Free Dark Winter by David Mark

sweets.
    ‘Why here, Miss Mountford? Are you sure there’s nowhere more comfortable we could go?’
    She rubs a hand across her round features and looks at her glass, and then towards the bar. Then she shrugs. ‘I share a house, like I said. My housemate’s got the living room tonight. I don’t like police stations. This is where I always am at this time on a Sunday. It doesn’t bother me.’ She looks at her glass again. ‘I need a drink to talk about her,’ she adds softly.
    ‘It must have been very difficult,’ says McAvoy, as tenderly as he can over the hubbub of the half-full bar. ‘We break the news to family, but people sometimes forget about the friends. To hear something so terrible on the radio. To read it in the newspapers. I can’t imagine.’
    Vicki nods, and McAvoy sees gratitude in the gesture. Then her eyes fall to the glass again. He is wondering whether he should offer to buy her a drink when a waitress, clad in black T-shirt and leggings, approaches the table.
    ‘Double vodka and tonic,’ says Vicki gratefully, then raises her eyebrows at McAvoy. ‘And you?’
    McAvoy doesn’t know what to ask for. He should perhaps order coffee or a soft drink, but to do so might alienate a potential lead, who so clearly has a taste for something stronger.
    ‘Same for me,’ he says.
    They do not speak until the waitress returns. She is back inside a minute, placing the drinks on neat white napkins on the black-varnished table. Vicki drains half of hers in one swallow. McAvoy takes only the merest sip before placing the drink back on the surface. He wishes he’d ordered a pint.
    ‘I forgot it was Sunday,’ says McAvoy. ‘Was expecting office workers and people in designer suits.’
    Vicki manages a smile. ‘I only come in on Sundays. You can’t get a table on a week night and people look at you strangely when you’re on your own. It’s music night in here on a Sunday. There’ll be a jazz band on in an hour or two.’
    ‘Any good? I don’t mind a bit of jazz.’
    ‘Different ones each week. They’ve got a South American group on tonight. All right, apparently.’
    McAvoy sticks out his lower lip – his own elaborate gesture of interest. He had policed the Beverley Jazz Festival during his last days as a uniformed constable and been blown away by some of the ethnic jazz groups that had made their way to the East Yorkshire town to play a dozen intermingling tunes for drunk students and the occasional true aficionado.
    ‘Expensive, is it?’
    ‘If you’re here before six, it’s free. A fiver after that, I think. I’ve never paid.’
    ‘No? Must save you a bob or two.’
    ‘On a supply-teacher’s wages every penny counts.’
    Her words seem to steer them back to the reason for their meeting. McAvoy positions himself straighter in his chair. Looks pointedly at his notebook. Softens his face as he prepares to let her tell the story in her own words.
    ‘She must have meant a great deal to you,’ he says encouragingly.
    Vicki nods. Then gives what is little more than a shrug. ‘It’s just the wastefulness of it all,’ she says, and it seems as though some of the anguish leaves her voice, to be replaced by a weary resignation. ‘For her to go through all that and to get her life in some kind of order …’
    ‘Yes?’
    She stops. Tips the empty glass to her mouth and inserts her tongue, draining it of the last dribbles of watery alcohol. Closing her eyes, she appears to make a decision, and then ducks down below the level of the table. McAvoy hears a bag being unzipped and a moment later she is handing him some folded sheets of white paper.
    ‘That’s what she wrote,’ she says. ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’
    ‘And this is?’
    ‘It’s her story. A bit of it, anyway. A snippet of how it felt to be her. Like I said, she had a talent. I would have liked to have taught her all the time but there was no permanent position at the school. We just got chatting. I’ve done some