by David Mark
“Which way are you heading?” asks Arthur, suddenly. “I don’t mind a bit of company, once in a while.”
“Of course,” says McAvoy, falling into step beside the older man as they plod through the cold and the dark to the end of the street. They don’t speak much as they wind their way through the estate. Arthur’s breath sounds pained. Difficult. McAvoy finds himself offering Roisin’s services.
“She makes this toddy which really cuts through the gunk in your chest,” he says. “Tastes wonderful too.”
“Knows her stuff, does she?”
“Oh yes. We’ve only got a little herb garden but she’s been raised with all this stuff. Knows which leaves can cure what ailments. Honestly, you tell her you’ve got a broken leg and she can find the right flavour mint-leaf to fix it.”
Arthur gives in to a smile, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. He doesn’t care about his chest. His pain. He relishes it, and will end it, when this trial is over. When the Chocolate Boy is behind bars.
They are already in the alleyway before McAvoy realises where they’ve been heading.
Arthur stops. Puts his bare hands on the rough bricks.
“This is where the knife blade broke off,” he says, softly. “Went right through her. They never found it, you know. Of course you do, what am I saying?”
McAvoy doesn’t know what to do. He wants to put a hand on Arthur’s arm. Tell him he understands. But it would be lies. All he knows of Ella Butterworth is what her corpse looked like. How her rotting cadaver smelled when he opened the door. He doesn’t remember her first steps. The first time she flashed the smile that would light up the newspaper stands.
“Just seconds, they say,” he’s muttering. “A couple of seconds either side and their paths would never have crossed. She’d have come home. Had a cry about the dress, but we’d have fixed it. Silly thing to get upset about, but I suppose she wanted the fairy tale. Wanted it to be perfect.”
McAvoy nods. Summons up the courage to pat the older man’s back. Gets no response.
“Bad timing, they say. Silly thing to die for, isn’t it? That’s the bit that gets me. I know Cadbury’s not all there, like. Got the screws loose. But how do you see a pretty young thing and go from giving her the eye to cutting her up? That’s what I don’t get. God help me, when she was missing I had all sorts of images in my head. I reckon I always knew she wasn’t coming home. But for it to be a stranger? For it just to be bad luck?”
He sniffs, but he’s too used to these feelings to give in to more tears. “That’s the hard part. Knowing his face was the last thing she saw. She’s never had a hand raised against her in her life. Never said a bad word about anybody. She was beautiful. She had such a good heart.”
Arthur turns. Fixes McAvoy with a look from beneath eyelids swollen with the effort of blinking back a never-ending agony.
“You got kids?” he asks, suddenly.
“A boy,” he replies, grateful to know the answer to at least one question. “Fin. Just a toddler. We’re trying for another but maybe it’s not meant to be. Fin’s enough, whatever happens.”
“Nice age,” he enthuses, smiling without showing teeth. “Treasure him.”
“I do.”
“You can never keep them safe enough,” he says, looking at his feet. “Christ, you can’t know how many times I’ve wished it was me instead of her. Anybody but her. I’m her father. I’m supposed to keep her safe.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” he begins, but it’s feeble.
“I don’t,” he says. “Not really. I blame Cadbury. He’s the one who did it. That much was clear from the first time I met your man Roper…”
McAvoy feels the pain in his gut. The sensation of falling. Of nausea. He smells the old man’s rotting daughter in his throat. Wants to steady himself against the wall but fears he’ll feel her blood on his palm. Wants to ask. Ask how it would feel if he learned that somebody else had stuck the knife in. That Roper had taken the easy option. Taken it easy and nabbed himself a headline. Arthur saves him from himself.
“I had my doubts, of course,” he says, talking more to himself than to the policeman. “You go through everybody in your mind. Try and imagine the unthinkable. It wasn’t that long before she went missing that we had those hassles with the kids in the neighbourhood, bouncing on the cars, making a show of themselves. And then there was that chap who Ella convinced herself was spying on her. I still don’t know if that was true, but her mum had no doubts she saw somebody at the window that night. I called the police, like you do, but they couldn’t find anybody. I only bothered because Ella had told me about these funny messages she’d been getting. You can convince yourself of all sorts, though. Wendy even reckoned some of her tights had gone from the basket, but that’s how it builds. You scare yourself…”
McAvoy can’t breathe. He looks at the spot where Ella Butterworth lost her life and turns to her father. Listens to him spill his guts about another line of enquiry the investigation had ignored.
Finds the strength in his mind’s eye, to take notes.
The stench in his nostrils.
The feeling in his belly.
He’s out there.
The man who killed her.
We’ve got the wrong man…
28
Give yourself an Oscar, thinks Detective Superintendent Roper. A-grade performance, that. Fucking beautiful.
He skips down the stairs and enjoys the slick, graceful sound his shoes make on the linoleum. Swishes down the corridor, coat-tails billowing. Alone, and still making the effort to look good.
Add that one to the repertoire, he thinks. Actually had him thinking I was surprised to see him there! Like I didn’t know. Like I’m not Doug Fucking Roper. Little tit.
It’s all coming together, he thinks. All the little pieces. And I can knit them into something beautiful. Documentary crew were creaming their knickers. Can edit out the insults. Some of them stung.
Flies in the ointment, though, sunbeam. Still got to find this witness. Can’t screw the trial. Can’t let the Chocolate Boy melt. You got a little physical with him in the interview and there could be repercussions. Don’t need that, he thinks. A little bit of reputation is one thing, but a blemish on the record could spoil things royally.
Pulls his phone from his pocket. Quick call to McAvoy, the rising star. Hope the cunt’s asleep, he thinks.
Answered on the sixth ring.
“Sergeant. It’s Roper. The girlfriend. Yeah. Pick her up first thing. Wait until her brother leaves, though. I don’t want there to be a scene.”
Oh Doug, he thinks. You are a card.
29
She cried for two hours after Roper left, snottering and muttering into my shoulder, begging to be held and then pushing me away.
I was glad to escape, happy to jog the half mile to De Grey Street and fork out for a foil wrap full of poison; pressing three grubby notes into a grubbier hand, the gun back at Kerry’s flat for fear of temptation during the transaction.
I wanted to look away while she shot up, but couldn’t move my eyes – fascinated as the rock bubbled on the spoon, as the blood misted the chamber of the syringe, and the delicious smack charged into her veins.
Me, wiping the drool from her chin.
Laying her down and watching her sleep; cuddling my hand to her face.
Slipping away in the darkness.
She’ll be out for hours.
I miss the coat more than I miss her. The gun is too obvious in the inside pocket of my suit jacket, my fags and notebook too cumbersome in my trousers.
And I’m cold. Shivering in the fine drizzle of the grey morning.
7.22 a.m., Tuesday, February 7.
Tramping up Spring Bank. Back towards The Tap.
Pop into the little café near Kwik Fit and order a tea with two sugars, warming my hand on the polystyrene cup.
Sipping tea and feeling it sting my teeth. I order a teacake and stand, waiting.
“Excu
se me, have you finished with the Mirror?”
I turn around and a big lad with a stud in his lip and short, bleached blonde hair, is pointing at the newspaper I’ve inadvertently leant on. “Help yourself,” I say, handing it to him. He takes it, gratefully, and orders himself a ham salad sandwich, in a broad Hull accent.
“Bit fancy,” I say, conversationally. “More fried pig trotters and giblet ciabattas in here.”
“I look after myself,” he says, smiling. He’s youngish and there’s a bit of a softness to his movements and a slight pouting of the lips that I take as distinctly homosexual.
“I can see that,” I say. “Which gym you with?”
“Used to go to the Holiday Inn,” he says. “Left there a few months ago and just been doing my own thing since then. You into lifting, are you? You look in good shape.”
“I do my bit, when I remember. The workout’s the boring bit, though, isn’t it? I just go for the sauna and the Jacuzzi. Chill out a bit.”
“I know what you mean. Love the lifting though. Working up a sweat.”
I sip my tea and he glances over the sports pages. His sandwich arrives before mine, but he doesn’t find a seat immediately. He stands, looking at me. I sense he’s lonely.
“You want to join me?” he asks, and there’s a look in his eye that suggests he’d like to do more than chat about weightlifting.
“Sorry,” I say, and mean it. “Got to be at work. Another time, though, eh? You a regular here?”
“No, never been in before. I’m staying at the hotel down the ways there and their idea of continental breakfast is a fucking croissant and a roll, so I came out to get myself something. I can come back though.”
“If you like,” I say. “You sound local, though. Why you staying in a hotel.”
He goes a bit coy, and I help him out by saying: “Boyfriend kick you out?”
He gives a smile and shakes his head, tapping the side of his nose in a conspiratorial gesture. “I can come back tomorrow if you want to continue this conversation…”
“Might see you around,” I say, as my teacake appears in a greasy bag on the counter-top.
“I’m Minns,” he says, and the name flows over me without being snagged.
“A pleasure,” I say.
Out the door and into the rain.
The fumes.
Darkness like rancid fruit.
Suddenly not hungry anymore.
I drop the teacake in an empty bin outside the corner shop.
Onwards and upwards, jangling sounds right in the centre of my head.
Not giving a shit as I pass the two coppers and scene of crime van down Jamieson Street and get into the knackered, beige, Vauxhall Cavalier that every copper in East Yorkshire is looking for, and failing to spot.
Flip Johnny Cash out of the CD player and slide in a bit of Prodigy.
Waking up properly and swilling my mouth with tea.
Juggling a notebook, polystyrene cup and unlit cigarette.
Into first, second, third.
Roaring up Spring Bank at sixty, an hour before gridlock.
Light it up.
Breathe deep, to my toes.
Twisted Firestarter.
30
Twenty minutes later.
Road slick beneath the tyres.
Looking in the mirror, I notice that my stubble’s become a beard. I look like my dad, but with something added and a lot taken away. Thinking of him feels like a pint of cold Guinness on an empty stomach, and I pull back from the memory.
I let my brain drift down familiar, well-worn tracks. Remember his hands, those big hands and the tiny cigarettes he cupped within them; those fingers the colour of over-ripe bananas.
Drifting into Cottingham for the press conference. Still dark.
Round a roundabout, down a side street. Park in a cul-de-sac, under a tree, outside a big house with an unkempt garden. Children’s swing and a slide on its side. Soaked fluffy rabbit, sinister on its back, abandoned on the front step; glassy eyes staring up at the tumbling sky.
Cottingham. Britain’s biggest village, according to the sign and the bullshit. Town, really. Quite well to do. Few chain shops, decent pubs, nursing campus. Big bastard of a police station, next to the site of the new cemetery. Fields, here and there. Rural, after a fashion. It all looks the same.
A sigh, then out the car. Not raining, exactly, but the air’s wet.
Freezing. Wishing I’d brought my coat. Feel naked without it.
Fags and notebook tucked under my arm, inside my suit jacket.
Gun in my waistband, pleasantly uncomfortable.
Bit of a walk ahead, through the town and down Priory Road, fields full of horses either side.
Passing houses, stepping between dark shadows and circles of streetlight, then drifting into countryside.
Today’s the day, I think. Today’s the day you all get to see who I really am.
*
“More than a hundred blows,” he reckons. “Pathologist couldn’t tell which bone fragments came from the front of his head and which from the back. Powder and mush.”
“Brick, wasn’t it?” Scruffy lad from a radio station, standing with us without being asked.
“Rock. Boulder, actually. Smashed his fucking head in.”
We all say: “Nice”.
8.54 a.m. Priory Road Police Station canteen. It’s been cleared for the press conference.
Me, Tony H, Steve from The Mirror and Aled from one of the Leeds news agencies, leaning on the snooker table and talking death.
Big room. Modern. Rows of chairs facing a table, in front of the Humberside Police crest.
Place is filling up. TV crews fiddling with tripods, checking levels, getting in each other’s way. Cockneys talking into headsets and mobile phones.
Kids from Yorkshire radio stations, dressed in Punkyfish and corduroy, looking lost.
Microphones on the table, sticking out in all directions, like spears repelling a cavalry charge.
Proper reporters lounging at the back, sharing with our mates.
Knowing it’s all bullshit. Surprised to see so many faces for a routine press conference. Isn’t even silly season. Plenty happening.
Train crash in Oxfordshire last night, I’m told. Nutter drove the works van onto a level crossing. Four dead and plenty injured. Enough for six pages. Another Leeds United player arrested for butt-fucking a teenage girl in the lift at Elland Road.
Business as usual.
Tony H sucking the chocolate off a Twix and scowling at Steve, who’s stolen his thunder by sharing the details of the post mortem.
Raining in sheets now, soaking the news vans parked on the field beyond the glass doors.
I missed the worst of the downpour.
Charmed life.
Black circles around my eyes.
Waiting for Roper.
“I wonder what they were doing in the woods, though. Lover’s tiff?”
Laughs all round.
“It’s a theory. Has to be drugs though. You know the Petrovsky line, yeah?”
“Fuck yeah. Checked the cuttings and we haven’t had much on him. Not exactly a Kray though, is he? Not a household name.”
“No, but this guy’s got the potential to be a Bond villain. We could make him anything we want. Can’t exactly libel the evil twat, can we?”
“True. How you playing it, Owen?”
“God knows. I’m struggling to get worked up about it, to be honest. A druggie and a headcase take each other out and they waste my taxes trying to catch someone for it? Nobody ever stops and wonders whether it’s worth the bother, do they? Be nice if just once, they said, ‘Who gives a fuck about this one’ and spent the money on, I don’t know, me? Makes as much sense…”
Raised eyebrows.
Realise I barked it. Said it like I meant it. “Sorry, was in my Daily Express mode, there. Give me a moment, I’ll Guardian it up for you. Yes, shocking, terrible – probably had an awful childhood, poor lamb.
I blame the cuts to social care. Call this a coalition government? Clegg’s nowt more than a sock puppet…”
Relief all round.
“Remind us why you haven’t got your own column,” says Tony H, lightening the mood.
“Doubt this will be worth the trip,” says Aled, nodding expansively. He’s come over from West Yorkshire for this, on the off-chance one of the nationals will have neglected to staff it. Busy thinking of ways to make his copy unique. “Still, everybody loves Roper, don’t they? Always good for a line or two.”
“I bloody don’t,” I say, wanting to tell somebody about his visit to Kerry’s, and deciding against it.
I amble over to speak to Trish from one of the local TV stations, but she’s busy getting an earful from a producer on her mobile, and after a few seconds standing waiting for her to finish and sharing a conversation of facial expressions, I decide I look like a twat and head for the door.
Cigarette. Fingers. Lighter. Lips.
Inhale. Absorb.
*
Shivering, blocking the doorway, staring at the car park and the grass, wires snaking around my feet.
There’s a barrel-chested bloke in a well-pressed suit leaning against the wall, taking deep breaths of cold air. Big lad, looking lost. He’s a redhead with pale skin and freckles. Probably about my age, though better looked-after. He sees me and moves along the wall to make room. He looks familiar. Definitely a copper, but I can’t place him.
“Fag break?” I ask.
“Fresh air, actually,” he says, and his voice is a low, soft, Scottish brogue.
“Yeah? Sorry if I’m spoiling it for you. Do you want me to put it out?”
He pauses, as if unsure how to respond. I can see him working things out. “That’s rather up to you. My wife’s a smoker. People should make their own decisions.”
I smile, politely. His manner is a bit disconcerting. I have an overwhelming desire for him to like me. He’s got big sad eyes, like a cartoon cow, and there’s something about his manner that makes me think he should be wearing a hood and sandals and trudging along a pilgrim trail. Maybe it’s the voice, I think. Or the stillness. Or maybe I’m just going mad.
