Taking Pity (19 page)

“Fucker’s everywhere,” says Ray, though there is no real malice in it. “I keep expecting to find him in the mirror behind me, looking all sad and heroic.”

“Is that how you see him?” asks Helen, turning in her seat.

Ray shrugs. “Don’t think about him much. I know he hits hard, I’ll tell you that. And chicks fucking love him.”

Helen turns away. She winds the window down another inch and feels the cold evening air turn the sweat on her brow into a chilly veneer.

They are sitting in Ray’s Saab 9-5 on Oakbrook Road in Sheffield. It’s a nice cosmopolitan area with delicatessens that sell tubs of olives, anchovies, and sun-dried tomatoes to people who spend their weeks browsing antique fairs and helping to organize art exhibitions in churches and community centers. Helen likes it. They are little more than an hour from Hull and still very much in Yorkshire, but the East Coast seems half a world away. There was even some blue in the sky as they made the drive over, though the evening has drawn in quickly and the blue-black air beyond the glass contains a fine mist that soaks to the bone.

“This is her neck of the woods, isn’t it?” asks Ray, spooning up the last of his lamb bhuna with the edge of a CD case. He licks greasy sauce off Bruce Springsteen’s back then chucks the case onto the backseat. He pulls out his cigarettes and begins to puff, contentedly.

“Her, sir?”

“Pharaoh. She’s South Yorkshire.”

“I think so. Mexborough.”

“Brian Blessed’s from there.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Always liked him.”

Helen doesn’t know what to say. Gives a well-intentioned nod. “Good.”

They have been here for more than an hour. The car smells of curry, cigarettes, and Colin Ray. Helen is used to the company of her male officers and is resisting the temptation to reach into her handbag and start spraying her surroundings with something floral. She contents herself with sticking her nose next to the gap between window and roof, inhaling fresh air like a dog.

“Somewhere nearby,” says Ray, nodding at the laptop on Helen’s knees. “Within a hundred yards. Fuck.”

Helen is keeping an eye on Piers Fordham’s location. His car is parked a little way up the road. It’s a black Audi; immaculately clean and with a state-of-the-art sound system. According to the data that Dan from Tech Support is feeding her laptop, Piers’s office mobile phone is inside it. At some point he will have to return to the car and Colin Ray can get a proper look at the man he wants to hurt like no other. All they can do is wait.

“Makes you wonder why we miss it,” says Helen moodily. “All the waiting. Sitting about.”

“Never got used to it myself, love. Always tried to find a quicker way, that’s my problem.” Ray sounds oddly confessional. He must hear it in his own voice and quickly switches back to a more aggressive and sneery tone. “Would be worse with the Flying Scotsman in the back though, eh? Bloody hell, we’d have his legs sticking out the front windows.”

Helen’s phone beeps and she looks at the message she has received from Dan.

“Dan’s ready for home,” she says, sighing. “He’s going to leave the system on for us, but wants me to know that if he gets into trouble he’s blaming it all on you.”

“I signed the forms, didn’t I?”

“You’re suspended. Only a superintendent can request that a mobile phone be pinged for a location. And even then it’s up to the phone company.”

“Yeah, but they played ball. And besides, I did sign it as a superintendent. Chief Superintendent Davey.”

Helen looks at him for signs he is joking. Watches as he burps and enjoys the taste of curried lamb.

“How are you still in a job?” she asks, aghast.

“I’m owed a lot of favors,” he says. “And I know where the bodies are buried.”

“I bet you bloody do.”

They sit in silence for a time. The rain starts to come down more heavily and Ray switches on the windscreen wipers so as not to lose sight of the car up ahead. They are parked outside a nice old-fashioned property with a gable window and stone cladding. It’s part of a terrace that runs far down the hill and stops by a row of shops. The Indian restaurant was a welcome discovery in among the jewelers, hairdressers, florists, and delicatessens.

“Hold up,” says Ray, sitting forward in his seat. “That’s the fucker.”

The two detectives hold their breath and take in the short, plump man ahead of them. He has a big beard and a long cashmere coat that reaches almost to his ankles. He’s coming toward them, puffing on a cigarette.

“Where did he come from?”

“He must have got out of a car . . .”

“Which car?”

“I didn’t see!”

“Fuck!”

Piers Fordham stops at his Audi. He presses the button on his car keys and the headlights flash with subtle German precision, illuminating the columns of hard rain that are filling the gutters and forming puddles on the cracked road. He looks up. Scowls at the apartment above the gardening shop a few car lengths away. He gives a slow shake of his head. Climbs inside. Wipes the raindrops from his beard. A moment later, he is cruising back up the road, the sound of his car lost beneath the rain.

“Do we follow, sir?”

Ray is chewing his lower lip. “He must have come from a car.”

“Sir, do we follow?”

“We can find him again, yeah? On the tracker thing?”

“Yes, but . . .”

Ray opens his car door. “Stay here.”

Helen’s protests are lost as he steps out of the vehicle and into the rain. He inhales the South Yorkshire air. Expects steel and Brasso. Gets curry and wet grass.

“Right, ya fucker . . .”

Ray does a fine impression of a drunk. He begins to stagger. Looks up and lets the rain soak his skin. Giggles to himself. Totters and zigzags up the darkened road, bumping into parked cars and trying to free his hand from his pocket. In this manner it takes him a little under a minute to check the interiors of each vehicle parked in the street. He spots a Fiat 500 and barges into it, setting off the alarm. Suddenly the street is alive with noise and flashing lights.

“Come on, son . . .”

A little way ahead, a car door opens. It’s a nondescript vehicle. A Renault or a Vauxhall. Its driver is a thickset man. He’s wearing white sneakers, jeans, and a puffer jacket. He looks angry. Crosses to the pavement and approaches Ray.

“What you fucking doing?” he asks as he comes closer.

In his pocket, Ray switches on the tape recorder. The man’s accent is Eastern European. Russian, if he’s any judge.

“You touch my car? You touch my car, I fucking kill you.”

“Sorry, mate,” says Ray, slurring. “You Russian? Beautiful country. I met a Russian girl once. Dirty fucker. Probably your sister . . .”

The man’s face twists and he lunges at Ray. Ray suddenly becomes very sober. He turns and twists at the hip and kicks his attacker beneath the kneecap with enough force to send him sprawling to the ground.

“Back of the net,” says Ray, turning. “Now, I think that deserves a penalty kick . . .”

He punts the fallen Russian in the ribs as he lies on the ground. A pocketknife tumbles from the man’s pocket and Ray grins evilly as he picks it up.

“Carrying an offensive weapon? If I wasn’t suspended, you’d be fucked. As it is, I’ll just do this . . .”

He unfolds the blade and crosses to the man’s car. He plunges the blade into the rear tire and looks on contentedly as air hisses out.

“Your mate,” he says conversationally. “Piers. Lawyer, of sorts. I’d love to know more about him. Can I maybe borrow your phone and ask all your—”

“That’ll do.”

Ray turns around. He has his hand inside the man’s coat and his fingers around his mobile phone. He looks in the direction of the voice: clear and accented, despite the noise of the car alarm. A big man in a woolly jumper and a flat cap is leaning against the bonnet of a big 4×4. He has a gray mustache and a broad, weather-beaten face. He’s got a chest that convicts could crack rocks on. Behind him, a pretty, large-breasted girl with dark hair and too many earrings is holding a baby to her chest.

“Police business,” says Ray offhandedly. “Go back inside.”

“The police dinnae do business like that. I’d make yourself scarce if I was you.”

Ray’s face twists into a sneer. “Jock, are you?”

“No, lad. I’m a Scotsman.”

“Good for you. Now fuck off back to Scotland.”

“I can’t do that,” he says, walking forward. “I’m just that way. Now, I hate to use foul language in front of a bairn, but if I was you I’d piss off.”

Ray considers his options. Realizes that doors are opening. Lights are going on. He’s caused too much of a scene. He pockets the man’s mobile phone. Holds the Scotsman’s stare and walks past him toward the waiting Saab. Helen is standing outside it, her phone in her hand; eyes wide and face pale.

“Fucking jocks,” says Ray, slamming the door. “Pikey bitches.”

Holding her phone to her chest, Helen winds down the window as they pull away from the curb in a squeal of rubber on wet road. They tear past the Russian’s parked car and see him clambering painfully into the passenger seat. The large Scotsman is fiddling with a child seat in the back of a large dark-colored car.

Helen only locks eyes with the big man’s passenger for an instant but it is long enough for her heart to all but stop beating. She recognizes those blue eyes. That long, lustrous hair. The curve of the hips and the jewelry at her throat. Recognizes the baby against her breast.

“Sir, I—”

“Don’t say a word,” says Ray, spitting as he snaps at her. “Did she ring? Your swinger? Your slag? Suzie?”

Helen can’t catch her breath. Her thoughts are reeling as the car screeches through unfamiliar streets and she looks through a windscreen fragmented by a billion raindrops.

“She’s on now,” she says, light-headed. “Got the addresses of the sites he was looking at yesterday on the work computer. Some touristy stuff about Panama. The archives of the
Newcastle Journal
. A Google search on somebody called Mahon . . .”

Helen lifts the phone to her ear again.

“Suzie, yeah, that’s great. What else? BBC home page. News stuff. Science stories. A company in London. Some bigwigs in the city. And what? Personnel . . .”

Helen closes her eyes as she hears Suzie speak. Can barely bring herself to thank her and hang up.

“Well?” snaps Ray, eyes on the road and a cigarette between his teeth. “Why’s he even here? He’s the big man, yeah? What’s he doing sorting out surveillance and legwork? And who was that bloody jock?”

Helen says out loud the name that Suzie has given her. Tries not to let her mind do terrible things.

Ray says nothing for a while. Just smokes and hisses and twists his hands around the steering wheel.

“We’ve got to tell her,” he says. “Or him. Somebody.”

Helen nods. She doesn’t want to make that call. Doesn’t want to have to make sense of events that could not pass for coincidence.

“That was his wife,” says Helen, trying to keep the tone of her voice neutral. “Roisin McAvoy. I don’t know why she’s here. Maybe she’s hiding.”

“Not very well,” says Ray without malice. “Fuck, I don’t know . . .”

Helen focuses on the computer in her lap. The company mobile is beeping its way back toward Hull. The Russian that Ray left on the ground has no way of alerting his employer about what has just happened. They can talk to Piers tonight. They can get answers and maybe save a life. But they aren’t police officers right now. She doesn’t know what to do.

“Shaz,” says Ray, as if reading her mind. “We’ll let her put all this through the books. Get him in. Get a nice interview room and see how big he is then . . .”

Helen is barely listening. She is staring at a picture at the front of her mind. She is looking at the absolute fear in Roisin McAvoy’s eyes. She is wondering how much horror it has taken to break such a powerful soul.

T
HE
PUDDLES
REFLECT
Mahon’s hulking shape as he crosses the pitted, cracked tarmac of the car park.

He can’t feel the rain as it pelts the deadened surface of the small rectangle of skin that is visible between his scarf and sunglasses, but he enjoys imagining the caress of the downpour upon his ruined features.

He steps between the lorries parked up in the truck stop, his eyes fixed on a vehicle at the rear of the compound.

Nobody sees him. The drivers are either stealing a nap in their wagons or holed up in the greasy spoon at the front of the service station, tucking into a variety of brown foods dished up with toast and fried bread.

He passes a wagon with purple livery and slides into a shadow as the door opens. He slows his heart. Stops his lungs. The ligature eases down from his wrist and into his gloved hand.

A man, bulky, with a shaved head and a rash on his neck, turns up his T-shirt collar and half runs, half waddles away through the rain in the direction of the café.

Mahon steps out of the blackness and continues on to the dark green cab that stands at the back of the yard. It’s hauling a nondescript blue container.

Without pausing, Mahon pulls open the driver’s door. He climbs up the three steps and into the cab. Swishes back the curtain to the sleeping quarters.

The man asleep on the bunk is in his twenties. Wearing a black round-neck T-shirt and combat pants. He has a thin, pinched, Eastern European face, and a golden crucifix has snaked out of his top to lie coiled by his face as it rests upon the makeshift pillow of a luminous yellow coat.

The man wakes as Mahon takes hold of both his legs and pulls. He is wrenched forward, arms flying up to claw at the curtain as he’s hauled through the gap in the seats. He looks up and, for a fraction of a second, sees the colossal, deformed man in the black leather jacket and cloth cap who blocks out the dull autumn light of the rain-lashed car park.

Mahon leaps gently down to the tarmac, the man’s ankles still held in his grip.

Groggy, spluttering, fuzzy with disrupted sleep, the man gives a half-strangled yell as he slithers into a seated position in the driver’s seat.

Mahon’s grip is immovable. He stands bolt upright, and without ceremony, as though pulling a soiled sheet from a mattress, he wrenches the man from the cab, taking two quick steps backward.

The man’s entire body leaves the vehicle, pulled far out over the hard, wet, glistening blackness of the pavement several feet below.

There is an instant in which the man feels he is flying; his whole frame four feet from the ground—face, chest, groin, toes, all pointing skyward.

Then a sensation of movement.

A push in his chest.

The cessation of his trajectory and a sudden rush downward.

And he slams into the ground.

His skull cracks like an egg.

Mahon stands over the man and waits for the gurgling sounds to stop. He pauses until the jamlike blood that seeps from the fissure in the cranium is running almost to the corpse’s waist.

Then he turns and walks away.

It was not the man’s fault. Not really. He’d been given the chance at easy money. All the reports Mahon had heard suggested that he had done his best to look out for the girls in his care. But Mr. Nock controls the working girls around here. He runs a profitable service providing girls for the minimum-wage building crews and meatpackers who come over from the Balkans each year to earn themselves a wedge of illegitimate cash and then bugger off home before immigration officials catch up with them. He doesn’t want any competition. Doesn’t want anybody to spread their legs between Whitley Bay and Hadrian’s Wall without him getting half the profits. The dead young lad hadn’t known that. Had just done what some enterprising villain had asked of him. He was probably not even aware that Mr. Nock wouldn’t approve. Maybe didn’t even know the name and what it meant.

Bloody Eastern Europeans.

Mahon is pleased to be back in the North East. The couple of days away seem to have done him some good. He feels fit and well. Ready for what will come next. And Mr. Nock is in fine form. Had made his feelings clear on what should be done to the driver who deposited a dozen shivering and emaciated Slovenians at a house in Jarrow last night. An example needed to be made. It should look to the casual observer like an accident. But to those in the know, it should be a very clear statement of intent.

There’s a gap in the chain-link fence at the rear of the truck stop and Mahon slips through it without snagging his clothes. He crosses a patch of waste ground and emerges at the back of a housing estate. One of his favored lads is waiting for him in the driver’s seat of a nondescript Peugeot. Mahon grunts a hello as he climbs into the passenger seat. Lights himself a cigarette as the lad pulls away from the curb.

“All grand, boss?”

“Champion,” says Mahon.

He settles down in the seat, wreathed in blue smoke. Watches the houses whiz by. Apparently it’s a rough neighborhood, this. Full of bad sorts, according to the papers. It’s a warren of narrow streets and alleyways: back doors facing each other across strips of concrete, where kitchen appliances sit abandoned and rotten mattresses lean against graffitied walls. The main streets are all steel shutters and speed bumps, and the few patches of greenery have been churned to mud by the tires of stolen cars.

“Now then,” he says at length, to his companion. “What you got for me?”

Mahon’s driver is called Hughie Lowes. He’s in his late thirties and has been a friend of the Nock family since he was a boy. He’s a safe pair of hands and a solid set of biceps. He also has an inquiring, tactical mind. Can punch his weight but can finish the
Sun
crossword in under ten minutes and knows how to work a computer and forge official documents with the same aplomb that he can snap a knee in ways that will never heal. He’s a good-looking sort. Looks like a sports teacher on his day off. Sneakers, cords, stripy T-shirt, and a baggy cardigan. Frameless glasses and a wedding band. Hair shaved with a number-two guard and a day’s growth on his chin and upper lip. He may run the firm some day. But that day won’t come until Mahon says so.

“Benny Pryce,” says Hughie. “That’s whose piss you can smell, if you were wondering. We’ll have to torch the Peugeot.”

Mahon nods. He hasn’t got a great sense of smell. Hadn’t noticed anything unpleasant but is willing to take his underling’s word.

“I don’t think he took their silver, Mr. Mahon,” continues Hughie. “I think he was trying to do us a good turn, to be honest. He says some ex-copper from Yorkshire got in touch with the lads at the
Journal
. Gave them some bullshit about a book he was writing. Benny had offered one of the young reporters there a favor if they alerted him to anybody asking questions like that. He got a call and said he’d look into it. Turned out the writer was an old colleague of Benny’s. He’d told Benny the truth of it. Wanted to know any and all properties associated with Mr. Nock. Benny did his old mate a favor and gave him the list but left half of the addresses off and stuck a few dead ends and red herrings in there for good measure. Met the fella at Scotch Corner and gave him what he wanted. Then he said his good-byes.”

Mahon sniffs loudly as the car turns right, past a small church erected from chunky, crudely cut bricks. There is no graffiti on the church wall. The local kids know better. Some things are sacred, even to the damned.

“He got hurt, yeah? The bloke? The ex-copper?”

Hughie nods, keeping his eyes on the road. “He’s in hospital. Shit kicked out of him. You know that shit with the nail gun that happened in Hull and down south? He got a couple of nails in him down some side road near Goole.”

“Goole?”

“Shithole between Leeds and Hull.”

Mahon sniffs again. Lights another cigarette. “Changing a tire, was he?” he asks cynically.

“Some traffic cops pulled him over, then buggered off. A car rammed him from behind. Dragged him out and went to work. Put nails in his feet.”

Mahon sits, not speaking. Wonders whether the attacker would have thought to wipe his prints from the nails.

“Where did we get all this?” he asks with a jerk of his head.

“Fat fucker who used to be CID down in Hull. Don’t know if you’ve met him. Linus. Back in uniform now, but still has his ear to the ground.”

Mahon tries to put a face to the name but can’t come up with anything. Wonders if he’s ever met the bloke or if age is simply wiping his memory a little at a time.

“He’s solid, is he? This Linus?”

“Knows how the land lies, that’s all. Used to work for a bloke who liked to put a few quid in his personal pension fund. You remember Roper? Absolom? Crooked as a cat’s cock.”

Mahon nods. “All roads lead to Hull, eh? Fucking hell, we just got back.”

Hughie looks across at him apologetically. “Don’t know if we have to get involved any further, really,” he says diplomatically. “Benny says there’s no way that list will lead anybody to Mr. Nock. There’s only you who knows where he’s having himself a little rest. If these new villains want to beat up an ex-copper and piss off the law, that’s their concern, not ours. As long as they stay out of Newcastle, why do we give a shit?”

Mahon says nothing. Inhales cigarette smoke and holds it until his eyes water and his lungs hurt. Hughie’s right, of course. They’ve got enough things to think about. Mr. Nock’s health, for a start. On the drive back from Yorkshire, the old man had been coughing up something that looked a little like shit. Mahon is no doctor but can’t imagine that such a thing can be a positive step.

“Got history, that house,” says Hughie conversationally, nodding at the glass. “Remember my dad telling me about it.”

Mahon had barely registered which street they were traveling down. Hadn’t noticed the shabby end-terrace property that somebody has covered in a shiny pebble dash and hanging baskets. Mahon slows his breathing as soon as he realizes where he is. Doesn’t close his eyes in time. The vision of the property sets off a flip book of memories. Sees himself, handsome and unscarred. Sees his old Ford Popular parked at the curb. Mr. Nock used to take the piss out of him for driving such a nondescript motor. Told him to splash out. To enjoy himself. To put his money into something with a bit of muscle and sex appeal. Mahon had shrugged it off. He’d liked the car. Liked blending in. Liked the fact it had enough room in the boot for a trio of bodies and a spade. Wonders what happened to the car. Whether they sold it or scrapped it after the southerners came for him. Whether he’d left anything sentimental in the glove box . . .

Christ, but the memories hurt . . .

He remembers opening the front door and climbing those stairs and smelling the blood, the beer, the cigarette smoke, sweat and cum. Remembers the feeling in the pit of his stomach: the knowledge that everything had just turned to shit. Remembers their bodies. Him, heavy and slippy: a dead dolphin sliding around in his grip. Her, featherlight and perfumed: fragile and breakable, like a baby bird.

“Belonged to what’s-his-name, didn’t it? One-armed-bandit bloke. Got sent down, didn’t he? Wouldn’t stop banging on about being innocent—”

Mahon holds up a hand to stop his companion. He can’t stand listening to any of it. Can’t stand listening to the past being so misrepresented. He has lived through all the local legends. Has been at the heart of most of them.

“Sorry, boss,” says Hughie, shutting up. “Like I say, that’s where we’re at. Benny’s a team player. Got a bit of useful info out of him, too. Shipment coming in, according to his snout. Thought we might divert it . . .”

Mahon nods, drinking it all in. He was killing somebody ten minutes ago. Is buggered if he can remember why that was . . .

“Linus said we should watch out for the bloke’s mate,” says Hughie suddenly. “She’s a superintendent. Bit of a looker from the picture I found. Anyways, Linus didn’t like to admit it, but apparently she’s good. And she’s got this giant of a lapdog. Scottish bloke. Redhead. Jock name, he said. Told us not to even bother making an approach. Holier than thou, said Linus.”

Mahon turns his head.

“McAvoy,” he says, plucking the name from the air. He’d heard it spoken on John Glass’s doorstep. Had watched the giant copper’s back get smaller across Pearson Park.

“That’s it,” says Hughie. “You know him?”

Mahon settles himself more comfortably in the seat. He gives a tired little chuckle and finds himself almost sad at the thought of what is coming.

He stares out the window at the gray air and misery. Wonders, for an instant, what the big man’s throat will feel like beneath his hands.

“Don’t know him yet,” he says. “But I will.”