Dark Winter by David Mark Read Free Book Online Page B

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 bin-bags? 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 thingshe 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