Cold bones, p.28
Cold Bones, page 28
part #8 of DS Aector McAvoy Series
She calls the number, wondering whether she would be better served waiting until the car comes to a halt. Braces herself. ‘Mrs Chappell, my name’s Trish Pharaoh and—’
She nearly drops the phone when Sophie Kirkland answers. ‘Boss? Boss, is that you? Where are you? Fuck, have you heard from the sarge? It’s going mental here. How did you get this number?’
Twenty minutes later, Pharaoh is rubbing her forehead, pissed off with herself and everybody else.
The poor bastard’s been chasing shadows! Chasing a trail she never intended to leave. Enid Chappell is dead. The man who was helping her – Russell Chandler – is dead. Two old trawlermen, dead on the Blake Holst. Sophie’s having no luck in finding Gerard Wade. Napper Acklam is missing. Area Commander Slattery has all but suspended the acting head of Major Crimes and Rory Ballantine’s son has some weird split personality that caused him to punch McAvoy in the face and lick Andy Daniells on the chops. Her insides bubble.
She feels Minervadottir’s eyes upon her in the mirror.
‘Cards on the table,’ says Pharaoh. ‘You know that phrase? It means we stop dicking around.’
Minervadottir nods, turning around and angling the mirror back to where it belongs. Thor glances at Pharaoh, his eyes gentle. She tries to return it but gets thrown against the door as he swerves around a huge pothole in the road. To their left the sea crashes relentlessly at the towering black cliffs. The wind rushing by the window is a low, mournful drone, broken only by the crying of the gulls.
‘Just like the postcard,’ mutters Minervadottir, nodding at the view.
‘Sorry, love?’
‘Your Chandler. The postcard in his car – it showed this exact place.’
Pharaoh pushes her hair behind her ear. ‘Postcard?’
‘The list of items recovered from the rental car – the magazine, the postcard.’ Minervadottir plays with her phone, frustrated. Her face falls. ‘Yes, this was mentioned in the initial report – a postcard showing the lighthouse, it was beneath the mat in the passenger seat. My apologies, I don’t know why this was not in the inventory we sent you.’
‘Poor bastard,’ says Pharaoh, lighting a cigarette. Her blue eyes sparkle. She suddenly feels very tired. For a moment she imagines how Chandler must have felt – believing he was coming closer to the truth, to a form of redemption, only to realise he had been manipulated all along – lured to this dismal place to be buried with his secrets. She decides the time has come to share everything she knows. ‘Listen to this,’ she says, and calls up the files on Chandler’s phone.
‘You kept it!’ growls Minervadottir, looking at the phone with angry eyes.
‘And you were too busy showing off to ask for it back,’ says Pharaoh. ‘Don’t get upset. It was worth it.’
She begins to read them aloud.
‘Password was McAvoy,’ she mutters, by way of explanation, when she finally comes to a stop.
There is a long silence inside the vehicle. ‘What do you think happened here?’ asks Thor quietly.
‘I’m not sure yet. But Chandler made it happen. He didn’t mean to but one of the people he spoke to on that recording – what he told them changed everything. They became somebody else. Did terrible things.’
Pharaoh feels the car start to slow down and grabs the door handle as they lurch to the left, bumping over mounds of ice and snow. They roll to a halt ten feet from the cliff-edge. Pharaoh turns her back on the thick black line where the land stops and the fall begins.
‘Here,’ says Thor, in the driving seat. ‘The car was here.’ He points along the road. ‘The lighthouse,’ he says. ‘Kalfhamarsvik.’
The car shifts as he moves, reaching over to the seat behind Minervadottir and retrieving the laptop. He opens it and flicks through a file of images, black and white; a body laid out on the sea wall against a slate-grey sky; a face, half eaten by birds and sea-life; teeth and bone leering out from beneath a mask of tattered flesh.
‘You two – you know your mythology?’
‘We’re Icelandic,’ says Minervadottir. ‘We were raised on the sagas.’
Pharaoh shows them Chandler’s notes. ‘Vidarr,’ she says. ‘Tell me what I don’t know.’
Minervadottir and Thor share a look and speak quickly in their own language. ‘Vidarr is Odin’s son,’ she says. ‘In the legends. At Ragnarok – the end of the world – Odin is killed by the great wolf. His son, Vidarr, avenges him. He makes a great book from the scraps of leather discarded by shoemakers all over the world and uses it to stamp on Fenrir’s jaw and stab through into his heart. He is the god of vengeance.’
Pharaoh scowls and sifts through her notes, muttering to herself. ‘The god of fucking vengeance. What I wouldn’t give for somebody stabbing somebody else because they’re fucking drunk . . .’
‘These stories – they matter to people. If your killer believes themselves to be Vidarr they won’t stop until they take a blood revenge on everybody who has wronged them.’
‘You’re full of helpful nuggets you, aren’t you?’ She glowers at Minervadottir. ‘What was he doing up here? It can’t just be the fact that it’s close to where the ship sank. Have you got a decent map on that thing? There must be some kind of landmark – something that drew him here.’
‘Only the lighthouse and the village,’ says Minervadottir. ‘There are two farms further ahead but they are uninhabited. The lighthouse is automated – the engineer visits sporadically. Tourists come, they take photographs. The only time we get called up here is when a hiker gets lost or a polar bear drifts ashore.’
‘Just show me the map please,’ says Pharaoh angrily.
Thor takes the tablet from his colleague and hands it across. She thanks him with a nod. ‘This is where he was found,’ says Thor, touching a curve of coastline with his big, pale finger. ‘Here, a little further on – that is where Mr Timpson’s body was found.’
‘The buildings,’ says Pharaoh, gesturing at the screen. ‘There are farmhouses marked here.’
‘Empty, as I said. The villagers left in the 1930s. The last inhabitant at Hvalreki died in the 1970s. That is just a ruin.’
Pharaoh runs her finger over the screen. ‘Tell me about the people who lived there.’
‘Why?’ asks Minervadottir, losing patience. ‘Do you expect me to know everything about every house?’
‘You knew enough to find your way to me with nothing more than a magazine and a dying name,’ says Pharaoh. ‘You knew about the Purcell. Your head’s full of information, love. You checked this place out the second you heard there was a body on your patch, I know you did.’
A tiny smile flickers across Thor’s face. He suppresses it. Minervadottir turns away, veiling her face lest she betray any trace of pride.
‘Arnaldur Ragnarsson,’ says Minervadottir. ‘His family were the last to farm here. It is still registered in his name but the land and the shell of the house – they have no value. There are houses like this one all over Iceland, nothing but walls and broken roofs. Ragnarsson was old and his son did not wish to become a farmer.’
‘Where did you get your information?’ asks Pharaoh.
‘One of the last inhabitants of the village,’ says Minervadottir. ‘He gave a statement to the local police some years ago. He knew little of Mr Ragnarsson, despite being neighbours for so many years. But when electricity came to Skagi, he attempted to persuade the authorities to extend the coverage as far as his own farm, at the tip of the peninsula. He believed he would have a more persuasive case if he brought his neighbours on board. He visited Hvalreki and found it abandoned. He presumed his neighbour had simply left, as many do, but he did his duty and informed the constable from Blonduos when next they met. A report was taken.’
‘And what was done?’ asks Pharaoh. ‘Was he located?’
‘We have a report from his son, Vilmar, from 1976. A letter in our files, sent from the cargo ship where he was a crewman. It is a touching communication. His father was half blind. He was troubled with bronchial pain. Vilmar had agreed with his decision to move to their summer residence nearer the capital. It was too late. While Vilmar secured work at sea, Mr Ragnarsson did little but drink himself insensible and sadly, that caused the accident that led to his death. We have his medical notes. The District Physician signed the death certificate. He was discovered by a neighbour at their new home outside Kopavogur, not far from the capital.’
‘What’s the significance of that location?’
‘None,’ says Thor, beside her. ‘But it is attractive. Good for the lungs. Convenient for the sea. People do retire there.’
‘Cause of death?’
Minervadottir flicks through her notes, two pink spots appearing in her perfect white cheeks. ‘He fell while in a drunken stupor. Banged his head and did not get up. He had been dead for some time and due to the heat in the property, the body was mostly liquid by the time it was discovered. Vilmar sent money to pay for the funeral and a cremation.’
Pharaoh licks her lips. ‘The farm,’ she says. ‘What does it mean?’
Thor smiles. ‘It is a good word. It means a gift of the sea – the carcass of a whale, washing up during a time of hunger. We use it instead of “Godsend”.’
Pharaoh sits back in her chair and screws up her eyes. She can almost see a full picture. Can almost make sense of it. ‘Is it far?’ she asks quietly. ‘Just a look. Just to see what Chandler saw.’
‘Your phone is ringing,’ says Thor, nodding at her pocket.
Pharaoh looks at the screen. Her heart clenches, her mouth dry. A number she knows by heart. She opens the door and steps into the gale, unwilling to talk to him inside the confines of the car. The wind tugs at her hair. She hears the waves crash against the rocks and stares across the snow-covered blackness at the miles and miles of nothing beyond. The ocean and the distant, jagged mass of island that sank its teeth into the Blake Purcell.
Chapter 30
Hessle Road, Hull
4.06 p.m.
The clouds have folded in on themselves. The raindrops are the size of boiled sweets, tumbling in their millions to strike gutters, brickwork, cobbles. The bin liners outside the foods-of-the-world buffet are overflowing: and a smear of crushed leftovers and soggy cardboard leaks into the teeming drains.
Stephen Ballantine dares the gale to hit him harder. He glares, shoulders squared, as he stomps down Hessle Road, head back, coat unfastened; shirt and jacket stained almost black. He takes a breath and catches a whiff of rotting crops over the muddy air of the nearby river.
Stephen’s been drinking since this morning. He woke up in the passenger seat of his fancy car, parked up near the ice-house. It was the first place he bought when he came into money. Eighteen years old and already taking the steps towards owning an empire. Rory’s son. The best of the Ballantine boys. The heir to the prince of the city. The ice factory hadn’t cost much. The docks were already dying, the fishing industry already sunk. He saw a chance to buy old-established businesses at bargain-basement prices. A chance to diversify. He’s bought and sold countless local firms in the years since. Still owns the ice factory. He’s nostalgic like that. Just like Mum, up there on the coast, unable to leave her little patch of paradise; her reasons for staying deep in the crumbling earth.
There’s a cold misery in Stephen’s gut. He’s always felt a loneliness; the emptiness of the solitary twin. To share a womb; to be pressed up close against your doppelganger: to feel their every movement. He is half a thing; a divided soul. He feels his twin’s absence more keenly now than ever before. Sometimes it feels as though he has absorbed his sibling; peculiar feelings and unnerving impulses taking control. He bites down on his cheek. Thinks of Tommy. Not identical, but close enough.
He steps into the doorway of the student flats as a police car glides past, lights flashing but silent, pitching rain-splintered spotlights into the gathering dusk. Checks his phone so that he has something to do with his hands. A message from Mum.
Not for the first time, Stephen wonders whether he was born too late. If he’d slithered out of his mother fifteen years earlier he’d have had a different life. A simpler, harder life. He wonders how he would have fared as one of his dad’s lads. One of Rory’s crew. He indulges in the fantasy. An alternative life. He could have joined the crew of a trawler; two weeks away, two days home; his kids conceived during drunken fumbles after a night in Rayner’s, gradually filling a two-up, two-down off Hessle Road with a succession of pale, bare-legged kids; fighting the elements during eighteen-hour shifts, sliding his gutting knife into the belly of fat silver cod with hands that felt like blocks of stone; one eye on the horizon, watching the ice and snow double then triple the weight of their vessel . . . only ever one big wave away from turning turtle and sinking beneath the waves.
He looks across at the Star and Garter. Rayner’s, to its friends. When had he last popped in? Summer? He’d been handing over a big cardboard cheque, smiling for the camera and telling some pretty thing from the Hull Daily Mail that whichever local charity he was helping today was a cause particularly close to his heart.
He thinks about the big man who had humiliated him. The Jock. His brother would have loved to meet him, he’s sure of that. Tommy. Silly sod. Always nose deep in a book: lost in fantasy. It was no wonder Bowbells had hated him. He was just too fucking meek. There was something delightful about hurting him; like holding a bird in your hand and squeezing until the bones splinter and crack. Stephen feels bad looking back. He should have let Napper and Gerard step in sooner. But Stephen liked watching Bowbells hurt his brother. Tommy was always Roberta’s favourite. She’d wipe his nose and dry his eyes and cuddle him like he was a baby. She swore she’d kill him if he ever touched him again. Stephen saved her the trouble. He told Uncle Napper that Bowbells had started touching him. Soon, Bowbells was dead. Gerard fixed it for the two boys to apply to go to boarding school – a chance to become something decent in memory of their dad. Stephen got in. Tommy didn’t. It was a shame, but what could you do? If Tommy had been a little less trusting, a little less feeble, Stephen would never have been able to switch their exam papers. It might have been Stephen who buggered off to the sea at sixteen and fucked up his life. Instead, he’s heir to the throne. He’s the prince of the city. He’s . . .
He realises his walk has brought him back to the old warehouse district. To the old ice-house. The place where it started. He has a memory of that night, thirty-odd years ago. Roberta blubbing and sobbing and saying she had something to tell them. Something important. Stephen didn’t like it there, in the cold and the dark, with dust on his posh school blazer. He’d said that whatever it was, he didn’t care. She’d tried to make him stay. Said this was about who they were. What they were. He hadn’t wanted to hear it. He put his hand over her mouth. Told her to stop. Pushed his brother to the ground and kicked him bloody. Banged Roberta’s head off the floor until the lights went out in her eyes. He’d felt nothing. When Tommy woke up, there was blood on his hands. Stephen was sobbing.
You’ve killed her, he said. Look what you’ve done . . .
He stares at the ice factory. He still sees it each night in his dreams. He has made something of himself but he knows that only half of him is worth anything at all. The other is grotesque: ugly, a thing of absolute darkness . . .
He feels his thoughts colliding; fracturing and splintering. His whole body starts to shake. His legs begin to buckle as the lies untangle themselves. He pushes himself away from the door and staggers down the empty street, the smell of salt air growing stronger in his nostrils. Feels the wind and swirling rain.
He looks up as a shape appears from the darkness. Black eyes. A shimmering, iridescent mask. Long black braids. The figure holds a hook in one black-gloved hand. He raises his hands to his face and drags away his second skin, a shimmering mass of leather and scales. Stephen stares into the face of the man who used to call him ‘brother’.
He sobs. Calls for help until the word becomes a nonsense. Calls for his father, for Rory, the prince of the city. Calls for him until the name becomes mere sound catching the wind, skittering through the damp streets, billowing up and over the great double doors of the lock gates, before disappearing towards the sea.
Chapter 31
The Star and Garter, Division Road, Hull
4.25 p.m.
‘Still damp out, I see,’ says the barmaid. ‘Snow, fog, bloody ice. Now it’s pissing it down. There was sunshine an hour ago. Maybe you missed it.’
‘Story of my life,’ says McAvoy. He glances around. Takes in the red walls and the varnished wooden floor, criss-crossed with muddy footprints. He can hear the tinny sound of country and western bleeding from a speaker.
McAvoy surveys himself in the mirror behind the spirits. He’s pale and the darkness beneath his eyes makes his face look leaner; harsher.
‘Just the one,’ he says, surveying the brass tap. No real ales but a decent dry cider. This way, he can tell himself he’s not here as part of the investigation. This way, he’s a bloke on his day off, having a pint and chatting to the bar staff. If she happens to be the childhood friend of Roberta Ballantine, that’s just pure coincidence . . .
The barmaid pulls a glass from the dishwasher, steam billowing out like smoke, and runs it under the tap to cool it down. She glances at him and holds up a finger, urging patience, and starts rummaging under the bar. She hands him a dry beer towel as he slips out of his coat and drapes it on the bar stool. Tieless, wrinkled, he barely recognises himself. He dries his hair, his face, inhaling a musk of spilled ale and wood polish. Hands the towel back and takes a sip of his drink. It’s good. Cold and refreshing. It hits his stomach like ice. He realises how hungry he is. How cold. There’s pain in his chest, across his arm, across his shoulders. His mind is fizzing with connections and theories.
