The Dark Winter

CHAPTER 27

McAvoy wakes into nothingness. He can’t move. The pain in his throat, his neck, is the centre of his being.

He tries to lift his head. Fails. Tries to move his arms. He can’t seem to send the message to his limbs.

He listens. Tries to focus. He senses the hum of car tyres.

He is crumpled in the passenger seat of his own car, moving at speed.

There is a voice near by. A soft, sibilant, animal whisper. It sounds as though it has been talking for an age.

‘… just this one, my love. This one, then wake. Wake for me. Wake for me. Take it back. Please. Take it back …’

McAvoy tries to will himself back to his limbs.

He manages to lick his dry lips. Moves his head the tiniest fraction.

‘He survived. Survived when you didn’t. Survived like me. Like all of them. We’ll take him to where it happened. Cut him like he should have been cut the firssst time …’

Through the fog, the haze of his thoughts, McAvoy understands. Understands that Simeon Gibbons is taking him to where it all began a year before. Where Tony Halthwaite slashed him with a blade for daring to discover that he was a killer of young girls. Where he became the one that got away.

McAvoy shifts his head. Catches a glimpse of the road. Of dark trees, swaying in a wind filled with slashing rain.

Recognises the familiar silhouette of the Humber Bridge.

Half an hour from home.

Five minutes from the spot where, a year ago, he’d caught a killer, and almost bled to death for his trouble.

‘… Sparky let us down, didn’t he? The room. The bed. The best money could buy. And you still asleep. Asleep and beautiful, but no more than a picture in a frame. He said he was our friend. But they couldn’t fix you. Couldn’t make you wake, could they? It was beyond that. Beyond medicine. We needed somebody’s miracle, didn’t we? The writer knew. Made it make sense. There’s only so much justice. Mercy is finite. It falls like rain but the sky is dry. Only so much luck. People lived when others died. Why not you? Why did they steal your mercy?’

McAvoy feels the car swing round a roundabout. Sees the density of the tree cover begin to change overhead.

McAvoy thinks of Roisin. Remembers the last time he kissed her mouth. Pictures her in the kitchen, grating and mixing and chopping like his good little white witch …

Remembers the potion in his pocket.

The glass vial of ammonia.

He opens his eyes. Turns his head.

Looks into blue eyes set in a face of pulped skin; of molten flesh and risen welts.

Reaches into his pocket and, with an arm that tingles and throbs, closes his tingling fingers around the glass.

Turns.

Lashes out …

Smashes the glass vial into the ruined features of the man who killed them all.

Tries to grab the wheel and flicks his head to look at the road …

Doesn’t even have time to exclaim as the vehicle ploughs at 60mph into the brick and glass building at the edge of the car park and explodes in a ball of flame.

The heat is intense against McAvoy’s cheek as Gibbons pushes his face against the window of the buckled passenger door. The windscreen itself is so much shattered glass, and the flames from beneath the bonnet are starting to curl, like flapping laundry, into the vehicle.

McAvoy brings his fist up short beneath Gibbons’s extended right arm, feels something break as the punch slams into his elbow.

For a moment, the connection is broken, and McAvoy grabs at the door handle. He pushes, but the door refuses to give.

He takes his eyes off Gibbons and spins in his seat to face the door. He brings both feet back and kicks at the window. Once. Twice. The glass explodes outwards, and as fresh oxygen rushes into the car the flames are given fresh fuel; tongues of red and orange heat flutter and tear over the steering wheel, the dashboard and the two men in the front seat.

McAvoy feels the flames catch at the trousers. Scorch his hands. Kiss his face.

He kicks at the door this time. Kicks with everything he has.

Creaking, hurting, the door folds outwards, and McAvoy scrabbles for the gap.

Hands close around his boots. Strong arms encircle his legs.

He slithers forward, pulling Gibbons behind him, until both men slide and thud onto the wet car park.

McAvoy kicks his legs free and instinctively rolls away from the vehicle.

He tries to stand.

Then Gibbons is upon him. In the light of the flaming car, his scars are monstrous. There is no moisture in his eyes now. The black of his pupils has almost engulfed the blue of his irises.

They are twenty yards from the burning vehicle. Gibbons is hauling him to his feet. The wounds at the ex-soldier’s throat seem to be reopening.

McAvoy feels himself being dragged towards the dark shadow of the wood that stands at the edge of the car park.

He struggles for purchase on the wet tarmac. Tries to tear himself from Gibbons’s grasp. The other man seems to sense what he is doing and swings another pointed thumb in the direction of McAvoy’s neck. He sees it coming and yanks his head back, lashing out with two swift right hands that catch Gibbons on the side of the head and send him reeling backwards.

McAvoy falls. Tries to stand and slips again.

Everything hurts. He watches Gibbons shake his head, as if trying to clear it. Sees him bunch his fists. The glint of a blade in his hand. Sees him turn his head and look down on McAvoy’s sprawled, vulnerable body.

McAvoy drags himself to his knees. Puts one hand on the wet tarmac and pushes himself to his feet, righting himself just in time to see Gibbons pounce like something feline and beautiful from five feet away.

The punch is instinctive. McAvoy’s vision clears for a moment. The pain subsides just for an instant. For a heartbeat, he is a strong, big man, a man who could have been a boxer if he had been able to inflict pain without remorse.

The punch swings upwards almost from the floor. It catches Gibbons just below the chin.

His trajectory changes. He flies backwards like a tennis ball struck by a racquet.

McAvoy, the last drop of energy draining from his body, falls backwards onto the wet earth.

And then the car explodes.

Flame and metal and jagged glass fill the night air.

Gibbons is still staggering backwards from the force of the blow when the blast tears his body into offal.

McAvoy doesn’t see the moment of release. Doesn’t see the killer shredded and cooked and smeared across the earth.

He is lying on his back, staring at the sky, wondering whether the clouds above will give Roisin and his family snow for Christmas.