The Dark Winter

CHAPTER 20

8.43 a.m. Queen’s Gardens. Ten days before Christmas.

A sunken area of parkland overlaid with a quilt of untouched snow, criss-crossed with hidden paths and peppered with dead rose bushes and rubbish-filled flower-beds.

One set of footprints punched deep in the ground.

A bench, missing its backrest.

Aector McAvoy. Elbows on knees. Hat pulled down low. Eyes closed.

Pulls his phone from his pocket. Eighteen missed calls.

He’s hiding. He’s stomped off into the snow and the solitude because it hurts too much to see somebody else shaking the Chief Constable’s hand and drinking whisky surrounded by laughing uniforms and grinning suits.

Russ Chandler.

Charged with two counts of murder at 6.51 a.m.

Russ Chandler.

The man who butchered Daphne Cotton in view of the congregation at Holy Trinity Church.

Who set fire to Trevor Jefferson, then did it again in his hospital bed.

Russ Chandler. The man who answered ‘no comment’ for four hours, then told enough lies to get himself charged with murder.

In three hours he’ll be remanded into custody pending trial. It will be months before the prosecutors begin spotting the holes in the case.

By then, the unit will probably have imploded, or been given over to Ray, and McAvoy will probably be driving a desk in some remote community nick where a man who’s a dab hand with a database is a vaguely useful tool.

He puts the mobile away. Reaches down and picks up the litre bottle of fizzy pop that stands between his feet. Unscrews the cap and takes a swig. He’s guzzling orangeade like a tramp downs cider. He’s eaten three chocolate bars and a bag of jelly sweets. The sugar’s making him feel a bit manic, and he’s craving something beefy and deep.

He uncrosses his legs. Sits forward. Rubs his cold thighs. Sits back. Takes another swig. Wonders if he could just stay here for good. Make this bench his permanent home. Here, in the snow-covered isolation of Queen’s Gardens; huddled inside his jacket, chocolate on his tongue, cold pain in his bones, and a feeling not unlike toothache boring into his brain, as if deliberately trying to make his thoughts hollow and painful.

It’s quiet, here in the park. At this hour, this time of year, it’s empty. Hull’s empty. The sudden snowfall after days of frost has turned the city’s network of pot-holed B-roads and winding dual carriageways into so many ice rinks and snow banks, and McAvoy fancies that the thousands of commuters who usually make their way into the city centre will be ringing in and suggesting they start their Christmas holidays early. Others will chance it. Take their old cars with their bald tyres and their too-small engines, and drive too fast on glassy tarmac. People will grieve today. Families will lose loved ones. By nightfall, forensics officers will be disentangling broken limbs from crushed cars. Uniformed officers will have broken bad news to sobbing relatives. A detective will have been assigned. A press release will have been circulated. The cycle will go on.

He wonders briefly whether anybody really gives a fuck about anything.

‘Feeding the penguins, McAvoy?’

He looks up and sees the slender, elegant figure of Tom Spink crunching through the snow towards him.

‘Sir, I …’

McAvoy begins to speak and stops again.

‘Can’t say I blame you,’ says Spink airily. ‘Does you good. Clears the head. Clears the lungs too, if you’re a smoker. Mind if I join you?’

McAvoy nods at the space on the wrought-iron bench.

‘It’s wet,’ he says, in case Spink hasn’t noticed the two inches of snow icing the green-painted bench.

‘It’ll do,’ says Spink, sitting down.

‘Nippy,’ he adds, as he makes himself vaguely comfortable. He’s wearing a thin leather coat over his collarless shirt and soft cords. ‘Suppose this is nowt where you’re from, eh?’

McAvoy turns away.

‘Pharaoh got as far as the Humber Bridge,’ he says. ‘Managed to get across despite the weather warnings. She was at the top of Boothferry Road when her mobile went and the brass told her not to risk it. To take a few days off. Colin Ray’s got things under control.’

‘She take any notice?’

‘Yes and no. She’s not going to crash the party. Diverted to Priory Road.’

‘How’s she taking it?’

‘About as well as you’d expect. Managed to bite her tongue, but she’s got to be careful how she plays this. If she keeps her head down, it could all work out fine. She’ll have been lead detective on a successful hunt for a killer. If she starts shouting the odds and kicking up a stink, her card will be marked.’

McAvoy realises he’s grinding his bunched fists into his knees. Forces himself to stop.

‘It’s not Russ Chandler,’ he says through his teeth. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking about it. Thinking about nothing else. It’s not him.’

Spink turns to him. Stares into his eyes for a good twenty seconds, as if trying to read the inside of his skull. Seems to scorch the inside of McAvoy’s head with the intensity of his gaze. Then he turns away, as if making a decision.

‘It often isn’t.’

McAvoy pulls a face. ‘What?’

‘It often isn’t, son. You know that better than anyone. You’re going to kill yourself if you carry on like this, lad.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with giving a damn,’ he spits angrily.

‘No, lad. There’s nothing wrong with giving a damn. But the price you pay for it is this. You must see it, you must see the cops who come to work, do a half-decent job, and head home without a backward glance. You must have seen them toasting questionable results and dodgy convictions. You must have wondered why you can’t be that way.’

‘I just think it matters,’ he begins, and then stops when he feels the words catching in his throat.

‘It does matter, Aector. It matters that a villain gets locked up, because that way, the public can go back to feeling all safe and secure in the knowledge that our boys in blue are up to the challenge of keeping them safe from nutters. That’s why it matters. And it matters to the press, because it sells newspapers. And it matters to the top brass because it makes their crime statistics look peachy. And it matters to the politicians because voters don’t want to live in a society where a young girl can get chopped up in a church during Evensong. And back at the bottom, it matters to coppers, because they don’t want to get it in the neck from their superiors, and because most of them decided to become a police officer in the hope of making some kind of difference to the world. Then there are people like you, son. People who need to matter on some fucking cosmic level. People who need to find justice as if it’s some fundamental ingredient of the universe. As if it’s some naturally occurring mineral that you can drill for and dole out.’

Spink pauses. Waves a hand, tiredly.

‘McAvoy, son, it’s not like that. It should be, yeah. By Christ it would be nice if the whole world felt your outrage. If people couldn’t eat or sleep or function until the balance had been redressed and the evil expunged by some act of good, or decency, or justice, or whatever you want to call it. But they don’t. They read about something horrible and they say it’s awful and they shake their heads and say the world’s going to the dogs and then they put the telly on and watch Coronation Street. Or they go in the garden for a game of football with the kids. Or they head down the pub and have a few jars. And I know that it makes you sick, son. I know that you see people going about their daily business and it makes you angry and nauseous and empty inside that people are capable of such callousness and heartlessness when they should be focusing on the dead, but if you spend your life waiting for things to change, you’re going to die a disappointed man.’

Spink stops. Screws up his eyes. Gives his head a little shake. Turns away.

McAvoy sits in silence. He tugs at the little patch of hair beneath his lower lip. Pulls it until it begins to come out. There’s an anger in him. An indignation at being read, at being analysed, at being judged, by a man he barely knows and who has the temerity to call him ‘son’.

McAvoy opens his mouth and shuts it again. He wipes a hand across his face.

‘Colin Ray’s got evidence, son. It might not match what’s in your gut and it might just hurt like hell, but unless you’ve got any of that big bag of natural justice you want to sprinkle, then Russ Chandler’s the man that can be tried, and maybe even convicted of murder.’

McAvoy glares at him. ‘Do you think he did it?’

After a moment of trying to stare him out, Spink looks away. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

McAvoy spits again.

He stands up. Takes a gulp of cold, fresh air.

Towers over the other man.

‘It matters what I think.’

He says it through gritted teeth, but finds himself twitching into a smile, as the elation of realisation of acceptance seems to carbonate his blood, to fill his skull with endorphins and energy.

‘It fucking matters.’

There’s an art to walking in snow. Novices grip too hard with their feet; arching their soles, digging in with their toes, and are on their knees rubbing cramped-up calves within a hundred paces.

Others are too cautious, taking large strides, stepping onto patches of what seems like firm ground. They slip on iced concrete. Tumble, holding bruised shins — ankles twisting inside unsuitable shoes.

McAvoy walks as he was taught. Head down. Watching the ground for changes in the texture of the snow. Hands at his sides, ready to shoot out and break his fall.

He was born into a landscape harsher than this mosaic of tended grass and firm pavements, overlaid with six inches of white. He grew up on terrain scarred with crevices, with cracks, with loose shingle and shale; all concealed for eight months of the year by the relentless snowfall.

He sometimes remembers the noise the sheep made when they stumbled and snapped a leg. Remembers the silence too, in the moments after he ended their suffering. Slit their throats with a pocket knife. Pinched their mouths and nostrils closed with a gloved hand.

Remembers the artfulness with which his father could snap a neck. His acceptance of the necessity of his actions, laced with a resolute determination to take no pleasure in them.

Remembers, too, the damp eyes his father had turned upon him. The tenderness with which he had reached down and stroked the wool. The way he raised his hand to his nose and breathed in the damp, musky scent of a ewe he had reared from birth, and whose neck he had snapped to end her pain.

The man at Holy Trinity Church had that same look in his damp, blue eyes. So did the man who carved his name in Angie Martindale. Who sat, crying, for an age before embarking on his work.

Energised, blood pumping, thoughts racing in his mind, McAvoy considers a killer.

‘Is that what you’re doing? Putting them out of their misery? Are you ending their suffering? Are you asking me to end yours?’

McAvoy stops. Lost in his thoughts, he has taken the wrong path from the park.

His phone begins to ring. Number withheld.

‘Aector McAvoy,’ he says.

‘Sergeant? Hi, this is Jonathan Feasby. I got a message to call …’

McAvoy racks his brains. Puts the events of the past twenty-four hours into some sense of order. Feasby. The reporter from the Independent. The guy he’d emailed about the aid worker in Iraq.

‘Mr Feasby, yes. Thanks for getting back in touch.’

‘No problem, no problem.’ His voice is breezy. Southern-sounding. Cheerful, considering the weather and the hour.

‘Mr Feasby, I’m involved in the investigation into Daphne Cotton’s murder and I believe you may have some information that would be relevant to the inquiry.’

McAvoy listens as the reporter gives a whistle of surprise.

‘Me? Well, yeah, if I can. Hull though, isn’t it? I’ve never even been to the North East.’

‘Hull isn’t in the North East, sir. It’s in the East Riding of Yorkshire.’

‘Right, right.’

‘Are you aware of the case I’m referring to?’

‘Not her name, no. But I just Googled “Hull” and “murder” and “McAvoy” and got myself about a billion hits. Process of elimination, I’m assuming it’s the current one. Poor girl in the church, yes? Terrible.’

McAvoy nods, even though nobody can see.

‘Mr Feasby, I want to talk to you about an article you wrote some time ago. It concerned an Anne Montrose. She was injured in an incident in Northern Iraq. I understand you were the freelance writer hired by the Independent to cover the incident …’

There is silence at the other end of the line. Pressing his ear to the phone, McAvoy fancies he can hear the sound of mental gears clashing.

‘Mr Feasby?’

‘Erm. I’m not sure I remember the case,’ says Feasby. He’s lying.

‘Sir, I have a decent relationship with the local press and my colleagues make fun of me for my belief in human nature. If I talk to you off the record, will it stay that way?’

‘I’m one of the last reporters who believes in such a concept.’

‘Well, I’m one of the last men in the world who believes that a promise means something, and I promise you I won’t be pleased if the contents of this conversation appear in print.’

‘I understand. How can I help you?’

‘I’m working on a theory that perhaps the man who killed Daphne Cotton may be targeting other people who have survived near-death experiences. That perhaps he or she is finishing off something that they view as an unacceptable escape from the Reaper’s scythe. I am trying to work out who might be next on their list, if such a list exists. Anne Montrose fits the criterion. She was a survivor in an incident in which everybody else involved died. I want to know what happened to her after the story you wrote. I want to know that she’s safe.’

There is silence at the other end of the phone. McAvoy listens out for scribbling.

‘Mr Feasby?’

‘If I’m off the record, then so are you, yes?’ Feasby’s voice has lost its lightness. He sounds pensive. Almost afraid. ‘I’m not intending to incriminate myself or anybody else here …’

‘I understand.’

The reporter lets out a whistled breath. ‘Look, it probably doesn’t mean much to you, but when I say that I’ve never done this before …’

‘I believe you.’

McAvoy isn’t sure whether he does or he doesn’t, but knows how to sound sincere.

‘Well, the only time I’ve ever taken money not to publish a story was when I tried to follow up on Anne Montrose. I had the opportunity to write one more bloody follow-up on one more bloody victim of one more bloody day of that bloody war. And I had the chance to write nothing. To call in a favour with my news desk and bury the whole thing …’

‘How? Why?’

‘I had the chance of a way out.’

McAvoy pauses. He tries to clear his head.

‘After I wrote the story about the explosion, about what happened to her, a man came to see me,’ he says, and his voice sounds far away.

‘Go on.’

‘He was the boss of a company that was making money in the clean-up operation. Rebuilding communities. Building schools and hospitals. And he said that if I did him a favour, he’d do me one in return.’

‘And the favour?’

‘Not another word on Anne. The newspaper would get full exclusives on everything that his company did from this point onwards …’

‘And you?’

Feasby sighs. ‘An honorary position on the board of his company.’

‘You took it?’

‘On paper I was a marketing consultant, helping his firm establish its media relations strategy …’

‘And in reality?’

‘I never wrote a word. Drew a salary for a few months, then went back to what I was good at.’

‘You weren’t curious?’

McAvoy imagines Feasby spreading his palms wide. ‘I’m a reporter.’

‘And?’

‘And I don’t think I should really be telling you any more until I’ve had a good hard think about what you really need to know.’

McAvoy pauses. He wonders if the reporter is fishing. Whether he is expecting the promise of an exclusive in exchange for his information.

His phone beeps in his ear. More from impulse than any conscious desire, he switches lines and answers.

‘Mr McAvoy? This is Shona Fox from Hull Royal Infirmary. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. It’s about your wife. I’m afraid there have been complications …’

And nothing else matters any more.

CHAPTER 21

McAvoy didn’t sleep for the first twenty-seven hours. Didn’t eat. Managed two sips of water from a cloudy, plastic beaker, then coughed them back up onto his stinking rugby shirt, mucus trailing from his eyes and nose.

Outside, Hull froze.

The excitement of a possible white Christmas gave way to fear at the harshness and severity of the conditions. The snow landed on hard ground. Froze. Fell again. Froze. The sky was a grey pencil sketch. Clouds broiled, rolled, twisted, curdled; like snakes moving inside a black bag.

The city stopped.

Later, McAvoy would tell his daughter that it was she who finally broke the winter’s spell. That it was only when she opened her eyes that the clouds parted and the snow ceased its frenzied dance. That it was she who cost Hull its first white Christmas in a generation. She who brought out the sun. It would be a lie. But it would be a lie that made his daughter smile. A lie that allowed him to remember the first few days of her life with something other than a dull throb of agony.

He hears movement behind him.

Turns.

‘Get back in that bed …’ he begins.

‘Well, I’m still a bit tender but if you want me that badly …,’ says Roisin, her face pale, her eyes dark. She’s wearing a baggy yellow nightie and has a pink band holding her unwashed, greasy hair back from her face. She seems shapeless, somehow. He has grown so used to the bulge of her stomach pressing at her clothes.

‘Roisin.’

‘I’m bored, Aector. I need some kissing.’

He sighs. Rolls his eyes indulgently.

‘Come here,’ he says.

Unsteadily, she crosses to where her husband sits, his massive bulk crammed into a wooden, high-backed orange chair. He’s facing the window but the curtains, with their nauseating greens and browns, are closed. She winces as she slides herself onto his knee, then drops her head to press her own clammy forehead into the mess of untended ginger curls upon his crown.

‘You smell,’ she says, and there’s a muffled smile to her voice.

McAvoy, for the first time in days, snorts a laugh. ‘You’re not exactly a bowl of potpourri yourself.’

She raises her head. He feels her small, moist hand upon his cheek, turning his face upwards, angling him into her gaze.

For a moment they simply stare, a thousand conversations rendered pointless by the ferocity and tenderness of their connection.

‘I was so scared,’ she says, and although they are all but alone, she whispers this admission, as if afraid that it will be used against her.

‘Me too,’ says McAvoy, and his truth seems to make her stronger. She leans down and kisses him. They kiss for an age. Break away only to smile at one another, to grin at the silliness of it all. To share a gleeful, knowing little glance, in the direction of the foot of the bed.

Lilah Roisin McAvoy was born on 15 December at 6.03 a.m.

Roisin had gone into labour almost as soon as McAvoy left the house, angrily reacting to Tom Spink’s text; thundering through the blizzard in the people carrier with its ready-packed maternity bag in the boot.

She had tried to call him. Willed him to answer his telephone. Focused all her energies on reaching out through the cold miles between them. To come home. To help her.

Eventually, her cries woke Fin. It was he who persuaded her to ring 999. He who said that sometimes Daddy had to work and couldn’t be there when other people wanted it. He who held her hand in the ambulance as the paramedics talked behind their hands about the volume of bleeding, the ice and snow on the roads, their belief that they should get time and a half for working nights in these conditions.

Roisin had tried to hold on. Tried to hold the baby in until the nurses reached her husband. But Lilah wanted out. Slithered out amid a gory rainbow of blood and mucus and was scooped up by a bald, bespectacled, Nigerian doctor, who carried her away to a waiting, scrubbed table, and performed complicated manoeuvres upon her tiny frame.

To Roisin, it seemed as if he was trying to breathe life into a dead bird.

She had turned away. Closed her eyes. Waited to be told the worst.

And then she heard the cry.

Lilah was four hours old, pink and wrinkled, with a breathing tube taped to the side of her face and oversized socks and mittens on her hands, before her father pressed his red, sweaty, tear-streaked face up against the plastic incubator and made the first of the thousand apologies he would stutter throughout the first few hours of her life.

When he took her from the nurse, she fitted perfectly in the palm of his hand.

Fin laughed at that. Asked if he had ever been that small. McAvoy told him no. That his sister had been so desperate to see him, she had come into the world early. That he was a big brother now, and it was his job to protect her.

Fin nodded solemnly. Gave her a wet, inelegant kiss upon the head. And then returned to the room full of grubby, donated toys, where he had been playing with a three-wheeled fire truck at the exact moment his sister began her wailing.

‘She still sleeping?’ asks Roisin.

‘Out like a light. Just like her mum.’

‘We’ve had a busy couple of days.’

‘Yes.’

She tenses, as if preparing to vacate her husband’s knee, and then relaxes, as she acquiesces to his firm hands and sinks back into his embrace.

‘Let her sleep.’

‘We nearly lost her, Aector. If she’d died … if she hadn’t woken up …’

He feels her begin to shiver, and holds her tighter, shushing her sobs.

After a time, he again asks her the question he had blurted out through bubbles of snot when he raced into her room three days ago, snow billowing from his coat, a security guard dragging at either arm, almost water skiing behind him as he barrelled along the polished green linoleum.

‘Will you ever forgive me?’

She answers him now, as she had then, with a perfect white smile. And for a precious moment, McAvoy feels so happy, so perfect, so loved and rewarded, that it crosses his mind to stop his own heart. To die happy.

This time, when she moves, McAvoy lets her. She stands. Winces again. Reaches out and pulls open the curtains.

‘Bloody hell.’

They are four storeys up, enjoying one of the few private rooms on the maternity unit of Hull Royal Infirmary. The vantage point affords them a view of a city rendered almost faceless. Its landmarks, its idiosyncrasies, its character, all mute and anonymous beneath a thick covering of white. The streets are largely deserted. Roisin cranes her neck. Looks down at the car park. It is virtually empty. Half a dozen large 4x4s are parked here and there across the wide open space, like islands on a vast ice rink. The hospital is down to a skeleton staff. Those who were at work when the snow began to fall have largely stayed here. Those at home, with a car capable of staying right-side-up, have made it in, but the conversations on the eerily quiet wards and corridors revolve around how they will get home again; whether the car will even start when they ease themselves back behind the wheel.

‘We’re best off in here,’ says McAvoy, pulling himself out of the chair.

McAvoy leans past her and looks out of the window. Gives a wry smile as he sees the small huddle of frail old men and fat middle-aged women, coats over their pyjamas, puffing desperately on cigarettes at the entrance to the car park; sucking the smoke into their lungs like diabetics gorging on insulin.

McAvoy looks down at the floor. He becomes suddenly aware of the mobile phone in his pocket. Feels it giving off waves of energy. Feels his fingers begin to twitch as he becomes overwhelmed by a need to switch it on. To plug himself back in. To find out what he’s missed these past three days of pain and prayer.

‘Roisin, do you mind if I …’

She’s smiling. She gives the briefest of nods.

McAvoy stops at his daughter’s cot. Rubs his big, rough fingers against her soft, fleshy cheek. Apricots, he thinks. She has cheeks like apricots.

Forty-three missed calls.

Seventeen text messages.

A voicemail service filled to capacity.

McAvoy stands in the doorway of the maternity unit, listening to the drone of voices.

Finds the call he has been looking for.

‘Sergeant McAvoy, hi. Erm, this is Vicki Mountford. We met the other day to discuss Daphne. Look, this might not be important, but …’

McAvoy listens to the rest of the message. Pinches the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb.

Calls her back.

She answers on the second ring.

‘Miss Mountford, hi. Yes, sorry. Vicki. I got your message. You mentioned that somebody else might have been aware of Daphne’s essay. Is that right?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she begins. ‘Well, I was talking to my sister, like I said in my message. It was a day or so after you and I talked. And anyway, I was telling her what we talked about and told her all about what had happened to Daphne and we were just gabbing about it and saying how creepy and terrible it all was, and then she remembered having told her bloke about it. Well, after I put the phone down she called me back and put me onto him and he sounded really sheepish and anyway, long story short, he remembers having a few drinks one night and telling a couple of blokes about this poor lass who’s wound up in Hull and wrote this gorgeous essay about all the horrible things that had happened to her and how it would make a brilliant book …’

McAvoy closes his eyes. He’s nodding, but saying nothing. Already he knows where this is going.

‘And this was where?’

‘Southampton,’ she says, and from the wonder with which she says the word, she might as well be saying ‘the moon’. ‘He’d gone there for a job interview. He’s your eternal student, is Geoff.’

‘And?’

‘Well, that’s the thing,’ she says. ‘Geoff doesn’t remember how it came up or what led to it, but this guy he got talking to was really interested. Said he was a writer. Well, Geoff’s got a bit of a fancy for writing a book some day. So he sort of chatted this guy up. Told him what he knew, not that there was much. And he forgot about it, like. Until …’

McAvoy gives a cough. Suddenly feels horribly hungry. Finds himself longing for sugar.

‘Until?’

‘He logged on to the Hull Mail website a couple of days ago. The day I rang you. And he saw the man who’s been charged. This Chandler. This writer. And …’

‘… and it’s the same man?’

There’s silence again, but McAvoy can hear the nod.

He says nothing for a moment, then takes Geoff’s details. Tells her she’s done the right thing. That he’ll get an officer to take a formal statement from her sister’s boyfriend and that perhaps the lad will have to view an identity parade. Considers, for a moment, the difficulties of assembling a line-up of one-legged drunks.

When he hangs up, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the dark glass front doors of the maternity unit.

Notes that he is smiling.

It’s beginning to sink in, now.

Colin Ray’s case is just waiting to be stamped on, and he knows exactly where to start.

He raises the phone again. Rings the CID office at Priory Road, where he knows there will be nobody around to answer. Leaves a message explaining that Roisin has been ill. That he hasn’t been able to get away from her bedside to phone in. That he’s going to be away until at least after Christmas.

Hangs up, slightly short of breath.

He’s covering his tracks, now. Nobody at the CID office will think to check the time and date of the message. They’ll just jot it down and eventually remember to pass it on to the brass. If it ever comes to an investigation, he’ll be covered.

And he’s bought himself a few days in which to find out who really killed Daphne Cotton.

He brings the phone up to his face. Rings the number that has just been breathed softly into his answering service.

It’s answered on the third ring.

‘Bassenthwaite House.’

McAvoy rubs a hand over his face and is surprised to discover that he is perspiring. Wonders whether this is a fool’s errand. Whether this private medical centre on the edge of the Pennines has anything to do with any of this. Whether Anne Montrose matters. Whether she could be next. Whether he’s just fucking wrong and Russ Chandler is indeed the man behind these deaths.

‘Hello. This is Detective Sergeant Aector McA …’

He’s met with a bright, heard-it-all-before ‘hello’.

‘It’s concerning a private patient of yours. An Anne Montrose. I understand she’s on your neuro ward receiving long-term care?’

There is silence at the other end of the line.

‘One moment, please.’

Then he is placed on hold, and spends a good five minutes listening to a classical piece that, were he to really push himself, he would remember as being one of Debussy’s more sombre works.

Suddenly, a deep, male, upper-class voice snaps a curt ‘hello’. He announces himself as a Mr Anthony Gardner. By way of job title, he brushes over a word that might be ‘liaison’.

‘Mr Gardner, yes. It’s regarding an Anne Montrose. I have reason to believe that she may be a patient of yours.’

After the briefest of pauses, Gardner clears his throat. ‘You know I can’t tell you that, Detective.’

‘I appreciate your obligations to your patients, sir, but there is a chance that Miss Montrose may be in danger. It would be a huge help to an ongoing murder investigation if I was able to speak to a member of her family.’

‘Murder?’ Gardner’s voice loses its composure. McAvoy feels oddly pleased that, even in these times, the word retains its ability to shock.

‘Yes. You may have read about the case. A young girl was killed in Holy Trinity Church in Hull last Saturday. And the same person may be responsible for several other killings …’

‘But I’m sure I read that somebody had been charged over that,’ he says. McAvoy hears the tell-tale tapping of fingers on a keyboard. He wonders if the hospital exec is logging on to a news site.

‘We have several loose ends to tie up, sir,’ says McAvoy, with as much sinister foreboding as he can muster.

Gardner says nothing, so McAvoy plays a trump card.

‘You may also have read that one of the victims was burned alive while in a hospital bed, sir.’

There is silence for a time. McAvoy hopes Gardner is considering the cost of being unhelpful. Wonders if he is weighing the angry phone call he may receive if he gives out patient details without going through the proper channels against the shit-storm that will descend if one of his coma patients gets herself immolated.

At last, Gardner gives a sigh. ‘Can you leave me your number, Detective? I’ll phone you right back.’

McAvoy thinks about saying no. And protesting that he’ll stay on the line while Gardner does what he needs to do. But his approach seems to be working, and he doesn’t want to push things hard enough to make them fail. Not yet. So he leaves his number and hangs up.

Paces for a while. Texts Tom Spink and Trish Pharaoh. Tells them Roisin is much better. That Lilah is thriving. Asks about Helen Tremberg.

His mobile rings. Anthony Gardner, sounding like he’s giving out the combination to his safe, is curt and quiet, as though afraid to be heard. He’s on the phone less than twenty seconds, but he gives McAvoy what he needs.

McAvoy gives a little nod to himself. Says nothing as he hangs up and immediately dials another number.

The call goes to voicemail.

‘This is Sergeant McAvoy. Many thanks for those details. I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot the other day but I appreciated your change of heart. You were right. Anne Montrose is indeed a patient at that centre. And you won’t be surprised to learn who’s paying the bills. I think there may be a story in all this. Give me a call if you’re interested.’

He ends the call. Counts to twenty. Enough time for Feasby to listen to the message. To mull it over. To give a sigh and give in to his hack instincts …

McAvoy’s phone rings.

‘Sergeant,’ comes a voice. ‘This is Jonathan Feasby.’