The Dark Winter

CHAPTER 18

The air in his lungs feels gelatinous. He wants to sneeze, but fears that the explosion will make his aching ribs shatter like a neon strip light thrown at a wall, and when he tries to bring the mug of hot chocolate and brandy to his lips, his trembling hands create a tidal wave on the murky brown surface and the sloshing liquid scalds his nose.

He considers himself in the iridescent sheen of the computer screen; his face overlaid with pictures and text.

‘It’s the adrenalin wearing off,’ says Roisin, making a garland of her thin, delicate arms and draping them around his neck. ‘We just need to get you worked up again.’

McAvoy nods. Manages a smile. Feels himself about to look up and pull her in for a kiss, and angrily fights the urge. Tells himself he still has work to do. That nothing is solved. That today he held a killer by the throat and let him go.

She is sitting on his desk, perched on the edge of the sturdy mahogany apparatus that he bought for less than a tenner from a charity shop on Freetown Way and which matches nothing else in their yellow and purple-painted bedroom with its white built-in wardrobes and flimsy four-poster bed. She is naked. Both of her dainty feet, with their dirty soles, are resting on his own bare leg; tiny toes gently massaging his flesh, digging into him as if he were made of sand. He cups one of her calves in his hand; the fingers encircling the limb, his palm registering the tiny veneer of stubble that has grown on her smooth skin since her belly became too much of an obstacle for her to be able to shave below the knees.

‘Aector. Are you feeling better?’

She turns his head to face her. Gives an eager smile.

‘What have we got?’

McAvoy, dressed in an old university rugby jersey and a pair of battered denim shorts, pushes himself back from the computer screen and tiredly waves a hand in the direction of the text.

‘Too much,’ he says, then wonders if he should correct himself. ‘Not enough.’

Roisin settles herself on his knee and begins to read the screen. McAvoy watches her, up close, the tiniest of smiles on his face as he notices that she still moves her lips slightly, even when she reads in her head. It’s a habit he hopes she never loses.

‘Is this what you think will be next?’ she asks when she’s scanned the page.

McAvoy just shrugs. ‘I don’t see how it can be,’ he says, dropping his forehead to her shoulder and taking a deep breath of her clean, fruity skin. ‘I wouldn’t have picked Angie Martindale if Chandler hadn’t mentioned her. Or Fred Stein.’

McAvoy’s mind is full of survivors. He’s disabled the clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen because he doesn’t want to know how late it is. He knows that he’s been at this for hours, and has no better idea of who the killer will target next than he did when he began. He feels pathetically amateurish in his investigations. Felt a damn fool typing ‘sole survivor’ into Google, only to find himself reading about a movie from 1970 starring William Shatner. He’d tried to think more strategically. Used his knowledge of search commands and internet design to run a search that eliminated some of the more populist guff. Tried to focus on newspaper sites. Magazine articles. Found endless tales of misery.

Tried to narrow it down geographically. Found himself wondering what pattern could be found in the locations of the crimes so far. Sure, the Fred Stein murder happened far out to sea, but he had a link to the East Coast. He was a Hull boy. The Daphne Cotton killing took place in the city centre. Trevor Jefferson had been burned to death in Hull Royal Infirmary. The Angie Martindale attack may have happened in Grimsby, but that wasn’t any more than half an hour away. Was the killer local? Did he have something against the East Coast? Had he been a sole survivor himself? Had he walked away from an atrocity. Couldn’t live with the guilt. Didn’t think anybody else should either …

‘Go back to the one about the lady,’ says Roisin, nodding at the mouse and encouraging him to return to a site she had read over his shoulder when she had brought him his first hot drink of this marathon session at the screen.

He retraces his steps. Opens the history of the last twenty-four hours of web surfing. Spots something down the bottom of the list. It’s a story from the Independent, dated a little over four years ago, under the banner headline ‘Brit Pays Price for Bravery’.

A British charity worker is thought to have been the only survivor of a devastating explosion that ripped through a school bus yesterday.

Anne Montrose, 27, is in a critical condition in a British military hospital following the latest bomb attack in the troubled area of Northern Iraq.

Miss Montrose, originally of Stirling, refused to be evacuated when the region was designated an enemy hotspot six months ago.

Since then it has been the scene of some fierce fighting between Allied forces and insurgents still loyal to toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

She originally travelled to the region with British children’s charity Rebirth, which specialises in helping communities create shelters and orphanages for children bereaved by war and disaster.

While many of her colleagues have fled the region, Miss Montrose is thought to have stayed on to assist with rebuilding in the area.

Reports suggest that she was taking the children on a trip to a recently reopened play area when the bomb exploded. Up to 20 children are feared dead.

A spokesman for Rebirth said: ‘We do not know the full details yet, but this is a tragedy simply too awful to comprehend. Anne would do anything for anybody. She wouldn’t think twice about endangering her life to help others. The risks she faced on a daily basis never once stopped her being the most caring, loving person that we ever had the pleasure to know …’

‘Poor lady,’ says Roisin. ‘Is there nothing else on it?’

‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I’ve put her name in umpteen search engines and there’s not a word on it after this story. Doesn’t say if she even pulled through. I’ve emailed the reporter at the newspaper, though, to see if they have a number for her relatives. She could be up and about by now. Or dead. Sometimes the papers just lose interest.’

‘They did with you,’ says Roisin.

‘I was never that interesting in the first place.’

‘You don’t really believe that.’

‘It depends which way the wind’s blowing,’ says McAvoy, as honest as he can be. He still hasn’t made his mind up whether he believes himself to be the best detective in the universe, or a big hopeless lump.

Roisin slides off McAvoy’s knee and gives a large yawn, stretching her arms high and wide; her bosoms rising to reveal the two tattoos of squashed fairies that she had inked into her ribcage as a surprise for him one Saturday, and which make him laugh every time she takes her breasts in her hands and pushes them skywards for his attentions. She walks over to the bed and lies down on top of the blanket. ‘Will you be much longer?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ he says, and means it. ‘I’ve got the entire internet to read. Haven’t made much of a dent so far.’

‘Pharaoh did tell you to spend some time with your family,’ she says, midway through another yawn. ‘I’m sure what she meant was that you should come over here on the bed with me and make me feel all pretty for a little while.’

McAvoy turns from the computer screen. Lets out his breath in one fast burst. She’s spread-eagled on the blanket, one hand rubbing the dark triangle between her legs, the other, thumb glistening with spit, softly squeezing the full, fat nipple on her tiny left breast.

‘Roisin, I …’

‘You just carry on,’ she says breathily. ‘I’m fine on my own.’

She stops for a moment. Reaches over to her bedside table and pulls out a pot of muddy green ointment. She dips her finger in it, and begins to knead it firmly into the delta of her thighs.

‘What’s that?’ asks McAvoy, his voice catching.

‘My secret,’ she teases. ‘It’s nice.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Lots of things. Mostly you.’

McAvoy feels his face turn red.

‘Amazing how you can still blush when all your blood’s heading south,’ she says, and this time there’s a tiny gasp in her voice.

He begins to stand, but she shakes her head at him. ‘As you were, soldier.’

She closes her eyes.

A moment later, she turns onto her side and takes a bite of the quilt, goose-pimples rising all over her body, shaking as if in convulsion.

After thirty seconds, the motions subside and she rolls onto her back, a smile on a face shiny and red with perspiration.

‘Sleepy now,’ she says, and one eye is already beginning to close.

McAvoy, breathless and hard, makes fists with his hands. Manages to drag his eyes away from her naked form and back to the computer screen. To the text document full of his notes. Wonders what he’s learned. Wonders whether any of this has been worth his time.

Whether today he has been a good man.

He’s going to have to sleep soon. His thoughts are starting to feel muzzy. He fancies he should be able to get four or five hours of sleep before he has to get himself back to the station. Before he starts getting emails back from people linked to sole survivors, and tries to put together some kind of report on who the hell they should be protecting.

Fucking reports. He’s had a bellyful, this past year that began in a hospital bed, waiting for his commendation, and which, within a day, had seen his part in the capture of a serial killer hushed up, had seen promises broken, and seen the foundations laid for his speedy transfer to a job collating, sourcing, filing and inputting; dancing around the edges of real police work and trying not to let his heart burst through his chest every time the Serious and Organised Crime Unit took a call, and he was told to ‘work the phones’.

He’s already printed out his report for Pharaoh. Kept it succinct. Easily digestible. Kept out his hunches and theories.

Wonders whether he should have just given her it all. Handed her his mind in a manila envelope and told her to pick out the best bits.

He feels himself getting warm. Feels heat in his toes. Feet. Ankles. Can feel himself sinking into sleep. He picks up the report and shuffles it. A sheet of paper slips through his hands and he makes a grab for it. It’s a picture of a onearmed, one-legged man, sketched by Fin, hours before.

McAvoy considers the drawing. Finds the energy for a smile. Finds some more for self-reproach. Should he be talking about these things in front of his boy? Is he doing him some damage by talking about death, about violence, about onearmed drunks and one-legged hacks?

He looks at the picture again. Wonders why he even mentioned the man with the missing arm. It had been one of the first things to spill from his mouth.

‘You say Channler?’

The man had asked it in an accent that was pure Eastern bloc. Had appeared in front of McAvoy like some sort of ghoulish apparition as he emerged from the side door of the pub. McAvoy was putting his mobile back in his pocket, having left a voicemail for Chandler, asking him to ensure that he was going to be at the rehab centre mid-morning the following day. He hadn’t realised he’d been talking at any volume.

‘Chandler, yes,’ said McAvoy, trying not to appear startled. Trying harder not to look at the armless shirt-sleeve, pinned across the man’s chest. ‘Russ Chandler.’

‘Why you want Chandler? He not know Angie.’

‘Miss Martindale was involved in a serious attack tonight-’

The man waved his single arm. He was tall. Wiry but hard-looking. He had a broad face, and despite only wearing a white shirt and faded jeans, didn’t seem to notice the cold. There was something intense in his gaze. McAvoy placed him as one of the men from the bar. One of the men who blocked his way and got some kicks in. Bruised, cold and sick of being cut off mid-sentence, McAvoy hardened his own gaze.

‘I hero. I stop bad man, yes?’

‘You not stop bad man, no. You stop policeman trying to catch bad man.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘No bullshit.’

They stood, looking at each other, two tall men, eyeball to eyeball, angry and wind-blown.

‘I mistake. Not Channler. No mind.’

The man turned to leave. McAvoy instinctively shot out a hand to stop him, and grabbed for the area where his arm should have been. He clutched at air. Then the voice of the young constable behind him had caused him to spin round. To take in the sight of the warm patrol car, its doors open, waiting to take him home. Home to Roisin, to Fin. When he turned back, the Russian was somewhere among the crowd that had gathered at the police cordon, in among the cigarette smoke and the beer cans, the chip wrappers and the wet clothes.

Somebody would take his statement. Somebody else …

McAvoy puts the picture down on top of the report. Looks at the stick-figure. The stump where the leg should be.

‘Chandler,’ he says to himself. What was the Russian talking about? Did it matter? Did any of it fucking matter?

His head starts lolling forward as the thick treacle of sleep climbs towards his mind. He staggers towards the bed, pulling his jersey off, easing down his shorts, already allowing himself to think of the warm touch of Roisin’s skin as he spoons up behind her, places his large hand on the perfect orb of her belly and pictures his unborn child reaching up to press their own fingers against his, as if separated by prison glass.

His mobile phone bleeps.

Cursing, he rolls back off the bed and finds his work clothes crumpled up in a heap next to the wardrobe. He finds his mobile, and looks at the display. Notes that it’s not yet 1 a.m.

Opens the message.

It’s from a number he doesn’t recognise.

Colin Ray has arrested Chandler. Thought you might like to know. Tom Spink.

Feels his heart sink as bile rushes up his throat and fills his mouth.

Wide awake in an instant.