McAvoy’s thought are fireworks, exploding in his vision. He can smell the blood rushing in his head.
‘Why now?’ he manages. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I got your message about this witness. At the time, I was fielding calls from the press, from the top brass, from the DCs and uniform. I was trying to get something out of Daphne’s mum, and trying not to get tears on the family album. Then I listened to my messages, and the only one that was calm, precise, unemotional and bloody interesting was yours. So I felt a surge of warmth for you, my boy. I decided to show you a little love.’ She smiles again. ‘Enjoy it while it lasts.’
McAvoy realises he’s been holding his breath. When he lets it out, he fancies that he feels himself growing lighter. He is overcome with affection for Pharaoh. Filled with a desire to repay her faith.
‘It was worth the trip,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘Vicki Mountford, I mean.’
‘Enlighten me,’ she says.
Without thinking about it, McAvoy removes his hat and begins to unhook his bag from his shoulder. Midway, he stops and cocks his head, looking at his superior officer with a half-smile of his own. And for the first time in as long as he can remember, he decides to act on impulse.
‘Do you like jazz?’ he asks.
The notice is a mess of faded black on white, tagged with purple scrawls and unfinished signatures.
THE PLAYING OF BALL GAMES IS NOT ALLOWED
Visitors to Hull’s Orchard Park estate might wonder who will enforce the order. Rows of houses stand empty, boarded up for demolition. Many are darkened to the colour of bruised fruit by smoke and demolition dust. Others are doorless. Windowless. Standing sentry over front lawns of mud and broken brick made into minefields of broken glass.
Few of the homes are inhabited.
This was the place to be, once upon a time. The old Hull Corporation had a waiting list of families desperate to move into this new community of solid houses, friendly shopkeepers and neatly tended lawns. Even when the high-rises started to climb into the skies in the sixties, it was still an address that smacked of honest, hard-working men and house-proud women. Poor, but with a front step you could eat your dinner off.
Not now. Thirty-odd years ago, the fishing industry died. The government gave it up. Handed it over to the Europeans and told them to have a ball. Told the Brits to be grateful they’d had it for so long. Told thousands of fishermen to fuck off home.
During the 1970s, the sons of the East Coast’s trawlermen, of its fish merchants, of its market traders and seamen, became the first generation in three centuries to find there was no living to be made from the ocean. No living to be made anywhere, unless you had the O levels and a Surrey accent. They signed on. Drank away their benefit cheques. Spawned children who followed Mam and Dad’s example as they grew into teenagers who spent their evenings stealing cars and trashing bus shelters, breaking into pharmacies and knocking-up teenage girls in the petrol-stinking lock-ups. Orchard Park began to die.
Ten years ago, Hull Council accepted what its people already knew. The city was on the bones of its arse. Its population was shrinking. Anybody with the cash moved to the surrounding towns and villages. Its graduates simply passed through on their way to more prosperous cities. Mortgage companies started offering easy cash to council tenants, who bought themselves two-up-two-down semis in any one of the new, identikit estates that were cropping up on the outskirts of the city. By the year 2000, there were 10,000 empty homes in Hull, and most of them were on Orchard Park. Wholesale demolition began.
There are still proud homeowners here and there. Amid the black teeth and rotted gums of the burned-out and vandalised houses stands the occasional white-painted molar. The lawns are rich green. The earth, coffee- brown. Hanging baskets dangle next to double-glazed doors curtained with lace. These are the homes of the people who will not leave. Who believe Orchard Park will be saved. That the bad element will move on. That the high-rises will fall. That the properties they spent their life savings to purchase will soon become a steal.
Across a rutted stretch of tarmac, surrounded on all sides by iron shutters, and blackened bricks, they face one another. Perfect little seaside chalets.
Though there are lights on at number 59, its owners are not home. Warren Epworth suffered an angina attack last night and was taken to Hull Royal Infirmary as a precautionary measure. His wife, Joyce, is staying with her daughter in Kirk Ella. It is a move her daughter hopes will become a permanent measure when her father is discharged. She hopes, too, that while the house is unattended, it will be robbed. Vandalised. Burned to the bloody ground. Her parents need proof that that their community is irredeemable. They need to leave.
Tonight, the living room of the house where the Epworths have lived for forty-two years is occupied by two men.
One wears a black balaclava. A dark sweater. Black combat boots.
He has wet, blue eyes.
The other man lies on a floral print sofa. He’s dressed in an old Manchester United shirt, jogging pants and trainers. He is scrawny and unkempt, with scabbed, goose-pimpled arms and an unshaven, ratty face. There is sticky, clotted red around his lips and one of his teeth points inwards, showing a rotten, bloodied gum.
His eyes are closed.
He reeks of alcohol.
The man in the balaclava looks around the living room. At the ornate picture frames on the mantelpiece. At the smiling portraits. The newborn babies and dressed-up grandchildren. At school photos. A ruby wedding snap showing an elderly couple holding hands and nuzzling foreheads at the head of a table strewn with presents.
The man nods, as if making a decision. Sweeps his arm along the mantelpiece and grabs the snaps. Bundles them into a black holdall at his feet.
Then he turns back to the figure on the sofa.
From his inside pocket he withdraws a yellow metal container. He closes his eyes. Breathes through his nose.
Sprays the lighter fuel on the unconscious man.
He stands back, his gloved hands balled into fists.
Watches the other man cough and splutter into wakefulness.
Sees him look up. Stare at him.
Know.
Know that he’s been living on borrowed time.
That he escaped when he should have been taken.
That the debt must be repaid.
He sees the other man’s eyes widen and shrink. Sees the panic and fury contort the muscles in his face.
‘What … where …?’
The man is trying to stand, but his mind is foggy with alcohol. His memories are smudged and edgeless. He remembers the pub. The scrap with the other punter. The car park. The first few steps of his long walk back to his flat above the bookie’s. Then a fist in his hair. The cold, hard neck of a bottle forced into his mouth. The sudden taste of blood and vodka. The fading sight of a black-clad man.
‘Is this …?’
The layout of the house seems familiar. Horribly similar to the place he once called home. The place he set aflame because he was pissed and liked the sound of fire engines.
The place that slow-cooked his wife and children.
‘Why …?’
The man in the balaclava holds up a hand, as if urging a speeding car to slow. He shakes his head. Conveys, in one gesture, that there is no point in struggling. That this has already been decided upon.
In one swift motion he pulls a cheap yellow lighter from his pocket. He drops to a crouch, like a sprinter on the blocks, and presses the flame to the patterned carpet.
Then he turns away.
The flame runs both left and right, growing and gathering pace as the twin streams of fire encircle the sofa.
The man in the balaclava steps back and shields his eyes.
As the man on the sofa draws breath to scream, it is as if he is inhaling the flame. With a gasping gulp of air, the spitting blaze leaps towards him.
