Dead Pretty: The 5th DS McAvoy Novel (DS Aector McAvoy) Read online

  Teddy is dragging the younger man towards the door. Foley is bleeding from the head and his eyes have rolled back like something from a cartoon.

  A thin man in a granddad shirt and soft cords is holding a hand up to his eyes, shielding them from the glare. There’s blood on his knuckles. He spots something on the floor and darts forward as Teddy hauls the door open and bundles both himself and Foley into the back garden and the enveloping darkness.

  ‘Mine,’ says the man, gathering up the dropped sculpture of Pharaoh. ‘Well, your mum’s, actually,’ he adds softly as he places a hand on Sophia’s back and helps her up. ‘Give it to her for me.’

  Roisin is too stunned to speak. She raises a hand to the hot slap mark on her cheek and then gathers herself. Rushes to Sophia and takes the crying girl in her arms. There’s sick in her hair and she seems barely able to walk. The front of her jeans is wet.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure she got it,’ says the man.

  He looks awkward. Embarrassed. Vulnerable and lost. He also looks like his hand is hurting. One of his knuckles is already starting to swell. Roisin takes his hand and looks at the injury. His hands have been hurt before. His fingers are delicate and olive-hued; their tips hardened but nimble-looking. She looks at him properly for the first time. Recognises him. From the telly. From the papers. From her husband’s files.

  ‘You made this?’ asks Roisin, taking the tiny figurine from the crying girl. ‘It’s good. Flattering, but good.’

  Reuben Hollow looks at her with eyes so blue that Roisin is put in mind of a Siberian husky. She feels an urge to put a palm on his stubbly face, to smell him, as if they are animals figuring one another out. She lifts his hand and rubs her tiny, warm thumb across the skin, checking for breaks and finding only old injuries. He seems unsure of himself. Looks like he needs a hug more than any man she has ever met.

  ‘Don’t tell,’ whispers Sophia, holding her fingers to her mouth as if trying to breathe life into a dead mouse. ‘Mum, I mean. She’ll go mental. She doesn’t need it.’ She turns to Reuben. ‘Please. Don’t tell her what happened. This is my fault, I know it.’

  Roisin is about to protest but there is a look in Sophia’s eyes that she feels unable to argue with. The girl looks as though she has suffered enough. Roisin understands. Knows that the teenager needs to forget what has just happened to her and not spend all night being interrogated. Did the men mention money? Something about Trish and her husband? None of what has happened feels right to Roisin, but she is finding it hard to concentrate. The handsome man is looking at her with an intensity that is making her skin prickle.

  ‘Roisin?’

  She turns. McAvoy is standing in the doorway. He looks as though a trapdoor has opened inside his body. As though, within him, columns are tumbling like the ruin of Rome.

  Then Pharaoh is pushing past him. Taking it all in. Advancing like a warship and grabbing Sophia to her chest; pushing Reuben Hollow with the flat of her hand and telling him, jaw clenched, to get out of her house.

  Roisin comes to her senses the moment McAvoy puts his arm around her and asks if she’s okay. Whether the children are okay. Why Hollow was here. What’s happened . . .

  When she looks up at him, he is staring at his reflection in the darkened glass; almost imperceptibly shaking his head; pitying the hapless fool who didn’t hear his wife’s plea for help until it was too late.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 8

  Tuesday morning, 9.06 a.m.

  McAvoy stands by an open window on the first floor of Courtland Road police station, an ugly building overlooking the Orchard Park estate; a grey battleship run aground in a hostile harbour. This is a place of empty houses and overgrown fields, roped-off play areas and smashed phone boxes. Soggy stems and dead petals flutter in cellophane coffins on lampposts and buckled barriers. Old twists of police tape garland garden fences. Satellite dishes sprout as fungus on crumbling brick.

  He’s watching an old lady wrestle with an umbrella. It isn’t actually raining but the gathering fog has made the air cold and damp. He watched as she spotted the droplets of water on her glasses. Saw her stop at the roadside to begin the complex process of hauling an umbrella from her bag. She has removed a bag of boiled sweets, a purse, a diary and a hairbrush and does not have enough hands to hold them all while still searching out the errant umbrella. She looks like she’s in her seventies but from this distance it’s hard to say. McAvoy finds himself inventing a story for her. Decides that she is on her way to the bus stop and is planning a trip into town to buy a card for a poorly friend, or something nice for the grandkids. She’s wearing a sensible coat and shoes built for comfort. She’s done her hair nicely before leaving the house. Perhaps she has her eye on a man. She never really felt much for the man who knocked her up when she was still a youngster. Fishing stock, probably; one of the families from Hessle Road. He wasn’t always nice to her but provided for the kids. Got her a decent enough house but drank it away when the fishing industry died. Moved them to Orchard Park for a fresh start then ran off with some strumpet from the Rampant Horse . . .

  McAvoy scowls at himself. Wonders what the hell he is doing? He turns away from the old lady before he has to endure the sight of her dropping her purse and bursting into tears . . .

  ‘Sarge?’

  Ben Neilsen has said his name three times already but McAvoy’s head was too full of his own thoughts to pay him any heed. Now he spins back towards the assembled officers. Rubs a big hand over his face and manages a smile. Orders his thoughts. Clicks the top of his pen a few times. Looks back at the big whiteboard with its photographs and names, arrows and dates.

  The Serious and Organised unit is only half the size it was. For a time, it was made up of more than a hundred police officers and civilian staff and had a brief that covered a multitude of sins. They were the Major Investigation Team – the force’s murder squad. Budget constraints have diminished the unit’s size and remit but it remains the glittering jewel of Humberside Police. Detectives from across the country want to work for Trish Pharaoh and to be handpicked for her inner circle is to be given the ultimate nod of approval. She has not sought a replacement detective chief inspector since Colin Ray’s departure. McAvoy is still a detective sergeant but the team are well aware that in Pharaoh’s absence he is the boss. The only person who doubts his ability to do the job is McAvoy himself.

  He screws up his eyes and pulls at his collar. Wishes he were lying in his bed in his battered old rugby shirt and boxer shorts. He didn’t sleep last night. He and Roisin stayed at Pharaoh’s overnight, squeezed together onto a three-seater sofa under a fleecy blanket, Roisin burrowed into him like a kitten. He lay there, cramped and ridiculous; feet hanging over the end and one arm slowly turning grey beneath Roisin’s shoulders.

  ‘The link, Sarge?’

  Neilsen says it encouragingly, willing his sergeant to do well. He knows how much McAvoy hates this part of the job.

  McAvoy follows Neilsen’s gaze to the photograph of Hannah Kelly. It’s a pretty image. She’s smiling, head half turned, as though somebody has cracked a joke as she’s leaving the room. She looks sweet. There are no piercings in her ears and she wears only the faintest trace of make-up. She has the kind of English rose quality that the national papers would have gone crazy over if she had turned up dead in the first week of the missing persons inquiry. They’ve rather lost interest now, though McAvoy senses that is about to change.

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ says McAvoy quietly, then repeats it for those at the back. ‘This is an investigation into Ava Delaney’s murder, have no doubt about that. But Hannah Kelly remains a missing person. She vanished from her home just twenty-six miles from where Ava was killed. They are of a similar age. Statistically, serial violent crimes against women occur with several months’ hiatus. I don’t want you to make any assumptions about this case but I do want every possibility to be in your thoughts.’

  Neilsen nods. Gives him a smile. McAvoy smiles b
ack and immediately feels a fool. He feels ill. He couldn’t face the McDonald’s breakfast that Roisin and the kids wolfed down on the drive back over the bridge this morning. Had hushed Roisin’s questions with soft little smiles. Just tired, he said. Overloaded. His brain feels like a saturated sponge. But he knows that in the coming days he will need to absorb more and more. He wishes he could compartmentalise, that he had the capacity to vent and offload. He sickens himself today. His every thought should be stuffed full of Ava Delaney, but his mind keeps handing him an image he never wants to see again. For all the horror of what was done to Ava’s corpse, it is the sight of Roisin holding Reuben Hollow’s hand that most turns his stomach. She looked at the man the way she looks at McAvoy. He had helped her. Saved her! McAvoy should be grateful. Should be shaking Hollow’s hand and buying him drinks. Acting like a normal man about the whole bloody thing. Or he should have hit him in the face so hard that he flew out of his shoes. Either option would have been better than the one McAvoy chose. He just stood there like a great bloody idiot, staring at himself in the darkened glass, steadying himself on the back of a chair, as Roisin explained what had happened.

  A couple of teenagers, Roisin had said. Just boisterous lads. This nice man had heard a commotion and come to see if they were okay. Sophia had been feeling a little rough and thrown up with all the drama. No problems. All fine now. Sorry for worrying you . . .

  McAvoy knows Roisin loves him. Knows she will always be loyal. But he has never believed he deserves her, or that she is with him for any other reason than a sense of gratitude for saving her so many years ago. She wasn’t even a teenager when they first met. She was a feisty, free-spirited traveller girl, temporarily camped up on a farmer’s land near Brampton in Cumbria. Some bad men had taken her, and young Police Constable Aector McAvoy had taken her back. Years later they fell in love. His life before her seems like it belongs to somebody else. She holds his whole heart. Owns his conscience and soul. He is not angry at her for looking at Hollow with simpering eyes, just quietly broken-hearted.

  ‘Medical records are through,’ says DC Sophie Kirkland, spinning back from her computer screen. ‘Give me a tick . . .’

  While he waits, McAvoy looks back at the board. They won’t know much about where to start until the post-mortem exam is carried out. Ava will be on the table right now, scrubbed and sliced: a Y-shaped incision from sternum to pubis and her flesh peeled back like the flaps of a tent. The top of her head will have been opened with a circular saw and her organs removed and weighed. The dirt beneath her fingernails and toenails will have been removed for analysis. Her vagina and anus will have been probed and swabbed for DNA. McAvoy has witnessed such indignities before.

  ‘Busy girl,’ says Sophie, with a note of disapproval in her voice, as she scans the report and gives the other officers the highlights. ‘History of self-harm. Suspected overdose last June. Admitted to Hull Royal Infirmary and had her stomach pumped . . . was referred for psychological evaluation. Prescribed anti-depressants . . . referred to a counsellor but the referral wasn’t followed up. She last saw her GP two months ago for something to help her sleep. Said she hadn’t self-harmed for a long time.’ Sophie looks up from her screen. ‘I’ll go back to when she was in nappies. Shout up if I find anything.’

  McAvoy nods. Taps his pen on his lips and turns to DC Andy Daniells, who has been waiting his turn to speak like a six-year-old who knows the answer to a teacher’s question. He’s a young, round-faced Welshman with a comfortable gut and a pleasant, chatty personality. He’s a good listener and works like a dog. Most importantly, he has a habit of bringing a picnic hamper full of luxuries on surveillance jobs and is more than happy to share. His dad runs a fancy delicatessen in Cardiff and sends his son all manner of indulgences. It’s made him popular. He recently entered into a civil partnership with his long-term partner, a painter and decorator called Dean, and even the most hard-bitten homophobes in the department chucked a couple of quid into the collection for a present.

  ‘Andy?’

  ‘Been Facebooking since about half four,’ says Daniells, eagerly. ‘I know that isn’t a verb, Sarge, before you start. We haven’t got her password yet but should be in soon enough. Her profile settings aren’t particularly private so we’ve been able to get a good idea of what she’s into.’

  McAvoy nods encouragingly. A Facebook photo of Ava has already been printed out and stuck to the board. It shows a funky, sexy little rock chick in a black halter-neck top with piercings, tattoos and a pleasing naughtiness in her eyes.

  ‘Last used her account on Monday evening,’ continues Daniells. ‘Commented on a picture of a baby elephant. Said, “Aww – so cute.” Prior to that, a bit of banter with a friend down south. Arguing over who’s the better guitar player. All friendly, but we’ve sent a local uniform to talk to him. She was a regular Facebook user, that’s clear. Took a lot of selfies. Posted lots of pictures she liked. Sunsets and treehouses, aurora borealis and stuff like that. Took the piss quite a lot. One thousand, three hundred and twelve friends. Interested in films, music, poetry, travel. Used to be in a band called Donkey but I don’t think they troubled Top of the Pops. Posted a lot of motivational messages about tattooing. On January twenty-first she had an argument with some girl from Coventry who said she was an ugly bitch with tiny tits. Ava’s reply was very reasonable, though she did sign off by calling her a cunt. Eight messages in all. Ava’s were the better spelled. No threats to kill but a lot of people “liked” Ava’s response.’

  McAvoy nods, as his brain swallows it all down. ‘Usual stuff, then, yes?’

  Daniells gives a vigorous nod of the head. ‘She took a brilliant selfie where she’d wrapped her head in Sellotape, but I think she was just bored. Got a lot of “LOL” responses. People have a lot of free time, don’t they? I’m going through each friend in turn and cross-referencing them with HOLMES and doing a swift Google search. I’ve roped in a couple of support staff for help, if that’s okay. Let me know if you need them back . . .’

  McAvoy waves a hand, admiring the young constable’s tenacity. ‘Anything so far?’

  ‘One of her friends from Coventry – that’s where she’s from, originally, if any of you were wondering – has a record for possession with intent to supply, and some bloke she talks to about music was done for wounding a couple of years ago. And she’s commented on a memorial page to a lad called David Belcher. Something about everything happening for a reason, which struck me as a bit ambiguous. I’m looking deeper, don’t fret. He died in June last year. Knocked down and killed walking home out near Wawne. His profile has been “memorialised”, which means the page stays active but sensitive information is removed. We’ve been able to get on there.’ Daniells pulls out a folder from under his seat and flourishes a colour printout. ‘If that’s not her then I’ve got a thirty-inch waist.’

  McAvoy takes the proffered picture. It shows a thin-faced, unscrubbed lad of around twenty, gurning for the camera while a smiling Ava Delaney plants a kiss on his cheek.

  ‘Relationship?’ asks McAvoy.

  ‘That picture was taken last May. Nearly a year ago. I’m thinking that perhaps we should go and see the lad’s family, maybe ask a couple of uniforms to swing by . . .’

  McAvoy looks back out of the window. The old lady has gone. A tree beside the chain-link fence is showing the first signs of blossom. The petals show as a fuzzy swirl of pink between the earthy tones of the damp branches and the gathering grey of the sky. The blossom is late this year; the result of a winter that bit to the bone.

  Neilsen refreshes his computer screen. Pushes in before Daniells can speak again.

  ‘There are two entrances to the courtyard and both are covered by CCTV. That’s the good news. Bad news is that almost everybody who knows Hull’s Old Town knows that you can use it as a cut-through from Bowlalley Lane to Alfred Gelder Street, so there are maybe twenty people every fifteen minutes going in or coming out. We’ve got all the recordings going back a f
ortnight. Once we get a vague time of death it will narrow things down a little.’

  McAvoy rubs a hand through his hair. Looks past Ben at the score of men and women, notebooks in hand, ties unfastened, lines in their foreheads and weary resignation in their eyes. They expect to catch whoever did this. Expect to find an angry boyfriend behind it. They’ve heard what he did to her and hope the same gets done to him once he’s in the cells.

  Another day at the office.

  Another dead girl.

  ‘Family?’ says McAvoy. ‘Friends?’

  Ben hits some buttons on the keyboard. The printer at the far end of the room whirs into life.

  ‘A précis of what we’ve got will be in your hands in a moment,’ says Ben, to the team behind him. ‘For those of you who struggle to focus on big words this early in the day, here are the highlights. Ava was twenty. Born and raised in Coventry. Lived with mum and stepdad until she was eleven when they split up and Mum moved to Germany to be with a squaddie. Ava went too. Went to a squaddie school in a place called Paderborn. We’ve requested her records. At sixteen she moved back to live with her gran in Coventry. Bit wild, but nothing that should have you losing any sympathy for her. Got into music. Goth stuff. Indie. She started at a local college but dropped out. Did some work in call centres and clothes shops. Arrested during a drugs raid on a house in Wood End but released without charge. Started a couple of apprenticeships. Beauty. Hairdressing. Didn’t finish either. Had a couple of boyfriends but according to what her mum told me through the tears when I spoke to her in the early hours, nothing serious. She was a bit lost – that’s what her mum said. Had a big brain but didn’t seem to be able to stick at anything.’