Original Skin

by David Mark

  “In him? Not very much. In who he’s friends with? Yes, quite a lot.”

  McAvoy decides to stop dancing around the subject.

  “Why are you here, Mr. Cocker? What’s your job?”

  Cocker gives a nod, as if making a decision. Shrugs. “Your new boss. Peter Tressider. Chairman of the Police Authority.”

  McAvoy says nothing. Waits for more.

  “You must have heard the rumors that the party is interested in him. He could be set for great things.”

  “He may run at the next election, you mean.”

  Cocker nods. “And if that goes well . . .”

  “People have plans?”

  “Indeed.”

  They sit in silence, both eyeing each other up. McAvoy speaks first.

  “And you’re seeing if there are any skeletons in his closet.”

  “In a manner of speaking. I’m a political consultant. I dig. I find out whether we should be worried down the line.”

  In his mind, McAvoy quickly runs through the many political scandals he has flicked through in the tabloids these past few years. He pulls a face. “There always seems plenty to be embarrassed about in politics.”

  Cocker gives a grin. “I can’t be everywhere.”

  “And what is it about Councillor Tressider that worries you?”

  “Councillor Hepburn.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  Cocker reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a crumpled roll of paper, covered in photocopied newspaper articles and scribbled notes.

  “Let me read you something,” says Cocker, clearing his throat. “If you don’t mind, that is . . .”

  “If it’s important,” says McAvoy.

  “Important? Possibly. Interesting, certainly.”

  McAvoy waits. Wonders when the other man will make his point.

  Cocker reads the words on the page. “‘He’s the politician who has made a fortune from the pink pound—and who swings to the left, the right, and straight down the middle . . .’”

  McAvoy closes his eyes. “Classy. Where’s it from?”

  Cocker stops. “Political website. One of many. They’d tone it down for a broadsheet feature but the few times he’s been in the national headlines, the tone hasn’t been far away from this tripe.”

  McAvoy nods at the papers. “Carry on.”

  “‘Stephen/Steve Hepburn, forty-seven, is the flamboyant, colorful, and rabble-rousing independent councillor and gay-bar owner who is shaking things up in the guildhall in Hull. He’s also the man who saw a hole and decided to fill it—and who has yet to hit a bum note on his rise to power. A local boy who was involved in the music scene during the Manchester explosion of the early nineties, he managed bars in London for a time before coming home to Hull a decade back. Hepburn purchased a run-down gay bar not far from the city center and planned to make it the biggest, boldest, and campest club in Britain. Apparently the idea for Slammers came to him in the night. Hepburn faced fierce objection from locals and various civic dignitaries, but despite recommendations that they block the proposals, Hull Council’s planning committee allowed Hepburn to proceed with the application. Yes, they bent over and took it. Rumors have since abounded that the authority feared accusations of homophobia, and that Hepburn played on those fears during the consultation process. The high-profile case turned out to be the making of Hepburn, who gave several interviews on radio and TV in which he came across as charming, bold, determined—and very funny. He had the presenter in tears of laughter as he plowed into the objectors and the different members of the committee: mimicking their mannerisms and questioning their motives in a speech that was full of double entendres. The opening night of his new club saw several big names from the music scene put in an appearance, and high-profile gay rights activists applauded his victory—bringing him to national attention. Slammers has gone on to become a hugely popular venue, attracting clubbers from across the country and reveling in a reputation for controlled hedonism where people can gleefully dance on the bones of Hull Council’s cock-up . . .’”

  McAvoy stops him, holding up a hand. “This is vile.”

  Cocker spreads his hands. Takes a drink. “This is politics.”

  “It’s not. It’s—”

  “‘During the dispute, Hepburn clearly tasted something he liked,’” continues Cocker. “‘He swallowed the plaudits, and so much more. When the next local elections came around, Hepburn put himself forward as a man with something big to offer. Due largely to a low turnout and the fact that the sitting Labour councillor didn’t bother to try to drum up any support, Hepburn was elected to the council. When the ruling Liberal Democrats of the time needed an extra vote to get through a key part of their manifesto, they persuaded Hepburn to join them in a loose coalition that gave him a position on the authority’s cabinet. He has since been sticking it to the cabinet on every occasion, making political allies along the way, impressed with his silver tongue . . .’”

  “Stop.”

  “Horrible, isn’t it? But people read it.”

  McAvoy screws up his face. Tries to remember who he is and what he’s doing.

  “And what has this to do with Peter Tressider?” he asks.

  “I’m getting to that. Look, known about Hepburn for ages,” he says. “His name has come up once or twice. He’s a playful man. Every bit as flamboyant as he pretends. That’s not what worries us. It’s the shadier side. The money. There are questions over where it came from. It wasn’t cheap, building that club.”

  “Shady?”

  “Loan from a criminal associate, perhaps,” says Cocker, speculatively. “Or perhaps somebody with dough to spare who might not like being linked to that sort of place.”

  Realization dawns. “You’ve been through Tressider’s financial records, haven’t you?”

  Cocker does not look away. “That’s basic. That’s the first job on the list.”

  “Hepburn’s name came up?”

  “In a roundabout way.”

  McAvoy makes no attempt to hide his contempt. “Has anybody done anything wrong?”

  Cocker puts his hands flat on the table. Looks away. “That’s not the point.”

  McAvoy waits for more. “Tressider’s a businessman. What are you getting at? What does this matter?”

  Cocker loses patience. “Look, in this business, rumor can kill you. A whiff of impropriety, you’re out on your ear. It doesn’t matter how good you are, or even if you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s what people think. And the party has got wind of whispers about a business relationship between our new paragon of virtue and a gay troublemaker, and it’s up to me to see if that is something we can swallow.”

  “You don’t care about the truth?”

  “I care about the appearance of truth.”

  McAvoy has to remind himself to breathe. He wants to see if he could fit the man into the empty lager bottle. Wants to pummel this walking embodiment of all he despises about the world.

  “And this is a job? A real way to make a living?”

  “A good living,” says Cocker unashamedly. “And I’m worth every penny.”

  McAvoy scowls as he puts together the chain of events that have brought him here.

  “You slipping cash to some of the officers at Hull City Council? Asking to be told about anything involving Hepburn?”

  Cocker grins. “That would be frowned upon, I imagine.”

  “Mr. Cocker?”

  “I have sources.”

  McAvoy nods.

  They sit in silence for a minute. Cocker looks at his watch and then in the direction of the pub kitchen. From the state of him, he could have been waiting for this meal since the mid-seventies.

  “There will be eyes on this place soon,” he says, gesturing out the wi
ndow at the dismal, half-empty marina. “The national media will be taking an interest in Tressider if he gets the nod. Right sort of man. Successful. Straightforward. Beautiful wife. Right background. Could go far.”

  “If you let him.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence falls. The sound of glasses being stacked and plates laid on sticky, varnished tables occasionally rises above the relentless patter of the rain on the glass.

  McAvoy runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth and wonders if he has missed something. Whether the past half hour has been worth his time.

  “We’re not investigating Councillor Hepburn,” says McAvoy eventually. “I don’t think you should be, either.”

  “What were you ringing about this morning?” asks Cocker, appearing not to register the firmness of McAvoy’s gaze.

  “It’s nothing. We’re trying to find out why a certain telephone number was in a certain telephone . . .”

  Cocker sits forward, like a jockey planning on giving a horse a few extra kicks toward the finishing post. He can clearly smell a story.

  “Hepburn’s phone, you mean?” he asks, all smiles.

  “I can’t tell you that,” replies McAvoy, willing himself not to blush.

  “The number you gave my contact,” Cocker muses to himself. “That was Hepburn’s phone. Only had it a month, then reported it lost. Got a new one from his own pocket.”

  McAvoy looks away before his face betrays him. “And?”

  “And what?” says Cocker. He is not in the least bit deferential in his manner. He is talking to McAvoy as if they were mates. McAvoy bridles a little.

  “I think we’re done,” says McAvoy, and begins to stand.

  “Are we going to mention it?” asks Cocker. “The thing we both know?”

  McAvoy sits back down. He had not wanted this conversation to reach this stage. Yes, he knows about Hepburn’s record. Flicked through it as he sat in the car outside the pub. He knows that, as a twenty-something, Hepburn was arrested for the alleged rape of a teenage boy. Knows, too, that the evidence was circumstantial and that the case collapsed well before trial.

  “He hasn’t been convicted of a thing,” says McAvoy. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. You’re out to get him just because you don’t like what he stands for.”

  “What does he stand for?” asks Cocker, incredulous.

  McAvoy colors. “Alternative lifestyles” is the best he can do, and he is embarrassed by the pomposity of his tone.

  Cocker does not disguise his laugh. He shuffles his papers and looks as if he were about to read some more. “You want to hear how the papers reported the case?”

  This time McAvoy does stand. “If you try and pay off any more council officers I’ll arrest you,” says McAvoy, walking away.

  “I’ll be in touch,” shouts Cocker at his departing back. McAvoy pulls open the double doors to the pub and all but throws himself out into the gusting wind and rain. It takes all of his willpower to say the word “tosser” only in his head.

  GOING FOR the three-course lunch today. Bag of peanuts, packet of crisps, and a pickled egg. All swilling, like croutons, in the red wine Colin Ray has been pouring down his neck for twenty minutes.

  It’s 1:24 p.m.

  He and Detective Superintendent Adrian Russell are sitting by the hearth in the George, representing two-fifths of today’s clientele. Warming themselves on the open fire. Ray’s got his back to it. There’s steam rising from his damp clothes, as though from compost.

  It’s an unashamedly old-fashioned pub, this. Dark. The smell of cigarette smoke still lingers even now. It has atmosphere. Style. It’s a proper boozer, all fingerprints and greasy brass. All leather-studded seats and dust-caked lightbulbs.

  Ray looks around. Breathes it in. Wishes he could smoke. Closes his eyes and plays his game. Tries to bring the scene to life in his memory. To paint the picture in his mind and then compare it to the reality. To see how much he can remember.

  Hardwood floor, darkened and scuffed.

  Mahogany walls, almost black.

  Thick, frosted windows.

  Old newspaper articles on the wall. Dartboard, more holes than cork. Drawing of something obscene on the blackboard by its side. Warm. Friendly. Comforting. Like crawling inside a hamster’s cheek and lighting a fire . . .

  Ray opens his eyes. He has every detail memorized. Could draw this place, if asked.

  It sits at the bottom of the Old Town, on a deathly quiet cobbled street that carries the most unlikely of names. Land of Green Ginger, the street signs declare. A narrow road which was named either for the profitable trade in exotic spices that brought money to the area centuries back, or in honor of a Dutch joiner who had a yard here once upon a time. Nobody is really sure, but the street name is an interesting enough discussion to knock back and forth over a few drinks.

  “Should have come to us in the first place,” says Russell. “Drugs bust. The foreshore. You could have had the collar, but when it comes to a bust, that’s our territory. That’s what we do.”

  Colin Ray is uncharacteristically diplomatic in his response. He knows that now is not the time to criticize Pharaoh. She’s just had her throat torn open by a pair of Rottweilers, which buys her some goodwill among the troops. Has decided to be sympathetic, at least until Russell lays his cards on the table.

  “Order came down from on high, Aidy. Don’t think she wanted it in the first place. And you’ve had plenty of results this year, if the Hull Daily Mail is anything to go by.”

  Russell gives a begrudging nod. “Yeah, we’ve had some wins.”

  “We’re going to put it all back together,” says Ray. “Shaz and me.”

  Russell takes a swallow of his second pint of bitter. “You’re a lucky boy, having Shaz to play with.”

  “She’s lucky to play with me,” says Ray as he sips his wine. He drinks lager in the evening.

  Russell waits for a juicier tidbit, but when none is forthcoming he picks up his drink again. “Should have come to me in the first place,” he says again. “It should never have come to this.”

  Ray nods his assent. Has the sense to keep his mouth shut. Just picks his back teeth with his tongue and wonders if it would be taking the piss to claim the senior officer’s drinks back on expenses. He lets it play out. Doesn’t push. Keeps his temper.

  “It wasn’t that I wouldn’t have shared,” says Russell slightly petulantly. “Just nobody asked. We’re supposed to be the fucking experts . . .”

  The boundaries that separate the roles and responsibilities of the different units within Humberside CID may as well be written in water. For every specialist section in the service, there is another team that feels better placed to do the job. For every case that goes to a particular unit, there are half a dozen disgruntled officers who believe the crime comes under their own remit. The Drugs Squad is unsure how to feel about the Serious and Organized team. Their duties frequently overlap, but rarely to anybody’s satisfaction. The balls-up during the failed cannabis factory raid at St. Andrew’s Quay has given the officers on the Drugs Squad a reason to feel a little better about themselves. They felt they should have been given responsibility for the raid—rather than being reduced to a peripheral role. And their boss, Adrian Russell, has made no secret of the fact. The only thing he has made a secret of is how much he could have helped, had he so chosen.

  Despite his rank, Russell is neither liked nor trusted by the majority of the CID team. He is one of the few members of the old CID to have survived the internal inquiry into the corruption so endemic under Doug Roper, Pharaoh’s predecessor. Nobody really understands how he scraped through it all—or landed a promotion and a cushy number running a headline-grabbing team. The consensus is that he has friends in low places.

  Ray considers him. Russell is in uniform today. Despite being one of the most senior plainclot
hes officers, he has been called to HQ for a meeting with some local dignitaries and been told to wear his best blues. He and Ray met a decade or so back, when both were unwilling participants on a “community assurance” training course. They were so vocal in their contempt during the two-day seminar that they might as well have stood up and pissed on the course tutor. They had hit it off. Found enough in common to form a halfhearted friendship based on drinking, football, and in-depth discussions about breasts. It was Russell who suggested Ray get on board when the top brass announced the formation of the Serious and Organized Crime Unit. Ray has sometimes wondered whether it was Russell’s recommendation that cost him the top job and instead reduced him to Pharaoh’s understudy.

  “If she’d only asked . . . ,” says Russell again, and looks away. Once upon a time the action would have caused a ripple in his fleshy face. These days he’s leaner and a damn sight more presentable. When Ray first met him, his gut was spilling over his beige suit and there was a sheen of sickly-looking perspiration on a jowly face that sloped upward to a shock of bristly gray hair. He hasn’t been much to look at, but a routine medical had given Russell enough reasons to clean himself up a little, and he had started hitting the gym. He’s still a large specimen, but there is now more muscle under his shirt than fat.

  Ray finds himself drawing crosses on the hardwood floor with the sole of his shoe. He wants to tell his friend to get on with it. To shit or get off the pot. To give him what he’s come for.

  “If it had been you running the show, Col . . .”

  Ray gives an understanding nod. Condones his senior colleague for being deliberately obstructive. For holding back. For not telling Pharaoh what he’s about to spill to one of the good old boys . . .

  “Just a steer, Aidy,” says Ray, turning away at the sound of the front door opening. A man in a suit pokes his head in. Takes a look at the virtually empty bar and then withdraws. The door bangs again. “We all know it should have gone to you. But it came to us, and Pharaoh played it her way. Maybe she didn’t know how much you know. I won’t make that mistake, mate. Straight to the horse’s mouth.”