And then her arms are around him and she is sobbing into the soaked cloth of his jacket, her body heaving as she holds him tight.
He strokes her hair, leaving blood upon her crown. Looks around at the ruin of Lewis Caneva’s old home. Imagines, for the briefest of moments, what Angelo witnessed here.
And then he is pulling out his broken phone.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispers, disentangling himself from Dr Pradesh and putting his jacket around her shoulders.
And then he falls to the ground.
Before he loses consciousness, he repeats it.
‘It’s okay.’
And then, as blackness washes over him: ‘I’m a policeman.’
Hessle Foreshore. 1.26 p.m.
Downey hadn’t expected to see this place again. He wishes she had gone somewhere else. This was the scene of his humiliation. The place where his revenge turned sour. He’d nearly pissed himself when the husband came home.
He lowers his head and snorts up another line. Feels it blast through his system. Feels as if he has opened a window at 35,000 feet.
Bitch!
He watches her climb from the car, rain coming in sideways to patter against her attractive face. He watches her arse as she leans over and into the back seat of her friend’s stupid little car. She emerges with her baby in her arms. It’s crying, and she hushes it, cooing and singing, as the pouring rain turns her white top see-through, and her mate stands there gormlessly huddled inside a waterproofed coat.
He sees the lights of another car, further up the road. Sees them as the eyes of something powerful and monstrous moving towards him. Has to shake his head to turn the lights back into something safe and unthreatening.
The women run through the rain to the front door of the house. There is some complicated fumbling with keys and then they are pushing inside.
Downey has to time it just right. He wants the door to be closing as he puts his weight behind it. Wants to see her face as she realises who she has dared to cross.
He pulls himself free of the car and splashes through the fast-moving water that covers the road. He hears thunder above and looks up, past the Humber Bridge and into a pewter sky that rolls and twists as if pregnant with a belly full of snakes.
Stumbles.
Curses.
Charges hard.
He puts his shoulder to the door and hears the squeal of surprise.
‘Bitch!’
Downey doesn’t hesitate as Mel slams into the wall. Just jabs his right fist into the seamstress’s face and watches her crumple, falling in a tangle of arms and legs in the doorway.
‘Where are ya!’
He’s bawling and screaming, his own voice alien to his ears.
The bitch appears from the living-room door. Her eyes widen in surprise as she sees him and then she turns her back on him, moving fast. The baby is over her shoulder, bobbing comically, and Downey almost giggles at the silliness of it all.
Roisin bangs at the back door, desperately rattling the handle, then looks around for a weapon. Her eyes are furious. If she had a blade she would stick it through his heart.
‘I’ll blow you fucking up!’
Downey hadn’t rehearsed the line. Had planned to say something else entirely. But it erupts from his lips unbidden.
‘He’ll kill you,’ she says, turning on him, hissing through bared teeth.
Downey pulls the grenade from his pocket. Looks at her and laughs.
‘He wouldn’t kill a fly for you, you bitch. Couldn’t even kill those blokes who whipped you bloody you when you were a kid. Let them go with a big bunch of flowers and an apology. Move and I’ll blow you and your baby into a million fucking bits.’
Roisin looks at the object in his hand. At the cocaine-fuelled hysteria in his eyes. Feels her world tilt as his words slide into her consciousness.
‘Please, I’ll get you more money. I’ll give you everything–’
Downey giggles, high-pitched and effeminate.
‘Too fucking late. You’ve spoiled it. I was supposed to be prince of the city, you know that? Supposed to get some fucking respect. And some pikey bitch just waltzes in and it’s over? You have to pay. Have to!’
Downey steps forward. He doesn’t know if he’s going to throw the grenade or not. He just likes the look in her eyes. He wonders what she’ll do if he pulls the pin out and holds it in front of her. It won’t detonate unless he throws it. He could have fun. Could make her piss her fucking pants …
Downey pulls the pin from the grenade at the exact moment Helen Tremberg clatters into the room.
She has her phone in one hand, her baton in the other. She’d arrived outside just as Downey ran from his vehicle and smashed through the door. She hadn’t hesitated. Knew the right thing to do. Knew she would rather be shot or stabbed or have her heart
squeezed in a fist than stand back while somebody hurt McAvoy’s wife.
Helen lashes out with the baton. It cracks across Downey’s arm.
The grenade tumbles onto the floor.
Four pairs of eyes turn to watch the object rolling in a lazy semicircle on the carpet.
Then there is a flash.
The explosion can be heard even above the sound of the thunder.
There is silence for a moment.
And then nothing but the sizzle of rain falling on flame, and the rumble of falling stones.
2.06 a.m.
A small hatchback, quiet and dark on a cold country lane.
Chamomile House sits brooding and silent beneath light rain and a half-full moon.
Maria Caneva whistles something she can’t quite place. The news is on the radio but she’s not really listening. The evening bulletin had been full of reports from East Yorkshire. The doctor who operated on Hoyer-Wood has been found alive. A 25-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of three murders and abduction. The body of a child was also recovered from a vehicle at the remote former medical facility in Driffield. A police officer has been taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries …
Maria had tuned herself out. She reckons she knows who the policeman is. Reckons that the man arrested at the scene is either her brother, having given a false age, or some mate he met inside. She can’t think about that. Can’t open that door in her head. There are too many screaming ghosts inside.
No, all she can do is this.
She can do what somebody should have done years ago.
The boss of the care home had been friendly. Had told her they tended to use agency staff but would be delighted to take on somebody with her experience and obviously caring demeanour. Told her she could see her fitting right in and that they had one particular patient who would be delighted to hear about her fondness for the arts and interest in poetry. She’d apologised for the smell and told her the septic tank had just been emptied a couple of days ago. It would be years before it would need to be done again, she reckoned. Could she start straight away?
Maria steps out of her car. She’s still dressed in her smart interview clothes. She locks the car and crosses the quiet country road. She throws one leg over the low stone wall and painfully climbs over and into a small copse of trees. Then she heads to the back of the building.
She pulls out the swipe card she has stolen from the receptionist and lets herself in, as quietly as she can. The facility is in half-darkness, with only a couple of bulbs in the corridor proving any illumination. She crosses to his door. Turns the handle and steps inside.
Sebastien Hoyer-Wood is on his back. His eyes are shut and he’s sleeping soundly. Maria would like to look at him for a while. Would like to savour the physical humiliation and degradation he has endured since their last meeting. But it’s not important.
He wakes as she pulls him from the bed. He isn’t heavy. Weighs less than a child. He begins to thrash and a low, whinnying sound emerges from his slack mouth, but Maria clamps her hand on his lower jaw. It feels as if he is trying to bite her, so she sticks a thumb on his windpipe, then silently carries him from the room, down the corridor and into the night.
Maria’s footsteps sound loud on the leaves and gravel, but nobody comes running. Through the trees she can see moonlight bouncing off standing water.
She follows her nose.
Lays Hoyer-Wood down on the cold ground.
She has no torch or phone, so has to find the lid of the septic tank by touch alone. She feels around amid rotting leaves and damp moss, sharp stones and mud. Feels two plastic handles. Puts her back into it, and pulls.
The smell hits her. The tank may have been emptied but it still stinks of accumulated gases and shit. She looks down into the darkness. Almost vomits at the stench. Sees a stagnant pool of brown, scummy liquid, about a foot above the bottom of the tank.
Without a word, Maria turns her head back to Hoyer-Wood.
He seems to understand. Tries to get away. Tries to stand. Tries to scream.
She doesn’t give him the chance.
‘Not today, Sebastien,’ she says, quietly. ‘But some day. I want you to keep the thought of this moment in your head tomorrow when I’m introduced to you. I’m your new nurse, Seb. I’ve got myself a contract and living accommodation and I’m going to be here at your beck and call for as long as I can stand it. And believe me, Sebastien, we are going to have some fun.’
Maria closes the cover over the fetid blackness and turns back to Sebastien. She picks leaves from his pyjama top and smiles into his terrified eyes. ‘They said there was no way to punish you. They said that letting you live as you are is punishment enough. Let’s see if they were right, eh?’
Maria scoops Sebastien up and carries him back towards his
room. As she lays him back in his bed she feels his body trembling like a frightened puppy’s.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she says, and switches off the light.
As she slips out of the room and into the cool of the night, a shaft of moonlight spears through from the hazy clouds. She looks at her hands. They are covered in dirt and leaves and filth that makes her want to gag.
She has never felt as clean.
Thanks, as ever, to the Quercus team and Oli Munson – agent and friend.
Thanks too, to the crime writers who have influenced, inspired and welcomed me. Stav, Mari, Martyn, Steve, Peter, Tom, John, Mark and Val, you are owed more drinks than I can afford.
Special thanks to Dave and Babs Watson, who allowed me to use their computer to write this damn book when burglars took mine.
Love, gratitude and a look of perennial bewilderment go the way of Nik, George and Elora. I couldn’t do any of this without you. And I’d have nobody to do it for.
Finally, thanks to the burglars. You really helped me imagine a whole new raft of gruesome deaths.