McAvoy is okay with blood. He had not raised objections when asked by Pharaoh to attend the autopsy on her behalf. But he had never seen a corpse like Philippa’s before. Nor had he seen Dr Woodmansey give that tiny little shake of the head, that muted exhalation of breath, that suggested, he, too, was at once disgusted and appalled by what had been done to the woman who lay naked and mangled, scrubbed and exposed, upon the metal table before him.
As he holds his wife and watches his son throw stones into the water, McAvoy pictures the scene that played out before him just a couple of hours ago. Sees himself, wraith-like in his disposable white coat and with blue bags on his shoes, standing back against a wall so joyless in hue that it seemed to have been coloured in with a pencil. In front of him are two steel tables. Philippa Longman lies upon one – her face having settled into a curiously inhuman, characterless mask, so pale as to be almost translucent. Against the far wall is a hydraulic hoist and steel doors polished to a reflective gleam. To his right are sinks and hoses, a cutting board and specimen bottles. Next to McAvoy is a large whiteboard, the names of the recently dead scrawled upon
it in doctor’s handwriting. The numbers scribbled in the various columns record the weight of heart, brain, kidneys, lungs, liver, spleen. McAvoy takes them in, and wonders what he should feel. Cannot help but picture himself, on the slab. Cannot help but imagine Dr Woodmansey leaning over him, slicing the scalpel around the crown of his skull, lifting his hair away as if he has fallen to a tomahawk blow …
As he works, Dr Woodmansey wears a green apron over green surgical scrubs, topping off the outfit with white welly boots and rubber gloves. As she was brought in, Philippa Longman’s body was wrapped in plastic sheeting, evidence bags secured over her hands and feet to preserve any microscopic evidence contained within. As he watched, sombre and silent, McAvoy wondered how it felt to be a policeman a half-century before. Wondered how he would have fared were he asked to catch a killer without knowledge of skin cells, hair fibres, DNA. As ever, he felt he would come up short.
Dr Woodmansey is a short, portly man with close-shaved hair and unashamedly old-fashioned glasses. He is businesslike in his dealings with both the living and the dead. He is not one for small talk. He makes no jokes over the body and appreciates silence as he works. McAvoy likes his manner. Likes that he knows nothing more about the man than the fact he is good at his job.
‘Swing me, Daddy.’
The vision disappears as Fin gives his father an attention-grabbing kick on the ankle. He smiles indulgently at his son, who is a miniature version of his dad – all broad shoulders, red face and russet hair. McAvoy picks him up and gives him a quick spin around, enjoying the laughter it brings from his wife and his child. The boy is sticky with sweat, and McAvoy can see problems
this evening when they try and get him to change out of the Ross County football strip he has worn every day since it arrived in the post on his fifth birthday. As presents go, McAvoy is not sure that turning a youngster with his whole life ahead of him into a Ross County fan is a tremendous gift. Still, Fin had been pleased, and is busy working on an elaborate thank-you card for his uncle in Aultbea. McAvoy wonders if the boy will still be as grateful as an adult, when he is nursing a consoling pint and wishing that he’d been raised to support Celtic.
Fin runs off, back to the wooden timbers. McAvoy reaches out for Roisin’s hand. It’s delicate and cold, despite the heat of the evening, and he takes it in his great warm paw, pulling her in. She rests her head against his chest and as one, they sink down onto the pebbles. It’s still horribly muggy and warm and the sky is the colour of the pathologist’s cutting tools, but at least here there is enough breeze for them to be able to hold one another without their clothing sticking to their skin.
‘Every night,’ says Roisin, raising her head and turning to look back at the row of properties 100 yards away across a strip of grass and a quiet road. ‘We can do this every night, Aector.’
McAvoy kisses her on the forehead. ‘You don’t think you’ll get bored with the view?’
‘It changes every day,’ she says, looking back at the water. ‘I’ve never seen it the same twice.’
She’s right. The Humber is one of the most dangerously unpredictable waterways in the world: a mess of contrary tides and shifting sands. Two millennia ago, the estuary managed to hold the Romans back as they marched north; a procession of slaves losing their lives as they failed to find a safe channel through the mud and waters. McAvoy has never worked out why
they didn’t just go inland fifteen miles and turn right at Goole.
‘And you’re sure it’s what you want? There are those apartments in the Old Town. You’d be near the shops, the museums …’
She reaches down and nips his thigh, then slaps him across his chest. This is her way of telling him to shut up. She has told him endlessly how much she wants this: this house, with its views and big back garden; this place, this life. He believes her. The only part he struggles to comprehend is why she wants to share it with him.
McAvoy stretches out his leg and gives the baby-carrier a little rock. Lilah is sleeping soundly at last. The heat has been too much for her, and every time McAvoy opens her bedroom window, flies, moths and wasps begin to circle her cot. Her crying had been a torturous and heartbreaking thing and they had decided to all go for a drive. To get some fresh air. To head for the new house, and indulge in pleasant daydreaming about how their lives will be when they move their stuff in next weekend.
‘Mel says she’ll come,’ says Roisin, into his chest.
‘To what?’
‘The housewarming, Silly. Suzie too. And a couple of the mums.’
McAvoy nods. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want a housewarming party. Doesn’t want strangers in his home. But he will have one, and smile as wide as he can muster, to please his wife.
‘The shop’s doing well, apparently. Slow, but it takes time, doesn’t it? And there are loads of shops closing down, so she’s doing well even to be in business, you know?’
‘Aye, it can’t be easy.’
‘She got a big order while I was there. Big bag of suits that
needed taking in. I think the bloke had been on some sort of extreme diet. He looked thin but green, and his breath smelled like cat food.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Aye. She’ll be good. She doesn’t mind working hard. I just wish there was somebody to keep an eye on her. It’s rough up there, and she’s not really tough, is she? I might spend a bit more time up there until she’s a bit more settled. I don’t like thinking of her on her own.’
Roisin met Mel a few months before at a salsa class and the two have quickly become close friends. McAvoy finds her pleasant enough company, though is never truly pleased when he comes home to find her in his living room, three-quarters of the way through a bottle of red wine and planning to spend the night on his sofa. Roisin always asks him whether he minds her friends staying over. He always tells her it’s fine. Tells her to do whatever she wants. Tells her to enjoy herself, and then he goes upstairs to read a book or fiddle with some new software on the computer in the bedroom. Lets her be. Lets her do whatever the hell she wants as long as she continues to love him.
‘I had a look in the hairdresser’s next to her shop,’ she says. ‘Nice people. They don’t do nails. I was thinking I might see about offering my services.’
McAvoy has to force himself not to visibly react. In his mind, Roisin has already started work at the salon. She is chatting. Laughing. Living. A sales rep comes in to offer samples. Makes her giggle. Touches her bare shoulder as he leaves. Slips a business card into her hand. She looks at it, longingly. Weighs up her options. Pictures her daft, hulking husband and his big stupid face and picks up her phone.
He feels his heart, disintegrating, in his chest.
‘That’s a good idea,’ he says, as brightly as he can muster. ‘Would do you good. Would you be able to do just a few hours, either side of school runs and stuff?’
‘It’s only a thought at the moment. We’ll see, eh? Anyway, they might want me to have all the certificates and stuff. I’m self-taught, aren’t I?’
McAvoy squeezes her. ‘You’re naturally brilliant,’ he says.
‘You think?’
‘I think.’
They sit in silence, just loving each other, and for a time, McAvoy manages not to picture anything dispiriting or gruesome. Manages not to fill his imagination with Philippa Longman, or the things he has seen being done to her corpse. Manages not to picture what was done to her in her dying moments, in the darkness, on a mattress of cracked stones and smashed glass.
He lets his mind spin. Presses Roisin closer to him. Tries to be a better man. Suddenly sees himself outside the mortuary, leaning against bare brick, fringe plastered to his forehead, strong mints wedged between teeth and cheek, phone to his ear and telling Pharaoh the pathologist’s findings.
‘She had a heart attack while it was happening, Guv. Her arteries were furred up and her cholesterol was above average so the shock of it all sent her into cardiac arrest. By that point though she was on the ground and she was getting hit in the chest. There’s a bruise to the back of her head. She went down hard but not hard enough to knock her out. There’s bruising around the hinge of the jaw that suggests pressure to the lower half of her face. Perhaps a hand, holding her mouth shut. Dr Woodmansey says she was pummelled with a large flat implement with a soft
surface, whatever that may mean. Repeated strikes to the ribs and chest. Ribs broke under the stress and punctured inwards. Eventually the ribs punctured the lungs and then finally the heart. He says twenty minutes all in. Twenty minutes, pounding on her chest. No evidence of sexual assault. A few fibres, under her nails. Red and black threads, soft cotton. Some substance, as yet unidentified, but organic. Could be anything, but he’s sending it off for analysis. Should have it back in a couple of days if we fast-track it. Dr Woodmansey says that it was furious but sustained. Whoever did it would have had blood spray on them, but wouldn’t have been covered. Her breath was full of blood particles and the killer would have been in close.’
Here, now, McAvoy closes his eyes. Tries to put the day’s findings into some kind of order. Tries to work out why somebody would kill Philippa Longman so brutally. Whoever killed her, it was important to them that she suffer. Somebody hated her. Was it a random stranger, hating the world? Or has she done something so terrible that her murderer wanted her to endure that much agony in her dying moments? He thinks of Darren Robb. Tries to imagine the pitiful fat man having that much rage inside of him. He struggles to see it. But he has been wrong before.
‘Did I tell you I met your friend Helen? She was up by Mel’s shop.’
‘Helen Tremberg? Detective constable?’
‘Yeah. Big girl. Nice. Got hurt when you were both in Grimsby …’
‘Yes, DC Tremberg. Did you say hello?’
‘Just briefly. She was with some snooty cow.’
‘Detective Inspector Sharon Archer?’
‘I dunno. She just sat there with her hand on the horn.’
‘Yeah, that would be her.’
McAvoy wonders how he feels about his wife chatting to his work colleagues. Unbidden, a blush rises from his shirt collar up to his cheeks. He imagines her telling Tremberg about their new home. Their plans. He imagines her inviting her to the housewarming. Telling her to bring a friend. Imagines Archer asking her junior officer whom she was talking to. Sees Tremberg, spilling her guts. Telling her about Aector McAvoy’s traveller wife. About what he did to the men who attacked her when she was young. Fuck. Fuck!
‘The lady who died,’ says Roisin, shifting position so she can look up at her husband. ‘Why did they kill her?’
McAvoy gazes into her for a few seconds. Her eyes are innocent and guileless.
‘We’ve got a few ideas. It may just have been a random nutter, but it doesn’t feel that way.’
‘Had she been putting it about or anything? Any affairs?’
McAvoy shakes his head. ‘We don’t think so. She was just a nice lady. Mattered to people. Did her bit. And somebody caved her chest in. Splintered her ribs like she was made of twigs.’
‘What with?’
‘We don’t know that either.’
Roisin makes a face, mildly disappointed in the detectives of Humberside Police. ‘They break easy, ribs. Even when you’re doing CPR, you can break ribs. I think I saw that in an episode of
Holby City
, actually …’
McAvoy has gone still. He breathes out, slowly, through his nose, and without saying anything, sits up and rolls Roisin onto her back. He places one hand on her chest and the other on top of it. Roisin looks up at him, happy, but confused.
‘We trying something new?’
He gives the slightest push. She winces, but doesn’t stop smiling.
McAvoy rocks himself back, onto his toes. He stares at her, eyes unfocused.
He stands and pulls out his phone.
‘Guv? I’ve had a thought …’
*
11.58 p.m. Barton-on-Humber.
The last town before North Lincolnshire hits the water. A decent, likeable place. Pleasant. Arty. A mingling of sturdy, centuries-old merchant homes and newly built estates. A place where cosy restaurants sit comfortably beside kebab shops; where slick Mercedes park next to rusted hatchbacks while the owners of both drink happily in real-ale pubs.
This wide road leading out of the town centre, up towards the roundabout and the last stretch of motorway that leads across the bridge.
A modern, detached house with neat front lawn and a sensible car parked on a newly tarmacked drive …
Yvonne Dale. Forty-six. Mother of two and gratefully divorced. She’s lounging at the apex of an L-shaped sofa in a long, white-painted living room. The walls serve as a timeline of her children’s lives. Above the flat-screen TV are baby pictures. Jacob, restless on the photographer’s cloud of tousled silk. Andrew, two years later, placid and uncrying as the same photographer manipulated his chunky limbs and soft curls into a more pleasing pose. Above the fireplace, their first holidays, all muddy welly boots and rain-streaked cheeks. First days at school. Almond-coloured skin between grey socks and shorts. Their trip
to Kefalonia three years ago. Jacob then six, Andrew four. Yvonne in some of these pictures, lounging by the poolside in the rented villa, large floppy hat casting a shadow on rosy cheeks and ample skin spilling out of a black swimsuit. Behind her, pixelated on a huge canvas, both boys laughing, Jacob’s arm thrown carelessly over his little brother’s shoulder as they sit cross-legged and side by side on Cleethorpes seafront reading the same book; Jacob patient with his younger sibling when he struggled with longer words.