army so he’s not going to be a slouch physically. And we’ve seen his temper first hand. Him and Colin had a right set-to in the interview room. Was almost another bloody murder. We’ve got him locked up until I decide what to do with him. Charged him with assaulting a police officer, so at least he’s not an official murder suspect, but when I had to go and explain where we’re at to the top brass, I got the distinct impression they wouldn’t be averse to us sticking it on Neville.’
McAvoy’s face says it all.
‘I know, son,’ says Tom Spink. ‘I know.’
As McAvoy gulps painfully on his dry throat, there’s a faint knock at the door. Logistically, he wonders if there’s actually room in here to open it.
‘Get that, Hector,’ says Pharaoh wearily.
McAvoy turns the handle and pulls open the door, stepping back into the room and trying not to register the faint connection that his backside makes with Pharaoh’s stockinged knee.
Helen Tremberg stands there, looking surprised to see him. ‘Sarge?’
‘He’s just the bouncer,’ comes Pharaoh’s voice from behind him, and McAvoy hears her stepping down from the desk. She appears at his side, her warm body pressed fully against his. Her perfume and whisky breath make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
‘Boss,’ Tremberg says, relieved. ‘The ID’s come back on the body at the hospital.’
‘That was quick,’ says Pharaoh.
‘Called in a favour, boss. Bloke in forensics doesn’t take much sweet-talking to rush through a quick fingerprint and DNA sample. Still waiting for dental records, but the ID makes sense.’
‘Well?’
‘Trevor Jefferson,’ says Tremberg. ‘Thirty-five. Last known address was a flat on Holderness Road. Bedsit, really. Over the bookie’s.’
‘So how did he end up in the house on Orchard Park?’ Pharaoh asks, and in her voice McAvoy fancies he hears the faint hope that there will be an easy answer.
‘That’s the weird bit,’ says Tremberg. ‘He used to live on Orchard Park. Wife, two kids and a stepson. Just a stone’s throw from where he was found.’
McAvoy feels a constriction in his chest. It is almost as if he knows what Tremberg is about to say.
‘So what, he got pissed and forgot where he was? Thought it was still 2003? Let himself in at the first house that looked habitable, fell asleep on the sofa with a fag in his mouth and cooked himself. Somebody heard about it, thought it was a good way to settle some old feud, and finished the job off in hospital?’ The optimism in Pharaoh’s voice sounds forced.
‘I haven’t got to the weird bit,’ says Tremberg, pulling a face.
‘Go on,’ says Pharaoh with a sigh.
‘The reason he left Orchard Park was because his house burned down. His wife and kids in it. He was the only one who got out alive. The Fire Service thought it was arson, though nobody ever got caught.’
McAvoy looks at the floor as Trish Pharaoh stares hard at the side of his face. Somehow, he gets the impression she feels this is his fault.
‘McAvoy?’ Her tone of voice demands explanation.
‘I don’t know, ma’am.’
She turns to Spink. He raises his hands in a shrug, simply relieved that he’s not really involved. That he’s only in Hull to write a book and that soon he’ll be able to get the fuck out of here.
‘Stein will have to wait,’ she says eventually. ‘McAvoy, you and Tremberg have got this. I want to know chapter and verse on those fires. On the suspects. On this victim. The homeowners. Helen, get McAvoy up to speed on what you know and get out to Orchard Park.’
Tremberg looks crestfallen. McAvoy realises she thinks she’s being taken off the Daphne Cotton case. Perhaps she is.
‘Boss, I’m swamped with the Cotton case already …’
‘I know, Helen,’ says Pharaoh, reaching around McAvoy to give her a squeeze on the arm. ‘But I need somebody I can trust. Keep an eye on this lump, will you?’
Tremberg lets herself be pacified and nods. Manages a toothless smile. It’s at Pharaoh, nobody else. She won’t look at McAvoy. He wonders if she’s angry with him, or just too disappointed to be civil.
‘Right,’ says Pharaoh, looking at her watch. ‘It’s gone ten, which means my kids will either be putting themselves to bed, or they’ll have taken over the neighbourhood and young Ruby has installed herself as queen. I know which scenario my money’s on.’
McAvoy takes the hint. Steps out of the office with an almost imperceptible nod and feels the heat of the hallway add another veneer of colour to his glowing cheeks. The door closes behind him, and through the wood he simply hears Pharaoh say ‘fucking hell’.
‘The coffee shop on the corner of Goddard,’ says Tremberg, over her shoulder as she walks back down the corridor. ‘Seven thirty a.m. We’ll start knocking on doors while they’re still snoring.’
McAvoy watches her depart.
Stands still, unsure which of the many emotions swirling in his gut to focus on.
Wonders if it’s wrong to be excited.
And sinks into a sensation of delight that tonight, he’ll be home in time to make love to his wife, and tell her that today, somehow, he did something important. That he is natural police. And that deep inside, a little voice is telling him that all this is connected, and the only man who can join the dots is her husband.
CHAPTER 13
‘They haven’t released him yet,’ says Tremberg, by way of greeting.
Her hair is damp, her face pale, and there are dark circles under her eyes.
‘Neville the Racist,’ she adds, in a voice still half-asleep. ‘Duty solicitor’s going bloody mental.’
She begins to take off her waterproof, and then changes her mind. Shrugs herself back into it and sits down on one of the padded, plastic-backed chairs that face the Formicatopped table. ‘You mind? I only got out the shower twenty minutes ago. Haven’t had a drink yet.’
She reaches across and wraps her hand around the large chipped mug of builder’s tea that stands, half- empty, in front of McAvoy. Raises it to her lips and takes a loud gulp. Pulls a face. ‘Sweet enough for you?’ she asks, and her mood is far friendlier than last night.
They are the only two customers in the Pigeon Pie Cafe, a white-painted, glass-fronted building on the corner of Goddard Avenue. It’s a proper greasy spoon, complete with laminated menus and ketchup dispensers in the shape of tomatoes. The dish of the day tends to be sausage, bacon or both, and the place is a Mecca for anybody who thinks that culinary evolution peaked with the combination of brown sauce and baked beans.
McAvoy would have loved nothing more than to order a sausage and fried-egg sandwich when he walked through the door ten minutes ago, but Roisin had knocked him up a breakfast of scrambled egg and smoked salmon on homemade rye bread before he left the house, and he knows how she would pout if she knew it had barely touched the sides of his appetite. He’d settled for tea.
‘You eating?’ he asks.
‘Tempting,’ she says, mulling it over. ‘They do a belly-buster special, you know. If you manage to eat it all you get it free. Nobody’s managed it yet.’
‘You ever had a go?’
‘What are you saying, Sarge?’ She looks indignant, but then breaks into a smile to let him know she’s joking. ‘Sorry if I was a cow last night,’ she says, taking another slurp of tea. ‘Had just got my teeth into the Daphne Cotton murder and then suddenly I’m given some dead drunk on Orchard Park.’
‘I understand,’ says McAvoy, nodding. He feels bad that Tremberg has been lumbered with this, and worse because of all the things he has to worry about, his fear at having to make conversation with a female colleague for the day is the one uppermost in his mind.
‘Two slices of toast, please,’ shouts Tremberg at the big-boned woman in a blue overall working the counter.
