by David Mark
Here, now, she feels absurdly pleased that she has shown Mark where she is from. She likes that he has listened. She has told him her best stories. Told him a little about being a detective. She is proud of her job and does not mind talking about work. She has asked him a few questions about his own job, but each time the conversation has steered back to her. She has rarely felt as interesting or desirable.
She giggles as Mark closes the door behind them, then puts a hand to her mouth. “I’m not a giggler,” she says primly. “I hate those giggly girls. That just slipped out.”
Mark turns her toward him and gives her a warm, forgiving smile. “It’s nice,” he says. “You can do whatever you want. Be whatever you want. I like whoever you are.”
Helen looks away, embarrassed. Thinks about making coffee, then decides to stop the charade. She pulls him to her, and opens her mouth for his kiss, eyes closed. When she opens them again, Mark’s face is an inch from her own. “Are you sure?”
She grabs him by his short brown hair, and pulls his mouth onto hers, kissing him hungrily, wetly, drunkenly. She is ferocious and rough with him, forcing his mouth onto her neck, her shoulders, grabbing his hands and forcing them onto her breasts. She feels outrageous and wanton, wildly happy. He pauses, grabbing her wrists so as to be able to look at her properly. “You’re beautiful, Helen. Not here. Bedroom?”
She holds his gaze. Takes his hand and leads him to her room. It’s not much different to when she used to stay here as a teenager. The walls used to be patterned with Formula 1 posters. Now the prints are in frames, and there is a little more order to her wardrobe, but it is still an unashamedly teenage room.
Mark doesn’t comment. Just turns her to him and presses himself against her. She tears at the buttons of his shirt, but he smiles and does it himself. Lets the garment fall to the floor. Stands there, muscled and perfect. Tattoos, artful and expensive, upon his shoulders and chest; a mayoral chain of Italian lettering inked into his skin.
She presses her face to it. Traces the outline with her mouth. She doesn’t care what it says. Just wants to consume it. To consume him.
Mark pushes her back onto the bed. Pushes up her dress. Kneels before her and pulls down her knickers. Smiles at her. Tastes her. Doesn’t even wince as she digs her nails into his skin and wraps her strong thighs around his head.
Panting, breathless, he turns her over. Plants soft kisses on the backs of her thighs.
She hears him removing his clothing. Feels tiny, delicate touches on her skin. Feels his warm hands upon her hips.
“Are you a bad girl?”
The words make her wriggle. She turns back to him. He reaches forward, puts his fingers to her lips. Lets her taste herself. She sucks on his fingers. Tastes something else, too. Bitter. Unpleasant. But it is gone in a moment, replaced by fresh pleasures as he uses his other hand upon her.
“I’m such a bad girl.”
She hears him breathe deep. Inhale. Slide inside her. And then she is lost in pleasure. In his movements. In the warmth in her belly and the sloshing pleasures in her skull.
She doesn’t see the camera.
Doesn’t see the tiny lens, busily recording it all.
Doesn’t imagine, as she loses herself in another climax, that she is being watched. Filmed. Immortalized electronically, having cocaine snorted off her arse and rubbed into her gums by a man who works for the very gang she is supposed to be trying to put away . . .
• • •
4:36 a.m. The A180. Five miles from Barton.
She’s doing eighty miles per hour in the outside lane: Soul II Soul on the CD player and a mug of black coffee rattling in the holder; police radio on the passenger seat and a GPS barking lefts and rights.
Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh, putting on makeup in the rearview mirror and steering with her thighs, trying to remember the right word for what has been done to Yvonne Dale. Ex-something. Excoriated? No. Excommunicated. Don’t be fucking daft.
The windscreen of the convertible is misting up, so Pharaoh swipes a hand across the glass. She clears a porthole, jeweled with droplets and streaks. Peers through at the pissy yellow streetlights and the damp gray motorway: at the distant line of pyrite glow and the beginnings of a sepia sunrise through a sky of wire wool.
She snaps her fingers. Exsanguinated. Bled out. Emptied. Cut to the femoral artery and left to empty on the linoleum.
Pharaoh is too drunk to drive, but she’s driving anyway. She does, sometimes. She lives an hour from her office and downs a bottle of wine and a few vodkas every night. Sometimes she’s still over the limit when she leaves the house in the morning, though she gets her kids up, dresses them, feeds them, and makes packed lunches, without any noticeable degree of intoxication. She doesn’t plan on stopping drinking. She doesn’t think she would be able to if she tried. She’s a drinker. Always has been. And she has to drive. She makes no excuse for it. If she gets caught, she’ll take her punishment. She’ll accept the headlines and the loss of her rank. That’s life. You do what you want to do, or what you have to do, and you deal with the consequences. That’s justice. That’s police work. That’s what she is for . . .
The radio crackles. A voice asks her whereabouts.
“I’m ten minutes away. See you in three.”
She’s up two hours earlier than usual, so reckons there is no doubt that she is still technically over the limit. She feels fine though. Better than she should.
Pharaoh was the first senior CID officer to answer the phone. The uniformed constable who attended the house in Barton had immediately called in the duty inspector, and he in turn had alerted CID. The duty detectives had passed it up the line, and ACC Everett was woken at home. He bumped it back down again, and within half an hour of Yvonne Dale’s body being discovered, the three most senior officers in CID were getting calls on their mobiles. Pharaoh answered on the second ring. Said she’d be there within half an hour. Pulled on leggings, boots, a nice blouse, and a light suit jacket. Phoned her mum and asked her to come sit with the kids. Made a strong coffee, took her antidepressants and her antacid tablet, and jumped in the car.
Pharaoh lives in Scartho in Grimsby. She pronounces the word properly, though true locals insist on “Scather.” It’s happily middle class, with a couple of foodie pubs and the kind of swimming pool where people actually get out of the water if they want to go for a piss. A lot of the properties are set back from quiet side streets, all white paint and neat hedges. Pharaoh does not have the funds to even dream of such a home. She earns a good wage on a superintendent salary, but historic debts, costly child care, and her husband’s condition mean she is grateful to scrape together enough each month to pay the mortgage on their three-bedroom semidetached home in the circle of a quiet cul-de-sac. Her name and hers alone is on the mortgage. Her husband lost everything when his business went bankrupt. Lost their big home on the outskirts of town. Lost their fancy four-by-fours and Florida vacations. Paid the price for thinking too big, and then let the stresses and guilt squeeze his brain like a fist. Five years ago, aged just forty-four, he suffered the stroke that has left him crippled down one side and a stranger to his children. Adapting their house to his needs took the few savings Pharaoh had kept back when he was trying to keep his business afloat. Her home life is hard. She feels half widowed. She still has her man; still sleeps next to him in their remote-control, adjustable bed. But he struggles to make himself understood. Can’t hold her. Can’t get his lips to form the right shape for the word “love.” The children know him little more than as a living ghost; some grunting, malevolent spirit of a man they half remember. They struggle to know how to love him, and she does not know how to teach them. She feels the loss of who he was more keenly than her kids. She remembers their life together. Remembers the fire in him. The fight. The way he grunted, animal-like, as he moved inside her. Remembers, too, his temper. His hands on her throat. Hi
s spittle on her face. Remembers loving and wanting and hating him all at once. She never expected to pity him. And yet that is the emotion she now feels most keenly. Sorry for him, to be so reduced. Sorry for herself. Sorry that nobody kisses her properly. Sorry that while the bitches at work put about the rumor that she’s some kind of slag, she hasn’t been fucked yet in her forties.
Pharaoh spots the house as soon as she turns off the motorway and drifts down the steep hill into the town. There are two patrol cars on the road and a third in the driveway. An ambulance is parked across the way and a police constable is wrapping blue-and-white tape around a lamppost. Lights are on in windows all the way down the road. Faces peer out through glass. Some doors are open: householders on doorsteps, wearing dressing gowns and drinking tea. The properties here are worth twice what Philippa Longman paid for her place, but the reaction of neighbors to death in their midst is the same in any postcode.
Pharaoh pulls up against the curb, one alloy hubcab scraping the stone. She flashes her badge at a slim WPC and ducks under the tape. She spots a familiar face over by the garage.
“Guv.”
“Morning, Lee.”
“We got a call from DCI Barclay from Grimsby CID. Seemed to think this was his . . .”
“I’m sure he did. So, what have we got?”
Detective Sergeant Lee Percy is a twenty-year veteran who started as a uniformed constable around the same time as Pharaoh. He made it into plainclothes before she did, but when she finally got the call into CID, her career took off, while his did not. They were sergeants together, and were both up for the same inspector job. It went to Trish. Lee took it okay, but Pharaoh fancies that after a few drinks, he will lance his spleen and spew bitter rants about how he lost out to a token woman who shagged her way into the job. She hopes she is wrong, of course, but has been right too many times to hold out much hope.
Sergeant Percy weighs things up and then shrugs. Decides that all the arguments will be among people well above his pay grade. He started his shift at six p.m. and had been planning an easy night, writing up statements and trying to persuade a reluctant eyewitness to a hit-and-run to make a statement. He hadn’t been prepared for this. Hadn’t been prepared for what he saw in Yvonne Dale’s bathroom. He stands against the brick of the flat-roofed garage, hands in his pockets, pale blue short-sleeved shirt flapping around arms that lack muscle or definition. He’s got the slightest of potbellies and a weak chin, but has caught his share of crooks.
“Bloody horrible, guv.”
“Tell me everything.”
Yvonne Dale’s body was discovered not long after she took her last breath. Her neighbors had been woken by a furious banging on their door and had come downstairs to investigate, expecting to find a drunk or a gang of difficult teens. Instead, they found the glass in their front door had been smeared in what they took to be red paint. They did not take it to be so for long.
“Tried to wash it off, guv. Old couple they are. The sort who don’t leave a job until morning. Filled a bucket of warm water and started soaping it off. It was only when they started doing it they thought it might be something a bit more sinister. Old boy licked some off his finger. Threw up in the azaleas.”
“How did it get there? Does that mean the killer banged on the door? Why? Did he want us to find her?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, guv.”
Pharaoh presses her lips together and scratches her nose. “Better, I would say. And then?”
“They phoned 999. Uniforms started an immediate search of the area. One bright spark found a footprint in the mud of next door’s garden. Found another outlined in the gravel of the drive. Followed the trail over here and banged on the door. Got no answer so tried to get the householder’s details. Phone rang for ages. Then a little kid answered. PC persuaded him to come open the door and the poor little sod did. Uniforms went inside and did a search for Mum. Found her in the bathroom in more blood than I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Pharaoh screws up her eyes. “Two kids, they said on the way over . . .”
“The youngest didn’t wake up until one of the uniforms came and scooped him up. Little bugger went nuts. There was proper screaming. They’re with one of the uniformed sergeants now, down the street at a neighbor’s house. We’re trying to get hold of any other family.”
“Dad?”
“Lives abroad. They’re divorced.”
Pharaoh nods. “How much did they see?”
Percy shrugs, but not unkindly. He just doesn’t know.
Pharaoh says nothing for a moment. She turns, as if to say something to somebody behind her, then remembers he isn’t here. She gives a nod to Percy and pulls out her phone. She is scrolling down to McAvoy’s number when she stops herself. Thinks of the bags under his eyes and the teething red-faced baby he keeps trying not to mention at work. She decides he deserves another couple of hours. Sometimes, when the world seems more ghastly than usual, she likes to think of him asleep. It soothes her. When she pictures him, he is peaceful, bare-chested and flat on his back, baby in one arm and Roisin in the other. She enjoys the vision for a second, then puts her phone away. She gives a wave and tells Percy to lead on. She pulls a pair of blue plastic bags from her jacket and slips them over her boots, then tucks her hands into her pockets to avoid the temptation of touching anything. Then she follows him into the house.
As she steps inside, she hears sirens, growing closer. She hears more tires grinding to a stop by the road. It’s beginning, she thinks. Won’t be long until the press are here, waking up any neighbor still lucky enough to be asleep and asking them precisely how sad they are that a neighbor has been bled out on her bathroom floor.
“Body’s upstairs. You need to see?”
At the foot of the stairs, Pharaoh pauses. She can already imagine the scene. She has seen scores of bodies in her career and accepts it as part of her job. She no longer shudders at the thought of flesh and bone torn open, and the only time she can’t stop her eyes from filling with tears is when the corpse before her is that of a child. But this is a mum. A woman only a couple of years older than herself, who put her kids to bed, sat up for a while, then walked up these stairs for the very last time. She feels herself grow warm across her back and shoulders. Feels her cheeks flush.
Too much wine, she thinks. For God’s sake, don’t cry.
“I’ll have a look downstairs first,” she says, running her tongue around her lips and scrubbing her mouth with the cuff of her jacket. “Get the lay of the land.”
“Okay, guv. I’ll be around.”
Pharaoh enters the living room and the sheer normalcy of it all nearly puts her to her knees. The pictures on the walls break her heart, and it is all she can do not to mentally superimpose tears and open mouths onto the smiling faces that stare down at her.
She breathes out slowly. Rubs her hand over her face and opens her mouth as wide as it will go. There is a satisfying click from her jawbone, then she shakes her head and gives an elaborate stretch. All of these movements represent a transformation: the putting on of another form. She is getting dressed. Becoming whom she needs to be.
From the pocket of her jacket, she feels a vibration.
“Pharaoh,” she says into the phone.
“Detective Superintendent, this is Ken Cooper from the Press Association. We understand there has been a major incident—”
Pharaoh cuts the call. Switches the phone off. Looks at the wall and the pictures of Yvonne Dale with her two happy lads. They’re sitting in a restaurant. London, certainly. All varnished floors and silver buckets; balsamic vinegar and olive oil. The youngest has a huge grin on his face as he tackles a slice of pizza the size of a sailing ship. His brother and their mum are roaring with laughter; heads pressed together at the temples. Pharaoh feels a warmth for the woman. Decides this will be the picture she gives the press. Decides, too, that it will be
the one she keeps in her mind, whatever she sees when she goes upstairs.
She turns, and sees the address book on the arm of the sofa. The mobile phone, plugged in by the wall. Forensics will get to it eventually. Everything in the damn house will be printed and catalogued, photographed and entered into the system. Everything will be done properly, in time. Court cases are won and lost on whether the right serial numbers are entered into the right evidence bags. Murderers have walked free because the police have been unable to prove that key forensic evidence never left their sight on its way from the crime scene to the lab and the storage room. She takes a pair of latex gloves from her inside pocket and rolls them on. Were McAvoy here, she would make a crack about him enjoying watching her do it. Might even insist he picture her wearing nothing but these and a pair of wellies. She does it to get a reaction. She does it to warm him up. She does it because she knows that even for a fraction of a second, the image appears in his head. And she likes that. Likes it more than she should.
Pharaoh picks up the address book. It’s full of scribbles and crossings-out, probably only legible to the author. She puts it back down again and squats by the phone. It’s a similar make to her own, so she navigates its complex settings without too much difficulty. She finds the call log. Hull area code. She screws up her eyes, somehow already knowing what will happen when she hits redial.
The phone rings nearly a dozen times. Then a voice she recognizes answers the call.
“Family liaison. Longman household. This is PC Bob Tracy.”
“Bob?”
“Who’s that?”
“This is Trish Pharaoh.”
“Sorry, guv, didn’t recognize the number. Half-asleep, actually. What’s happening?”
Pharaoh pauses. “Have you had any phone calls this evening from a Yvonne Dale?”
“No, guv. I’ve answered every call. But there have been loads of people ringing. Condolences, you know. Hang on . . .”
In the background, Pharaoh hears the family liaison officer telling somebody not to worry. Tells them just to go back to bed. This is what the FLOs are for. It’s what they’re damn good at. They provide a little comfort and a lot of help. They answer the phones for a couple of days. They keep the press away. They sleep over and make tea and try to help the household forget that one of their number has had their chest caved in while walking home from work.