Sorrow Bound (8 page)

While she has enjoyed the company of a few blokes over the last few months, she has lacked any real enthusiasm for taking things further. She likes her own space, her own company. Has a few mates, both inside and outside the police service, and has years left before her biological clock starts trying to get her
attention. She even has the odd Friday night out on Cleethorpes seafront. Has some fancy sequinned dresses and painful strappy shoes. Knows how to do her make-up and ruffle her short hair in a way that takes the attention away from her broad shoulders and weightlifter thighs. She’s okay with herself.

So why are you so giddy, you silly girl?

Helen tries to focus on the half of the computer screen she gets paid to give a damn about. She’s cross-referencing between two databases, trying to spot any familiar names among the owners of white, 2003-registered Land Rovers. Such a vehicle was captured on blurry CCTV, heading away at speed from a petrol bombing on the Preston Road estate. The target was an empty bottle shop, and the motive most likely insurance or boredom. It comes under Helen’s purview because she is attached to Colin Ray’s investigation into the spike in organised crime, and because there had once been a Drugs Squad raid on the shop amid accusations it was being used as a halfway house for cocaine coming off the nearby docks. That raid had proven fruitless, but with the top brass happy to throw resources at making the drugs problem go away before the end-of-year figures are collated, anything with even a sniff of organised criminality about it comes to Colin Ray, and anything he doesn’t think is worth his time goes to Shaz Archer, who dutifully passes it on to the people she likes least.

Having already wasted a morning on the entertaining but fruitless trip to Hull Prison, Helen is resigned to a day of futility and irritation, made worse by the buzzing flies and oppressive heat. She had been gutted to hear that Pharaoh was looking into the murder off Anlaby Road. Tremberg is an ambitious woman, hoping to be put forward for the sergeant examination, and
had cautiously celebrated when placed on Colin Ray’s side of the squad not so long ago. That joy has faded now. She is on a unit that is making no progress, led by a man who is at best tenacious, and at worst, dangerous. Her immediate superior is a tart who doesn’t rate her and the last bit of work Helen did that in any way helped make the east coast a safer place was when she put Colin Ray in the back of a taxi before he made good on his promise to cut DC Andy Daniells’s head off with a glass bottle at the last CID quiz night.

Her computer suddenly beeps and Helen takes a deep breath. Her left leg bounces up and down.

Stop it, you silly girl …

She opens the email. It’s him. Mark. The one she can’t get out of her bloody head.

Helen smiles and exhales at the same time. She rubs the back of her hand across her face, and prepares to compose a reply. She’s no poet. She wishes she’d read the Philip Larkin collection McAvoy had sent her when she was in hospital a few months back. Wishes, even more, that McAvoy himself were here. There are few moments when she is not second-guessing herself in his voice, wondering whether he would approve of her decisions, her police work, her heart. He has somehow become her conscience.

Her thoughts drift to his wife. Helen knows what McAvoy did for her. Remembers that day in the greasy spoon café when her senior officer opened up. Told her about the men who hurt Roisin when she was not yet a teen. McAvoy was just a constable then. A young man in uniform, called to a traveller camp. A man who heard screams and went to investigate. Who carried the crying girl from a burning building and did things to her attackers that scarred his soul. Helen has never asked him what he did to those men. Never asked how he and the child he saved came to be lovers as adults. She has not made up her mind whether she truly wants to know. Whether she wants to unpick the perfection of the image she carries of the McAvoys. She just knows his love for his family is a palpable, magical thing. When he talks of Roisin and his children, the air around him is thick enough to be scooped up with a ladle. She wants some of that. Some of that honesty. That perfect, powerful thing he carries inside him.

It’s the best she can do. She makes sure the number of kisses she types is no more or less than the number he placed on his. She runs a quick spell-check, just to make sure she hasn’t embarrassed herself, then sends it back, hoping she will not have to wait too long for a reply. She is using her personal email account on the work computer, which is strictly against the rules. She has heard of other forces where viruses have been uploaded simply by opening an unvetted file, but she is so eager to hear from the man that she is willing to take the risk.

Sort yourself out, Helen
.

He’s not her usual sort. She likes sporty, athletic types. She likes men bigger than her, who know their Grand Prix history and don’t shave on a weekend. Mark seems the complete opposite. He’s a lawyer with a local firm, dealing mainly in divorce cases and the occasional bit of blame-and-claim litigation. They got talking last month in the canteen at Hull Magistrates’ Court, where Helen was giving evidence in a youth offending case she had dealt with in her first plain-clothes job. It had taken an age to come to court and Helen had been sitting there struggling to remember which little bastard had punched which other little bastard. Her mood had been foul, as a man in tracksuit bottoms, shirt, tie and baseball cap had discovered when he told his toddler son to shut the fuck up and cuffed him around the head. Helen, pretending to fall as she passed him, had found a way to tread on the man’s instep and knee him in the groin at the same time, all the while apologising out loud – even as she nipped the skin beneath his armpit and whispered cold threats in his ear.

If anyone saw what she’d done then they had the sense to keep quiet about it, but she was soon the only person sitting in the waiting area with an empty chair beside her. Despite the chaos of the court, nobody had wanted to sit next to her. Nobody except Mark. He sat down with a smile, whispered ‘Nice work’ and waited for her to meet his gaze. He smelled nice. Clean, but not soapy. No aftershave, but somehow fresh, like line-dried laundry. He was small and wiry, his physique putting her in mind of a cyclist’s. His sideburns were slightly too long for a man in his mid-thirties, but his designer, frameless glasses and blue pinstriped suit went well together, while the Maori-patterned leather strap around his wrist made him seem just intriguing enough to warrant further investigation.

She’d noticed, even then, that he wore no wedding band. Had it been mercenary? Predatory? Had she been eyeing him up as a potential mate? She didn’t know. But he did not run a mile when she told him she was a police officer, which was a hell of a good start, and when he gave her his business card, she had waited less than an hour before sending him an email saying how much she had enjoyed their chat, even though not a word of it had stuck in her head. Since then their correspondence has grown more regular and passionate. She looks forward to his words and spends time thinking up her own. She wants to tell him about her day. Her life. She wants to look at him over the lip of a wine glass and smile as she offloads the dirt and sweat of the day. She wants to know whether his chest is hairy or smooth. Wants to look down on him as she moves …

Ask him. Make a date, girl …

Helen wishes she were brave enough to suggest a drink tonight. Hopes that in his next email he takes the initiative and does so himself. Oh Christ, how she hopes …

‘Now then, children!’

The door to the office is already open but Trish Pharaoh still manages to make enough noise as she barges into the room to get everybody’s attention. Like worried meerkats, heads pop up above monitors and phones are silenced. Ben Nielsen leans over and switches off the fan and a hush falls on the room. Helen sees them as canaries, their cage suddenly shrouded and silent. Pharaoh is rarely here. She has an office of her own, up another flight of stairs, where she does complicated and exasperating things with spreadsheets and budgets. She is one of CID’s most senior figures, having got to a position where she can do little actual police work by being very good at police work.

Tremberg waits for McAvoy to come in as well, and is surprised by his absence. Pharaoh catches her looking at the door, and gives an indulgent smile. ‘He’s busy,’ she mouths. ‘We’ll be okay without him.’

Helen nods. Joins the rest of the officers in watching Pharaoh stride to the far end of the room, where she starts rubbing Colin Ray’s scribblings off the whiteboard. She doesn’t even stop to read them.

‘Right, you lot. I’m talking to the whole room here because I can’t remember which of you lot are still mine and which are Colin’s. So, if this is nowt to do with you, just be quiet. In a minute, some very efficient people are going to turn this part of the room into a murder suite. I’ve spoken to the brass and we’ve agreed that Philippa Longman’s death should be looked at by this unit. Regular CID are about as happy about that as you’d expect, but it will be me that gets the earache and none of you, so don’t worry about it. More importantly, don’t go approaching any of this thinking that it’s got anything to do with bloody organised crime. It hasn’t. The gang we’re all looking for wouldn’t give a shit about some local community activist kicking up a stink about drugs. But by the time that information reaches the Assistant Chief Constable, we’ll have found who did it and there will be champagne and cigars all round. Savvy?’

There are smiles and snorts of laughter at that. Tremberg finds herself turning around, half-hoping that Colin Ray and Shaz Archer return from whatever errand they’re running and walk into the middle of the briefing.

‘Colin and I will be having a chat about which officers stay on current cases and which assist me in the murder enquiry. For now, I’ve got uniforms doing door-to-door in the immediate vicinity.
It’s bloody hot at the moment so people will be sleeping with the windows open and may well have heard something. You can’t do that much damage to a person without it waking somebody. I’ve insisted the forensics be fast-tracked and the PME will be done this evening. McAvoy and me have already interviewed a suspect – the former partner of Longman’s daughter. Document wallets will be going around when my secretary or whatever they’re supposed to be called these days finishes trying to turn my handwriting into English.’

There are a few mutters at McAvoy’s name. Some people are holding a grudge longer than others.

‘We’ve got one lead that needs your immediate attention. Sophie, Andy, I’m thinking of you two.’

Helen lets the disappointment show on her face, but Pharaoh does not acknowledge it.

‘We’ve got a footprint. Almost a perfect one. Size eight, big grips, heavy indent at the toe.’

‘Work boots?’ asks Helen, hoping to make herself noticed.

‘Give that lass a gold star,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Yes, work boots. We’ve got plaster casts on their way over, so you need to be hitting the warehouses, the builders’ merchants, trying to find a match, and see how widespread those kind of shoes are.’

‘It could be anybody’s boots, Guv,’ comes a dissenting voice. Helen traces it to Stan Lyons. He was a detective sergeant before his retirement, and now works part-time for the unit as one of its complement of civilian officers. He’s a nice old boy in his early sixties who takes tablets for his blood pressure and as such is always cold. Even today, in this heat, he’s wearing vest, shirt and golfing jumper.

‘It could indeed, Stan,’ says Pharaoh, ‘but given that he’s trodden some of Philippa Longman’s blood into the grass, I reckon it’s worth thinking about, yes?’

‘We got anything else?’ asks Ben Nielsen, optimistically.

‘Early days, my boy, and given you haven’t read the paperwork yet, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold your hand and baby-step you through every last detail.’

Ben smiles. ‘Sorry, boss.’

She nods, looks at the expectant faces, then raises her hands to tell her team to get on with it. This is how she works. She doesn’t micro-manage. Sometimes they go days without hearing from her. She hand-picked most of the officers on the unit, and trusts them to do their jobs. The only people she didn’t want, and still doesn’t, are Colin Ray and Sharon Archer, but she respects them enough to know they won’t make waves when it comes to a murder investigation.

Pharaoh heads for the door, stopping only briefly at Helen Tremberg’s desk.

‘Sorry, Helen. I wanted you. It seems Colin can’t spare you. The ACC mentioned you by name.’

Helen looks confused. ‘Guv?’

‘Seems you’re doing a good job. Keep it up.’

With a warm, motherly squeeze of her shoulder, Pharaoh bustles away. For a brief moment, there is silence in the room. Then the fan is switched back on, and officers start to pick up phones. A middle-aged woman in pleated skirt and round-neck T-shirt enters carrying a pile of folders, which she begins to distribute to the team members like a teacher handing back homework.

Helen scowls for a while, then decides to accentuate the positive. Whatever it is she’s doing, she’s doing it well. She’s
essential to the ongoing investigation into a criminal gang responsible for countless deaths. That must be something to celebrate.

Quickly, before she can change her mind, she types Mark a new message.

*

McAvoy pushes his hair back from his face and looks in disgust at the sweat on his palm. He feels like he’s melting. His insides feel wrong. He’s hungry but the heat of the day is making him feel sick. He wants something sweet and cooling but thinks it would probably be unseemly if he conducted his section of the murder enquiry while licking an ice lolly. He resigns himself to stopping in at a newsagent’s for a bar of chocolate on his way back to Arthur Street, where he has another twenty-five houses to doorstep before his section of the house-to-house is completed. People are cooperating, as much as they can. Police are tolerated around here. It’s not a bad neighbourhood, all told, and nobody wants to live in an area where the nice lady from the late shop can have her chest caved in on her walk home. The trouble is, nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. And while everybody that he and the uniformed officers have spoken to has been only too willing to take his business cards and to promise to call if anything comes back to them, they have yet to find a witness.