‘Apparently she was that way inclined when she arrived. Her family were very religious. She had seen some horrors over there but it hadn’t put her off. Her mum, her new mum, took her to Holy Trinity just for a day out when she first arrived, and she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It became a big part of her life. Her mum says she’d never been so proud as the day she became an acolyte.’
McAvoy tries to get a mental picture of Daphne Cotton. Of a young girl, plucked from horror, decked out in a white robe and allowed to hold the candle during the honouring of her God.
‘Have we got a picture?’ he asks softly.
Helen jogs back to her desk and returns almost instantly with a colour photocopy of a family snap. It shows a smiling Daphne, sandwiched between her two short, plump, greying adoptive parents. The background shows Bridlington sea front. The skies are eerily and unusually blue. The image seems almost too glossy and perfect. McAvoy wonders who took the snap. Which poor passer-by captured the image that would come to define this tragic girl. McAvoy takes his own mental picture. Memorises the snap. Makes this smiling, happy girl his vision of Daphne Cotton. Superimposes it onto the bloodied, broken corpse. Makes her human. Makes her death the tragedy it needs to be.
‘So, she was a regular at church, yes?’
‘Three nights a week and twice on Sundays.’
‘Big commitment.’
‘Huge, but she was a clever girl. Never let it get in the way of her homework. She was a straightA student, according to her mum. We haven’t spoken to her teachers yet.’
‘Which school?’
‘Hessle High. Walking distance from home. She’s due to break up on Tuesday for the Christmas holidays.’
‘We need to speak to her friends. Her teachers. Everybody who knew her.’
‘That’s what Sophie and me are dividing up, Sarge,’ says Tremberg, pulling an appeasing face. It is as if she is trying to tell an ageing father not to worry — that it’s been taken care of.
‘Right, right,’ says McAvoy, trying to slow himself down. To restore order in his mind.
‘Shall we get your statement down, now, Sarge? Best get it out of the way. Tomorrow will be a nightmare.’
McAvoy nods. He knows that in reality, the only thing he is bringing to this investigation is a witness statement and a glorified filing system. But he’s got a foot in the door. A chance to do some good. To catch a killer. He lets his mind drift back to this afternoon. To the chaos and bloodshed in the square. To that moment when the masked man appeared from the doorway of the church, and looked into his eyes.
‘Is there anything distinctive, Sarge?’ asks Nielsen, although there is no real hope in his voice. ‘Anything you’d recognise again?’
McAvoy closes his eyes. Lets the masked face swim in his vision. Blocks out the cold, snow-filled air and the screams of the passers-by. Lets his memory focus in on one moment. One picture. One scene.
‘Yes,’ he says, with the sudden sense that the memory is important. ‘There were tears in his eyes.’
He stares into the blue irises of the mental image. Fancies he can see his own reflection on the wet lenses. His voice, when it emerges from his dry mouth, is but a breath.
‘Why were you crying? Who were you weeping for?’
CHAPTER 5
It sits to the north of the city, the east of everything else — three left turns and a right from the edge of the new estate; thrown up for first-time buyers by builders following plans that could have been designed by a child with a page of graph paper and a box of Monopoly houses.
Three bedrooms. Chessboard tiles. A back yard, with a nine-slab patio propped up on reclaimed railway sleepers. All decorated to the drab, lifeless taste of a landlord who made the purchase through an agent, and has yet to visit.
It’s late. Too late for Fin to still be up. He must have taken his nap around tea-time. He’ll be awake all night, eager to bounce on Mummy and Daddy’s bed, to try on Daddy’s shoes and stomp around on the lino in the kitchen, squashing imaginary monsters.
She’s done this for him. Settled the lad for a nap so that he’ll be awake and fresh and ready to make Daddy feel better when he finally gets home from the station, thoughts made heavy and dull by the relentlessness of the assault with which they have battered his skull.
Roisin opens the door for him and McAvoy doesn’t know who to kiss first. He opens his arms and takes them both in. Feels the hard pressure of Fin’s head on one cheek. Roisin’s lips, soft and warm and perfect, on the other. Holds them both. Feels her hand stroke his back. Takes their warmth inside himself. Senses her breathing him in, in return.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and whether it’s addressed to her or the boy or the universe in general, he would not be able to say.
Eventually he pulls away. Roisin takes a step backwards to allow him into the little lobby at the foot of the stairs. As he pushes the door closed behind him, he turns and knocks the same picture from the wall that he has dislodged almost nightly since they moved into this, their first proper home, two years ago. They giggle, sharing the joke, as he stoops to pick it up, and awkwardly hangs it back on the hook. It’s a pencil sketch of a hillside, done in a shaky hand. It meant a lot to McAvoy once, back when images of his childhood had been the emblem of his happy times. It doesn’t matter so much now. Not since Fin. Not since her.
She’s beautiful, of course. Slim and dark-haired, her skin an almost sand-blown tan that betrays her heritage. Mucky, his dad had said when he first saw her, but he hadn’t meant it in a bad way.
She’s wearing a tracksuit that hugs her figure and her hair tumbles to her shoulders. She’s only wearing a small pair of hoops in her ears today. She used to have row upon row, climbing up both ears, but Fin developed a liking for pulling at them and so she has limited her adornment in recent months. It is the same with the gold that dazzles at her throat. She wears two chains. One bears her name in copperplate: a gift from her father when she turned sixteen. The other is a simple pearl, a captured raindrop, that McAvoy presented her with on their wedding night as an extra present, in case his heart hadn’t been enough.
Without being asked, she hands Fin to his father. The child beams, opens his mouth like a capital O and then begins aping McAvoy’s facial expressions. They frown, grin, pretend to cry, aim monster-like bites at one another, until they are laughing and Fin is wriggling with excitement. McAvoy puts him down and the child runs off with his bow-legged cowboy gait, adorable in his blue jeans, white shirt and tiny waistcoat, chattering to himself in the made-up language that McAvoy wishes he better understood.
‘You waited,’ he says to his wife as he looks around the living room. Roisin had been planning to put up the Christmas decorations today. They have a plastic tree and a box of baubles, half a dozen cards to stretch on a wire over the fake-coal fireplace, but they remain in the cardboard container by the kitchen door.
‘It wouldn’t have been any fun without you,’ she says. ‘We’ll do it another day. As a family.’
McAvoy takes off his coat and throws it over the back of an armchair. Roisin comes forward for another hug, the better to feel his body without the impediment of his bulky waterproof. The top of her head comes up to his chin, and he leans forward to kiss it. Her hair smells of baking. Something sweet and festive. Mince pies, perhaps.
‘I’m sorry I’m later than I said,’ he begins, but she shushes him and pulls his mouth to hers. He tastes cherries and cinnamon in her kisses, and they stand, framed in the window, mouth on mouth, until Fin runs back into the living room and begins whacking his father on the leg with a wooden cow.
‘Grandpa sent it for me,’ says Fin, holding up the toy as his father peers down. ‘Cow. Cow.’
McAvoy takes it from his son’s grip. Examines it. He recognises the workmanship. Can picture his father, wood shavings on his glasses, knife and rock-hammer held by white hands sheathed in fingerless gloves, sitting at
