by David Mark
“Sir, things are very much in hand…” begins Roper, but falls silent with a glare from his commanding officer.
The cameras catch it all.
“And this is Owen Lee?”
I nod. Don’t know if I should extend my hand.
“In the car,” he says, and his officers move forward. I put my wrists up and allow myself to be cuffed. I smile while they do it.
“Sir, this has been my investigation,” says Roper, and he’s a petulant child. Cameramen rub raindrops from lenses. I’m led through the crowd to the squad car. Behind me, I hear Tony groaning as the paramedics begin tending him.
The uniforms suddenly get the situation into some semblance of order and start to move the press back.
I slide into the warm car, and shiver as I lay my head back. I’m suddenly dog-tired, but I can’t help wishing I was with the pack, covering this, as it happens to somebody else.
Another copper slides in beside me. Doesn’t even look in my direction.
Outside, the Chief Constable is talking to Roper. Supercop’s head is bowed. Anger is radiating off him.
I just nod. Chew the inside of my cheek for a while. Rub tiredness from my face with muddy, bloody hands.
I look out at Roper again, and wish I could catch his eye. There might be something in them, at last.
He doesn’t turn around. I can only see the face of his young puppet. The blonde copper who wanted to be my friend and who beat the shit out of me in a prison cell. The lad who looks baffled and scared, and who’s standing on his own.
And then I lean back and close my eyes.
Feel the pleasant constriction of the cuffs on my wrists.
The knowledge I have nowhere to be and nobody to kill.
And I think of Jess.
I don’t doubt she’ll forgive me, and I hope she won’t have to wait for me for very long.
Kerry.
I can feel nothing but sadness, there. Nothing but empty, cold pain. I couldn’t save her. I helped her fall. Sadness, that on the day my dad heard he’d lost his daughter, he’ll hear his son has been arrested for murder.
Ella.
Just regret. That we never met. That I could not know her in life, the way I have understood her in death.
And then we’re moving.
Out of the car park. Past the cameras and the flashbulbs.
The rain somehow less ferocious on the windowpane.
Up at the sky.
Six spears of sunlight forming a constellation in the canopy of grey.
Epilogue
Four months later
June, 2012
It’s a ghastly day. Although the fog has not taken this part of the east coast in its fist, the sky is an endless smear of grey and the air is speckled with a misty rain; a billion tiny raindrops hovering like flies. Despite this, it’s warm. Sweaty. The sky may be the colour of white clothes washed alongside a funeral shroud, but the air has a moist pestilence about it, as though a great damp beast has been laid invisibly over the city. Roisin McAvoy feels perfectly within her rights to lie out on a sun-lounger in the front garden of her terraced house on the Kingswood estate.
Standing at the sink, staring through the window and more than enjoying the view, Aector McAvoy wonders whether his wife is breaking any laws in looking so extraordinarily beautiful. She’s wearing a leopard-print bikini, pulled down to avoid tan-lines, and she’s holding a baking tray to ensure that the occasional moments of sunlight help her fill in the gaps in her tan. She has earned this moment. She rarely considers what she does or doesn’t deserve, but her husband has made it plain that whatever she wants, she has earned.
Inside the little semi-detached on the Kingswood estate, Aector McAvoy, alive despite his best efforts, is thinking about his mum. He has spoken to his mother four times in the past five years – once to tell her about the birth of her grandson, and the others to put her mind at rest about rumours of his demise. She had been pleased about Fin. Hadn’t been aware, on any of the other occasions, that he had been in any kind of danger. You’re a policeman, she had said, as if this explained everything. Isn’t that what happens? McAvoy had found himself agreeing with her. Played down his injuries. Asked after her health and that of her husband and stepchildren. She had, in turn, asked after ‘the Irish girl and the baby’. McAvoy had kept his temper. Were he to lose it, he would never find it again.
He considers his son. The lad is asleep. Dead to the world, snoring contentedly. He’s going to be a big brother soon. He needs his rest.
It’s June 2012. McAvoy has been on sick leave since February. In the immediate aftermath of his encounter with Tony Halthwaite, his heart stopped twice. McAvoy would love to be able to tell his wife that he saw white light and perfection. He did not. In the moments between life and death he saw Ella Butterworth. Saw the girl taken before her time. Somehow, the wounds she sustained in Tony Halthwaite’s attack had been repaired. She was peaceful. She was serene. There was a moment’s connection, as she evaporated into fragments. And then there was only Aector McAvoy, half-dead on the damp ground of the Humber Bridge Country Park. He’d been given the chance to become something else. Something other. To pass on and be done with the complications of life and the people within it. He’d fought for life as if he were drowning. He does not know what lies beyond, but unless it contains Roisin and Fin, it holds no attraction.
He sits at the kitchen table. The radio is playing one of his favourites. It’s ‘Roll Away Your Stone’ by Mumford and Sons. There’s a new album out soon. Roisin knows a guy who knows a guy who robbed a guy. There will be tickets for the new tour in his car when his birthday arrives next month. He’ll be thirty years old. A third of the way through his life, and still no fucking clue what it’s all about.
He looks at the phone on the kitchen table as if it were a bomb. It is almost twenty minutes since he hung up on the newly appointed Detective Superintendent Patricia Pharaoh. She wants him on her team. She’s taking over the rebranded Major Crimes Unit. It will be known as Serious and Organised. He feels as though he fits both descriptions well enough to qualify.
The door swings open. Roisin is glorious: glazed in sweat and sun cream. Her sunglasses, knock-off Pradas, reflect McAvoy back upon himself. Barefoot, she crosses to where he sits. Slides, guilelessly, onto his lap, and drapes herself around him like a scarf.
“Tell me,” she says, into his ear. “I can take it.”
He swallows. Gooseflesh rises upon his exposed flesh. He feels her press her forehead to his. Feels her make him well, the way she has made him well these past months.
“Serious and Organised,” he says, his lips brushing her earlobe. “She says she trusts me. Understands.”
He hears her laugh against his neck. “The one with the blue eyes and the big tits? Yeah, she’s seen something in you, no doubt.”
“They’re all gone,” he says, quietly. “The whole team. Roper’s lot. Scattered to the four winds. Stace. Slater. All the DCs. All gone.”
“Fresh start,” says Roisin. “New beginnings.”
“It’s still on the table,” says McAvoy. “The offer. Full pension. Disability pay-out…”
“And what would you be, if not this?” asks Roisin, quietly. “What would you be for?”
He thinks about it. Casts around for an answer that works. “I’m not brave, Roisin. Not a hero. I just blunder around and somehow it’s worked out. But Mum was right. She asked me whether I was ready to do something that could actually make a difference. Christ, I’d do more good going back to the croft…”
“Whatever you choose,” says Roisin, and she squeezes his forearm. “You’d let me be whatever I wanted. It’s not mad to expect the same in return.”
“I expect nothing,” he says, and tries to keep the tears from his voice. “I just want to make you proud.”
Roisin shakes her head. Smiles into his neck. “She’ll be so fucking proud, Aector,” she says, and her small, warm hand finds his big, cold fist. She places h
is palm on her belly. “This time,” she says, and there is a ferocity to her voice. “Your girl. Your Lilah. She’s a fighter, this one. She’s you, and she’s me, and she’s herself too.”
McAvoy pulls her closer. “He got away with it,” he mutters. “Roper. Handed in his notice, took his pension. Working for a consultancy in London, making a fortune. And Owen – they got him. Put him away while I was dead to the world…”
“You nearly died,” says Roisin. “And there’s nothing gone wrong you can’t put right.”
McAvoy can’t find the words. Just holds her, close, and wishes there were a way to make her see that there is nothing in his life worth anything if she weren’t there to help him put himself back together.
“I nearly lost you,” says Roisin, softly, her lips brushing his skin. “I felt your heart stop. Truly. I felt the world break. And I called out, and you came back…”
“Roisin…” he begins. He can’t find a way to end the sentence. Feels tears spill. Feels her, kneading her fingers through his hair, his beard, cupping his big scarred face as if it were made of fine china.
“This Pharaoh,” she says, sitting back and looking into his damp, glazed eyes. “You know she fancies you, yeah? You only got the job because she wants to rattle your bones?”
“Roisin…” he begins, and he feels her love as if it were a second layer of skin.
She grins. Kisses him. “Keep it professional. You’ll do good.”
He says nothing. Lets her kiss him. Feels everything else drift away.
“Me gamau dut…” says Roisin. Then adds, for his benefit: “For ever.”
He can’t find the words to reply. He just knows that here, now, life seems like something worth protecting.
He wonders whether, in the depths of the dark winter, he will find his way towards the light.
About the Author
DAVID MARK spent more than fifteen years as a journalist, including seven years as a crime reporter with the Yorkshire Post. His writing is heavily influenced by the court cases he covered: the defeatist and jaded police officers; the competent and incompetent investigators; the inertia of the justice system and the sheer raw grief of those touched by savagery and tragedy. He writes the McAvoy series, historical novels and psychological suspense thrillers.
Dark Winter was selected for the Harrogate New Blood panel (where he was Reader in Residence) and was a Richard & Judy pick and a Sunday Times bestseller. He has also written for the stage, for a Radio 4 drama (A Marriage of Inconvenience) and has contributed articles and reviews to several national and international publications. He is a regular performer at literary festivals and also teaches creative writing.
David also starts to get all squirmy and self-conscious when he looks at stuff like this, so we’ll leave it there.
@davidmarkwriter www.davidmarkwriter.co.uk
An Invitation from the Publisher
We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.
We will keep you up to date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.
Get in touch: [email protected]
www.headofzeus.com
@headofzeus
@HoZ_Books
Head of Zeus Books
