He steps back from the desk, suddenly unsure of himself.
‘Excuse me, did I hear my name?’
McAvoy turns. Standing in the doorway are two men. One is dressed in athletics gear … Hooded sweatshirt, zipped up to his chin, woolly hat pulled down tight and jogging trousers tucked into football socks. He’s jogging on the spot and the small window of face that peeks out from between the hat and the hoodie is flushed and red. The other man is shorter and almost skeletally thin. He’s wearing baggy corduroy trousers, plimsolls, and a padded lumberjack shirt over a V-neck T-shirt. His head is shaven, but the light from the hall reveals that he would be bald on top even without the ministrations of the razor, and his dark goatee beard is flecked with grey. He wears glasses that, even from a distance of some yards, appear filthy with dust and grime.
‘Was the gatekeeper here making life difficult?’ he asks with a smile and nodding at the receptionist. McAvoy hears a trace of Liverpudlian in his accent. ‘She’s ferocious, is our Margaret,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that right, sweetie?’
McAvoy turns to look at the receptionist but she’s rolled her eyes and turned to her screen and is trying to ignore the exchange. When McAvoy turns back, Chandler has crossed the floor and is holding out his hand.
‘Russ Chandler,’ he says, and as McAvoy takes his hand in his, he feels like he’s closing his palm around a collection of dried twigs.
‘Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy.’
‘I know,’ says Chandler, grinning warmly. ‘I used to do a bit of work in your part of the world. Knew Tony Halthwaite pretty well. Doug Roper, too. All got shushed up, eh?’
McAvoy thinks,
‘I’d rather not …’
‘Don’t fret, mate. My lips are sealed. Unless you happen to have a bottle of whisky on you, in which case they’ll bloody open.’ He looks past McAvoy and grins at the receptionist. ‘Just kidding, sweetheart.’
In the doorway, the man in the running gear has upped the pace of his stationary sprinting. His knees are getting higher. He looks like he knows what he’s doing.
Chandler notices McAvoy staring and spins back to his companion. ‘You just get going, son. Usual route. Keep your arms up. We’ll see you by the bench.’
With barely more than a nod, the other man disappears from the doorway. McAvoy hears fast footsteps on the shingle. He looks at Chandler inquisitively.
‘Room-mate,’ he says, by way of explanation. ‘They put us in twos in here so there’s somebody there during the night to make sure we don’t top ourselves.’
‘This your game, is it? You a boxing man?’
‘I wrote a book a few years back. Chap from Scunthorpe who’d had something like 200 pro fights.
‘I boxed a bit at school. Bit more at university. Was hard getting people to get in the ring with me. I’ve always been the biggest in the gym.’
‘I can see that,’ smiles Chandler, without malice. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’
‘Is there somewhere we can talk, Mr Chandler? It’s regarding Fred Stein.’
Chandler sticks his lower lip out playfully and raises his eyebrows in a show of surprise. ‘Fred? I’m not sure …’
‘It won’t take long.’
Chandler nods, seemingly unfazed at the prospect. ‘You mind walking and talking? I’ve promised my young lad I’ll time him.’
McAvoy nods gratefully, happy that this is working out.
As they leave the foyer and trot down the stairs into the darkening air and billowing snow, McAvoy notices his companion is limping on his right leg. Remembers what Caroline told him. Glances down. Chandler turns and looks up at the bigger man as they walk. ‘Amputated,’ he says simply. ‘Price you pay for loving the ciggies and living on bacon. Got a falsie under these trousers. I’d recommend them to anybody who goes to Weight Watchers. You just slip your lower leg off and you’ve lost half a stone.’
McAvoy isn’t sure whether to pat him on the shoulder or give him an encouraging smile, so just brushes over it. ‘Fred Stein,’ he says, as they begin following a neatly tended gravel path towards a line of evergreens. ‘You heard what happened?’
‘Did indeed,’ he says, with a sigh that becomes a cough. It’s a hacking sound. Unhealthy. ‘Poor bugger.’
‘Caroline Wills told me that you were the one that managed to get him to talk. Tracked him down. Brokered the deal.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Was there anything in his manner when you met him that suggested he was thinking of taking his own life?’
Chandler stops. They’re perhaps 500 yards from the building. He cranes his neck to see if anybody’s poking their head out of the front door, then reaches down and hitches up his trouser leg. He takes hold of the limb at the knee and with a swift jerk, snaps off his leg just below the joint. Absent-mindedly, he reaches inside the false limb and pulls out a cigarette and lighter. He sparks up, and draws the smoke deep into his lungs. It seems an almost religious experience. Without saying another word, he leans down and fastens the leg back in place. He looks up with a grin that tries to be impish but instead looks strangely gruesome, splitting so unhealthy a face.
‘Frowned upon?’ asks McAvoy, smiling, despite himself.
‘You’ve got to sign an agreement when you check in,’ he says contemptuously. ‘No fags. No chocolate. No bloody sugar. All part of the programme, apparently. Can’t detox you when you’re still putting toxins in yourself.’
‘And you don’t think perhaps you should listen?’
‘Oh, there’s no doubt they’re right, Sergeant. But that’s the thing with addictions. Rather hard to drop.’
‘But the money you’re spending to be here, surely it’s worth trying …’
‘I’m giving it my best shot,’ he says, looking away and blowing out a lungful of smoke. ‘I’ve been in places like this three times before. I come out full of hope and within a day I’m in a boozer, knocking back whisky. I know I’ll do it even before I’m out the gates. It’s the finality I struggle with. The idea of never having another cig. Never having another drink. What’s the bloody point?’
‘Your health, surely …’
‘Who am I staying healthy for? There’s just me, mate. No kids. No missus. No adoring fans desperate to sleep with me. Got to pay to publish my own bloody work.’ He says the last with a sudden rush of venom, and McAvoy notices the way his jaw locks around the cigarette.
McAvoy quickly runs through in his mind the brief details he had pulled off the internet about this man. He’d found his byline on several features on various special-interest websites and national newspapers, but the majority of hits had come from a Surrey-based publishing house. Russ Chandler had written several self-published books. Some were about the glory days of the fishing industry, others on local history and a couple of tomes on unsolved crimes in various Northern cities. They came with an author profile that revealed Russell Chandler was born in Chester in 1966 and spent some time in the army before becoming a full-time writer. He had worked as an insurance salesman and as office manager for a haulage firm. He had lived in Oxford, East Yorkshire and London, and now made his home in East Anglia. His last book had been published four years earlier, a biography of three of the RAF Bomber Command pilots who had taken part in the raid on Dresden in World War Two. McAvoy had read the extract. He’d been impressed.
‘I won’t tell,’ says McAvoy, watching the writer take a contented drag.
‘Thank you,’ he replies, making a small, theatrical bow. Then he offers him the packet. ‘You smoke?’
‘No,’ says McAvoy, shaking his head. Then, conversationally: ‘My wife does.’
Chandler looks at him with the faintest smirk on his lips. ‘You want to take one home for her?’
McAvoy wonders if he’s being laughed at. Feels the prickling of temper in his chest.
‘No thanks. She’s seven months pregnant. Got her down to three a day by way of compromise. One glass of wine …’ He stops. Looks at the ground.
‘She like a drink?’
McAvoy looks up to see Chandler staring at him hard. He tries to dismiss the moment with a wave of his
