it. Just let me dress you for a little while.’
He’d relented. Let her dress him. Carried the man-bag. Grown used to the coat, which was warm and kept the rain off, and spared him too many barbs about his unruly ginger hair.
When he insisted that clothes don’t make the man, she said: ‘When people see you, they need to see somebody to reckon with. Somebody with confidence. Somebody with style. It’s not as though you’re Columbo. You’re just badly dressed.’
And so Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy had become a fashion victim. Turned up at the station that Monday morning to catcalls, wolf-whistles and a chorus of the
McAvoy likes Nielsen. He’s one of the half-dozen new faces brought in six months back by the brass to try and wipe out the stench of the bad old days. The era that had both made and cost McAvoy his name. Nailed him as the copper who cost a detective superintendent his job and sparked an internal investigation that scattered a crooked team of CID officers to the four winds. Who managed to glide through the whole thing without a blemish on his written record. He’s the copper who did for Doug Roper, the copper who nearly died out at the woods beneath the Humber Bridge, at the hands of a man whose crimes will never be known by anybody other than a handful of senior officers who stitched his face up more expertly than the doctors at Hull Royal. He’s the copper who refused to take up the offer of an easy transfer to a cosy community station. Who now finds himself on a team that doesn’t trust him, working for a boss who doesn’t rate him, and trying to blend into the background while carrying a Samsonite satchel with adjustable straps and waterproof bloody pockets …
Pharaoh has had to hit the ground running. In the wake of Doug Roper’s departure the Chief Constable decided the bad-boy’s old team should become an elite unit, specialising in serious crime. A unit within the greater body of CID, run by an experienced, reliable hand and staffed with the best officers from within the Humberside boundary. Nobody had expected the job to go to Trish Pharaoh, the sassy, determined ‘token woman’ from across the Humber. Detective Chief Inspector Colin Ray had been the bookies’ choice for promotion, with his protegee Sharon Archer as his number two. Instead, Trish Pharoah had been hand-picked by the Chief Constable, who needed something attention-grabbing to put in a press release. Brought her over from Grimsby and told her to make waves. Ray and Archer were drafted into the team as Pharaoh’s deputies, and neither took to the roll with good grace. Rumour had it the top brass told them on their first day that their new boss was a mere figurehead — a lightning conductor positioned to take the heat when it all went wrong. Told them that, in reality, they were the unit’s leaders. Pharaoh had different ideas, though; saw a chance to build something special and set about picking her team. But for every officer she recruited, Ray brought in one of his own. The unit was soon laced with intrigue and duplicity, split between Ray’s old campaigners and Pharaoh’s more forward-thinking, hand-picked specialists.
McAvoy falls into neither camp. His business cards declare him a member of the Serious and Organised Crime Unit, but he is nobody’s blueeyed boy. He requested the transfer himself. Used up his thank-you from the top brass. Slid into the unit as a muted reward for nearly getting himself killed in the line of a duty that nobody had asked him to burden himself with.
In truth, he is somewhere between an ambassador and a mascot; an educated, well-spoken, physically imposing emblem of the brave new world of Humberside Police — tailor-made for giving talks to the Women’s Institute and local schools, and a valuable asset when putting together year-end reports on the force’s new software requirements.
‘What’s going on, Daddy?’
As McAvoy stares out across the square, the smell of snow grows suddenly stronger. He’s heard it said that it can be too cold for snow, but a childhood spent in the harsh and unforgiving embrace of the Western Highlands has taught him that it is never too cold for flakes to fall. This sudden plunging in temperature will harden the ground. Catch the snowfall without letting it settle. Cause the wind to rebound. Build a blizzard that will blind his young eyes and turn his fingers to blue stone …
In the back of his throat he tastes the metallic tang again, and for an instant wonders at the eerie similarity between the flavour of changing weather and the sharp, bitter taste of blood.
And then he hears screaming. Loud. Piercing. Multi-voiced. This is no drunken reveller, tickled by a boyfriend, chased by a pal. This is terror, unleashed.
McAvoy’s head snaps towards the direction of the sound. The movement in the square stops suddenly, as if the men, the women, the families moving on its surface are mere music-box ballerinas, spinning to a graceless, abrupt halt.
He stands, extricating his frame from the cramped confines of the table, and stares into the mouth of the church. He takes two steps and finds the table legs still blocking his thick shins. He kicks out. Knocks the table to the floor. Begins to run.
McAvoy sprints across the square, sensing movement on all sides. ‘Get back,’ he shouts, motioning with his arms as curious shoppers begin to jog towards Holy Trinity. His breathing becomes shallow, as adrenalin begins to pump into his veins. He feels the blood fill his cheeks. It is only as he runs through the open metal gates and into the shadow of the double doors that he remembers his son. He pulls up like a lame horse, all arms and legs and knotted, tumbling limbs. He stares back across the square. Sees a four-year-old boy sitting in front of an upended table, mouth open, crying for his daddy.
And for a moment, he is torn. Truly motionless with uncertainty.
A figure bursts from the doors. It is clad in black, head to toe.
There are fresh shrieks as this shadow springs forth from the open-mouthed House of God: a streak of silver in its left hand, stains upon its handle, damp upon its breast …
McAvoy has no time to raise his hands. He sees the blade rise. Fall. And then he is on his back, staring at the darkening sky, hearing running footsteps. Distant sirens. A voice. Feeling hands upon him.
And harsher, stronger, like a firm black pencil stroke among shading and blurs, another voice, drenched in anguish …
‘He’s killed her. She’s dead. She’s dead!’
Staring wide-eyed into the sky, he is the first to see the snow begin to fall.
CHAPTER 2
She lies where she fell, crumpled and folded on the altar steps: one leg drawn up, bent the wrong way at the knee — a dislodged training shoe hanging precariously from stockinged toes.
She is a black girl, her face and hands a rich mahogany: her upturned palms soft, the colour of churned milk. She’s young. Still in the throes of adolescence. Not old enough to buy cigarettes. Not old enough to have sex. Not old enough to die.
Nobody has tried to restart her heart. There are too many holes in her. Pressing on her chest would be like squeezing a wet sponge.
Her pure white cassock has been pulled up behind her back, creased beneath her corpse. Its thick white material hugs tight to the curve of one small, firm breast.
The girl’s blood has made her robe sodden and crimson down one side. It remains pristine on the other. Were it not for the twisted expression that enfolds the entirety of her face, it would seem as though this hideous indignity had only been visited on one side of her small frame.
It is clear she died in agony. The blood that streaks her cheeks, neck, chin and lips looks as though it was hurled at her in great wet handfuls. It settled on her in a hazy red rain as she lay here, dead and staring, gaze fixed on a distant ceiling of curving columns and hand-drawn stars.
‘You poor, poor girl.’
McAvoy stands by the altar, one big pink hand gripping the wooden backrest of the front pew. He feels sick
