The Dark Winter

‘Get that, did you?’ Chandler spits. Lights his final cigarette. ‘Vultures with cheque books.’

‘You’ve worked for them, though,’ points out McAvoy, as diplomatically as he dares.

‘What fucking choice have I got? I was born with one bloody talent, son. I can write. Two, if you count getting people to talk. I should be on every bloody bookshelf in the land. But I’m not. I’ve got a bedsit in East Anglia and even if I still had my licence, I couldn’t afford a car. I use what little royalties I get from one book to pay for the publishing run on the next.’

‘Mr Chandler, I-’

‘No, son, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m a fucking failure as a writer. I’ve had more rejection letters from publishers than I can fucking stomach. But put Caroline Wills in front of the camera and put a fat cheque in an old boy’s hand and you get TV bloody gold. My graft. My idea!’

McAvoy waves his hands, urging Chandler to slow down. ‘Your idea? I though Miss Wills contacted you …’

Chandler dismisses him with an angry grunt. ‘I have a million bloody ideas. I’ve got a notebook full of them. If I come up with enough outlines, maybe one day a publishing house will like one of them. Fred was in there. An idea I had. A book about people who survived. The ones that got away. The individuals who escaped when nobody else got out alive. I hadn’t even started looking for him, nor for any of the others, by the time the rejection letters hit the doormat. That’s my life, son. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m fucking here!’

Chandler is standing now. In the darkness, McAvoy can see the glowing tip of his cigarette moving from side to side, up and down, rolling around his mouth as if wedged in the lips of a cow chewing grass.

‘Mr Chandler, if you would just calm down a moment …’

Chandler extinguishes his cigarette on the palm of his hand. He places the stub in his pocket. ‘Are we done?’

McAvoy, red-faced, bewildered, angry and confused, doesn’t know what to say. He just nods. Dismisses Chandler by turning his away and sits back down on the bench. He listens to his footsteps limp away. His brain hurts. His mind is a fog of good intentions, guilt and an intuition he doesn’t fully trust.

Why did I come here? he asks himself. What have I bloody learned?

As he walks back to his car, he feels a hundred years old. He wants to upload his mind into the database and delete the bits that aren’t important. Look for connections. See what it is that his subconscious is telling him.

He closes the door on the swirling, angry snow. Closes his eyes.

Switches on his mobile phone.

Listens to his messages.

The bollocking from Pharaoh.

The instruction to call Helen Tremberg as soon as he can.

CHAPTER 12

McAvoy plays with the car radio.

6.58 p.m. Two minutes to the next news bulletin.

Outside lane on the A15, downhill to approaching the harp strings and tangled metal of the Humber Bridge. It was an impressive sight the first few times he’d driven across this mile and a half of rigid tarmac and pristine steel that stitches Yorkshire to Lincolnshire, but the novelty has worn off, and he simply resents the?3 it costs for the privilege of not having to drive through Goole.

He feels the car swerve as the road becomes the bridge. Feels the buffeting of the ferocious wind that whips down the estuary as if it’s in a rush to get inland.

Slows down, so he can listen to the bulletin in full before he reaches the kiosk and has to pay his fare.

Good evening. Members of Humberside Fire and Rescue Service are attending a blaze at a recently opened specialist burns unit at Hull Royal Infirmary. The fire was reported shortly after 6 p.m. and is thought to have been confined to just one room occupied by a single male patient. His condition is said to be critical. In other news, the detective leading the murder enquiry following the death of a teenagegirl at Hull’s Holy Trinity Church has denied reports that a city man has been arrested in connection with the investigation. Acting Detective Superintendent Patricia Pharaoh told reporters that no arrests have been made, and that the man in question was merely assisting with inquiries. She repeated earlier calls for witnesses to the horrific stabbing to come forward …

‘Fuck,’ says McAvoy, and, without giving a damn about who sees, reaches for his phone. Pulls over on the inside lane of the bridge and switches on his hazard lights. Hears the blare of horns as drivers of the vehicles behind him let him know he’s a wanker.

Helen Tremberg answers on the third ring.

‘Speak of the devil,’ she says, and there’s not much humour in her voice.

‘Really?’ he asks, and winces.

‘You bet. Me and Ben are having a little wager as to who’s going to kill you first. Pharaoh, Colin Ray, or ACC Everett.’

‘Everett? Why?’

‘Wouldn’t like to say. Just came stomping into the incident room about tea time and asked where you were. Didn’t look happy. Even less so when one of the support staff asked him who he was.’

‘Christ!’

‘Indeed. Where have you been?’

‘Long story. It doesn’t matter. I just heard the headlines on Humberside …’

‘Yeah, Colin Ray’s really fucked up. Sorry, Sarge, I mean …’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says, and means it.

‘This bloke him and Shaz brought in. All just a hunch. Ray’s gut feeling. I don’t know what happened when they got him in the interview room but he came out of there with his nose bleeding and puke on his shirt. That’s according to the desk sergeant, any road. Apparently Pharaoh turned up and all bloody hell broke loose. The bloke’s still in the cells but they don’t seem to know what to do with him.’

McAvoy feels his heart racing. Sees the headlines. Wonders how much of this almighty fuck-up can be attributed to him buggering off in the middle of the day to follow up on a feeling.

‘And the fire? At Hull Royal?’

‘We’re here now,’ says Tremberg. ‘It was out almost as soon as it started but the second the fire crews ventilated the room and the smoke cleared, we got the call.’

‘Why us? I mean, why you?’

‘Deliberately started, no question. Top brass reckon there’s no point having a serious crimes unit and then using the whole team on one case. Me and Ben were knocking off when the city DCS phoned and asked us to attend personally.’

McAvoy screws his face up. Feels the car rock as a lorry thunders by, paying no heed to the weather warnings.

‘But one little fire? Sure, it’s in the new unit but a uniform could clear it up with half a dozen witness statements and the CCTV …’

‘Sarge?’ Helen Tremberg sounds confused.

‘Why use us? For a fire?’

Realisation dawns. ‘Didn’t they say on the radio? It’s a fatal, sir. A murder. The man from the house fire on Orchard Park last night. Somebody broke into his room and finished the job.’

*

‘I don’t know where to start,’ says Pharaoh, in a voice that sounds like steam escaping from a high-pressure pipe. ‘You take more looking after than one of my kids.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

‘Will you please cut out that “ma’am” bollocks, McAvoy. It makes me feel like Juliet fucking Bravo.’

McAvoy nods. Lets her outstare him. Turns away.