by David Mark
“I don’t know. Steve would never tell, no matter how much he likes the limelight. And I haven’t told anybody. But we’ve made mistakes. And I’ve hardly been discreet.”
McAvoy raises his hands to stop the councillor’s flow. Takes a breath.
“Councillor, I’m obliged to inform you that I am here to talk to you about the circumstances surrounding the death of a young man named Simon Appleyard. Simon died in November last year. Hanged himself. There are reasons to consider looking again at his death. Your name has come up in connection with the investigation.”
“Oh, God!” The councillor collapses in on himself, his face red, his mouth open. “I knew,” he says, hugging his arms. “I knew.”
McAvoy does not know how to respond, so simply kisses his daughter and waits for Cabourne to meet his eye.
“Do you know Simon Appleyard?”
“I don’t know,” replies Cabourne angrily. “Fuck!”
McAvoy gestures in the direction of his daughter. “Don’t swear.”
Cabourne, rubbing his face, apologizes. He sips more water. Has his face in his glass when McAvoy slides a picture of Simon across the table. It is a photocopy of the image that the dead man’s aunt had given him.
Cabourne shrugs. Looks away.
“Do you know Simon?”
Cabourne forces himself to study the photo. “It was dark.”
“When?”
“Every time!”
They look at each other, each trying to gauge what the other knows.
“You have been meeting men for sex,” whispers McAvoy, conscious of Lilah’s nearness. “Am I right?”
Cabourne sips his coffee. Meets the detective’s eye. “Men, not boys.”
“Simon was twenty-five.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean it’s not illegal.”
“No, it’s not.”
Cabourne breaks first. “I love my wife,” he says, suddenly pitiful. “I think I do, anyway. We’ve been together so long. It was just—”
“One of those things?”
“Exactly. I’ve never cheated with a woman. Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Only when they’ve been there, too.”
“Where?”
“The parties!” he says exasperated. “The clubs. The dates.”
McAvoy puts Lilah back in her seat. Scratches his head. Lets the pieces drift together.
“Sex parties. That is what Ed Cocker is investigating?”
“It must be!”
“Parties that Councillor Hepburn organizes?”
“He doesn’t organize them,” says Cabourne defensively. “Why would he? He can have what he wants. Take what he wants.”
Cabourne sniffs. McAvoy passes him one of Lilah’s wipes, which he takes gratefully and uses to clean his face.
“Councillor Cabourne, my brain is starting to hurt. What is it you’re frightened of?”
Cabourne looks up, blinking.
“Playmatez,” he says, under his breath. “It was just to try it out. I’d always had this fantasy . . .”
McAvoy nods, keeping his eyes impassive. Non-judgmental. “You went on a website, yes? A dating site?”
“I wanted to try it. Everybody was there for the same thing. It was free. I must have been drunk when I signed up. Just put a bit about myself and what I liked. Didn’t even think about it at first. Linked it to my private e-mail.”
“And?”
“And I got loads of responses. Men and women! I didn’t even say I wanted girls, and there they were, turned on just at the thought. I e-mailed a few of the lads back. Said I was a novice. Didn’t know what to do or what I wanted. Said discretion was everything . . .”
“You met?”
Cabourne finishes his coffee and looks away. “Cheap hotel near Goole,” he says. “A married man, out for the same thing as me.”
“And?”
Cabourne shrugs, all pride lost. “I wanted more. Met more.”
“When did this begin?”
“A year ago, maybe. No more.”
“Simon,” says McAvoy, nodding again at the picture. “Did you ever meet Simon?”
Cabourne picks up the picture again. “No,” he says at length. “I’m sorry. No. This is the dead man?”
“Did you ever read this post?”
McAvoy slides a piece of paper across to Cabourne. The councillor’s lips twitch as he reads the words on the page. It is Simon’s posting on the Playmatez website. An invitation to fill him up and a phone number.
“It rings a bell,” he begins, noncommittal.
“Did you respond to that posting?”
“Possibly,” he says, with a shrug that is far from uncaring. “I replied to so many.”
McAvoy looks around him. There are balloons on a table to his left, already laid out for a party later in the day. Beyond the wooden blinds the rain is holding off temporarily. Shoppers and diners walking past the glass are coatless. Some have bare arms. He wants to be in that sunshine now. Not here, where the clouds are gathering and the air smells of rain.
“Councillor Hepburn,” says McAvoy, deliberately vague, “explain how that happened.”
Cabourne closes his eyes. He pulls his phone from his shirt pocket and looks nervously at the screen, as if checking for messages. “We had friends in common,” he says, and appears to be watching footage of the night in the cinema of his memory. He is almost smiling.
“Friends?”
“I let my mouth run away with me. Told a guy my real name. What I did for a living. I don’t know why. Just trying to impress.”
“And he knew Hepburn?”
“Everybody knows him.”
“And?”
“And even though I begged him to forget what I said, it wasn’t long before I got a text from Steve telling me he knew I’d been a bad boy.”
“That must have been a difficult moment.”
“Horrendous. I panicked. Told him I had no idea what he was talking about.”
McAvoy reaches across and takes a sip of Cabourne’s water. He can think of no other way to show the other man that he is not disgusted. That he does not feel repulsed by these admissions and is still a safe listening ear.
“He didn’t believe you?”
“We were only colleagues, not friends,” explains Cabourne. “We’d had a few rows in council meetings. Been in the same bars after meetings. I’m Labour, he’s an independent, but he wasn’t exactly a political enemy. Nor was he a great mate. Just a guy I kind of knew. A guy famous for his lifestyle choices, who now knew everything about me.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t have to do very much,” he mutters with a half smile. “Hepburn didn’t make a big deal of it. After those couple of texts he was just his usual self. Said hello when we passed on the stairs, gave me a grilling at committee. Usual stuff. I didn’t see anybody else for a while. Then one day he just asked me, out of the blue, if I fancied a drink. He was casual about it. Just said it one day as we were coming out of committee. I panicked. But I said yes.”
“And?”
“And we talked. He didn’t try and put pressure on me to admit what I’d been doing, but I just blurted it out. Told him it all. He just listened. Let me be myself.”
Cabourne purses his lips. Distractedly brushes at the front of his shirt. Looks at his phone and puts it down again.
“You had an affair?”
Cabourne shakes his head. “We just became friends.”
McAvoy looks skeptical. “Friends?”
“He made my life more interesting. He knows everyone. Has been living the right kind of life for an age.”
“The right kind of life?”
“Fun,” he says bombastically. “Alive.”
“You
went to parties together? Sex parties?”
“Nothing around here,” says Cabourne, as if trying to prove he has not been a complete fool. “We’d go to London. Manchester. There’s one in Blackpool . . .”
“All men?”
“All sorts.”
They stop talking. McAvoy stares hard at the other man. He is trying to decide how he feels about him. He wonders if Cabourne has done anything wrong. What “wrong” even means.
“You really don’t know Simon?” asks McAvoy at length.
“I could have e-mails from him,” Cabourne says, trying to be helpful. “So much of this stuff happens online. Most times it leads to nothing. Some people leave their mobile numbers on the site but I could never do that. Too risky. I could check . . .”
McAvoy waves him into silence. “Dial this number,” he says, flipping open his notebook and showing Simon’s digits to the councillor. “Dial it and show me your phone.”
Obediently, like a child, Cabourne does as he is bid. The councillor punches the final digit, and waits for it to ring. Before the warning message flashes up to tell him the number is unavailable, the phone does the hard work for him. The number is linked to a contact called “Peacock.”
Cabourne’s mouth drops open. “Him?”
McAvoy looks at the other man with an expression that says he does not appreciate being lied to.
“I swear I just took the number down,” he says desperately. “I’ve contacted so many people on there. I just kept the numbers when they gave them. Look, look . . .”
Cabourne is turning the phone around, scrolling through the contacts. Names flash by.
“Paul T,” he says, pointing. “That’s for ‘throat.’ He said he liked having his neck squeezed. And there, look. Vampire. He said he was into biting. They’re just for me to help remember who is who . . .”
“And Peacock?”
“I think he said he had tattoos.” Cabourne stops, memory dawning. “He e-mailed me,” he says, eyes wide. “There was a line of poetry on the bottom of his message. Something he said he liked. Peacocks and lilies.”
McAvoy drops his head to his hands. He has more questions than answers.
Suddenly he looks up. “He e-mailed you? Not texted?”
“Definitely.”
McAvoy begins rummaging through his papers. He is trying to find a mention anywhere in the various reports that suggests Simon owned a computer.
“I’m an idiot . . . ,” mumbles McAvoy.
“I’m sorry?”
“Were the e-mails from a smartphone?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t, I don’t think so . . .”
McAvoy stops. He realizes the man in front of him is guilty of betrayal. Of confusion. Of weakness and lust. But he does not see a criminal.
“Keep your head down, Councillor Cabourne,” he says, sliding himself out of the booth and picking up Lilah’s car seat. “Ed Cocker isn’t after you. He’s after somebody much bigger.”
Cabourne looks up at him, unsure whether to give in to the magical sense of relief that threatens to flood him.
“I’ll check my old e-mail account,” he begins. “I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
McAvoy nods. “Yes. You will.”
11:47 A.M.
A BLUE twelve-year-old Vauxhall Frontera, steamed up and idling on the double yellow lines that edge this quiet side street off old Hessle Road.
Four cops inside—damply smoldering, jittery with unused adrenaline.
There’s a brightly lit takeaway to their left. It’s all glass and white paint, cartoon characters, and gaudy lettering. The relentless rain jewels the large, dirty windows and turns the skinny, fifty-something woman behind the counter into a fragmented caricature of herself: mechanical, joyless, shaking spice into paper bags full of chips.
There’s a barbershop to their right. Black gloss—bought in bulk and applied too thickly, collecting in rivulets in the gaps between the bricks.
Shutters down today. Down most days.
Helen Tremberg sits in the back of the unmarked car. A sergeant from the Drugs Squad stares out of the window beside her, watching the raindrops dribble haphazardly down the glass. He hasn’t spoken since giving her a grunt of acknowledgment as she slid into the back of the car and wiped the rain from her face with a warm palm. He smells faintly of stale beer and wet dog.
DCI Ray is sitting in the front, passenger side, sucking the chocolate off a Twix.
At the wheel is Detective Superintendent Adrian Russell. Everything about his manner suggests he is in a foul mood. He is moving chewing gum around his mouth, but the look upon his face is more in keeping with that of a man trying not to acknowledge the gone-off oyster under his tongue.
There is silence inside the vehicle, save the drumming of rain on the roof, and the occasional swish of damp tires as cars pass by on Hessle Road.
Tremberg feels uncomfortable. Out of place. Unwelcome. She has never worked with Russell or his underlings, and has no bond with her DCI. She is here because the opportunity arose. Here because she is an ambitious officer who wants to be there when a high-profile raid goes down. Here because Shaz Archer can’t be rustled up, and because with Pharaoh out of the picture and McAvoy out on a limb, she is feeling lost. There has been no fanfare to welcome her return. No hugs or tears. She came back after risking her life to catch a killer, and was very nearly on fire before the end of her first shift.
“Should have parked ourselves in Rayner’s,” says Ray chattily, throatily, while jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the legendary pub across the street. “Could have bought you a Babycham and a packet of peanuts.”
Ray angles the rearview mirror until he can see into the back. A bite of Twix moves around in his mouth as he talks.
“Never been in,” says Tremberg, turning in her seat to stare across at the building on the corner. “Doesn’t look welcoming. They do scampi in a basket?”
“Proper pub,” says Ray. “I read up on it when I moved to this shitty city. Hessle Road was already on its arse by then but, fuck, that place had character.”
It is not the first time Tremberg has heard about this boozer, or its place at the very heart of the old fishing community. This is where the trawlermen drank on their three days home, their refuge after six weeks risking their lives in distant waters. It is where scores were settled and where tensions erupted into bloody violence. Where feuds ended in bloodshed or in forgiveness. Where men tried to dilute the ocean in their veins with pint after fucking pint. It was a hard man’s watering hole. A place of mourning and of celebration. A place that numbered countless dead among its regulars, and where it was said that the ghosts of recently dead trawlermen would call in for a drink before sailing on to purgatory.
“What’s it like in there now?” asks Tremberg, for something to say.
Ray shrugs. “Only been in there once. Decent pint. Few old boys with a story to tell. Bit sad, really, when you think what it was. What all this was . . .”
Ray stops talking as he realizes he is sounding soppy. He gestures at the run-down side street beyond the glass. Waves an arm halfheartedly at the cut-price furniture shops and the empty greasy-spoon cafés.
“It was probably all shit in the good old days, too,” he says, by way of antidote to his display of nostalgia. “Fifty years from now Hull folk will reckon life nowadays was fucking peachy.”
Silence again.
Adrian Russell, chewing his gum.
The sergeant beside her stifling a burp and then blowing out the faint smell of last night’s beef Madras . . .
Tremberg wondering if she should text McAvoy. Tell him what Ray has arranged. Ask him if he knows why the fuck the detective superintendent seems to have ceded operational authority to his junior officer, and appears to be swilling sick around his gob.
They all jump as Russell’s
phone rings, the riff from Gary Numan’s “Cars.”
A look passes between Ray and the detective superintendent.
Russell closes his eyes. Answers in little more than a whisper.
“Russell. Yes. Yes, as a matter of courtesy . . . No. Well, obviously. I do appreciate that. No. It’s not my call. There are limits, you understand . . . I’m not sure that would be wise . . . No, I realize that. Different breed, you might say. Of course I understand the benefits. Yes. If you’re sure . . .”
Russell hands the phone to Colin Ray.
Ray is all smiles.
“Detective Chief Inspector Colin Ray. Very Serious and Vaguely Organized.”
He puts the phone onto speaker. Seems to take pleasure in the other officer’s shiver of discomfort.
The car is filled with a stranger’s voice: tinny and robotic.
“Mr. Ray, I’m sorry we have not had a chance to be properly introduced before now. I would have made it my business to do so, but I was unaware of your existence till today.”
The voice is almost accentless. The enunciation clear but giving nothing away.
“That’s okay, son, I don’t know much about you, either. Know you’re going to have a bad day, though.”
Ray’s words seem not to register with the speaker.
“In the past hour I have remedied my aberration. I have acquainted myself with several of your personal details. Allow me to express my sadness that such an experienced officer should find himself so poorly remunerated at such a time in his career. You have given up so much for this job, and you are rewarded with a childless existence, and more ex-wives than a man can afford. To be only a few years from retirement, and still to be an underling . . . it saddens me. A man of your experience should be better rewarded.”
In the mirror Tremberg watches Ray’s face for any glimmer of discomfort. Sees none.
“Aye, you’re right there,” he says, as if chatting to an old friend. “I’m surrounded by fucking ingrates and incompetents. I’m sure you know the feeling. That’s what you get for working with Chinks and pikeys. You should put your hand in your pocket, son. Bring in some lads who can think and tie their shoes at the same time.”