David Mark - The Dark Winter

Nielsen looks to the ceiling, as if considering this for the first time. ‘Yes,’ he concedes. ‘She could have been.’

They sit in silence for a moment, both brooding over the point. Behind them, they can hear the two female officers. Helen Tremberg is reading out names from a list of members of the congregation and Sophie Kirkland is dividing them up between CID officers.

‘She wasn’t, though,’ says Nielsen.

‘No,’ says McAvoy, and tells himself to just let some things go. To shut his mouth until he has a point worth making.

Nielsen leaves another respectful pause. Then, after a bright smile, ploughs on. ‘Anyway, as you can imagine, the parents are broken up. They weren’t there, you see. Normally, the mum goes to the service with Daphne, but she was planning some big Christmas shindig and was busy preparing the food. Dad was at work.’

‘On a Saturday? What does he do?’

‘They run a haulage firm, of sorts.’ He suddenly stops and shouts over at Helen Tremberg. ‘What is it the dad does, Hell’s Bells?’

Helen pushes herself back from the desk and walks over to where the two men are sitting. She gives McAvoy a smile. ‘Joining us, eh?’

McAvoy tries not to grin. He feels a sudden sensation of warmth towards her. Towards Ben, also. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he is feeling excited. Alive.

‘Logistics, is it?’ asks McAvoy, trying to keep his voice even.

‘According to their website, they take a lot of charity stuff to inaccessible locations. They have the contract for a lot of the different aid agencies. You know when you give your old jumpers and whatnot to the women with the binbags? Well, this is one of the companies that gets it to places where it’s needed. Some freight, sometimes container ships, sometimes air.’

‘Right,’ says McAvoy, making a note in his own pad. ‘Carry on.’

‘Well, long and the short of it is that this couple have a child of their own who died a few years ago. Leukaemia. Anyway, they adopted Daphne through an international agency when she was ten. They had a year of paperwork but it’s all above board. She’s from Sierra Leone, by birth. Lost her family in the genocide. Tragic stuff.’

McAvoy nods. He remembers little about the politics of the disagreement. Can only summon up hazy television footage of atrocities and brutality. Innocents, sprayed with bullets and chopped down with blades.

‘Is the machete significant?’ asks McAvoy. ‘That’s the weapon of choice out there, isn’t it?’

‘The boss asked the same thing,’ says Nielsen. ‘We’re looking into it.’

‘And are they are a church-going family? How did she become a server?’

‘Apparently she was that way inclined when she arrived. Her family were very religious. She had seen some horrors over there but it hadn’t put her off. Her mum, her new mum, took her to Holy Trinity just for a day out when she first arrived, and she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. It became a big part of her life. Her mum says she’d never been so proud as the day she became an acolyte.’

McAvoy tries to get a mental picture of Daphne Cotton. Of a young girl, plucked from horror, decked out in a white robe and allowed to hold the candle during the honouring of her God.

‘Have we got a picture?’ he asks softly.

Helen jogs back to her desk and returns almost instantly with a colour photocopy of a family snap. It shows a smiling Daphne, sandwiched between her two short, plump, greying adoptive parents. The background shows Bridlington sea front. The skies are eerily and unusually blue. The image seems almost too glossy and perfect. McAvoy wonders who took the snap. Which poor passer-by captured the image that would come to define this tragic girl. McAvoy takes his own mental picture. Memorises the snap. Makes this smiling, happy girl his vision of Daphne Cotton. Superimposes it onto the bloodied, broken corpse. Makes her human. Makes her death the tragedy it needs to be.

‘So, she was a regular at church, yes?’

‘Three nights a week and twice on Sundays.’

‘Big commitment.’

‘Huge, but she was a clever girl. Never let it get in the way of her homework. She was a straightA student, according to her mum. We haven’t spoken to her teachers yet.’

‘Which school?’

‘Hessle High. Walking distance from home. She’s due to break up on Tuesday for the Christmas holidays.’

‘We need to speak to her friends. Her teachers. Everybody who knew her.’

‘That’s what Sophie and me are dividing up, Sarge,’ says Tremberg, pulling an appeasing face. It is as if she is trying to tell an ageing father not to worry — that it’s been taken care of.

‘Right, right,’ says McAvoy, trying to slow himself down. To restore order in his mind.

‘Shall we get your statement down, now, Sarge? Best get it out of the way. Tomorrow will be a nightmare.’

McAvoy nods. He knows that in reality, the only thing he is bringing to this investigation is a witness statement and a glorified filing system. But he’s got a foot in the door. A chance to do some good. To catch a killer. He lets his mind drift back to this afternoon. To the chaos and bloodshed in the square. To that moment when the masked man appeared from the doorway of the church, and looked into his eyes.

‘Is there anything distinctive, Sarge?’ asks Nielsen, although there is no real hope in his voice. ‘Anything you’d recognise again?’

McAvoy closes his eyes. Lets the masked face swim in his vision. Blocks out the cold, snow-filled air and the screams of the passers-by. Lets his memory focus in on one moment. One picture. One scene.

‘Yes,’ he says, with the sudden sense that the memory is important. ‘There were tears in his eyes.’

He stares into the blue irises of the mental image. Fancies he can see his own reflection on the wet lenses. His voice, when it emerges from his dry mouth, is but a breath.

‘Why were you crying? Who were you weeping for?’

It sits to the north of the city, the east of everything else — three left turns and a right from the edge of the new estate; thrown up for first-time buyers by builders following plans that could have been designed by a child with a page of graph paper and a box of Monopoly houses.

Three bedrooms. Chessboard tiles. A back yard, with a nine-slab patio propped up on reclaimed railway sleepers. All decorated to the drab, lifeless taste of a landlord who made the purchase through an agent, and has yet to visit.

Home , thinks McAvoy, bones weary, drowsily parking the people-carrier on the kerb and watching his wife, framed like a film star through the square front window, swaying with his son in her arms, and waving to Daddy.

It’s late. Too late for Fin to still be up. He must have taken his nap around tea-time. He’ll be awake all night, eager to bounce on Mummy and Daddy’s bed, to try on Daddy’s shoes and stomp around on the lino in the kitchen, squashing imaginary monsters.

She’s done this for him. Settled the lad for a nap so that he’ll be awake and fresh and ready to make Daddy feel better when he finally gets home from the station, thoughts made heavy and dull by the relentlessness of the assault with which they have battered his skull.

Roisin opens the door for him and McAvoy doesn’t know who to kiss first. He opens his arms and takes them both in. Feels the hard pressure of Fin’s head on one cheek. Roisin’s lips, soft and warm and perfect, on the other. Holds them both. Feels her hand stroke his back. Takes their warmth inside himself. Senses her breathing him in, in return.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and whether it’s addressed to her or the boy or the universe in general, he would not be able to say.