Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) (37 page)

McAvoy is still sitting in his car, looking like a kicked puppy, trying to work up the courage to come and tell her he’s sorry, or that he’s not, or that he hasn’t got a bloody clue who he is or what he wants and needs her to make it all better.

Pharaoh turns too quickly and feels dizzy. She’s weary to the bone. Can smell her own exhaustion. Can taste nothing but cigarettes. She’s ignoring her bleeping phone.

Pharaoh hasn’t had a drink since last night but she feels half drunk, ephemeral and half formed. She hasn’t eaten all day, save the three ibuprofen she necked with a cup of machine coffee at HQ. Her fingers feel trembly. She fancies that if she were asked to type up a report, the page would fill with duplicated letters.

She needs him.

Through the darkened glass she catches his eye. Gives the tiniest jerk of her head. Tells him to get his arse inside the fluttering police tape.

In the blue darkness he is just an outline; a big, lumbering thing made of rocks. As he gets close, she sees how tired he looks. Sees the darkness beneath his eyes and the alabaster pallor of his cheeks.

She holds his stare. Manages something like a smile.

‘I’m sorry for questioning you,’ he says, and she can see how much he wants to turn his head away as he says it. Instead, he focuses too hard; stares, intensely, into her eyes. His damp fringe flutters in the breeze and he seems to be suppressing a shiver. Pharaoh wants to put a palm on his cheek, though whether tenderly or violently, she is not completely sure.

Pharaoh waits a moment. Closes her eyes and sorts herself out. Jerks her head and they begin walking, slowly, up through the village towards the church.

‘He was working on a pew, we think,’ says Pharaoh. ‘He’s a specialist when it comes to church work. Lecterns and lintels and all sorts of words I had to look up on Wikipedia. That’s when they came for him. He went down fighting. Knows how to fight, does our boy.’

Beside her, McAvoy says nothing. He feels lost. Doesn’t know how he feels about anything right now.

Pharaoh kicks at a pebble as they approach the church. Breathes out.

‘You know what the Americans say about things being above people’s pay grade?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hate all that shit,’ she says, and pauses to light a cigarette. She sucks on it as if it contains answers she can absorb. Inhales it like a prayer.

McAvoy wishes he could think of something to say. He knows she is about to tell him something. Knows that if he keeps his mouth shut, he can’t mess it up.

‘Privilege of rank,’ says McAvoy.

‘Burden of it,’ says Pharaoh, wryly. She shakes her head. Looks up at the church. Decides she can’t bring herself to go in. Leans against the wall and looks up at her sergeant. At her friend.

‘I pushed to be allowed to tell you,’ she says, through a veil of smoke. ‘I wanted you on the team. Turned out I was lucky to be on it myself, if lucky is even the right word. I stumbled into something. They saw a chance to draw him out. They played mind games with a psychopath and they lost.’

McAvoy waits for more. He has to stop himself from reaching out and taking the cigarette from between her lips. Has to stop himself stroking her hair and telling her it will all be okay. She doesn’t even smell like Pharaoh any more. She’s supposed to smell of Issey Miyake, little black cigarettes and bacon sandwiches. Here, now, she smells of lager, cheap fags and unwashed sheets.

‘They think he’s killed half a dozen people,’ says Pharaoh, looking down. ‘More. I’ve been building a case. He would never have fallen for an undercover operation and the only copper who tried it ended up half dead. So they picked me. Hid me in plain sight. Vulnerable. Needy. Alone. They set me up to look like a Big Mac to a starving man, and Christ, he took the bait. I had no choice. I’ve had nobody to talk to, Hector. Christ, I’ve wanted to talk.’

McAvoy stares into her eyes. Fears, for a terrible second, that she is going to let the tears overflow. Gives a tiny smile of relief when she gets control of herself, even as a hundred questions flood his brain.

‘I don’t even know if I believe it,’ she says, grinding out her cigarette on the wall of the church and wrapping the butt in tissue. ‘It’s all been guesswork and supposition. This case is a career-maker, that’s the trouble. They weren’t content to let him go down for manslaughter. The bloke who went for him? The bloke Hollow knocked lumps out of? That wasn’t an eye-catcher, not for these buggers. They wanted a headline-making case. “Britain’s FBI Catch Serial Killer.”  You know the bollocks.’

McAvoy nods. He is beginning to understand. Knows how the National Crime Agency operates and how its worth is judged.

‘The lead detective’s name is Aberlour,’ says Pharaoh, with a faint snarl. ‘Political animal. Utter twat. Acted like I should be grateful for an opportunity to work with the elite. That was his phrase. Elite! They came to me after Shaz Archer arrested Reuben. And my life turned to shit.’

McAvoy waits for more. Holds his hands in fists as Pharaoh plays with her phone and finds the document that Aberlour sent her when she started asking the right questions of the wrong people. It was culled from psychological reports, probation papers, court hearings and intelligence work. She hands the phone to McAvoy with a small nod of warning. Lights another cigarette and watches him read.

Reuben Hollow was not so named until he was twenty-two years old. Prior to that he had been Oliver Millichamp, born in 1974. He grew up in a pleasant, rural environment and was known as a cheerful and attentive student at the village school where he was an above-average student. At eleven, he passed the exams required to allow him to attend a decent school in central York. He excelled. Displayed extraordinary abilities in the arts and English. In 1986 he was involved in an altercation in his village. He was attacked by a group of local, older teens. Oliver grabbed a paintbrush and stuck it in the neck of one of his attackers.

Though the attacker survived, Oliver was tried for unlawful wounding. Went to a juvenile detention centre for the next two years. At seventeen, he brutally beat a man he thought was harassing an elderly woman in his local Co-op. He was sent back to prison. Finished his sentence in adult jail.

Pharaoh loses patience. Can’t stand to watch McAvoy read. She snatches the phone and begins spitting information at him without even looking at the text.

‘Oliver Millichamp began calling himself Reuben Hollow when he got out,’ she says. ‘Changed his name by deed poll and disappeared from the system. It was years before he resurfaced. A Nigerian people-trafficker was found with the back of his head smashed in and pepper spray in his eyes. The victim was known to the National Crime Agency. His name was Adejola Bankole, though women called him “the devil”. He was involved with an organised crime gang that brought young women over from remote parts of Africa and forced them into prostitution. A month before his death, Bankole met a young Nigerian girl off a plane at Gatwick Airport. She might have come to Britain expecting work as a cleaner or a maid but Bankole was nothing more than a pimp. He was a fucking slaver. He told her that if she didn’t do as he said, her family back home would be raped and burned. She never even got out of Gatwick. He’d already sold her to some contacts in Rome. Sold her like she was meat. He gave her a new passport. Fake. Put her back on a plane – this time to Italy. They wouldn’t let her in. Sent her back to her point of origin, which was Gatwick, in their eyes. She didn’t know what the fuck to do. Just sat in the bar at the airport and cried into a glass of alcohol that she had no intention of drinking. And then she met a stranger. Told him, despite herself, about the devil who would do terrible things to her when he learned she had not made it to Italy. He listened. Told her not to worry. Within the week, the young woman had handed herself in to the authorities and was co-operating with the NCA in cracking the network. And Bankole was dead. The NCA used all of its toys. Facial recognition software was used on CCTV footage taken in the bar. It came up with a possible match: Oliver Millichamp. The NCA thought they had found a major player in the organised crime world. Presumed they had identified an assassin. They tracked Millichamp to his new life as a woodcarver and caring stepfather, living in the wilds of East Yorkshire. None of what they saw added up.’

Pharaoh takes a breath. Scratches at her forehead and leaves vertical lines. ‘The NCA green-lit an investigation,’ she says, and the memory seems to pain her. ‘Profilers were used. Cameras and recording equipment were placed in his home in the hope that Millichamp or Hollow or whatever the fuck you wanted to call him was going to start naming his gangland employers. The results were unexpected. Hollow was nobody’s hired muscle. He killed when he felt it was warranted. Killed only those who deserved to die. And that’s when it all got really interesting. Detective Chief Superintendent Aberlour reckoned he had identified a pattern. And that meant he had carte blanche to do what he wanted. Serial killers are recession-proof.’

McAvoy looks at Pharaoh, who is grinding out her second cigarette.

‘Helen has unearthed the same thing,’ he says. ‘There’s definitely enough to build a case.’

Pharaoh examines him. Looks upon him like a dog-lover who has just seen a Yorkshire Terrier perform an impromptu back-flip.

‘They
were
building the case,’ says Pharaoh, looking away. ‘Aberlour’s lot were getting ready to move on him when Mathers died. Archer arrested him. She didn’t expect the case to get anywhere. He’d been defending himself and his victim had fallen. It was always going to be a hard one to prove. Archer lost interest so they brought me in to advise. I looked into his past. Found gaps in his back-story. Found the legal documents that Aberlour had been so excited about. Then Aberlour himself and his pet poodle, DCI Dawn Leather, got in touch with me. They were so cloak-and-dagger it was almost funny. But as soon as they got my assurances that the conversation would go no further, they played me a recording of Mathers’ death. They’d bugged Hollow’s place, you see. Had the lot. And it was clear Hollow was telling the truth. It had just been an accident. They had struggled, and his attacker had hit his head. Aberlour had audio footage of Hollow telling the man to calm down and apologising for attacking his son.’

Pharaoh pauses. Considers another cigarette and decides against it.

‘That’s when they started filling me in on his past,’ she says. ‘They were damn sure Hollow had killed. There was circumstantial evidence by the bucket-load but they were scared. They had to remove any chance he’d wriggle free and embarrass them. They needed something concrete to pin him to one of the unsolved cases that various police forces across the UK had on their books. They told me that they were going to put an informant in his cell with him and get him to open up. But to do that, they needed to make sure he was in prison to begin with. It was up to me to make the case for Mathers’ death stick. You can imagine my response.’

McAvoy gives a small snort of laughter. He can see it perfectly. Can see his mentor and idol telling them where to shove such an idea.

‘I told them to get fucked,’ she says, waving a hand as if this piece of information should be obvious. ‘I couldn’t put an innocent man away. They laughed at that. Laughed at the idea he was innocent. And then they showed me the photos of his alleged victims. I saw the damage he had done.’

‘He only hurt bad people,’ says McAvoy, half to himself. ‘You were torn.’

‘It wasn’t that I agreed with Hollow,’ says Pharaoh forcefully. ‘I didn’t think he was some sort of hero and that the streets were a safer place with him free. I just wasn’t sure I believed the evidence against him, and it seemed as though Aberlour was only interested in the positive headlines it would bring his team. I honestly didn’t know which way to turn, and you weren’t around.’

Pharaoh shakes her head as McAvoy begins to protest.

‘It wasn’t your fault, Hector. You were away, building bridges with your dad. And like I say, they wouldn’t have let me talk to you about it anyway. In the end I decided that the only way to know for sure would be to allow the operation. He had to go to prison so they could get answers. I had to build a case that would see him remanded into custody awaiting trial. I never expected him to be convicted. Cotteril’s statement was only ever meant to be the icing on the cake. When he was found guilty, Aberlour was pretty much doing cartwheels. He hadn’t been able to get his man anywhere near Hollow while he was on remand. They had him in a category C prison where the governor wouldn’t play ball. But when he was convicted they sent him to a category A, and his new cellmate just happened to be a detective sergeant from Aberlour’s team. The sergeant had been briefed by profilers. Had been told to make himself seem like a legitimate bodyguard figure in the eyes of his new best friend by beating the shit out of somebody vulnerable. He picked the wrong man. They’d read Reuben all wrong. When the sergeant began pounding on Jez Gavan, Hollow saw only another bully. The DS ended up in hospital and Hollow requested a new cell alongside Gavan. He saw himself as Gavan’s protector. The whole damn operation was wrecked before it began. Then his lawyer began raising hell. A judicial review found that Hollow had been imprisoned on the back of potentially falsified evidence. Cotteril took enough pills to kill an elephant and left a suicide note on his home computer, admitting he had told nothing but lies and that the truth was all going to come out. Hollow was freed. Came home and the next moment he’s on
Look North
like some bloody pop star.’