Cold bones, p.3
Cold Bones, page 3
part #8 of DS Aector McAvoy Series
She sighs, picks up her phone and puts it down again, growling at herself. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Don’t fucking call him.’
She takes her last black cigarette and lights it with a cheap yellow lighter. Blows out a perfect ring of smoke and wishes there were somebody here to impress. She glances at the second hand of her watch and tries to take her own pulse. Stops when she realises that she can’t feel it and starts to worry that she might be dead.
She jumps as the phone suddenly chirrups into life and glowers at the bits of herself that she can see. She’s not a jumpy woman. She hates those flighty, silly sods who shake like a hypothermic terrier whenever the doorbell goes.
‘Pharaoh,’ she says, her voice loud in the soft silence of the room.
‘Excellent name,’ says the caller cheerily. ‘Sounds from the dial tone like you’re abroad. Anywhere nice?’
‘I’m sorry, who’s this?’ asks Pharaoh, grinding her back teeth.
‘Sorry, Peter Glover. Editor of CrymeLog. You left a message. You’re awfully senior to be making your own calls, Detective Superintendent. I’m sorry it’s taken this long. What’s the time difference where you are? Not disturbing you, am I?’
Pharaoh rummages around in her papers, locating the meagre details she has on the man at the end of the line. He’s in his fifties. Used to work for a couple of national broadsheets before falling victim to staffing cuts. He took a decent redundancy and set up a crime magazine and website, indulging in his passion for cold cases, serial killer profiles and the sort of conspiracy theories that get the armchair crime fans dribbling into their cats. His accent marks him out as having come from money.
‘No problem,’ says Pharaoh, huffing her hair out of her eyes. ‘I was wondering whether—’
‘Where is it you find yourself?’ asks Glover pleasantly.
Pharaoh frowns, unused to being interrupted. ‘Mr Glover, I’m looking at an old copy of your magazine. There’s a story about a serial killer having a connection to Hull and a missing woman . . .’
There is a pause and Pharaoh fancies she can hear gears changing in Glover’s head. ‘Bit speculative, that one,’ he says, and the chummy tone in his voice sounds a little forced. ‘Favour for a pal, I suppose you’d call it. Bit of a space-filler. There’s always just enough news to fill the paper, have you ever noticed that? It’s not quite the same in specialist mags. Sometimes you need to, shall we say, push the credible – just so you don’t leave the reader with three blank pages. What is it you would like to know? I rather hope you’re not planning on giving me an ear-bashing.’
Pharaoh takes a moment to consider her approach. Glover may run a magazine with a readership of under 10,000 but he’s still a journalist and she fancies she will do better with him onside.
‘Long before my time,’ she says breezily. ‘So you haven’t offended me personally. I was intrigued, that’s all. That sort of speculation – it doesn’t take people long to point the finger at the police. The local paper is bound to pick it up soon. I’m amazed they haven’t yet, truth be told.’
‘Oh they have,’ says Glover, laughing. ‘I received an email from one of their feature writers not so long ago, wondering if we could, in their words, “share resources”. I was a little embarrassed to inform them that we have few resources to share. They wanted to know who our detective was, you see. The chap we quoted so fulsomely. Not an easy thing to provide.’
‘Ethical question, is it?’ asks Pharaoh, trying not to sneer.
‘Oh my goodness no!’ says Glover, laughing at the very idea. ‘No, sad to say I had no source to give him. The article came from a freelancer. You’ll see there’s no name on it. Old drinking chum, bit down on his luck. You know the type. I throw him a bone now and then. We’d had a letter from a regular reader, wanting to know if we had ever covered the disappearance of that Ballantine girl. I didn’t know the case. It was hardly national news. But you know how it is, when one is asked to provide, one should do one’s best.’
‘One should,’ says Pharaoh, trying not to gag.
‘I phoned my pal – he used to know that part of the world quite well. Said we’d pay for a double-page spread. NUJ day rates and forty pence a mile on his fuel allowance.’
‘When was this?’
‘Early summer?’ muses Glover, uncertainly. ‘I’ll check. Anyhow, off he went and I forgot about it until he called back and said he was onto something very tasty indeed, that he’d spoken to one of the original investigators and they had this half-baked theory that she was one among many. He was jabbering on like a monkey. I’d have thought he’d had a drink if I didn’t know how hard he’d fought to kick the stuff. Ranting about postcards and shadows and people coming back from the dead. I told him to keep at it. It was nice to hear him so enthused. It clearly didn’t go the way he first thought. Of course, as you’ll see from the article, in terms of actual evidence there’s precious little to report. But he stood by his source. Reckoned there was this huge great cover-up and that there would be a hell of a book in it. Silly old duffer has been saying that for the last thirty years but at least when he’s on the hunt for a story he has a reason to stay a little more sober than when he’s festering in his rat-hole.’
‘How did he pitch the story?’ asks Pharaoh. The line starts to crackle. She puts a finger in her ear, scowling. ‘Did you see his notes? Audio transcripts? You’re the editor, after all.’
‘I think you may have an elevated idea of what that means.’ Glover chuckles. ‘My writers write and I let them get on with it. Most of my job is keeping the advertisers happy and trying not to slander anybody. I thought I was on safe ground with Marlowe but he very nearly landed me in it.’
‘Marlowe? Does he have a first name?’
‘He has many names.’ Glover laughs. ‘Marlowe’s more of a nickname, I think. Way back he was Albert Jonsson but he changed his name as fancy took him . . .’ He pauses pointedly. ‘Or as circumstances dictated. Marlowe suited him. I may have to call him a few other things when he finally gets back in touch. Rather hung me out to dry. Honestly, there was no shortage of angry phone calls and emails when the article came out.’ Glover takes a slurp of something, the splosh of liquid audible over the sound of the crackling line. ‘They have long memories in Hull, I’m sure you’ve noticed. What did we want to be raking over the past for? Did we know how much heartache it caused? All the usual. I’d barely read the piece before we printed it but on reflection I can see there was plenty of vague accusation and nothing in the way of substantiated fact.’
‘You contacted him?’
‘Of course,’ says Glover. ‘Asked him, man to man, if this was one of his, shall we say, slightly more exaggerated yarns. He was his usual self, giving me hell for what we’d done with his beautiful story. Said we’d hacked the heart out of it, left him looking silly. Said he was onto something that really mattered.’ Glover pauses. ‘What precisely is it you’re after, Detective Superintendent? If you’re concerned about the validity of the accusations, you’ll note that nobody specific is mentioned. It was just an excuse to print an intriguing tale. Marlowe’s old-school, though that’s no excuse. The “unnamed detective” thing is very old hat. Should have known better.’
‘He wouldn’t tell you who he’d got the story from?’
‘I don’t think he got it from anybody,’ says Glover awkwardly. ‘He as good as told me that the “copper” was a work of imagination. He’d cobbled it together from a couple of chats he’d had in a bar and an interview with some batty old soul who claimed to be Roberta’s friend but who wouldn’t even let him quote her.’
‘I’d like to see the original story,’ says Pharaoh. ‘The piece he sent in before your editor chopped it up.’
Glover makes a noise in the back of his throat, a whinge of impending displeasure. ‘I don’t even know where that would be. Old-school, like I said. He faxed his stories in. Faxed! They’d go to a sub-editor, then on to an inputter at an agency in Dorset and they send an electronic copy. I’ll do my best, see if I can’t ferret it out. You may be better off just ringing him, though he hasn’t the fondest memories of Humberside Police. And you might struggle to track him down. He was furious with me last time we spoke.’
‘I would really like to see the original, Mr Glover,’ says Pharaoh. ‘If your colleagues could try and recall what else the piece might have said, that would be a help too. I’ll be back in touch.’
‘I do hope this hasn’t been a nuisance for you, DSU Pharaoh,’ says Glover, an unattractive slick of obsequiousness coating his vowels. ‘As I say, it certainly wasn’t intended to upset anybody.’
Pharaoh grunts and ends the call. Drops the phone on the sofa, throwing herself back in the chair. She stretches out her arms and rolls her head on her shoulders, listening to the cricks and cracks of cartilage grinding against muscle.
‘What are you doing here, you silly cow?’
She asks the question aloud, and it seems to reverberate against the cold, lonely walls.
She wonders, for the thousandth time, whether she is here to solve a crime, protect a friend, or simply hide away for a while.
She looks again at the name on the top page of her notes and the email from the magnificently named Rannsóknarlögreglumaður Hildur Minervadottir of Logreglan, the Icelandic Police.
In the early hours of 3 January, a man’s body was found on a stretch of storm-lashed beach at the tip of the Skagi Peninsula. He had been in the water for several hours. All identifying features had been rendered useless through immersion in the salt water. One limb was severed at the knee. Birds had pecked at his eyes and begun to strip the flesh from his skin. The local woman who found him was checking his body for some form of identification when she leaned on his chest and a spume of dirty water and crimson blood erupted from his ruined mouth.
He spoke.
One word.
A desperate cry uttered with a tongue all but bitten in two.
‘McAvoy . . .’ he’d said, as he died.
The police found a car abandoned on the cliffs further back down the coast. There was no ID. The only clue was a copy of CrymeLog, wedged beneath the driver’s seat. The car had been hired at Keflavik Airport forty-eight hours earlier by an English national named Albert Jonsson, immediately after the arrival of his flight from Humberside Airport. He’d selected an automatic due to his prosthetic leg. He’d chatted with the clerk at the rental desk. Said he was writing a book. Told her to google the name ‘Russell Chandler’ if she wanted to know more about him. She didn’t bother. Didn’t think about him again until the police came and asked her for CCTV footage and a witness statement.
Minervadottir googled the name immediately and found a convicted criminal: an alcoholic journalist whose taste for whisky had cost him his career and whose addiction to cigarettes had cost him a leg. He’d been arrested for murder a few years back. Eventually it had emerged that Chandler was as much a victim of the real killer as anybody else. The charges were dropped and he wrote a memoir about his association with the real killer. Nobody published it. Nobody gave a damn. He’d gone back to what he knew, drinking and smoking and making ends meet with freelance journalism jobs. Most recently, he’d been working for CrymeLog. A few days before, something had persuaded him to fly to Iceland. That decision would cost him his life.
The email from Minervadottir had originally been intended for Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. Her Hector. Her everything, truth be told. She knows that Roisin owns his heart; that no world exists in which they could ever be together, but the connection between them is a fierce and primal thing and it makes her giddy to know that he thinks of her as his closest friend. They would die for one another, and have frequently had cause to put that claim to the test. Pharaoh knows he has no shortage of enemies and she makes it her business to protect him from as many distractions as she can. He takes things to heart and if she can spare him from unnecessary burdens she is more than willing to do so – even if it means keeping him in the dark about things he would probably rather know about. She had been relieved when she intercepted the email, which had pinged forward into her inbox since McAvoy was out of the office. Pharaoh read it twice. Something had chimed, faintly, in the back of her skull. She’d called the Icelandic officer back and told her that if she needed some assistance, she would be glad to provide it. An hour later, she had booked herself a flight.
Pharaoh crosses back to the window.
A sadness wraps around her and she feels tears pricking at her eyes. She refuses to give in. Swallows painfully, and leans forward with her hands on the windowsill, pressing her forehead against the cold glass. She stares into her own eyes. She allows herself a moment of comfort.
Pictures McAvoy.
Hopes to God the silly sod is keeping out of trouble.
Chapter 3
Cherry Burton Road, East Yorkshire
9.36 a.m.
McAvoy is concentrating hard, gripping the steering wheel like the reins of a skittish horse, willing the tyres to maintain their grip on the slick road. It’s all farmland here, a bleak patchwork of muddy squares. There’s no snow, but the image beyond the windscreen is patterned with the silvery white of this morning’s hard frost.
Through the trees he spots the big white house that Paulette had told him to look out for. She’d scribbled her name and address down for him, adding a mobile number and email details, before bouncing back to her car like Little Red Riding Hood skipping off to see Grandma. McAvoy snatches a glimpse of a grand art deco affair, oblongs and right angles with big square windows. He slows as the headlights pick out a gleaming patch of black ice, changes down to second gear and tries to relax his shoulders. He can feel a headache starting. He stares ahead, concentrating hard. Spots the gap in the trees and glimpses the rectangular property peeking through, and slowly turns the vehicle through a set of crumbling sandstone gateposts. It feels like driving into a carcass: the tree trunks bending overhead, their tops meeting with each breath of wind, knitting together to form a spindly ribcage that contracts and expands. McAvoy manoeuvres the car down a narrow path. He keeps staring ahead, the trees transforming: black skeletons, slapping their flimsy limbs against the metal and glass.
A dead bird stares back at him from a patch of long, frozen grass, its feathers a hundred shades of brown and gold.
McAvoy suddenly understands why Paulette and her son turned the little one-storey cottage into the setting for make-believe. It’s a place that reeks of fairy tales. The walls are the colour of hand-churned butter. It looks like a retirement cake: a gooey approximation of a country cottage, the strokes of the palette knife still visible in the rough icing. Hanging baskets dangle from jet-black hooks set either side of a cherry-red front door. The curtains are drawn across all the windows but they still contrive to give off a cheery air. The roof isn’t thatch, but in this light it’s hard not to imagine it as such. Hard not to imagine that the gutters taste of gingerbread and that there’s a lock on the oven door.
The car rolls to a stop on a large, oval patch of frosty gravel at the front of the house. McAvoy looks through the misty glass. He hopes a light will come on. None does. He climbs from the car and reaches into the back for his long black coat. The air is bitterly cold. He shivers and turns up his collar. It smells of Roisin, all elderberries and lip gloss.
The wind drops and he suddenly becomes aware of the silence. No birdsong. No tyres on tarmac or rustling leaves. He looks again at the cottage and suddenly the jolly image he enjoyed a moment ago is replaced by something more sinister. The door is now an open mouth; the blackened windows eyeholes in a cadaverous face.
McAvoy shakes his head, forcing such nonsense from his mind. There is just enough light to see by. He casts a quick glance around him. A footpath leads from the front door to a little allotment area where he makes out the shape of a small wooden hut. He looks over the neat patch of garden and stops when he sees another sad lump of stiff feathery blackness.
Slowly, feeling like a burglar, he crunches across the frozen ground. He glances at his own reflection in the darkened glass of the front window. Looks away, dissatisfied. Bangs politely. Bangs again. Puts his hands in his pockets and wonders what to do next. He mooches down the path towards the allotment. The soil has been raked into neat furrows and the frost clings to each, making the ground look like a mountain range viewed from above. McAvoy sees another dead bird, flat on its back, feet in the air, as if the corpse had been positioned for comic effect. He turns away from the garden and makes his way to the back of the bungalow. The temperature seems to drop, the darkness becoming denser, as he tries to keep his feet on the slick stones. The spindly branches of a pear tree claw at his face as he pushes past and then he emerges into a small courtyard garden at the rear of the property, low walls and terracotta planters framing a neat patch of grass. A wooden swing sits frozen at the bottom of the garden, where a wrought-iron table and chairs glint.
He tries the back door with the cuff of his coat and isn’t sure whether to be pleased or disappointed when the cold metal handle responds to his touch. Cautiously, he pushes open the door, blowing a lungful of air into the icy darkness of the hallway. He steps inside, automatically brushing the muck from his boots on the coarse mat by the door.
