McAvoy tries again.
‘Look, the people at occupational health have insisted I come for six sessions with a police-approved counsellor. I’m doing that. I’m here. I’ll answer your questions and I’m at great pains not to be rude to you but it’s hot and I’m tired and I have work to do, and yes, there are lots of places I would rather be. I’m sure you would too.’
There is silence for a second. McAvoy hears the beep of an appointment being announced in the waiting room for the main doctor’s surgery downstairs. He pictures the scene. The waiting room of sick students and chattering foreigners, of middle-class bohemians waiting for their malaria pills and yellow fever jabs before they jet off to Goa with their little Jeremiahs and Hermiones.
Eventually, Sabine tries again. ‘You have three children, is that right?’
‘Two,’ says McAvoy.
‘Youngest keeping you up?’
‘Comes with the job.’
‘It’s your duty, yes?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tell me about duty, Aector. Tell me what it means to you.’
McAvoy makes fists. Thinks about it. ‘It’s what’s expected.’
‘By whom?’
‘By everyone. By yourself. It’s the right thing.’
Sabine says nothing for a moment, then reaches down and pulls a notepad from her satchel. She writes something on the open page, but whether it is some clinical insight or a reminder to pick up toilet rolls on the way home, McAvoy cannot tell.
‘You’ve picked a job that is all about duty, haven’t you? Did you always want to be a policeman?’
McAvoy rubs a hand across his forehead. Straightens his green and gold tie. Rolls back the cuffs on his black shirt, then rolls them down again.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he says, eventually. ‘Where I grew up. The set-up at home. The script was kind of written.’
Sabine looks at her notepad again, and shuffles through the pages to find something. She looks up. ‘You grew up in the Highlands, yes? On a croft? A little farm, I believe …’
‘Until I was ten.’
And that’s when you went to boarding school?’
McAvoy looks away. He straightens the crease in his grey suit trousers and fiddles with the pocket of the matching waistcoat. After a while.’
‘Expensive, for a crofter, I presume.’ Her voice is soft but probing.
‘Mam’s new partner was quite well off
The psychologist makes another note. ‘And you and your mother are close?’
McAvoy looks away.
‘How about you and your father?’
‘Off and on.’
‘How does he feel about your success?’
McAvoy gives in to a smile. ‘What success?’
Sabine gestures at her notes, and the cardboard file on the floor at her feet. ‘The cases you have solved.’
He shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. I didn’t solve anything.’ He stops. Considers it properly, shrugs. ‘Maybe I did. Maybe I was just, well, there. And when it was just me, on my own, when nobody else gave a damn, I ended up thinking I shouldn’t have bothered. Or maybe I should have bothered more.’
There is silence in the room. McAvoy rocks the small plastic chair back on two legs, then puts it down again when he feels it lurch.
After a moment, Sabine nods, as if making up her mind.
‘Tell me about Doug Roper,’ she says, without looking at her pad.
Involuntarily, McAvoy clenches his jaw. He feels the insides of his cheeks go dry. He says nothing, for fear his tongue will be too fat and useless to make any sense.
‘We only get the most basic details in the reports, Aector. But I can read between the lines.’
‘He was my first detective chief superintendent in CID,’ says McAvoy, softly.
‘And?’
‘And what? You’ve probably heard of him.’
Sabine gives a little shrug. ‘I Googled him. Bit of a celebrity policeman, I see.’
‘He’s retired now.’
‘And you had something to do with that?’
McAvoy runs his tongue around his mouth. ‘Some people think so.’
‘And that made you unpopular?’
‘It’s getting better now. Trish Pharaoh has been very helpful.’
‘That’s your new boss, yes? Serious and Organised Crime Unit, is that right? Yes, you mentioned her last time. You mention her quite a lot.’
McAvoy manages a faint smile. ‘You sound like my wife.’
Sabine cocks her head. ‘She means a lot to you?’
‘My wife? She’s everything …’
‘No. Your boss.’
McAvoy’s leg starts jiggling again. ‘She’s a very good police officer. I think so, anyway. Maybe she isn’t. Maybe Doug Roper had it right. I don’t know. I don’t know anything very much. Somebody once told me that I would drive myself insane trying to understand what it’s all about. Justice, I mean. Goodness. Badness. Sometimes I think I’m halfway there. Other times I just feel like I’m only clever enough to realise how little I know.’
‘There’s a line in the report we have that says you take the rules very seriously. Can you tell me what you think that might mean?’
McAvoy holds her gaze. Is she making fun of him? He doesn’t know what to say. Is there something in the file about his adherence to the rule book? He’s a man who completes his paperwork in triplicate in case the original is mislaid and who won’t requisition a new Biro from the stationery cupboard until his last one is out of ink.
He says nothing. Just listens to the tyres on the bone-dry road and the sound of blood in his ears.
‘The report says you have lots of physical scars, Aector.’
‘I’m okay.’
McAvoy tries to be an honest man, and so does not reproach himself for the answer. He is okay. He’s as well as can be expected. He’s getting by. Doing his bit. Making do. He has plenty of glib, meaningless ways to describe how he is, and knows that were he to sit here trying to explain it all properly, he would turn to ash. At home, he’s more than okay. He’s perfect. With his arms around his wife and children, he feels like he is glowing. It is only at work that he has no bloody clue how he feels. Whether he regrets his actions. What he really feels about the corrupt and pitiless detective superintendent whose tenure at the head of Humberside CID only ended when McAvoy tried to bring his crimes into the light. Whether noble or naïve, McAvoy’s actions cost him his reputation as rising star. This gentle, humble, shy giant of a man was made a distrusted, despised pariah by many of his fellow officers. He was dumped on the Serious and Organised Crime Unit as little more than accountant and mouthpiece, expected by all to be chewed up and spat out by the squad boss, Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh, with her biker boots, mascara and truckloads of attitude. Instead she had found a protégé. Almost a friend. And at her side, he has caught bad people.
The burns on McAvoy’s back and the slash wound to the bone on his left breast are not the only scars he carries, but they have become almost medals of redemption. He has suffered for what he believes.
Sabine puts down her pen and pulls her phone from her bag. She looks at the display and then up at McAvoy. ‘We have half an hour left. You must want to get some of this off your chest.’
McAvoy pulls out his own phone to check that she is right, and sees that he has had eight missed calls, all from the same number. He pulls an apologetic face and before Sabine can object, rings back.
Trish Pharaoh answers on the second ring. Spits his name the only way she can pronounce it, with a mixture of sugar and steel.
‘Hector, thank fuck for that. We’ve got a body. Tell the shrink to tick your chart and let you go. You’re in fine shape. Let’s just hope your gag reflex isn’t. This one’s going to make you sick.’
*
Tick-tock, tick-tock
, indicator flashing right. A bluebottle buzzing fatly against the back window. Horns honking and the drone of a pneumatic drill. Shirtless workmen lying back against the wall of the convenience store on the corner, egg-and-bacon sandwiches dripping from greasy paper bags onto dirty hands.
The lights turn green, but nobody moves. The traffic stays still. Two different radio stations blare from open windows. Lady Gaga fights for supremacy with The Mamas and the Papas …
A city in the grip of a fever: irritable, agitated, raw.
McAvoy checks his phone. Nothing new. Tries to read the sticker on the back windscreen of the Peugeot two cars in front, but gives up when the squinting makes his temples sweat.
Looks right, at the Polish convenience store: its sign a jumble of angry consonants. Left, at the gym with its massive advert for pole-dancing fitness classes. Wonders if any of the immigrants in this part of town have become champion Pole dancers …
He’s at the bottom of Anlaby Road, already regretting his decision to turn right out of the doctor’s surgery. He’s driving the five-year-old people-carrier that he and Roisin had settled on a month ago. There are two child seats in the back, leaving
McAvoy constantly worried about being asked to chauffeur any more than one colleague at a time.
The lights turn green again, and he noses the car forward, into the shadow of a boarded-up theme pub. He remembers when it opened. A local businessman spent more than a million on revamping the building, convinced there was a need for a sophisticated and luxurious nightspot in this part of town. It lasted a year. Its demise could serve as a mirror for so much of this area. The bottom end of Anlaby Road is all charity shops and pizza parlours, cash-for-gold centres and pubs where the barman and the only customer take it in turns to go outside for a cigarette. The streets are a maze of small terraced houses with front rooms where a man of McAvoy’s size would struggle to lie down. Once upon a time, the people would have been called ‘poor but honest’. Perhaps even ‘working class’. There is no term in the official police guidance to describe the locals now. Just people. Ordinary people, with their faults and flaws and wishes and dreams. Hull folk, all tempers and pride.
The lights change again, and McAvoy finally edges into Walliker Street.
Second gear. Third.
He is at the crime scene before he can get into fourth gear. There are three police cars blocking the road, and a white tent is being erected by two constables and a figure in a white suit. Pharaoh’s little red convertible is parked next to a forensics van, outside a house with brown-painted bay windows and dirty net curtains pulled tight shut. Next door, a woman in combat trousers and a Hull City shirt is talking to a man in a dressing gown in the front yard. McAvoy fancies they will have already solved the case.
He abandons the car in the middle of the road and reaches into the back seat for his leather satchel. It was a gift a couple of years ago from his wife, and is the source of endless amusement to his colleagues.
‘Hector. At last.’
McAvoy bangs his head on the doorframe as he hears his boss’s voice. He looks up and sees Pharaoh making her way towards him. Despite the heat, she has refused to shed her biker boots, though she has made a few concessions to the weather. She’s wearing a red dress with white spots, and has a cream linen scarf around her neck, which McAvoy presumes she has placed there to disguise her impressive cleavage. She is wearing large, expensive sunglasses, and her dark hair has a kink to it that suggests it dried naturally on the hot air, without the attentions of a brush.
‘Guv?’
She looks at her sergeant for a moment too long, then nods. ‘No suit jacket, Hector?’
McAvoy looks at himself, neat and pressed in designer suit trousers, waistcoat, shirt with top button done up and his tie perfectly tied in a double Windsor. ‘I can pop home if …’
Pharaoh laughs. ‘Christ, you must be boiling. Undo a button, for God’s sake.’
McAvoy begins to colour. Pharaoh can make any man blush but has an ability to transform her sergeant into a lava lamp with nothing more than a sentence or a smile. He has refused to wear a white shirt since she told him she could see the outline of his nipples, and has yet to find a way of looking at her that doesn’t take in at least one of her many curves. He raises his hands to his throat but can’t bring himself to give in to slovenliness. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Pharaoh sighs and shakes her head. ‘All okay at the shrink?’
He spreads his hands. ‘She wants me to have more problems than I have.’
‘That’s what she’s paid for.’
‘Came as a relief to get your call.’
‘You haven’t seen the poor lass yet.’
Together they cross the little street, passing a closed fish and chip shop that appears to have been built in the front room of one of the terraced houses. The row of houses stops abruptly and behind the wall of the last house is a large parking area, its concrete surface broken up and pitted, and the beads of broken glass on its surface testament to the fact that this is no safe place to leave your car.
The forensics tent has been pitched on a patch of grass beyond the car park, behind a small copse of trees that stand in a dry, litter-strewn patch of dirt. Behind it is the railway bridge that leads over the tracks to another estate.
‘Brace yourself,’ says Pharaoh, as she lifts the flap of the tent and steps inside.
‘Guv?’
‘Take a look.’
A forensics officer in a white suit is crouching down over the body, but he stops taking photographs and backs away, crablike, as McAvoy enters the tent. Breathing slowly, he crosses to where the corpse lies.
The victim is on her back. The first thing that strikes him is the angle of her head. She seems to be looking up, craning her neck so as not to see the ruination of what has happened to her body. Even so, her expression is one of anguish. The tendons in her neck seem to have stretched to breaking point and her
face is locked mid-scream. Her mouth is open, and her blue eyes have rolled back in her head, as if trying to get away.
McAvoy swallows. Forces himself to look at more than just the wounds.
She is in her late fifties, with short brown hair, greying at the roots. She is wearing black leggings and old, strappy sandals that display bare toes with nails painted dark blue. Her fingers are short but not unsightly, with neatly clipped nails and a gold engagement ring and wedding band, third finger, left hand.
Only now does he allow himself to consider her midsection.