The Dark Winter

hand, but Chandler is already intrigued.

‘The way you said that …’

McAvoy shrugs. Figures it can’t hurt. ‘We’ve lost babies before now,’ he says. ‘This will be our fourth attempt at a second child.’

Chandler reaches out. Puts a hand on McAvoy’s broad shoulder.

‘I’d pray for you, if I believed any of that bollocks. But I don’t. So I’ll just wish you the best.’

McAvoy finds himself half-smiling. He nods in appreciation, then feels his lips begin to tremble and his eyes fog like glass as he realises he has made Roisin sound as if she were to blame for the children that never were. ‘It wasn’t the smoking,’ he begins defensively. ‘And they’re just little glasses of wine. She knows her limits …’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ says Chandler quietly, and McAvoy wonders if he has just made this interview more difficult for himself than it need be.

‘My dad always said willpower was the way,’ says McAvoy hurriedly. ‘Decide whether you’re a smoker or a non-smoker, and just be that. I’m a non-smoker. My wife’s a smoker. Just one of those things.’

‘Sounds a bright chap.’

‘He was. Is.’

‘He a cop too?’

‘No,’ says McAvoy, looking away. ‘Crofter. Up near Loch Ewe. Western Highlands to you. His family have farmed the same patch of land for more than one hundred years.’

‘Yeah?’ Chandler sounds interested. ‘I’ve read about them, crofters. Hard life, from what I’ve heard.’

‘Oh aye,’ says McAvoy, now torn between talking more about his childhood, of testing the edges of that damp scab, and getting back to Fred Stein. ‘Dying way of life, too.’

‘So I hear. All the crofts being turned into tourist lodges nowadays, from what I read in The Times. Your dad not fancy that?’

‘He’d rather bite his own arms off,’ says McAvoy, more to himself than to his companion. ‘He and my brother work the land.’

‘Not you, though?’ Chandler’s voice is subtle. Soft. Inviting.

‘I gave it ten years,’ he says. ‘Then went to live with my mother. City life. Or at least, as much of a city life as you can get in Inverness. Gave that a year. Then off to boarding school, paid for by my stepdad. Bit of a culture shock. University in Edinburgh. Three years of a five-year degree. Then this. Policeman. Yorkshire. Hull. Husband and father. I wouldn’t be any use to my dad up there now. Don’t think I ever really was.’

‘Shame,’ says Chandler, and seems to mean it.

McAvoy nods. Wishes he were capable of thinking about his old life, his old family, with anything other than sadness.

They stand in silence for a moment, until they remember what has brought them together.

‘So?’

‘Yeah, Fred. Was big news in his day. Before my time, of course. Was just a baby when it happened. But I did a bit of work in Hull and it was impossible not to hear about the Black Winter. Anyways, I heard the story about Fred Stein years ago. The Yorkshire Post used to have an office on Ferensway and they had framed front pages on the wall. I was in there one day, having a can of ale with an old boy from the Sun who used to share an office with them, and I started reading this front page from the sixties. All about this one bloke who survived. Made it to the lifeboats with two of his crewmates and drifted to some remote bloody hell-hole in Iceland. Tramped cross-country until some local farmer found him. Media frenzy, there was, when it turned out he was alive. Everybody had given him up for dead, see? I just logged the info in the back of my brain. It’s getting cramped back there, like.’

‘Did you know him personally at this point?’

‘No, no. He was just a story. I had it in my mind that one day I might try and get him to talk about it. There might be a book in it. That’s what I do, see? I publish at least a book a year. You can buy them in the bookshops under local interest or get them from the publishing house website. Sell pretty well, considering. Fred seemed ideal, but I never really got round to it.’

‘Until?’

‘Well, that Caroline, from Wagtail. Met her during the Dunbar inquiry. Nice girl, if a bit fond of herself. Didn’t know a damn thing about the fishing industry and was willing to pay for background. That’s my line. Did her chapter and verse on the history of the local fleet; the characters, the names. Theories, contacts. She was made up with it. That’s when Fred Stein came back into my mind. I told her about it, thought no more, and then last year she got back in touch and said she thought there could be a documentary in it.’

They’ve reached the tree line now and the darkness suddenly becomes harder to penetrate. Chandler points to a wrought-iron bench and they both take a seat. McAvoy is hunched up inside his coat but the wind is still bitter on the few inches of exposed skin. He wonders how Chandler, just skin and bone in a shirt and vest, can stand it. He seems so fragile, and there’s a pestilence about him, a suggestion that even without cigarettes, his breath would be a plume of grey smoke.

‘So where do you start with something like that? Tracking him down?’

‘It’s not difficult,’ he says dismissively. ‘Start with a last known address and just start working the phones and writing letters. Fishing community’s a small one with a long memory. Found him in Southampton within a week. Put the phone down on me the first three times, so wrote him a nice letter with my details and he got in touch. Gave him the spiel. Chance to close that chapter in his life. To honour his crewmates. Say goodbye. Tell his side of the story. I really don’t think he was that interested, to be honest, but when I mentioned what they were willing to pay, he changed his tune. I’m not saying he was mercenary or anything. There’s nothing wrong with greed. He wanted a few quid in his old age, that was all.’

‘And you met in person?’

‘Just the once. Caroline was in the US and she needed the deal signed, sealed and delivered. I went down there on expenses and we had a few beers down his local. Nice old boy, really. Would have made a better book than a TV programme but my pockets aren’t deep enough. That’s the way of the world now. You try getting a book deal and you’ll see nobody gives a damn. It’s all celebrity biographies and misery fucking memoirs.’

The venom is back in Chandler’s voice. McAvoy notices that he has started rooting about beneath the bench with his left hand, and he suddenly pulls out a bottle of single malt.

‘Good lad,’ he says, as he unplugs the bottle and takes a giant swig.

McAvoy watches Chandler in the gathering gloom, wide-eyed and strangely impressed. Sees the smaller man’s silhouette change shape as the bottle tips up and stays there at the end of a long, bony arm.

‘Website said it costs five thousand a week to stay here,’ says McAvoy, shaking his head. ‘Money well spent, eh?’

‘I don’t know if I get more pleasure from the drink, or from being naughty,’ he says, smiling.

‘I don’t suppose you just found that bottle by accident?’

‘My young room-mate,’ he laughs. ‘He’ll do anything for me.’

‘I’ll bloody bet.’

They sit for another twenty minutes. The afternoon dusk turns midnight black. The snow lays half-heartedly on the wet gravel, then disappears into nothingness. They talk about Hull. McAvoy shivers and puts his hands in his pockets.

Eventually, the conversation returns to Stein.

‘You haven’t asked why this is a Hull CID matter,’ says McAvoy as he watches Chandler finish off the last of the whisky and notes that he hasn’t been offered a drop.

‘His sister’s got a husband on the Police Authority,’ Chandler says with a wave of his hand. ‘I’d imagine you’re doing somebody a favour.’

McAvoy looks at his feet, wishing he were as shrewd or well-informed as an alcoholic hack.

‘So what do I tell her?’ he asks.

‘Tell her that Fred was a good bloke. A nice chap full of stories. That he didn’t mind talking about what happened to him when he had a pint in his hand, and that he was shit-scared of going on that bloody great cargo ship with a TV crew who wanted to make him dance like a monkey.’

The irritation is there again. The bitterness. It might almost be called rage.

‘You don’t seem to have a great deal of time for TV journalism.’