Dark Winter (13 page)

‘She like a drink?’

McAvoy looks up to see Chandler staring at him hard. He tries to dismiss the moment with a wave of his hand, but Chandler is already intrigued.

‘The way you said that …’

McAvoy shrugs. Figures it can’t hurt. ‘We’ve lost babies before now,’ he says. ‘This will be our fourth attempt at a second child.’

Chandler reaches out. Puts a hand on McAvoy’s broad shoulder.

‘I’d pray for you, if I believed any of that bollocks. But I don’t. So I’ll just wish you the best.’

McAvoy finds himself half-smiling. He nods in appreciation, then feels his lips begin to tremble and his eyes fog like glass as he realises he has made Roisin sound as if she were to blame for the children that never were. ‘It wasn’t the smoking,’ he begins defensively. ‘And they’re just little glasses of wine. She knows her limits …’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ says Chandler quietly, and McAvoy wonders if he has just made this interview more difficult for himself than it need be.

‘My dad always said willpower was the way,’ says McAvoy hurriedly. ‘Decide whether you’re a smoker or a non-smoker, and just be that. I’m a non-smoker. My wife’s a smoker. Just one of those things.’

‘Sounds a bright chap.’

‘He was. Is.’

‘He a cop too?’

‘No,’ says McAvoy, looking away. ‘Crofter. Up near Loch Ewe. Western Highlands to you. His family have farmed the same patch of land for more than one hundred years.’

‘Yeah?’ Chandler sounds interested. ‘I’ve read about them, crofters. Hard life, from what I’ve heard.’

‘Oh aye,’ says McAvoy, now torn between talking more
about his childhood, of testing the edges of that damp scab, and getting back to Fred Stein. ‘Dying way of life, too.’

‘So I hear. All the crofts being turned into tourist lodges nowadays, from what I read in
The Times
. Your dad not fancy that?’

‘He’d rather bite his own arms off,’ says McAvoy, more to himself than to his companion. ‘He and my brother work the land.’

‘Not you, though?’ Chandler’s voice is subtle. Soft. Inviting.

‘I gave it ten years,’ he says. ‘Then went to live with my mother. City life. Or at least, as much of a city life as you can get in Inverness. Gave that a year. Then off to boarding school, paid for by my stepdad. Bit of a culture shock. University in Edinburgh. Three years of a five-year degree. Then this. Policeman. Yorkshire. Hull. Husband and father. I wouldn’t be any use to my dad up there now. Don’t think I ever really was.’

‘Shame,’ says Chandler, and seems to mean it.

McAvoy nods. Wishes he were capable of thinking about his old life, his old family, with anything other than sadness.

They stand in silence for a moment, until they remember what has brought them together.

‘So?’

‘Yeah, Fred. Was big news in his day. Before my time, of course. Was just a baby when it happened. But I did a bit of work in Hull and it was impossible not to hear about the Black Winter. Anyways, I heard the story about Fred Stein years ago. The
Yorkshire Post
used to have an office on Ferensway and they had framed front pages on the wall. I was in there one day, having a can of ale with an old boy from the
Sun
who used to share an office with them, and I started reading this front page from the sixties. All about this one bloke who survived. Made it to the lifeboats with two of his crewmates and drifted to some remote bloody hell-hole in Iceland. Tramped cross-country until some local farmer found him. Media frenzy, there was, when it turned out he was alive. Everybody had given him up for dead, see? I just logged the info in the back of my brain. It’s getting cramped back there, like.’

‘Did you know him personally at this point?’

‘No, no. He was just a story. I had it in my mind that one day I might try and get him to talk about it. There might be a book in it. That’s what I do, see? I publish at least a book a year. You can buy them in the bookshops under local interest or get them from the publishing house website. Sell pretty well, considering. Fred seemed ideal, but I never really got round to it.’

‘Until?’

‘Well, that Caroline, from Wagtail. Met her during the
Dunbar
inquiry. Nice girl, if a bit fond of herself. Didn’t know a damn thing about the fishing industry and was willing to pay for background. That’s my line. Did her chapter and verse on the history of the local fleet; the characters, the names. Theories, contacts. She was made up with it. That’s when Fred Stein came back into my mind. I told her about it, thought no more, and then last year she got back in touch and said she thought there could be a documentary in it.’

They’ve reached the tree line now and the darkness suddenly becomes harder to penetrate. Chandler points to a wrought-iron bench and they both take a seat. McAvoy is
hunched up inside his coat but the wind is still bitter on the few inches of exposed skin. He wonders how Chandler, just skin and bone in a shirt and vest, can stand it. He seems so fragile, and there’s a pestilence about him, a suggestion that even without cigarettes, his breath would be a plume of grey smoke.

‘So where do you start with something like that? Tracking him down?’

‘It’s not difficult,’ he says dismissively. ‘Start with a last known address and just start working the phones and writing letters. Fishing community’s a small one with a long memory. Found him in Southampton within a week. Put the phone down on me the first three times, so wrote him a nice letter with my details and he got in touch. Gave him the spiel. Chance to close that chapter in his life. To honour his crew-mates. Say goodbye. Tell his side of the story. I really don’t think he was that interested, to be honest, but when I mentioned what they were willing to pay, he changed his tune. I’m not saying he was mercenary or anything. There’s nothing wrong with greed. He wanted a few quid in his old age, that was all.’

‘And you met in person?’

‘Just the once. Caroline was in the US and she needed the deal signed, sealed and delivered. I went down there on expenses and we had a few beers down his local. Nice old boy, really. Would have made a better book than a TV programme but my pockets aren’t deep enough. That’s the way of the world now. You try getting a book deal and you’ll see nobody gives a damn. It’s all celebrity biographies and misery fucking memoirs.’

The venom is back in Chandler’s voice. McAvoy notices that he has started rooting about beneath the bench with his left hand, and he suddenly pulls out a bottle of single malt.

‘Good lad,’ he says, as he unplugs the bottle and takes a giant swig.

McAvoy watches Chandler in the gathering gloom, wide-eyed and strangely impressed. Sees the smaller man’s silhouette change shape as the bottle tips up and stays there at the end of a long, bony arm.

‘Website said it costs five thousand a week to stay here,’ says McAvoy, shaking his head. ‘Money well spent, eh?’

‘I don’t know if I get more pleasure from the drink, or from being naughty,’ he says, smiling.

‘I don’t suppose you just found that bottle by accident?’

‘My young room-mate,’ he laughs. ‘He’ll do anything for me.’

‘I’ll bloody bet.’

They sit for another twenty minutes. The afternoon dusk turns midnight black. The snow lays half-heartedly on the wet gravel, then disappears into nothingness. They talk about Hull. McAvoy shivers and puts his hands in his pockets.

Eventually, the conversation returns to Stein.

‘You haven’t asked why this is a Hull CID matter,’ says McAvoy as he watches Chandler finish off the last of the whisky and notes that he hasn’t been offered a drop.

‘His sister’s got a husband on the Police Authority,’ Chandler says with a wave of his hand. ‘I’d imagine you’re doing somebody a favour.’

McAvoy looks at his feet, wishing he were as shrewd or well-informed as an alcoholic hack.

‘So what do I tell her?’ he asks.

‘Tell her that Fred was a good bloke. A nice chap full of stories. That he didn’t mind talking about what happened to him when he had a pint in his hand, and that he was shit-scared of going on that bloody great cargo ship with a TV crew who wanted to make him dance like a monkey.’

The irritation is there again. The bitterness. It might almost be called rage.

‘You don’t seem to have a great deal of time for TV journalism.’

‘Get that, did you?’ Chandler spits. Lights his final cigarette. ‘Vultures with cheque books.’

‘You’ve worked for them, though,’ points out McAvoy, as diplomatically as he dares.

‘What fucking choice have I got? I was born with one bloody talent, son. I can write. Two, if you count getting people to talk. I should be on every bloody bookshelf in the land. But I’m not. I’ve got a bedsit in East Anglia and even if I still had my licence, I couldn’t afford a car. I use what little royalties I get from one book to pay for the publishing run on the next.’

‘Mr Chandler, I—’

‘No, son, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m a fucking failure as a writer. I’ve had more rejection letters from publishers than I can fucking stomach. But put Caroline Wills in front of the camera and put a fat cheque in an old boy’s hand and you get TV bloody gold. My graft. My idea!’

McAvoy waves his hands, urging Chandler to slow down.
‘Your idea? I though Miss Wills contacted you …’

Chandler dismisses him with an angry grunt. ‘I have a million bloody ideas. I’ve got a notebook full of them. If I come up with enough outlines, maybe one day a publishing house will like one of them. Fred was in there. An idea I had. A book about people who survived. The ones that got away. The individuals who escaped when nobody else got out alive. I hadn’t even started looking for him, nor for any of the others, by the time the rejection letters hit the doormat. That’s my life, son. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m fucking here!’

Chandler is standing now. In the darkness, McAvoy can see the glowing tip of his cigarette moving from side to side, up and down, rolling around his mouth as if wedged in the lips of a cow chewing grass.

‘Mr Chandler, if you would just calm down a moment …’

Chandler extinguishes his cigarette on the palm of his hand. He places the stub in his pocket. ‘Are we done?’

McAvoy, red-faced, bewildered, angry and confused, doesn’t know what to say. He just nods. Dismisses Chandler by turning his away and sits back down on the bench. He listens to his footsteps limp away. His brain hurts. His mind is a fog of good intentions, guilt and an intuition he doesn’t fully trust.

Why did I come here?
he asks himself.
What have I bloody learned?

As he walks back to his car, he feels a hundred years old. He wants to upload his mind into the database and delete the bits that aren’t important. Look for connections. See what it is that his subconscious is telling him.

He closes the door on the swirling, angry snow. Closes his eyes.

Switches on his mobile phone.

Listens to his messages.

The bollocking from Pharaoh.

The instruction to call Helen Tremberg as soon as he can.

McAvoy plays with the car radio.

6.58 p.m. Two minutes to the next news bulletin.

Outside lane on the A15, downhill to approaching the harp strings and tangled metal of the Humber Bridge. It was an impressive sight the first few times he’d driven across this mile and a half of rigid tarmac and pristine steel that stitches Yorkshire to Lincolnshire, but the novelty has worn off, and he simply resents the £3 it costs for the privilege of not having to drive through Goole.

He feels the car swerve as the road becomes the bridge. Feels the buffeting of the ferocious wind that whips down the estuary as if it’s in a rush to get inland.

Slows down, so he can listen to the bulletin in full before he reaches the kiosk and has to pay his fare.

Good evening. Members of Humberside Fire and Rescue Service are attending a blaze at a recently opened specialist burns unit at Hull Royal Infirmary. The fire was reported shortly after 6 p.m. and is thought to have been confined to just one room occupied by a single male patient. His condition is said to be critical. In other news, the detective leading the murder enquiry following the death of a teenage
girl at Hull’s Holy Trinity Church has denied reports that a city man has been arrested in connection with the investigation. Acting Detective Superintendent Patricia Pharaoh told reporters that no arrests have been made, and that the man in question was merely assisting with inquiries. She repeated earlier calls for witnesses to the horrific stabbing to come forward …

‘Fuck,’ says McAvoy, and, without giving a damn about who sees, reaches for his phone. Pulls over on the inside lane of the bridge and switches on his hazard lights. Hears the blare of horns as drivers of the vehicles behind him let him know he’s a wanker.

Helen Tremberg answers on the third ring.

‘Speak of the devil,’ she says, and there’s not much humour in her voice.

‘Really?’ he asks, and winces.

‘You bet. Me and Ben are having a little wager as to who’s going to kill you first. Pharaoh, Colin Ray, or ACC Everett.’

‘Everett? Why?’

‘Wouldn’t like to say. Just came stomping into the incident room about tea time and asked where you were. Didn’t look happy. Even less so when one of the support staff asked him who he was.’

‘Christ!’

‘Indeed. Where have you been?’

‘Long story. It doesn’t matter. I just heard the headlines on Humberside …’

‘Yeah, Colin Ray’s really fucked up. Sorry, Sarge, I mean …’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says, and means it.

‘This bloke him and Shaz brought in. All just a hunch.
Ray’s gut feeling. I don’t know what happened when they got him in the interview room but he came out of there with his nose bleeding and puke on his shirt. That’s according to the desk sergeant, any road. Apparently Pharaoh turned up and all bloody hell broke loose. The bloke’s still in the cells but they don’t seem to know what to do with him.’

McAvoy feels his heart racing. Sees the headlines. Wonders how much of this almighty fuck-up can be attributed to him buggering off in the middle of the day to follow up on a feeling.