Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) (16 page)

He bears her no ill will. He has never wanted to hurt her. He wants to protect her, from that which is within her and also without. He likes to take women under his wing. Likes to be there when they need him, like last night. He doesn’t know who the men were but it was right to hurt them. He’s sure she’ll tell him everything, soon enough. They’ll become confidants. Friends, even. He sees something in her that he wants.

She’s crossing towards him now; angry, surprised.

‘What the hell are you doing, Hollow? You can’t be here. This is stalking.’

He raises his hands placatingly. He’s dressed the way he likes, in old jeans and a collarless shirt, leather jacket and flat cap. He’s holding a copy of the
Hull Daily Mail
.

‘Ava,’ he says, pointing to the front page. ‘I might be able to help. My daughter . . .’

Pharaoh stops. Scowls. Pats her pockets for her cigarettes then reaches up and takes the hand-rolled one from between Hollow’s lips.

She looks at him with eyes that are almost as blue as his. Almost as tired, too.

‘You have information pertinent to the case?’

He shrugs. ‘It may be nothing. But I thought if we could talk . . .’

Pharaoh looks at the object clutched in her palm. Her lips become a thin line but there is no disguising the smile she is trying not to give in to.

‘Why don’t you come back to mine? We can talk. We have so much to talk about, Trish.’

Pharaoh says nothing. She looks, for a moment, as though she is about to fob him off. To tell him she can’t just leave work in the middle of the day and that she doesn’t have the time. She seems to catch herself before she can do so. Seems to make a decision that here, now, she doesn’t give a fuck.

And then she follows him through the fog to his car. Climbs inside the battered old Jeep, and lets him drive her away.

Chapter 10

10.16 a.m.

The police station on Grimsby’s Victoria Street. A long, two-storey building in three different shades of brown, bordered by the magistrates’ court on one side and a supermarket on the other. It’s a busy road, and all the buildings around here are occupied. There’s a little retail park, down towards the old docks. An all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. An electrical retailer and a tile warehouse. A furniture shop for people who don’t buy their sofas on credit and don’t baulk at paying £500 for a coffee table. A Kwik Fit and a JobCentre are neighbours to the snooker club and the car wash. A couple of solicitors have offices in the older buildings at the top of the street, just before the crossroads that lead on into Grimsby’s town centre and its chain pubs and sandwich shops. If there were room for a brothel and a place to buy fried chicken, it would be a masterclass in urban planning.

In a drab office painted the colour of sour milk, Helen Tremberg sits at her desk and holds the telephone so tightly that there is a danger of leaving grip marks in the plastic.

‘So what was the actual point, then?’ she asks, through gritted teeth. ‘I should have been in on it! I’m not made of glass. Am I part of this or not? No . . . look . . . of course I appreciate that . . . of course . . . Yes, I’m grateful . . . it does make things easier, yes, and . . . no, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Look, I’m sorry I snapped. Yes, yes I’ll let you know. Thanks. Thanks. Bye.’

She bangs the phone down hard in the cradle. Does it twice more for effect. The two civilian officers with whom she is currently sharing an office have popped out for a cigarette so there is nobody to see the tear of frustration that betrays her and spills from her tired eyes. She sniffs. Rips open a bag of Cadbury’s Buttons and stuffs a handful in her mouth. She swallows without tasting. Imagines, for a moment, what it would feel like to sit on Shaz Archer’s chest and hit her repeatedly in the face. Knows, without question, it would be bloody lovely.

Finally, she takes a deep breath. Closes her eyes. Lets them flutter back open, like butterflies coming back to life. Stares out of the window . . .

As part of her return from maternity leave, Helen is allowed to work the majority of her shifts from Grimsby HQ, rather than over the water in Hull with the rest of the Drugs Squad. It makes life easier in terms of childcare and travel-to-work time, and keeps her out of Shaz Archer’s way. Normally, that means her working day is relatively peaceful and she can at least get away at a sensible hour. She’d also fooled herself into believing that she was making a valuable contribution to the team.

This morning’s edition of the
Hull Daily Mail
has made a mockery of that.

Last night, DCI Sharon Archer led a series of raids on three properties on the Preston Road estate. She and her team confiscated cocaine, heroin, cannabis and cash. They arrested six people. It was described in the press as a ‘crisp, clean and efficient’ operation. The pictures showed a short, tubby man with bad skin and short hair being led away in handcuffs and aiming a boot in the direction of the camera.

The reporter had clearly enjoyed being invited along for the ride.

Helen was not extended the same invitation.

She had managed to read to the fourth paragraph of the article before her temper bubbled over. The death of Raymond O’Neill had been the lead item on page five.

It took an hour of increasingly insistent demands before Archer returned her phone call.

All happened last minute
, she said.

No time to contact you.

We needed you dealing with the O’Neill case.

It wasn’t lying. I don’t lie 
. . .

Helen rubs her hands through her hair. She should have been on the damn raid. Should at least have known about it. Christ, Archer must have been laughing her perfect bloody tits off. That was why the cow hadn’t come to the O’Neill murder. That was why it had landed with Helen. Archer had been too busy planning her latest media masterclass. She had told Helen she had a polo match. A bloody polo match! And all she’d had to say in response to Helen’s work on the murder was that it didn’t sound like one for her team and should probably be bounced over to Pharaoh. Helen had wanted to pull Archer through the phone by her hair extensions and beat her unconscious with her expensive shoes.

She takes another breath. Looks at the photo of Penelope on her desk. It’s a sweet picture. Penelope with a headband pulled down over her eyes so it looks as if she has been blindfolded, gummily grinning at the unexpected darkness. She’s wearing a
Top Gear
T-shirt declaring ‘I Am The Stig’.

Right, bloody calm down.

Helen gathers her thoughts. She has to work out how to proceed. Played right, this could work out okay. If the O’Neill murder is going to Serious and Organised, she could, perhaps, go with it. Catching whoever killed O’Neill is going to take a lot of legwork. It’s the kind of case that will only be solved by good fortune and knocking on doors, and she has no desire to start walking around Preston Road with a picture of the deceased, asking people if they know who smashed a bastard’s skull to pieces. She needs resources. Needs Pharaoh and McAvoy. Needs to get away from Archer before she lets her mouth run away with her.

Breathe, Helen. Calm down.

Taking another handful of chocolate buttons, Helen fiddles with her computer. Finds herself on the gossip section of the
Daily Mail
website. Discovers that an actress she has never heard of is struggling with cellulite and that a footballer’s girlfriend has started bleaching her anus. Helen wonders why these pieces of information are so much easier to remember than passwords and PIN codes. She works her way back to the
Hull Daily Mail
. Curses Archer and stuffs another chocolate in her mouth. She clicks on the other stories on the news site’s homepage. Reads a little about the death of Ava Delaney. Poor lass. Sounds as though a boyfriend did it. Shouldn’t be that hard to catch. A nice collar. A chance to do something useful. Pharaoh will probably kick him in the bollocks by accident before she cuffs him.

She clicks on another link. A feature on the growing list of unsolved crimes in the Humberside Police area. One of the losing candidates in the police commissioner election is having a pop about the police not being able to get to the bottom of half a dozen violent incidents over the past year. He mentions Raymond O’Neill and wonders why it took so long for the body to be discovered. Why had nobody been looking for him? How could a body lie undiscovered for so long? Mentions the shoot-out up at Flamborough Head a couple of years back. Bodies have yet to be recovered and the situation adequately explained. And what about the hit and run at Wawne? The debacle over Reuben Hollow. It’s a scathing piece and one that will have the top brass squirming. Helen can’t find many factual inaccuracies in it, though she does feel like mentioning that Pharaoh was doing a bloody good job catching villains until her resources were slashed in two.

Helen finishes the chocolate. Scowls again. Wonders if she should just bugger off home. Her dad’s looking after Penelope again. Taking her around Tropical World at Cleethorpes. Helen would rather be there. He took Helen there when she was little too. They could take a ride on the little steam train. Maybe eat some fried chicken and go to the soft-play area near the cinema.

An email alert drags her out of her reverie. She’s set up a filter on her system so that key contacts are automatically flagged as ‘urgent’. This one is top of her list.

For the next hour, Helen does not take her eyes off the computer screen. Her notes would be illegible to anybody but her, written without looking away from the passages of text that scroll before her eyes; a Spirograph of blue ink on lined paper. Her civilian colleagues return and ask her if she would like something to eat or drink and she waves them away with a dismissive flap of her left hand. They leave her in peace. They like Helen. Everybody likes Helen. She’s tall and strong and funny and committed and she sometimes brings her baby in for them to coo over. Used to be a big-hitter, apparently. Saved the life of a copper’s wife a couple of years ago. Got more scars than a blind carpenter’s thumb, if you believe the rumours . . .

At around noon, Helen pushes herself back from the computer. She breathes into her hand for a while, her finger hooked over her nose; elbow on the desk, knees touching the underside, biting her lip.

Helen had almost forgotten that she had requested the information. She phoned it across yesterday afternoon, driving back over to Caistor with the smell of antiseptic and sandwiches on her skin. She asked one of the civilian officers to make a formal request to every force in the country, asking for information on all cases that carried any of the same signatures as O’Neill’s murder. Under Pharaoh, such requests were standard procedure. They had made a similar request of Interpol. She wanted data on violent incidents occurring within a month of the victim being freed from jail or walking out of court without a custodial sentence. She wanted information on any cases where the victim had previous convictions for violent crimes. She wanted information on any cases where the victim was bound and beaten. Any cases where the victim had irritants in their eyes.

One of the civilian officers put in some hard yards to get the information back to her. Had spent the morning sifting, scrutinising and putting it into something cohesive and understandable. They had done a brilliant job. Helen would offer them a chocolate, were there any left.

Helen feels her pulse racing. She should take this to Archer. Should throw it in the bitch’s face and tell her that she has missed a golden opportunity to cherry-pick something career-defining. It’s nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with vengeance.

O’Neill’s killer has done this before.

Done it well, and often.

She picks up her phone again and chews on her lip as she wonders whom to call.

Replaces the receiver and gets her bag.

She has to be certain. She only has circumstantial evidence and a hunch.

But she’s pretty sure she’s just identified a serial killer.

Chapter 11

‘You’re looming a bit, Sarge.’

‘Sorry. Should I sit?’

‘If you like. You’ll still be taller than me though.’

McAvoy pulls up a swivel chair and eases himself down onto it. Andy Daniells is right. Even seated, he casts a shadow over the constable’s desk.