just stay here for good. Make this bench his permanent home. Here, in the snow-covered isolation of Queen’s Gardens; huddled inside his jacket, chocolate on his tongue, cold pain in his bones, and a feeling not unlike toothache boring into his brain, as if deliberately trying to make his thoughts hollow and painful.
It’s quiet, here in the park. At this hour, this time of year, it’s empty. Hull’s empty. The sudden snowfall after days of frost has turned the city’s network of pot-holed B-roads and winding dual carriageways into so many ice rinks and snow banks, and McAvoy fancies that the thousands of commuters who usually make their way into the city centre will be ringing in and suggesting they start their Christmas holidays early. Others will chance it. Take their old cars with their bald tyres and their too-small engines, and drive too fast on glassy tarmac. People will grieve today. Families will lose loved ones. By nightfall, forensics officers will be disentangling broken limbs from crushed cars. Uniformed officers will have broken bad news to sobbing relatives. A detective will have been assigned. A press release will have been circulated. The cycle will go on.
He wonders briefly whether anybody really gives a fuck about anything.
‘Feeding the penguins, McAvoy?’
He looks up and sees the slender, elegant figure of Tom Spink crunching through the snow towards him.
‘Sir, I …’
McAvoy begins to speak and stops again.
‘Can’t say I blame you,’ says Spink airily. ‘Does you good. Clears the head. Clears the lungs too, if you’re a smoker. Mind if I join you?’
McAvoy nods at the space on the wrought-iron bench.
‘It’s wet,’ he says, in case Spink hasn’t noticed the two inches of snow icing the green-painted bench.
‘It’ll do,’ says Spink, sitting down.
‘Nippy,’ he adds, as he makes himself vaguely comfortable. He’s wearing a thin leather coat over his collarless shirt and soft cords. ‘Suppose this is nowt where you’re from, eh?’
McAvoy turns away.
‘Pharaoh got as far as the Humber Bridge,’ he says. ‘Managed to get across despite the weather warnings. She was at the top of Boothferry Road when her mobile went and the brass told her not to risk it. To take a few days off. Colin Ray’s got things under control.’
‘She take any notice?’
‘Yes and no. She’s not going to crash the party. Diverted to Priory Road.’
‘How’s she taking it?’
‘About as well as you’d expect. Managed to bite her tongue, but she’s got to be careful how she plays this. If she keeps her head down, it could all work out fine. She’ll have been lead detective on a successful hunt for a killer. If she starts shouting the odds and kicking up a stink, her card will be marked.’
McAvoy realises he’s grinding his bunched fists into his knees. Forces himself to stop.
‘It’s not Russ Chandler,’ he says through his teeth. ‘I’ve been sitting here thinking about it. Thinking about nothing else. It’s not him.’
Spink turns to him. Stares into his eyes for a good twenty seconds, as if trying to read the inside of his skull. Seems to scorch the inside of McAvoy’s head with the intensity of his gaze. Then he turns away, as if making a decision.
‘It often isn’t.’
McAvoy pulls a face. ‘What?’
‘It often isn’t, son. You know that better than anyone. You’re going to kill yourself if you carry on like this, lad.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with giving a damn,’ he spits angrily.
‘No, lad. There’s nothing wrong with giving a damn. But the price you pay for it is this. You must see it, you must see the cops who come to work, do a half-decent job, and head home without a backward glance. You must have seen them toasting questionable results and dodgy convictions. You must have wondered why you can’t be that way.’
‘I just think it matters,’ he begins, and then stops when he feels the words catching in his throat.
‘It does matter, Aector. It matters that a villain gets locked up, because that way, the public can go back to feeling all safe and secure in the knowledge that our boys in blue are up to the challenge of keeping them safe from nutters. That’s why it matters. And it matters to the press, because it sells newspapers. And it matters to the top brass because it makes their crime statistics look peachy. And it matters to the politicians because voters don’t want to live in a society where a young girl can get chopped up in a church during Evensong. And back at the bottom, it matters to coppers, because they don’t want to get it in the neck from their superiors, and because most of them decided to become a police officer in the hope of making some kind of difference to the world. Then there are people like you, son. People who need to matter on some fucking cosmic level. People who need to find justice as if it’s some fundamental ingredient of the universe. As if it’s some naturally occurring mineral that you can drill for and dole out.’
Spink pauses. Waves a hand, tiredly.
‘McAvoy, son, it’s not like that. It should be, yeah. By Christ it would be nice if the whole world felt your outrage. If people couldn’t eat or sleep or function until the balance had been redressed and the evil expunged by some act of good, or decency, or justice, or whatever you want to call it. But they don’t. They read about something horrible and they say it’s awful and they shake their heads and say the world’s going to the dogs and then they put the telly on and watch
Spink stops. Screws up his eyes. Gives his head a little shake. Turns away.
McAvoy sits in silence. He tugs at the little patch of hair beneath his lower lip. Pulls it until it begins to come out. There’s an anger in him. An indignation at being read, at being analysed, at being judged, by a man he barely knows and who has the temerity to call him ‘son’.
McAvoy opens his mouth and shuts it again. He wipes a hand across his face.
‘Colin Ray’s got evidence, son. It might not match what’s in your gut and it might just hurt like hell, but unless you’ve got any of that big bag of natural justice you want to sprinkle, then Russ Chandler’s the man that can be tried, and maybe even convicted of murder.’
McAvoy glares at him. ‘Do you think he did it?’
After a moment of trying to stare him out, Spink looks away. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’
McAvoy spits again.
He stands up. Takes a gulp of cold, fresh air.
Towers over the other man.
‘It matters what I think.’
He says it through gritted teeth, but finds himself twitching into a smile, as the elation of realisation of acceptance seems to carbonate his blood, to fill his skull with endorphins and energy.
‘It fucking matters.’
There’s an art to walking in snow. Novices grip too hard with their feet; arching their soles, digging in with their toes, and are on their knees rubbing cramped-up calves within a hundred paces.
Others are too cautious, taking large strides, stepping onto patches of what seems like firm ground. They slip on iced concrete. Tumble, holding bruised shins — ankles twisting inside unsuitable shoes.
McAvoy walks as he was taught. Head down. Watching the ground for changes in the texture of the snow. Hands at his sides, ready to shoot out and break his fall.
He was born into a landscape harsher than this mosaic of tended grass and firm pavements, overlaid with six inches of white. He grew up on terrain scarred with crevices, with cracks, with loose shingle and shale; all concealed for eight months of the year by the relentless snowfall.
He sometimes remembers the noise the sheep made when they stumbled and snapped a leg. Remembers the silence too, in the moments after he ended their suffering. Slit their throats with a pocket knife. Pinched their mouths and nostrils closed with a gloved hand.
Remembers the artfulness with which his father could snap a neck. His acceptance of the necessity of his
