Dark Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

streaking across the wet gravel to his rear; a moment of fur and exclamation mark of tail, glimpsed in the foggy glass.
    It is already 6 p.m. The drive back from Beeford, twenty miles up the coast from his North Hull home, will take an hour in these conditions. He will have to pass his own front door on his journey back to the central police station, and the thought makes him irritable, but a recent order from the Chief Constable’s office forbade the overnight use of pool cars without prior written approval, and McAvoy assumes there must be a good reason for the directive, and will ensure it is enforced.
    A gap suddenly opens up in the hedgerows to McAvoy’s right and he gently swings the lumbering vehicle into the space for which he has been searching. In daylight, in spring, he imagines the scene around him will be a watercolour of ploughed brown soil and swaying blonde corn; but in this Stygian dark, this feels a lonely place, and it is with relief that he spies the brooding hulk of the tall, slate-grey farmhouse as the car grinds over firm, reassuring gravel and up the private drive.
    A security light blinks on as McAvoy ramps up next to a muddy 4x4 in the oval parking area. An elderly woman is standing at an open back door. Despite the quizzical expression on her face, she has an attractiveness about her that the years have not diluted. She is straight-backed and slim. Subtle adornments – designer reading glasses, Swarovski crystal earrings, the softest trace of blush-coloured lipstick – gild soft, neatly composed features. Her short bobbed hair looks as though it is drawn in pencil. She is wearing a sleeveless body warmer over a burnt-orange sweater, with navy-blue, neatly pressed slacks tucked into thick walking socks. In her hand she holds a wine glass, containing just the faintest puddle of red.
    McAvoy opens the car door into a gust of wind that threatens to pull his tie from around his neck.
    ‘This is private property,’ the woman says as she reaches down for a pair of wellington boots that stand by the door. ‘Are you lost? Were you looking for the Driffield road?’
    McAvoy feels colour rising in his cheeks. He slams the car door shut before his notes, loose on the passenger seat, can start playing games with the wind. Quickly, he calls up her name from memory.
    ‘Mrs Stein-Collinson? Barbara Stein-Collinson?’
    The woman is halfway out into the driveway, but her name stops her short. A look of concern freezes her face. ‘Yes. What’s wrong?’
    ‘Mrs Stein-Collinson, my name is Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. Might we go inside? I’m afraid I have—’
    She shakes her head, but her denial is not directed at the policeman. It is as though she is aiming the gesture at a vision. A memory. Her face softens, and she closes her eyes.
    ‘Fred,’ she says, and her next words do not sound like a question. ‘The silly sod’s dead.’
    McAvoy tries to catch her eye, to hold her gaze in the earnest, comforting way he does so well, but she is not paying him any attention. He turns away, oddly embarrassed, though it is more at the cack-handed way he has handled this, the only mission for which his superiors feel he is suited. He watches the snow fall inconsequentially onto the gravel. Sniffs politely as the cold makes his nose run.
    ‘Found him, have they?’ she asks at last.
    ‘Perhaps we could—’
    Her sudden glare cuts him dead. She stands there, snarling, her head shaking, her glasses slipping down her nose as her countenance turns hard and cold. She spits out her words, as if taking bites out of the air.
    ‘Forty years too bloody late.’
    ‘Would you mind taking your boots off? We have a cream carpet in the kitchen.’
    McAvoy bends down and starts unfastening the soggy, triple-knotted laces. Lets his eyes sweep the little cloakroomfrom his vantage point at knee height. No wellingtons. No dog baskets. No rubbish bags or newspapers waiting for the next bonfire or tip-trip.
Incomers
, he