by David Mark
Fin looks out at the darkness. Back, at his father’s shining, energized eyes and sweat-soaked forehead.
“Will there be anybody else there?” he asks, nervous and excited.
“None that can do us any harm,” says McAvoy, shoving the car into second gear.
They drive without talking for a few minutes. Squint through the dirty windows and the darkness and rain. McAvoy almost loses control as he spots the gap in the hedgerows. Feels the tires slip and slide in thick mud as he yanks the vehicle left and pulls up in the shadow of the low, brooding building. Switches off the headlights and looks at the outline of black on black.
“You going to be brave?”
Fin nods and they step from the car into thick mud.
“A graveyard?” asks Fin, wide-eyed.
“We’re going into the woods,” says McAvoy. “Do you trust me? Will you be brave?”
Fin looks up at his dad and reaches out to take his hand. “What are we going to find?” he asks.
“Answers,” says McAvoy, striding toward the tree line. “And an unopened tomb.”
“I don’t understand. Can you slow down . . . ?”
McAvoy reaches down and picks up Fin, walking faster. He turns his eyes on his son. “Have you done the war yet? Second World War? We won, yeah? Well, this man called Winston Churchill. He was our leader. A good man, for a Conservative. He wanted to make sure that if we did lose, there would be people who could make life difficult for the Germans. So they dug these bunkers . . .”
His voice is lost in the darkness as the trees swallow father and son.
• • •
MAHON STANDS SILENTLY in the hallway and considers the man he has come here to take. There is little about him that he considers worthy of affection. He only knows a little about the man’s character, but from his appearance Mahon struggles to see the benefits in letting him exist in perpetuity. He’s a bald pit bull; a sculpture of sinew and chiseled fat, topped by a shaved skull and eyes like an angry rat. He will have enjoyed what he did to Tom Spink yesterday. Enjoyed it more than the other vices he seems unable to go without.
Mahon dabs the spittle and rainwater from his face. Blinks a pink tear that drips onto his tongue. Tastes ointment and blood.
Mahon leans against the doorframe and watches the two men writhing in the bed. He can hear the slap of skin on skin, like wet fish being struck against each other.
The younger man, slim, pale, with muscles like a child, is on his back, mewing: a grizzled high-pitched whine that rattles with spit.
The other man’s back is streaked with perspiration. The tattoo across his shoulders seems to move in the half-light; the illegible Latin letters morphing into new shapes and patterns. Mahon squints, trying to make them out. Gives up. Looks instead at the discarded clothes on the floor. Sees a wallet poking out of crumpled jeans, thick with folded notes. Sees black boots that still show splashes of the mud and blood of a lay-by in East Yorkshire. Sees the ID badge spilling from a shirt pocket. The slick company logo and an office address near St. Paul’s in London. Mahon is in the right place. Is about to hurt the right man.
The bedroom is lit by a gaudy, brass-bottomed lamp that stands on the table by the bed. It is rocking as the headboard slams back and forth, and the room’s sparse furnishings swing in and out of focus. It’s an expensive room, like a tart’s boudoir. Red walls, gilt-edged frames to Moulin Rouge prints, black-and-gold fleece throws. A row of bulbs surrounds the giant mirror on the wall behind the bed, but they are not turned on.
Mahon breathes in. Tastes the air.
Despite his appearance, his size, Mahon can make himself all but invisible. Beige trousers, today. Army boots. Black jumper, leather jacket, scarf, sunglasses, and cord cap. Had himself a pleasant evening with a copy of the Racing Post and a bottle of brown ale. Took a pew in the corner of the sophisticated wine bar and watched the man the Headhunters want to die. Watched him play with his phone and drink his wine and pick at his olives and crisps. Saw him sneer and snarl and pick at his teeth as he talked animatedly with his boss. Then Mahon followed him down to the waterfront. Saw him exchange words and notes with a pretty young lad in a tracksuit. Watched them walk together to the posh hotel.
Mahon followed them here, to the big property near the university: shiny silver cars in the driveway, wooden blinds and red chandeliers, mahogany floors and designer wallpaper. Soundlessly followed them in. Watched them kissing and undressing on the stairs, exploring each other, tonguing each other, tenderness giving way to aggression, to want.
Mahon stands now, and watches.
Waits.
Slows his heartbeat and diminishes himself to a pulse, a steady drumbeat. Becomes an automaton. A thing created with a single purpose, incapable of distraction or doubt.
Mahon crosses the room in three strides.
The lad looks up and sees a giant, face grotesque and scarred beneath the mirrored lenses of his dark glasses.
The weight on the young lad’s chest prevents him from crying out.
The other man feels a presence behind him. A darkness. As though there are fingers on his neck. He looks up, stiff-limbed, not breathing, struggling to function through the glut of wine, cigarettes, release. He slides an eye upward.
The thing he sees burns an imprint on his retina. It’s a shadow puppet. A paper doll sliced from black card.
A darkness that doesn’t just block the light, but denies its very existence.
Mahon brings down his fist into the man’s twisted neck. Hears the click. The crunch. Sees the tension leave the man’s body as unconsciousness swallows him whole.
The lad doesn’t have time to register what is happening. His eyes are dry when the needle plunges into his neck.
• • •
AN HOUR LATER, Mahon is sitting on the sofa in his cottage. The greasy prick who tried to turn Lloyd’s head is a tangle of bruised limbs and mottled skin. His eyes are dull and his breath is a slow, weak thing.
Mahon’s new prisoner is lying on the floor, his shirt open at the waist. There is a flat stone at the base of his spine, pushing between two vertebrae, and there are floorboards across his chest. Mahon is tossing a fist-sized rock in one hand and holding a mobile phone in the other.
He experiences a moment of contentment as it rings.
“You were right,” he says to Mr. Mouthpiece on the other end of the line. “Exactly where you said he would be. I do like it when relationships begin honestly. Don’t you, fella? It means that when things turn sour, the lies don’t have to be punished.”
Mahon and his new associate talk for ten minutes. They come to an agreement. The Headhunters will allow Mr. Nock to maintain control of his empire until he takes his last breath. They will stay out of Newcastle. In return, Mahon is going to solve their problems. The employees who have stopped taking orders from anonymous voices are going to have their wings clipped. And Mahon is the blade.
“You ready to talk to me, son?” asks Mahon as the man on the floor begins to come to. “Don’t worry, your boyfriend’s okay. Will wake up with a headache and a sore arse, but only half of that is my fault. Now, turn your head slowly and have a look at the thing to your right. Recognize him?”
The man swivels his eyes and begins to groan.
“I believe you know him as a Headhunter. I’m not sure what that makes you. You’re the mavericks, aren’t you? You and your little crew. You’re going your own way and upsetting people all over the bloody place. Well, this fella on the floor—he came up here to sideline my employer. I’ve set him right on that. And I’ve come to an arrangement with your old firm. I’m going to hurt you, you’re going to talk to me, and then I’m going to tell that generous gobshite from Hull where to find your friends. Now, let’s start, shall we? Why did you hurt the old copper? Tom Spink, I believe his name is. I met him once. Seemed an upright sort of chap. And you’
ve put him in hospital. I’d love to know why.”
The man begins to writhe and grunt, then stops as the agony in his back courses through him.
“Lay still. There’s a good lad. I know you must have a lot of questions. You might not even know who I am. But I know who you are, son. I’ve been doing this shit since before you were born. I pick up the phone, I ask a question, I get an answer. Mr. Mouthpiece is an impressive man. Called an old contact of mine. Benny Pryce. Said he had an offer for me. We got on, if you can believe that. Told me your name. Told me you would be in the city. Told me you couldn’t go more than a day or so without getting your tip wet with some pretty boy. You weren’t hard to find. You’re not a looker, are you? I mean, I can’t talk, but I’ve got an excuse. You’re just an ugly fucker.”
The man bares his teeth. Tries to spit, but it sprays across his own face and chest.
“You’ve fallen so far. You thought you were climbing the ladder when in fact you were sliding down a pole.”
Mahon leans forward and drops the stone softly on the nearest plank.
“You should have stayed a copper.”
EIGHTEEN
FIN LIVES UP TO HIS WORD. His face is pale and his eyes seem to have been pinned open but he doesn’t say a word as his dad hugs him to his chest and forces his way through the grabbing, soaking branches and stumbles into the clearing. They both have twigs in their hair and water seeping through their clothes and shoes. They are both cold. Both unnerved by the stillness of the forest and the stench of rotting leaves and vegetation that rises from the disturbed leaves of the forest floor.
“There,” says McAvoy, pointing with the light from his mobile phone. “Come on, nearly there . . .”
McAvoy’s eyes shine with a zeal that verges on mania. He doesn’t seem able to stop himself. Has lost all sense of who and what he is. It would only take a word of rebuke or a cry of unhappiness from Fin and McAvoy would return to himself. He would run from this dark and eerie place and take his son to the kind of place that five-year-old boys are supposed to be at this time on a school night. But McAvoy spent his childhood walking in the darkness of the moorland that surrounded his home. At Fin’s age he felt comfortable walking through the seaweed and heather from the beach at Slaggan, all the way up to the water-lily lake where he and his mother used to picnic when she was still around. He had learned that the darkness is no more terrifying a thing than the light.
“Will you be okay if I put you down, son? Just lean against the tree and keep the light on me, yes?”
Dutifully, Fin leans against a moss-covered oak and turns the beam on his father. McAvoy has a wildness about him. In the glare of the torch beam and with the woods at his back, he seems a person out of time.
“There, Fin, there.”
Fin had been shining the light on the horse box, trying to make out its edges amid the tangle of trees and leaves. At his father’s voice he points the beam back at the ground and sees McAvoy crouching down, heaving a slab of stone from the forest floor and pushing it into a patch of mulched leaves.
McAvoy lets out a breath and rubs his cold hands. Waves distractedly, asking Fin for the phone. He closes his fingers around it and points the light into the darkness below him.
He turns to Fin. Gives him a look of pure love. “This must be how Santa Claus feels,” he says, staring into the absolute blackness of the hole in the earth.
“Or the Big Bad Wolf,” says Fin, his voice unsteady. “You’re not going in, are you?”
McAvoy considers the hole. Reaches down and feels a piece of decayed timber nailed to the brickwork. Reaches down farther. Feels another. Could he fit? It was built for men who traveled light. Built for people who had been taught to move fast and loose and to kill without thinking.
“Would you be okay? Fin? For a jiffy?”
Fin looks around him. The woods seem to be closing in from every side. He can barely see the sky. His dad wants to leave him alone as he slithers into this hole in the earth. Fin keeps his mouth closed but manages a nod.
McAvoy knows that if he waits, he will talk himself out of it. He takes a deep breath and swings a leg into the darkness. Presses his stomach and face to the carpet of leaves and feels around with his feet for the next step down. His boot catches on it, and he begins to inch his way lower; repeating the process until just his face is poking over the side. He takes hold of the brickwork with one hand and reaches up to Fin for the torch with the other. He points it through his feet and sees a white, shimmering mass. It looks liquid in this light, and McAvoy fears that the chamber has flooded. Then he glimpses the words, flickering on the wood.
The rotten beam beneath his foot gives way.
McAvoy grabs for the stone. Scrapes his knuckles on the bare brick. Hangs there suspended, over nothing.
He looks into Fin’s eyes. Sees the fear in them. Feels a sudden, thudding wave of guilt and shame as he realizes what he is doing . . .
Then drops into the darkness like a stone.
A mountain of bin bags filled with designer labels breaks his fall. He bounces and slides, tumbling like a thing made of straw, before his knees hit solid earth and he comes to a halt with a crash.
“Daddy! Daddy, are you there?”
McAvoy takes a second to get his breath. Looks around for the fallen torch and sees that it has landed faceup, its light pointing straight up the shaft down which he has fallen.
“It’s okay, Fin,” he shouts, short of breath. “It’s okay.”
He’s not sure it is. He’s fifteen feet underground in a damp, chilly chamber with a curved brick roof. He shines the light around him. The walls are bare brick, the floor compacted earth. To his right are the remains of what looks like an old cot bed.
He swings the torch. Throws aside some of the bin bags so he can see the far side of the chamber. There is a patch of greater darkness toward the far wall. He can feel air coming from it. Knows in his bones that this is the entrance to the tunnel system dug seventy-five years ago on the orders of Churchill. Knows that he is not the first man to have stood in its embrace and felt the chill of fear.
“Won’t be a moment, Fin,” he shouts, wondering how the hell he is going to climb out. “Just stay brave, yeah? I think the bear has been here, but he’s long since gone . . .”
McAvoy kicks aside some more bin bags and squats down in front of the circular hole in the wall. From the little he knows about these bunkers, they can go back for hundreds of yards, with areas for weapons storage, bomb manufacturing, and combat training. Their construction was a massive undertaking, and preserving their secrecy an even harder challenge. Few people ever broke the word. Perhaps only a handful of people alive know of the bunker’s existence. But that knowledge may have helped a man commit murder and pin it on a trusting, simple man.
McAvoy turns from the hole. His boots are still greasy with mud and he slips on the damp ground. He puts his hand out to stop himself and staggers against the wall. He hears tearing. Fears he has snagged his clothes on a jagged piece of stone.
He shines the torch up at the wall.
A strip of magazine is hanging from the brickwork. It shows the upper half of a buxom, dark-haired woman soaping herself in a bathtub. McAvoy peers closer. Moves the torch. Up. Down. Sees the pictures and cuttings that have fallen over the years like so many dead leaves.
This was somebody’s special place. A chamber, hidden from the world, in which they could hide their secrets and desires. McAvoy squats down and examines the individual pictures. They are titillating, more than anything else. Soft porn. Postcards of women in negligees. Pages torn from mail-order catalogs, showing matronly types in scaffolded bras and sexless knickers. There are cars, too. Pictures of sleek vehicles throwing up spray around hairpin bends. A picture of Formula One driver Stirling Moss, all sideburns and cigarettes. And drawings. Drawings of rifles. Handguns. A sketch of an underground chamber. A
crude drawing of a girl in a school uniform; her shirt ripped open and breasts exposed . . .
McAvoy sits back. Raises a hand to his face and wipes the dirt and sweat from his face.
The image is signed. Signed PC. Dated, too. Not more than a month before the fantasy became a reality.
He wants to put his fist through the wall. Wants to hurt himself for his own stupidity. For being taken in by the sad eyes and the echoes across five decades of corruption and deceit.
He waves the light at the wall again. Knows that, if nothing else, he has something new to show the Home Office.
McAvoy catches sight of the piece of newspaper as he arcs the light back and forth. It’s damp and tattered and hangs from a nail like a limp flag. But there is something about it that catches his attention and forces him forward in the darkness.
Four men. One tall and dark haired. Another hiding his face with a beefy forearm. A smaller man, turning his face away from the glare of the flashbulb.
Vaughn Winn stands in the rear of the shot. He’s wearing a silk scarf tucked into a Crombie overcoat. His hair is gelled back and he is leering into the camera with eyes of absolute blackness. They bore into McAvoy as he stares. He has to turn away. Blinks a few a times and then returns his concentration to the image, holding it to the light. Somebody has drawn a pencil line around Vaughn’s face. An arrow comes from the circle and leads to an exclamation mark. The words next to it are almost completely invisible, but if he squints, McAvoy can just make them out.
On my way, Colesy. On my way.
McAvoy stands up, holding the piece of paper. From his pocket he takes an evidence bag and slips it inside. He leaves everything else. Will come back and do this properly with a forensic team and men in white coats. He has to find a way out. Find answers. Get back to his son.
He reaches up, tentatively pushing at the low roof, as if expecting it to yield a sudden trapdoor or a rope ladder. Spins around, suddenly overcome with a need to leave this place. To sit quietly with a computer and put his thoughts into order.