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

  McAvoy turns back to Gavan.

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Didn’t change the number but I sent her landlord a text and never heard back,’ he says, picking his smartphone from his knee and holding it up like a prop. ‘Never heard back. That was that.’

  ‘And when did you last hear from her?’ asks Pharaoh.

  ‘Weeks, I reckon,’ says Gavan. ‘Got a message a couple of days after the missus saw her off, saying she was sorry and wouldn’t bother me again. She was just in a state. I wouldn’t have wished death on the poor lass.’ He chews on his lip. Starts rolling another cigarette. ‘What happened? She stabbed?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’ asks Pharaoh.

  Gavan shrugs. ‘It’s what people do, isn’t it? Strangling or stabbing. We haven’t got guns, have we? It’s easy for the Americans. They just pull a trigger.’

  Pharaoh keeps her eyes on Gavan’s. He looks away first.

  ‘Could you tell us any more about her background? Her friends? Do you have any dates or times or places that may assist us?’

  ‘I might have kept some of her messages,’ Gavan tells her. ‘I’m not much of a technical bloke. That any good?’

  McAvoy pulls himself from the inflatable chair with as much dignity as he can muster. Holds out a hand for the phone. After a moment’s hesitation, Gavan deposits it in the large, warm palm. McAvoy’s fingers dance across the screen. He turns back to Pharaoh and shakes his head. Gives the phone back to its owner, who shrugs apologetically. ‘Not even a contract,’ he says, sadly. ‘It’s a pay-as-you-go.’

  On a whim, McAvoy pulls out his wallet. He folds it over so the picture of Roisin and the baby is facing away. Shows the image of Hannah Kelly to Gavan.

  ‘You recognise this girl?’

  Gavan looks puzzled but studies the photo. After a moment he shrugs. ‘Missing lass from the papers, ain’t she? Aye, I recognise her from that. But nowt else. Why? This connected? You not caught anyone for that yet? Poor bitch.’

  McAvoy says nothing. Looks at Hannah’s face for a moment and then reverently closes his wallet.

  Pharaoh taps her fingers on the arm of the chair and reaches out a hand. McAvoy pulls her upright, like she’s a granny getting out of a beanbag.

  ‘We’ll need a formal statement, Jez,’ she says to Gavan, who appears to have discovered some long-dead spirit of chivalry and is standing up to see his guests out. ‘And if anything else comes back to you, call me.’ She presses a card into his hand. ‘She didn’t die well. We don’t know much about her but unless she’s been slicing up babies, she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Be the hero, yeah? Help us out.’

  Jez nods solemnly and backs up a pace or two as Pharaoh steps out of the front door and back into the glare of the car’s headlights. McAvoy gives Mrs Gavan a smile, then follows Pharaoh across the broken tarmac to the vehicle. He isn’t surprised to find it untouched. Reckons that the neighbourhood vandals would rather set fire to themselves than tamper with a vehicle visiting the Gavans.

  They stand in the silence for a moment, listening for the shouting to start. When it does, it is a muffled but unmistakably shrill affair. Mrs Gavan is going spare.

  ‘Well?’ asks Pharaoh, lighting one of her own cigarettes.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ says McAvoy. ‘I looked through the wifi networks the phone has stored. Ava’s was one of them. It’s been in her home.’

  Pharaoh rolls her cigarette between her fingers. ‘You think he got sick of her demands? Decided to put a stop to them? He can’t have shagged her, can he? Turns my stomach.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted something for his money,’ says McAvoy, looking away. ‘Killed her to shut her up.’

  ‘Should we nick him?’ asks Pharaoh, though the question is directed more at herself than her sergeant.

  ‘We’ll have a lot more to bombard him with when we have the post-mortem completed,’ he says. ‘He’s not scared of a police station or a cell. If he’s done it, we want enough to show him how pointless it is to argue. He’s a proper old con and we must have his DNA in the system so we’ll just have to show him we’ve got the deck stacked. Make him see the sense in confessing to it. ’

  ‘What about her?’ asks Pharaoh. ‘Miss World in there.’

  ‘Hard to say,’ muses McAvoy. ‘I can’t see her scalping somebody’s armpits, though, can you? Seems a bit ritualistic. I doubt she was as polite to Ava as she claims, but it’s hard to see her doing that.’

  ‘True,’ says Pharaoh, and pulls out her car keys. ‘Plus, she’d never manage the stairs.’

  The pair climb back inside the car. McAvoy feels a tiredness settle upon him as he squeezes himself into the passenger seat. A few hours ago he was sitting on soft grass with his wife and child, trying to find peace and a place inside him for Hannah Kelly. Here, now, he wonders if he has the capacity to carry another pretty girl’s ghost. Wants to catch whoever did this, and fast. Wants to get back to Hannah. He feels as though he has betrayed her by allowing this new spectre to come between them.

  ‘Back to mine?’ asks Pharaoh. ‘There’s room.’

  McAvoy looks at his personal phone and feels a prickle at the back of his neck, as though cold spiders are dancing on his skin.

  Six missed calls and a dozen messages.

  He reads the last one. Roisin’s words, typed in caps to show him she means it.

  I THINK THERE’S SOMEBODY TRYING TO GET IN. XXX

  Chapter 7

  Bank holiday Monday, 10.17 p.m.

  Fog is closing over the east coast like an unwashed lace curtain and drawing a dirty haze across the half-full moon as it shines down on this quiet cul-de-sac. The sound of tipsy conversations bubbles up from back gardens and the air is greasy with the lingering scent of barbecues and mown grass.

  A nice place, this. Home to teachers and bank clerks, council workers and bankrupt detective superintendents. A place for dinner parties and jubilee celebrations, where people respect one another’s parking spaces but would commit murder if their neighbour planted a leylandii tree without asking first.

  Roisin McAvoy: sitting in the darkened kitchen at the rear of the property, holding a meat mallet and jabbing at her mobile phone. There’s sweat under her arms and across her forehead but she’s not as scared as she should be. She’s faced a lot of danger in her life. Fancies her chances whatever the odds. She doesn’t like violence but if she encounters those who do, she’s willing to kick their heads in.

  Sophia opened up to her this evening. Told her about the lads she and her friends had got to know recently. Older boys. One of them has a Peugeot 306, which makes him as moreish as heroin in the eyes of adolescent girls. They like a drink and a smoke and know which quiet lay-bys to park up in when they have female company. One of them got a bit overly friendly with Sophia recently. She told him to back off, in front of his friends. Made him look like a mug, or so he said in the string of vile texts he sent her in the hours afterwards. Worked himself up. Got increasingly descriptive in his threats. Sophia had feared he would turn up at last night’s party. She was relieved beyond measure when the person who dragged her from her sleep turned out to be her mum, even if the drama queen had shown her up. Sophia had reacted without thinking. Said some hurtful things. But of course she loved her mum. She just didn’t want to get into trouble by telling her about the lad who was threatening her.

  Then they heard the noises at the back door.

  Now Sophia sits with her arms around her three sisters, quiet as church mice as they huddle on the sofa in the living room and try not to cry. She snuggles in to little Olivia, who’s feeling proud because she heard the strange noise coming from the back door.

  Upstairs, a red-haired, barrel-chested seven-year-old sits cross-legged on Olivia’s bedroom floor. There is an earnestness to his gaze. A sincere devotion to the task he has been given. He has already keyed the number into the cordless phone between his legs. He’s just waiting for his mum to give the word and he’ll press the green button
and demand immediate assistance. His dad is busy, catching killers. Fin is willing to fill the void.

  The handle of the kitchen door begins to turn. There is the sound of a thin set of metal rods slipping back into their cases. The careful, practised whisper of a UPVC door easing open.

  ‘You boys lost?’ asks Roisin, flicking the light on.

  Teddy and Foley look with amused surprise at the young woman who stands in the neat kitchen. She’s in her mid-twenties and no more than 5 foot tall. She’s model pretty, with dark hair and tanned skin. Neat, bare arms and a six-pack are accentuated by a purple vest. There are tattoos around her belly button and a jewel through the middle. She’s wearing leopard-print leggings and the toenails of her bare feet have been painted different colours and adorned with diamanté. She’s holding a phone and a meat tenderiser and looks thoroughly unperturbed by their nearness.

  ‘You’re a traveller, ain’t you, girl?’ Foley’s voice is pure south London and contains a mocking contempt.

  ‘I’m Roisin,’ she says, and the Irish in her accent becomes more pronounced. ‘This is a copper’s house. My husband’s a copper too. We’ve already called the police. It looks to me like you’re most definitely in the wrong place, so if I were you, I’d fuck off while you have the means to do so.’

  Foley takes a step forward and Roisin subtly alters her position. She’s only got to shout and Fin will call 999. She hopes it won’t come to that. Doesn’t know whether Pharaoh would want this reported. She knows Sophia doesn’t. The poor girl’s got herself into a bit of a situation but it’s nothing that can’t be resolved. These blokes are probably well-meaning and hard-of-thinking uncles or cousins who have had a few cans of lager too many and agreed to help restore the family honour by scaring a teenage girl. Roisin has no time for such things, for these kinds of men. She never had to put up with much in the way of teenage romancing. Travellers don’t really date. Many don’t get to spend time alone with a boy until marriage is up for discussion. That would have been the plan for her, had she not fallen in love with the big, gentle copper who saved her and showed her how life was meant to feel.

  ‘Got a houseful,’ says Foley to himself, rubbing his nose. ‘All the girls through there, are they?’ He nods at the closed door. ‘That one with the long hair looked a peach. Wouldn’t mind a play with that, to be honest. Wouldn’t mind at all.’

  Roisin ignores him. Looks at the older of the two.

  ‘I don’t know what you want but you won’t find it here,’ she says, flatly. ‘I reckon you’re a couple of blokes who got a bit drunk and took a wrong turn, eh? I reckon you’re feeling a bit silly and a bit embarrassed and want to just go and sleep it off. I’m right, eh? What d’you say?’

  Teddy keeps looking at her with the same half-smile on his face. He seems to be making up his mind about something important.

  ‘You really married to a copper?’ he asks, at length. ‘You a stripper, then?’

  Roisin consents to laugh. ‘I can turn my hand to most things, mister.’

  ‘The bitch still out?’ asks Foley, sniffing something unpleasant into his mouth and swallowing it back down.

  ‘Bitch?’

  ‘This bitch,’ says Foley, and holds up a tiny wooden figurine. It shows Pharaoh, viewed on her best day. It’s a beautiful piece of work, done with a tender, worshipful hand.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ asks Roisin, and finds herself hoping that she gets an opportunity to bite the head off the thing before her husband ever gets a chance to see how much unwarranted perkiness the sculptor has added to Pharaoh’s bust.

  ‘Lovely thing, isn’t it?’ says Teddy, before Foley has a chance to answer. ‘Flattering depiction but unmistakable. My mate here shouldn’t have taken it but he does appreciate the finer things in life. He’s not alone in that regard. Take our employer. He loves modern art. I’m not much of a fan myself. Some of the stuff in his office gives me a bloody migraine. But he does like his swirls and his patterns and his big blobs of colour. It’s his indulgence. He’s indulged a little too much recently. Got himself in a bit of a pickle. So he’s asking his old friends to do right by him. Calling in a few old debts, you might say. That’s why we’re here. Just wanted to see if we could come to some kind of an arrangement.’

  Roisin looks from the older man to the younger and back again. She’s painfully aware of the children upstairs and in the next room. She will fight to her last breath to protect them but hopes to Christ that McAvoy gets her messages before it comes to that.

  ‘I’m just the babysitter,’ she says, with a wink. ‘Just me and the kids here. I reckon if it’s that important to you then you should go and see her at work. She’s a reasonable woman. Probably all a misunderstanding.’

  Foley suddenly snaps his head left and points at the door in the far wall.

  ‘That lead through to the garage, does it? He in there? The gimp?’

  ‘Now now, lads, don’t be taking the piss,’ says Roisin, as if this is all grand craic and can soon be cleared up over a pint of Guinness. ‘He’s not a well man. We don’t go in there. I’ve only met him a couple of times and he’s not one for visitors. Why don’t I give Trish a call, eh? See if we can’t get this sorted. I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Or would you be wanting a glass of whiskey? I don’t know if it’s a Bushmills house or a Jameson; or I’ve no doubt there’ll be vodka . . .’

  Without a word, Foley crosses the kitchen and turns the handle on the door to the converted garage. Soft blue light spills out, alongside the sound of a cowboy film playing on the flatscreen TV at the end of Anders Wilkie’s bed.

  Roisin starts forward, shaking her head, bringing up the meat mallet. She’d have no hesitation in bringing it down on the chavvy bastard’s arm. Would smash his head open if it comes to it.

  ‘Stand still,’ says the older man, and produces a weapon with a yellow barrel and a black handle from behind his back. ‘This is a taser, love. Not police issue, mind. Five times as powerful. I shoot you with this and you’ll shit your lovely leggings and that means when I take your pants off you’re going to be all embarrassed. Stay the fuck where you are. And if you say another word I’ll go and use it on the littlest kid I find. That would be yours, I reckon. Saw you turn up with two of them. Ginger one and a black-haired little princess. How do you think she’d cope with fifty thousand volts, eh? I reckon she’d look like she’d been toasted.’

  Roisin stands still. Feels a chill creep into her flesh. Tries to send a silent message to the girls in the next room. Begs them with her mind not to come in here, to grab the two upstairs and run for the door.

  ‘Look at the state of this poor bastard,’ says Foley, standing in the open doorway. ‘This is the bloke, yeah? Fucking pitiful.’

  Teddy shows no inclination to go over. He keeps staring at Roisin, like he’s considering his options. Like he has the option of doing whatever the fuck he wants.

  ‘A hundred grand,’ says Foley, loudly. He’s addressing his comments to the gaunt, half-immobile man in the hospital bed, hooked up to fluids and monitors and staring with hollow-eyed boredom at the flatscreen TV above his bed. ‘He wants his money, matey. I’d get off your arse and get it, if you can. But I don’t reckon you can. So we’ll just wait here until your missus comes home and we’ll ask her.’

  ‘This is about money?’ asks Roisin, quietly. ‘They’re bankrupt. They used to have a big house. Aector told me. They lost it all. That’s her husband’s debts, not hers.’

  Teddy strokes the taser. Looks longingly at the gap between her vest and her waistband.

  ‘The boss wouldn’t normally be fussed about a hundred grand,’ he says softly. ‘But there have been changes in the way he works. He’s got new friends who expect things to be done a certain way. They expect payments to be made regularly. If those payments aren’t made, they get upset. Our boss would love to carry on being useful. I’d say it would be fair to assume he’s trying to make a point here. You may be a fucking copper, but you still owe wha
t you owe. That seem fair? Oh Foley, you are a bad, bad lad . . .’

  In the doorway, Foley is giggling. He’s pulled down his jogging pants and is pissing into the bedroom.

  ‘He’s not getting up, Teddy. Reckon he’s on the level. This bloke was a player once, was he? Christ, how the mighty have fallen.’

  Roisin turns away from the sight. She feels temper prickling, though most of it is directed at herself. She’d wanted to show off. Reckoned that the people fumbling with the back door were no worse than a couple of pissed-up teenagers. She’d planned on being the cool grown-up, on delivering a slap or two and sending them on their way. She recognises something in the eyes of Teddy and Foley: the look of men who have hurt her before.

  ‘Shall we give him a zap, Teddy?’ asks Foley, tucking himself away. ‘It’s all brainwaves and shit, isn’t it? Might cure him. Or fucking kill him . . .’

  Roisin turns as the door from the living room opens. Sophia bursts in, her eyes red and the remote control for the TV in her hands.

  Teddy looks at her and begins to laugh. ‘What you gonna do with that, you silly cow? Fucking mute me?’

  Roisin swings the meat tenderiser like an ape wielding a club. Teddy yanks his arm back before he can fire and with his free hand, delivers a harsh slap to the side of her face. She rocks back and Teddy steps forward, snarling.

  Sophia throws herself at him like an angry cat. She claws at his neck and tries to sink her teeth into his cheek. She spits curses in his ear and tries to ram her thumb into his eye socket. Her mother has taught her well.

  ‘Foley!’

  The young man grabs Sophia by the hair and drags her off his partner. He hits her twice in the stomach and has to step backwards as she vomits all over the kitchen floor. She drops to one knee, and he goes to kick her in the side of the head . . .

  The door to the kitchen opens at the same moment that the lights in the room go out. Teddy turns to the door, yelling, and Roisin staggers back, trying to grab the meat mallet. Something whistles past her. A shape. A scent. All wood shavings and rich tobacco. She hears the sound of flesh on flesh and the sharp, hard crack of bone against something hard. She scrabbles back. Finds the light switch. Bathes them all in harsh yellow illumination.