Dark Winter by David Mark

of her homework. She was a straight-A 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?’

CHAPTER 5
    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 betterwhen 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.
    Eventually he pulls away. Roisin takes a step backwards to allow him into the little lobby at the foot of the stairs. As he pushes the door closed behind him, he turns and knocks the same picture from the wall that he has dislodged almost nightly since they moved into this, their first proper home, two years ago. They giggle, sharing the joke, as he stoops to pick it up, and awkwardly hangs it