The Dark Winter

PART THREE
CHAPTER 19

The snow has begun to fall. Fat, white, perfect flakes tumble in their millions from a sky a hundred shades of black, icing the kerbs, the pavements, the rooftops, the awnings; adding inches of height to the wet, damp city.

McAvoy looks but does not see. The windscreen is misted insensible from the breath that eases from his lungs in a low, icy, angry whistle. Two great dorsal fins have been carved in the snow upon the glass by wipers he has no memory of switching on. He does not register the weather. Nor the cold. Just grinds his teeth and narrows his eyes and drives the people-carrier too fast on slick, treacherous roads.

Colin Ray, he thinks. Colin Fucking Ray.

The effort of holding his jaw tight is giving him a headache and the cold is making his ribs ache. Gradually, in increments, he becomes aware of the pain. Becomes aware of his surroundings. Of the weather.

‘You silly bastard,’ he says to himself, for what must be the hundredth time. ‘Why did you go home. Why?’

When the anger subsides he will find time to reproach himself for this. Tell himself that he lost his temper because he feared having his moment of glory taken away. Missing out on the arrest in a case that has crawled under his skin. He will find ways to loathe himself, and resolve to never let his own need for personal glory become his primary reaction when learning about an arrest in a murder investigation. But for the moment, it feels justified. He is not the lead investigator, but it feels like his case. It is he who has slotted the pieces together. He who has twice looked into the wet blue eyes of the man who is committing these crimes.

Worst of all, he finds himself wondering if he has got it wrong. Ray couldn’t have gone in with nothing. Couldn’t have arrested Chandler on a hunch.

Christ, what if it really is him?

Gingerly, so as not to add to the dull agony in his ribs, he turns the wheel hard to the right and pulls into the car park at the back of Queen’s Gardens station. Parks in a spot reserved for visiting senior officers and finds himself quite enjoying the feeling of not giving a damn whether he gets into trouble. Kicks open the door as the wind and the snow take him in their fist.

‘McAvoy,’ comes a voice. ‘Sergeant. Here.’

Struggling with the door, shivering as the snow spills from the brim of his hat and down the collar of his ragged rugby shirt, he glares across the car park at the dimly lit rear entrance to the building.

McAvoy leaves a trail of deep, perfect footprints as he crosses the distance between himself and the voice. The snow is ankle-deep already.

‘Figured you’d come,’ says the voice, and as McAvoy gets closer he sees Tom Spink, standing in the doorway, a mug of something in one hand, dressed, as yesterday, in dark trousers, cardigan and collarless shirt.

‘I got your message,’ says McAvoy, who is too wind-blown and irritated to chide himself for stating the obvious.

Spink nods. Blows out a sigh, then holds out the mug as McAvoy skips up the stairs and into the shadow of the doorway.

‘Fancy a nip?’

McAvoy doesn’t care what’s in the mug. He takes it and gulps down a liquid that is at once warming and cold.

‘Calvados,’ says Spink, taking the mug back. ‘They’re in interview room three. We’ll talk on the way.’

Stepping through the open door, a wave of heat washes over them both. Overhead, the motion-activated, energy-efficient lighting flickers on and the corridor is bathed in lurid green. At this hour, the station is virtually empty, with the civilian workers long since tucked up in bed and only a skeleton staff of uniformed officers tasked with manning the custody suite while the patrol cars and traffic officers are scattered across the city, no doubt hunkered down somewhere warm with flasks of tea and petrol-station food.

McAvoy is about to ask what the hell has happened in the few hours since he left the Bear, but Spink gives him no opportunity. He starts talking softly, rapidly, as they make their way up the hall, past locked doors and noticeboards overflowing with policing initiative posters, rotas, rosters and staff news. McAvoy has never once seen anybody stop to read them.

‘Pharaoh’s not here,’ he says under his breath. ‘She knows, though. Spitting bullets and teeth.’

‘Is she on her way in?’

‘Can’t. Her husband’s an ill man. Wheelchair-bound, if you hadn’t heard. He has good days and bad days. This is a bad day. She’s trying to get somebody to watch him and the kids so she can get across, but in this weather I doubt we’ll see her.’

‘So this wasn’t her call?’

‘Are you joking? Christ, she’s going spare.’

‘She didn’t send DCI Ray?’

‘No chance. The cheeky monkey did this as soon as her back was turned. Trouble is, it’s starting to look like the right move. To the top brass at least.’

‘What?’ McAvoy stops dead in the corridor, and then has to scamper to catch up with Spink when he realises the man isn’t stopping.

‘Look, I’m just an innocent bystander, son,’ he says, shaking his head and then nodding to direct them down another corridor as they come to a crossroads. ‘Trish knows her stuff, but she’s got her enemies. She was never meant to have this job. For every woman and ethnic minority member that gets promoted to make us all look reasonable and forward-thinking, another twenty blokes from the old school get bumped to superintendent. If Colin Ray’s gone in with his size tens and managed to nab somebody we can actually pin this on, they’re not going to tell him off for going over Trish’s head.’

‘But it’s a nonsense,’ says McAvoy, the frustration apparent in his voice. ‘Chandler couldn’t possibly-’

‘Look, I’m not the one with the answers, lad,’ he says, slowing their pace and looking up from watching his footsteps to actually make eye contact with McAvoy. ‘I’m just a writer these days. A writer who happens to hear things now and then and a writer who tonight, happened to be having a mug of tea with the desk sergeant when Colin Ray and Shaz Archer brought in a little bloke holding a wooden leg and asking for you. I phoned Trish. She said she’d get here as soon as she could. Told me to let you know. I have.’

‘She asked you to tell me? Why?’

‘I don’t know, lad. Perhaps she wanted you to make them some sandwiches.’

Spink turns to walk on, but McAvoy blocks his way. ‘What have they got? What has Ray found?’

Spink looks down the corridor, as if keen to make a break for it, then appears to come to a conclusion.

‘I don’t know how much of this is bollocks and how much they can prove, but Colin’s been telling people that you and Trish have ballsed up. Failed to run a background check on a key suspect in the investigation. It turns out Chandler isn’t called Chandler at all. He’s really Albert Jonsson. Registered under that name at the clinic. Asks to be called Russ Chandler and people respect it, but he’s a non-person. Albert Jonsson, however, is very real. And he’s got a record. One count of wounding, two burglaries, obtaining money by deception …’

‘But we were going to interview him tomorrow,’ McAvoy says through gritted teeth.

‘There’s more,’ says Spink, looking away. ‘There was no chance of a warrant. Not at this hour. So Shaz Archer laid on the charm. Persuaded the night staff to do a search of Chandler’s room. They found his notebook.’

Something about Spink’s tone of voice makes McAvoy feel as though he is opening a final demand.

‘And?’

‘And Daphne Cotton’s name’s in there, son. Clean sweep.’

McAvoy’s shoulders slump forward. His head lolls to his chest. He takes a step backwards and leans his against the wall, blood rushing in his head. Could he really have been so wrong? Could he really have sat and chatted with a killer?

‘It doesn’t have to mean anything,’ says Spink. ‘I’ve seen bigger coincidences.’

McAvoy tells himself to nod, but can’t find the strength. He feels as though he’s been kicked in the gut.

‘He’s not admitted it, then?’ he asks, his voice suddenly weary and old.

‘They’re conducting the interview now. All he’ll say is “no comment”, or at least that was how he was playing it last I heard. But Colin’s persuasive. He won’t back off.’

McAvoy manages the faintest of nods. ‘Jonsson? That’s …?’

‘Icelandic, yes. Again, could be nothing.’

‘But probably not.’

‘No.’

He tries to pull himself together. Wishes, for a moment, that he smoked, just so he could busy his fingers with lighting something that would bring him a modicum of comfort.

‘If it is him …’

‘Yes.’

‘At least he’ll be off the streets,’ he says, trying to make himself feel relieved that at least a murderer would be behind bars. ‘At least we’ll have done some good.’

‘Exactly,’ says Spink, and tries a grin.

The silence stretches out.

‘It looked nothing like him,’ says McAvoy, more to himself than anybody else. ‘Different eyes.’

‘I know.’

‘And he called me,’ he says, suddenly loud. ‘He called me about Angie Martindale. Why would he do that? And he wouldn’t have had time. He called, me, remember? You’re getting this so wrong …’

‘They found a mobile in his room. They’ve contacted the mobile phone company. Should hear back in the morning. They’ll know where the signal came from. They’ll know if he took a break from carving his name on Angie Martindale for long enough to give you a fighting chance at stopping him.’

‘They think he was playing a game?’

Spink nods.

‘Cat and mouse with me the stupid Scottish pussy?’

Spink smothers a smile by wiping his hand across his mouth. ‘We don’t know anything yet,’ he says.

From nearby comes the sound of voices. Footsteps. Excited chatter. Without saying anything, McAvoy and Spink push off from the wall and follow the sound. They turn left at the next T-junction and carry on past the four pieces of Blu-tack that used to hold a laminated piece of paper bearing the words INTERVIEW ROOMS.

Outside a wooden door with a long narrow pane of glass at its centre stand Colin Ray and Shaz Archer. Ray is holding open a manila folder, nodding vigorously as Archer points into its depths with a chewed biro.

‘… would make anybody frustrated,’ she’s saying. ‘Big brain, little dick, big problems, eh Col? How many times we seen it? Can’t just go out and pick a fight, because he’s too high and bloody mighty for that, but he can dream up something like this, eh? Something that makes him that bit special. It’s all here.’

McAvoy would have been content to turn away. To walk back the way they’d come without being seen. But Spink coughs and greets the two officers with a smile.

‘Going well?’

Colin Ray’s eyes flash anger. He closes the folder as if trying to squash a fly in its pages. Flares his nostrils as if preparing to charge.

‘She sent her errand boy?’

The question is directed at Spink, but McAvoy knows it is himself to whom Ray is referring. Later, he will tell himself that it’s a good thing, that he’s now known as Pharaoh’s blueeyed boy when a week ago she couldn’t even spell his name. But now, it just makes his cheeks burn.

‘It’s my case too,’ says McAvoy, and even as he does so, wonders where the words came from.

The two senior officers share a look.

‘Well, you’re here just in time to watch it end,’ says Ray, nodding in the direction of the interview room. ‘We’ve got the bloody lot.’

‘He’s confessed?’ Spink sounds incredulous.

‘He’s giving it all the no comment at the moment,’ pipes up Archer. ‘But he’s getting tired.’

McAvoy looks at them both. Colin looks tired and ill, but the map of burst blood vessels in his cheeks and the vein pounding at the side of his head suggest he has enough fire in him to see this through.

‘You can’t seriously expect to charge him …’

‘I bloody can,’ snaps Ray, looking down at the closed folder as if it contains treasure.

McAvoy can’t help himself. ‘What have you found?’

Shaz Archer suddenly looks like a cat stretching out after a long nap. Her whole posture becomes preening and luxurious. ‘Woke up the chap that used to be his agent,’ she says though a grin. ‘Interesting man.’

‘And?’ Tom Spink’s voice has become authoritative. The DCI inside him has momentarily forgotten he’s retired.

‘And he says our Russ Chandler, or whatever he likes to call himself, is a bloody headcase.’

She takes the folder from Ray’s hands and holds its out to McAvoy, beckoning him forward as if enticing a dog with a biscuit. He takes the file.

‘Read it,’ says Archer, under her breath.

As McAvoy opens the folder he hears the door to the interview room open and close. He looks up into Shaz Archer’s face. Ray has gone back in to finish the job.

‘Not hard to fathom when you’ve got all the pieces,’ says Archer, waggling her fingers in the air as she mimes mystery. ‘Our boy in there’s spent his bloody life trying to be an author. Dreamed of it since he was a kid. Never good enough. Got his early works rejected without being opened. Got some interest when he started doing a bit of investigative work but never took off. Had to self-publish in the end. One book was almost readable, managed to get himself an agent, but it still never happened. Just lost it in the end. Couldn’t keep taking the rejection. Couldn’t stand writing about people who he saw as nobodies and not being a household name himself. Came up with all of this as a way of payback. Psychologically it’s a neat fit. Get a shrink to sign it. Col knows somebody …’

McAvoy’s been fighting with himself not to blurt out the word ‘bollocks’ but it’s a battle he can’t win.

‘That’s all just guesswork, isn’t it, DI Archer?’ says Spink, distracting her before she can turn on her junior officer.

‘We’ve got his fantasies,’ she says, pointing at the folder. ‘We’ve got Daphne Cotton’s name in his notebook. We’ve got Angie Martindale. His involvement with Fred Stein. Trevor Jefferson. He’s the common link.’

‘But that doesn’t mean-’

‘Read the letter he sent the publisher that turned him down.’

There is something about the way she says it that makes McAvoy stop talking. He leafs through the photocopied pages in the file. Notices the red felt pen circle around the page of handwritten notes. Sees the name ‘Daphne C’. A phone number. Reams of shorthand. He turns the pages.

‘There,’ says Archer, nodding.

Dear Mr Hall,

My agent, Richard Sage, has just informed me of your decision not to proceed with the publication of my novel, All Hands. As you can perhaps imagine, I find this news very distressing. I have poured my heart and soul into this volume and, as sales of my previous, albeit self-published, literary efforts demonstrate, there is a market for my work. I must ask that you reconsider. In our previous correspondence I have spoken in glowing terms of the esteem in which I hold your publishing house and I have taken great personal interest in both your organisation and its personnel. For example, I know that your home address is Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge. Your wife’s name is Lauren. Your son, William, boards at Rowan Prep School in Esher. I tell you this not to alarm or threaten you into offering me a publishing deal, but to demonstrate the meticulous single-mindedness of my painstaking research. Indeed, I am willing to go to almost any lengths in order to achieve my dream. As I have already mentioned, my own understanding of the criminal psyche is unsurpassed and my many interviews with convicted killers have offered me an unrivalled insight into the disordered mind. I await your response with interest …

McAvoy closes his eyes for five whole seconds. Imagines the correspondence being read out in court. Pictures Chandler’s defence barrister telling him to change his plea to guilty and take the prosecution’s offer of a reduced sentence. Sees Ray smiling as his mates slap his back.

‘Open and shut,’ says Archer, and for once, her words don’t seem designed to pummel him. They merely state fact.

‘What was the upshot?’ asks McAvoy, in little more than a croak.

‘Publisher threatened to go to the police and the agent dropped him,’ says Archer, taking the folder from his hands and putting it under her arm. ‘The agent’s had plenty of emails from him as well. All in a similar tone. Totally obsessive. Sage said he’s never met anybody so desperate. Somebody who would kill to see their name on a bookshelf.’

McAvoy frowns. It makes no sense. He’s seen nothing in Chandler’s eyes to make any of this believable.

‘His eyes,’ he remembers suddenly. ‘The man I fought with had blue eyes. Chandler doesn’t.’

‘Fucking hell, McAvoy,’ says Archer angrily. ‘Maybe he wore contacts. That’s all just detail. We’ve got murders, and we’ve got a guy with “murderer” written through him like a stick of Blackpool rock.’

‘But if it’s not …’

‘Then he won’t confess.’

McAvoy reaches into his coat and pulls out pages he’d printed off the internet moments after Spink sent him the message. ‘Look at these,’ he says pleadingly. ‘There are other people at risk. Look at this woman. A charity worker blown up in Iraq. Still alive but she’s the only one who made it. We can’t get this wrong. The next victim could be here …’

McAvoy turns to Spink, but the older man is facing away from him, staring down the corridor, as if unable to meet his eyes.

The door opens and Colin Ray pokes his head out of the crack. His face is covered in sweat. The neck of his jumper is ragged and twisted. He looks at McAvoy for less than a heartbeat and then turns his gaze to Archer.

‘Come in, Shaz,’ he says quietly. ‘Peg-leg wants to confess.’

She takes the printed pages from McAvoy’s unresisting hand and walks back into the interview room.