

  Red.

  Jury enter. Rag-bag bunch. Some in suits. Young lad with a mullet haircut and skinny arms. Couple of mumsy types in polo necks. Gangster-looking guy in a black suit and turtle neck. Gold bracelet. Pensioner with thick glasses. A woman I recognise from a night in The Manchester Arms. The manager from the bookies down Whitefriargate, looking annoyed to be here. All the same expressions. Nervous. Excited. Eager to find out if they’ll make the final twelve. Irritated to be here but too curious to leave.

  Names called.

  Twelve answer and come forward. Always one attractive lass in a jury. This one’s about thirty and blonde. Too much eye make-up. Snuggly jumper but a bare stomach. Dirty look about her. Something in the way she carries herself. The type to slap on a bit of roll-on deodorant in the morning rather than have a wash. My type. One to watch.

  Always one fat bastard. Always one sensible type who’s brought his own notebook. Always a scummy fucker in jogging pants carrying a Netto carrier bag.

  The pride of the English legal system. Would lose a pop-quiz against a brick. Can’t decide on pizza or Chinese most nights but allowed to pass a verdict on a murder.

  Confirming their names now. Taking the oath. Some voices falter. Some can’t read the words on the card. Sweet lady with glasses drops the Bible.

  Words from the judge. Telling them about their important duty. Playing the kindly role. Making them feel important.

  Cadbury tugging at his beard with his right hand. There’s a rosary wrapped around the pudgy mitt, clutched tight.

  Me. Rolling dried blood between my fingers. Looking around and thinking of murder.

  Monsters starting to giggle behind my eyes.

  Feeling hysterical. Oppressed. Grinding my teeth. Suddenly overcome. Over-wrought. Looking down, staring at nothing, ground opening beneath my feet. Legs jiggling up and down. Biting lumps of plastic off the Biro between my teeth.

  Hungry. Hungry for something.

  And the prosecutor is on his feet. Distinguished. At ease. Elevated above the baseness of the actions he is describing.

  A voice rolled in brandy, matured in oak barrels, describing horrors unimaginable, filling the courtroom with blood.

  Rain.

  A hard, persistent drumming on the g
lass ceiling – angels weeping for a defiled sister.

  9

  McAvoy stands facing the wind, face so pale it could be reflecting moonlight. He can hear his own heart beating. Can feel his pulse against the strap of his watch. A sharp, diagonal rain comes in from the water and finds the gaps in the canopy of trees, which conspires to soak him while giving the illusion of shelter.

  Behind him a tangle of trees and thorns. Sycamore, ash. A holly bush, the remains of a den built by children some time over the weekend. Inside, two dead men. They look like lifeless birds in a ravaged nest.

  In his ear, repeating like the sound of an old locomotive, Roisin’s words as she departed. “You’re good at this. Believe in yourself. You’re a good man. A good man. A good man…”

  McAvoy chews on his lip. He feels sick. In his nostrils, the smell of Ella; the memory of her; the sensation of her drifting inside him and taking possession of his flesh. He cannot smell the dead men behind him. They are still fresh. He has glimpsed little of them since taking up his position a little back from the footpath, his back to the big chalky cliffs and the tree roots and creepers that snake over and through them like veins.

  “A good man,” he whispers, and rain sprays from his lips. He does not know if he believes it. And even if it were true, he wonders whether it marks him out as a good police officer. He has been told for the past decade that he is ‘too soft’, ‘a pushover’, a ‘sucker for a sob story’. One sergeant, early in his career, told him without malice that the police service was no place for ‘bleeding heart liberals’ and warned that he would get a reputation as a ‘do-gooder’ if he continued taking things to heart and trying to make a real change in people’s circumstances. McAvoy has mulled over the accusation for the best part of a decade and still can’t work out how doing good could merit derision.

  “This better be good, Jock! I’m piss-wet through here. Dripping like a fucked fridge!”

  McAvoy turns at the sound of the voice. Coming down the wooden steps, clinging onto the greasy handrail and scowling into the downpour, is Detective Inspector Julie Stace. She has a homely, almost mumsy look about her, as if she might work in a pre-school, spending her days singing songs about silly wombats and helping toddlers find missing socks. McAvoy knows that the appearance is misleading. With her sensible bobbed haircut and librarian-style spectacles, she has been under-estimated by many an opponent in the interview room. Each has found, to their cost, that the small, soft frame serves as a cashmere mitten around a steel claw.

  A step or two behind is Detective Constable Duncan Slater. McAvoy doesn’t know either particularly well but in Slater’s case, he can’t help notice that ‘a step or two behind’ seems rather fitting. He’s a large, lumbering sort, workshy and happier doing as he’s told than offering anything in the way of creative thinking. He’s middle-aged and the muscles that marked him out as an athlete in his youth have loosened like old elastic and to McAvoy’s eye he looks like a taxidermist’s early work: disjointed and inexpertly stuffed.

  DI Stace fixes McAvoy with a glare as she crosses the ground between them. She’s wearing green wellington boots that are several sizes too big and they slip forward and back as she slips and slithers her way through the mud. “The boss said you’d killed a couple of people. Wanted us to help you make it look like an accident. That right?”

  McAvoy can’t seem to work out how to reply. He had an opening line prepared but he can’t extract it from the swirl of his thoughts. Instead, he steps aside, a little theatrically, and points at the white training shoe which pokes out from between a mesh of branches.

  “Ah,” says DI Stace, scowling. She looks up at him. Cranes her neck, and takes a step back. “This is what you do, is it? On your days off. I thought you were building a new database, or sticking paper snowflakes to the windows at HQ, or something. We could do without this.”

  Slater looks past him. Turns up his nose. “He’ll want it,” he mutters, half to himself. He gives a disinterested look at McAvoy, and then at DI Stace.

  “Yeah?” asks DI Stace. “Tell him, then.”

  “He won’t be up until after the opening statements. He’s got the camera crew with him. He’ll want to make it look right. Dramatic.”

  A decision has been made. McAvoy looks from one to the other, wondering what will come next. He has a pained, fluttering feeling in his chest. He wants these officers, these elite detectives, to pay some heed to the dead men in the tangle of branches and thorns. He wants their murders to be acknowledged, their endings mourned.

  “Couple of bad lads, by the look of it,” says Stace, angling her head. She reaches out to move a branch, and McAvoy stiffens, forcing himself not to grab her hand. She notices. Arrests her forward motion and gives him a smile that dies well before her eyes.

  “He said you wanted in. Be part of things. That true?”

  McAvoy nods: a child being promised a sweetie if they own up.

  “This?” asks Slater, scornfully. “Two bad lads in the woods? Druggies, probably.”

  McAvoy finds his voice. Wherever it has been, it has brought back something cold, and dangerous, like the growl of distant thunder. Not many people have heard him speak this way. “Druggies, Detective Constable?”

  Slater doesn’t catch the warning tone in his sergeant’s voice. He laughs, openly. “All very formal, aren’t we, Mac? Just call me Dunc.”

  McAvoy looks down at the floor. “Druggies, Dunc? What does that actually mean?”

  Slater laughs again, looking over at DI Stace, who is fiddling with her mobile. “Drug addicts, Mac,” he says, openly mocking. He sticks his tongue in his lower lip. Slaps at his forearm as if trying to raise a vein. “Scum. Wastes of space.”

  McAvoy’s eyes become pin-pricks, his pupils boring into the forehead of the amused DC. “That’s your considered opinion, is it, Detective Constable Slater? These men are drug addicts? Beneath you? An inconvenience in your day?”

  “Why are you getting bothered, mate…?”

  “Why am I getting bothered?” McAvoy feels a patch of prickly heat spreading across his back. “Why do the deaths of these men cause me concern?”

  “OK, Mac, don’t split your knickers over it… what do you want me to do, bring a fucking wreath?”

  Two circles of colour bloom on the whiteness of McAvoy’s face. He alters his position, cocks his head, his eyes carving a circle in the junior officer’s face as if with a blow torch. He forces himself to take a breath. “Those trainers, DC Slater. They are Nike Air Yeezys. They cost more money than most people see in a week. And they are mint condition, save the mud and blood. People with a drug dependency will sell their own skin to get their hands on the drug of choice. Those trainers would buy enough heroin to kill an elephant.”

  Slater shrugs. “OK, so one’s a buyer, the other’s the dealer. Got out of hand, killed each other. Job done. Fuck, you don’t have to be so prissy. Why are you always acting like a preacher? Guilty conscience, is it? Something to make up for?”

  “Dunc,” says DI Stace, quietly, typing out a text message. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “Who’s he to fucking talk to me like that…?”

  McAvoy steps forward, fast on his feet for a big man. Slater puts his hands up as if he’s about to receive a blow, transforming from aggressor into scalded spaniel in the time it takes McAvoy to close the distance between them.

  “I’m a sergeant,” he says, voice soft as silk. “I’m your sergeant. And you’ll damn well listen to me. Roper may be happy with you treating murder victims like slaughtered cattle but you will afford these men some respect and you will do the same with me. You’re not ‘Dunc’, you’re not one of Roper’s good old boys, you are a detective constable on the Major Crimes Team and you will never use the word ‘druggies’ around me again…”

  DI Stace looks up from her phone, a half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She considers McAvoy as if seeing him for the first time. Licks raindrops from her lips. “That’ll do, pig,” s
he says, with a laugh. Then she holds out her phone. Roper has been listening at the other end of the line.

  McAvoy takes the phone. Holds it to his ear.

  “All right Mac?” asks Roper, a grin in his voice. “I heard we had a couple of dead druggies…”

  10

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My name is Timothy Anderson and I represent the Crown in this case, assisted by my learned junior, Mr Figgis. The defendant, Shane Cadbury, is represented by my learned friend, Mr Choudhury, who sits to my right, and Miss Hall, who is seated immediately behind him.

  “At the time of her murder, Ella Butterworth was eighteen years old. At around 8 p.m. on Thursday, January 27th of last year, Ella was at the home she shared with her family on Rufforth Garth on the Bransholme estate in Hull. She and her younger sister had been trying on their dresses, ready for Ella’s wedding, which was scheduled for two days later. During the course of the evening, a glass of red wine was spilled on Ella’s dress. Ella’s mother, Wendy Butterworth, suggested taking the dress straight round to her aunt’s house, approximately 500 yards away, on the next Garth. Her aunt had a reputation in the family as always knowing what to do in a time of crisis. Very upset at what had happened to her dress, Ella decided not to waste time by getting changed, and ran from the house, still wearing her wedding dress and veil. She left her shoes in the house, and ran barefoot. Wendy Butterworth had gone to get her coat from an upstairs room, but by the time she came downstairs again, Ella had gone, leaving her sister alone in the living room.