He makes fists. Closes the car door. Locks it. Pulls his bag over his shoulder and sorts himself out. Steps over a cracked paving slab and nearly loses his footing on a discarded kebab.
Maria Caneva lives down Bartle Lane. The electoral register indicates that she lives alone, though given that it’s a student neighbourhood he can’t rule out that she rents out a room or two to somebody studying at the nearby university.
He turns off the main road and walks softly towards the small, bare-brick property. McAvoy tries not to think anything too derogatory about Bradford. The areas he has seen are dirty, rubbish-strewn and ugly. Most of the shops carry signs written in a language he presumes to be Urdu, but he feels far too Caucasian and guilty when he starts thinking about the socioeconomic reasons for the neighbourhood’s current state and usually stops himself before he can think anything negative. It’s a community of halal butchers and general stores, where watermelons in damaged crates pile up outside graffiti-covered general stores that carry posters for English newspapers long
since defunct. He would think of it as a rough neighbourhood if not for the unexpected flashes of class. Halfway up the main road is a glitzy, brightly lit restaurant that would not look out of place in London’s West End, and most of the cars parked outside the takeaway shops and budget electrical stores carry Mercedes badges. It’s an area McAvoy struggles to understand and he’s grateful he’s not a policeman here.
McAvoy finds the right door. Composes himself. Licks his palm and smooths his hair down. Rubs his lips. Closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing.
He knocks, politely, on Maria Caneva’s door, then begins to count to ten in his head.
After just a few seconds the door is opened by a plump young woman in her middle twenties. She’s wearing a pink dressing gown and has a pair of glasses on top of her head. Brown hair is pulled back from a plain but not unattractive face, and though she looks surprised to be answering the door at this hour, her expression is not unwelcoming.
‘I thought you were the milkman,’ she says, by way of greeting.
McAvoy shows her his warrant card. Gives a courteous, closed-mouth smile, and introduces himself.
‘Are you Maria Caneva?’
She nods.
‘I would like to talk to you about your brother.’
Her face falls, but an expression that may be relief also flashes over her features.
‘What’s he done now, silly sod?’
‘Could I come in?’
‘Please.’
Maria invites him inside. The door opens straight into an
untidy living room. On the sofa that sits beneath the large front window there are pillows and a quilt. In front of it is a coffee table covered in haphazardly opened letters, food wrappers and empty coffee cups. The TV is an old-fashioned and boxy affair that sits on a dusty glass cabinet and the electric fire looks sad and unlit inside a slate-and-breezeblock fireplace. There are books and old newspapers piled in one corner of the room and DVD cases in the other. It’s not a nice room, but Maria makes no apologies as she kicks the duvet behind the sofa and waves McAvoy to sit down.
‘Did I wake you?’ asks McAvoy, indicating the pillow and trying not to mention how much of her fleshy thighs he can see as she sits down and draws her legs up underneath her.
She looks puzzled, then realisation dawns. ‘Oh, I sleep down here most nights. There’ve been burglaries. I haven’t got much to take but I don’t like sleeping up there. Every time I hear a noise I think there’s somebody in the living room.’
McAvoy looks around him.
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘A few years. I’ve never really got round to doing it up the way I want. I just rent, so if I spent too much tarting it up it would just be money down the drain.’
‘And you live alone?’
Maria makes a show of sticking out her lower lip. ‘Young, free and single. Apart from the “young”. Or the “free”.’
McAvoy plays with his collar. He’s suddenly very aware of how he looks. He gets out his notebook, putting his warrant card down on the sofa beside him as he does so. Maria looks at it again and her mouth opens wide.
‘Oh, you’re McAvoy? I’m sorry, I was half asleep. Didn’t twig …’
McAvoy takes his card and looks at it himself, as if for confirmation. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You got the transcripts okay, yes? I wasn’t sure I’d spelled it right.’
McAvoy feels a little lost, but he suddenly understands how Hoyer-Wood’s psychologist sessions ended up in his hands and why the envelope was postmarked West Yorkshire.
‘You sent them?’
Maria nods, innocently. She seems to be waking up a bit now. She reaches down beside her and finds a can of pop. She sips at it and smiles.
‘I spoke to Dad after you visited him,’ she says. ‘He called me. He doesn’t very often, but I think talking to you had shaken him up a bit. He said what you wanted. What was happening.’
McAvoy looks at her. She seems utterly without guile. She’s a bright, open person and McAvoy feels himself warming to her. As she comes alive, she seems to examine him more closely. He feels her looking at the bruises on his knuckles. The Elastoplast. The blood and bruises. ‘I’m sorry, have you been trying to get me on the phone?’ she asks, raising a hand to her mouth. Her hands are cleaner than the room, with short, clipped nails. ‘I’m only on a pay-as-you-go phone and it’s off most of the time. I’m a nurse, you know that, yes? My bosses play merry hell with me because I’m such a bugger to get hold of. Dad does too.’
She says it all brightly. McAvoy wants to push.
‘You and your dad are close?’
Maria shrugs. She seems about to speak and then stops herself. She closes her eyes and then suddenly stands. ‘I’m going to make a coffee. Do you want one?’
McAvoy doesn’t know what to say. He just looks down at his
notebook and stays quiet as she rolls her large rear end off the sofa and plods into the kitchen. He hears cupboards opening and a kettle boiling. Hears a fridge opening and closing and then she is back in the room, carrying two glasses of steaming brown coffee.
‘No cups,’ she says, apologetically. ‘Hold it by the top or you’ll burn your fingers.’
She hands McAvoy the glass of hot liquid and he sips it, scalding his tongue. He puts it down as Maria plonks herself back on the sofa next to him. She spills coffee on her bare leg but doesn’t seem to notice. Then she looks at him so hard that he wonders if she is trying to imprint a thought on the inside of his skull.
‘Angelo,’ she says, at last. ‘He’s in trouble again, yeah? I know what you’re thinking. You’re wrong.’
McAvoy licks his thumb and dabs at a spot of blood on the back of his hand. ‘What am I thinking?’
‘You’re thinking Angelo has killed these people, aren’t you?’
McAvoy spreads his hands. ‘We’re open-minded. But he has questions to answer. This is a murder investigation that is very closely linked to Sebastien Hoyer-Wood. I feel like I’m swimming through treacle, but the one thing I’m certain of is that somebody is punishing the people who saved Hoyer-Wood’s life. Yesterday I spoke to a lady who was there the night Hoyer-Wood should have died and who tells me that Angelo broke into her house with plans to kill her. Angelo has spent time inside. He has a record. The picture we’re getting is of a dangerous man …’
Maria pulls the band from her hair as McAvoy talks and places it over her wrist. She pushes her hair back from her face and rearranges it into the same style it was before. She doesn’t look worried. Just distracted.
‘He’s not dangerous,’ she says. ‘Not really. He’s just been through a lot.’
McAvoy sighs. ‘Do you know where he is?’
Maria considers him. ‘You’ve read what I sent you, yes?’
McAvoy nods. ‘How did you get the transcripts, Miss Caneva? And why did you send them to me?’
For a time, the small, untidy room is quiet save for the sound of the city coming to life beyond the glass. Steel shutters are being drawn up. Car engines are beginning to purr. A letter box bangs noisily as a newspaper is pushed through it too hard.
Maria finishes her drink. She pulls her legs up afresh. She scratches at her face and makes all the little adjustments that seem to help her decide what to say.
‘You know what happened, yeah? You’ve read them properly?’
‘All of them. Every word.’
‘You believe him? Sebastien?’
It’s a strange question, but McAvoy answers it. ‘They helped me put some of the pieces together.’
She nods. ‘I’ve had those transcripts for years, Sergeant. That man had an effect on all our lives. When you’re young you ask questions. You need explanations. There was all sorts on Dad’s computer, growing up. Angelo and me could quote you most of those sessions word for word.’
McAvoy shakes his head. Decides to be honest. ‘Maria, I’m lost …’
She gives him an indulgent smile. ‘I do prattle, don’t I? The funny thing is, I’ve often wondered what I’d do if I ever had to tell a policeman about this. I didn’t imagine I’d be in my dressing gown in a place like this. It’s funny. The whole thing’s just funny.’
As McAvoy looks into Maria’s cheerful, pleasant face, he realises he is talking to somebody damaged. She is too lighthearted. Too sparkly. She’s suffered and endured. She’s survived, but at a cost to some part of herself. He wonders what she allows herself to feel. He’s suddenly too hot, and yet the hairs on his arms are rising and he feels himself about to shiver.
‘Angelo went off the rails when Mum was poorly,’ she says. ‘Got into trouble more and more often. Our lives were different then. We had money, for a start. We were very London in our outlook. We weren’t exactly happy, having spent so much time at that bloody place.’
‘You mean your dad’s hospital?’
She snorts. ‘Hospital? It was a factory. A money-making machine. The government was throwing money at private healthcare in those days. Dad always did have an eye for a few quid.’
‘Living there must have been hard …’
‘We never really lived there,’ she says, looking at the dirty sole of one foot. Her actions are childlike, and put McAvoy in mind of Fin’s schoolfriends.
‘No?’
‘Weekends and holidays,’ she says, licking her finger and rubbing the dirt from the knuckle of her big toe. ‘It was pretty, but Mum was never mad keen on us going up there too often. There was plenty of security and there really shouldn’t have been any risks, but Mum said it was no place for kids. Even so, Dad got his way. He usually did. It was okay, to be honest. Mum would take us shopping or down to Hull or over to York or wherever. We didn’t mind too much.’
McAvoy wonders what she is trying not to blurt out. He decides to steer the conversation.
‘Sebastien Hoyer-Wood,’ he says, gently. ‘Tell me.’
Maria gives a high, girlish laugh. It’s a near-hysterical sound, but there are no tears. She just giggles, as if the name is funny.
‘We knew that him and Dad were friends at university. We knew he’d got into trouble because he was ill. We knew Dad was helping him get better and we didn’t have any reason to doubt it when Dad said there was nothing to be scared of about having him in the house from time to time.’
‘How did your mum feel about your father having these sessions in the family home?’
Maria flashes her teeth then shrugs. ‘She never said.’
McAvoy waits for more. When nothing comes, he moves closer to her. Tries to hold her gaze.
‘Maria, what is it you want me to know? You sent me those transcripts …’
She turns around on the sofa, kneeling up, and pulls the curtains aside to look at the street. McAvoy can no longer see her expression, but he can hear her words.
‘When we met Sebastien he was in a wheelchair. He couldn’t talk very well. He was in a lot of pain. He was a cripple, though you couldn’t use that word around Dad. I’m a couple of years older than Angelo, you know that, yes? We’d do impressions of him. It’s cruel, isn’t it? But Dad would have him in his study and they’d be talking and sometimes Angelo and me would go and listen at the door or go outside and look through the window. Sebastien saw us, once. He was in his wheelchair, looking out the window. Dad had his back to us. He couldn’t see what we were doing. Angelo was pulling this face and being silly and I was laughing and we saw that Sebastien was watching. We were so embarrassed. We felt really bad. He didn’t look sad, though.
Not Sebastien. He looked like he was smiling. Like he found it funny. It was creepy, but it stopped us watching the sessions any more …’
McAvoy wishes he could see her face, wishes he could better read this strange young woman.
‘After it all happened, our family was never the same,’ she says, quieter now. ‘It affected us all. Mum got sick. Angelo closed down. I don’t know what happened to me. Dad started to lose everything. I needed answers. So did Angelo. It wasn’t hard to get Dad’s transcripts off his computer. I think he knows I took them, but at least it spared him having to talk to us about any of what happened. When he told me you wanted to see them I think he was trying to wriggle out of breaking the rules. I think he knew I would send them to you. I’m pleased I did. You seem nice.’
McAvoy just stays silent.
‘You know what Angelo got sent down for, don’t you? He was in a dark place. He’d started getting high. Sniffing glue, if you can believe that. It was easier for him to get his hands on than the hard stuff. He always looked young. Nobody would sell to him. He was a bit of a softy, really. Didn’t make friends very easily. And he was an angry sod in his teens. He blamed Sebastien for what was happening to us. The money. The way he felt. Mum. He must have found out which hospital Sebastien was in from some of Dad’s paperwork. Either way, he disappeared from home for a few days and then Dad got a call to say he’d been arrested. He’d thrown a milk bottle full of petrol and rags at a hospital minibus. Petrol-bombed it. We knew straight away which patient he’d been aiming at. The first question I asked wasn’t whether Angelo was okay. It was whether he’d got him.’
Maria turns back, smiling.
‘In a way, he did get him. The stress of it brought on a massive stroke. Hoyer-Wood ended up worse than he had been before. Proper vegetable.’