The governor makes a noise that suggests he’s thinking. ‘I wish I had more to tell you. His file won’t have that much more in it. He did a couple of courses while he was with us. Took his GCSEs, now I remember. Got good grades, considering. Earned his stripes with the lads in a couple of scraps. Was popular by the time he left. I thought he’d probably go into something useful. He did a City and Guilds course in something or other. Might have been plastering. I’ll check and get back to you. I do remember he was always in a world of his own. Always had his mind somewhere else. I hope he’s got himself sorted out, Constable. We always expect the worst but Angelo seemed to have more about him …’
Helen leaves her contact details and hangs up. She rubs her nose and it makes a squeaking sound. In her bag, she notices her phone is ringing, but decides to ignore it. She doesn’t want to be distracted from this feeling. She clicks back to the Police National Computer and looks into the eyes of Angelo Caneva’s
mugshot. He’s young. Small. Dark-haired and frightened. But there is something else in his eyes. Something that could be called determination.
Helen prints the image. She is about to cross to the printer when the phone on her desk begins to ring. Impatiently, she snatches up the receiver and barks her name.
‘Constable Tremberg,’ comes a familiar voice. ‘Please don’t ignore my calls. I could be in distress and require your assistance.’
The joy of the previous moment dissipates as the colour drains from Helen’s face. She sinks into her chair.
‘I did what you asked,’ she hisses, spittle hitting the receiver.
‘Indeed you did, and your services are hugely appreciated. I understand that Miss Langley is busy recanting her calumnies as we speak. No, I am seeking your assistance in one more matter. You may not be currently aware, but one of my well-informed young uniformed constables told us some days ago that when he was apprehended, Mr Downey was spitting and cursing with regard to having had his money taken by a girl of decidedly Romany appearance. I am not of the opinion that Miss Langley could be described in said terms. No, I require a little clarification from yourself regarding the identity of this unknown creature.’
Helen feels herself begin to shake. Jesus, no …
‘I am not a great believer in happy accidents. I don’t find the idea of serendipity to be reliable. But sometimes the universe does play along. I’m referring to McAvoy. Like yourself, Detective Constable, he will soon become a little more manageable. And it would seem Sergeant McAvoy has a wife who caused considerable embarrassment and distress to our Mr Downey.’
Helen leans forward. Rests her head on the cool corner of the desk. She can feel herself coming apart.
‘Don’t,’ she says, softly. ‘Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re planning, don’t go near her. You don’t have any idea what you would be starting.’
From the other end of the line comes a faint laugh.
‘So, you concur. The young Mrs McAvoy is indeed the person to whom we should be addressing our petition for recompense. Thank you, Detective Constable. Now, please do not trouble yourself any further. I can assure you that your contributions to our cause have been appreciated. The funds deposited in your bank account will remain there as a gesture of gratitude. Do not be foolish enough to warn your superior about the information we have in our possession. The fates have actually succeeded in saving Mrs McAvoy from our original plan. Mr Downey will not be pleased but Mrs McAvoy will be grateful her identity has become known to us. I am an adaptable man. But I guarantee you that our plans will become more severe in execution should you go running to her husband with your stories. I thank you for your time.’
Helen holds the phone to her ear long after the call is terminated. She feels part of herself leave her body and die in the hot, static-laden air. Then she wipes her face with the heel of her hand, and manages to stand up. She needs to find McAvoy. She needs to help him catch a killer. She just hopes that she can look him in the eye.
*
It’s cold in the interview suite. Although it’s a small, airless space, the walls have shielded the little room from the heat of the day. The walls are damp and the air cool. The hairs on Ashleigh Cromwell’s arms rise as she crosses them on the chilly rubber surface of the desk.
McAvoy sits down opposite her and hands her the can of fizzy
pop she had asked for, along with a see-through plastic cup. She takes it gratefully and pours herself a drink. She watches the bubbles bounce on the surface, then drains it. She closes her eyes, trying to compose herself. McAvoy lets her take her time. He sits back in the chair, content to wait.
Ashleigh Cromwell had been living with her husband and children for more than ten years when Sebastien Hoyer-Wood had taken a shine to her that winter day in Bridlington fourteen years ago. She was no holidaymaker. The house where he tried to rape her was the family home, on a quiet street near the seafront. She’d seen him looking at her a few hours before the attack. She and her husband, Johnny, were having a drink in one of the boozers off the promenade. He’d stared. Stared until her husband had asked him what he was looking at.
‘He seemed out of place,’ says Ashleigh. ‘Everybody knew Johnny. He was a bit of a character. He was a tough man and everybody knew we were a couple. The way he was looking … it just wasn’t … Johnny gave him a look to say clear off and he did. We just laughed about it. It didn’t matter. He was just a bloke. It didn’t seem to matter.’
It had mattered that night, though. Sebastien Hoyer-Wood had got into their house.
Ashleigh plays with the empty cup. She’d told him on the way in that she didn’t like coppers, didn’t like police stations or telling tales. She seems uncomfortable here, as though she is being interviewed under caution. McAvoy is trying to put her at her ease. She looks at him before she speaks again, as if to thank him for his patience. Then she takes a breath, and stumbles on.
‘I reckon he sneaked in when Johnny was having a fag with the back door open. They found his clothes later on. He’d been
naked when he came in. Must have hidden somewhere in the house till we went to bed. My kids were there. That’s the bit that I can’t get past. My kids …’
Shortly before midnight, Ashleigh and Johnny Cromwell were woken by Sebastien Hoyer-Wood pouring petrol over their sleeping bodies. The bedroom light was switched on and a naked man in a surgical mask told them to take a deep breath. To sniff the air. To look at what he had in his hand.
‘We were half asleep and wide awake at the same time,’ says Ashleigh. ‘You know when a light goes on and you sort of can’t see properly? But we smelled the petrol. And we saw the lighter. And you only had to look between his legs to know what he wanted.’
Hoyer-Wood had ordered Johnny back against the bedroom wall. He told him he was going to do him a good turn. He was going to let the children carry on sleeping.
‘He pulled the covers back,’ says Ashleigh, eyes closed. ‘I had a nightie on, and he poured more petrol on me. It stung. Stung my eyes. Then he told Johnny that if he moved, we would both go up like fireworks. The house would burn down. His kids would die. He told him to stay still like a good boy, and enjoy the show.’
Johnny Cromwell had never been the type to apply logic to a situation. He was a straight-ahead kind of man who had taken his fair share of beatings but handed out plenty more. He had looked at the naked man lying on top of his wife, parting her thighs, and he had reacted instinctively. He’d moved. He’d hit Sebastien Hoyer-Wood so hard in the face that he broke his own hand. And then Hoyer-Wood had dropped the lighter.
‘He got himself more than me,’ says Ashleigh, her fingers brushing the scarring at her hairline. ‘I went up, like. My nightie caught fire. There was a whoosh of flame. I don’t know how I
knew to do it but I flung myself on the floor and rolled, like they do on the movies. I put myself out. Then I looked up and the curtains were blowing and there was glass everywhere and he’d gone out of the fucking window …’
McAvoy looks across at Ashleigh Cromwell. She’s probably in her early forties but looks ten years older. She looks wrung out. It is as if a pretty, vivacious woman has been dehydrated. All of the moisture has gone from her flesh. Her softness has been burned away.
There is silence in the room as Ashleigh wipes her fist across her nose. A low, insistent buzz has started to penetrate McAvoy’s consciousness, and as he looks for the source, a wasp lands on the table between them. Instinctively, he takes Ashleigh’s empty cup and drops it over the creature. It knocks, ineffectually, against the plastic.
‘Johnny went after him. I ran to see the kids were okay. They were still sleeping. Then I went out onto the street. Johnny had caught up with him. He was smashing his head on the pavement. I don’t know why I told him to stop. I guess I thought that with Johnny’s record he would do time. I don’t even know if I was thinking at all. I was sore and scared and there was this naked man all bloody and burned in the snow on Bridlington seafront and the next thing there are all these people and somebody is putting a coat around me and Johnny is being held back and the police are there …’
On the table, the wasp has begun to beat against the plastic. Its tiny tinfoil wings are breaking as it fights, pathetically, in the sticky syrup that pools on the table. McAvoy cannot stand it. He lifts the cup and watches, gratified, as it buzzes angrily away.
‘I didn’t save him,’ says Ashleigh. ‘Other people saved him. The people who died.’
She seems to get smaller. Takes her face in her hands.
McAvoy reaches across, his arms rubbing the drips of orange soda into the tabletop. He puts his hand on her bare forearm and she raises her eyes to his.
‘You said you thought the killer wanted you, Mrs Cromwell. Could you tell me what you meant by that?’
Ashleigh sniffs, noisily, and raises her eyes to the ceiling. She rubs at her arms.
‘Johnny and me broke up not long after it all happened,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if it was because of that night or all the other stuff. Johnny was always hard work. He had other women, but I usually forgave him. I had a few other men, though they were usually too shit-scared of Johnny to be tempted. I was a bit more of a catch then, as well. Johnny got himself into more bother. He stopped coming home. We split up then he got sent down for glassing some bloke. I don’t even know what it was about. The kids and me moved away. The oldest has her own place but my son and me are doing okay.’
‘You live locally?’ asks McAvoy.
‘Scunthorpe,’ she says. The steel town is half an hour away, over the bridge. Not too far from Barton, where Yvonne Dale died. McAvoy wonders if it is significant.
‘I have a sister there,’ explains Ashleigh. ‘We wanted a fresh start. She runs a newsagent’s and I work there with her. We’re doing okay.’
McAvoy nods. He licks his lips, unsure how to ask. ‘Hoyer-Wood,’ he says, gently. ‘He wasn’t sent to prison. He could be said to have got away with it …’
Ashleigh looks as if she has just cracked an out-of-date egg onto her tongue. She looks like she wants to spit.
‘Me and coppers have never got on,’ she says. ‘I never expect much of them but I thought he’d have done a stretch. The copper in charge, George Goss – he said the bastard had been doing it for years. He reckoned they’d put him away for nigh-on life. Then his posh mates got involved and next thing he was living it up in some plush mental asylum. I don’t know how I felt, really. I know he was suffering, so that was something. I sometimes wondered if Johnny would have got sent down if he’d killed him. I sometimes wonder why I told him to stop. I wonder a lot of things, but I keep it all inside, most of the time. Then something brings it back. Like now.’
McAvoy waits. He rubs at the sticky patch on his skin and watches the wasp as it crawls up the pale green wall.
‘How did you know to ask for me?’ asks McAvoy.
‘George Goss,’ says Ashleigh, looking at the floor. ‘When I heard about the murders I rang for him. They told me he was retired. They put me through to CID and some bloke said he could get a message to George if it was important. I said it was and George rang me. Told me that I should speak to you. Said you were okay.’
McAvoy nods, embarrassed. ‘The murders,’ he says. ‘What do you know about the victims?’
Ashleigh gives him an angry look, and for an instant, McAvoy sees the animated features of the woman she once was. There is a light in her eyes and a flame appears to have been lit behind her pale skin.
‘I didn’t know the paramedic, but I remember the two women and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they’re all connected.’ She says this with an accusing tone. ‘I work in a newsagent’s. I read the
Scunthorpe Telegraph
. I don’t watch the news. But you hear, don’t you? Somebody told somebody else
and then my sister told me to read one of the other papers. I can’t believe you haven’t told people they’re linked. I thought you might not know, but George says you already know about Hoyer-Wood and what happened …’
McAvoy raises defensive hands. ‘That decision was made at a senior level,’ he says, neutrally. ‘Myself and the senior investigating officer are trying to change the thinking on that. We’re trying to get in touch with anybody who may be at risk. I’m sure an officer would have been in touch with yourself at some point …’
Even as he says it, he senses that his words will not give Ashleigh much new faith in the police.
‘Too late for me, Mr McAvoy. He already bloody got to me. That’s why I’m here.’
McAvoy looks at her, trying to make sense of her words. Behind her, the wasp appears to lose its grip on the wall. It tumbles and lands on the cold floor, where it twitches and spins until, finally, the soft buzzing comes to a halt.
‘I don’t understand,’ he says, and wonders if he should have it etched on his gravestone.
Ashleigh takes the can of drink and raises it to her lips. It shakes in her hand. The can is empty, but she makes a show of swallowing.
‘A year ago,’ she says, quietly. ‘Maybe a little more. It happened again. I woke up with a fucking man sitting in my bedroom.’