The Dark Winter

CHAPTER 17

‘Don’t say a word,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Don’t fucking breathe.’

She walks behind the bar and reaches up to the top shelf for a half-pint glass. She holds the glass under the optic and pours herself a double vodka, which she downs in one.

The investigation team is assembled in the front bar of Wilson’s. Colin Ray is lounging in a hardbacked chair, his tie unfastened almost to his navel. He’s chewing nicotine gum and looking pleased with himself. Sharon Archer, as ever, is at his side. She’s got a packet of crisps open on the table in front of her, and is eating them as quietly as she can.

Sophie Kirkland and Ben Nielsen are standing at the bar, watching Pharaoh. They arrived together a few minutes ago, grumbling about the parking and shaking snow from their hair onto a floor thick with muddy bootprints.

McAvoy is resting against the fruit machine by the side entrance. Through the frosted glass he can see the fluorescent yellow jacket of the officer guarding the entrance. Two other constables are stationed at the front doors. The road has been cordoned off, but the crowd outside is still close enough to be a cause for concern. Some of the faces in the crowd had been snarling the last time McAvoy had poked his head out of the front door. He wonders whether it’s even worth trying to tell them that he feels worse about Angie Martindale than they do. And he’s the one who saved her life.

Pharaoh stands behind the bar. She closes her eyes. Breathes in and out for a full thirty seconds. Slowly, without saying a word, she pulls a thin cigar from a pocket of her coat, lights it, and draws the smoke deep into her lungs. She exhales precious little of it.

‘She’s not dead,’ says Pharaoh eventually. ‘This is a good thing.’

She stops. Takes another drag of the cigar.

‘Helen Tremberg will be OK too. That’s another good thing.’

Another drag. Another puff of smoke.

‘What’s not a good thing is the fact that the first I knew about all this was when I got a call from ACC Everett asking me for an update. Apparently he’d been at a funeral with the Grimsby Central superintendent when the super’s desk sergeant rang for advice on whether or not to assist the Serious and Organised Crime Unit with their murder investigation, and kick in the door of a city-centre flat. Asks me how Angela Martindale fits into the Daphne Cotton investigation. Or the Trevor Jefferson case, for that matter. You remember those investigations, yes? So the ACC asks me for chapter and verse. Puts his finger in his ear and waits for enlightenment. I was a little less than impressed to get that call. Even less so when I found myself about to tell him that I’d never heard of her. That I don’t know why on earth two of my officers are insisting that a poor uniformed constable kick her door in and make sure she’s not dead.’

McAvoy raises his head. Opens his mouth. Closes it again.

‘And now I find myself in Grimsby,’ she says. ‘I have an officer bleeding. I have another holding a piece of balaclava. I have a woman on her arse in a pub toilet with cuts to her foo-foo. And I have quite a lot of questions. Do you think perhaps now might be a good time for somebody to give me one or two answers?’

There is silence in the room. Colin Ray shrugs, but takes the time to turn his head and give McAvoy a wink that is in no way a gesture of comradeship. Shaz Archer follows his lead, and with a less interrogatory glare, Ben Nielsen and Sophie Kirkland also swivel. All eyes are on him.

‘Looks like you’ve been nominated, my boy,’ says Pharaoh, and there is no friendliness in her voice.

McAvoy looks up. His ribs throb like a migraine and his back teeth feel loose in his gums. He feels sick at the thought of explaining himself, and ill to his bones at having had a murderer in his hands and letting him slip away.

‘There’s a link,’ he says, and his voice sounds like a schoolboy’s. He closes his eyes again. Tells himself to just get it over with. To lay it out and hope it makes sense the way it had seemed to a few minutes before, when his fingers closed around the strong, wiry arms of the man kneeling above Angela Martindale, and he realised he had been right. Right to follow his nose, and right to smash the door in. Just wrong not to tell his boss along the way. He wonders what it says about him. Wonders if it is his own arrogance that prevents him from even considering sharing this with his superior officer. In the heat of the moment, in the rush of adrenalin, in the white-hot moment of certainty that he was about to confront a killer, it had all been forgotten.

He looks away from them all. Imagines he’s talking to himself. Laying the information out on a white page.

‘On the day of Daphne Cotton’s murder, ACC Everett asked me to visit a Barbara Stein-Collinson to break the news that her brother had been found dead at sea. His name was Fred Stein. He was the sole survivor of one of the trawler tragedies off Iceland in 1968. He’d escaped in a lifeboat with two crewmates. They died. He didn’t. A week ago, he set off with a documentary crew to tell his story and to put a memorial wreath over the spot where his ship went down. While on board, he disappeared. Got upset during an interview, went outside for some air and vanished. A few days later he was found dead in a lifeboat. Not one of the ship’s lifeboats but one that had been brought on board specially. So, an elaborate suicide? Feeling guilty for being the one that got away? Possibly. But it felt wrong. Long story short, I got in touch with a writer called Russ Chandler. He’s a resident at Linwood Manor …’

‘The nut-house?’ Sharon Archer is incredulous, as if he’s just told her his informant is a nonce.

‘He’s drying out. Got a drink problem. Anyway, he telephoned me today and wanted to know when we were picking him up. Started talking about Trevor Jefferson’s phone records …’

Several of the officers begin to hold up their hands and shoot each other confused glances. ‘Trevor Jefferson? The hospital guy?’

‘Yes. It transpires that as well as being the man to broker the Fred Stein deal for the TV company, Chandler had also approached Trevor Jefferson some time ago with a view to writing a book about solitary survivors. People who had been the only ones to survive.’

McAvoy’s eyes find Trish Pharaoh. Her arms are crossed and she’s biting at her lower lip, but she’s listening, and the subtle nod of her head suggests she understands what he is going to say.

‘Jefferson survived a fire that killed his wife and kids,’ says McAvoy, trying to find a face he feels comfortable talking to. ‘Wasn’t a scratch on him.’

He stops again, waiting for somebody to ask a question.

‘And how does this lead to Angela Martindale?’ asks Kirkland quietly. She looks genuinely confused and her eyes are still red from the shock of seeing Tremberg sitting in the back of the ambulance, having her slashed arm wrapped in gauze.

‘Angela Martindale was another person Chandler had been in contact with. She was the only surviving victim of a man the press called the Bar-Room Butcher. He raped several women in pub toilets. Carved his initials on their private parts. Stabbed them to death. Angela Martindale survived her injuries. Testified. She was the one who got away.’

McAvoy catches Pharaoh’s eye. She nods again, telling him it’s OK to proceed.

‘Daphne Cotton was the victim of a machete attack as a baby,’ he says meaningfully. ‘Everybody she loved was cut up by militants. Hacked to bits. In a church. She survived. She was the only one who did.’

After a moment, Colin Ray readjusts his pose. He slides himself into a more upright position. He appears to be listening.

‘Vigilante?’

McAvoy shakes his head.

‘It doesn’t fit,’ he says. ‘Sure, with Jefferson I can understand it. Especially if he’s the one who set the blaze. But Stein? Daphne Cotton? Angela Martindale? What have they ever done to anybody?’

McAvoy is interrupted by the sound of the toilet door swinging open. A forensics officer in a white suit and blue face mask enters the bar, a tray of evidence bags in his hands. He looks at the assembled officers and realises he’s walked in at a bad time. He puts the tray down on the nearest table. Looks at Pharaoh and mumbles ‘same footprint’ through his mask before ducking out the side door. An icy gust of wind and a smattering of street noise enters the room to fill the void left by his departure.

‘Footprint?’ asks McAvoy, gazing at Pharaoh.

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant,’ she says, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘I know I didn’t share that piece of information with you. I hope you can forgive me. It wasn’t deliberate. It’s just that as senior investigating officer, I rather thought me knowing was sufficient. Frustrating, isn’t it?’

‘So it is the same guy, yes? The one who did Daphne?’

Pharaoh nods. ‘It looks that way.’

Nielsen turns to McAvoy. ‘You’ve seen him twice.’

‘Yes,’ he says, trying to show that he already feels sufficiently bad about it to be spared any abuse, however richly deserved.

‘Was it the same guy? I mean, did he have the same build? Same physique?’ Nielsen smiles charmingly. ‘Same teary blue eyes?’

McAvoy finds himself absurdly pleased that Nielsen remembers his description off by heart. It makes him feel better to know that somebody has been paying attention.

‘There’s no doubt. I only got a glimpse of his eyes but they were the same. Blue. Red-seamed. Wet, like he’d been crying.’

‘And the victim said the same?’

‘Yes,’ replies McAvoy. ‘It was hard to get much sense out of her, but she was clear. He’d been crying. Sat above her for an age with his pants down and his knife drawn and did nothing but sob.’

Colin Ray turns to Pharaoh again. He appears to be coming to life. ‘Money in the budget for a profile?’ he asks.

Pharaoh nods without even thinking about the figures.

McAvoy, despite all that has happened, is feeling almost warm inside. It is as if his colleagues are becoming police officers in front of him. They begin to shout out questions. Theories. Suggestions. Pharaoh comes out from behind the bar and marshals Kirkland and Nielsen closer to the senior officers with a soft, stroking palm in the centre of their backs.

‘Whoever it is, they’re sure as hell not random acts,’ says Pharaoh. ‘This has been thought through. Considered. Somebody’s got a bee in their bonnet about unfinished business, and we’ve got to find out why they think it’s up to them to finish it.’

Without thinking about it, McAvoy moves away from the fruit machine and pulls up a chair. They sit together in a rough circle and with each word spoken he feels drawn further into this sphere of energised officers. This was what he imagined it would be like when he made the move to CID.

‘So how we do know where to look next?’ asks Sophie, looking up from her notebook and her frantic scribbling. ‘How the hell else do we find a sole survivor?’

Colin Ray, who has been muttering something in Shaz Archer’s ear, suddenly sits back in his chair as if he’s been shoved in the chest.

‘This Chandler,’ he says. ‘What’s the script?’

McAvoy thinks about the best way to sum up the rumpled, drink-pickled hack. ‘Typical journo, really. Out for himself. Cuts a few corners. Ticked off at life and drinks too much.’

‘Sounds to me like he’s the link in the chain,’ says Ray, and McAvoy notices a few subtle nods from the others. He looks at Pharaoh.

‘You’re not suggesting that Chandler could be the actual …’

‘Pick a prize from the middle shelf,’ says Ray.

‘No, I can see the connection, but in terms of his physical capability to commit the crimes, there’s no way,’ says McAvoy, and the whole idea seems so preposterous to him that his voice is louder than he intends.

Ray gets defensive. ‘Look, lad, I’ve known blokes with the build of a fucking jockey who could knock over a bodybuilder when their blood’s up. There’s no shame if a little fella has got the best of you once or twice …’

Without intending to, McAvoy finds himself starting to stand. ‘Do you think that’s what I care about?’ he demands.

‘Easy, Sergeant,’ says Ray, not moving.

‘I’ve met Chandler. Spent time with him. And I’ve met the person who’s doing this. They’re different people.’

‘That’ll do,’ says Pharaoh, and waves McAvoy back into his seat. She looks from his flushed face to Colin Ray’s angry one and appears to make a decision.

‘What is it with you and the limbless? There was a onearmed Russian bloke shouting the odds at you when I turned up,’ she says, with the faintest of smiles. ‘I can live without one-legged pissheads just now.’

For a moment, he looks as though he’s going to explode in anger, but he controls himself. Gives a little laugh to show he’s got control of himself. Feels everybody else relax a little.

‘Here’s where we’re at,’ says Pharaoh. ‘We’re getting somewhere, that’s one thing. This morning we had two separate cases. This evening we’ve got four, but they’re quite possibly connected. McAvoy’s done some good work here, even if he has been hiding his light under a bushel …’

There are laughs, and McAvoy doesn’t have to force it this time when his face breaks into a smile.

‘McAvoy, I need you to write this up the first moment you get. I need a full report of where we’re at, what you know. I need your witness statement on this afternoon’s events. I’m going to make a call to the top brass and explain that we were working this all under the radar and trying to maintain radio silence. Or some such shit. Whatever makes it sound like I know what my team are fucking up to. It’s early yet, so I’m afraid there’s going to be no sloping off back home. Ben, you get yourself up to the hospital and get Angie Martindale’s statement. The barman’s too, if he’s coherent. Be gentle, yeah? And Sophie, you’re looking for anything that links the names in this case. Any link between Stein, Daphne Cotton, Trevor Jefferson, and now Angela. There’s no doubt that this Chandler character is a major piece of the puzzle. McAvoy, he obviously feels a connection to you, so tomorrow, you and I will take a ride down to Lincolnshire and have a little chat. I want to know what else he remembers. Colin, Shaz, you speak to the locals around here. Work the pubs. Find out about Angela Martindale. Whether she had a boyfriend. Whether she talked about what had happened to her in the past. Whether it was common knowledge or her own little secret. This is a fishing community so throw out Fred Stein’s name …’

McAvoy raises his head. Looks at her like a puppy awaiting a slice of ham.

‘You’ve got the fun job,’ she says, and in her eyes is a flicker of the warmth that has sustained him in past days. ‘Use that big brain of yours. Find out who we should be protecting. Who else has walked away? Are there other sole survivors out there? We’re in for a late night, and what’s worse, we’re in Grimsby,’ she says. ‘That means I’m close to home and can’t pop back there to finish the bottle of Zinfandel in the fridge. This depresses me. Let’s make sure nothing else does.’

They all exchange looks. Take deep breaths, as if limbering up for a marathon. Then the chair legs scrape on the floor and they are out of their seats, talking, joking, laughing, straightening ties and clicking rollerball pens.

McAvoy is last to stand. As he does, Trish Pharaoh appears at his side. He dwarfs her, but she smiles up at him like he’s a giant toddler.

‘I don’t know if this is good work or not,’ she says softly. ‘But I’m sure Helen Tremberg would rather have a scar on her arm than her throat cut. And Angie Martindale’s alive. Whatever gets said, remember that.’

He can’t find any words, so just nods.

‘You can write your report from home,’ she says.

He nods again.

When he opens his eyes she’s still staring at him.

And there’s something more than motherliness in her gaze.