Cold Bones, page 31
part #8 of DS Aector McAvoy Series
And now he is encircling his hands around the corpse that eddies on the waves, rising and falling with each movement of the water. The arms are taut and elongated, bound at the elbows with a wire that eats into the puffy white skin. One hand is missing, flesh and bone cut clean through. The water is so dark that it is only as McAvoy pushes past the figure, close enough to kiss, that he is able to take in any details. The man is naked. Elaborate patterns have been carved upon alabaster skin.
McAvoy breaks the surface and grabs frantically for the sea wall. The first sound is the screaming of gulls, raucous and dreadful. He hears the slap of water against stone. He tries to speak but the rank brown sludge of the estuary floods his mouth and he has to fight to keep above the surface.
He feels himself go under again, as if there were weights tied about his ankles: hands clawing at his clothes. He tips his head back. Tries to shout. Turns himself over and feels the body bounce against his torso. Instinctively he lashes out. Pushes the corpse away with hands that do not feel like his own.
Spears of torchlight cast distorted polka dots onto the surging surface of the water. He tries to focus on the light, his teeth chattering, fingers numb. He is shivering, fading, unable to tell his body what to do, and then it feels as if somebody were dragging at his coat, pulling him away from his anchorage at the wall, and he is thrashing wildly, certain that the corpse is reaching out for him. He feels the meaty impact of his fist hitting bone.
People will come, he tells himself.
He can see his breath rising, drifting upwards through the dark, and as his hands fasten around some solid part of the corpse’s remaining tissue, he feels a tug, as of a fishing wire snapping beneath the strain. The body rises up. McAvoy looks into the empty eye sockets. Glimpses metal. Four silver streaks winking out from the stone circle of his mouth, tiny harpoons forming a cage . . .
Napper.
He drags himself upwards, claws his way up the bare brick, tearing skin, ripping nails. And then he is spilling onto the hard ground like a cod released from a trawl, puking up brown water and gasping for breath. He tries to raise his head and collapses back, suddenly aware of the colossal pain that runs from his head down into his shoulders and back.
‘Bodies,’ he says into the darkness. ‘Down there. . .’
The world turns purple and then black as he slithers back towards the floor. He finds himself staring at the lock gates. Two great wooden and iron doors, topped by a rickety walkway.
A hand has been fastened to the rotten wood. It looks like a dying flower, the fingers becoming petals, slowly closing. It seems to writhe as sudden flaring searchlights project a rippling flower of yellow light. The light glints on metal. The head of the nail protrudes from the palm like a jewel.
Napper.
McAvoy feels a great sadness bloom inside him. Blood and dirty water, upon his lips, his tongue, his throat. He smells it. Rust and old machinery, iron and blood.
The darkness closes over him like the mouth of a shark.
Chapter 34
St Andrew’s Dock, Hull
9.14 p.m.
McAvoy jerks awake. The pain grabs him from both inside and out. His skeleton seems to have been jarred loose.
Uncertainly, he tries to focus. He sees lumps and blurs and twists of ragged grey. He hears voices. Sirens. Slowly, like a face in fire, the haze becomes something familiar. He raises his hand to his face. His knuckles are grazed. He turns his hand and looks at his soft, clean palms.
Memories come together like quicksilver. St Andrew’s Quay. Stephen Ballantine. Hard rain. He’d lifted the metal sheeting and slithered into darkness, his nostrils filling with the smell of brick dust and iron. He’d fumbled for his phone, the light of the screen casting a sickly green illumination into the shadows. He remembers rubble and graffiti, old bottles and cans. A broken lift-shaft; a metal cage. He recollects dead birds at his feet – the stink of them, the taste climbing into his mouth. And then he was moving over shattered rock, up stairs, slipping on feathers, on birdshit. Swung the light on his torch at the great picture on the crumbling wall. A raven. The symbol of the Blake Line; a portent of the gathering dark. He’d heard the sound of sudden movement. Turned his head a moment too late. Then something had hit him. Cannoned into his ribs and then into the back of his head. He’d gone down, face pressed into the feathers, the gravel and glass, trying not to lose consciousness, pulling himself forward. His shirt had torn. There had been a figure. A silhouette. More of an approximation of a man; a shadow drawn in blurry strokes. It had watched him. Watched him wriggle and crawl. Had he glimpsed his face?
He concentrates hard. The insinuation of a shape above him, crouching, squatting, peering at him as he tumbled down the steps and tried to make his way outside. He’d been muttering to himself. Making an emergency call in his head, thinking he was already on the phone to the dispatcher, listening to her calm, measured tones as he clattered through an empty doorway and fell. He managed to pull himself up only to blindly stagger into another abandoned office. He had turned back. Caught sight of the thing that pursued him and lashed out, hard. He shudders at the recollection of the touch. The flesh had felt like leather.
It takes a moment for McAvoy to step out of the memory and into the here and now. He can’t seem to make his thoughts behave the way they should. He drags himself to his feet.
‘Stephen,’ he mutters. ‘He came to take all you have. Came to ensure you’re the last of your blood.’
He runs his fingers through his hairline. Feels a fresh ridge of assaulted skin.
The sudden whir of helicopter blades throws great gobbets of sea water and mud into McAvoy’s face. He throws up his hand to protect himself. Glimpses the shimmering black fish-leather beneath his nails.
He looks up. The police helicopter is hovering low over the water, its great lights casting butter-yellow spheres onto the hexagonal stones of the sea wall. McAvoy feels suddenly cold. He isn’t sure he even wants to know the details. He clamps his teeth, trying to keep his thoughts from overwhelming him. He can’t let himself give in to it. There’s a tightness in his chest and he realises, to his horror, that he is on the verge of a panic attack. His muscles ache and there is a high ringing in his head. He tries to find Roisin’s lullaby. Latches himself onto the graceful eddy of her voice and lets it carry him. He needs her. He’s tired of being so sore. Of seeing such horrible things. Tired of being unable to look away.
He sees the lights flash. Tries to focus on the two men in the cockpit of the aircraft that buzzes low over the water. He hears his name. Watches as the lights flash, out across the waste ground, back to where he stands. He turns towards the great broken wasteland of the dock. Understands. The pilot recognises him. They’re showing him which way the bastard went.
McAvoy can feel a buzzing in the centre of his skull, like static.
He clamps his head between his hands, trying to squeeze his thoughts into a more manageable shape. He watches the silhouettes of the divers.
He swivels his eyes back towards the Blake building. Forces himself to consider what he had seen. The clammy touch of flesh; the reek of rancid skin; the ugly wounds carved into slow-boiled meat. He breathes in. Sea salt. Diesel. The chemical tang of the refinery. He turns his back to the water.
Fixes his eyes on the light and the tiny, matchstick-like figure who sprints towards Road.
Begins to run.
Chapter 35
The industrial units between Hessle Road and the waterfront, Hull
9.37 p.m.
A harsh diagonal rain is scything down from the dark sky, cutting through the blurry circles and squares that bleed from the street lamps and bare windows.
McAvoy feels as though somebody were standing on his lungs. He skids on a frozen puddle and swears. The scenery changes around him: the warehouses thinning out, the darkness becoming denser, picking his way through the rubbish and the potholes as he goes.
This is where it happened, he realises, drawing a straight line between his suspicions. Where they killed Roberta. Where they made the pact that cost them all their lives. All of them. Mags. Tommy. Rory’s old pals. Keeping a promise to a ghost . . .
He is at the door of the ice-house before he realises: some deeper consciousness taking the decision for him. There’s a car parked outside. He puts his hand on the bonnet. There is still some warmth to the metal. He peers through the window. Tries the handle, which opens with a click. He pulls open the door. Smells old-lady perfume. There’s nothing in the back seat save a tartan blanket and a blue and white carrier bag. He reaches into the back. Takes his spectacles from his pocket and uses the arm to open the bag without affecting the prints. Finds smashed glass and a broken brocade picture frame. Whatever photo was inside has been removed. He slithers back out of the car and pulls his coat sleeves over his fingertips to open the boot. There’s a large plastic container. He levers the lid off. Looks inside.
He closes the boot. There is nothing pastel to his vision, no liminal shading to his senses. There is no dissenting voice. Inside the corridors of his mind a cold gale is howling: slamming shut doors and obliterating the parts of himself that have no part in what he must do. Every rebellious whisper in his skull fell silent the moment that he saw the fragile bones.
Napper, he realises. He didn’t dump her in the bathtub but he didn’t report her death. Just stole her papers and tried to make sure the secrets died with her.
He takes off his coat. Removes the lanyard from his neck. Takes off his tie and wraps it around the crooked knuckles of his right hand. The rain soaks through his shirt in moments. He catches a glimpse of himself in the darkened glass of the windscreen.
He cannot announce himself as a police officer. Cannot risk panicking the man in black. He needs to get close to him. Needs to be able to put himself in harm’s way.
He crouches low. Pulls open the rusty sliding door. It glides up and over silently. He looks into the small, square space. It’s dark. Damp papers cover every inch of the wall. Chandler’s notes. Enid’s files. The report from the welfare officer at Hesslewood Hall about the little boy they couldn’t control.
He lets his eyes adjust. Reads the soggy document stuck to the bare brick.
. . . clear that the time spent in such an extreme state of neglect has had a catastrophic impact on William. He has learned to mimic the behaviour of those other children whom the staff identify as more deserving of reward but it is clear that this is mere simulation. His own nature is impossible to predict. He could as easily decide to parody the actions of an abuser if he believed it would lead to approval. He has begun to demonstrate an unhealthy interest in some of the older female residents and has been repeatedly disciplined for intruding in the female dorms and taking personal items. He seems to have an unhealthy obsession with female hair and reacted with a venom I have never before witnessed when his ‘treasure trove’ of scraps of female hair was discovered and destroyed. I must think of the other children and insist that he be found alternative accommodation. He has previously developed something of a bond with a former resident now employed as a welfare officer within the Hull Corporation Social Services team. Could I humbly request that Ms E. Chappell be appointed his welfare officer? She has good links with the fishing community and perhaps hard work in the company of decent, reliable men might extinguish some of the fire within him . . .
McAvoy turns from the papers and surveys the bleak interior of the old ice-house: rusting machinery looming from the gloom like the rooftops of a distant city. He makes out the shape of a battered old sofa against the near wall. Shelves to his left, piled high with old glass bottles, rusting tools: a cityscape in silhouette under a thick mesh of cobwebs. He feels a breeze and moves towards it. It’s cool upon his face. It carries the smell of the waterfront: a green, brackish scent. He fills himself with it. Catches something else. The flavour of disturbed earth; the fresh-grave pungency of mud.
He moves forward. Sees the light: a soft, yellow haze, rising up from the floor. It’s barely perceptible, like flame-coloured spots dancing behind closed eyes after staring too long at the sun. It’s coming from the far corner, between the sofa and the wall.
A noise, to his right. Low and muffled; like a baby crying through sailcloth.
He moves towards the sound, the soft pocket of light. He fumbles on the floor, patting damp brick, dusty cement, seeking an edge, a place to put his fingers, desperately seeking purchase. There is nothing to grip. No hidden hatchway. No manhole cover or trapdoor. And yet the scent is richer here, the breeze more keen on his exposed skin. He pats again at the floor. Scratches at a patch of damp grit. The loose stones shift. He pushes deeper, half mad with it now, using his hands as shovels, digging through the earth until his hands touch fabric. He does not stop. Scrapes at the garage floor, throwing handfuls of dirt aside, forcing his hand deeper, his palm pressed against cold flesh. The tip of his index finger brushes the wrinkled flesh of an old throat. He alters his position and starts to dig afresh, pulling handfuls of soil and stone from the floor.
Mags Aspinall. Mags Ballantine. Mags Lowery. Lace wrapped around neck, jawbone, mouth, nose. Stephen Ballantine laid out beside her.
He pushes his right hand beneath the old woman’s neck. He anchors himself. Hauls upwards. He hears the sound of falling stones and sliding soil and he is falling backwards onto the hard ground, the old woman frail in his arms, her eyes wide and terrified behind the lace veil. He tears at it with his grimy, blood-streaked fingers. Hears her gasp and feels her come to life in his arms.
‘You’re okay,’ he says, hoping it is so. ‘Just breathe. Where is he? Where is he!’
Behind him, it is as if a photographic negative has suddenly come to life. The shadows rearrange themselves as the figure steps out of the darkness. Knitted grey gansey, dark jeans. Steel boots. His face has no features; just two black holes where the eyes should be. Long black braids hang to his shoulders.
In his right hand he holds a length of cable. A steel hook hangs from it; a question mark suspended in the darkness.
McAvoy has no time to react. He only realises that the killer is behind him when the metal touches his throat. And then he is choking as the steel garrotte bites into the skin beneath his jaw and he is hauled back, his senses transforming into a high-pitched whine as the blood supply to his brain shuts off like a sluice gate.
He feels dead flesh against his face. Smells rotten skin. He seems too high. The perspective is all wrong. The woman on the floor seems too far away. Too small. As if he is rising through a darkening sky, watching stars emerge: bright spots of colour, whirling, blurring . . .
He does not know he has closed his hand around a stone until he has already smashed it into the killer’s head. The pressure loosens momentarily. He gasps a breath. Swings again, backwards over his shoulder. There is a sickening thud. He drops the rock. Tries to get onto his knees but the man who holds him is too strong. He twists his neck and feels the metal rip at his skin. He strikes out again, but it feels like hitting a carpeted floor. The man is too strong, too big. He reaches behind him. Feels the leathery surface of the mask. Jabs his thumb back like an ice-pick.
The scream that emerges from beneath the mask is muffled by the leathery folds. McAvoy feels the hands let go of him as his attacker raises them to his ruined eye. And then McAvoy is on top of him, raining down punches onto the rubbery face. A face emerges as the mask is ripped to fibrous scraps.
He slumps forward on the bloodied, semi-conscious body of the thing that used to be Tommy Ballantine.
Chapter 36
Dear Aector,
I’ve written millions of words in my life. None of them mattered. Not really. But this does. He’s coming for me. Billy Godson. He was an orphan. The authorities at Hesslewood never even knew where he came from. His file is a horror story. His birth was never registered. The first anybody knew of his existence is when he was found at some god-awful farm. He was chained inside a hen-house. He’d been there most of his life.
When Social Services were called in they found somebody almost feral. Somebody broken beyond repair. Enid Chappell was a Hesslewood girl. She’d fought and clawed her way to a degree and a position where she could help people. She became his welfare officer. Did all she could for him. Tried to heal him with kindness. All he learned was how to give people what they wanted. When he hit puberty his desires became dangerous. He hurt people. Enid spoke to a man she knew. A good man. Rory Ballantine. He took him under his wing. Took him to sea.
Billy repaid him by raping his little sister. Ripping her hair from her scalp. That was his first trophy. He has many now. He taunts me with it. I’m so fucking cold and I know he’s busted me up inside but he doesn’t want me to die until he’s taunted me with all his trophies. He has made himself a raven wig from the hair of those he has taken.
He’s told me all of it, Aector. Told it like he’s always wanted an audience. Told me about that night.
Rory had just learned he was to be a father when Billy convinced Rory that it was Cowboy Mick Timpson who’d brought the lock of Roberta’s ‘scalp’ aboard, that he’d hurt her. Rory and Gerard beat Mick half to death and he still wouldn’t confess to it. It was Napper Acklam who asked what Billy was doing going through Mick’s things. They started asking him questions. Started turning on each other. Gerard said they should just destroy it before it brought bad luck on the ship. Held the hair to his lighter and Billy screamed like a dying bird. They knew. They all fucking knew. They beat him until there wasn’t much left to beat. Rory tried to stop them. Said he wanted to take him back to Hull. To do things properly. That’s when the storm closed in.
