‘Not a sausage. Too windy to get the chopper up, and too late now anyway. But with the amount of blood he’s covered in, somebody will have spotted him …’
‘OK,’ says McAvoy. He turns away from the girl’s body and looks into Tremberg’s face. She’s a very average- looking woman, compared to his Roisin, but she has a face that he reckons an artist would enjoy. Thin, elfin features sit in the centre of a round, broad head, like a gourmet meal in the middle of a large, plain plate. She’s tall and athletic, perhaps thirty years old, and dresses in an inoffensive, nondescript fashion that makes her neither a sex object to the male officers nor a threat to the more Machiavellian women. She’s funny, energetic and easy to get along with, and although there’s a slight tremble to her lips that betrays the adrenalin running through her body at the thought of being involved in the hunt for this killer, she is otherwise masking it with an aplomb McAvoy finds admirable.
‘The family,’ he says. ‘Were they here?’
‘No. They usually are. The verger said they were friends of the church, whatever you think that means. But no, she was here on her own. They dropped her off and she was going to make her own way back. That’s according to one of the other acolytes. An older lad. Wants to be a priest. Or a vicar. Don’t know the difference.’
‘But they’ve been informed, her parents. They know?’
‘Yes, sir. Family liaison have been contacted. I thought you’d want it to be our first port of call, soon as you got your faculties together.’
McAvoy gives a thin smile. He’s pleased he is standing up. Were he sitting down, his legs would be jiggling up and down with a feeling that a less specific man would call excitement. McAvoy does not think of it as such. It is not even nervousness. It is a feeling he associates with the beginning of things. The potential of the blank page. He wants to know about Daphne Cotton. Wants to know who killed her, and why. Wants to know why he, Aector McAvoy, was spared the blade. Why there were tears in the man’s eyes. Wants to show that he can do this. That he’s more than the copper who brought down Doug Roper.
He looks at his surroundings, at this majestic, aweinspiring place.
Will it be the same? he wonders. Can the faithful sit in their pews and praise the Lord and not remember the time a killer leapt from the congregation and slaughtered one of the acolytes as she held her candle and attended the priest? He screws up his eyes. Rubs a palm over his features. When he opens them again he is staring at a great golden eagle, its wings folded in repose. He wonders at its significance. Why it stands here, on a tiled floor, at the top of the nave, facing the gothic stairs that lead to the lectern. Wonders who chose this bird, for this place. Feels his mind beginning to race. To analyse. This murder in a church, less than two weeks before Christmas. He contorts his features, as he remembers that moment, not yet two hours ago, when the song of the choir flooded across the square and warmed the hearts of those who heard it. Thinks of how Daphne Cotton must have felt in those awful moments, when the protective embrace of her faith, of her congregation, was punctured by a blade.
‘The car’s outside, Sarge,’ says Tremberg eagerly, gesturing to the door with her head. ‘Ben Nielsen’s on his way here to oversee interviews. We’ve got child specialists en route to interview the choirboys. They probably had the best views, poor sods …’
As McAvoy starts walking towards the door, the phone rings in his inside pocket. A tremor of anxiety floods him. He should have called in. Should have logged this straightaway with the top brass. Stamped his brand on the case. But he was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, letting an inexperienced DC run the show.
‘Detective Sergeant McAvoy,’ he says, and stops walking, already letting his head drop.
‘McAvoy. This is ACC Everett. What’s going on down there?’ The voice of the Assistant Chief Constable is tense and stern.
‘We’re on top of things, sir. We’re on our way to see the family now …’
‘We?’
‘DC Helen Tremberg and myself, sir …’
‘Not Pharaoh?’
McAvoy hears himself gulp. It feels as though he’s swallowed ice water on an empty stomach. His guts start to cramp.
‘Detective Superintendent Pharaoh is on a course this weekend, sir. I’m duty senior officer …’
‘Pharaoh phoned in, McAvoy. Cancelled the course the second she heard. This is a murder, Sergeant. In the city’s biggest, most historic church. The church where William Wilberforce was baptised. A teenage girl, hacked up by a lunatic in front of the congregation? This is all-hands-to-the-pump time, man.’
‘So do you want me to fill her in after I’ve spoken to the girl’s family?’
‘No.’ There is a finality to Everett’s voice that makes a mockery of his own belief that this could be his investigation.
‘Yes, sir,’ he says defeatedly, like a schoolboy told he has not made the team. Beside him, Tremberg turns away, popping two pieces of gum into her mouth and chewing angrily as she realises what is happening.
‘No, I was ringing about the other matter, McAvoy. The one I telephoned about earlier,’ Everett continues with barely a pause.
‘Yes, sir, I got the message but-’
‘Well, never mind that now. Other things have come up. But now you’re free of having to lead the investigation you can do something else for me. A favour, actually.’
McAvoy’s eyes are closed now. He’s barely listening.
‘If I can, sir.’
‘Excellent. I’ve had a call from a pal of mine at Southampton. It seems an old chap from their neck of the woods has had an accident while making some documentary out at sea. Terrible. Terrible. He’s from this area originally. Still got family. A sister, out at Beeford. Normally, a uniform would drive by and break the news, but this lady, well …’ Everett starts to stumble over his words. He sounds like a shy man making a speech at a wedding. ‘Well, look, she’s the wife of the Police Authority vice-chair. A very important lady. She and her husband are big supporters of a lot of the initiatives the community policing programme are hoping to see through over the next few years. And you always have such a fine way with people …’
There is a rushing sound in McAvoy’s ears. His heart is thudding. He can smell his own blood in his nostrils. He opens his eyes to see Tremberg walking away from him, an air of contempt to her gait. She’ll find her way into Pharaoh’s team.
‘Yes, sir.’
CHAPTER 3
McAvoy slows down to 20mph. Squints into the darkness as the wheels of the boxy saloon throw up muddy streaks against the spray-jewelled glass. His eyes are eerily keen, but the December gloom enfolds him in a damp fist. Concentrating, he glimpses the eyes of song thrushes roosting in the lower reaches of the hedgerows. Can see the dead, rotting stems of cow-parsley and flaxweed sticking out like broken spears from the muddy, tyre-worn boundary of the road. Fancies that a rabbit is streaking across the wet gravel to his rear; a moment of fur and exclamation mark of tail, glimpsed in the foggy glass.
It is already 6 p.m. The drive back from Beeford, twenty miles up the coast from his North Hull home, will take an hour in these conditions. He will have to pass his own front door on his journey back to the central police station, and the thought makes him irritable, but a recent order from the Chief Constable’s office forbade the overnight use of pool cars without prior written approval, and McAvoy assumes there must be a good reason for the directive, and will ensure it is enforced.
A gap suddenly opens up in the hedgerows to McAvoy’s right and he gently swings the lumbering vehicle into the space for which he has been searching. In daylight, in spring, he imagines the scene around him will be a watercolour of ploughed brown soil and swaying blonde corn; but in this Stygian dark, this feels a lonely place, and it is with relief that he spies the brooding hulk of the tall, slate-grey farmhouse as the car grinds over firm, reassuring gravel and up the private drive.
