‘Butter, not low-fat spread.’
‘A woman after my own heart,’ says McAvoy. ‘My dad used to say margarine had almost the same chemical qualities as plastic. I don’t know if that’s true, but it rather put me off. Like that whole thing about peanuts on the bar being full of blokes’ wee-wee. Nasty.’
Tremberg pulls a face. ‘Wee-wee?’ she asks, laughing.
McAvoy feels the beginning of a blush and is grateful when Tremberg’s toast arrives. ‘Sorry. Comes from having a young son.’
‘He’s a handsome boy, your Fin,’ says Tremberg, with her mouth full. ‘Proud of you, too. Wasn’t scared, y’know. He knew something bad had happened in the church and he saw you go down, but he knew you’d be getting up again. He said you’d get whoever did it.’
McAvoy has to look away to hide the huge grin that splits his face. ‘That’s his mother’s doing,’ he says, smothering his words with a big hand as he supports his head on his palm. ‘Got him thinking I’m indestructible. Some kind of superhero.’
‘Better than him thinking you’re a knob,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘That’s what most kids think of their parents.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You’re weird, Sarge. Everybody knows that.’
They sit in silence for a while. McAvoy finishes the tea and watches Tremberg lick butter from her fingers. They’re unmanicured and unadorned with any jewellery. They seem somehow naked when compared to his wife’s, which are sparkling and dainty.
‘You are, anyway,’ she says finally, picking at her teeth with a finger.
‘What?’
‘Indestructible. Everybody knows that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last year’s palaver,’ she says, raising her eyes and sitting forward in her chair. She appears to be coming to life in front of him. The tea and toast have given her some kind of sugar rush and she’s suddenly full of energy. ‘When you got, y’know …’
‘What?’
‘You were stabbed, weren’t you? That’s what everybody says.’ If she thinks it’s a sensitive subject that shouldn’t be approached without extreme care, she does not betray the fact in her manner.
‘Slashed, actually,’ he says softly. ‘A hacking motion. Overhand right.’
Tremberg lets out a deep breath. Feels compelled to say ‘fuck’. She screws her face up in thought. ‘Like Daphne?’
McAvoy nods. The thought has occurred to him too, though it is significant only to him. He knows that before her heart stopped beating, she will have felt pain. That the sensation is strangely cold. That there is a moment of dull agony, and then mere confusion. That it’s a horrible thing to endure.
Tremberg cocks her head, waiting for more. Nothing is forthcoming. ‘Sarge?’ she prompts.
‘What?’
She throws her hands up in frustration. ‘You’re not much of a bloody conversationalist.’
He looks at his watch. It’s taken her eight minutes to find fault with his company. ‘Has it occurred to you that it’s a conversation I don’t want to have?’
Tremberg considers this. ‘Yeah.’ Then she gives him an impish grin. ‘Just wanted to be the one who got you to crack.’
He looks puzzled; his eyebrows almost meeting in the middle.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, noting his expression. ‘There’s no cash riding on it. Just professional pride. How are we supposed to get suspects to fess up when we can’t even get one of our own to admit what happened to him?’
‘People wonder?’
‘Course they do. Everybody likes a mystery man, but they’d rather solve the mystery.’
‘Mystery man?’
‘Come on, Sarge. Big bugger like you, tiny, gorgeous little wife who cooks you gourmet packed lunches; son who thinks you’re Spiderman. Then there’s the little matter of Doug Roper and all that fuss last year that saw CID scattered to the four winds and you sent to some fancy private hospital in Scotland for a knife wound? You think nobody’s interested in chapter and verse?’
McAvoy considers it, as if for the first time. ‘Nobody’s ever asked me,’ he says weakly. ‘Anyway, I think I like being mysterious.’
‘You’ve got it down to a fine art,’ laughs Tremberg.
‘My wife will be delighted. I think she sees me as some sort of rebel, out there on the mean streets, righting wrongs, though she knows I’ve spent the past ten months doing nothing more than designing databases and running errands. I haven’t got her thinking I’m some sort of one-man force for good.’
‘She just thinks that way on her own?’
McAvoy looks into her eyes and tries to decide if she’s taking the piss or complimenting him on being loved properly. He wonders if she’s in a relationship herself. Whether she’s had her heart broken. Where she lives, what she thinks and why she became a police officer. It occurs to him he knows nothing about her. About any of them.
‘She was young when we got together,’ he confides, and feels the blush spread to the back of his neck. ‘And I helped her with some problems. She makes up her own mind.’
They sit in silence for a moment, and McAvoy congratulates himself on biting his tongue. For not taking an opportunity to unload his neuroses by telling his colleague that not a moment goes by when he doesn’t worry that his young wife married him out of gratitude, and that some day the novelty will wear off.
‘Problems?’ asks Tremberg, intrigued again.
‘She’s from a travelling family,’ says McAvoy, looking away. He’s far from ashamed about the admission and knows that Roisin would not mind, but he feels uncomfortable talking about any aspect of his personal life and finds it easier not to meet her eyes.
‘Gypsies?’ says Tremberg, surprised.
‘If you like,’ says McAvoy. ‘Prefers it to Pikey, any road.’
‘So what happened?’
‘It was a long time ago. I was barely out of training.’ He stops. Can’t seem to find the right words.
‘Where?’ she asks, helping him along as if it’s an interview situation.
‘Cumbria Constabulary. Borders.’
‘And?’
‘Group of travellers turned up in this farmer’s field on the road to Brampton,’ he says, sighing. Reconciling himself to the fact he will have to share.
‘Popular?’
‘Nice little town. Plenty of Tory voters and blue rinsers who didn’t take kindly to it. Sergeant and me went out to have a chat with them. Told them there was a designated site on the outskirts of Carlisle. Anyway, they said they’d be gone before the day was out. Nice enough bunch. Maybe a dozen caravans. Kids everywhere. Roisin must have been there, but I didn’t see her.’
Tremberg looks at him expectantly. ‘Love at first sight, was it?’ she asks, trying to keep things light.
‘She was a child.’
‘I’m kidding, Sarge. Jesus.’ Tremberg looks pissed off. Shrugs, as if this is too much effort, but McAvoy has already started talking. More freely now. Suddenly desperate to get the words out.
‘They didn’t go,’ he says, staring out of the window. ‘More travellers turned up. Bad lot. So the landowner went down there to ask them why they hadn’t moved on. He was attacked. Hurt enough to upset some of his staff. They went looking for a spot of revenge. Found Roisin and her sister walking back from the shops.’
McAvoy pauses. Tremberg notices him pick up the salt cellar and grip it hard. Watches his knuckles grow white.
‘If I wasn’t such a bloody idiot, I don’t know what would have happened,’ he says, his jaw tight.
‘What?’
