Dark Winter by David Mark Read Free Book Online

done, in the exact way that nearly claimed him as a young man.
    He knows he shouldn’t promise that he will stay in touch. That he will find out what happened. Knows he shouldn’t give her his home phone number and tell her to call if she has any more information. Any questions. Just to talk.
    But he does.

CHAPTER 4
    McAvoy pulls his phone out of his inside pocket and replays the last voicemail. Even distorted as it is by the tinny loudspeaker, the anger in the woman’s voice is unmistakable.
    ‘McAvoy. Me again. How many times is this? I’ve got better things to do with my time than chase after you. We need you here. Get a fucking move on.’
    The voice is Trish Pharaoh’s. The most recent message had been left only forty-five minutes after the first, but there had been six in between, including a mumbled, whispered heads-up from Ben Nielsen, suggesting that whatever McAvoy was doing, he should drop it immediately and head for Queen’s Gardens or risk losing important body parts.
    There are a dozen reporters milling around the front of the station, but they pay him little heed and he makes it through the large double doors and into the lobby of the squat glass-and-brick building without being questioned.
    ‘Incident room?’ he asks, panting.
    ‘Pharaoh’s?’ asks the portly, pale-skinned desk sergeant. He is sitting on a swivel chair with a mug of coffee and a hardback book. Muscly and middle-aged, he carries the look ofsomebody who has worked the night shift for a long time, and isn’t going to let anything come between him and his routine. He is wearing a short-sleeved shirt which seems too tight at the collar, giving his large, round head a curiously disembodied look.
    ‘Indeed.’
    ‘Still setting up. Try Roper’s old office. Know the way?’
    McAvoy locks eyes with the desk sergeant. Tries to work out whether there is an accusation in the way the man says it. Feels his blush begin.
    ‘I’m sure I can find it,’ he says, trying a smile.
    ‘I’m sure you fucking can,’ says the uniformed officer, and runs his tongue over his lips with the faintest of sneers.
    McAvoy turns away. He has grown used to this. Grown used to contempt and venom, to distrust and outright loathing, among the cadre of officers who rode Doug Roper’s coat-tails.
    Knows that if it weren’t for his size half of his colleagues would spit in his face.
    He walks as quickly as dignity will allow until he is out of sight, then breaks into a semi-run. He takes the steps three at a time. Down another corridor. Pictures and posters and warnings and appeals whizzing past in a blur from notice-boards and unhealthy magnolia walls.
    Voices. Shouts. Clatters. Bangs. Through double mahogany doors and into the lion’s den.
    He is raising his hand to knock on the door when it suddenly swings inwards. Trish Pharaoh storms angrily out, deep in rushed conversation.
    ‘… high time they realised that, Ben.’
    She’s a handsome woman in her early forties, and looks more like a cleaner than a senior detective. Barely regulation height, she’s plump, with long black hair that is expertly styled about once every six months, and left to grow wild the rest of the time. She has four children, and treats her officers with the same mix of tenderness, pride and aggressive disappointment as she does her offspring. Tactile and flirty, she scares the hell out of the younger male officers, to whom she exudes a certain best-mate’s-mum kind of sexiness. She wears a wedding ring, though the photos on her desk do not include a man’s picture.
    She stops suddenly when she notices McAvoy, and DC Nielsen clatters into her back. She spins round and glares at him before turning to snarl at McAvoy.
    ‘The wanderer returns,’ she says.
    ‘Ma’am, I was in a radio black spot on a goodwill assignment from ACC Everett and—’
    ‘Shush.’
    She places her finger to her own lips, and then holds her palms out in front of her, her eyes closed, as if counting to