Original Skin

by David Mark

  “Sure, Fin, we’ll put it on. You finished playing?”

  McAvoy is interrupted by the sound of a Shakira song. Roisin fumbles in her cleavage for her phone, and puts Lilah on her hip as she speaks.

  She rolls her eyes at McAvoy as she asks who it is.

  Her smile fades. She stops looking at her husband. Turns away from him.

  “Daddy, can we—?”

  McAvoy shushes his son. Crosses to his wife and turns her to face him.

  “But that’s mad,” his wife is saying. “It’s not an honor thing now. How can it be? He’ll never say yes. He’s a policeman. No, that’s . . .”

  McAvoy is rubbing his wife’s forearm. Trying to get answers. He has a feeling between his guts and chest, an uneasiness. A queasy feeling of foreboding.

  “Tell him no,” says Roisin. “No.”

  She hangs up the phone. Turns to McAvoy. Her face is pale. The dark lines beneath her eyes, invisible when she was laughing just moments ago, seem suddenly to have deepened to a bruise.

  “Fin, can you watch your sister for five minutes? There’s a good lad.”

  Roisin’s voice has a slight tremble. Its tone is gray.

  She settles Lilah back on her play mat and takes McAvoy’s hand as she leads him from the room and into their own bedroom. She switches on the bedroom light and sits down on the bed, looking up at him with wide eyes.

  “Did you hurt Ronan?”

  McAvoy, the nervousness inside him threatening to make his hands tremble, is too bewildered to answer. He tries to predict what he will be told. Cannot think fast enough.

  “There’s a new campsite at the playing fields in Anlaby,” she says. “Some of the lads from Cottingham have set up there.”

  McAvoy spreads his hands, eager to find out how much he needs to worry. “Yeah, I was there a few days ago, there was an escaped horse, I told you . . .”

  “You were there a couple of nights ago. You arrested Ronan.”

  McAvoy frowns. An image of the ginger lad fills his mind. Sees himself, pinning him to the dirt and wrenching his hands behind his back. Hears, again, the hissed threats. “Do you know him? He’s the one who set the dogs on Trish.”

  Roisin waves the question away. “I think we were once at a wedding together. That’s not the thing.” She stops. “Aector, do you know who his godfather is?”

  McAvoy’s mind is struggling to keep up. “What? No.”

  “Look, Aector, people know who you are. They know you’re the big ginger copper that Roisin Byrne ran off with and got herself married to. They know your name.”

  “What does that matter?”

  McAvoy’s voice betrays his feelings. They have not had to discuss such things in many years. His wife’s past and heritage are things they have both long since assimilated into their union. They have been a couple since she was seventeen. Their first meeting was on a campsite just outside Carlisle. She was a girl, giggly and raven-haired, entertained but not enthralled by the giant, young, uniformed policeman who blushed so furiously as he spoke to the men on the site about a spate of petty thefts. It was only later that their passing knowledge of each other was cemented. Bonded by fire. Turned into something deep and unyielding in a moment of violence that left McAvoy with blood on his hands, and a weeping girl in his arms: she rescued from her attackers by luck, providence, and a giant man with flame-red hair and furious righteousness in his eyes.

  “Aector, Ronan’s godfather has heard about what you did. Ronan’s called him somehow. Told him you beat him up. Tied his hands and battered him.”

  “That’s insane,” splutters McAvoy. “I would never . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, her eyes pricking with tears. “He believes it. And he wants a straightener.”

  McAvoy opens his mouth. Pulls a face. He breathes out, relieved that the problem is no bigger than the ones he is already facing.

  “A straightener? I’m a policeman! You told them that, yeah?” He pauses. Furrows his brow. “Who was that on the phone?”

  Roisin looks at her phone distractedly, as if it doesn’t matter. “Just somebody giving us warning.”

  “Friendly or unfriendly?” asks McAvoy, and there is an edge to his voice now.

  “Aector, there are still people who care for me. I’m not dead to everyone.”

  McAvoy sees the flash of temper in her cheeks and sits next to her on the bed. He puts an arm around her slim, toned shoulders. “I didn’t mean that,” he says.

  He knows how much she has sacrificed to become his wife.

  Knows that her mother and father can barely bring themselves to acknowledge that their youngest daughter has married a policeman, in a simple registry office ceremony. Her two brothers deny her existence. Roisin was brought up believing in family above all else. He knows that part of her soul was fractured the day she told her parents that she had fallen in love with the policeman who had twice arrested her dad.

  “Aector, his godfather is Noye.”

  McAvoy searches her face, waiting for more information. None comes.

  “Noye?”

  “Giuseppe Noye. Pepe.”

  McAvoy stands again. There is a half-full glass of water on the bedside table, and he takes a sip, swilling it around his mouth until it is warm.

  “I’m a policeman, Roisin. We don’t have fights. We deal with dangerous people all the time.”

  Roisin stands now, coming close to her husband. There is genuine fear in her expression.

  “He won’t care about that,” she says. “It’s a traveler thing. An honor thing. Ronan’s told him you hurt him, and that’s that. The uniform won’t matter.”

  McAvoy sighs. He could do without this. “Roisin, seriously, he can’t expect me to go and have a bare-knuckle fight . . .”

  “He does! That’s what he’s demanding.”

  “Well, he hasn’t demanded anything of me.”

  “This is how it works, Aector,” she says patiently, as if explaining to a child. “The word gets out. A message gets to you. A time and place is arranged. You meet and you fight. And you keep going until one of you gives up.”

  “Dead?”

  “No, not dead. There are rules. There’s a ref. He keeps it from getting—”

  “Deadly?”

  “Yeah. But people get hurt. Really hurt. And they get hurt by Giuseppe Noye.”

  McAvoy finishes the glass of water. Sits back down and pulls Roisin to his knee. In truth, he is not overly concerned. He is sad that his wife is upset, and knows that he will probably have to deal with this situation at some point, but in terms of what he has to deal with at present, he will not be giving Giuseppe Noye much thought. He mentally puts a circle around the name. Makes a note to check him out, and cross-reference for any links to Vietnamese drugs gangs.

  “I can look after myself,” says McAvoy. “This is what I do.”

  Roisin does not seem pacified. “Would you fight him, Aector? If you had to? For honor?”

  McAvoy looks at her. He realizes he has been wrong. Her fear is not that Noye will hurt him. It is that he will not fight.

  “There’s no honor in this,” he says coldly. “I’d die for what I thought is right. But this? Is that what you think I am?”

  Roisin drops her face to her hands. “I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I feel like a stranger. The way things are, the way you all behave.”

  “Who’s ‘you all’?”

  They sit in silence. For a moment, McAvoy entertains the notion of agreeing. Of standing his ground and taking his bruises from a bare-knuckle fighter. He laughs under his breath. Reaches out and strokes his wife’s hair.

  “I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Roisin. I’d die to make you smile.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want that. I don’t even want you to fight. I want you to be you. To
be good and brave and caring. But then I see my mam’s face and how she would sneer if one of her boys said no to a straightener and I don’t know who to be myself.”

  McAvoy pulls her close. Holds her. They were married when she was so young. Her life was among the travelers, and she took to his world without a backward glance. There are times they both feel they married somebody from a different age.

  He tries to make her smile.

  “Lilah was awesome, wasn’t she?”

  With an effort of will, Roisin manages to let herself be steered into more pleasant thoughts.

  “She’s got my laugh, not yours.”

  “That’s a relief,” says McAvoy. “She’d scare people.”

  Fin appears in the doorway. He is scowling and clearly ready to watch the film.

  “Go on down with Mammy,” says McAvoy. He eases Roisin into a standing position. “I’m going to make a call or two, then I’ll be down, too.”

  She looks at her husband. Ruffles his hair and bends forward to stroke the rasping stubble on his cheeks. “You’re my hero.”

  The family head downstairs, leaving McAvoy alone in the bedroom. He picks the laptop up from where it has been charging by the bed, and places it on his knees as he shuffles back against the headboard. The machine had run out of power when they were looking at holiday destinations in bed the night before. The picture is frozen on an image of a lake in Sweden. It is the view from the remote log cabin he hopes to be able to afford to take his family to for a week or so in the winter. Whether they make the trip or stay at home will depend on whether the insurance company pays out for the minivan. He is not getting his hopes up.

  He logs on to his work e-mail, using his remote access code and password. Checks his messages. Nothing from the tech unit yet, and a brief line of thanks from ACC Everett for rewriting his speech. It had gone well.

  Pursing his lips, unsure whether he is simply inviting more worry, he accesses the Police National Computer. He enters the name Giuseppe Noye and breathes out through a tight mouth as the screen is filled with the criminal activities of the forty-eight-year-old repeat offender. He scans the various crimes. Armed robbery. Wounding. Receipt of stolen goods. He has served for different lengthy sentences. Was released from a stretch only last September and has not kept any of his parole meetings. A warrant for his arrest is currently active.

  McAvoy brings up the mug shot. Maximizes the image until it fills the screen. Looks into the face of a thickset, bovine man with close-cropped hair and piggy eyes, his jowls and jaw covered in gray stubble. McAvoy checks his height. Six feet, two inches. He gives a little nod.

  “Okay,” he breathes.

  He is about to close the screen when it occurs to him to check Noye’s associates. He does not know whether he expects to find Ronan’s name, or Roisin’s.

  Scrolling down, he looks for familiar names. Stops at Alan Rourke. The pair did an armed robbery together in 1993. Held up a post office in a village just outside Leicester. It had been a straightforward raid: lots of noise and shouting and a shotgun shoved in the postmistress’s face. They would have got away had Noye not realized, on his way out of the door, that he had used the name Al when shouting instructions at his partner. Despite Rourke’s protestations, he had climbed out of the getaway car to go back in and silence the witnesses. The decision was costly. Rourke and Noye were still arguing on the pavement over whether or not to add murder to their list of crimes when the police turned up. The chase was a short one. Rourke crashed their stolen Toyota, and both men were sent down. They served seven years of a twelve-year sentence.

  McAvoy jots down a couple of notes. Closes his eyes, aware he is about to be shouted at, then picks up his mobile. Calls Colin Ray.

  “What do you want?” The voice is tired and grumpy.

  “It’s about Alan Rourke,” says McAvoy, determined simply to say what he has to, and then get off the phone. “One of his associates. A Giuseppe Noye. He’s worth checking out.”

  There is silence at the other end of the phone. McAvoy wonders where the other man is. Realizes he knows precious little about his life. Knows only that he is twice divorced and lives in an apartment somewhere in the city center. He tries to picture his life. Finds it hard to imagine the older man without Shaz Archer in his shadow. A thought crosses his mind. He wonders if there is anything more to their relationship than the master-and-protégée dynamic. Realizes that many of his colleagues must have questioned it before him. Wonders, briefly, whether such rumors would ever circulate about his own bond with Trish Pharaoh.

  “It’s Sunday morning, lad. I’m busy.”

  “Oh, yes?” McAvoy tries to sound chatty. Can’t help but be curious.

  “Picking up the lads, as it happens. Football match.”

  “Yes? Who’s playing?”

  “We are, you daft bastard. Bridlington away.”

  McAvoy vaguely recalls some conversation he had with Colin Ray when he first joined the unit. Remembers that the older man coaches one of the divisional police football teams. Remembers, too, the detective chief inspector’s expression when he told him he was a rugby and boxing man, and did not follow football.

  “Are you driving?” McAvoy is about to offer to call him back when it is safe to take the call.

  “What do you fucking want?”

  McAvoy feels the blush. Wishes he could talk to people with some degree of comfort or aplomb.

  “One of Alan Rourke’s past associates. He’s a real villain. A Giuseppe Noye. He’s also the godfather of Ronan.”

  A pause at the other end of the line. “Noye?”

  “Yes. Armed robber.” He thinks for a second about whether to reveal more. Realizes he must. “Traveler.”

  Ray gives a bark of a laugh. “You don’t say.”

  McAvoy falls silent. “I thought it might be worth checking out, that’s all.”

  He has done his best to maintain an interest in the Rourke investigation, but knows only that the old armed robber kept his trap shut during the interview. Gave “No comments” all the way. Young Ronan gave only slightly more. Lost his temper, shouted and screamed his way through questioning. Neither Ray nor Archer had managed to get a useful word from either of them, and though they made a fuss when both were given bail, they had expected little else. Ronan gave his address as Rourke’s place, and the older man was put down on paper as being his current guardian. Social services went away happy. And Ronan fucked off the second he walked out of the door.

  “I know the name Noye,” says Ray quietly, appearing to be struggling with a memory. “Fighter, isn’t he? Bare-knuckle stuff.”

  McAvoy isn’t sure how to respond. Starts Googling Noye’s name for something to distract himself. “A boxer? I don’t think . . .”

  “Traveler fighting,” says Ray. “Bare-knuckle stuff. I think he’s part of that crowd.”

  McAvoy finds a link to the gypsy’s name. Clicks it. Feels himself closing down inside as he presses play on a video showing Noye stripped to the waist, knuckles taped, pounding right hand after right hand into the ribs of a younger man while a crowd of lads form a rough circle around the fight. A muscular man in a white T-shirt tries to separate them. To keep some kind of order. He is struggling.

  “That’s illegal.”

  “Piss off, lad,” says Ray. “Everything fun is illegal. And the gyppos have been doing this shit for centuries. Straighteners, they call them. Honor fights. Big business now. They’re arranged like pro fights. Big crowds. And the DVD sales are massive.”

  “I’m watching him fight now,” says McAvoy. “How can I be watching an illegal fight? I just clicked one button . . .”

  Ray gives a joyless little chuckle. “I’d love to see the world like you do, lad. Fucking hell.”

  McAvoy pauses the video, just as the camera zooms in on Noye’s snarling, blood-spattered face. His bound knuckles,
too, are caked in red.

  “The interview,” says McAvoy. “Ronan.”

  Ray laughs again. “Fuck all so far,” he says. “Had to sedate the little bastard. Every time he went in his cell he lost it. Started bouncing himself off the walls. Not happy with you.”

  “Me?”

  “He’s feeling a bit miffed that you put him down like a sack of shit.”

  McAvoy isn’t sure whether to preen or be humble. “I’m a policeman.”

  Ray says nothing for a moment. Then, as if it hurts him to say it, adds, “You did good, by the way. Taking him down. I lost my feet. Little shit got me right in the jaw. Landed on a rib. Hurts like hell . . .”

  McAvoy knows that if he were to speak, he would spoil the moment, so simply nods. “Any news on Pharaoh?” he manages.

  “Back tomorrow, so she reckons,” says Ray, equally glad to have had the subject changed. “She could have strung this out for months, silly cow. Obviously needs to come and make sure we can still wipe our arses.”

  McAvoy lets the other man talk. He is wondering what Pharaoh’s return means. Whether he has done enough wrong to get more than a telling-off. Whether he will be able to get the report back from the tech unit in time to present her with evidence of the need for a genuine murder inquiry. Whether he should just do what he’s been told. Wonders, for a moment, why he is not trying this hard to catch the two shaven-headed thugs who have outmuscled the Vietnamese and caused a spike in the violent crime statistics.

  “Enjoy the match, sir,” says McAvoy. “Hope you win.”

  “Enjoy whatever it is you fucking do,” says Ray, and ends the call.

  McAvoy stares for a moment longer into the eyes of Giuseppe Noye. Shakes his fears away. Calls the tech unit and asks for Dan.

  “Sergeant,” says the young man when he comes to the phone. “All good?”

  “I was rather hoping to have your report this morning,” says McAvoy. “Superintendent Pharaoh did specify that it was very urgent.”

  “I know she did,” says Dan. “I was up till three for her. She’s worth an all-nighter, don’t you think? That’s why I sent her the report.”