Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) (22 page)

‘I’m sorry.’

‘If you say that again I’m going to elbow you in the throat.’

‘Really. That wasn’t what I brought you here for. I’m sorry if you misunderstood . . .’

‘Stop talking. Save your life.’

On the steps of the caravan, Reuben Hollow hangs his head. He’s been rolling and unrolling a cigarette for the past five minutes. It’s starting to annoy Pharaoh and she’s annoyed enough already. Annoyed and hot and embarrassed. Burning with shame.

‘Do you want me to roll that?’ she asks, through gritted teeth.

Hollow notices the cigarette, seals it shut with the tip of his tongue and lights it with his black Ronson lighter. It’s a classic, expensive-looking object. He plays with it nervously. Raises his head and stares at Pharaoh. She’s standing by the fire, chain-smoking. Her hair is stuck to the sweat on her head and neck. The right leg of her tights is laddered and there is dirt on the back of her black dress.

‘If you tell anybody . . .’ says Pharaoh, her teeth clamped around the filter. She softens her face a little, then hardens it as tears prick at her eyes. ‘Why did you carve those figures? What did you expect me to think?’

Hollow scratches at his stubble. He’d only let her kiss him for a moment. She came at him hungrily. Her mouth was hot and wet and tasted like his own. Her body felt warm and her breasts had squashed against him as she pulled his mouth onto hers and grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

It was when her tongue slithered against the roof of his mouth that he reacted. Pushed her away as if she were a vile thing. Pushed her too hard. She had fallen backwards. Snagged her tights and landed on the ground among the dead leaves and the scuttling, crawling things. She had looked up through a veil of hair and her face had contained more hurt than he had ever seen.

He had rejected her. Led her on just so he could say no. Had played with her like she was a schoolgirl. She hadn’t even known she was falling for him. Had surprised herself as much as him when she clamped her mouth onto his. It has been so long. So long since somebody has touched her. So long since she felt beautiful.

Here, now, she repels herself. She has never felt so unclean.

‘I thought you might like something to drink.’

She turns, wiping her eyes and trying to hide her laddered leg behind the good one. A girl is walking towards them through the grass, holding a thick green bottle and two glasses. She’s good-looking. Red hair and freckles. She’s wearing a man’s jumper and a pair of denim shorts, her hair tied back with a scarf that puts Pharaoh in mind of munitions factories and overalls. She’s wearing glasses with a chunky frame and her features are pleasingly mischievous. Delphine.

‘That’s so thoughtful,’ says Hollow. He comes down the caravan steps and greets his daughter with a kiss on the forehead. He lingers there, sniffing her hair. Gives her a squeeze. ‘This is Delphine. You’ve met before, yes?’

Pharaoh’s throat feels dry. She raises her cigarette to her lips and realises it has burned down to nothing. She and Delphine have never spoken but she saw her every day during the trial. She sat in the public gallery with a quiet dignity and took notes. Every night she took two buses home. Walked the last mile to this lonely place, with its headstones and ghosts. Didn’t cry when he was sentenced. Only let her tears go when he was released. Then she held him on the steps of the Court of Appeal and sobbed into his chest as he held her and the scrum of photographers snapped their pleasure and pain from every angle.

‘I’m going soon,’ says Pharaoh, in as kindly a voice as she can manage. ‘If you could call me a taxi, please.’

Hollow stands with his arm around his daughter. ‘I’ll drive you,’ he says. ‘Here, have a drink.’

Pharaoh feels so out of place she’s tempted to simply run off through the woods. It’s all suddenly too much: the buzzing of the flies and the rustling of the trees and the chirruping of the songbirds on the headstones and high branches; the shadows of the leaves moving over her face; the emptiness in her gut and the hot, angry sense of having let herself down . . .

‘Are you okay? You look like you’re sweating. Drink this.’

Pharaoh feels unsteady on her feet. She takes the proffered glass. Smells Delphine as she puts her arms around her and steers her to the steps of the caravan. She smells like a teenager, of sweat and mown grass. Cheap shampoo and junk food.

‘Daddy, help me get her sat down. Is she okay? I heard shouting . . .’

‘Don’t worry, darling, she’s just overworked. Needs a rest. Here, Trish, drink some more. I’ll take you back soon, I promise.’

Pharaoh can smell something else. It’s an oppressive, thrusting scent and spears into her mouth and nose like the fingers of a grasping hand. She can smell corruption. Can smell the earth, the leaves turning to mulch beneath her feet. She’s suddenly overcome by thoughts that are alien to her. Is consumed by the knowledge that all things end. Feels tiny. Feels for a moment her place in the order of things and realises that if she catches a thousand murderers she will still have failed to matter.

This place
, she thinks.
Here, among the dead. It’s a window into something that we should not see
. She imagines growing up here. Watching as chicks hatch and fledge and fly away. Finding their pathetic bodies among the snapdragons and bluebells. Seeing them feast on wriggling things; gulping down spiders and moths, squawking and fighting, begging for life . . . Pharaoh cannot stand it. She would grow mad here inside a week under the weight of seeing nature as it truly is.

‘I’m okay,’ she says, and tries to mean it. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Too many late nights.’

‘I’ll get the car,’ says Hollow. He seems pleased to have something to do, a little lost in the face of Pharaoh’s embarrassment and sickness.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Delphine, sitting next to her. ‘I can make you something. Have you eaten? Did Daddy take you for something? There are some nice pubs. We could go.’

‘I’m fine. I just need to get back to work.’

‘Will you come again? Daddy likes you.’

Pharaoh turns away. Doesn’t like the word ‘daddy’. Doesn’t want to be seen.

‘I came here to talk to him about a murder inquiry.’

‘I thought that was all over.’

‘Not that. That’s done. He told me he’d taken you to hospital and you saw a girl. Ava Delaney. She was found murdered last night.’

‘That’s horrible. How?’

‘I can’t tell you that. But do you remember anything about her?’

‘I had a migraine that night. I don’t remember very much. That’s so sad. How old was she?’

‘Do you know the name Hannah Kelly?’

‘I don’t think so. No, no, I do. Is she the one who’s missing? Why? Did Daddy say we’d met her too?’

‘No, we’re just asking everybody. I’m sorry to trouble you.’

‘I don’t blame you, y’know. You were just doing your job. But those lads did attack me for no reason and Daddy just did what everybody should do.’

Pharaoh looks into the eyes of the pretty, earnest girl and sees a love for her father that she has never seen in any eyes other than Fin McAvoy’s.

‘It must get lonely out here,’ says Pharaoh, gesturing around her. ‘Just you and your dad.’

‘It wasn’t always just us. My brother died – you know that, don’t you? Killed himself. And Mum drank herself to death.’

‘I’m sorry. About both of them.’

‘Aramis used to get sad all the time. He drank polish. Poison. It was a horrid way to die. Nearly broke Daddy’s heart.’

‘And yours, I expect.’

‘Of course. I talk to him a lot. It’s nice to have him close by. It only got lonely when Daddy was gone. But he’s back now.’

Pharaoh closes her eyes for a long time. When she opens them again, Reuben Hollow is standing in front of her holding out his hand.

‘I carved the figures because you’re beautiful,’ says Hollow softly, as he helps her down the steps towards the car. His hands are warm and his breath upon her neck threatens to take the strength from her legs. ‘Too beautiful to be sullied by me.’

Pharaoh allows herself to be steered into the passenger seat. Closes her eyes as the shadows dance upon her and the warm leather seats burn her skin.

‘Come again,’ says Delphine, as the car jerks away over the uneven grass. ‘Please.’

Pharaoh catches something in the voice. A plea. A hint of something she cannot place.

She looks across at Hollow. Handsome and charming, with his blue eyes and gentle hands. Reuben Hollow, who refuses to touch her because she’s too damn beautiful. Reuben Hollow, with his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and a kiss that lingered a second too long upon her head.

She closes her eyes and hopes sleep will take her.

Hopes that when she wakes it will be into a world where her thoughts do not make her feel so sick.

Chapter 16

Tuesday evening, 9.18 p.m.

A row of terraced cottages, white-painted and timeless; little front yards and potted plants blooming in window boxes. Overhead, the mass of the Humber Bridge; so many tonnes of concrete and steel, rising out of the fog and the coffee-coloured waters of the estuary.

Aector McAvoy, sitting on the stretch of grass opposite his home, phone under his chin and notebook on his lap, watching through the darkness and the clouds as his children throw stones in the water and his wife plucks daisies with her dainty toes to drop them in his lap one at a time.

‘No earlier than Sunday,’ he says, consulting his notes. ‘No later than Tuesday. He’d say later rather than sooner, if you pushed him.’

At the other end of the phone, Pharaoh snorts. ‘If I pushed him he wouldn’t get up for a month. Carry on.’

‘Cause of death was asphyxiation. Low levels of oxygen in the blood, high levels of carbon dioxide. Evidence of significant cyanosis. That’s the purplish colouring.’

‘I know what it is.’

‘Crushed hyoid bone. Do you know—’

‘Yes.’

‘Vomit in the mouth and throat. Not much stomach content left but she had been drinking red wine shortly before her death. A spirit too, though he’s struggling to identify it. She had eaten from a bag of toffee popcorn and had a microwave moussaka for her lunch. We found the packaging in the carrier bag she was using as a bin.’

‘The scalping,’ says Pharaoh, sighing. ‘Get to the scalping.’

‘A sharp blade. Well maintained. Polished with a normal household chamois. Equally sharp on both sides of the blade. Perhaps six inches long. Not like anything found at the flat. This was an impressive weapon.’

‘Was it after death, Hector?’ asks Pharaoh. Her voice suggests this is the thing that matters most.

‘Yes, thankfully,’ he says, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘He held the hair in his fist and sliced through the axilla. That’s the technical name for an armpit . . .’

‘I know.’

‘. . . left a tiny patch under the left arm. Enough to suggest at least a month’s growth. Possibly more.’

‘The bleach,’ says Pharaoh.

‘Used as a crude way of destroying anything of forensic value. Caused severe burns to the skin and meant we couldn’t get a print off any part of her. It was done by somebody with some understanding of forensics but no real expertise. Basically, nothing you wouldn’t know by reading a lot of crime books.’

McAvoy hears the neck of a wine bottle hit a glass. Hears Pharaoh swallow and then a deep breath as she takes a drag on her cigarette. He has so much to ask her. He expected her to walk into the incident room all day. Had expected at least a phone call. But he has been left to run a murder inquiry without her guiding hand. Jackson-Savannah delivered his findings mid-afternoon and McAvoy held off briefing the team until he was damn sure Pharaoh wasn’t going to show. He has been calling her all evening. Was about to give up when she finally called back, just as McAvoy and Roisin were telling the kids it was time to cross the road and go back home for a bath and bed. They were delighted when McAvoy took the call and signalled they could have another few minutes on the little patch of rocks and mud that they insist upon calling ‘the beach’. It is where they spend most of their evenings. The house is already too small for them. They only moved in a couple of years ago and it has spent much of the time since under tarpaulin and scaffolding, being renovated and largely rebuilt. It is a newish property, built to look old. It shouldn’t have ghosts yet. But it has witnessed death and destruction. People died in the living room during an investigation that almost cost the McAvoys everything. They would have moved out were it not for the view. McAvoy adores it here. Loves the water. Finds the drone of tyres on tarmac comforting as it drifts down from the colossal bridge. Likes the chatter of the drinkers who make their way to and from the Country Park Inn; the sound of the ice-cream vans and the squeal of children playing football on the grass. Likes to hear the splash of the lifeboat as it hits the motionless water. There’s a park nearby. A large, decorated farm cart, filled with flowers that spell out the words ‘City of Culture’ in a riot of reds, yellows, blues and greens, poems by Philip Larkin etched into the spokes of the great wheels. It soothes him. Helps him to breathe.