Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) (12 page)

Pharaoh stays quiet. Lets him fill the silence.

‘Look, I got talking to her in the Lambwath. This was months ago. Christmas just gone, that sort of time. You know the Lambwath? Not my normal pub but I was barred from my local so I went to spend my money somewhere else. She was in there with some friends. I don’t know what the occasion was. Birthday or leaving do or something. She was dolled up to the nines. They all were. She didn’t look like the others. Looked like Morticia Addams with all the black she was wearing and the piercings and the eye make-up. But for all that she was a smiley thing. She asked me for a fag and I said I didn’t have any but I’d roll her one. So I did. We had a natter. She told me she was going to have to move away because she couldn’t get a flat. Seemed a shame to me.’

Gavan glances at his wife. Her face is stone.

‘Look, I haven’t always been a good boy,’ he says, looking at McAvoy and trying to find an ally. ‘I thought she were a pretty thing and I’m a sucker for that. She told me she couldn’t get a flat because she had a bad credit history and I said that money talks and if she could put down the first few months’ rent then most landlords wouldn’t worry too much about the credit checks. I own my own home, see?’ He gestures at his living room. ‘I doubted I could be a guarantor for the poor cow but I gave her my address and my number and said she could try and use my name on the forms. Could say she lived here, if she liked. I was just being nice.’

Pharaoh raises an eyebrow. Twinkles a little. ‘You’re a bad puppy,’ she says, in a way that makes Gavan seem to grow two or three inches in height.

‘I wish I hadn’t met the lass, to be honest,’ he says. ‘Right pain in the arse she became. Called me up a week later and said she’d given my number to her landlord in case there were any problems. Said she’d spent her savings getting stuff for the flat and was stony broke. Wanted to borrow a few quid. I’d just got out of the nick and didn’t have enough money for a packet of tobacco. I ignored her. Then she sent a load more, saying she was really in bother and hadn’t eaten and that she had to get a train ticket and all the sob stories people use when they’re trying to fleece you. I’d have changed my number if so many people didn’t have this one. Then her landlord phones me and says she’s behind with the rent and that she’s given them my name! I was proper fucked off. Wasn’t my fucking business, was it? And my wife here puts up with a lot, y’know? I told her about this lass who kept bothering me. She wasn’t happy but it was a weight off my mind.’

Pharaoh looks across at the rotund woman. Gives the tiniest of signals for McAvoy to take over.

‘Worth their weight in gold, a good wife and mother,’ says McAvoy, softly. ‘Jez is a lucky man. You must have reminded him of that when he told you.’

Mrs Gavan sucks her cheek, enjoying the attention and the big man’s wide, sincere eyes.

‘We’ve been here before,’ she says, rolling her eyes and nodding at her errant husband. ‘He’s a sucker for the pretty faces. Always giving lasses money for a taxi or a few quid to get themselves a pizza on the walk home. Can’t help himself, the silly sod. This Ava took the piss. I believed him when he said nothing had happened – especially when I saw her for myself.’

‘You actually met?’ asks McAvoy, keeping his eyes on hers.

‘In town,’ she says, chattily. ‘Bottom of Whitefriargate. Jez and me were having a drink in the Bonny Boat one Friday night. Don’t normally drink around there but he were treating me. I saw him talking to this tiny little thing with half her head shaved and tattoos and piercings every-bloody-where and I thought I should go and save him from himself. Jez were apologising. Saying he had nothing to give her.’

‘She wanted money,’ cuts in Gavan. ‘She wasn’t insisting or being a cow or anything. Just really pleading. I said I could spare a few quid but she said she needed a few hundred. Would do anything. The missus butted in before I could promise her I’d sell the house and give her the proceeds.’

‘I wasn’t nasty,’ says Mrs Gavan to McAvoy. ‘Just told her that she should have a bit more self-respect. Everybody has problems. What does she think we are, a bloody bank? I sent her on her way. Told Jez to get his number changed and tell her landlord that it was fuck all to do with him.’

McAvoy turns back to Gavan.

‘And did you?’

‘Didn’t change the number but I sent her landlord a text and never heard back,’ he says, picking his smartphone from his knee and holding it up like a prop. ‘Never heard back. That was that.’

‘And when did you last hear from her?’ asks Pharaoh.

‘Weeks, I reckon,’ says Gavan. ‘Got a message a couple of days after the missus saw her off, saying she was sorry and wouldn’t bother me again. She was just in a state. I wouldn’t have wished death on the poor lass.’ He chews on his lip. Starts rolling another cigarette. ‘What happened? She stabbed?’

‘Why do you ask that?’ asks Pharaoh.

Gavan shrugs. ‘It’s what people do, isn’t it? Strangling or stabbing. We haven’t got guns, have we? It’s easy for the Americans. They just pull a trigger.’

Pharaoh keeps her eyes on Gavan’s. He looks away first.

‘Could you tell us any more about her background? Her friends? Do you have any dates or times or places that may assist us?’

‘I might have kept some of her messages,’ Gavan tells her. ‘I’m not much of a technical bloke. That any good?’

McAvoy pulls himself from the inflatable chair with as much dignity as he can muster. Holds out a hand for the phone. After a moment’s hesitation, Gavan deposits it in the large, warm palm. McAvoy’s fingers dance across the screen. He turns back to Pharaoh and shakes his head. Gives the phone back to its owner, who shrugs apologetically. ‘Not even a contract,’ he says, sadly. ‘It’s a pay-as-you-go.’

On a whim, McAvoy pulls out his wallet. He folds it over so the picture of Roisin and the baby is facing away. Shows the image of Hannah Kelly to Gavan.

‘You recognise this girl?’

Gavan looks puzzled but studies the photo. After a moment he shrugs. ‘Missing lass from the papers, ain’t she? Aye, I recognise her from that. But nowt else. Why? This connected? You not caught anyone for that yet? Poor bitch.’

McAvoy says nothing. Looks at Hannah’s face for a moment and then reverently closes his wallet.

Pharaoh taps her fingers on the arm of the chair and reaches out a hand. McAvoy pulls her upright, like she’s a granny getting out of a beanbag.

‘We’ll need a formal statement, Jez,’ she says to Gavan, who appears to have discovered some long-dead spirit of chivalry and is standing up to see his guests out. ‘And if anything else comes back to you, call me.’ She presses a card into his hand. ‘She didn’t die well. We don’t know much about her but unless she’s been slicing up babies, she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Be the hero, yeah? Help us out.’

Jez nods solemnly and backs up a pace or two as Pharaoh steps out of the front door and back into the glare of the car’s headlights. McAvoy gives Mrs Gavan a smile, then follows Pharaoh across the broken tarmac to the vehicle. He isn’t surprised to find it untouched. Reckons that the neighbourhood vandals would rather set fire to themselves than tamper with a vehicle visiting the Gavans.

They stand in the silence for a moment, listening for the shouting to start. When it does, it is a muffled but unmistakably shrill affair. Mrs Gavan is going spare.

‘Well?’ asks Pharaoh, lighting one of her own cigarettes.

‘No doubt about it,’ says McAvoy. ‘I looked through the wifi networks the phone has stored. Ava’s was one of them. It’s been in her home.’

Pharaoh rolls her cigarette between her fingers. ‘You think he got sick of her demands? Decided to put a stop to them? He can’t have shagged her, can he? Turns my stomach.’

‘Perhaps he wanted something for his money,’ says McAvoy, looking away. ‘Killed her to shut her up.’

‘Should we nick him?’ asks Pharaoh, though the question is directed more at herself than her sergeant.

‘We’ll have a lot more to bombard him with when we have the post-mortem completed,’ he says. ‘He’s not scared of a police station or a cell. If he’s done it, we want enough to show him how pointless it is to argue. He’s a proper old con and we must have his DNA in the system so we’ll just have to show him we’ve got the deck stacked. Make him see the sense in confessing to it. ’

‘What about her?’ asks Pharaoh. ‘Miss World in there.’

‘Hard to say,’ muses McAvoy. ‘I can’t see her scalping somebody’s armpits, though, can you? Seems a bit ritualistic. I doubt she was as polite to Ava as she claims, but it’s hard to see her doing that.’

‘True,’ says Pharaoh, and pulls out her car keys. ‘Plus, she’d never manage the stairs.’

The pair climb back inside the car. McAvoy feels a tiredness settle upon him as he squeezes himself into the passenger seat. A few hours ago he was sitting on soft grass with his wife and child, trying to find peace and a place inside him for Hannah Kelly. Here, now, he wonders if he has the capacity to carry another pretty girl’s ghost. Wants to catch whoever did this, and fast. Wants to get back to Hannah. He feels as though he has betrayed her by allowing this new spectre to come between them.

‘Back to mine?’ asks Pharaoh. ‘There’s room.’

McAvoy looks at his personal phone and feels a prickle at the back of his neck, as though cold spiders are dancing on his skin.

Six missed calls and a dozen messages.

He reads the last one. Roisin’s words, typed in caps to show him she means it.

I THINK THERE’S SOMEBODY TRYING TO GET IN. XXX

Chapter 7

Bank holiday Monday, 10.17 p.m.

Fog is closing over the east coast like an unwashed lace curtain and drawing a dirty haze across the half-full moon as it shines down on this quiet cul-de-sac. The sound of tipsy conversations bubbles up from back gardens and the air is greasy with the lingering scent of barbecues and mown grass.

A nice place, this. Home to teachers and bank clerks, council workers and bankrupt detective superintendents. A place for dinner parties and jubilee celebrations, where people respect one another’s parking spaces but would commit murder if their neighbour planted a leylandii tree without asking first.

Roisin McAvoy: sitting in the darkened kitchen at the rear of the property, holding a meat mallet and jabbing at her mobile phone. There’s sweat under her arms and across her forehead but she’s not as scared as she should be. She’s faced a lot of danger in her life. Fancies her chances whatever the odds. She doesn’t like violence but if she encounters those who do, she’s willing to kick their heads in.

Sophia opened up to her this evening. Told her about the lads she and her friends had got to know recently. Older boys. One of them has a Peugeot 306, which makes him as moreish as heroin in the eyes of adolescent girls. They like a drink and a smoke and know which quiet lay-bys to park up in when they have female company. One of them got a bit overly friendly with Sophia recently. She told him to back off, in front of his friends. Made him look like a mug, or so he said in the string of vile texts he sent her in the hours afterwards. Worked himself up. Got increasingly descriptive in his threats. Sophia had feared he would turn up at last night’s party. She was relieved beyond measure when the person who dragged her from her sleep turned out to be her mum, even if the drama queen had shown her up. Sophia had reacted without thinking. Said some hurtful things. But of course she loved her mum. She just didn’t want to get into trouble by telling her about the lad who was threatening her.

Then they heard the noises at the back door.

Now Sophia sits with her arms around her three sisters, quiet as church mice as they huddle on the sofa in the living room and try not to cry. She snuggles in to little Olivia, who’s feeling proud because she heard the strange noise coming from the back door.

Upstairs, a red-haired, barrel-chested seven-year-old sits cross-legged on Olivia’s bedroom floor. There is an earnestness to his gaze. A sincere devotion to the task he has been given. He has already keyed the number into the cordless phone between his legs. He’s just waiting for his mum to give the word and he’ll press the green button and demand immediate assistance. His dad is busy, catching killers. Fin is willing to fill the void.

The handle of the kitchen door begins to turn. There is the sound of a thin set of metal rods slipping back into their cases. The careful, practised whisper of a UPVC door easing open.

‘You boys lost?’ asks Roisin, flicking the light on.

Teddy and Foley look with amused surprise at the young woman who stands in the neat kitchen. She’s in her mid-twenties and no more than 5 foot tall. She’s model pretty, with dark hair and tanned skin. Neat, bare arms and a six-pack are accentuated by a purple vest. There are tattoos around her belly button and a jewel through the middle. She’s wearing leopard-print leggings and the toenails of her bare feet have been painted different colours and adorned with diamanté. She’s holding a phone and a meat tenderiser and looks thoroughly unperturbed by their nearness.