drunk and disorderly incident outside the Fathom Five …’
‘Fathom Five? Closed down last year.’
‘There’s nothing else here!’ shouts McAvoy, re-reading his notes in the hope that he’ll see something new. A clue. An indication of what to bloody do next.
Tremberg bites her lip, swinging the car hard to the right at the latest in a seemingly endless chain of roundabouts that leads into the town centre. ‘Call Sharon at the Bear,’ she says triumphantly. ‘If Angela drinks down Freemo, she’ll know her.’
Grateful for something to do, McAvoy dials the first of the directory inquiries numbers that he can remember. Listens for what seems like an age as the Asian voice at the other end of the line reads off the welcome script. ‘The Bear,’ he yells. ‘Freeman Street. Grimsby.’
Tremberg winces as she hears him repeat it.
‘No,’ he’s bellowing. ‘Just put me through. Put me through.’
A moment later he gives her a nod. It’s ringing.
‘Hello? Is that the landlady? Ms …? Sharon? I’m ringing from Humberside Police. I urgently need to contact a lady who might be one of your regulars. Angela Martindale …’
Tremberg takes her eyes off the road for a full ten seconds, watching McAvoy’s face drift through different stages of anger and frustration. She can imagine what the woman at the other end of the line is saying. Knows full well that she thinks she’s doing Angie a good turn. That she’s sticking by her regulars. Telling the Old Bill where to get off.
Without thinking, she reaches across and takes the phone from her sergeant. ‘Sharon,’ she barks into the receiver. ‘This is Helen Tremberg. I arrested Barry the Bailiff when he cracked Johnno with his car-lock. Remember? Right, we need to find Angie Martindale now. I swear to God, if you find out we’ve nicked her for anything on the back of what you’ve told us, I’ll pay for your beer order from my own pocket for the next twelve months. Right.’ She nods. ‘Good, love. Good.’
She hands the phone back to McAvoy. ‘One of her regulars said he was nattering with her in Wilson’s an hour or so back. Top of Freeman Street. Serves Bass.’
‘Does she have a means of contacting-’
‘Freemo,’ says Tremberg, as she turns sharply right past the
In a blossoming darkness punctuated by neon signs and winking headlights, the boarded-up shop fronts and graffiti-covered corrugated shutters strike McAvoy as something transplanted from the Eastern bloc. He is used to this misery in Hull. This is a new town. A new imagining of recession and poverty, of apathy and pained acceptance. It hurts him to his heart.
‘Top of the street,’ says Tremberg again.
They see the swinging signs and ruined facades of three different pubs on their right as they pass the yawning entrance to the fish market. McAvoy tastes the air, expecting cod, haddock, perhaps turbot. Finds nothing. Not the salt of the sea. He can smell nothing but chips and petrol fumes. See nothing but snow and darkness, streetlights and shadowy shop doorways.
‘That’s Sharon’s place,’ says Tremberg as they pass a bar with a whitewashed front and black-painted double doors, inside which huddle half a dozen smokers, stamping feet, hand-rolling cigarettes, watching the traffic and spitting as far as the kerb.
‘Lights are on,’ says Tremberg, motioning ahead at a building on their right, sandwiched between a charity shop and a bakery. ‘Good sign.’
She slows the car and pulls into a parking bay outside the bar. Closes her eyes for a second before killing the engine. Looks up and slowly turns her head. McAvoy is staring over her shoulder at the closed front door.
‘She might not be here,’ says McAvoy.
‘No.’
‘Might be anywhere. Having a drink somewhere else. Met a bloke. Gone to do her Christmas shopping …’
‘Yes.’
‘The chances of her being in there now …’
‘Slim.’
‘Almost non-existent.’
‘May as well get a drink while we’re here, though …’
‘Pint of Bass?’
‘Pint of Bass, yeah.’
A look passes between them as they both tell themselves they believe their lies. And then McAvoy nods.
The wind grabs the door as McAvoy tries to disentangle himself from the too-small vehicle and he feels a shooting pain in his arm as he battles with the wind to pull it shut. By the time he has got both feet on the road and slammed the door closed, Tremberg is already trying the door; rattling the rusted handle, knocking with her boots.
‘It’s locked,’ she says breathlessly, over the sound of the wind. She locates the letterbox and pushes her fingers in, pressing her face to the gap through which a sliver of yellow light emerges. ‘Police,’ she yells. ‘Police.’
She looks through the letterbox again. Presses her ear to it.
‘Anything?’ asks McAvoy.
Tremberg screws up her face as she turns to him. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Distractedly, she waves her hand at the wind, as if motioning for it to be quiet. ‘I can’t hear. You try.’
She moves aside and McAvoy presses his ear to the gap. Angles his head and shouts ‘Angela Martindale! Are you in there? Police. Open up.’
There is no mistaking the sound. It is human. Afraid. A guttural, animal roar of timeless, faceless terror.
Tremberg has heard it too, but her attention is distracted by sounds from down the road. The smokers from the Bear are pouring out into the street, drawn to drama like flies to shit.
She looks back at McAvoy, about to tell him to break the door in, but he is already running at the entrance.
The door comes off its hinges, smashing backwards as if ram-raided, and McAvoy spills into the foyer of the bar. There is a pain in his shoulder and he tastes blood where his teeth collided too hard on impact, but he pushes such sensations from his mind, shaking his head to clear his thoughts.
He drags himself upright, pushing down on the broken door, feeling a long, jagged splinter slide under his skin.
‘Sarge!’
Tremberg takes his arm and hauls him upright. They stand on the muddy wooden floor, blinking in the light. The bar is empty. Some abandoned shopping bags stand by a bar stool. There are dirty glasses on the bar top.
‘Hello.’
The word sounds comical in the abandoned space.
Then the scream comes again.
McAvoy whirls round, searching the near wall for a doorway. Finds none. Begins running for the far end of the bar. He puts a hand out and grabs the brass rail that runs along the varnished wooden top. Without thinking, he picks up a dirty glass. Almost stops as he sees the body behind the bar.
‘Helen,’ he yells, spotting the entrance to the toilets. ‘Behind the bar!’
Without drawing breath he bursts through the swing door and clatters into a plaster wall. To his right are the entrances to the ladies’ and gents’ facilities. With the glass in his right hand, he kicks out at the door to the ladies and throws himself inside.
The room is bathed in blue neon, emanating from a single strip light in the ceiling. There is a broken mirror on the far wall and two cubicles, both with half open doors.
Angie Martindale is wriggling on her back on the floor. Her skirt has been pushed up to her waist. Her leggings rolled down to her ankles. In the unnatural light, the mess of blood around her pubic region looks tar-black
