Fire of Lies

by David Mark

  Alto cannot prove what happened next but has no doubts about the sequence of events. Alto has traced the calls made from Ellison’s cell phone and knows that he rang an unregistered cell phone forty minutes before a stolen Volvo was dropped off at the kerbside outside his building by a stocky man in a woollen hat and a ski jacket. He has never been traced. A short while later, a man who looked a lot like Ellison was spotted by a neighbour placing a suitcase in the trunk of the car. He then got into the vehicle and drove away. The vehicle was picked up by surveillance cameras on a residential street in Red Hook. The driver covered his face as he left and did not lock the door. Instead, he left the keys in the ignition. It was stolen four hours later. Whoever took it, seems to have abandoned the vehicle a short while afterwards. Alto has a feeling they looked in the trunk. Not long after, it was stolen again. By the time the contents were reported to the police, making a case against Ellison seemed damn near impossible. The District Attorney said there were too many gaps in the timeline. Once the neighbour began to have doubts about who it was they had seen, and with so many opportunities for other parties to have put the case in the trunk, the whole thing became too difficult to proceed with. There were no usable forensics, and Ellison had good lawyers. He stuck to his story. The girl came home with him, they had sex, and she left. The suit his lawyer was wearing cost more than Alto’s car. Ellison smirked his way through his interviews and even had the balls to wink now and again at the officers watching from behind the mirrored glass of the interview room. Alto managed to track down the petty thief who sold Ellison the vehicle but he refused to testify and left the city before Alto could secure a subpoena. The District Attorney’s office was impressed with the work Alto had done to demonstrate the victim’s last movements, but did not have sufficient belief in a conviction to prosecute. Ellison was set free. Alto, who had been present at the victim’s autopsy, had to be physically held back as Ellison stepped onto Pitt Street and climbed inside a sleek black limo. He was in the process of pulling his gun.

  After the outburst, his sergeant bought him the Zen garden. Told him to let it go, to be a bit more Buddhist about the whole affair. Karma was a bitch, and Ellison would eventually get what was coming to him. Alto heeded his sergeant’s words. He just wanted to make sure that karma knew exactly what was required.

  Alto is staring into Ellison’s green eyes when the phone on his desk begins to ring. His eyes flick to the clock: 10.30 p.m. The visitor is bang on time.

  After telling the desk sergeant he will be straight down, Alto crosses to the printer and collects his sheaf of papers. He pauses for a moment and decides that it will be too cold without his coat. He returns to his desk, pulls on the great grey garment that makes him look like a member of the KGB, and walks briskly down the stairs to the reception area. He does not need to be told which of the people waiting in the small reception area is here for him. He performed a Google search on his visitor the moment he was told who was coming. And the man standing reading the noticeboard is unmistakably Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy of Humberside Police in Merrie Old England.

  ‘Sergeant McAvoy,’ says Alto, swiping his card on the security scanner and pushing through the plastic barrier. ‘A pleasure.’

  The big man turns from the noticeboard like a teenager who has been caught looking at a skin magazine. He looks startled. Embarrassed. His big face is red and his tousled hair is damp at the temples. There is grey beneath his eyes, as if an artist started drawing him in charcoal then switched to pastels halfway through. He has a ginger goatee, running to grey and the big brown eyes of a Disney animal. There are scars running from his eyelid to his jawline. They are angry, painful-looking wounds, at odds with the gentleness of the rest of his face. He’s wearing hiking boots and dark trousers that disappear into the hem of a long, dark blue woollen coat. His right hand, when he extends it, is pink and broken and solid as rock.

  ‘Detective Alto?’ asks McAvoy. ‘I’m Sergeant McAvoy. Oh, sorry, you already said . . .’

  Alto fights not to do a double-take as he spots a blush creeping onto the bigger man’s cheeks. On his computer are the reports he requested detailing this man’s part in the successful detection of two different serial killers on his home turf in Yorkshire. One of those men ended up dead. The other is serving multiple life sentences. In both cases, McAvoy had bled in pursuit of his quarry. In both cases he was praised for his insight and bravery. Alto has been looking forward to meeting him.

  ‘Good flight?’ asks Alto.

  ‘No delays,’ says McAvoy. ‘Humberside to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to here.’

  ‘Amsterdam, eh? Any time to enjoy yourself?’

  ‘I was only there two hours,’ says McAvoy, not appearing to understand the reference.

  ‘When did you get in?’ asks Alto, his tone breezy.

  ‘Into JFK a couple of hours ago. Taxi to the hotel, then I walked here.’

  ‘So there’s no point asking you what you think of our fair city?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s lovely,’ says McAvoy, apparently apologising for not being able to give a better researched answer.

  ‘First time in New York?’

  ‘Near enough,’ he says, pushing his hand through his hair and giving a twitchy little smile. ‘Flew through here years ago. Changed for a flight to Texas. Rugby team. I was still a student then.’

  ‘Texas, eh?’ asks Alto, and tries to win McAvoy’s affection. ‘They say everything’s bigger there. Doubt they said that when they saw you.’

  McAvoy’s blush turns scarlet and Alto realises he is dealing with a man whose shyness could well be a fatal affliction. He feels embarrassed by McAvoy’s discomfort and gestures towards the door so the bigger man has time to recover himself. Out on the street the cold hits Alto immediately and he winces in greeting to the uniformed cops leaning against the front wall, drinking coffee and speculating on the parentage of the firefighters with whom they are engaged in a bitter fight for parking lot supremacy.

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t lay on some better weather for you,’ says Alto, as he leads McAvoy down the sidewalk away from the precinct. ‘There’s a little place up here we can grab a quiet corner and something that actually tastes better than the plate it’s served on. I can’t promise you the same in the detectives’ room.’

  McAvoy gives a nod of agreement. He walks comfortably enough on the snow. Doesn’t hunch inside his jacket the way that most people do. His big strides seem to devour the sidewalk. Alto is no small man and is well used to the company of men whose general size and shape would be best equated to kitchen appliances, but next to McAvoy he feels like he is walking beside a suddenly mobile building.

  ‘Cab driver give you his life story?’ asks Alto.

  ‘His name was Jack,’ says McAvoy, looking across the street at an ugly housing project. ‘Been here since he was seven. Runs a limo firm but still drives cabs. Hasn’t been back to Hong Kong since he was nineteen but hopes to get there next year. Likes the Knicks. Has a cousin in London and wanted to know if it’s true that we all carry umbrellas.’

  Alto laughs. ‘Cab drivers like that where you’re from?’

  ‘Depends whom you get,’ says McAvoy, and Alto finds himself oddly pleased by McAvoy’s use of the word ‘whom’. ‘The stand-up comedians would have you believe that every taxi driver is a racist chatterbox with the social graces of a barnyard animal. I wouldn’t like to say. Cabs are expensive. I usually drive.’

  Alto notices that McAvoy has slowed his pace a little and seems mesmerised by the tall buildings across the street.

  ‘Not exactly pretty,’ says Alto, nodding. ‘It gets more hipster the further we go.’

  ‘It looks like Snakes and Ladders,’ says McAvoy. He turns to Alto, his brow furrowing. ‘Do you have that here? The game with the ladders? And the snakes? All the fire escapes. We just need some huge dice.’

  Alto considers the building that McAvoy is looking at. He has never thought of it before but suddenly finds himself seeing i
t the way his new acquaintance does. ‘We say Chutes and Ladders, but I’ll tell that to the boys,’ he says, nodding appreciatively. ‘You must have an artistic soul.’

  ‘My boss would make a joke about being an arsehole,’ says McAvoy.

  ‘Asshole, you mean?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say that. Wouldn’t sound right.’

  ‘She? You got a lady boss?’

  McAvoy nods. ‘She wouldn’t call herself a lady either. Tougher than any of us. Best police officer you’ll ever meet.’

  ‘Can’t be easy when you don’t hate the boss,’ says Alto, stepping around some garbage bags and feeling his feet slide on the hard snow. ‘Hating the boss is what gets a lot of cops through the day.’

  McAvoy considers this, while mumbling a ‘good evening’ to two black youths in baggy sweatpants and puffer coats standing outside the liquor store and watching their curse words turn to clouds on the cold night air.

  ‘Nothing to hate,’ he says. ‘And it helps that she saved my life.’

  ‘I Googled you,’ says Alto tactfully. ‘You’ve seen some action, eh?’

  McAvoy turns his head away. He seems to be at last feeling the cold. He draws himself a little closer into his coat.

  ‘Where is it you’re taking me?’ asks McAvoy, and his voice is a little colder too.

  Alto points at the dark glass of an Irish bar. They are only a couple of blocks from the Seventh but already the buildings seem cleaner and the shops and restaurants more inviting. The cold weather has thinned out the normal night-time crowd but there are still huddles of students, office-workers and intoxicated diners milling around. Alto pushes open the door and his glasses mist up as they approach the long, copper-topped bar of Lucky Jack’s.

  ‘Nice,’ says McAvoy appreciatively, looking at the dozens of whiskey bottles and the gleaming silver bar-taps. It’s dark and atmospheric and the lights dance pleasantly in the shapely bottles stacked up behind the bar.

  ‘You drink, I presume,’ says Alto, saying hello to a large man with a green Mohawk who is drinking Guinness and reading the Tribune.

  ‘A bit,’ says McAvoy. He’s studying the specials written in chalk on the blackboard by the toilets. ‘I’m intrigued by the hot buttered rum. And there’s a mucky hot chocolate sounds good. Would you think the worse of me?’

  Alto wonders if the big man is joking. He works with men and women who drink beer and Bushmills. He gives a smile and turns to the young, handsome barman, who gives himself away as Australian with his opening ‘G’day’.

  ‘Mucky hot chocolate for the big man and a Brooklyn for me,’ he says brightly, and turns around to find McAvoy looking out of the window at the bum wrapped in a sleeping bag in the doorway across the street. Alto barely noticed him. He was just a shape among the piles of hard snow and the uncollected garbage.

  ‘Thanks,’ says McAvoy, taking the hot chocolate. Without another word, he goes to the door and walks out, crossing the street in six strides. Alto watches McAvoy deposit the drink beside the homeless man and gently place a hand on his shoulder. He talks to the man for no more than a minute, then makes his way back to the bar.

  ‘A lemonade for me,’ says McAvoy, slipping out of his coat. His cheeks are burning.

  ‘And a lemonade,’ says Alto to the barman. He smiles. Gives a little shake of his head. ‘You looked like a massive Jesus, healing the sick.’

  ‘A massive Jesus,’ says McAvoy, and gives what seems to be his first proper smile in an age. ‘Don’t say that near my boss.’

  ‘You seem to love that woman.’ Alto laughs.

  ‘And don’t say that near my wife.’

  The two chink glasses and hunch forward in their stools, elbows on the bar.

  ‘Copper to copper,’ says McAvoy, indicating the bar-top.

  ‘You’re fucking weird,’ says Alto, and grins, suddenly enjoying himself. ‘Seems a shame to spoil the mood.’

  McAvoy’s smile fades. He gives a little nod, as if preparing himself. ‘You’ve been told why I’m here,’ he says.

  Alto takes another sip of his Brooklyn and pulls the papers out of his coat pocket. ‘You want to know whether we’ve caught the people who shot the Miracle Man,’ says Alto, in a way that suggests the news is not going to be good.

  McAvoy puts his head on one side. Sucks his cheek as if weighing up whether to lay down playing cards that he has no faith in.

  ‘No,’ he says at last. ‘I want to help you find the other victims.’

  ‘There’re more?’ asks Alto. ‘Just what we need.’

  ‘There’s one more, at least,’ says McAvoy.

  ‘And what makes you think that?’ asks Alto conversationally.

  McAvoy looks at the ice chinking in his glass and breathes out, as if from his toes.

  ‘Because he’s family. And he either pulled the trigger, or you just haven’t found his body yet.’

  Can’t get enough of McAvoy?

  Click here to pre-order CRUEL MERCY now

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  COMING SOON

  1