by David Mark
McAvoy sits down in front of the screen and logs on. He entertains the notion of using somebody else’s ID, but he is past caring. Evidence trails don’t seem to matter. Roper can make things look however he wants to.
Excitement making his fingers tremble, he puts the name into the database.
There is a pause. The screen turns black, and McAvoy finds himself digging his nails into his palm and chewing at his cheek.
Unsure what he wants the criminal record check to find…
And then it begins.
A catalogue of mugshots, going back twenty years. Unmistakably, the man in the photograph.
The familiar face.
Cautions for shoplifting.
Affray.
Then a dwelling burglary.
Another.
Threats to kill.
Indecent exposure.
Five more, inside two years.
Burglary.
Indecent assault on a minor.
Assault.
Rape.
Carrying an offensive weapon.
A decade of arrest and conviction, and then ten years of almost nothing.
He’s got better.
Found out how to do it properly, and not get caught.
McAvoy looks in his notebook. At the cases in London, and further north.
The addresses match.
So does the photo.
He’s trembling, now. Excited, but angry, too. Angry that this man could have been caught, if only Roper had cared enough to do things properly when Ella’s body was found.
An obsessive, with a violent past, whose previous addresses match with the dates of the murders and woundings of half a dozen attractive young women.
Aector McAvoy breathes out, and wonders what to do next.
He’s just found a killer.
59
We stroll hand in hand to the car, no longer caring about the rain, or the vehicles that splash water from the deep muddy kerbs up our trouser legs. We stop once in a while to kiss. For her to ask another question. For me to feel lighter with each truth spilled.
She’s nodding a lot. Taking it all in.
It helps, talking about it. Laying it out chronologically. All that has happened since she told me this was my last chance. Since I set off to the bridge to spite her, and smashed a rock through the skull of a man who was trying to kill me.
“Why this area, though?” she’s asking. “After you got out. Why not start again somewhere else? Why surround yourself with memories of what you did?”
“Because I didn’t deserve a fresh start. I didn’t deserve to live calmly and peacefully. I needed to be here. So I could never forget. Never put it behind me. Never condone it.”
“It sounds like those Catholics who whip themselves,” she says, biting her lip. “Who wear those things around their thighs that dig into the skin so they’re always reminded of Jesus’s suffering. Is it like that?”
“I wear mine on the inside,” I say, looking away, watching the gulls and the waves and feeling my heart race as I dare to believe that she does, truly, understand. That she gets it. Gets me. And it’s not too late to make a difference.
“But to become a journalist? In the area where you were born?”
“I’ve only ever been good at a few things, Jess. Boxing, writing, and talking to people. The hospital I was in, it was more like a centre for troubled teens, it had a boxing club and I didn’t have much else to do with my time other than getting back in the ring. I knew I’d never be able to box professionally. Too notorious. But I made it a decent club. Had a proper coach and everything. Ended up with kids who weren’t even residents at the centre coming along for training. And our best boxers started entering competitions. Just little stuff, but I reckoned they deserved some credit so I started sending in match reports to the paper. York Press was the nearest. They liked my style. And I told enough lies to get a freelance job, sending stuff in over the phone, making a few quid. And then when the shrinks reckoned I could go out into the big bad world without shooting anybody, it became a proper job.
“Nobody was more surprised than me. It was like everything I’d done had been atoned for and forgotten. The world had given me a normal life. A job. A wage. There was only me who didn’t feel like I deserved it. Who kept waiting for the world to give me the skinning I deserved. But it didn’t come. I found you. I found a chance at happiness. All the stuff with Dad and Kerry, that was bad, but it wasn’t my punishment. It wasn’t justice, I suppose. And then you got pregnant. And I found my atonement. Our baby died. I poisoned it. And I wasn’t even strong enough to hold you…”
“No,” she cries, her hands rising to her mouth as though she fears she’ll be sick. “No, Owen, that wasn’t it! That wasn’t your fault. It was nobody’s fault. It just happened.”
“It happened because of me.”
“Why not me?”
“Because you’re an angel. You’re perfect. You’ve never hurt anybody.”
“I’ve hurt you every day we’ve been together. I haven’t been what the man I love needs. Why wasn’t us losing the baby all down to me? Why not my fault?”
“No, Jess, I was poison in you…”
“You were my goodness, Owen. Even now, you’re the only good man I’ve ever known.”
I see myself reflecting back in her eyes. They’re the only mirrors I can tolerate.
We hold each other. Touch each other as if for the first time.
Eventually, she speaks again.
“But you must have torn yourself open, not knowing what would happen. Not knowing if you had a real future. Every moment, not knowing if somebody would recognise you from an old picture…”
“Tony did. He knows. Saw me in the files and told me he knew everything. It was a weird feeling. Like being found out, but being relieved that somebody else knew, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell you. I had a confidante who didn’t share my bed. I could talk to him about it without worrying that I’d scare him away. How could I lie there with you? Telling you about how it felt to pull the trigger. What I’m seeing when the lights go out. How it feels to spend most of your life trying not to flinch when goblins start chucking daggers in your face…”
She puts a hand on my cheek. Pulls me close. “That’s what love is, Owen. That’s what your kind of love is, anyway. It’s taking somebody else’s sadness. Using everything in your power to make their every moment a perfect one, even if it means making yourself miserable. It’s caring more for somebody else than you do for yourself.”
I feel myself fragmenting. Coming apart. I can’t see properly, through the tears and the rain and the endless images that spill over one another as I try to make sense of who I am. “I’m a fool,” I say, and it doesn’t seem like enough.
“You are,” she agrees, and we find it in ourselves to laugh.
I tell her about Roper. About how he works. What he’s done. Show her my bruises.
She shakes her head. Reacts as if I’m telling her about an unpleasant boss. Tells me not to worry. That he’s probably jealous. That he’ll get his in the end.
Then I’m spilling all of it. Tony. Ella.
As the words spew into the low cloud, it becomes harder and harder to look at Jess. In her, I see another life. Another person. Another Owen.
I suddenly can’t argue with any of it. McAvoy’s right.
Ella needs justice.
They all do.
And I have to pay for what I’ve done.
We climb inside the car, and sit, silently, watching the steam rise from our clothes and the rain on the windowpane.
Her: “We could run.”
Me: “I have to go back.”
Both of us, horrified at the words of the other. Then folding into a smile and another embrace.
“Will they catch you? How much money did you take?”
“I never counted it.”
I pull out the roll, and her lips move as she counts the £20 notes. “Just under £2,
000,” she says.
It doesn’t seem very much.
“The gun?”
I pull it from my waistband and pass it to her. She holds it. Weighs it. She passes it back with a shudder. “I don’t like it,” she says.
I put it back where it belongs.
She reaches underneath herself and pulls out the wad of documents McAvoy had thrust at me. She starts sifting through them.
“It is important,” she says, softly, almost to herself. “Not just that somebody gets put away. But that the right person does. I suppose ordinary people just need to know that somebody has gone to prison for doing something wrong. It’s the people who are caught up in it, who are directly involved, that need something more than that. Some proof, deep down, that the world makes sense. That if you do something dreadful, it’ll catch up with you.”
All I can do is nod, and try not to look at the papers in her hand.
“This Ella,” she says, looking at a potted biography of the deceased. “She was a good person?”
“She never hurt anyone. She was a sweet girl, who died for no reason.”
“Would it make a difference if she had done something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I say, honestly. “That’s my job, isn’t it? I deal with death almost every day. I see people at their most raw and exposed. You can come to convince yourself the world is chock-full of blood unless you find a way to reconcile it. So, yeah, if some hooker’s been found dead, you tell yourself she knew the risks and shouldn’t have been out. A bloke’s been kicked to death after a night out, you tell yourself he probably said the wrong thing, and what was he doing out on a weeknight when he had a baby at home? That’s what you do. You find a way to tell yourself that they would still be alive if they hadn’t been playing silly beggars. That way you can write about them and it doesn’t touch you. You can say they were fabulous people, without the burden of having an emotional connection to them. It was different with Ella. None of us knew why it had happened. None of us could find a bad word about her. Not even Tony. It was new for all of us. The whole pack. She was a good, decent person, and she was killed in such a horrible way.”
“What if she was seeing somebody else? If she was a bully at school? If she went on internet chat rooms and talked dirty with strangers? If she was a human and not a bloody angel?” Jess’s eyes flash fire. It’s as if she’s jealous of a dead girl.
“I don’t know,” I say, again, and it sounds so pitiful I want to bite it back. I try again. “It would be easier, yes. Easier for Tony, anyway. I’ve never known him so bloody respectful as on this case. Barely went near the family. Wasn’t at many of the press conferences. You know what he’s like. Can get the family to tell him their pin number inside five minutes, most days. This one, he even gave the backgrounder to young Tom. I think it troubled him. Giving a shit.”
Jess scoffs. “Him? Care? The only way you could find that dirty sod’s heart is with a metal detector.”
I find myself smiling, because it’s a phrase I made up and she’s taken to copying. I should have known better than to mention his name. She likes me to have friends, but would rather I share a bolthole with Osama bin Laden than a pint with Tony H.
I switch on the windscreen wipers for something to do, and a jumbled, opaque landscape appears on the glass. Wet. Desolate. Miserable. It occurs to me that all I want is in this car.
I take the sheet of paper from Jess.
Lean in and kiss her.
Pull back.
To stop myself crying again, I look down at the documents, gulping hard.
The sheaf of papers is open on a report from the technology division. The history of Ella’s mobile phone. Calls in. Calls Out. Texts and pictures.
I look at the number that McAvoy has ringed in his sturdy, steady hand.
666999.
The Batphone.
60
Through the double doors. Past security and up the stairs.
A swirl of raindrops flying from his coat, McAvoy pushes through the throng of suits, and into the police room. He’s out of breath, but he’s keeping it controlled. He’s gulping down his panic. Stilling his heart. Knows this is important. Too important to mess up with excitement, silliness and panic.
He’s made a decision.
He’s elected to trust in the goodness of people. His belief that if you dig far enough, you will find even the worst person’s limit.
Roper’s sitting at the back of the room. He has an arm around Wendy Butterworth’s shoulders and he’s talking in a soft, hushed voice.
Two other detectives are talking gently into mobile phones in the rear of the shot, looking business-like and efficient. On the case.
They look up as McAvoy enters, and just manage to stop themselves from groaning.
Wendy does not even raise her eyes. She is too far gone. Her existence too terrible. She has not experienced any happiness since her daughter was taken, save for the grim satisfaction that the man who did it will be locked away. Now that small glimmer of comfort is in doubt. Nothing makes any sense anymore. She would take her own life, were it not for anguish at knowing that her daughter’s killer would have claimed another victim.
Roper catches McAvoy’s eye, remembers he’s on camera, and smiles. “Yes, Sergeant? Any developments?”
“A moment of your time, sir,” he says. Calm. Even. Then nods towards the cameras, and shakes his head.
Roper looks puzzled. Angry, for a second, then accepting. He excuses himself, and steps lightly to McAvoy’s side.
“Well?” His tone is light and mocking. Smug and amused.
“Cadbury, sir. What’s happening?”
Roper rolls his eyes. “He’s in the cells. They’re probably going to call a halt to the trial. We’ll be back here in a few months doing it again, all being well.”
“And Lee?”
“Oh there’s a school of thought that he had something to do with Ella’s murder but I can’t see that coming to much. Not much need, neither. We’ll get him on all the others. No point tagging Ella on as well. Big case like that, needs its own hearing. No, we’ll get Owen for this week’s little trail of destruction and Cadbury for Ella. Job’s a good ’un.”
McAvoy nods. Tries not to let the anger into his face.
“Does it matter to you, sir? Whether or not they really are guilty?”
Roper snorts. “You getting holier than thou, son?”
“I am holier than thou. I’ve never met anybody less holy than thou.”
“Very good,” says Roper, smiling. Then he moves in a little closer. “What is it this time, laddo? What’s chafing at your nethers?”
“It wasn’t Cadbury,” he replies, calmly. “I never thought it was, and you know that. But I know who did it. He met her when he was judging the singing contest. He’s got a record as long as your arm. He’s a violent obsessive. Done time for it, years ago. The Mail reporter. Tony Halthwaite.”
Roper giggles. Shakes his head. “Tony H?”
McAvoy meets the other man’s gaze. “Yes.”
The moment stretches.
McAvoy waits for Roper’s mask to slip. For some humanity to smile out.
Roper drops his voice to little more than a whisper.
Then smiles.
“I know Tony H, son. Know him well. He’s a nasty little bastard. I know all about his fucking record. Checked him out the second he got the crime brief at the Mail. Filed it away in the old upstairs. A thing worth knowing. A trump card. But he’s got fuck all to do with this case.”
“That’s not true, sir. We know somebody was prowling around the Butterworths’ house not long before she died. That she’d had dubious messages on her phone. I checked the computer and the CCTV records and there was a Hull Mail fleet car in the area, both on the night of the sighting at her house, and the night she was killed.”
“Circumstantial,” he tuts.
“But enough to investigate. This is what I keep saying. It’s not about convictions, sir. It’
s about truth.” McAvoy tries to stop his voice rising, but his angry hiss still prompts looks from the film crew and the other officers.
Roper treats them all to his best smile. Puts his mouth close to McAvoy’s ear.
“Fuck truth, son. Fuck it all. Fuck you, and Owen Lee and fuck Ella Butterworth. Silly slag probably had it coming. Maybe Tony H stabbed her. Maybe he didn’t. I don’t care. There’s enough on Cadbury to make it stick, so that’ll do. And Owen? Armed and dangerous, isn’t he? He won’t see the morning. Done me a good turn and drowned the chap who was becoming a problem. Didn’t even use the gun, which is fucking ungrateful, given what a bitch it was to get him out of the station with it in his grubby mitt. Tony’s my friendly face at the Hull Mail. He’s useful. He might have some demons, but haven’t we all? And as for you, laddo? You’re out of my department. You can go where you fucking like, but it’s not even funny watching you waste your time anymore.”
McAvoy rubs his hand across his forehead. He feels faint. Sick to his stomach. There’s blood thundering in his head.
“But he might do it again…” his voice has no strength.
“I always find the right man,” laughs Roper.
They look at one another. McAvoy, although taller, is stooped and weakened, so has to stare upwards to see into Roper’s eyes. They are black and lifeless. Nothing comes back save his own, uninspiring reflection.
McAvoy wants to say something clever. Make a threat. Make a scene.
But it will do no good.
Nothing will.
Nothing save the gun in his pocket.
The one Owen gave him, to put things right.
McAvoy closes his eyes, and mouths an apology to the pictures of the people in his head.
Tears sting his eyes and his chest is fit to burst.
His head is full of hot snakes and cold anger.
His fingers close on the gun.
Pictures the hole the bullet will make in the skull of the smirking demon who stands before him, clad in leather and the air of the untouchable.
Begins to pull the weapon free…
