Darkness Falls

by David Mark

McAvoy visibly crumbling, like a statue eroded by the elements. He looks broken. Disappointed. Hollowed out.

  I hear McAvoy, softly, saying: “So what will you do?”

  “I don’t care,” I say, quietly. “I never have, much, but now it’s all boiled down to this, some bits are making sense. I know I need to hold Jess again. After that, whatever happens, happens. A few days back, I was ready to kill myself. End it all. Chuck myself off a bridge rather than let a beautiful girl see I’m as vulnerable and scared and useless as she is. Today, look at me. I got a gift. A second chance, and here I am. Wanted. Hunted. The middle of something I can’t change.”

  “But you can!” He grabs a hold of my words like a branch. “It all comes down to Roper. We get him, we can start looking for some real truth. Real justice.”

  “We? I’ll be in a cell. Or dead. Dead at the hands of a man I can’t stand.”

  McAvoy’s suddenly picking up the documents, thrusting them towards me. “Read them,” he’s saying. “There’s a killer who needs to be caught. Look, I can contact another force, start an official investigation. You just have to go on record. You can put it right,” he begins, starting to stand. “Do something good. It might make a difference…”

  “To you.”

  I hear myself panting, feel myself stand, papers clutched to my chest. Files and reports, phone numbers and statements. “This is the way I am. The way I have to be. Always will be.”

  McAvoy stands, raindrops scattering outwards from his wet clothes. “I can make you,” he says, and drops his eyes, as if he’s unaccustomed to dishing out threats and doesn’t want to see how I respond to his rookie attempt.

  I stare back, twice as hard. “You can fucking try.”

  “I can arrest you,” he says.

  “And take me where?”

  “I can do this without your help. I just thought I saw something in you that would want to be involved. To put things right. Remove Roper. Do things properly. Find the truth for Ella’s family.”

  “Then you’ve backed the wrong horse,” I say, and I feel like an absolute devil for saying it. I’m breaking McAvoy’s heart here.

  He breathes out, slowly, and the breath seems to contain the ghost of every hope he has held inside him since he saw Ella Butterworth’s corpse.

  Looks at his feet.

  Up at the heavenly mural.

  “Owen Lee, I am arresting you for the murder of Alfred Prescott…”

  He’s barely said more than the name when I’m pulling the gun from my waistband.

  It’s the twin.

  The one Roper handed me.

  McAvoy freezes as he sees it, words drying in his throat.

  My finger on the trigger, the sound of an onrushing train in my head. Getting closer. Closer.

  McAvoy seems about to move, to stagger backwards, to beg for his life, but he holds it in check. He just stands still. Looks at the gun, and me, then the skies. He says a name: Roisin…

  I know that I can’t.

  Instead, I hurl the gun high into the air. McAvoy’s head swivels to follow its path and I lunge forward, shove him in the chest and watch as he topples backwards onto the pew.

  Then I’m running. Sprinting, a blur of angels on either side.

  Hearing the gun clatter onto the stone flags.

  Pushing open the wooden double-doors.

  And disappearing into the rain.

  55

  It’s mid-morning by the time I see the sea. It’s a strip of sluggish movement, the colour of fresh-fried chips, reaching up with mucky fingers to tickle the sagging belly of the fat, low clouds.

  Bridlington manages a kind of shabby eloquence when the sun shines. When families from West Yorkshire tell themselves that they don’t need to go abroad to have fun and book themselves into a B&B for a long weekend; their days wrapped up warm on the demerara-coloured sand or feeding cash into slot machines; their nights on the promenade, eating chips, sipping tea, daring each other to test their strength on the arcade attractions or to take a ride on one of the feeble big dippers run by the gypsies down at the harbour. Eating candy floss and sugar dummies, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

  Here, in winter, the place belongs to the natives. Most of the chip shops and toffee-apple shacks shut up shop. The guesthouse owners nip away for their own holidays to somewhere more appealing. The thick floral curtains are pulled across single-glazed windows and the ‘No Vacancies’ sign is spun. The trawlers that offer boat rides around the bay from Easter to September either tie up or head to middle waters, looking for the crab and lobster that have slowly turned the resort into the biggest shellfish port in Europe without seeming to bring any money to the town.

  The old car glides down gusty roads, polystyrene chip cartons dancing on the wind, past boarded-up shops and dilapidated guesthouses bearing names like Avalon and Edelweiss. “Come as guests, leave as friends.”

  Down to the seafront.

  The keening of gulls.

  The insistent rustle of the sea as it pans for shiny pebbles in the shallows.

  Computer games bleeping from the neon-fronted arcades.

  Metal shutters banging open, as a smattering of tattooed shopkeepers decide it might be worth trading, even if it’s only for a few hours.

  I park up on the hill. Townhouses and guesthouses, three and four storeys, gazing out on a view sketched in different shades of brown and grey. Step out onto wet concrete, leaving the crumpled documents on the front seat. I half hope the wind will carry them away as I open the door.

  And then I’m walking down the hill, listening to the tide, the swish of the occasional car as it slices past and throws mucky water up my trouser leg.

  I look at my watch. Mid-morning. We’re meeting in the fancy ice cream parlour on the promenade. I turn right into the harbour, lighting a cigarette. There’s no cloud as I breath out. The smoke is the same colour as the sky.

  Listening. The hulls of wooden pleasure boats knocking together like chimes. The slap of water against peeling hulls. The shouts of fishermen, unloading empty pots from greasy decks, their luminous waterproofs and rubber-soled boots squeaking on the damp, worm-eaten wood.

  Up the steps, to the promenade. Most of the shops are shut. Only a few kiosks stand open, selling kites and knick-knacks, imitation shells and kiss-me-quick hats, staffed by miserable teenagers texting on mobile phones or grizzled old women who look like they have been standing in the same place their whole lives.

  I try to smile. There’s excitement in me. Exhilaration at the thought of Jess. Her embrace. Her kiss. Fear, too. At opening up. Telling all. Telling her the bits she doesn’t know.

  On, down to the amusements, boots leaving an unbroken trail of chocolate-brown mud on the wet red pavement. The prom is almost deserted. One man studies the tide charts, another trains binoculars on a lonely shoreline bird.

  Down to the ice cream parlour. She’s not there, yet. Three staff members in black T-shirts and trousers stand chatting, one leaning on a broom. Its theme is 1950s America, all polished chrome and mirrors painted with knickerbocker glories. It looks like the cast from Grease should walk through the door and order cherry sodas and thick milkshakes, but the only customers are two old ladies, sipping coffee from mugs that are too heavy for their shaking hands.

  How do I tell her… How?

  I sense her before she speaks. The air behind me feels suddenly softer. Warmer.

  “Hey you.”

  She’s standing by the sea wall. A sensible purple coat over jeans and sandals, painted nails. Blonde, fluffy hair and hands in pockets. Her face, cold but flushed. Her smile, reaching all the way to her eyes.

  I try to speak but nothing happens, so we just stare at each other, until the wind blows her hair in front of her face and I step forward and brush it behind her ear, resting her cool cheek against my warm palm, and rub the tip of my nose against hers, and then her eyes increase, blur and fill as we move together and goose pimples appear on her chest, and mine, and
we’re kissing.

  And nothing else really matters, for a while.

  56

  McAvoy wonders if this is how killers feel. If, in this raw moment of despair and anger, he is sharing a bond with the men and women it is his job to bring to justice.

  He adds guilt to the cocktail of emotions sloshing in his system and turning his face a flushed and livid red.

  He feels like a creationist being eaten by a dinosaur. All of his beliefs, the anchors that make him what he knows to be a good man, seem suddenly silly and insubstantial in the face of his desire to cause harm.

  Is it just circumstances that turn anger into murder? He thinks of jealous husbands, out to scare, acting in rage, strangling their cheating spouses for a second longer than they intended, and suddenly finding themselves astride a corpse? Thinks of pub fights. Men in drink, pulling a pen knife from a pocket and sticking it in the belly of the bloke who has spilled their pint and failed to apologise.

  He is seeing in shades of grey, and it scares him.

  Until today, he believed there were murderers and victims. Decent people and evil people.

  He finds his fingers curling themselves into fists.

  He shakes the steam from his eyes. The computer screen keeps blurring. He can feel a migraine edging into his head, encircling his brain with cold, numbing tentacles.

  More than anything in the world, he wants to run home. Sprint down the stairs, take a patrol car, and screech home. Hold her. Hold the baby. Pack a bag and run. Put miles between himself and this place. These people.

  He sits at his neatly ordered desk in the empty CID suite. A civilian officer is doing something with files at the far end of the room, but save for her shuffling of paper, he is alone. The team are either at Roper’s side or hunting the man of the hour.

  The call came through mid-morning. The body of a man thought to be the missing witness from the Cadbury trial found in the plunge pool at a city hotel. Prime suspect, Owen Lee. Recently bailed on suspicion of two other murders. Detective in charge, Doug Roper. Suspect considered armed and dangerous. Firearms officers have been put on alert. Media informed. This is a priority case…

  The men and women in the shiny suits had scrambled. Taken Roper’s individual calls and hustled out of the office, pulling on matching raincoats and picking up umbrellas carrying the insignias of cars they can’t afford. Despatched to likely hideouts. A team of uniforms sent to his home address. Called in moments later to alert the control room to two more bodies. Brains bashed in. Fucking bloodbath…

  Later, the call from the team at the hotel. The suspect’s sister has been found. No pulse. Suspected overdose. Drugs in abundance. Signs she had been assaulted shortly before death…

  McAvoy, in the middle of it all, not moving. Just sitting at his desk, waiting to be given something to do, trying to keep the tears from his eyes and his feet firm on the carpet. Making his tongue bleed as he clamped his teeth upon it. Longing to run. Longing to run.

  He doesn’t know how much of what Owen told him is true. Wonders how many times self defence will work as mitigation. Whether anybody saw him, standing outside the apartment block, talking to the country’s most wanted murderer in the rain, ushering him into the church. If there were witnesses as Owen fled the scene, putting distance between himself and the duty McAvoy had so believed he would perform.

  Obsession.

  McAvoy knows that is the key to it all. It is the fuel that is keeping him here. Fixing his eyes on the screen. Burning in his gut and belching bile into his mouth.

  How to stop Roper?

  How to stop his lies?

  How to find the killer? The person who took a shine to a pretty girl, frightened her, followed her, and killed her in an alleyway within view of her house. Who left her body to be found by a pervert, who took it as a gift, and used it for his own unspeakable lusts.

  He logs onto websites he has visited time and again. Cross-references log-numbers and statistics, profiles and callouts, with the bundle of paperwork and photocopied notes by his right hand. Spills his mug of cold tea and does not even stop to mop up. Begins picking up the documents in his fist rather than his fingertips. Finds his hands in his hair. His jaw aching as he grinds his teeth, and watches the screen flicker, and wonders what to do, what to do, as the radio fizzles with static, more reports, updates, lies, lies, lies…

  …Attention all units, the trial of Shane Cadbury has been adjourned following the discovery of the body at the hotel. Whether it will resume after the weekend is unknown, but indications are it will be declared a mistrial. The judge has been briefed about developments and the Crown Prosecution Service is holding off on any decision about whether to progress with the case until the involvement of Owen Lee has been fully investigated…

  McAvoy kicks the waste-paper bin and slams his arm on the desk. He doesn’t know who he is anymore. Last night he stood dumb as a suspect was beaten in a cell. This morning he sat in the Lord’s house with a killer.

  Roper will stitch it all together again, he thinks. He’ll ensure Owen is either shot, or dismissed as a lunatic and fantasist. He’ll get a retrial for Cadbury, without the hassle of the defence witness. He’ll probably find out about McAvoy’s little meeting with the prime suspect, and then he’ll either put him in his back pocket, or have him go away.

  And Ella’s family will go home and curse the wrong man. They’ll sit in a house surrounded by flowers and cards and her picture, and they’ll loathe Shane Cadbury, when the man who stabbed their daughter, and the man who let him go, are walking around, and preparing to do it again.

  He tries to focus.

  Somebody who knew her.

  Wanted her.

  Fantasised over her and wouldn’t let go.

  Running through suspects in his head.

  Realising he has none.

  All he has is a deeply-held belief that the investigation was carried out improperly. He doesn’t even know who to tell.

  He looks at the phone again, and the number on the paper in front of him.

  He wants to phone her family. Tell them everything. Explain to the Butterworths that they’ve been lied to. That the copper with the dazzling smile is a chancer and a villain, more dangerous than the man the whole police force is hunting.

  Tries typing the mobile phone number into a search engine. Gets gobbledygook and accounts for an Australian air-conditioning firm.

  Puts her name in.

  E-l-l-a B-u-t-t-e-r-w-o-r-t-h

  Page after page of news stories. Online versions of papers, TV reports, radio bulletins. Snatches of sympathy and opening lines.

  Sees Roper’s name among most of them.

  Puts it in the search engine.

  Profiles and interviews, story after story, case after case. Even an entry on Wikipedia and Who’s Who. Pictures. Sometimes smiling, sometimes overflowing with saccharine concern.

  A fraud, thinks McAvoy. A liar. A conman.

  He scrolls through site after site, sneering at the screen. Finds himself back where he started. The Hull Daily Mail.

  A story by Tony Halthwaite on the search for a missing girl. Disappeared in her wedding dress having spilled wine on it and raced to her auntie’s house for help. Family very concerned. Never done anything like this before. Detective Superintendent Doug Roper understood to be personally handling the investigation.

  The picture that accompanies the story is the one that the city would come to know in the weeks and months that followed. That would accompany every update and bulletin. Ella. Captured in a broad smile. Large hooped earrings, halter-neck black top. Flushed cheeks and sparkle in her eyes.

  But it’s not just a headshot. It hasn’t been cropped.

  In this, the first chapter of the Ella Butterworth story, the picture is printed in its entirety. She stands on a stage, in front of the Search For A Star banner, bouquet of flowers in her grip.

  An arm around her shoulders.

  The hand, almost imperceptibly, curving down onto th
e slope of her breast.

  Family and friends around her, celebrating her triumph in the heats of the talent contest she would never have a chance to win.

  And staring out at him, with a leer, a familiar face.

  57

  She’s done the hard work for me. Told me what she knows. Said it while staring out over the sea wall, hands on the wet brick, eyes on the horizon, filling the air with my misdeeds.

  Blake.

  She’d always known, she said. Dad had mentioned something to her about him having done something bad in the past, and she’d pieced it together from there. Got other bits from Kerry when she was off her face. She just wanted to hear it from me, she said. Have me trust her enough to open up.

  “You were a child,” she says to me, still looking out at the grey waters. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”

  She tells me she understands the demons, too. That I sometimes talk to them in my sleep. That I fight and kick against invisible things in the moments before I give in to unconsciousness. That she’s found my prescriptions, and the pills.

  Always known, she says. Just waiting for me to tell her.

  So I tell her the rest.

  The men in the woods.

  Kerry’s flat.

  Our home, and the Russians.

  The sauna.

  Kerry.

  Roper.

  McAvoy.

  I share it all, between gasps of cigarette smoke. When she turns to face me, I don’t know whether the water on her cheeks is from her eyes or the sky.

  When she holds me, she’s trembling, but the embrace is strong.

  I didn’t know I needed to be forgiven until she said that she did.

  And then my floodgates open, and the tears that fall from my eyes are twenty years old, and roar to earth with the intensity of a storm.

  58

  McAvoy is trying not to run. His shoes are squeaking on the plastic-covered floor as he moves quickly down the corridor and into the darkened PNC room.

  Punches his code into the keypad and steps inside.

  A uniformed officer is sitting at one of the two large terminals. He looks up, gives a gruff “all right?” then returns to his work.