Taking Pity

by David Mark

  Through snot and tears, the man manages more venom, shaking his head from side to side and opening fresh wounds on his chin as he rubs his flesh against the splintered wood that pins him down.

  “The French have a name for this,” says Mahon, sitting back and holding a fresh rock in his lap. “Peine forte et dure. I’m no linguist but I think that’s right. Only been to France once and never got a chance to use the expression. Hope I’ve got it right. Protestant bastards used it on Catholics who refused to recant. Was a famous case in York. Beautiful city, York. You ever been? No? Was a lady there called Margaret Clitherow. Upright, well liked, normal sort of woman. Authorities arrested her for her beliefs. Ordered she be pressed to death. Laid her on a stone the size of a man’s fist then placed a door on her chest. The town sheriffs were supposed to load the door with rocks but couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Couldn’t persuade any townsfolk either. Ended up paying some beggars. What that woman must have endured, eh? But she wouldn’t recant. Stuck to her beliefs. Some people even say that her final words were ‘More weight.’ I admire her for that. She cared about something so much she was willing to endure whatever it took. I think she’s been sainted since. The thing is, son, you’re not protecting a faith. You’re not standing up for what you believe in. You’re just being a silly, obstinate bastard. You might get your orders through a mobile phone. You might not know who the next man up the chain is. But you know the passcode for your phone. And if you don’t tell me, you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, shitting in a bag. And I tell you, nobody’s going to think you’re a saint.”

  The man on the floor opens his mouth. His breathing is ragged and strained. A blood vessel has popped in his right eye and the wounds to his palms from the switchblade are big enough to pass a coin through.

  “Please,” he manages, and red tears run down his face. “No more . . .”

  Mahon begins to smirk, when his own mobile phone rings.

  “Sergeant,” says Mahon brightly into the phone. “This going to be expensive?”

  For the next few moments, Mahon doesn’t speak. He just listens and stares at the shadows on the wall, as if the flickering shapes are players on a stage.

  “Thank you,” says Mahon at last. “Usual amount, plus a bonus. And your loyalty is appreciated.”

  Mahon ends the call. Looks at the broken human being on the floor at his feet.

  “Painful memories,” he says, rubbing his jaw. “Haven’t thought about that place in years. Bad business. Mess, it was. Cost me a lot, that night. People can’t control themselves, can they? Just have to act like animals. And then people like me have to pick up the pieces.”

  Mahon drops the rock on the man’s chest. Listens for the sound of bone turning to powder.

  He turns away from the riot of screams and looks out of the small window at the dark forest and the tumbling rain. He drifts into remembrance. Lets his mind tumble back almost half a century. Remembers gravestones and blood, snow and gunshots. Remembers the girl and the smell of innocence lost. He has no wish to revisit that place. Nor to remember that night. But circumstances dictate he has to rebury a ghost.

  • • •

  TUESDAY MORNING, 9:05 A.M.

  McAvoy can only afford one cup of coffee and fancies that he will need to use the Internet for longer than it will take him to drink it. So he orders the drink in a takeaway mug and walks with it through the soft rain and gray air to his car, parked directly outside the Costa coffee shop that sits on this little retail park to the west of Hull. From his vehicle he can still access the shop’s Wi-Fi, but he won’t feel compelled to get up and leave as soon as he drains the last sip of his gingerbread latte. This way he can take his time and won’t sweat and blush himself insensible each time one of the nice young ladies asks if they can get him another.

  He opens his laptop. Takes a sip of the sweet, frothy drink. Wipes foam from his freshly shaved upper lip and rubs his back against the driver’s seat. One of his wounds is finally scabbing over and itching so badly he wants to tear his skin off with a rake.

  McAvoy is dressed in a way that would not displease the women in his life. He managed to find a supermarket suit in his size and looks passable in dark blue with a plain white shirt and an old-school tie. His walking boots don’t look too incongruous and last night’s rain cleaned the last of the dirt from his cashmere coat. He looks fine. Battered, and careworn, and a little dangerous around the edges, but he had still felt caring eyes upon him when he dropped Fin off at school this morning and said hellos to the appreciative mums.

  McAvoy accesses his e-mails. There are some big files from Pharaoh. They were sent just after eight a.m. and the originals carry government logos. He opens one at random. Flicks through the findings of a mental health tribunal. Closes it down and opens another. Scanned images of witness testimonies. Black-and-white photos. A shotgun, tagged and wrapped in polythene. A photograph of a footprint. Tire tracks on crushed snowdrops. He takes a deep breath. Opens up a search engine and types a name into the Internet. He gets fewer hits than he had expected. But he still finds plenty to keep him going.

  Over the course of the next hour, McAvoy’s drink grows cold in the cup holder at the front of the battered minivan. The laptop screen casts images onto his face. Fills his scarred features with the words of witnesses long dead. Fills his mind with images he will not soon forget.

  By midmorning, McAvoy feels ready to close the computer. He blinks hard. Rubs a hand over his face and drains his cold drink. He reaches into the pocket of his overcoat and pulls out a chocolate croissant wrapped in tissue paper. He munches it thoughtfully. Wonders, for a time, quite what he should hope for. Were this a fresh case, he would be giddy at the thought of taking it on. But these murders happened nearly fifty years ago, and the tone of the correspondence between Pharaoh and her contact at the Home Office suggests that it is McAvoy’s job to just make sure that if the case should ever come to trial, it can be tied up swiftly and without embarrassment.

  The situation he finds himself in is the direct result of the new home secretary staying true to his word. Two decades ago, while still a junior minister, the cabinet member had met one of his constituents at a local hospital. She was a sweet woman. Timid but determined. A loyal party member. A regular voter. A pillar of the community and the sort of person who looked good in a twinset and pearls. She’d told him about her grandson. Peter Coles. Arrested back in 1966 at the scene of a spree killing and locked away under the Mental Health Act. Had been pretty much catatonic ever since. Wouldn’t tell her why he had done it. Hadn’t been a bad boy. Hadn’t ever wanted to hurt anybody. Was it right? Could he be locked away like that, without a trial, for all those years? She wanted to hear the facts. Wanted to know if he could be kept in a cell for decades without a proper hearing before a judge. Said her neighbors, the victims, had a right to know. The minister had made a promise. Said he would do what he could. And twenty years later, a decade after the old woman’s death, he remembered it. Set the wheels in motion and demanded that if Peter Coles was mentally fit to be so, he should be tried on four counts of murder. Caused his civil servants a succession of heart attacks. And they had approached Trish Pharaoh with a request for help.

  1966, thinks McAvoy. Bad year to be a Scotsman.

  McAvoy was not born until a decade after the events he has been tasked with investigating. His mother and father had not yet met. His dad was still working the family croft near Aultbea. Still not sure who or what he wanted to be. Never sure whether he should flee the croft for adventure or stay and work the land where so many McAvoys had lived and died. Still a bit of a bastard and a bugger for trouble when the drink was in him. It would be another few years before he met and fell in love with the wild, bright-eyed, and very-English student on a backpacking holiday in the Highlands. Still a few years until he became a father to two strapping sons. Still a few years until he had his heart
broken by a woman who left him because his big, strong arms and his brooding intensity were nowhere near as attractive as her new lover’s money.

  McAvoy considers the man his father is today. He and his dad have little to do with each other. Haven’t seen each other more than a dozen times since he left the croft at the age of ten and went to a boarding school paid for by his mum’s new man. His dad sends Fin a letter each month, filled with details about life on the croft. Sometimes they include little pencil sketches of views that make McAvoy dizzy with nostalgia. He always asks after McAvoy’s health and even threatened a visit during Aector’s stay in the hospital. But the visit didn’t happen. Fin has still only met his grandfather twice. Lilah has never met him at all. Probably never will. Neither of them have met McAvoy’s older brother or visited the low-roofed, tumbledown property that Aector owns in Gairloch or the snug, well-tended family croft a few miles away. McAvoy wonders what his dad was doing in 1966. Whether he watched England’s triumph in the World Cup that year or spent the evening by the fire with a book, refusing to acknowledge the cheers from the English sailors who docked their warships in Loch Ewe and headed into the towns and villages like marauders.

  McAvoy rubs crumbs from his fingers and ponders the name of the church mentioned in the top report. St. Germain’s. It seems familiar. Had he heard about this case when he first moved to the area a few years back? Had he taken a trip to the remote patch of Holderness with Roisin? Did it have some significance to his studies? His training?

  He nods, pleased to have remembered.

  Andrew Marvell.

  When he moved to Hull as a uniformed constable, McAvoy had been single and lonely and had spent his spare time reading up on the area’s history. Andrew Marvell was one of the city’s most revered sons. He represented the city as MP for more than thirty years and became one of the closest confidants of Oliver Cromwell, before making himself equally invaluable to the restored monarchy under King Charles II. More than that, he was a poet who epitomized the metaphysical ideals. And he had been born at Winestead and baptized in St. Germain’s Church, where his father was rector.

  McAvoy is pleased he has not had to say any of this out loud. Pharaoh makes fun of his ability to recall odd facts and dates. Reckons he would be a pub-quiz champion if he would just let himself cheat on the questions about popular culture. Laughs at the idea he would be fine on the rounds about astrophysics and literature but would let himself down on EastEnders.

  McAvoy winds down the window and breathes in the cold, damp air. He needs to order his thoughts. Needs to lay out every piece of paper on a bare wall and input every fact into a database. Needs to see which pieces of data are incontrovertible and which need to be reassessed and validated. But more than anything, he needs to feel a connection. Needs to see where this family met their deaths.

  It will take him around forty-five minutes to get out to Holderness. Through the city and on into nowhere. He will learn nothing he can put in a database. Will find nothing of forensic evidential benefit. But he will at least feel something. For these past months, the only pain he has felt has been his own.

  He turns the key. Feels the wind on his face.

  Drives, through the wind and the rain, to a murder scene built on bones.

  FOUR

  9:18 A.M. The chain pub opposite Hull Crown Court.

  Traffic nose to tail, turning the leaves in the gutters into a paste of orange and gold.

  Solicitors and coppers, criminals and clerks, hurrying through the sideways rain; illuminated by the reds and yellows of headlights and streetlamps.

  Detective Chief Inspector Colin Ray sits on one of the high bar stools, looking out through rain-lashed windows. Watches as the driver of a white van beeps his horn at the tall black woman crossing between the motionless cars, dragging a briefcase on wheels that were not designed to deal with the potholes and cobbles of Hull’s city center. Watches as she jumps at the sudden noise, then gives a nervous wave to the fat prick behind the wheel.

  Ray spoons up a last mouthful of hash browns and scrambled egg. Takes a sip of wine and wipes the grease off the rim of the glass with the end of his tie. Takes a look behind him at his fellow diners. It’s mostly men. Old boys. Retired trawlermen with missing fingers and chapped faces. Workmen in luminous yellow jackets and steel-capped boots. A shaky-looking bloke holding a tall glass of gin and orange is leaning on the bar. His shoes are polished to a shine and his blue suit is neatly pressed, but his right leg is shaking in a way that suggests he is due before a judge this morning and is sinking his drinks like somebody who is not expecting to get the chance to do so again for a while.

  No new faces, thinks Ray. Same shit. Same pricks and nobodies. Same friends.

  He takes in his surroundings. Up, at the exposed air-conditioning units, all coiled steel and polished copper. The walls, with their modern art and blocks of color, their history posters informing him of the rich heritage of this old building, which served Hull as a post office for decades. Down, at the sticky wooden floorboards and blue carpet trodden flat.

  He drains his wine. Takes his electronic cigarette from the pocket of his crumpled black shirt and inhales. Scowls at the weak, anemic hit the gadget provides. Wishes he could just flash his warrant card and tell them he wants a fag. A proper fag. Three inches of nicotine and tar, smoke billowing upward in a greasy cloud, masking the stench of men.

  He sniffs. The bar smells of damp carpet and clothes dried in musty rooms. It smells of brick dust and mud, mildew and spilled ale. It smells of stifled burps and cigarettes. It’s a place where men in their eighties place their daily budget on the table in front of them and keep drinking until it’s gone or the fruit machine pays out. It’s a pub that caters to the sort of clientele who like their fried breakfasts with a whiskey chaser. It starts serving pints at nine a.m.

  The double doors bang open, bringing in rain and wind and traffic noise. Two solicitors with a pretty, little thing. One of them is fat and bearded, leading with his belly and looking around him like he is thinking of making an offer to buy the place. His colleague is a step behind; short and skinny, twitchy and beige. The blonde looks halfway familiar. She’s got on a business suit and flip-flops and has mud streaked up her pale calves. She’s wearing big spectacles and cheap jewelry. She looks fun. The trio order coffees to go. The blonde asks for a muffin. Says it with a giggle and a hint of innuendo and gets nothing back from her colleagues. Sighs, saying, “Tough crowd . . .”

  This has been Colin Ray’s routine for the past three months. He has been suspended from work since slapping the piss out of some mouthy little prick in the cells. At fifty years old, he should have known better, but he was goaded into it by a slimy bastard who knew which buttons to press. The victim is dead now but Ray still hasn’t been invited back into the fold. He feels like an outcast. The police have been his life since he was twenty-one. He doesn’t know how to be anything or anybody else. He hasn’t the money to retire—his ex-wives see to that. His various families want little to do with him. He has a teenage son in Bristol whom he last met when the kid was still in nappies, and his last wife has gone back to Singapore with the daughter he gave her. That one hurt. He always did his best by the kid—right up until the point her mum closed her knees for good and sent him on his way. He misses that one. Liked looking after her. Liked the way she squeezed his face and did silly drawings and laughed when he swore. She’ll be nearly ten now. Probably doesn’t remember him. Probably doesn’t know why she looks a bit less bloody foreign than her bitch of a mum.

  “Can I take that, sir?”

  Ray turns to the handsome young lad who is hovering by his stool.

  “Your plate, sir? Can I take it?”

  “No, lad, leave it a bit. There’s something almost artistic about the way the bean juice is congealing. I want to look at it a bit more.”

  “Oh,” says the barman acceptingly. “No problem . . .�
��

  “Take the fucking plate,” says Ray, pushing it away. “Christ.”

  The youngster looks confused but has enough experience of dealing with the breakfast drinkers to know that he shouldn’t make a scene. He takes the plate and retreats. Ray sits back in his chair and returns to scowling at the scene beyond the glass. He can see St. Mary’s Church across the way. Its chimes used to waken him when he first moved to the city center. Now he finds them soothing, like an infant’s mobile, playing gentle lullabies over the grind and fizz of the city’s soundscape.

  “Getting poetic, Col,” he says to himself with a twist of his lip. “Be taking it up the arse next.”

  He coughs. Sprays spit and undigested food onto his shirtfront and the tabletop. Wipes it with the palm of his hand.

  Behind him he hears the doors bang again. Turns around to see that the suits have fucked off. Probably on their way to a trial across the road. Probably going to make a fortune for pushing bits of shit around the judge’s chambers like dung beetles in expensive shoes. He has no time for lawyers. Doesn’t like the way they talk. Doesn’t understand what would compel somebody to do such a job. Feels the same way about parking attendants, traffic wardens, and prison guards. He has a lot of hate inside him. Reserves most of it for coppers who don’t know how to play the game. Despite his own poor disciplinary record, he considers himself to be a passable detective. He’s not bent. Not on the take. He’ll accept a few free pints or a bottle of whiskey as a thank-you or a sweetener, but he would never make the kinds of deals that some of his colleagues have done over the years. It was the head of the Drugs Squad who let the Headhunters take root in the city—exchanging a blind eye for good headlines and ready information. Ray can’t abide that approach. He thinks of a villain as a villain. Hopes he has passed some kind of moral backbone on to the few protégés he has helped out over his long career.