Ray spits in the mesh waste-paper basket. Watches the phlegm slide down the inside of a polystyrene food carton. Sniffs, and scratches at his neck.
‘I’ll tell you that when you tell me why you are ringing,’ he says, wetly, into the phone. ‘If you’re ringing to suggest that we somehow lose interest in Adam Downey, then I reckon it’s because your organisation is bright enough to know that loyalty has to be earned. We already know that Downey worked for a dealer around here for years. He supplied on street corners then got a bit more of a reputation and started dealing wholesale. If your outfit has taken over the gang he used to work for, Downey will know about it. He might even have done the killing himself. I reckon his old
boss is in the ground. I think during his last stretch inside, one of your bright things got in touch with him and promised him the earth if he showed a little ambition. That’s how you lot work, isn’t it? You look at the individual. You look at what they want. And you find a way to give them it. That’s how it worked with Aidy Russell, I’m guessing. You realised he was an ambitious officer and you gave him enough information to get him some good headlines, and the price was that he left you alone.’
The caller breathes out, slowly. ‘There are so many more people willing to assist us in our endeavours than your friend the detective superintendent, Mr Ray. As you say, my associates have an uncanny ability to find out what matters most to people. We are all about the individual. And Mr Downey is an individual who has demonstrated loyalty. We would not be particularly effective employers were we to then turn our back on him for making an error of judgement.’
‘Storing his gear in a sewing shop, you mean?’
Another pause, then: ‘He was demonstrating original thinking. We prize that, even when the results do not go as hoped.’
Ray taps his fingers on the phone at his ear, slowly, deliberately. He fancies it will be irritating to the man at the end of the line.
‘So you’re ringing to ask me to go let him out?’ asks Ray, smiling wide enough to show the pastry crumbs in his back teeth.
This time, the man allows himself what could almost be called a laugh. ‘No, Mr Ray. I am ringing to tell you that Adam Downey will be released within the week. He will not talk to you. Nothing you can do or say to him will change that. I am aware of the conversations you have had with some local hooligans with regard to Mr Downey’s incarceration. I can assure you that Mr Downey’s brief time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure will not be
the purgatory you envisage. Nobody is going to threaten him, Mr Ray. Nobody is going to lean on him. If you check your call log in around twenty minutes, you will see that two members of your CID will be on their way to Hull Prison, where one of the inmates of your acquaintance was found, moments ago, in the shower block, with nails through his hands and knees. A most unfortunate incident. I am ringing to tell you that while some people are resistant to change, others embrace it. These are changing times, Mr Ray. I am ringing out of courtesy, because there is something about your intractable demeanour that some of my associates find charming. More than anything else, I am ringing to apologise for not sending you a birthday card. You made a sad sight, sitting there alone. I do hope that by next year, you have somebody to share it with.’
Ray’s smile fades. He clears his throat.
‘Do you think I’m scared of you, son?’
The line goes quiet. There is a suggestion of a cigarette being lit.
‘No,’ comes the voice, finally. ‘You have nothing for us to threaten. You have no money and no children. You have your pension and will be dead by the time you are sixty even without our intervention. You would not respond well to promises of remuneration and you treat your body far more poorly than anybody in our employ could.’
‘So what are you going to do with me, eh, son?’ Ray asks it with a laugh, but it sounds weaker than before.
‘Nothing, Mr Ray. We will simply tolerate you. You are not important enough to care about.’
Ray’s fist slams on the desk. The computer shakes, a coffee mug falls. The sound bounces off the walls of the empty room.
The call is terminated with a click.
Ray shouts expletives until he can think of nothing else to say. Then he throws his phone at the wall. The smash isn’t enough. It hasn’t made a dent in what he is feeling. He picks up the swivel chair and knocks his computer from the desk with it in a shower of glass and crumbling plastic. He pants, hands on his knees. Feels the demon sloshing around in his belly.
Makes up his mind.
Then he heads down to the cells.
He heads for Adam Downey.
Ray manages to look sane for the briefest of moments. He winks at the desk sergeant and grunts something about needing to ask a few extra questions.
The uniform hands him a bunch of keys.
Here.
Now.
Cheap shoes, clip-clopping on green linoleum. Pausing at a metal door. A stained hand pulling down the grille. A yellow, bloodshot eye staring at the handsome little bastard who has refused to talk for three fucking days …
Ray opens the door. Enjoys the look of panic on the young lad’s face. Then he wraps the key-chain around his fist.
A moment later, the silence of the custody suite is broken by a guttural, agonised shout. There is the sound of skin on skin. Boots on flesh. There is the rattle of a key-chain, the wet thud of metal striking something soft and vulnerable.
And then the desk sergeant and half a dozen uniformed officers are running into Adam Downey’s cell, dragging a bloodstained, sweat-streaked Colin Ray into the corridor by his arms and legs. Somebody presses the alarm; a high-pitched wail shrieks from
the speakers on the wall. The prisoners in the adjoining cells start to shout. To bang on their cell doors.
Adam Downey lies on the floor in a pool of his own blood, arms wrapped around his head, lacerations to his arms and chest; his expensive T-shirt ripped to the waist, his diamond earring dangling from a shredded earlobe.
And above the shouts and the alarm, Colin Ray’s voice, filled with bile and madness:
‘Tolerate that! Fucking tolerate that!’
Monday morning, 9.18 a.m.
The same room in the same health centre on the same road.
Too hot to breathe.
Aector McAvoy: bone-tired and unshaven, aching across his shoulders and back. He has bags under his eyes and plasters on the backs of his hands, and the blue suit he is wearing was chosen because it has the fewest creases rather than none at all. He’s spent the weekend lifting furniture in and out of a removals van. Has carried mattresses and bed frames up flights of stairs and climbed in through a first-floor window with a wardrobe on his back while a crowd gathered on Hessle foreshore and shouted encouragement. He has spent two days struggling with cardboard boxes full of books and shoes and pots and pans, wrestling with a sofa that wouldn’t fit through the bloody front door, despite the careful measurements he had taken when they viewed the place. Spent an hour with his fingers in an ice bucket borrowed from the Country Park Inn, after Fin decided that tickling Daddy while he carried a washing machine would be incredibly funny. This morning he selected his clothes from a suitcase and a variety of bin liners.
He is trying not to dwell on the fact that his socks don’t match. He has already made up his mind never to move house again. He’s exhausted and sore and doesn’t want to be back here. Not back in this airless room, with its traffic sounds and buzzing flies and stupid plastic chair.
‘It went okay, yes? The move? It was this weekend, wasn’t it?’
Sabine Keane is giving him an encouraging smile. He tries to return it. This could be his last session, if he plays nicely.
‘Hard work,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know we had so much stuff.’
‘You didn’t get removal men in?’
‘Sort of. A man with a van. I thought he’d be more help than he was. He was very good at drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.’
‘So you did it all yourselves?’
McAvoy gives a laugh. ‘Roisin was more of a foreman. She’s not built for lifting sofas. She and Mel kind of directed …’
‘Her friend, yes? You’ve mentioned her before.’
McAvoy clears his throat. Stares at his tie for a while. ‘She’s been through a bit of an ordeal. There was an incident at her shop. Had a bit of a set-to with a drug dealer and helped the police nab him.’
Sabine looks impressed. ‘So you’re tolerating her more readily?’
McAvoy wonders if his answer will lead to another note in his file. ‘I don’t dislike her. I never said that I did. And Roisin thinks she’s great. Is that important?’
Sabine shakes her head. She looks up at the ceiling. Looks down, into her open handbag. Appears to be working out what to say.
‘This could well be your last session, Aector. If I count the last one.’
She says it with a smile. Warm and friendly. McAvoy nods, hopefully.
‘Yes?’
She sighs. ‘I’m not sure you’ve really told me anything.’
McAvoy looks frustrated. He opens his mouth and makes gestures with his hands, then breathes out as if this is all too much. ‘What would you like to hear, Sabine? I’m fine. I’m investigating two murders. I’m doing my job.’
‘But you feel better
because
you are investigating murders, Aector. What if there were no murders to investigate?’
He looks at her, perplexed. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about that. This is Hull. And people will always be horrible to each other.’
She persists. Sits forward in her chair. Adjusts the strap on her sensible sandals then gives him her full attention. ‘How would you define yourself if not for your job? That’s what I mean.’
He doesn’t understand. ‘But I
am
a policeman.’
‘And what does that mean?’ she asks, probing deeper. ‘What does being a policeman mean to you?’
McAvoy wants to stand up. Wants to pace. ‘Is this about duty again, because we’ve talked about that–’
‘What I want to know, Aector, is whether you are a policeman first and a human being second, or whether there is room inside you for both.’
McAvoy turns to her, wondering what she is trying to get him to say.
‘You’ve broken the law, yes? You’ve hinted at doing something bad when you and Roisin met. You have been present when people have been killed. You can talk about these things in here, Aector. You’re safe.’
He looks at her, hard. Looks at this middle-aged woman in her cream dress and frizzy hair, her visible panty-line and her untended nails. He does not see her as a safe repository for his secrets. Were he to meet her in the street he would not take it upon himself to tell her what he did to the men who attacked Roisin as an adolescent. And yet, she is right in what she says. This room is safe. Her report to his senior officers will only declare that he is not suffering from any mental illness and is fit for duty. Were he to unburden himself, he would not lose a friend. He does not mind if she judges him harshly. This is a confessional. A place to give voice to the thoughts and feelings of guilt that sometimes threaten to eat him up.
‘Aector, you’re safe. I don’t want anything from you. I want to help you. This case you are investigating now must be taking its toll. You have so much to think about. You can’t rely on Roisin for everything.’
McAvoy looks away. She is right, of course. He expects too much of his wife, though she never fails to give him what he needs. She is his confessor. She is his sounding board. She is his whole soul. And yet he cannot tell her everything, for fear of reminding her of darker times. Cannot discuss how he feels about the day he found the farm boys raping a twelve-year-old traveller girl. Cannot tell her what he did to them for fear of changing the way she views him.
He rubs a hand through his hair. Sabine has begun talking again but he is not listening. He finds his thoughts turning back to Friday’s meeting in The Wellington in Driffield. His chat over a couple of pints of real ale with the two security guards. The older man had introduced himself as Jimmy Forsythe. Taken a pickled egg from the jar on the bar and devoured it in a bite.
Took his pint, found a table, and gave McAvoy and Pharaoh the lot. Told them what the lads at Tower Security knew about what happened at the facility. There had been no dazzling revelations, but Pharaoh considered the cost of a couple of pints to have been money well spent. They are building up a picture of Sebastien Hoyer-Wood and his friend Lewis Caneva. It is becoming clear that the rapist was neither as injured nor as mentally ill as his old university friend claimed. He seemed to have lived with Caneva and his family more as a house guest than as a patient at the neighbouring asylum. And something had happened that had broken up this cosy arrangement and sent Caneva into a tailspin.
Caneva is the man they want next. Ben Nielsen has found an address for him and McAvoy will be heading there as soon as he has got this last session with Sabine out of the way. He’s going alone. Pharaoh is back at the station, fighting fires. ACC Everett is attempting to suspend DCI Colin Ray from duty for beating the shit out of Adam Downey in the cells. Downey has spent the weekend in Hull Royal Infirmary and has a bail hearing this morning. The top brass are doing their damnedest to keep quiet what happened, but Downey’s solicitor is threatening to blow the whole lot in his address to the court unless bail is agreed to. Ray has made an almighty balls-up and played into the hands of whoever pays Downey’s wages. The case is likely to collapse before it ever gets before a judge.
‘Aector?’
McAvoy sighs. Closes his eyes and tries to keep his breathing steady.
‘She thinks I killed them,’ he says, and is surprised to hear himself speaking. ‘Thinks I put them in the ground.’
Sabine’s eyes widen.
‘And did you?’
McAvoy looks at the floor. Gives the slightest shake of his head. Confesses his greatest sin and is surprised to discover that he still has tears to shed.
*
It’s just before one o’clock, and on Hull’s Princes Avenue a blue Peugeot 306 is sitting in stationary traffic, waiting to turn left. On its roof is a large sign, advertising the services of the man at the wheel. It boasts of a 90 per cent first-time pass rate and promises that the first two lessons are free. Godber Driving School is written in a sporty-looking font, though to call the company a ‘school’ may be an overstatement. Allan Godber has no colleagues, though he has plenty of students. Allowing himself this hour for lunch is a luxury.