Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) (26 page)

McAvoy lets his confusion show on his face. ‘Not really. A bit. When I was younger.’

Jackson-Savannah purses his lips. Claps his hands, as if returning to business. ‘Dead for over six months,’ he says dispassionately. ‘Multiple stab wounds to the face and torso. We’ll be able to count them when we get her washed. She’s been buried for months too. We’re taking soil samples.’

‘The armpits,’ says McAvoy, dry-mouthed. ‘Were they . . . ?’

‘Scalped,’ says Jackson-Savannah. ‘Same as the other girl.’

‘Christ,’ says Mallett, standing up. ‘So it’s one killer?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

‘Who’s co-ordinating?’ asks Mallett. ‘McAvoy here’s raring to go. Is the house-to-house under way?’

Jackson-Savannah gives the Assistant Chief Constable a haughty glare. ‘I am a Home Office pathologist, not a police officer. But if you expect me to answer your every query I will be glad to do so. The duty CID inspector is bumbling his way around. Tim Graves. He was making noises about DSU Pharaoh’s unit no doubt cherry-picking this one as well. Shall I inform him he is to be vindicated in his suspicions?’

Mallett smiles at the pathologist’s pomposity. He turns to McAvoy. ‘Your team is already on the Delaney case. This is coming under that banner. It will take some careful management of the press but I’m sure you can handle that. And when your boss has the grace to show up you can tell her I want a full précis of where we’re at. Get this Gavan chap arrested. I’m going to go and find out where my bloody uniform is.’

He nods at the pathologist and winks at McAvoy. Opens the door and lets in the cold and the fog.

‘The sculpture,’ says Jackson-Savannah, nodding again at the creation on the fireplace. ‘Gift, was it?’

‘We stayed with him last summer,’ says McAvoy, distracted. ‘He gave it to us as we were leaving.’

‘Was it a whittling knife he used?’

‘Just a regular knife,’ says McAvoy, frowning. ‘He’s had it years. You’re not properly dressed up there unless you’ve got a pocket knife. Why?’

‘I need a comparison for the weapon,’ he says, matter-of-factly. ‘It’s hard to see but I’d suggest the wounds on Hannah’s body were made with a small blade. A knife sharp on both sides, with a hilt. Perhaps four inches long. It’s hard to tell but one particular wound is almost textbook. I think the weapon could be missing a portion of its tip. Not a rare weapon, by any means. The sort of thing one uses for whittling.’

McAvoy stares at the sculpture. Wonders just how many other things he cares about will be tainted with the blood of others before his work is done.

‘It should set the cat among the pigeons, that’s for certain,’ says Jackson-Savannah, chattily. ‘A political nightmare, I imagine, and not one that will look good for your DSU Pharaoh. She should be careful whom she insults. She won’t have many friends when the news gets out.’

McAvoy nods, then realises he has only been half listening. He turns angry eyes on the pathologist.

‘What news? What are you talking about?’

‘The report should be in your inbox, Detective Sergeant. I am not your secretary.’

‘What report, Doctor?’

Jackson-Savannah gives a last glance at the sculpture and then turns and walks out of the room. McAvoy stands alone, eyes closed, wondering what the hell to do next.

Slowly, as if diffusing a bomb, he looks at his phone. Finds the report sent from Dan in the lab.

Skin cells and trace DNA have been discovered on a handkerchief stuffed in the pocket of Ava Delaney’s little black leather jacket.

The knife used to scalp her armpits was perhaps four inches long with a double-sided, hilted blade, commonly used in wood carving.

McAvoy feels his heart fold in on itself as he reads the name at the bottom of the report.

Reuben Hollow.

Chapter 19

‘About 6 foot tall, medium build. Good-looking, yeah. Blue eyes, nice smile, smelled like, I don’t know, like my granddad’s garden shed used to, if that makes any sense . . .’

Helen is just past Lincoln, on the windy road that will have her home in around forty minutes. If not for Penelope she would have stayed overnight in the pretty town where she spent the evening. Stamford, in south Lincolnshire, is the sort of place Helen would like to retire to. It’s all manor houses, mullioned windows, ancient stone bridges and quaint little shops. She spent a weekend here a few years ago, testing the limits of the four-poster bed in some boutique hotel with a married man who made her feel desirable and exciting for about five hours, and then ashamed of herself for the next two days. She’d like to come here with Penelope when she’s a little older. Would like to sit down for a five-course dinner somewhere posh, to make her daughter giggle by calling the waiter ‘my good man’. She imagines Penelope, swilling Tango around her mouth and testing its piquancy as she imitates a connoisseur.

Helen grins in the darkness. Turns on her fog lights as the first whispers of cloud stream past the windscreen. Turns her thoughts away from her daughter and towards the purpose of her lengthy round trip.

She had left Yvonne to her tears and her wine. Managed to inveigle the most half-hearted of physical descriptions out of her before she did so. She acted like it really wasn’t important. But her mind was sizzling with possibilities by the time she got back to her car and followed the spark of an idea through to its conclusion. She called the other names on her list as she drove. Spoke to the sister of the barmaid attacked by the thug who wound up dead in his swimming pool in Turkey. The sister was a chatty, bubbly Irish girl who was thrilled to be talking to a police officer, even if it was about such a horrible thing. Yes, she’d been delighted to hear about the death of her sister’s attacker. No, she didn’t recognise the physical description. But her mother might. Helen had called the number she gave her. Spoke to a tired-sounding and wheezy woman in her fifties, asked her the same questions and got the same replies. She’d been about to hang up when the woman had said something that she should have bitten down on. Was he in trouble? Would he be okay? Helen had hung up. Made a note to contact the Garda and get somebody to take a more formal statement first thing in the morning. Then she’d driven to Stamford to speak to the ex-copper who arrested Dennis Ball for menacing the closest thing the pretty little town had to a rough estate. Ball had grabbed her. Pinned her down and forced her mouth open with his dirty hands before spitting down her throat and grabbing great fistfuls of her thighs, buttocks and chest. He’d looked into her eyes and grinned. Licked her face and pulled out a lump of her hair. He was only prevented from raping her when the other officer from her patrol car caught them. They were behind a skip outside an electrical store. Nine months later, Ball’s body was found in the same spot; his skull smashed to pieces. The officer had quit the force by then and was trying to make a new start. She’d told a lot of people what had happened. Maybe the guy that Helen described was among them but she didn’t know or care. And if he’d been involved in hurting Dennis Ball, he should get a bunch of flowers and a trophy.

Here, now, Helen feels a pulse of exhilaration beating inside her. She imagines telling McAvoy what she has found. Imagines telling Pharaoh. She needs to digest it all. Needs to make sense of it, to figure out how a charming, softly spoken vigilante has been killing people with impunity for God knows how long.

Helen picks up her phone and checks her messages. Calls Vicki back and pulls over at once.

‘Vicki? Hi, this is Helen. Yeah.’

The PCSO sounds as though she has been running. She’s breathless. Her voice sounds small.

‘Helen, hi. How’s things?’

‘Not bad,’ says Helen, hoping that the other officer has rung for more than a chat. ‘Did something occur to you about O’Neill?’

Vicki’s pause lasts almost ten seconds. And then she starts blurting it all out.

‘Honest, I swear if I’d remembered this the other day I’d have told you, but, look, I was watching a bit of telly tonight. Mum had taped a programme and I was having some food and fast-forwarding and there was a bit of the local news at the start of the programme. And look, I don’t normally watch the news. But this guy was on. And I remember speaking to him. He’d done a bit of work at the Freedom Centre, fixing some of the flooring in the function room.’

‘Go on,’ prompts Helen, with a finger in her ear.

‘Raymond O’Neill was drinking in the bar area with one of his lads and a couple of mates,’ says Vicki, still talking too fast. ‘They were celebrating.’

‘Celebrating?’

‘Him getting released.’

‘So this was last February?’

‘Must have been. Anyway, there was a bit of a to-do. Nothing major, a bit of bother.’

‘Vicki, you can tell me.’

The PCSO sighs. ‘You know I told you he called me a c-word? This was the day. There was a nice family drinking in the bar and Raymond and his mate were being really loud and swearing and it caused a bit of an argument. We were in the neighbourhood. We came in and tried to calm things down. Ray was really in my face but that was just Ray. The man who was on the news tonight – he was watching it all. I spoke to him when it all calmed down. He said Ray was an animal. I told him he didn’t know the half of it. Told him about Ray getting released from prison. I swear, I never thought of it again until tonight. Remember, we didn’t know Ray was missing so at the time it didn’t seem relevant. But when I saw him interviewed and realised who he was . . .’

Helen manages to convince Vicki she has done a great job. Calms her with kind words that seem to flow naturally from her tongue. Her heart is racing as she hangs up. Her knuckles are white around the steering wheel; the words scored into her open notebook have penetrated a dozen pages. She doesn’t know what she thinks or what she should hope for. Can’t remember if she came out with any decent platitudes before she hung up.

She opens a text from Ben Neilsen.

Hannah Kelly’s body has been found outside McAvoy’s house.

Helen’s hands go to her face. She can picture the devastation in his eyes. Can imagine the fire and ice in his gut.

She starts to call him. Stops herself. Starts again.

He’s quiet when he answers. Quieter than usual. Manages his name and a breath.

‘Sarge, I heard . . .’

‘Thanks for ringing,’ he says, and sounds grateful. ‘Not very nice here at the moment.’

‘No. Shit, Sarge, I’m so sorry.’

The phone rustles by her ear. She can hear McAvoy readjusting his own phone, brushing it against the grey and ginger bristles on his cheeks. She wonders if they are damp. Whether he has cried or is holding it all in to fuel the promises she knows he makes to the dead and those left behind.

‘How did you get on?’ he asks. ‘Are you okay? You’re not still on the road, are you? What about Penelope?’

Helen keeps her eyes on the road. Realises that despite herself, she is smiling.

‘There’s so much to tell you. We’re on to something, I swear.’

McAvoy grunts his interest and approval and seems to be making up his mind about something. Finally, he comes out with it.

‘There’s been a development with the Ava Delaney case. We’ve found DNA at the scene. It belongs to Reuben Hollow.’

Helen turns to look at the road signs as he says it. Sees her eyes widen in the darkened glass of the driver’s window.

‘Hollow? Christ, wait until you hear what I just found out . . .’

McAvoy makes a noise as she recounts the contents of her conversation with Vicki Fry. Helen wishes she were better at reading his sounds.

‘Can you make yourself available first thing tomorrow? I know it’s a lot to ask. But I could use a steady pair of hands. And I want to hear how your interviews went.’

Helen gives a proper smile then bites it back.

‘What are you thinking? Hollow was still inside when the girl died, wasn’t he? And what about Hannah? Were there any similarities? I mean, psychologically. Sorry for asking, it’s just . . .’

She hears McAvoy sigh. It’s not a dismissive or disappointed sound. He’s just too full of questions and sadness to contain it.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ says Helen, trying to cover up and cursing herself for rambling on.

‘Thanks again, Helen. Kiss Penelope goodnight for me.’

He ends the call. She can almost feel the soft, powerful pressure of his thumb upon the button of his phone.