Taking Pity

by David Mark

  Helen gives her an apologetic smile. “You won’t get into trouble?”

  Suzie shrugs. “Not illegal, is it? Having a chat?”

  “Depends on what we’re chatting about.”

  “Well, I reckon we’re chatting about Piers Fordham. Do you know that name?”

  Helen shakes her head.

  “He’s who I was with getting the coffees yesterday morning. Well, him and Mr. Wilde. But he’s Scottish and smokes a gazillion cigarettes a day and couldn’t do a refined English accent if his life depended on it. So I’m thinking it’s Piers you’re after. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Helen can feel her heart racing. She suddenly has a name. A real identity to tie to the faceless manipulator at the end of the phone who reveled in her discomfort and thought he was putting it right when he sent her to a house that was about to explode.

  “He’s a solicitor, then?” she asks, keeping her voice even.

  “Not as such,” says Suzie, blowing up her empty carton of Ribena and then squeezing it so that the air makes her fringe ripple. “He was a solicitor. Had a private practice in Grimsby. Did a lot of duty solicitor work. You know the stuff. People smashing up kebab shops or hitting their ex in the face with a beer bottle. That was his niche. Came over here once in a while, or at least that’s what it says in his file. I handle personnel records, you see. Or ‘filing,’ as they call it at my place. He seems to have been very good at what he was doing, whatever it was. Had some high-profile clients and cases.”

  “But you say he’s disbarred, yes?”

  “We don’t exactly go on about it around the watercooler, but you can’t help but Google somebody when you do a boring job like I do, can you? And yeah, he was struck off about five years ago. He’d been ripping off the legal aid people. Claiming for cases that had never gone beyond a caution. Making up bogus clients. He was getting druggies to sign forms for him, claiming legal aid for cases that were totally made up. He made half a million, according to the report I read.”

  Helen purses her lips and blows out. She’s chewing her lip. Picking at the skin around her nails. She senses something taking shape.

  “He went to prison?”

  “Eighteen months, he got. Served less than seven.”

  “Which prison?”

  “Hull.”

  Helen makes a fist. “Your firm employs him, though, yeah?”

  “Not on staff, no. He does investigative work. Sorts out things that need a bit of finesse and legwork. He’s got his own firm but he does at least a day a week on jobs for us. A lot of probate. Conveyancing. Things that don’t need a license.”

  “He makes a lot of money?”

  “Not bad,” says Suzie. “More than me. More than you, I should think.”

  Helen scratches at the back of her neck, thinking. A crooked solicitor. A man with the balls to try and scam the big boys. A man who spent time in prison and got to see how hopeless and ill-disciplined the majority of criminals really are.

  “What’s he like?” asks Helen, bouncing her legs on the balls of her feet. “Single? Kids? Gay? Straight?”

  Suzie laughs. “He’s straight, I know that much. Tried it on with me a few times. I’m not keen, to be honest. He was married until he went to prison, I think. Don’t know about kids. He’s a bit too big for his boots, you could say. Always likes to let it be known he’s got the goods on you. He was the only one who gave me a sly wink when I came back to work after the court case. Everybody else had the good grace to pretend they didn’t know what I had been getting up to. He made it clear he knew, and that if I wanted, he could help me.”

  “Help you with what?”

  Suzie shrugs. “Make it go away. Get a new job. A fresh start. Maybe have the bitch who killed Simon bumped off. I don’t know. But he’s that sort. Got a lot of, I dunno . . . swagger?”

  Helen flops back against the bench. She doesn’t know why she is so surprised. Every criminal case of note has been made on a stroke of luck. Serial killers have been stopped by routine vehicle checks; rapists sent to prison because one of their victims recognized their shoes or an Identikit struck a chord with a copper. One phone call, made at the wrong time, made to gloat over the fate of Colin Ray, and suddenly Piers Fordham is in the frame for so many crimes, Helen doesn’t know where to start listing them.

  “How do you contact him?” asks Helen. “He’s not an office person, I gather?”

  “No, we tend to see him only a couple of times a month. He sends his case papers and invoices in from home. He’s rarely in the office. Was only in yesterday to have some papers signed. It was a surprise when he asked to borrow the meeting room.”

  Helen rubs her shin with the toe of her shoe and thinks hard. She can picture it clearly. Can see Piers Fordham slipping into a side room so he could phone Colin Ray and goad him. He was out of the way. He was invisible. None of the CCTV cameras could pick him up, and the unregistered mobile phone would doubtless be going in the bin once he got outside. He’d made a call, and it was going to come back to haunt him.

  “What is it you think he’s done?” asks Suzie, brushing her hands clean on her trousers. “Has he been ripping us off? I mean, I have a bit of responsibility for the accounts so I hope there’s nothing going to cause me problems.”

  Helen shakes her head. “It’s just routine,” she says without thinking about it.

  “No it’s not,” says Suzie, beaming. “He’s a bad one, isn’t he? What’s he done? What does Aector think? And the other one. Nice, but a bit scary.”

  “Detective Superintendent Pharaoh,” says Helen automatically. “She’ll be pleased, I think. I can’t really tell you much. I just wanted to get to know a bit about him.”

  “Well, I can give you his home address,” she says. “And he’s got a work mobile on him, in case we need him. You can track him down from that, can’t you?”

  Helen turns away as the bluebird flutters down to the grass at Suzie’s feet. Suzie puts a crumb of bread between her bare toes and lets the bird peck at it. She looks up at Helen, absurdly pleased.

  “He’s lovely, isn’t he? He’s going to be migrating soon. I’ll miss him.”

  “Piers?”

  “No, the bird. Although, Piers is always going on about the weather in Britain and hating it. He was playing about on his computer yesterday morning, looking at apartments somewhere hot.”

  “A laptop?”

  “No, one of the PCs in the back office. He had to see Mr. Wilde and the boss was late in, so he was killing some time having a coffee and fiddling on his computer. Nice place he’s got his eye on . . .”

  Helen feels like hugging the small, squishy, and delightfully odd girl. “I don’t suppose your computers store things like what websites he may have visited, do they? Or do they wipe at the end of each day?”

  Suzie laughs. “No chance of them being wiped unless you do it yourself. I used to look at a few sites I shouldn’t and it was a nightmare remembering to delete my browsing history. Why?”

  Helen bites down on the tremble that is affecting her lower lip. In her coat pocket she can feel her mobile vibrating. Colin Ray, eager for an update. She’s going to make him pretty damn happy. She can already picture them, walking back into the station and giving Pharaoh the bloody lot. Can imagine the warm handshakes and the hugs and the drams of celebratory whiskey. Can see McAvoy’s look of eternal thanks. Hopes that the image will rub out the one she carries with her—frightened eyes and falling masonry.

  She turns to her new friend, wincing for effect as if to remind the girl of the injuries she suffered saving Roisin from death.

  “Suzie,” she says. “I think I might need another favor.”

  • • •

  MCAVOY IS LOOKING at a satellite image of the Winestead area. It’s a surreal sensation. He feels he should be able to see the roof of his own car. Should be ab
le to put his hand out the window, wave at the sky, and see himself, tiny and pixelated, on the laptop screen in front of him.

  The screen is almost entirely green. It’s an area of woodland and fields, broken up by ancient hedgerows and boundary walls. St. Germain’s Church is a square of brown and gray in an oval of trees and grass. It is surrounded by darker grassland that comes to an end at the tree line. On three sides, the grassland borders arable land, though in this satellite image none of it seems to have been given over to crops. The trees begin to the right of the church and stretch in an impenetrable mass for hundreds of meters. There is only one significant gap in the canopy of trees and branches. It’s the spot where the estate used to sit. The dirt track that leads to it is a tiny knife slash in the greenery.

  McAvoy expands the image as much as he can and takes in the red roof of the remaining property. It’s changed a lot since the Winn family called it home. The outbuildings have been pulled down. Audrey’s old cottage is a pile of rubble and earth. Like the mansion owned by the Hildyard family centuries before, the structure has been demolished to try and bury the blood it has seen. Only the manor house remains, and that has been modernized almost beyond recognition.

  McAvoy tries to make sense of it. He puts his finger on the screen, touching the house. Fiddles with the cursor and the image jumps to include more of the local landscape. He places another finger on the church. According to the timeline, the Winn family left their home in the early evening for an after-dinner stroll. This was not unusual. At some point on that stroll they encountered Peter Coles. For reasons unknown, he shot all four family members with a double-barreled shotgun. He then exposed the breasts of Anastasia Winn and sat looking at her and muttering to himself until John Glass turned up.

  Something about the picture feels unsettling. McAvoy tries to imagine the route they would have taken. Through the trees. Over the boundary wall. Across the grass and through the old moat, into the churchyard. If Peter Coles was playing with his gun on the grounds of the church, surely the Winn family would have heard and altered their route?

  McAvoy flicks through the printouts and curses the lack of information. Every question he comes up with lacks a suitable answer. He wants to know what the family ate for dinner. Were they struggling to digest a large meal? Had they perhaps taken a drink and set out for a walk in the snow in high spirits? A postmortem examination would give him such answers, but the report has yet to be located.

  McAvoy removes his fingers from the screen and splays his hand. Expands the image of the churchyard and looks down at the drawing in his notepad. Places a finger on the location of each corpse. Clarence Winn, nearest to the church. His daughter a few feet away. Then farther back, toward the moat, his wife and youngest son.

  John Glass’s original statement is one of the few pieces of evidence McAvoy feels he can trust. He reads it through again and digests its contents. Cross-references with the document stapled to the back of the crime scene photos, outlining the injuries suffered by each family member.

  The wounds Clarence Winn suffered were to the torso. His daughter’s to the face. His wife was shot in the chest. His son had wounds to the abdomen and head.

  McAvoy looks out the window. Looks up at the church. It has a sinister air in this fading light. The soft rain and pewter sky seem to reinforce its air of timelessness and isolation. Were it not for the occasional sound of passing cars on the road to his rear, McAvoy could have stumbled into a different time and not realized it. He would not be surprised to see a Spitfire fly overhead or to hear a horse and cart clip-clop to a halt behind him.

  “Abdomen and head, abdomen and head . . .”

  McAvoy mutters to himself as he examines the documents afresh. Could one shot cause such damage? Or would it take an extra cartridge? Two shots to the boy, one for each of the others . . . five cartridges?

  How did nobody get away? If Clarence was killed first and his daughter immediately afterward, his wife and son would have had time to turn. Would they not have covered more ground? Or were they walking in two groups? Perhaps father and daughter were walking ahead and mother and son behind?

  McAvoy slaps the steering wheel and lets out a grunt. He realizes that his answer to every question he poses is “I don’t know.”

  He steps from the vehicle and checks his watch. It’s not quite four p.m. Fin will be at his after-school club for a little longer. He has time. Time to get himself damp and mucky, should he so desire.

  McAvoy’s boots sink into the mud as he closes the car door. He notices a fresh set of tire tracks scored into the damp ground. Recognizes his own from the last visit he made here and wonders whether the tread is that of the vicar. He knows that she still preaches here once in a while. Wonders if perhaps somebody has visited a grave. Makes a note to look for fresh flowers or a scrubbed headstone.

  The gate creaks as he pushes it open; loud and eerie in the absolute stillness of the churchyard. He crunches over gravel and then onto the soaking, spongy grass. Walks straight to the place where Clarence Winn fell. Turns his head and tries to work out where Peter Coles would have been standing. The church itself sits at the top of a slight slope. Clarence would have approached from out of the trees. He would have been lower than Peter Coles. The shot took him in the stomach, so Coles would have had to be aiming down. And yet, his next shot took Anastasia in the face. Did he come stalking down the slope, raising his gun like a hunter? Or did Anastasia die first? Was she the first to reach the church? If Peter Coles killed her and bent to strip her corpse, he might have been disturbed by the unexpected approach of her father. He could have turned and fired. It would make sense. He would then be at a lower angle and more likely to aim for the torso than the head.

  McAvoy raises an imaginary gun and goes through the various permutations in his head. He has fired a shotgun himself. Knows how it kicks. His dad has always owned a shotgun. Taught McAvoy how to hold it. How to tuck it into the shoulder and absorb the power. How to shoot while breathing out and to squeeze the trigger, not pull. McAvoy had been eight years old when he mastered it. Doubts he would be able to hit a barn door from ten feet if asked to do so now.

  McAvoy tramps down the slope and pushes branches aside to wrestle his way into the copse of trees. He shivers as raindrops splash down the collar of his shirt. Feels himself sinking into a mulch of mud and foliage and quickens his pace as he steps into the dip at the far end of the churchyard. This was the moat that surrounded the Hildyard mansion. This is where the lord of the manor lost his son. McAvoy takes larger steps and comes up the other side of the moat. A low wall bars his way into the neighboring field. He climbs over it and feels his trousers growing cold and damp as he comes into contact with the old stone.

  He crosses the neighboring field. Rotten turnips sit in rutted grooves, the grass half folded into a bed of mud and stone. He is across the field in no time. Makes for the woods. Feels his hands slip on the greasy wood as he climbs over the moldering, flaking fence, and climbs down into the deep embrace of the forest.

  McAvoy finds it hard to imagine that this would be a popular place for an after-dinner stroll. Even if the woods were better tended half a century ago, the ground in March would have been muddy and slimy underfoot. Were the Winns dressed for the conditions? He wishes the evidence log contained anything to help him, but all he has is John Glass’s vague description of what Anastasia was wearing, and that did not include any mention of what she had on her feet.

  He pushes farther into the woods. There are no paths, or any suggestion of which way to go. It is simply a thick, wet forest at the beginning of autumn. Dead leaves hang and fall from saturated branches. Rotten timber is mashed under his feet as he fights his way through a spiderweb of spindly, clinging tree limbs. He feels his clothes snag and his feet sink and wonders what on earth he is doing. For an instant he feels like a storybook prince, hacking his way through a wall of thorns to rescue a sleeping maiden. Then
he winces as a branch digs into one of the wounds on his back, and the pleasant sensation of doing something noble disappears to be replaced by frustration and pain.

  He pushes on, hoping the woods will thin out. He tries to remember the names of the trees but cannot quite get his thoughts together. He sniffs, loudly and unpleasantly, swallowing scents of dead vegetation and turned earth. He looks back the way he has come.

  Breathless, sore, soaked to the skin, McAvoy pushes a thick branch aside and stumbles into a small clearing. He bends forward, hands on hips, and sucks in a breath of air. He has only walked through a hundred yards of woodland but he feels as though he has had to push his way through the crowd at a rock concert. His limbs ache and he can feel scratches and bruises upon his skin. He hopes to God there is another way back to his car. Isn’t sure he can face battling back the way he has come.

  McAvoy leans against the trunk of the nearest tree. It’s reassuringly solid and cold. He wipes his forehead and looks around him. He needs to know what this woodland was like in 1966. Surely the Winn family would find a better route for an evening stroll than through this maze of thorns and branches.

  He looks up, through the tops of the trees, and sees a vast black cloud slide elegantly overhead. It seems to be bringing the night with it. It’s getting dark. Rain still tumbles from a sky that seems to be sinking toward the earth.

  McAvoy squints as something catches his eye.

  Across the clearing, behind a low, tumbledown wall, sits something solid and man-made. He squints through the gathering gloom. The shape seems familiar. He moves closer. Realizes it’s an old horse trailer, abandoned long before. He walks toward it. Sniffs again and feels a pain in his chest. Christ, he feels cold and lonely . . .

  There is a camouflage net draped across the horse box. Its sides have been painted a mottled green and brown. There are deep grooves in the forest floor where its thick black wheels scored their progress into the damp earth.