Voices. Shouts. Clatters. Bangs. Through double mahogany doors and into the lion’s den.
He is raising his hand to knock on the door when it suddenly swings inwards. Trish Pharaoh storms angrily out, deep in rushed conversation.
‘… high time they realised that, Ben.’
She’s a handsome woman in her early forties, and looks more like a cleaner than a senior detective. Barely regulation height, she’s plump, with long black hair that is expertly styled about once every six months, and left to grow wild the rest of the time. She has four children, and treats her officers with the same mix of tenderness, pride and aggressive disappointment as she does her offspring. Tactile and flirty, she scares the hell out of the younger male officers, to whom she exudes a certain best-mate’s-mum kind of sexiness. She wears a wedding ring, though the photos on her desk do not include a man’s picture.
She stops suddenly when she notices McAvoy, and DC Nielsen clatters into her back. She spins round and glares at him before turning to snarl at McAvoy.
‘The wanderer returns,’ she says.
‘Ma’am, I was in a radio black spot on a goodwill assignment from ACC Everett and-’
‘Shush.’
She places her finger to her own lips, and then holds her palms out in front of her, her eyes closed, as if counting to ten. The three of them stand in silence in the corridor for a moment. DC Nielsen and Sergeant McAvoy, naughty, clumsy, absentee schoolboys who’ve gravely disappointed a favourite teacher.
Eventually, she sighs. ‘Anyway, you’re here now. I’m sure you had your reasons. Ben will bring you up to speed and you can start working the database. It’s a bit late to get much done on the phones, but we need the congregation loading into that matrix you came up with. I’m right in thinking that it was for this kind of case, yes? Lots of witnesses. Disparate backgrounds? Links between-’
‘Yes, yes,’ says McAvoy, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘It’s like a Venn diagram. We find out everything about a certain group of people, then load that into the system and see where there are parallels, or, in particular, overlaps, and-’
‘Fascinating,’ she says with a bright smile. ‘Like I said, Ben can bring you up to speed and get your statement.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘You were a witness, McAvoy. You saw who did this. They hit you in the bloody face with the murder weapon. Quite what you and ACC Everett were thinking …’
‘I was following orders, ma’am.’
‘Well, follow mine. There’ll be a briefing at eight,’ she says, looking at her watch, then clip-clops down the corridor in heeled biker boots.
DC Nielsen raises an eyebrow at McAvoy. They both look like teenagers who’ve just got away with something, and there is an impish smile on both their faces as the junior officer steps back into the office and McAvoy follows him into the brightly lit room.
DCs Helen Tremberg and Sophie Kirkland are sitting side by side at the same desk, staring an open laptop computer. Sophie is eating a slice of pizza and using it to gesture at something on the screen. It is the only computer in the room. The rest of the office is empty, save for some spilled and battered old files, and a firing squad of assorted binbags, which look like they’ve been sitting there by the wall for months.
‘Given us the presidential suite,’ says Ben, leading McAvoy to a semi-circle of plastic chairs by the window.
‘Looks like it. Why here? Why not back at Priory?’
‘Convenience, they said. Order came down from on high. I think they were imagining headlines.’
‘Like what?’
‘Usual shit. Us being eight miles from the scene, when there’s a station three hundred yards from where it happened.’
‘But there’s facilities at Priory,’ says McAvoy, confused. ‘This can’t have been Pharaoh’s call.’
‘No, she thought it was bloody stupid as well. But she’s had to hit the ground running. By the time she got up to speed, the ACC had put out a press release saying this would be coordinated from our city-centre local policing team.’
‘So we’re running uphill?’ he asks.
‘In fucking treacle, Sarge.’
He sighs. Plonks himself down in the hardbacked chair. He looks at his watch.
‘What do we know?’
‘Right,’ says Nielsen, jabbing a finger on the page. ‘Daphne Cotton. Fifteen. Residing with Tamara and Paul Cotton at Fergus Grove, Hessle. Nice little place, Sarge. Off a main road. Terraced. Three-bedroomed. Big front garden and a back yard. You know the ones? Back to front houses near the cemetery?’
McAvoy nods. He and Roisin had been to view a house in the area when she was pregnant with Fin. Had decided against it. Too little parking and the kitchen was too small. Nice neighbourhood, though.
‘Brothers? Sisters?’
‘The family liaison is trying to get all that, but I don’t think so. Her parents are an older couple. White, obviously.’
McAvoy screws up his face. ‘What?’
‘She’s adopted, Sarge,’ says Nielsen quickly.
‘She could have been adopted by black people, Constable,’ he says softly.
Nielsen looks to the ceiling, as if considering this for the first time. ‘Yes,’ he concedes. ‘She could have been.’
They sit in silence for a moment, both brooding over the point. Behind them, they can hear the two female officers. Helen Tremberg is reading out names from a list of members of the congregation and Sophie Kirkland is dividing them up between CID officers.
‘She wasn’t, though,’ says Nielsen.
‘No,’ says McAvoy, and tells himself to just let some things go. To shut his mouth until he has a point worth making.
Nielsen leaves another respectful pause. Then, after a bright smile, ploughs on. ‘Anyway, as you can imagine, the parents are broken up. They weren’t there, you see. Normally, the mum goes to the service with Daphne, but she was planning some big Christmas shindig and was busy preparing the food. Dad was at work.’
‘On a Saturday? What does he do?’
‘They run a haulage firm, of sorts.’ He suddenly stops and shouts over at Helen Tremberg. ‘What is it the dad does, Hell’s Bells?’
Helen pushes herself back from the desk and walks over to where the two men are sitting. She gives McAvoy a smile. ‘Joining us, eh?’
McAvoy tries not to grin. He feels a sudden sensation of warmth towards her. Towards Ben, also. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he is feeling excited. Alive.
‘Logistics, is it?’ asks McAvoy, trying to keep his voice even.
‘According to their website, they take a lot of charity stuff to inaccessible locations. They have the contract for a lot of the different aid agencies. You know when you give your old jumpers and whatnot to the women with the binbags? Well, this is one of the companies that gets it to places where it’s needed. Some freight, sometimes container ships, sometimes air.’
‘Right,’ says McAvoy, making a note in his own pad. ‘Carry on.’
‘Well, long and the short of it is that this couple have a child of their own who died a few years ago. Leukaemia. Anyway, they adopted Daphne through an international agency when she was ten. They had a year of paperwork but it’s all above board. She’s from Sierra Leone, by birth. Lost her family in the genocide. Tragic stuff.’
McAvoy nods. He remembers little about the politics of the disagreement. Can only summon up hazy television footage of atrocities and brutality. Innocents, sprayed with bullets and chopped down with blades.
‘Is the machete significant?’ asks McAvoy. ‘That’s the weapon of choice out there, isn’t it?’
‘The boss asked the same thing,’ says Nielsen. ‘We’re looking into it.’
‘And are they are a church-going family? How did she become a server?’
