Fire of Lies

David Mark

www.mulholland.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Mulholland Books

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Dead Pretty Ltd 2016

Extract from Cruel Mercy Copyright © Dead Pretty Ltd 2017

The right of David Mark to be identified as the Author of the Work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

in which it is published and without a similar condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 473 65394 8

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

For the people of Hull.

May you forever remain uniquely inspirational

Contents

PROLOGUE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

COMING SOON

PROLOGUE

There is a scream as the angle grinder bites into the steel lid of the beer keg. It’s an ugly noise; a grating, brutal squeal that makes the quiet man think of dentists’ drills and car crashes.

‘C’mon, you ffff . . .’ grunts the man with the muscles, biting his lip as he puts his full weight on the tool and continues to cut a neat circle through the gleaming metal. The resulting shower of pinkish sparks is the only light in this dark, claustrophobic space, with its damp walls and its stink of spilled beer, cold stone and fresh blood. ‘Worthington’s, is it?’ he asks, feeling for the label on the belly of the keg. ‘Shame there was no guest ales with a more suitable name. Anybody ever tried a pint of Wanker?’

The quiet man leans back in the darkness. His whole body is rigid with the effort of staying still. He knows what is lying at his feet. If he were to take a small step to his right, he might put his foot on Paul.

There is a sudden clang of metal on metal and the muscled man gives a satisfied shout. He stands up straight, holding the lid and peering, through the gloom, at the long, firm pipe that protrudes from it.

‘Get in,’ he says, triumphantly, and switches off the angle grinder.

The quiet man focuses on the area of darkness in front of him. The mechanical sound continues to echo off the off-white walls. He senses the change in the quality of the darkness and turns his head to follow the muscled man as he moves. Watches him the way cats watch one another; working out the next dozen moves. He sees a huge silhouette move through the grey air towards the door. There are curses and mumbles and then a sudden flicker of light as the solitary bulb, hanging like a fat corpse, flares into life. It throws a gaudy yellow glow upon the scene beneath: exposing the three dirt-streaked men who stand among the kegs and barrels and try not to rub their faces for fear of tasting another man’s blood.

‘He’s not going to fit,’ says the tall man with the glasses. His white trainers are stained red up to the laces. ‘No way.’

‘He’ll bloody fit,’ says the muscled man, dismissively. He is a great believer in the benefits of power over finesse.

‘He bloody won’t,’ snaps the tall man. ‘It’ll be like trying to get a chicken in a jam jar.’

‘I could do that too. Don’t bitch about it. We can just give him a good shove.’

‘He’ll come apart, mate. You saw what it was like getting him down the stairs. His head . . .’

‘Stop moaning, man. He’ll fit.’

The quiet man says nothing. Just stares at the silver barrel. With the lid removed it looks like an empty eye-socket, or a toothless, desperate scream.

I did this, he thinks. The thing I swore I would never do again.

‘It’s not right,’ mutters the tall man. ‘He was a wanker but we can’t . . .’

‘We’ve talked about that,’ says the muscled man. ‘We can’t risk it.’

‘This is more of a risk! I did nothing. He was already dead.’

‘You know that, do you? How do you know it wasn’t you that finished him?’

‘Piss off, he was twitching like a fish on deck.’

‘Aye, but not dead.’

‘That’ll do,’ says the quiet man, and the others fall silent. He has a thumping headache. It feels as though his brain is growing too big for his skull. He rubs at his temples and the pain in his knuckles shoots into his wrist. It hurts when he swallows and he closes his eyes in response. His bones are aching. As his eyelids slide shut, his mind fills with recent memories. They flood his cranium like spilled paint. For a moment he is back at his favourite table, circling the day’s winners in the Racing Post and transferring the information to his little black jotter. He wasn’t really listening to the conversation of the others; only half aware of the change in the air as the banter became a darker thing; all low voices and growled threats. And then there was the unmistakable thud of flesh meeting flesh and bone upon bone and chair legs and table legs scraping along the wooden floor and he was looking up to see a streak of steel and an arc of blood and a sudden explosion of hair and teeth amid a crescendo of screams . . .

In the end they have to use a broom to force the body into the cramped space. When the muscled man withdraws it there is skin and gore upon the bristles.

‘We should weigh it down,’ says the tall man.

‘We’d never get it back out the cellar.’

‘I could,’ says the muscled man. He flexes his shirtless torso, and his steroid-enhanced frame looks, for a moment, like a stuffed animal skin filled with triple the necessary sand. The quiet man wonders what would happen to him if somebody sliced him. Whether he would swoop around the room like a deflating balloon or simply explode with a sad, damp ‘pop’.

For the next half-hour the only sound in the cellar is of a blowtorch melting steel: repairing the severed metal to craft a perfect ring of scar tissue on the barrel’s shiny surface.

Before the dawn, the barrel will be floating down the River Hull.

It will be eight months before anybody looks inside. By then, for most, this night’s work will be a receding nightmare; reduced to a patchwork of glimpsed memory. It will be a flicker pad of shouts and barks and cries for help; gunshots and knife-wounds and the sight of blood upon a dirty wooden floor.

‘Anybody got a eulogy?’ asks the muscled man, with a twitch of a smile. ‘A prayer? Something to mark his passing?’

It falls to the quiet man to say what the others are thinking.

‘Aye,’ he says. His accent is pure East Hull. ‘Rest in pieces, you silly bastard.’

The others gave it a moment as they compose their thoughts. Their voices are united.

‘Amen.’

Chapter One

Sunday, 14 August 14, 4.02 p.m., Hessle Foreshore

A row of white-painted cottages with green gates and pastel doors; a collage of hanging baskets and ornamental planters; pebbly front yards and shabby-chic garden furniture.

The roses and peonies in the baskets at number four bloom a little more brightly than those of their neighbours. The reds are a livid explosion against the white walls: crimson splashes upon a pristine quilt. They would be the first object to catch the eye were it not for the colossal, red-haired man who stands at the window and stares, disconsolately, beyond the glass.

Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy has come to the conclusion that if he ever felt any kind of urge to paint the view from his living-room window, he would require only three colours to do it justice. The grass on the other side of the grey road is kept as short and stubbly as a soldier’s hair. Beyond, the muddy strip of beach is the sludgy brown of cold, forgotten coffee and the sky is the sharp blue of cheap denims. As he stares out, his face twists into a grimace. He doesn’t look accustomed to the action. Despite the scars that line his large, handsome face, he has kind eyes and a mouth tuned for soft words and gentle smiles. The grimace is in response to a comment addressed to his broad back by the woman who sits on his sofa with a glass of red wine and a chicken leg, waving it around like a cross between a medieval king and the conductor of a symphony orchestra. She is busy offering her opinions on the anatomical peculiarities of the witness that McAvoy has just returned from interviewing.

‘Nude? On the East Coast? In this? I bet his tackle looked like somebody had shaved a baby dormouse,’ says Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh, to the rapturous giggles of the children playing on the floor around her. ‘Top me up,’ she adds, smiling at the three-year-old girl earnestly massaging her feet and drawing the occasional words of praise from her Auntie Trish. The girl takes the wine glass and runs to the kitchen.

‘She’s a bloody diamond, that girl,’ says Pharaoh, as Lilah returns with a glass full to the brim with deep red Merlot. ‘You are, aren’t you,’ she says. The little girl in the pink and white leotard and bolero jacket beams at being recognised as such. ‘I mean, you look like you’ve been covered in glue and dropped in a dressing-up box but I’d say that’s not so much your fault as your parents’.’

McAvoy continues to try to lose himself in the view. It is a cold, blustery day but the wind that slashes in off the water has done little to drive the tourists away from the attractive straggle of land forming a right angle with the concrete and steel of the Humber Bridge far above. Every parking space along this popular stretch of road is taken up by family estate cars and people-carriers. Most of the vehicles are occupied by families eating picnics or passing ice creams back and forth. Others have wrapped up warmly enough to actually head on to the beach, where children with runny noses and chapped cheeks weep into their scarves as they dig in the mud and shingle with freezing hands while parents brandishing camera-phones urge them to smile.

‘Go on,’ says Roisin McAvoy, seated on the floor with her back against the wall and looking equally unique in her purple leopard-print catsuit and wedge-heeled white trainers. ‘She looks a million dollars. More. Take no notice of the nasty lady, Lilah. It’s jealousy, ’tis all.’

Lilah enjoys the attention, whipping her head back and forth between them. She likes it when Auntie Trish and Mammy have one of their ding-dongs. Daddy has explained it to her on more than one occasion. They like each other really – they just need different things from Daddy and sometimes those things overlap and cause them to start bickering. Then Daddy’s day becomes difficult, and he has to eat a bar of chocolate and bang his head on a tree until he feels better.

McAvoy continues staring out of the window. There’s a little smile on his face as he listens to his boss and his wife bicker. They are very different people but they have the same motivations in life – they both want as much of him as he can spare. Roisin has been his wife for close to ten years but still looks as much of a traveller as she did when they fell in love. Pharaoh is pushing fifty but is still a figure of lust for most of Humberside Police. There are few officers who haven’t enjoyed a fantasy about being handcuffed and slapped about by Trish during one of her infamous bouts of temper. She’s short and curvy with bottle-black hair and red lips and habitually wears sunglasses to disguise the fact that she is hungover, or in the process of ensuring she will be tomorrow.

Pharaoh and her two youngest daughters have been for Sunday dinner. During the first course she had a brainwave that necessitated McAvoy changing into his suit, climbing into his car and driving down the Lincolnshire coast to ask a witness something. He returned home to find that Pharaoh had eaten her own meal and was now helping herself to the portion that Roisin had placed under clingfilm in the microwave.

‘Was he really nude?’ asks Roisin, a giggle in her voice that makes his heart clench. ‘You didn’t join in, no?’

‘I don’t need that image in my head,’ protests Pharaoh.

McAvoy sits down on the floor. He’s still wearing his grey three-piece suit and his face is rosy from walking into the wind. He spent part of the afternoon at Northcoates Point on the Lincolnshire coast, trying to keep up with a fifty-nine-year-old naturist called Barry Payne as he strode nakedly through waist-high grasses and repeated his account of how he stumbled on to what was left of a man who went missing last November.

‘He’s definitely recovered from the shock,’ says McAvoy. He thinks for a moment about asking the children to leave the room but decides, as always, that they would be better off knowing about the good men and women who are trying to protect them from terrible deeds than just hearing about the terrible deeds themselves.

‘And his wife?’

‘Still a bit twitchy,’ confides McAvoy.

Fifteen days ago, Barry and his wife Jan were enjoying their biweekly ramble along the naturist beach on the wild, windswept curve of coastline that leads down towards Horseshoe Point and Mablethorpe.

Today, Barry was back there waiting when McAvoy arrived. He was already dressed in nothing more than a camera bag and a pair of walking sandals. His body was a ruddy colour that put McAvoy in mind of cured ham. He was covered in a scattering of grey, downy hair. He had his car keys and a compass on a chain around his neck and on his arm he had scrawled the exact coordinates for the spot where he’d found the keg. He was waving madly at McAvoy as he pulled the car into a space beside Barry’s sensible Volvo: smiling widely and delighted to have company. McAvoy has long since accepted that he has no power to control his blush. His cheeks were positively crimson as he climbed from the car and made a great show of putting on his knee-length cashmere coat. There were handshakes and pleasantries during which McAvoy gave himself a headache through the sheer effort of not allowing himself to glance in any direction that might show him something that would remain burned into his retina long after his career was over.

‘Normal day, according to Barry,’ says McAvoy, shrugging. ‘Apparently it’s a popular spot with the naturist crowd. They don’t like to say nudist, so Barry tells me. And they refer to people who wear clothes as “textiles”, if you can imagine that. Apparently he and Jan get a couple of miles of naked walking in along the beach and then they turn inland and try to pick their way through the reeds and channels back towards the car. It’s all part of the experience, he says. It’s nice to get your feet wet and really “feel” nature. All I can say is that there was a lot of nature to feel and if he tried that back home, he’d realise why we stopped wearing kilts.’

Pharaoh and Roisin chuckle as he talks. McAvoy was raised on the family croft in the western Highlands. He has told them eye-watering stories about vindictive thistles before.

‘They spotted the barrel lying on its side in one of the little channels that come in off the water. According to Barry, it was Jan who first suggested finders should be keepers. She’d seen a video online about turning beer barrels into barbecues. They weren’t far from the car park by then so Barry manhandled it on to the grassy area and together they started rolling it back to the car. He didn’t notice the smell. As he says, the wind there is so harsh it blows any smells away. Well, they huffed and puffed it back to the car and then Barry tried to lift it into the boot. It was heavier than he thought. Jan came to help him but their hands were wet and they started to feel it go. They jumped back as it dropped from the lip of the boot. That’s when the welds in the lid gave way. The gases inside had built up to such a level that when it blew the lid open and most of what was inside erupted like somebody had put a firework in a lasagne. They were covered. And there was no way the wind was going to blow away that smell. So they just stood there, covered in all this horror, and then, Barry said, all matter-of-fact, they decided to phone the police.’

‘Sensible plan,’ muses Pharaoh. ‘I don’t think I’d have been as good at making the right call in those circumstances. I’d probably have been rocking back and forth and ripping my clothes off and chugging bleach straight from the bottle, which isn’t a major departure from what I intend to do when I get home.’ She slumps, appearing to examine what her evening has in store. Then she sits up a little straighter again. ‘What did he say about the contents? Why exactly did he think it might be a body? The pillock who took his statement never asked and they’ll have a field day in court with that kind of gap – if it ever comes to that.’

McAvoy takes a deep breath. ‘I asked him that exact question. Forty-five miles for one question but I asked it. You wanted to know why he thought it was a human and not some kind of rotten meat, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, in his own words . . . “because meat doesn’t wear trousers”. Through all the mess he saw a belt buckle. The same belt buckle that Lincolnshire Police matched to our missing man. The same belt buckle that Paul Rouse was wearing the last time he was seen alive.’

Chapter Two

Gone to seed, thinks Shania, glancing up from her computer screen and taking in the chaos of her kitchen. Sort it out, you lazy cow. Make it better. Get a grip of your bloody self . . .

She turns her nose up at the space. The plants on the windowsill are stiff and brown and there is a mound of unwashed pots rising from the grimy steel sink. The lino is covered in dog hairs and bootprints and the small work surface is festooned with unopened letters, empty wrappers and spilled coffee grounds. It’s cold, but if she closed the window she would have to deal with the reek of her decaying life. On balance, she’d rather shiver.

‘Are there any crisps?’ asks Jay, entering the kitchen and pulling open a cupboard door. There’s nothing inside but a giant, half-empty bag of dry dog food. He’s wearing a blue robe and crumpled pyjamas. His short brown hair sticks up from his sweaty scalp in a dozen directions and his fingernails need cutting. He’s a fleshy child. He’s only nine but looks older. There are bits of microwave chicken madras stuck in his teeth. ‘Mam, are there any crisps? I’m starving.’

‘Go and get some from the bar,’ snaps Shania as she turns to him, her eyes harsh, her body language screaming that she’s busy and should not be disturbed. ‘I’m doing something.’

‘I was just asking . . .’

‘Well, don’t. I’ve got enough to think about. And don’t go on about packed lunches. I’ll give you a quid in the morning for some Space Raiders and a sausage roll.’

‘I don’t like Space Raiders, Mam.’

‘Yes, you do,’ hisses Shania. ‘They’re your favourite. From now on, they’re your favourite.’

Doesn’t he realise? Doesn’t he see that she’s working hard on getting them out of all this? Getting them away from him, from them – from the things she has to do every day to keep them safe. Their life of a few months ago seems like a half-remembered hallucination. They used to laugh. Used to snuggle up on the sofa with the dog and watch TV and read stories and revel in the fact there was nobody else around to spoil it all. Now they can barely talk without it becoming an argument. He’s been acting up at school, hitting other students, stabbing them with pencils, stealing their equipment and threatening anybody who tells. He’s on his last warning and the teachers are concerned. She’s been called in half a dozen times. He’s been turning up late, unwashed, dark lines under his eyes. His attainment has dropped. He’s no longer the chatty boy he was. Is there anything wrong at home? they asked. Any change in his circumstances?

Shania feels suddenly overcome by it all. He deserves a hug, she decides. Needs it. She begins to stand and is stopped by the softest of growls to her right.

Shania flicks a glance at the large, brown shape standing in the doorway and watching its master. Deano is a Newfoundland, though at first glance he could pass for a bear in a coat. An ex-boyfriend found the animal as a pup and brought it home for Jay when he was barely old enough to stand. Deano has been unquestioningly loyal ever since – growing into an even more imposing physical specimen than Jay himself. He’s a huge, muscular beast, named in honour of a Hull City legend, and better crowd control on a Saturday night than a dozen bouncers.

Shania watches the boy and his dog walk away. She turns her attention back to the computer screen. She has squashed herself into a cheap plastic swivel chair: her hips, buttocks and thighs spill over and around the armrests. Her elbows rest on the white plastic table that serves as the centrepiece for her small, cluttered kitchen. Behind her fleshy hand, her lips move wordlessly as she watches the images on her laptop – replaying the footage over and over; rewinding and playing, scrolling and staring, sniffing back some kind of foulness as her mug of tea grows cold beside her and her cigarette burns down to the filter in the overflowing ashtray.

The news reporter is standing on the street beyond her kitchen window. The pub she runs forms almost the entire backdrop to the shot. She realises how shabby it must look to first-time eyes. The paint is peeling, there are loose tiles on the roof and the wires from three huge satellite dishes hang in a tangle down the grubby pebbledashed walls. The pretty female reporter is gesturing at the building and talking about a man that Shania knows better than she wishes to. Paul Rouse. Wankerpaul, to those who had the misfortune of spending a little time in his company. A skinny little wretch with a big mouth who just loved to tell the world where it was going wrong. Who liked to show people shocking little video clips on his mobile phone and tell perfect strangers about the time he spent in the Foreign Legion and the different medals he was awarded for conspicuous bravery. A prick of the first order, whose disappearance is being lamented as some sort of catastrophe by a BBC girl who would have poured her drink over his head within five minutes of listening to his bullshit.

‘Christ, stop watching that.’

Shania jumps as Mattie appears behind her. He bends down and kisses her cheek. She feels wet lips and stubble. It turned her on, once. Now it’s all she can do not to shrink into herself like a baby having its hair washed.

‘It’s ruining the business,’ she says, angrily. She glares at her boyfriend, who’s leaning back against the cooker with a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale in his hand. His black T-shirt is so tight around his muscles that it looks as though he must have worn it from birth.

‘Have a drink, babe. Chill out.’

Shania shakes her head, irritable. He’s younger than she is and sometimes she thinks that, intellectually, he’s probably on a par with his own shoes. ‘If you look close enough you can see Pigeon Keith baring his arse at the camera. If that glass wasn’t frosted it’d look like we were having a party with flesh-coloured balloons!’

Mattie frowns for a moment, working it out. Then he smiles. ‘You make me laugh, baby.’ He takes her in. ‘You look fucking delicious. You horny, babe? It’s been ages. Is the lad asleep? I’ll rub your shoulders after . . .’

‘Never mind that,’ she snaps. ‘Many in downstairs? Kimberley handling it?’

Mattie shrugs. ‘Usual crowd. Couple of new faces. Davey stopped in for a short.’

‘They weren’t coppers?’

‘Fuck, no! You think I can’t spot a copper? Can you picture that massive Jock who sat and held your hand? Bet he’s great at undercover!’

Shania processes the information. ‘Is he in?’ she asks, dropping her voice.

‘Always is,’ says Mattie, looking away. ‘Said he would be, didn’t he? Said we had to keep to a routine – no changing patterns or doing anything daft. We’re doing the right thing. They’ve got nowt. They haven’t even had me in proper yet.’

Her shoulders slump. She feels like an intruder in this odd, lumpen body. She can’t bear the sensation of her flesh rubbing against itself or the smell of herself or the sight of her own face, pale and patterned with burst capillaries.

‘Let me make you feel pretty, eh, babe?’ says Mattie. ‘Just stay strong. You’ve got me. I know we’ve had our ups and downs but we’re good together. You can’t still be cross at me. You said you forgave me. Heat of the moment, that’s what you said.’

‘It was wrong,’ she says, coldly. ‘Wrong to even let it in your head.’

‘Don’t keep going on,’ says Mattie, looking at himself in the side of the kettle and flexing. ‘Give us a kiss, eh?’

Shania scowls and waves a hand. She picks up her dead cigarette from the ashtray and curses. She finds her cigarettes in the pocket of her gown and lights a fresh one. She coughs as she breathes out: rattly and grim, like the last dregs in a gravy boat being sucked through a straw. ‘Don’t start, Mattie. I’ve got bigger things to think about.’

Mattie crouches down beside her and puts a hand on hers. ‘You can chill, babe. It’s all cool.’

‘It’s not fucking cool! Three times I’ve told them the same thing. They said it would be the station next time . . .’

‘Just chillax, yeah? Let me see if I can make it all better . . .’

‘No!’ hisses Shania, making fists and slapping his hand away from her thigh. ‘We should go away. Just go somewhere else. Start again.’

Mattie stands up, sighing deeply. She glances at his eyes and is pleased to see he’s too drunk to lose his temper. He’s starting to look bored with her. Bored with this. She was a fool to think it would be any different. Never get involved with the punters – that was the first rule her first boss taught her. Don’t let them get their feet under the table. She’s never managed to follow that advice. Every boyfriend she’s had started out as a customer. She liked Mattie better before she took him to bed. Liked it when she just knew the public version of his personality. She has seen his temper now. Seen what he is capable of. She has no fear of throwing violent drunks out of her pub but her stomach twists at the thought of him looking at her with rage in his eyes. Fears, even more, what would happen if he were to turn his temper on Jay.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, quickly. ‘Just loads in my head.’

Mattie drinks from his bottle. Looks at her long enough to make her feel uncomfortable. She urges herself not to shiver or to turn her head away. He could do better, she knows that. He’s good looking and his body’s like something from a fireman calendar. She can’t let him lose interest. Can’t let him grow tired of her. She needs him where she can control him. She knows how vengeful men can be when slighted and Mattie is the sort who would drop them all in the shit just to score a point. She should have booted him out that night, told him that she’d seen what was inside him and that it sickened her. But the quiet man made it plain what could happen if she followed her instincts. She had to keep him sweet, stay on his good side until everything blew over and matters could be sorted out more permanently.

‘You want to go to the sofa?’ asks Mattie, slipping his hand inside his jogging pants to readjust his balls. ‘Take your mind off things?’

Shania manages a tight smile and a nod. She closes the laptop and lets him help her from the chair. When he kisses her, she tastes ale and emptiness. He doesn’t eat much. Just drinks his nutrition shakes and injects himself with chemicals that make him erratic and shrivel his dick.

‘You’re still the only one I fancy,’ he says, stuffing a hand inside her top. ‘Let’s fuck it all away, yeah? Stop worrying. It’s all in the past. It’s done with. They’ll get bored soon, you’ll see.’

Shania closes her eyes. She feels him slobber and slurp at the scar on her left breast. Remembers the blade and the jet of blood and the sudden moment of savagery that changed their lives. She wants to talk, to tell people about that night. The detective who interviewed her last, the big Scotsman with the kind eyes and the scars. She liked his voice. Liked the way he said her name and told her that he was here to help in a way that didn’t sound phoney. She wants to spill it all. But they have made their pact, and to break it would sink them all. She has to endure. Has to keep intact the ties that bind them all together. If she doesn’t, the fire of lies that was lit eight months ago will burn them all to cinders.

Chapter Three

McAvoy’s backside is growing numb. Pharaoh’s sitting in the chair he normally uses himself and he is becoming increasingly aware of the gap in his stomach where roast chicken should be. Pharaoh looks like the queen in some fantasy TV show. McAvoy cannot help but imagine oiled bodyguards fanning her with palm fronds while nubile handmaidens paint her nails and feed her grapes. She is still telling Fin about the investigation, using words like ‘bastard’, ‘entry wound’ and ‘contusion’ without apology. He glances at Roisin, who is miming stabbing herself with the TV remote control.

‘Was he nice?’ asks Fin, from the floor. He is wearing his Ross County football shirt and drawing pictures in his sketchpad. He has done a good job recreating Barry’s Volvo but his red felt tip ran out before he could accurately capture the explosion drenching a portly, naked man in unspeakable grimness.

‘A nice man?’ asks McAvoy. ‘Barry? Very nice. He’s a humanities teacher at a school in Skegness. He and Jan have four grandchildren and . . .’

‘No, Paul,’ says Fin. ‘The one in the barrel. Was he nice? You haven’t said.’

Pharaoh sits forward in her chair. She’s wearing a green tunic-style top with black leggings and her biker boots. There are goosepimples on her arms and sweat on her neck. She hasn’t confided in McAvoy but Roisin’s told him that if she isn’t going through the menopause then she must be trying to come off heroin.

She gives the boy her attention, gazing into his large brown eyes.

‘If you must know, Fin, we don’t think he was a very nice man. He was a bit of a bore and he told a lot of fibs to make himself look good. But that doesn’t mean he deserved to be shot in the head and sealed in a beer barrel and then explode all over a nudist. I don’t think anybody deserves that. Don’t you worry, though, we’ll find who did it.’

Fin seems relieved that everything is going to be OK. He goes back to his sketch. Pharaoh’s two youngest daughters are lying on the floor playing on their phones. If they’re listening, they’re not giving much away.

‘He was a gobshite, was he?’ asks Roisin.

‘And then some,’ says Pharaoh, sucking her lower lip. ‘It wasn’t our case when he first went missing. Regular CID had it on their books and Serious and Organised didn’t get involved until he’d been gone three months. Even then we didn’t do much more than review the witness statements and dig a little deeper into the relevant backgrounds. Chief Superintendent Wandsworth’s team got a whiff that Rouse owed some money to one of the skunk dealers in Wincolmlee, but if you ask me he was getting nowhere and just wanted to be able to palm it off so it was on my books and not his. We got nowhere. Then he bobs back up. You should see the office! Pictures of tide patterns and wind directions and every stream and tributary from here to King’s Lynn. For all we know he could have been dumped off a cruise ship in Barbados. It’s a big old ocean.’

‘It’s not as bleak as that,’ says McAvoy, stretching out his legs and pushing Lilah with his toes. She rewards him with a laugh and an instruction not to be naughty. ‘It would be, don’t get me wrong. But given what we know about his last movements and the type of barrel, I think I could pinpoint the exact bit of river where he first made a splash, the poor wee bugger.’

‘They say the barrel was nicked, you know that,’ says Pharaoh, tetchily.

‘Nicked?’ asks Roisin.

‘The barrel he was in. We’ve traced the batch of ale. It was delivered to the Trawl, down by the cocoa factory at the bottom of Clough Road, in October. The Trawl just happens to be by the river. And Paul Rouse was a regular there.’

Roisin looks longingly at her lighter, resting on her thigh. She wants to have a cigarette but will resist doing so indoors. She doesn’t want to go outside and miss hearing the interesting parts.

‘Sounds pretty obvious,’ she says, untangling two of her necklaces and dropping them into her cleavage. ‘Can’t you just check the pub for blood matches or something? Bring in all the regulars and sweat them until somebody says what happened?’

Pharaoh sits back in her chair, rubbing at her teeth with her thumbnail. She notices that her glass is empty and seems about to ask for a refill. Then she screws up her face, apparently deciding to have no more.

‘Wouldn’t life be lovely if you were in charge,’ she mutters. Then she gives a low groan. ‘Fin, would you do me a favour? Go and grab eight of your action figures. Same sort of size, please. And a box of some kind. We’ll do this in a way everybody can understand.’

McAvoy glances at his wife. ‘You might want to have that now,’ he says, pointing at the cigarette. ‘He’ll be an age.’

Roisin pulls herself off the floor. She manages to angle her pert backside enticingly close to McAvoy’s face as she passes him, stepping into the hallway and opening the front door. She lights up and blows smoke into the cold, salty air. Moments later, Fin returns and hands a wrestling ring and a selection of toys to Pharaoh, who looks pleased. She holds up a figure of The Thing from the Fantastic Four. ‘This one would be Daddy.’

Pharaoh starts laying the various wrestlers, superheroes and Disney dolls down in the wrestling ring. She looks at her phone from time to time, grumbling to herself, clearly checking her facts. She waits until Roisin has finished her cigarette and retaken her seat by the fire.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Hector, stop me if I get any of this wrong. Your father, he’s the expert in all this. He makes things easy for your Auntie Trish to understand. I’m the one that then sounds like the expert in front of the bigwigs.’

‘That’s not true . . .’ says McAvoy loyally, and both women shush him with a look.

‘This man here is Paul Rouse,’ says Pharaoh, holding up an action doll. ‘You have to imagine him in dirty combat trousers held up with a Superman belt, and ex-army workboots. Paul was forty-one. Five foot eight. Skinny and not very handsome. He had a black goatee that looked like it had been drawn on and he wore his mobile in a pouch on his hip like a gunslinger, or a prick from 2005. He worked for the railways, repairing damaged tracks and broken signals and the like. He lived alone in a flat near Myton Bridge. Never married and no kids. No girlfriend, no boyfriend, no dog. Lonely life in some people’s eyes – bloody bliss to others. Anyway, Paul liked a drink. Carling drinker, though we can’t hold that against him. Man of habit, like so many around here. He used to divide his time and money between three pubs. The Lambwath, the Ship in Sutton, and the Trawl. You keeping up?’

Roisin, Fin and Lilah all nod. Pharaoh glances at McAvoy and gives him a tiny smile. He was nodding too.

‘December nineteenth, last year,’ he butts in, colouring slightly and eager to demonstrate that he is a decorated and experienced detective and not the biggest child in reception class. ‘Rouse finished his shift just after six p.m. He didn’t drive and preferred to cycle everywhere. His routine was always the same. He’d cycle home, get changed out of his work clothes, make himself a bite to eat and then head out around seven thirty. He’d go to Sutton first. Two pints there. Two more in the Lambwath. Then he’d finish in the Trawl. A tenner on the fruit machines and about twenty quid on drink. His wages just about covered the habit. I asked some of the locals whether they knew he was an alcoholic and they looked at me like I was mad. “Alcoholic? How? He drinks Carling . . .” ’

‘Paul left the Lambwath just before ten p.m.,’ continues Pharaoh. ‘We’ve seen the CCTV. He’d been his usual self, sounding off and bigging himself up to anybody who would listen and plenty more who wouldn’t. Well, according to the landlady at the Trawl, he never arrived. He wasn’t missed because he wasn’t exactly the sort of person you looked forward to seeing. It was a normal night, so she says. Few drinks after they closed and the regulars toddled off home. When Paul didn’t come to work the next day there was no fuss. It was a week before anybody even remarked on him being missing but even then nobody went to check. The only person who was concerned was an online friend who’d noticed that Paul had stopped posting pictures on this mountain bike Facebook group they were both members of. Paul knew his stuff about bikes, apparently. Anyway, the guy went and knocked on his door. No answer. Place was deserted. After a while, he called the police. Eventually, CID got in touch with his family up in Bridlington. They’d heard nothing. His bike was fished out of the river not far from Myton Bridge – under a quarter of a mile from the Trawl. But everybody in the pub was adamant he hadn’t been in.’

‘Could he have fallen off his bike?’ asks Fin, thoughtfully. Then he slaps his head. ‘Not unless he fell into the barrel.’

Pharaoh smiles at him. He looks ashamed of himself; appalled at the stupidity of his suggestion. If McAvoy could see his face, it would be like looking in a mirror.

‘There was talk of suicide,’ says Pharaoh, reaching down to pick up her handbag. She finds her electronic cigarette and sucks so deeply on it that her eyes seem to cross for a moment. ‘He had no real pleasures,’ she says, through a cloud of vapour. ‘Wouldn’t be the first person to get pissed and jump in the river.’

‘Or fall,’ says McAvoy.

Pharaoh nods. ‘Aye, that was a theory. But then we found him in a barrel. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but my money is on him not being a willing participant in the last moments of his life.’

The silence in the room is broken only by the sound of Pharaoh’s daughters tapping at their touchscreens.

‘Forensics,’ says McAvoy. ‘Tell Fin about the forensic discoveries.’

Pharaoh puts her sunglasses back on and takes a breath. ‘Well, by the time our science officers got him to the lab it would be fair to say there wasn’t much useful stuff left. He wasn’t much more than mince in a pair of trousers. He’d completely putrefied in the barrel. Cause of death was almost impossible to ascertain but, thankfully, the private team we use are pretty bloody good. Inside what was left of the cranial cavity there were shotgun pellets. They’ve gone off to a team of experts that the experts use when they’re not sufficiently expert, who cost a fortune. All we know so far is that the angle of the shot suggests he had his head against a firm surface and that it was “possibly” fired using a left-handed stance. We’re clinging to that like it’s an oil drum in the ocean. We don’t know if there was water in his lungs because most of his lungs blew up all over the nude couple.’

On the sofa, Lilah lets out a laugh. She has taken the action figure from Pharaoh and is playing with it, saying ‘boom’ and miming an explosion.

‘Lilah, have some respect,’ says Roisin. ‘That’s your brother’s toy.’

‘That’s all?’ asks Fin, disappointed. He has begun watching a lot of true crime documentaries and remains constantly nonplussed by the twentieth-century technology available to his father and his colleagues.

‘It’s gone to another team of specialists,’ says Pharaoh, in the tone of voice she uses when asked difficult questions by her bosses. ‘They’ll be looking for more samples. Plant fibres . . .’

‘So who might have hurt him?’ asks Roisin. ‘You said he talked a lot?’

McAvoy coughs a little, and puts his hands up to Lilah. She comes and joins him on the floor, pressing her head against his beard.

‘Over the past two weeks we’ve got statements from every regular who drinks in each of those pubs,’ says McAvoy. ‘We’ve cross-referenced them with the HOLMES system and come up with a rogue’s gallery of petty criminals and violent individuals. We’ve heard whispers about arguments he may have had and spoken to the people involved. Every avenue ends up in the same place. He was, in the words of the fine people of Hull, “a bullshit artist”. He told tall stories. People got sick of him and told him to be on his way. He’d been banned from a load of pubs. He was full of vinegar and had a temper and loved telling people about his dad’s old knife and what he’d do to people who wronged him. It was a sad life,’ says McAvoy, and his eyes grow dark as he considers this. ‘Really, he was lonely. Didn’t know how to talk to people. He probably just needed a friend.’

‘Maybe,’ says Pharaoh, shrugging. ‘Maybe he was a wanker. That’s what they called him, you know. Wankerpaul.’

McAvoy shakes his head and she mouths an apology. He tries to minimise the bad language. At the boarding school he attended, anybody heard swearing was forced to eat a bar of soap by the housemaster. He still cannot hear cursing without flinching at memories of that taste of Coal Tar Soap.

‘What about at the last pub?’ asks Roisin. ‘The one they say he never arrived at. Any bad sorts?’

Pharaoh holds up a Barbie doll. ‘Shania Oxley,’ she says. ‘Thirty-three years old. Mother of one. Landlady there since 2013. Got a community service order in 2009 when she attacked her then partner with a screwdriver at the photocopying shop where he worked. Court heard she had been under a lot of stress. Clean as a whistle since then but quite a character. She’s now shacked up with this gentleman . . .’ She holds up a figure of Disney’s Aladdin . . . ‘Matthew James, aged twenty-eight, served two years a while back for witness intimidation when one of his friends was up on a manslaughter charge. Big guy. Looks like a wrestler, now I think about it. Spends most of his money on a souped-up Subaru.’

Fin has started writing in his sketchpad. He nods to tell Auntie Trish he’s keeping pace. Behind him, McAvoy smiles. He’s thinking about Shania – all ample curves and flirty smiles and twitchy, suspicious eyes. She talked with him for more than an hour. They discussed her life – ex-boyfriends, broken dreams; the strange twists of fate that led her to a job counting pork scratchings behind a stained bar-top in Stoneferry. She didn’t tell him anything useful but he saw a good soul beneath the layers of defensiveness. She even managed to make him blush. His eyes had strayed to the cheap tattoo of a rose on her left breast – a handful of poorly executed lines and shades that seemed to have been put there to cover a sharp white scar.

Pharaoh holds up a Spider-Man and a Minotaur. ‘Of the other regulars who might have still been in after half ten on a weeknight, everybody has an alibi except these two,’ she says, looking at the toys accusingly. ‘Alan Mee, aged fifty-one. Works as a gardener for the city council. Told our DC he left the pub about eleven thirty without ever having seen Paul. Said he went straight home, but the CCTV at his apartment block doesn’t show that at all. When reinterviewed he said he got it wrong and had stayed with his buddy, Gordon Tiernan, the other regular. Forty-odd, father of twelve, listed his occupation as unicorn-rider when questioned. He found the whole thing funny. Didn’t like Paul, thought he was a prick and wouldn’t weep to know he was dead, but never saw him and certainly never killed him.’

‘You believe him?’ asks Fin.

‘That doesn’t really matter,’ says Pharaoh. ‘The pub cooperated. Forensics spent two whole days in there. Yes, there was blood. Yes, we found DNA belonging to Paul Rouse. But as they said, he was a regular. He cut himself when helping Shania change a barrel one night. Very circumstantial.’

‘And the welds on the barrel?’ asks Roisin.

‘Pretty well done, if not professional,’ says McAvoy, enjoying the fact that her mind throws up the same questions he’s asked along the way. ‘Somebody who knows the basics at least. A good amateur mechanic, perhaps.’

Roisin sucks her teeth. ‘The child,’ she says. ‘You said “mother of one”.’

‘Asleep upstairs,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Jay, if you’re interested. Nine years old. Seems to be going off the rails a bit at school from what we could see on Mum’s Facebook page. Gone from a good pupil to a terror. Plenty of screams and exclamation marks and questions about why she bothers.’

‘Nine isn’t usually the tearaway time,’ muses Roisin. ‘Not in my experience anyway. Though if he saw something or heard something and is too frightened to say anything then maybe that’d explain it. He might be the weak point for his mother – especially if she’s living with somebody who could’ve done it, and knows how to work a blowtorch.’

Pharaoh growls and turns to McAvoy. Then she reaches into her handbag and pulls out a £20 note. ‘I know you won’t accept this so I’m going to give it to a charity of my choosing,’ she says, prissily.

‘What’s this?’ asks Roisin, lightly, cocking her head.

‘A little bet,’ sighs Pharaoh. ‘Your darling man said that you would come to the same conclusion as we had before five p.m. I said it would be six.’

Roisin enjoys the admiration and then deflates a little.

‘You’re into her Facebook? What else did you see?’

McAvoy starts picking at the carpet, shifting his weight. He has scars across his back that sometimes pain him without warning, and he keeps his face locked in an inscrutable expression as he talks so as not to cause anybody any concern.

‘Ben Neilsen and I have been through all the pictures and profiles of the Facebook users who have “liked” the Trawl’s page. We found about a dozen pictures taken inside at club nights and quiz nights and nights when there’s been some kind of act on. The men Pharaoh mentioned – they’re in the background in every picture. We’ve identified most of the others too.’

‘Right . . .’

McAvoy pulls his phone from his pocket and calls up a file of JPEGs. He hands it to Fin, who passes it to his mother like an usher in a courtroom.

‘You can see Shania in that one,’ says Pharaoh, without looking up. ‘Her boy is sat at the bar doing his homework. That’s his dog at his feet – not a mountain lion, in case you were wondering.’

‘Cute lad. So, what am I looking at?’

‘The men behind him.’

In his mind, McAvoy can clearly picture the image his wife is staring at. He’d allowed himself a grin when he discovered it late on Friday afternoon, hunched over his keyboard at the SOU offices on Clough Road, having worked his way through so many Facebook pages he was confident he’d never need to see another picture of a cute cat or an inspirational slogan ever again. The image was in an album belonging to Alan Mee’s daughter and taken in October the year before. It was a poor photograph. Mee was barely in shot at one side of the frame and the blurry picture had also captured half of an old man, sitting alone and holding a pen over a copy of the Racing Post. In the centre were two men, standing at the bar, three feet from the boy.

McAvoy had recognised them at once but got confirmation from three officers in regular CID. They were Ronnie Bond and Dave Albert and eighteen months previously they had been the main suspects in a series of Post Office raids across East and South Yorkshire. The raids were loud and brutal and the weapon waved in the faces of the terrified cashiers was a sawn-off shotgun. Humberside CID did some good work building a case against them but found no trace of the stolen money or the weapon at their properties. They wore balaclavas during the raids so there were no witnesses. Still, CID matched fibres from Dave Albert’s car to a wound left in the cheekbone of a sixty-two-year-old sub-postmistress who had taken too long to empty the till. One of the men had stamped on her face and fractured the orbit of her eye-socket. CID brought them in for questioning twice and they treated the whole thing like the lark they clearly thought it was. Before they could be charged, Dave Albert came off the Clive Sullivan Way flyover at 73 mph. He and his Peugeot 306 were equally mangled in the impact and he died four hours later at Hull Royal Infirmary. After his death, the CPS took the view that Ronnie Bond would never be convicted when he could blame everything on his fallen comrade and enquiries were wound up. Bond has kept his head down ever since, but nobody mentioned him as a regular at the Trawl. To Pharaoh, that was significant.

‘He’s massive,’ says Roisin. ‘Muscles like yours, Aector.’

‘Bigger, I’d say.’ Pharaoh grins, poking her tongue out at her sergeant.

‘So this is your suspect?’

‘He drinks there. He’s a nasty bastard. He’s scary enough to ensure nobody mentioned his name during the initial investigation and he clearly knows where to get his hands on a shotgun.’

Roisin nods. ‘Yes. So, what’s next? I mean, what are you going to do?’

‘Well . . .’ Pharaoh smiles, and keeps her eyes fixed on Roisin’s. ‘That’s rather where I thought you’d come in . . .’

Chapter Four

It’s a little after nine p.m. and inside the smallest room in the Trawl, Alan Mee is trying to get a laugh out of the ragged collection of drinkers assembled around the L-shaped bar. It’s a dim space, lit only by the two unbroken bulbs in a dusty, plastic chandelier that bleed out a weak illumination that bounces off the bottled spirits and the smeared glass behind the bar. Only the creamy-white head on Mattie’s pint of Guinness identifies where he’s deposited his drink. From where Shania sits, she can see the direction of her partner’s eyes and she can tell he isn’t really listening to Alan as he holds court and picks on a friend who has a reputation for being tight with his money.

‘. . . he saw a fly in his pint and pulled it out,’ says Alan, waving his bottle of Beck’s. ‘Next thing he’s holding it back over the glass and shouting “spit it out, you thieving bastard”.’

Shania gives him a smile. She’s heard it before. Heard them all before. Every day is a copy of the last: a chain of interconnected experiences holding hands in her memory like so many paper dolls. She holds the smile long enough to please Alan. He’s a tall, bony man with short grey hair and thin spectacles. He’s been drinking in here since long before she took over. He and Gordo go back years. They were the ones who first brought Mattie and his mates into her life. One day the bar had been full of all different kinds of drinkers: workmen, lorry drivers, staff from the nearby DIY stores and tile shops. The next it had a reputation. Cliquey, that’s what people said. Intimidating. A load of hard-cases getting pissed and telling dirty jokes. That comment was left on TripAdvisor by a local man daft enough to leave his name. Shania insisted the lads send flowers to the hospital when she learned what they had done to him.

‘Cheer up, love,’ says Alan. ‘You look like you’ve got a drop of tea in your mouth and you’re trying to keep it warm.’

Shania forces herself to chuckle. She has to seem like she’s OK. The whole damn thing will fall apart if they think she’s on the verge of collapsing. They’re held together by secrets; bound by lies. She tries to put on a little bit of sparkle but it dies before it can reach her eyes. She’s cold and clammy. She wishes she’d put a cardigan on but knows that if she had, she would be flapping the front of it and the sweat on her forehead would dye her hair at the temples.

‘You like that, Mattie?’ asks Alan, grinning.

‘Heard it,’ says Mattie, rolling his eyes.

‘Have you? I just got that one last night. Text from Gordo. Must have been taking a break from hanging out his tea bags on the washing line.’

Shania looks at the scene in front of her. For an instant she feels curiously displaced, as if she has moved from the stage into the audience. She suddenly sees her life as it must seem to others. Herself, pink and round and miserable, polishing glasses behind the sticky and scarred wooden bar. Her boyfriend, in his white vest and his grey jogging trousers, playing some pointless but colourful game on his phone. The old boy at his usual table, reading his paper. Barely says a word save for ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, which in Shania’s mind at least makes him a proper gentleman. He was here before the lads took over the bar and he has never seemed the least bit disturbed by their activities or conversation. He does his own thing. Turns up at lunchtime every day during the week and late afternoon on a weekend. Never has more than three pints. The lads have tried to get him to open up but other than offering a dissenting opinion when Alan got his facts wrong about the sequence of FA Cup winners, he rarely gets involved in the usual pub banter. Just sits at his table and reads his paper, does his crossword, writes in his journal and drinks his drink. Probably seventy, if Shania had to guess his age. Ruddy face and yellowy-white hair that puts her in mind of margarine. Blotchy blue tattoos on the back of his right hand and a loose, flabby body beneath his navy-blue suit and stripy woollen jumper. She used to wish she had more customers like him. She would not waste wishes like that now.

‘Ronnie’s doing all right,’ says Mattie, looking up from his game. In the corner of the bar, squashed up against the fruit machine, Ronnie is talking to a tarty-looking young woman who has been sinking vodka and coke since before Shania came down from the flat to start her shift. Shania has taken an instant dislike to her. She’s only a little thing but her black top is stretched tight over firm, perfect breasts and she has the kind of backside that rappers never shut up about. Beneath the mascara she has stunning blue eyes and her dark hair is expensively cut. No shortage of jewellery at her throat and wrists. Shania had her pegged as a traveller the second she clocked her, leaning on the bar and staring dreamily at big Ronnie, laughing at his jokes and telling him how good his biceps look in his tight white England shirt.

‘Should be ashamed of himself,’ says Shania, loud enough to earn a hard glare from Mattie.

‘Gordo will be sad he missed her,’ says Alan, pursing his lips in appreciation of the girl’s assets. ‘She might be able to understand a word he fucking says.’

‘She Irish, is she?’ asks Mattie.

Alan laughs. ‘You’re a fucking moron. She’s almost a fucking leprechaun.’

Shania sprays Diet Coke into a glass and takes a swig. When she breathes in, it sounds loud and tremulous inside her head.

‘Least we know she’s not a copper,’ says Mattie. ‘She came in selling flowers from a bucket. I thought I was going to piss meself when she took a look at us lot. Not many people out on romantic dates in here – that’s what I told her. Said I’d buy a rose for you but I’d left my wallet in the flat and you won’t tell me the combination to the till. Then the big man took a look at her. Bought her a drink. Got her eating out the palm of his hand.’

‘That’s not what he’s after eating out,’ says Alan, and burps, unashamedly.

‘Lay off, Alan,’ barks Ronnie, spinning around. ‘Lady present.’

‘Sorry, mate,’ says Alan, chastened.

Shania slides on to the stool behind the bar, dangling her bare feet into an open box of crisps. She feels a sudden swell of affection for her son. She picks up her phone and texts him.

Come on down. Spend some time with me. Sorry I was grumpy. Love you. XX

She sends the message and feels better for it. A moment later she hears the creak of movement upstairs. She hopes he behaves the way he used to – bright and precocious and inquisitive. The lads used to adore him, with his questions and confidence. Gave him the change in their pockets and bought him knock-off DVDs and bootleg video games. Liked the dog, too. Bigger than him but with a personality that was pure sloth.

‘Another for the lady,’ says Ronnie, waving his empty pint glass. He turns away from her and grins as his attractive companion puts her hand on the small of his back.

One little favour, he said. Nobody will know . . .

It was a favour that would end with Paul Rouse’s body being pushed into a beer keg and her on her hands and knees, scrubbing blood and brain and bone from the tatty wooden floor of the bar she had once dared to think of as home.

Chapter Five

McAvoy sits on the low grey wall beside slow-moving brown water and listens through an earpiece as his wife tells an armed robber he has muscles she would never get tired of biting. He doesn’t know whether to keep his face inscrutable or allow himself a little smile of perverse pride at Roisin’s ability to play whatever role is asked of her. He likes knowing that, in Pharaoh’s eyes, Roisin is one of the team’s most useful assets. She would be the SOU’s best confidential informant if she allowed herself to be officially registered as such. But that would make Roisin a grass and the label is considered grotesque in the community where she was raised. She doesn’t mind helping her husband catch bad men – she just won’t do it for financial gain.

He’s only a hundred feet or so from the Trawl, with its ugly face and its black timbers and its roof that seems to be made of half a dozen randomly assembled triangles. A century ago this spot would have been thriving: a raucous waterside community built on hard work and trade. Today Stoneferry is a near-wasteland – empty warehouses, litter-strewn footpaths and graffiti-daubed walls. The Trawl is one of the last remaining pubs to survive in the ghost town which was once home to hostelries with splendid old names like the Grapes and the Blue Ball.

McAvoy stares at the water and thinks about death. He has seen much of it. Has witnessed pain and brutality and been present at the precise moment a human heart turns to stone through the sheer enormity of grief. He has seen how one simple act of violence can annihilate the soul. He doesn’t weigh one murder against another. He cannot allow himself to think of the murder of a child or a pensioner as somehow more appalling than that of a drug dealer stabbed to death or an abuser burned alive. He lives by the credo that it is wrong to take another life. He doesn’t doubt that if he’d met Paul Rouse he would have found him objectionable but if that were a sin worthy of execution, Hull would be an empty place. Nobody deserves to be half beheaded with a shotgun and then sealed in a beer barrel and dumped into the River Hull. He knows few things with any certainty but he is aware, to his bones, that it’s his duty to provide redress for the wronged.

‘You look like you’ve been a bad boy in your time,’ says Roisin, in his ear, cooing at the big man. ‘Tell me your war stories. You been inside?’

McAvoy bites his lip. There is a tight knot in his stomach. He has never ever attempted to tell Roisin what she can and cannot do. She’s good at this and she might help the team catch a killer. It isn’t his responsibility to stop her putting herself in danger. She experienced more peril and violence as a young woman than he, for all his scars and broken bones, has ever endured. He has no more right to tell her to stay at home with the children than she has to make him stop being a policeman. They are who they are. He adores her bravery and spirit and she stares at him in turn with the wide-eyed awe of a woman who married her hero. He has only fleetingly wondered whether it is her absolute certainty that he will come to her aid that makes her so resolutely fearless.

In front of him, a pigeon and a seagull are fighting over a discarded packet of crisps. He watches them for a while. He’s already read all the graffiti on the wall, topped with barbed wire, which divides the riverside walkway from the cocoa factory. He has no doubt that whoever wrote Connor Is a Liar on the grey brick has long since forgiven his indiscretion.

John PrewJ

There is a sudden vibration from within McAvoy’s long cashmere coat. In the right-hand pocket Roisin’s conversation is being recorded straight on to a sleek digital Dictaphone. He retrieves his phone and removes the earpiece. He recognises the number.

‘How’s she doing?’ asks Pharaoh, without a hello.

‘Been inside more than an hour,’ he says. ‘Flowers worked a treat.’

‘And she’s made friends with the big man?’

‘Aye.’

‘Had enough practice, I suppose.’

McAvoy says nothing. He wants to stay professional, even while his boss is sitting in his living room looking after his children while his wife flirts with an armed robber. Roisin has two objectives. She needs to ascertain the pay-as-you-go mobile number currently being used by Ronnie Bond and, if possible, she has to find out which of the regulars are left-handed. Through some seemingly random snippets of information she has already alerted McAvoy to the fact that Bond is not one of them. The news was disappointing. Bond ticks every box. But without actionable evidence, the CPS and the top brass are reluctant to drag him in for further questioning for fear of being seen to harass the poor thuggish bastard.

‘I’ve chased up Larsson on the ballistics,’ she says, and he hears her inhale, picturing the end of her e-cigarette glowing blue.

‘And?’

‘And the private sector doesn’t like taking calls on a Sunday but once you explain how much money they’re receiving for a report I should have had days ago, they become surprisingly placid.’

McAvoy kicks a stone. It makes a small splash and then drops without a trace. He finds himself wondering how long the beer keg stayed in the mud and silt of the river bed before the currents pulled it free and sent it spinning into the waters of the Humber and on down the coast.

‘The initial report was correct,’ says Pharaoh. ‘The gun was placed no more than an inch from Rouse’s neck and he got both barrels from a twelve-gauge. And yes, I know that Bond used a twelve-gauge. There’s no way of comparing shotgun pellets, other than to say that the same type was fired into the ceiling at one of the Post Office raids, which means nothing at all.’

‘And?’ asks McAvoy. He knows she must have rung for more than this. He hears her grin.

‘We did strike lucky on the sample analysis,’ she says, stringing out every word. ‘Bit of an unexpected find.’

‘Yes?’ he asks, impatiently. He wants to put the earpiece back in and listen to his wife. Bond could have confessed to the whole thing by now.

‘In among the carnage at the bottom of the keg. Teeth, shattered bone, brain fragments – the whole All-Bran of gore . . .’

‘Something useful?’

‘They’ve been making a computer model of Rouse’s head. A real contender for world’s nastiest jigsaw puzzle. Matching the fragments to pictures and coming up with a pretty serviceable replica of what he looked like before he died. And there was one tooth too many. They sent it for analysis and it came back as non-human.’

McAvoy, who has been pacing up and down, suddenly stops. His mind fills with the images he has pored over in recent days, trying to acquaint himself with every drinker and drinking den within a three-mile radius of Rouse’s last known whereabouts. He pictures the boy, Shania’s son, with his huge, docile dog.

‘Deano,’ says McAvoy, at the same time as his boss.

‘Yep,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Looks like he’s not just a big pussycat after all. He went for Rouse. What we don’t know is why. Or quite how a dog managed to use a shotgun . . .’

‘The gun could have been Rouse’s. It could have turned nasty in there – he pulls a gun, the dog defends its master, everything goes wrong and they have to tidy up.’ He frowns, displeased with his own theory. ‘But guns are hard to come by and if he had one he’d have shown everybody. And they’re a tricky thing to carry around on a bike. And then there’s the dog. We don’t know anything about his character.’

‘Look, you’re the animal lover,’ says Pharaoh, nonchalant. ‘I’m not wasting any of the budget on a psychological assessment for a bloody canine. I’m more interested in why Rouse would get both barrels. And here’s a thought – did the dog snack on Rouse after he was already down?’

McAvoy rubs his face, thinking hard. He has no doubt that a dog would defend its master. But what sort of danger could the lad have been in? He considers everything he knows about Rouse. Loudmouth. Gobshite. Always showing sick clips on his phone and trying to impress. Had he crossed the line? Done something that Deano took as a threat? And if he’d gone for the man, what would the other drinkers have done? Would they feel enough loyalty to an animal to lie to the police and risk jail time over it? He finds that hard to believe. But for one another, for Shania, the landlady of their local, they would put their necks on the block. He pictures Shania. Fleshy. Scared. Gone to seed, with acne and blackheads and burst capillaries, her cheap tattoos and her scars . . .

‘Shania,’ says McAvoy, abruptly. ‘If she tried to chuck him out and he turned nasty . . . if Jay tried to help his mum . . .’

‘Is she left-handed?’

‘Roisin’s trying to find out.’

‘And the boy?’ asks Pharaoh.

McAvoy closes his eyes. He hates where his thoughts are leading him.

‘Keep listening,’ says Pharaoh.

She ends the call without a goodbye. McAvoy collects his thoughts and controls his breathing. He puts the earpiece back in his ear. Hopes he hasn’t missed too much . . .

Chapter Six

‘Another, please,’ says the quiet man, from his table. Shania glances at him. He’s staring at the doorway, where Jay and his faithful dog Deano have appeared.

‘Now then, lad!’ says Alan, enthusiastically. ‘Good to see you. And your beast! You want a pop? Or is it a double whisky these days?’

Jay tries to smile but it’s little more than a twitch. His face is pale. Shania finds herself glancing at his lower half, hoping to God that he doesn’t suddenly piss himself the way he’s been doing two nights out of three for the best part of a year.

‘Double vodka and Coke, was it?’ asks Shania, turning to the pretty girl.

‘Aye, that’d be grand,’ says the woman, smiling in a way that Shania finds it difficult not to return.

‘On the slate, is it?’ she asks Ronnie, who nods and rubs his nose. He’s gone a little jittery. Shania recognises the signs. She starts counting down from five to one, knowing with absolute certainty what he is about to say.

‘Popping to the bogs,’ he announces. ‘Back in a sec.’

Shania says nothing. She’s stopped caring about the powder he shoves up his nose in the toilets. He didn’t learn his lesson when Dave Albert crashed his car. She doesn’t expect him to alter his ways just because of her.

‘Crisps, son?’ Shania asks Jay. He nods. His eyes find hers and she can almost taste his fear. He hates this room now, with its bad memories and its falsehoods. She wants to grab his hand and run; throw a match into a puddle of petrol as she leaves.

Deano lies down at his master’s feet – a colossal shaggy rug forming a moat between Jay and everybody else.

Shania is about to ask the woman some gentle questions about herself when the door to the Gents bursts open. Ronnie is standing in the doorway, an angry expression on his face and white powder crusting both nostrils. The young woman turns at the noise and Shania realises, with a mix of relief and dread, that it’s the traveller who has somehow earned his displeasure.

‘You’ve had my phone, you thieving bitch,’ he yells, chest out and head back. His face is red and the tendons in his neck stand out.

‘Sorry, sweetheart?’ asks the woman. If she’s afraid she doesn’t show it.

‘Don’t fucking sweetheart me. My phone. You’ve had it.’

‘Your phone?’ she asks, voice soft. ‘Why would I want your phone? Come and sit by me, my beautiful man. Take the temper off you a little.’

Mattie stands up straight, looking at his friend and then back to the traveller girl. ‘Easy, Ronnie . . .’ he begins.

‘No, fuck that. She’s had me phone. Who are you, anyway?’ He locks his teeth and stamps in her direction. On the floor, Deano raises his head and opens an eye. Jay starts to stand. Shania sees the fire and fear in his expression.

‘You invited me!’ says the woman. ‘Feck, if you’re gonna stay in a temper I’ll be off. I’ve better things to do than be called a thief.’

‘You’re more’n a thief,’ spits Ronnie. He is only a pace or two away from her, baring his teeth. ‘What are you? You come in here, sticking your tits in my face . . .’

‘That’ll do, Ronnie.’

Everybody turns. The quiet man raises his head from his Racing Post. He looks hard at the huge bodybuilder towering over them all.

‘What’s it to you?’ Ronnie barks. ‘Think you’re something, do you? Think you’ve got me scared just ’cause you showed a bit of something when these pussies were pissing their pants. Fuck you. Fuck all of you!’

Instinct takes over. Shania has thrown dozens of angry men out of her pubs and never allows herself to hesitate when violence suffuses the air. She throws open the hatch and hurries towards Ronnie, waving her arms, smiling like this is all a mistake.

‘Leave off, big man, we’ll help you look, she won’t have nabbed anything – not in here. You’re Ronnie Bond, everybody knows you. Nobody would dare. Let’s see if it’s down the side of the chair, yeah . . .?’

Ronnie isn’t listening. He’s high on the cocaine, amphetamine and steroid mix that once caused him to stamp on the face of an elderly woman and which fuelled him through a dozen different Post Office raids alongside his old mate Dave Albert. He sees only targets. Enemies. He turns to Shania and shoves her in the chest. She yells, surprised, and begins to fall back. Jay stands up, angry, indignant, and Ronnie roars at him to stay where he is.

Ronnie spins back to the traveller girl and wraps a huge, tattooed hand around her throat, lifting her off the floor up to him so that their faces are squashed together as if against glass . . .

There is a sudden roar as Deano transforms. The animal that was little more than a slumbering lump of contentment becomes a slavering, furious devil-hound. The growl in his throat turns into a furious cacophony of deep, guttural barks. Ronnie twitches towards the new sound. His face creases into an ugly smirk and he pulls out a switchblade. In a flash of dancing metal he flicks the handle into his palm and holds the blade out, ready to hack at the animal, or the traveller bitch, or anyone who dares cross him . . . ready to stick Paul Rouse’s knife through flesh and bone and into the warm caress of heart, liver, spleen . . .

The door seems to explode inwards.

Aector McAvoy comes through it like a train.

Chapter Seven

Three hours later . . .

The quiet man sits on the bunk in a holding cell at the police HQ on Clough Road. He feels oddly at peace. These past few months have disrupted his sleep and caused his ulcer to flare up. He half imagined that acting the way he did in his youth would somehow re-energise him. If he’d thought about it, he would have presumed that he’d wake up feeling youthful and vibrant the day after he blew Paul Rouse’s head apart. He would have been wrong.

On the bunk, laces removed from his shoes, belt and tie gone from his neck and waist, the quiet man thinks about the day’s events. The big copper went through Mattie like a car through long weeds. The imbecile went for the Scotsman with a glass and McAvoy slammed his head into a table hard enough to buckle the legs. Even the dog paused, slinking back to Jay while Ronnie squared up to the newcomer and told him what he would do if he didn’t get out of his face. McAvoy looked at the traveller girl, standing there with a little smile on her lips, and the quiet man understood at once. When Ronnie came for McAvoy, the traveller gave him the slightest of nods – tacit permission, a gesture of assurance. Ronnie put the knife in his left hand and threw a punch with his right. It was a good one, solid and vicious, just like the man who threw it. It connected with the policeman’s jaw. He simply looked at Ronnie. Looked right through him as if he’d been struck with a soft toy. Then he grabbed Ronnie by his too-tight T-shirt and threw him – literally hurled him – across the pub. Ronnie landed so hard it sounded like he’d fallen from the roof. McAvoy hit him only once after that. It was a short, open-handed slap but it knocked Ronnie out cold and made him piss his pants – eyes rolling back in his head and one leg broken at the knee. McAvoy glanced at the traveller and she reached out and squeezed his hand. Then he surveyed the wreckage. Sized them all up. Looked at the quiet man – and knew.

On his bunk, the quiet man slides into a more comfortable position. His bones ache. He’s seventy-six years old and feels every day of it. He’s had a decent enough life. It hadn’t been a difficult decision to spare the boy the horror of what Mattie suggested after the orgy of violence subsided all those months ago.

He thinks back. Remembers it all. Paul had been his usual self all night, talking bollocks, getting pissed, trying to impress with tall tales and bullshit. Even little Jay, the inquisitive and polite young man, had grown tired of him. Paul had tried too hard to impress and had shown the boy a video of some young naked blonde being brutalised by three dwarves. Jay hadn’t liked it and told Shania. Shania had lost her temper and ordered Paul to leave before she told the others about it. He’d refused. Embarrassed, he’d started mouthing off. The quiet man had sat there, drinking his pint, watching it build, savouring the familiar aroma of impending violence.

When Shania grabbed Paul’s arm and dragged him to the door he pulled out the switchblade that he had always bragged about. He threatened her. Said he would take her eyes if she didn’t let go of him, slashing at her and opening a thin red wound across the rose tattoo on her left breast. Jay saw his mum in distress and ran to her aid. Paul backhanded him. And Deano struck. One moment he was a docile, slumbering bag of rags and the next he had his mouth on Paul’s throat and the two were clattering to the ground. The other drinkers tried to drag the dog away and began beating on Paul, caught up in the frenzy of the moment. Shania dragged Deano into the snug and came back to find Mattie and Alan kicking at the prone Paul and her son cowering on the floor, eyes full of tears.

All eyes turned to the quiet man – the only person who had done nothing. He’d known this day would come. He’d been a bad lad in his youth. Served a few stretches for hurting people who’d put his back up and half killed a security guard who got in his way during a raid on a building society in ’81. He got away with that one, but served nine years for breaking a jeweller’s kneecaps with a hammer during the burglary of a watch shop in Henley in 1987. He had behaved himself since coming out. For nigh-on twenty years his interests were horses, real ale and watching old mysteries on the little telly in his small flat off Mayville Avenue. He has no grandchildren. No family to speak of. He’s been waiting for the end ever since his release – killing time in the pubs where he finds the conversation most tolerable and keeping his mouth shut out of practice. He knows how he’s seen. He’s an old man. A frail old bugger. Quiet and harmless.

It was Mattie who suggested they finish him off. His big friend Ronnie had been hiding his shotgun at the pub for months, hoping to resume his armed robbery career when the heat cooled off. Everybody knew about it. Shania got a little stack of notes as compensation. Mattie went to the cellar to get the weapon while the others stood around Paul’s twitching body and realised the enormity of what they’d done. He was still twitching. His broken mouth bubbled with blood. Even now, the quiet man cannot shake the feeling that the one word he kept trying to form was simply ‘sorry’.

Who’ll do it? asked Mattie, offering the gun around the crowd as if proffering a bag of sweets.

Heads were shaken. Profanities exchanged. Alan suggested leaving him to bleed out. They should dump him outside and chuck his bike in the river. But there was no disguising the bite wounds to his throat and that would lead the coppers to Shania’s door. Mattie toyed with the idea of cutting his head off – slicing through the ragged neck wounds. The quiet man sat and listened, counting down the seconds in his head until the inevitable suggestion was put forward.

‘Let’s say it was self-defence,’ said Mattie. ‘He went for the boy. He was a perv. The dog was just defending his master . . .’

‘We’ve all got form,’ said Alan. ‘And we kicked the fuck out of him.’

‘We could disguise the wounds. Shoot him close up, turn him into meat and get rid of him. Anybody asks, we’ll say we were at Gordo’s. He’ll cover – he has before.’

‘But that’s Ronnie’s gun,’ snapped Alan.

‘We could say the gun was Paul’s. He pulled it on us. We got it off him but it went off . . .’

‘You’re going to pull the trigger, are you, big man?’

All eyes turned to the boy, crying and snotting and huddled up to his mother.

‘He’s only nine,’ said Mattie. ‘I read somewhere, you can’t be done for murder at that age. If he pulls the trigger then even if the body’s found we’ve got a cover story.’

Shania opened her mouth, colour draining from her face. That was when the quiet man stood up and cleared his throat. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen blood before. But if any of you say a word I’ll spill an awful lot more. We’re in this together now. Shania, love – we need an empty keg.’

He can still feel Paul’s blood and brains upon his clothes and skin, soaking through to stain him pink. Can still remember the sparks in that dark cellar and the grunt of exertion as Mattie stuffed the limp, unrecognisable corpse into the keg. The quiet man has waited for discovery ever since. It was almost a relief when the body bobbed up down at Northcoates. He told them all to stay calm. Stick to the story. Remember their promise. He’d already had to reprimand Mattie for being dumb enough to give Paul’s switchblade to Ronnie as recompense for the loss of his shotgun. He isn’t surprised that the police made Ronnie their number one suspect. He would have thought the same. He wonders whether McAvoy will believe him when he tells him Ronnie wasn’t even there that night. Wonders whether he should keep that to himself. He’d like to see Ronnie go down. But the important thing is keeping Shania and Jay out of it. They’re a nice family. Deserve better. He hopes they think of him kindly, though that wasn’t his motivation for agreeing to pull the trigger. He just knew that his own soul was already damned and his shoulders could bear a little more weight.

The quiet man thinks about what passed between himself and McAvoy in the wake of the fight. McAvoy looked around him and clocked the weapons that each man had instinctively picked up when the violence began. The quiet man had gripped his pint glass and was preparing to throw it – to smash it into the face of the dog or the big man or whoever looked like they were going to cause the boy harm. McAvoy saw it, in his left hand, and read the rest in his eyes.

The quiet man is looking forward to the next few hours. He doesn’t think McAvoy will judge him and, if he does, he has no intention of biting his tongue. He’ll tell the big man what he needs to know. He’ll confess to murder and try to take the silly bastards who ruined his favourite boozer down with him. He’ll die in prison, but the knowledge causes him little distress.

He hears heavy footsteps in the corridor. The window in the metal door slides open and he looks into the deep brown eyes of the man who tore through someone calling himself Hull’s hardest as if he were made of dust. He returns the gaze and gives a little smile.

He receives a nod, the tiniest gesture of respect, and then the window closes and he is alone once more.

In the corridor outside the cell, McAvoy leans against the wall. The old man looks so fragile in there. Five foot four in his stockinged feet and hair like margarine. McAvoy isn’t looking forward to the interview. He already senses what he will be told. He saw it in the old man’s eyes in the aftermath of the incident at the bar. Saw the way he looked across at Shania and her boy. There was a quiet acceptance there – a knowledge of what was to come. In that moment, McAvoy understood – even before Mattie and Alan, groaning and broken, began to bark their accusations that it was the old man who had done it all. McAvoy knew what the old man had done. He’d done what he felt he had to. Took charge when others faltered.

He wonders what he would have done, in that situation. Whether the old boy has suffered for his actions. Wonders, for a moment, whether there will be any fallout from what he did to Ronnie and Mattie. Then he rubs his hair with a big rough hand and forces himself to get his thoughts in order. They have caught a killer. He has found redress for the dead. It brings him no joy – just a sense of vague satisfaction.

This is what he is for.

This is who he is.

COMING SOON

CRUEL MERCY

DS MCAVOY: BOOK 6

David Mark

McAvoy’s Irish Romany brother-in-law has gone missing in wintry New York. Of the two men he travelled with, one is dead, and the other only survived by a miracle. Violence is brewing – on both sides of the Atlantic.

McAvoy travels in the desperate hope of finding out what really happened, and soon comes up against mafias old and new, and the culmination of a crime forty years in the making . . .

Keep reading for an extract of Cruel Mercy.

1

10.15 p.m. Seventh Precinct, Lower East Side

Now . . .

There’s a chunk of plastic cat shit in Detective Ronald Alto’s Zen garden. It’s just sitting there, next to the little rake, forming a gruesome mouth beneath three shiny pebbles.

Alto fights back a smile as he wordlessly picks up the offending addition and deposits it in his top drawer. It clatters down among the other pieces of artwork that the detectives of New York’s Seventh Precinct have seen fit to place in the little bamboo and sand construction that sits in the in-tray on top of his age-blackened desk. He presumes this evening’s contribution was made by Detective Hugh Redding. Reviewed critically, the cat shit lacks subtlety but has a certain potency. The same could be said for the man himself. It certainly doesn’t possess the creative genius displayed by Sergeant Kendricks, who last week recreated a beach homicide out of Lego figures in the ten minutes that Alto was away from his desk.

‘B minus,’ announces Alto, without looking at the trio of detectives at the far end of the long room, who sit shovelling Chinese food into their mouths with plastic knives and forks.

‘Objection,’ shouts Redding, beginning to rise. There is rice on the front of his off-white shirt and the seams of his grey trousers strain under the pressure of his flesh.

‘Overruled,’ says Alto, waving Redding back into his chair.

‘It’s a litter box,’ shouts Redding, picking a shrimp off the rolled-up cuff of his shirt sleeve and popping it in his mouth. ‘I want the shit back. Belongs to my stepson.’

‘Early Christmas present, was it?’

‘Little prick left it in my shoe.’

‘And you thought of me?’

‘I always think of you, Ronny,’ says Redding, puckering up and blowing a kiss. ‘Can’t sleep unless I’m spooning you in my mind.’

Alto decides to end the conversation with a grin and a raised mid-finger. He is a veteran of the Seventh and well-versed in the foul-mouthed sexual banter that is as much a part of the squad room as the black linoleum, the beige walls, the battered silver filing cabinets and an aroma that would make a perfumer’s head cave in. It’s a pungent cocktail of perspiration, ethnic food and clothes dried out in a too-small room; marbled with coffee and stale cigarettes. Alto associates the smell with home. He missed it when he spent his year on temporary assignment with Homicide South. That was a hard time. He made the right contacts, put away some bad people but it was a difficult few months for his soul. He had to stand by while deals were made that turned his stomach and he found himself starting to see the advantages, the opportunity for manipulation, rather than seeing the victims and the villains. His time with Homicide came to an end through a combination of failing to kiss the right asses, and becoming too fond of the bottle. He knows himself to be tenacious but in drink he becomes obsessive.

For the last few months of his time in Homicide he was doggedly pursuing a money-launderer who had links to Paulie Pugliesca’s crime family. Loose lips alerted him to the crooked lawyer’s existence and he became convinced that if he could put a face to the legend he would have a useful lever to use against Pugliesca. The old man’s soldiers were responsible for a half-dozen hits during his time on Homicide and he had fought tooth and claw to keep the murder investigations under his remit instead of being folded up into the larger Federal investigation into organised crime. Instead he found endless layers of bureaucracy and legal red tape and became so entangled in who owned what and which company belonged to what offshore account, he found himself drowning. Like any drowning man, he reached for more liquid. He returned to the Seventh as a borderline alcoholic. The file he collected on the lawyer still sits in his desk; the smug, round-faced bastard grinning up through the sheets of arrest reports, requests for information and legal documentation. He doesn’t know why he keeps it other than a feeling, deep in his core, that it matters.

Adjusting his glasses, Alto sits down in his swivel chair and slaps his hand down on the keyboard of the chunky computer. The machine is all but useless and he prefers to use his own slimline laptop for his casework, but when the screen desktop is dark he can see the reflection of the squad room in all its grey misery, and at this hour, on an evening this grim, he is far too short on self-loathing to put himself through it.

Ronald Alto is forty-two years old. He’s tall and slim and is one of the few detectives in the Seventh who worries about how much exercise he is getting, how much he drinks, and whether he has consumed enough portions of fresh fruit and vegetables each day. His colleagues have stopped inviting him to join in their nightly banquets of cultural cuisine, though tonight the smell of chicken chow-mein is so strong that he could well be passively consuming a share of their artery-hardening calories. It took Alto a year of hard work to lose the sixty pounds he packed on after Lisa walked out on him and he is obsessive in his desire not to let a single ounce of fat slip back onto his middleweight boxer’s torso. Lisa would consider this typical of him. If he had been less obsessive about his work, perhaps she would never have left. Alto would disagree. She was always going to leave him. Obsession had nothing to do with it. He considers himself neither more nor less devoted to his work than any of his colleagues. He simply struggles with going home to watch shitty TV and eat dinners off a tray when he could be taking steps towards catching killers. He presumes he would be the same in whatever profession he chose. Were he a carpenter, like his father, he would not be able to stop sanding or varnishing simply because his shift had finished. He would need to see the job through to completion. He told Lisa that long before they were married and continued to mutter it, sullenly, in the face of her tears and tantrums through the course of their three-year marriage. She was already gone a week by the time Alto realised she had made good on her threat. It was not the absence of Lisa that plunged him into misery – more the fulfilment of the gloomy prophesies made by friends, family and colleagues when he announced his intention to wed. Cops’ marriages don’t last, they said. Marry another cop or marry nobody. He ignored their grim predictions, confident that he would be the exception to the rule. Nobody was pleased when he was proved wrong.

Alto opens his laptop and, in the few seconds it takes for the machine to come to life, turns to look out of the dirty windows at a view he knows better than his reflection. The detective room is on the second floor of the utilitarian Seventh Precinct, which shares its home with the handsome heroes of the Fire Department. It overlooks a dreary, blustery corridor of the Lower East Side. The constant wind seems to have picked up a vast chunk of Manhattan’s most uninspiring constructions and deposited them at the edge of the East River. The Seventh, housed at the pleasingly exact address of 19½ Pitt Street, looks out on a scene almost Soviet in its bleakness. This is a place of housing projects, bridge ramps and squat brick buildings, rattled almost insensible by the constant rumble of vehicles crossing the bridge overhead. Nobody would put this view on a Christmas card, despite the hard, frozen snow that is piled up on the sidewalks like garbage bags. Fresh snow hasn’t fallen for three nights but the temperature has yet to get above zero and the flurries that did fall have turned to jagged white stone. The emergency rooms are overrun with people who slipped and hurt themselves. Alto heard a story yesterday that a Vietnamese shopkeeper had been assaulted by the son of an elderly lady who fell outside his store. The dutiful son had blamed the shopkeeper for not shovelling the snow away from his building. The shopkeeper had suggested that it wasn’t his responsibility. Devoid of further rational argument, the son made his point by kicking the shopkeeper unconscious. It has been years since such anecdotes shocked Alto. He no longer questions what people will do to one another. He just tries to tidy up afterwards as best he can.

A buzz from his cell phone reminds him to take one of his vitamin tablets. His hooded, military-issue coat hangs on the back of a nearby chair and he searches its pockets for the correct bottle. He takes two green tablets with a swig of electrolyte-rich water, and then slides himself back over to his computer.

‘Dinner-time, George?’ shouts Redding, with his mouth full.

‘Just an hors d’oeuvre,’ replies Alto, grinning. The men and women of the Seventh have two nicknames for him. One is George Jetson, a reference to his diet of spaceman pills. The other is Bono, in tribute to the amber-tinted spectacles he wears to combat the migraines he suffers when he spends too much time beneath bright lights. Both nicknames are remarkably affectionate. The Seventh is full of police officers with handles like Boner, Stinkz and Ball-sack. To Alto, Ball-sack seems particularly unfair. After all, her mother named her Deborah.

Alto’s fingers move over his keyboard and he pulls up the relevant case file. He sends it to the printer and sits back, waiting for the ancient machine to start rattling and spitting like some steam-powered beast. His eyes flick up to the clock above the filing cabinets. It’s 10.18 p.m. He probably has a few minutes . . .

A moment later, Alto’s posture tenses as he looks at the mugshot filling his screen. The man’s name is Murray Ellison and if Alto doesn’t find a way to put him in prison there is a very good chance he will kill him. Last summer, Ellison drugged an NYU philosophy student he met in a bar off East Broadway. She had been out drinking cocktails with friends and the handsome investment banker had taken a shine to the petite nineteen-year-old with her bubblegum-pink hair, her hippy dress and her little boy’s body. He said hello. Charmed her. Bought her drinks and another round for her friends. Whispered in her ear until she goosepimpled and blushed. High on new experience, lost in drink, she let him near enough to stir Rohypnol into her sangrias blancas. As the drug loosened her inhibitions, she told her friends she was going to stay with her new friend. They were thrilled at her daring; excited that she was going to do something so delightfully brazen. He promised them he would ensure she got a taxi home. Instead, he took her to his East Village apartment and raped her near-unconscious body. He went to bed and left her on his living room floor. The combination of alcohol and Rohypnol caused her to choke to death.

Alto cannot prove what happened next but has no doubts about the sequence of events. Alto has traced the calls made from Ellison’s cell phone and knows that he rang an unregistered cell phone forty minutes before a stolen Volvo was dropped off at the kerbside outside his building by a stocky man in a woollen hat and a ski jacket. He has never been traced. A short while later, a man who looked a lot like Ellison was spotted by a neighbour placing a suitcase in the trunk of the car. He then got into the vehicle and drove away. The vehicle was picked up by surveillance cameras on a residential street in Red Hook. The driver covered his face as he left and did not lock the door. Instead, he left the keys in the ignition. It was stolen four hours later. Whoever took it, seems to have abandoned the vehicle a short while afterwards. Alto has a feeling they looked in the trunk. Not long after, it was stolen again. By the time the contents were reported to the police, making a case against Ellison seemed damn near impossible. The District Attorney said there were too many gaps in the timeline. Once the neighbour began to have doubts about who it was they had seen, and with so many opportunities for other parties to have put the case in the trunk, the whole thing became too difficult to proceed with. There were no usable forensics, and Ellison had good lawyers. He stuck to his story. The girl came home with him, they had sex, and she left. The suit his lawyer was wearing cost more than Alto’s car. Ellison smirked his way through his interviews and even had the balls to wink now and again at the officers watching from behind the mirrored glass of the interview room. Alto managed to track down the petty thief who sold Ellison the vehicle but he refused to testify and left the city before Alto could secure a subpoena. The District Attorney’s office was impressed with the work Alto had done to demonstrate the victim’s last movements, but did not have sufficient belief in a conviction to prosecute. Ellison was set free. Alto, who had been present at the victim’s autopsy, had to be physically held back as Ellison stepped onto Pitt Street and climbed inside a sleek black limo. He was in the process of pulling his gun.

After the outburst, his sergeant bought him the Zen garden. Told him to let it go, to be a bit more Buddhist about the whole affair. Karma was a bitch, and Ellison would eventually get what was coming to him. Alto heeded his sergeant’s words. He just wanted to make sure that karma knew exactly what was required.

Alto is staring into Ellison’s green eyes when the phone on his desk begins to ring. His eyes flick to the clock: 10.30 p.m. The visitor is bang on time.

After telling the desk sergeant he will be straight down, Alto crosses to the printer and collects his sheaf of papers. He pauses for a moment and decides that it will be too cold without his coat. He returns to his desk, pulls on the great grey garment that makes him look like a member of the KGB, and walks briskly down the stairs to the reception area. He does not need to be told which of the people waiting in the small reception area is here for him. He performed a Google search on his visitor the moment he was told who was coming. And the man standing reading the noticeboard is unmistakably Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of Humberside Police in Merrie Old England.

‘Sergeant McAvoy,’ says Alto, swiping his card on the security scanner and pushing through the plastic barrier. ‘A pleasure.’

The big man turns from the noticeboard like a teenager who has been caught looking at a skin magazine. He looks startled. Embarrassed. His big face is red and his tousled hair is damp at the temples. There is grey beneath his eyes, as if an artist started drawing him in charcoal then switched to pastels halfway through. He has a ginger goatee, running to grey and the big brown eyes of a Disney animal. There are scars running from his eyelid to his jawline. They are angry, painful-looking wounds, at odds with the gentleness of the rest of his face. He’s wearing hiking boots and dark trousers that disappear into the hem of a long, dark blue woollen coat. His right hand, when he extends it, is pink and broken and solid as rock.

‘Detective Alto?’ asks McAvoy. ‘I’m Sergeant McAvoy. Oh, sorry, you already said . . .’

Alto fights not to do a double-take as he spots a blush creeping onto the bigger man’s cheeks. On his computer are the reports he requested detailing this man’s part in the successful detection of two different serial killers on his home turf in Yorkshire. One of those men ended up dead. The other is serving multiple life sentences. In both cases, McAvoy had bled in pursuit of his quarry. In both cases he was praised for his insight and bravery. Alto has been looking forward to meeting him.

‘Good flight?’ asks Alto.

‘No delays,’ says McAvoy. ‘Humberside to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to here.’

‘Amsterdam, eh? Any time to enjoy yourself?’

‘I was only there two hours,’ says McAvoy, not appearing to understand the reference.

‘When did you get in?’ asks Alto, his tone breezy.

‘Into JFK a couple of hours ago. Taxi to the hotel, then I walked here.’

‘So there’s no point asking you what you think of our fair city?’

‘I’m sure it’s lovely,’ says McAvoy, apparently apologising for not being able to give a better researched answer.

‘First time in New York?’

‘Near enough,’ he says, pushing his hand through his hair and giving a twitchy little smile. ‘Flew through here years ago. Changed for a flight to Texas. Rugby team. I was still a student then.’

‘Texas, eh?’ asks Alto, and tries to win McAvoy’s affection. ‘They say everything’s bigger there. Doubt they said that when they saw you.’

McAvoy’s blush turns scarlet and Alto realises he is dealing with a man whose shyness could well be a fatal affliction. He feels embarrassed by McAvoy’s discomfort and gestures towards the door so the bigger man has time to recover himself. Out on the street the cold hits Alto immediately and he winces in greeting to the uniformed cops leaning against the front wall, drinking coffee and speculating on the parentage of the firefighters with whom they are engaged in a bitter fight for parking lot supremacy.

‘Sorry we couldn’t lay on some better weather for you,’ says Alto, as he leads McAvoy down the sidewalk away from the precinct. ‘There’s a little place up here we can grab a quiet corner and something that actually tastes better than the plate it’s served on. I can’t promise you the same in the detectives’ room.’

McAvoy gives a nod of agreement. He walks comfortably enough on the snow. Doesn’t hunch inside his jacket the way that most people do. His big strides seem to devour the sidewalk. Alto is no small man and is well used to the company of men whose general size and shape would be best equated to kitchen appliances, but next to McAvoy he feels like he is walking beside a suddenly mobile building.

‘Cab driver give you his life story?’ asks Alto.

‘His name was Jack,’ says McAvoy, looking across the street at an ugly housing project. ‘Been here since he was seven. Runs a limo firm but still drives cabs. Hasn’t been back to Hong Kong since he was nineteen but hopes to get there next year. Likes the Knicks. Has a cousin in London and wanted to know if it’s true that we all carry umbrellas.’

Alto laughs. ‘Cab drivers like that where you’re from?’

‘Depends whom you get,’ says McAvoy, and Alto finds himself oddly pleased by McAvoy’s use of the word ‘whom’. ‘The stand-up comedians would have you believe that every taxi driver is a racist chatterbox with the social graces of a barnyard animal. I wouldn’t like to say. Cabs are expensive. I usually drive.’

Alto notices that McAvoy has slowed his pace a little and seems mesmerised by the tall buildings across the street.

‘Not exactly pretty,’ says Alto, nodding. ‘It gets more hipster the further we go.’

‘It looks like Snakes and Ladders,’ says McAvoy. He turns to Alto, his brow furrowing. ‘Do you have that here? The game with the ladders? And the snakes? All the fire escapes. We just need some huge dice.’

Alto considers the building that McAvoy is looking at. He has never thought of it before but suddenly finds himself seeing it the way his new acquaintance does. ‘We say Chutes and Ladders, but I’ll tell that to the boys,’ he says, nodding appreciatively. ‘You must have an artistic soul.’

‘My boss would make a joke about being an arsehole,’ says McAvoy.

‘Asshole, you mean?’

‘She wouldn’t say that. Wouldn’t sound right.’

‘She? You got a lady boss?’

McAvoy nods. ‘She wouldn’t call herself a lady either. Tougher than any of us. Best police officer you’ll ever meet.’

‘Can’t be easy when you don’t hate the boss,’ says Alto, stepping around some garbage bags and feeling his feet slide on the hard snow. ‘Hating the boss is what gets a lot of cops through the day.’

McAvoy considers this, while mumbling a ‘good evening’ to two black youths in baggy sweatpants and puffer coats standing outside the liquor store and watching their curse words turn to clouds on the cold night air.

‘Nothing to hate,’ he says. ‘And it helps that she saved my life.’

‘I Googled you,’ says Alto tactfully. ‘You’ve seen some action, eh?’

McAvoy turns his head away. He seems to be at last feeling the cold. He draws himself a little closer into his coat.

‘Where is it you’re taking me?’ asks McAvoy, and his voice is a little colder too.

Alto points at the dark glass of an Irish bar. They are only a couple of blocks from the Seventh but already the buildings seem cleaner and the shops and restaurants more inviting. The cold weather has thinned out the normal night-time crowd but there are still huddles of students, office-workers and intoxicated diners milling around. Alto pushes open the door and his glasses mist up as they approach the long, copper-topped bar of Lucky Jack’s.

‘Nice,’ says McAvoy appreciatively, looking at the dozens of whiskey bottles and the gleaming silver bar-taps. It’s dark and atmospheric and the lights dance pleasantly in the shapely bottles stacked up behind the bar.

‘You drink, I presume,’ says Alto, saying hello to a large man with a green Mohawk who is drinking Guinness and reading the Tribune.

‘A bit,’ says McAvoy. He’s studying the specials written in chalk on the blackboard by the toilets. ‘I’m intrigued by the hot buttered rum. And there’s a mucky hot chocolate sounds good. Would you think the worse of me?’

Alto wonders if the big man is joking. He works with men and women who drink beer and Bushmills. He gives a smile and turns to the young, handsome barman, who gives himself away as Australian with his opening ‘G’day’.

‘Mucky hot chocolate for the big man and a Brooklyn for me,’ he says brightly, and turns around to find McAvoy looking out of the window at the bum wrapped in a sleeping bag in the doorway across the street. Alto barely noticed him. He was just a shape among the piles of hard snow and the uncollected garbage.

‘Thanks,’ says McAvoy, taking the hot chocolate. Without another word, he goes to the door and walks out, crossing the street in six strides. Alto watches McAvoy deposit the drink beside the homeless man and gently place a hand on his shoulder. He talks to the man for no more than a minute, then makes his way back to the bar.

‘A lemonade for me,’ says McAvoy, slipping out of his coat. His cheeks are burning.

‘And a lemonade,’ says Alto to the barman. He smiles. Gives a little shake of his head. ‘You looked like a massive Jesus, healing the sick.’

‘A massive Jesus,’ says McAvoy, and gives what seems to be his first proper smile in an age. ‘Don’t say that near my boss.’

‘You seem to love that woman.’ Alto laughs.

‘And don’t say that near my wife.’

The two chink glasses and hunch forward in their stools, elbows on the bar.

‘Copper to copper,’ says McAvoy, indicating the bar-top.

‘You’re fucking weird,’ says Alto, and grins, suddenly enjoying himself. ‘Seems a shame to spoil the mood.’

McAvoy’s smile fades. He gives a little nod, as if preparing himself. ‘You’ve been told why I’m here,’ he says.

Alto takes another sip of his Brooklyn and pulls the papers out of his coat pocket. ‘You want to know whether we’ve caught the people who shot the Miracle Man,’ says Alto, in a way that suggests the news is not going to be good.

McAvoy puts his head on one side. Sucks his cheek as if weighing up whether to lay down playing cards that he has no faith in.

‘No,’ he says at last. ‘I want to help you find the other victims.’

‘There’re more?’ asks Alto. ‘Just what we need.’

‘There’s one more, at least,’ says McAvoy.

‘And what makes you think that?’ asks Alto conversationally.

McAvoy looks at the ice chinking in his glass and breathes out, as if from his toes.

‘Because he’s family. And he either pulled the trigger, or you just haven’t found his body yet.’

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