Dark Winter (27 page)

‘Chandler?’ he asks, and withdraws his hand from the table to start kneading at the place beneath his jacket where his arm ends in a stump.

Pharaoh nods. McAvoy sits motionless.

‘You know him?’

Algirdas looks around again, and Pharaoh marches to the bar. She has a swift discussion with the barman – leaving him in no uncertain terms that the last orders bell has not yet rung – and returns with a pint of bitter and a double vodka for the Russian, another pint for McAvoy, and a packet of pork scratchings for herself.

She tears open the bag and starts shovelling the snacks in her mouth, never taking her eyes off Algirdas as he takes the top off his pint. He downs the vodka in one, then presses his sleeve to his mouth and breathes in through it.

Pharaoh gives McAvoy a sly look, as if asking what he’s doing.

‘It accentuates the hit,’ says McAvoy. ‘Russian thing.’

‘Fuck you,’ says Algirdas, conversationally. ‘I’m Lithuanian.’

‘Fuck you, sunshine. I’m a policeman.’

They sit quietly for a moment, eyes fixed on one another.

‘Are you aware that Russ Chandler has been questioned in connection with two murders?’ asks Pharaoh over the noise
of the barman chucking empty bottles into a plastic bin. ‘Probably charged by now.’

Algirdas sits back in his chair as if he’s been pushed in the chest. He’s bolt upright, suddenly, hand squeezing at his stump in a manner that looks almost invasively painful.

‘Murder? Who murder?’

‘A young girl called Daphne Cotton,’ says McAvoy quietly. ‘And a man called Trevor Jefferson. Those names mean anything to you?’

Algirdas takes a large pull of his pint. Taps his pockets and withdraws a pouch of tobacco and papers. Skilfully, with his one hand, he begins rolling a succession of cigarettes. He places one in his mouth.

‘No smoking indoors these days,’ says McAvoy, and, with a suddenness that surprises himself, reaches across the table and plucks the roll-up from the other man’s mouth.

‘Chandler,’ he says again.

Algirdas looks to Pharaoh. He seems to lose his temper. ‘Barry. Bouncer. He tell me police want to see me, I come. He says nice lady, big tits. I say no problem. I come here. I talk to you. I think it Angie. I think, maybe witness statement, yes? Not Chandler. Not murder.’

‘You were the one who mentioned his name to me,’ says McAvoy, slowly dismantling the cigarette and returning it to its component parts on the wet, sticky table top. ‘You heard me on the phone. You heard me say his name. And you asked me about him. That’s why we’re here.’

Algirdas sucks at his lips. Starts biting his lower one. He reaches inside his shirt and pulls out a dull metal pendant on a chain. He puts it in his mouth like a pacifier.

‘Your saint?’

Algirdas snorts. ‘Change from my first English pint,’ he says. ‘Two pence. Nine years ago. In a bar like this one.’

‘Touching,’ says McAvoy, and takes the sudden moment of pressure against his leg as a sign from Pharaoh that he should step off.

Algirdas finishes his drink. He looks to Pharaoh. He appears to be wrestling with something, then gives a little growl of acceptance. ‘I not illegal,’ he says. ‘I have papers. I have right to be in Grimsby.’

Pharaoh pops the last pork scratching in her mouth. ‘I couldn’t give a damn about all that, matey. Anybody who wants to be in Grimsby must be fleeing something bloody terrible. You’re welcome as far as I’m concerned.’

Algirdas nods, as if having come to a decision.

‘I meet Chandler in bar like this. Southampton, yes? Five years? Six? We drink. We talk. He listen my story. He writer. Great writer. He tell me.’

‘He going to write your story, was he? Make you famous?’

Algirdas hits the table again, and it’s hard to tell if he is angry or excited. ‘In Lithuania, I singer. I make record. Big hit. Not just my country.’

Pharaoh seems to be trying not to laugh. ‘You on Lithuanian
Top of the Pops
, were you?’

‘I on TV. Radio. Posters on bedroom wall. Big star.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. I good.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Fucking politics. I want more money. They not pay. I think I star. They not. I walk out. Wait for phone to ring. Take real
job. Pay bills until all get better. Never got better. Real job become real life.’ He stares at the table top with eyes that contain bitterness and regret.

‘And Chandler …?’

‘He love story. Say there could be book. Say could be hit. Tell my story. How pop singer become dock worker in Southampton. Then I hurt my arm. Chandler visit me. Says it make book more real. More human, he says. Says he call. Arrange interview. Speak to publisher.’

‘And he called?’

Algirdas looks away. ‘He start writing other book. Always writing. Always working. Sometimes drinking, yes. Likes the drinking.’

‘So what brought you up to Grimsby?’

‘I come for work. I have friend here. Offer me job. Not many choices for one-armed man.’

McAvoy pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘He contacted you again, though, yes? Recently.’

Algirdas nods. ‘He call, maybe month ago. Find my number. Say he has book in mind. Not forgotten me. Wants to meet.’ He closes his mouth, unsure if he should continue. McAvoy soundlessly pushes his only drink across the table and the Lithuanian takes it hungrily.

‘But first …’

‘He need favour for friend. Friend moving Iceland. Need booking on container ship. Asks can I arrange it …’

‘And you could?’

Algirdas shrugs. ‘Docks busy places. I got friends. Know system.’

‘And Chandler knew that?’

‘He must remember. I tell him. Tell him how easy to get people in and out. How police, how security, no fucking point. People come and go as they please.’

Pharaoh turns to McAvoy, but he doesn’t look at her. Keeps staring at the man who, any moment now, is going to tell him how Fred Stein ended up dead in a lifeboat.

‘And you said yes?’

‘Chandler tell my story. Show people who I used to be.’

McAvoy understands this overwhelming need to be appreciated, how a miserable little scribbler like Russ Chandler could pour honey in the ear of stronger, more capable men.

‘What were you asked to do?’

‘Chandler’s friend call me. Say he need container to stay shut. Need on bottom deck. No inspection. No sealed behind other. No top of stack. I book for him.’

‘You spoke to him?’

‘Short call. Two minutes. Matter-of-fact. You know this phrase? He to the point. I think talking hurt for him. Voice sound like he being strangled …’

McAvoy closes his eyes. He can smell blood and snow.

‘I wait for Chandler to ring …’

‘Has the phone rung?’

‘No,’ he says quietly, and then suddenly raises his head. ‘But he in jail, you say. He not ring me. How he write book now? Chandler not killer. He small man. One leg. Drunk. How he kill anyone?’

McAvoy’s temper flares. ‘He didn’t, you stupid gullible bastard. And he’s never written a book. Not a proper one. He’s a miserable little failure who’s just got his hands on a bloody best-seller!’

Running his hands through his hair, McAvoy stands up, knocking his chair over and bumping the glasses. Suddenly standing at his full height, Algirdas looks up at him as if he is a giant. His mouth opens and closes like he’s a dying fish. Pharaoh reaches up to put a hand on her sergeant’s arm, but he shakes her away and storms from the pub, oblivious to the stares and the meaningless words of the bouncer.

The cool air hits him like a slap.

He hears Pharaoh’s heels clatter on the wet pavement. Realises she’ll have to sprint to catch him, so slows his pace to allow her to talk him out of storming off.

‘McAvoy!’ she shouts. ‘Hector.’

He turns, face flushed, hair damp, sweat pooling in the well at the base of his neck.

‘McAvoy, I don’t understand …’

‘No,’ he snaps. ‘You don’t.’

‘But it all points to Chandler, doesn’t it? I mean, it looks like he’s guilty …’

‘Oh, he’s guilty,’ he says, tipping his head back to stare up at a sky utterly devoid of stars. ‘Guilty of playing games with people. Guilty of preying on people’s conceits and fears. Guilty of a huge amount of anger. But pulling the trigger? Stowing away on a bloody boat with a welding torch and a lifeboat? Hacking up Daphne in a crowded church? Putting me down twice? No, that’s not his style.’

He feels Pharaoh’s hand on his forearm and this time he doesn’t shake her off.

‘So what is his style? Tell me.’

McAvoy breathes out. Looks down the deserted main road
with its random constellations of blinking neon lights and broken shop-signs.

‘He can tell you himself,’ he says angrily. ‘We’re going to see him.’

Pharaoh looks up at him. Her breasts are heaving with the exertion of running, and her smell is ripe in the small pocket of air that seems to contain them both.

He pulls back.

Looks at his feet, and then fills himself with Daphne Cotton.

With Fred Stein.

With Angie Martindale.

Even Trevor fucking Jefferson.

He finds himself suddenly aware that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not the same things as ‘right’ and wrong’.

And he knows that the reason he has to catch the right man, has to reset the scales by flinging the right murderer into the right cell, is the same reason he will not let himself kiss this sexy, passionate, powerful woman.

It’s because somebody has to give a damn about the rules.

And because nobody else really gives a fuck.

McAvoy and Pharaoh are forty miles from Hull when the call comes through. Forty miles from Wakefield Prison, too. A little under an hour from a private meeting room, a table, three chairs, and an hour in the company of the only man who can tell him if he is right.

Pharaoh, in the driver’s seat, pulls the mobile from between her thighs and answers with the word ‘Tom’. She gives a few brief grunts and curses. Her face darkens as she hangs up.

Silently, one hand distractedly silencing McAvoy’s questions, she pulls onto the hard shoulder.

‘I think we’re at the end of the road,’ says Pharaoh.

‘What? It’s miles yet …’

‘Chandler. He tried to kill himself.’

McAvoy feels like he’s been punched in the stomach.

‘How?’

‘Had a razor in that false leg of his. Nobody checked. Found him in his cell, bleeding from the throat. The wrists. The ankles. Well, the ankle …’

‘He knew we were coming,’ says McAvoy flatly.

‘He didn’t, Hector,’ she says, and her voice is barely audible over the sound of the articulated lorries that tear past, inches away. ‘We were off-radar, my love. The warden was doing us a favour. We were going out on a limb. If his solicitor had found out …’

‘He knew.’

‘Hector.’

‘He fucking knew.’

There is silence for a moment.

He knows what she will say next. Knows that Pharaoh has gone as far as she can. That she, Spink, Tremberg, all of them, will begin to convince themselves of Chandler’s guilt. That they will begin to do what needs to be done to ensure Colin Ray’s case remains watertight. That they are all seen to get their man.

‘You know he didn’t do it,’ says McAvoy. ‘Not properly, I mean.’

‘I don’t know what to think, Hector. These are the actions of a guilty man.’

‘A guilty man who happens to be innocent.’

Pharaoh shakes her head.

‘We haven’t really got anything, have we?’ she says, half to herself. ‘Not you and me. Not Colin. We’ve made a bloody pig’s ear of this from the start. Serious and Organised? Which one do you see me as?’

McAvoy looks out of the window. Watches the angry sky.

‘What do you really think?’ asks Pharaoh.

McAvoy sighs. ‘I think what Chandler saw as an idea for a book, somebody else saw as something more. Something that made sense. I don’t know …’ Raps himself on the forehead with a bruised knuckle, furious at his inability to unravel the
tangle of thoughts that were messing up his mind. ‘This isn’t random. I know that much. This isn’t a crime for love or money or revenge. These are deaths that only make sense in the mind of one person. Somebody is redressing the balance. They’re taking away their second chances at life. People who survived when nobody else did. They’re being bumped off in the same way that somebody thinks they should have died. That means something. They’re replicating the conditions. They’re trying to take the miracle away. The only reason I could see Chandler doing that is to get himself a book out of it, but I met the man and there’s anger and self-loathing in those eyes but there’s no …’

‘Evil? McAvoy, it’s not always about—’

‘I know, I know. Most crimes are just about anger or drink or hitting somebody harder than their head can take. But I’ve looked into evil eyes and the eyes of the man who’s doing this aren’t like that. This is about sadness and despair and having to do something you don’t want to do. It’s about paying the price. It’s …’

Pharaoh reaches out and puts a hand on the back of his own. She nods at him.

‘Who do you think is killing these people, Hector?’

‘Someone like me,’ he says.

‘You’d never do this,’ she says. ‘You’d never hurt people.’

‘I would,’ he says to the floor. ‘For my family. For love. I’d send my soul to hell for the people I love. I’d cry while I was doing it, but I’d do it. Wouldn’t you?’

Pharaoh turns away. ‘Not everybody loves like you.’

‘So we need to find a man who does. Somebody strong enough to fight me. Somebody capable of cutting their way
out of a container and killing an old man. Somebody close enough to Chandler to use his connections. To make him call Algirdas. We’re looking for a man who loves like me.’

His face is angry, his gestures manic. Pharaoh, involuntarily, seems to shrink back a little in her seat, and McAvoy instantly realises the intimidating picture he must be presenting.

‘I’m sorry, guv, I just …’

Pharaoh shakes her head slowly, the tension breaking only when she gives a half smile. She follows it up with a punch to his shoulder.

‘You should come with a bloody manual,’ she says. ‘Your Roisin must be a saint.’