The Dark Winter

McAvoy can’t help himself. ‘What have you found?’

Shaz Archer suddenly looks like a cat stretching out after a long nap. Her whole posture becomes preening and luxurious. ‘Woke up the chap that used to be his agent,’ she says though a grin. ‘Interesting man.’

‘And?’ Tom Spink’s voice has become authoritative. The DCI inside him has momentarily forgotten he’s retired.

‘And he says our Russ Chandler, or whatever he likes to call himself, is a bloody headcase.’

She takes the folder from Ray’s hands and holds its out to McAvoy, beckoning him forward as if enticing a dog with a biscuit. He takes the file.

‘Read it,’ says Archer, under her breath.

As McAvoy opens the folder he hears the door to the interview room open and close. He looks up into Shaz Archer’s face. Ray has gone back in to finish the job.

‘Not hard to fathom when you’ve got all the pieces,’ says Archer, waggling her fingers in the air as she mimes mystery. ‘Our boy in there’s spent his bloody life trying to be an author. Dreamed of it since he was a kid. Never good enough. Got his early works rejected without being opened. Got some interest when he started doing a bit of investigative work but never took off. Had to self-publish in the end. One book was almost readable, managed to get himself an agent, but it still never happened. Just lost it in the end. Couldn’t keep taking the rejection. Couldn’t stand writing about people who he saw as nobodies and not being a household name himself. Came up with all of this as a way of payback. Psychologically it’s a neat fit. Get a shrink to sign it. Col knows somebody …’

McAvoy’s been fighting with himself not to blurt out the word ‘bollocks’ but it’s a battle he can’t win.

‘That’s all just guesswork, isn’t it, DI Archer?’ says Spink, distracting her before she can turn on her junior officer.

‘We’ve got his fantasies,’ she says, pointing at the folder. ‘We’ve got Daphne Cotton’s name in his notebook. We’ve got Angie Martindale. His involvement with Fred Stein. Trevor Jefferson. He’s the common link.’

‘But that doesn’t mean-’

‘Read the letter he sent the publisher that turned him down.’

There is something about the way she says it that makes McAvoy stop talking. He leafs through the photocopied pages in the file. Notices the red felt pen circle around the page of handwritten notes. Sees the name ‘Daphne C’. A phone number. Reams of shorthand. He turns the pages.

‘There,’ says Archer, nodding.

Dear Mr Hall,

My agent, Richard Sage, has just informed me of your decision not to proceed with the publication of my novel, All Hands. As you can perhaps imagine, I find this news very distressing. I have poured my heart and soul into this volume and, as sales of my previous, albeit self-published, literary efforts demonstrate, there is a market for my work. I must ask that you reconsider. In our previous correspondence I have spoken in glowing terms of the esteem in which I hold your publishing house and I have taken great personal interest in both your organisation and its personnel. For example, I know that your home address is Lowndes Square, Knightsbridge. Your wife’s name is Lauren. Your son, William, boards at Rowan Prep School in Esher. I tell you this not to alarm or threaten you into offering me a publishing deal, but to demonstrate the meticulous single- mindedness of my painstaking research. Indeed, I am willing to go to almost any lengths in order to achieve my dream. As I have already mentioned, my own understanding of the criminal psyche is unsurpassed and my many interviews with convicted killers have offered me an unrivalled insight into the disordered mind. I await your response with interest …

McAvoy closes his eyes for five whole seconds. Imagines the correspondence being read out in court. Pictures Chandler’s defence barrister telling him to change his plea to guilty and take the prosecution’s offer of a reduced sentence. Sees Ray smiling as his mates slap his back.

‘Open and shut,’ says Archer, and for once, her words don’t seem designed to pummel him. They merely state fact.

‘What was the upshot?’ asks McAvoy, in little more than a croak.

‘Publisher threatened to go to the police and the agent dropped him,’ says Archer, taking the folder from his hands and putting it under her arm. ‘The agent’s had plenty of emails from him as well. All in a similar tone. Totally obsessive. Sage said he’s never met anybody so desperate. Somebody who would kill to see their name on a bookshelf.’

McAvoy frowns. It makes no sense. He’s seen nothing in Chandler’s eyes to make any of this believable.

‘His eyes,’ he remembers suddenly. ‘The man I fought with had blue eyes. Chandler doesn’t.’

‘Fucking hell, McAvoy,’ says Archer angrily. ‘Maybe he wore contacts. That’s all just detail. We’ve got murders, and we’ve got a guy with “murderer” written through him like a stick of Blackpool rock.’

‘But if it’s not …’

‘Then he won’t confess.’

McAvoy reaches into his coat and pulls out pages he’d printed off the internet moments after Spink sent him the message. ‘Look at these,’ he says pleadingly. ‘There are other people at risk. Look at this woman. A charity worker blown up in Iraq. Still alive but she’s the only one who made it. We can’t get this wrong. The next victim could be here …’

McAvoy turns to Spink, but the older man is facing away from him, staring down the corridor, as if unable to meet his eyes.

The door opens and Colin Ray pokes his head out of the crack. His face is covered in sweat. The neck of his jumper is ragged and twisted. He looks at McAvoy for less than a heartbeat and then turns his gaze to Archer.

‘Come in, Shaz,’ he says quietly. ‘Peg-leg wants to confess.’

She takes the printed pages from McAvoy’s unresisting hand and walks back into the interview room.

CHAPTER 20

8.43 a.m. Queen’s Gardens. Ten days before Christmas.

A sunken area of parkland overlaid with a quilt of untouched snow, criss-crossed with hidden paths and peppered with dead rose bushes and rubbish-filled flower-beds.

One set of footprints punched deep in the ground.

A bench, missing its backrest.

Aector McAvoy. Elbows on knees. Hat pulled down low. Eyes closed.

Pulls his phone from his pocket. Eighteen missed calls.

He’s hiding. He’s stomped off into the snow and the solitude because it hurts too much to see somebody else shaking the Chief Constable’s hand and drinking whisky surrounded by laughing uniforms and grinning suits.

Russ Chandler.

Charged with two counts of murder at 6.51 a.m.

Russ Chandler.

The man who butchered Daphne Cotton in view of the congregation at Holy Trinity Church.

Who set fire to Trevor Jefferson, then did it again in his hospital bed.

Russ Chandler. The man who answered ‘no comment’ for four hours, then told enough lies to get himself charged with murder.

In three hours he’ll be remanded into custody pending trial. It will be months before the prosecutors begin spotting the holes in the case.

By then, the unit will probably have imploded, or been given over to Ray, and McAvoy will probably be driving a desk in some remote community nick where a man who’s a dab hand with a database is a vaguely useful tool.

He puts the mobile away. Reaches down and picks up the litre bottle of fizzy pop that stands between his feet. Unscrews the cap and takes a swig. He’s guzzling orangeade like a tramp downs cider. He’s eaten three chocolate bars and a bag of jelly sweets. The sugar’s making him feel a bit manic, and he’s craving something beefy and deep.

He uncrosses his legs. Sits forward. Rubs his cold thighs. Sits back. Takes another swig. Wonders if he could