by David Mark
McAvoy closes his eyes. “You sent it to Superintendent Pharaoh?”
“Yes. And?”
“I asked for it to come to me, I said!” He sounds exasperated. Childish.
“Does it make any difference? I wanted her to know how much effort we’d gone to . . .”
McAvoy is spared the effort of trying to formulate a sentence by the sound of the doorbell. He takes the phone away from his ear and listens to the muttered conversation from downstairs. A moment later there is the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
“I’ll call you back,” he says into the phone.
He looks up, ready to smile for his wife, as the door opens. His face freezes, locked in place, color falling into his shirt.
In the doorway of his bedroom, gauze strapped to her throat, hands bandaged, dressed in jeans, a too-tight vest, and a leather jacket, stands Trish Pharaoh. Her eyebrows are raised almost to her hairline.
“Guv, I . . .”
He is suddenly aware that he is wearing nothing but shorts. That he has a laptop balanced on his lap. He shuts the screen like a guilty teenager looking at porn.
Pharaoh raises a fist full of computer printouts.
“Time for a chat?” she asks.
Her voice could shatter steel.
“Your missus is a looker,” says Pharaoh, leaning against the bedroom wall and making no attempt to look away as McAvoy pulls on a hooded sweatshirt and smooths down his hair with the palm of his hand. “Not what I pictured.”
McAvoy wonders what his wife made of his boss. What she will make of him, when she is gone.
“Thank you,” he says, distractedly. He waves an arm vaguely to indicate her injuries. “How are you?”
Pharaoh’s expression does not change. She continues to watch him with wide-eyed detachment. “Sore. Getting attacked by Rottweilers will do that to you.”
“I wish I’d been there . . .”
“I know you do.”
McAvoy stops. Stands, next to the bed, and meets her gaze. “I was worried,” he says.
Pharaoh softens. For a moment, she is an indulgent mother accepting a thank-you fridge drawing from a naughty toddler. “Daniells stepped up. Kicked one of them right in the nuts.”
“He got hurt, too.”
“Poor lamb.”
“He did good.”
“He’s not you,” she says, shrugging, and what she means by it is left unsaid.
McAvoy cannot help himself. He points at the papers she clutches. “Tech report?” he asks, wincing.
“Yes, e-mailed to me at three a.m., together with a little note from some computer geek who wanted me to know how hard he had worked on this, along with all the info I requested and assigned to my budget.”
McAvoy rubs his face. Realizes he is biting the webbing between forefinger and thumb.
“It’s the case I told you about, guv,” he says. “You suggested I have a look.”
Pharaoh runs her tongue around the inside of her lower lip. Despite her injuries, she is wearing makeup. He wonders whether she applied it herself. Why she bothered, if only to come and shout at her sergeant.
“Does the expression ‘bane of my life’ mean anything to you, Aector?”
McAvoy grabs the question like a lifeline. “Bane is an old English word for ‘murderer.’ That morphed into meaning ‘something that causes death.’ That’s where you get the name for poisonous plants from, like wolfsbane and henbane . . .”
“No, Aector. You are the bane of my life. I spend a lot of time deciding whether or not to stab you in the head.”
McAvoy stops talking.
She looks at him hard. Gives the room a quick once-over. Lets her gaze linger, for the tiniest fraction of a second, on the leopard-print silk nightdress that hangs from the foot of the bed.
“I hesitate to ask this of your big brain, but is there a landlubber word for a Jonah?”
“Are you really asking?”
“No,” she says. “But I am implying that you seem like a magnet for shit.”
McAvoy looks at the papers in her hand as she gesticulates. Is desperate to unroll them and read the hidden words.
“I thought it was important.”
Pharaoh smiles, rolling her eyes. “It is important. You were right. You’re nearly always right. Doesn’t mean I don’t think about hurting you.”
McAvoy’s skin prickles. He does not know how to comport his face, so stands still, looking expectant. “I was right?” He is hesitant to ask which of his half-formed theories and vague gut instincts have been vindicated.
“Right about Simon Appleyard,” says Pharaoh, crossing the room and sitting down, unasked, on his bed. He stands up, in turn. He has to fight the urge to turn scarlet at the intimacy of the moment. His boss, here, in his bedroom. Family downstairs. Words to stroke his ego in her hand.
“He was murdered?” asks McAvoy, instinctively, leaning back against the wall in the position she has just vacated.
Pharaoh shrugs. “You’re right that he could have been. I’ve spoken to the pathologist again. She e-mailed me through images of the body and the postmortem exam. Pretty boy, wasn’t he?”
“His back, you mean? The tattoos?”
“Yeah, lovely work. Will have to show you mine someday. Anyway, I can see why she didn’t see it, but she’ll be getting a bollocking at some stage.”
“See what?”
“The bruise,” says Pharaoh, rustling through her papers.
McAvoy crosses back to her. Sits next to her on the bed. Catches a hint of her perfume. Notices that she is wearing open-toed shoes instead of her usual biker boots, and that her feet are not as pretty as his wife’s. Wonders why he is even thinking about such things.
“You can see it here,” she says, holding up a color printout.
McAvoy looks upon the photograph of the boy whose death has so troubled him. Simon is laid out naked on a steel table. The clinical aluminum and white of the mortuary frame the exotic colors of his body. Makes his slim frame appear almost skeletal. McAvoy stares into the mass of ink. Squints, between the eyes of the tattooed peacock feather, at the slight blur of discoloration.
“Sergeant Arthurs told me about that,” he says. “Said he was surprised the pathologist missed it.”
“Nothing surprises me,” says Pharaoh. She hands him more pictures. Simon, kneeling forward, slumped and lifeless, his skin a mottled red and blue. A rope trailing from his throat, tongue hanging forward from between open lips, a black slug.
“He had been there some time,” recalls McAvoy.
“Heater was on the whole time, too. Decomposition started quickly. She’ll have a good reason for not seeing it.”
“If it’s anything at all,” warns McAvoy.
“True,” says his boss. “But it looks like a footprint to me.”
“Or a knee,” he says, looking again at the image.
They look at each other, close as lovers on the edge of the bed. McAvoy looks away first.
“Why did you contact the pathologist, guv?” he asks.
“Boredom?” She laughs. Then her face turns serious. “No, Aector, I trust your instincts. You’ve made your usual balls-up of going about it all, but there’s something here.”
McAvoy is torn between feeling flattered and insulted. Tries to ignore both feelings and just ends up jiggling his leg. His mind is trying to work out how much she knows. Whether she is already further ahead than him.
“Dan’s report?”
“I’m pleased it came to me first. You’d have had a heart attack. But you’re right. I think we made a right cock-up looking into it.”
“I’ve spoken to his aunt,” says McAvoy. “She doesn’t know what she thinks. Doesn’t know if she wants to know. But she says he was living life to the full, if you get my meaning. And had a friend who we
nt everywhere with him. I haven’t started tracking her down yet.”
“What else?”
McAvoy looks skyward. Realizes he has no real justification for sharing more, but does not want to hold anything back. “Two city councillors,” he says, at last. “Cabourne and Hepburn. They’re connected. They’re lovers.”
“Lovers! Christ, the way you talk. They’re both blokes, yes?”
“Yes. Hepburn’s the one who . . .”
“Yes, I know him. Character, yes? Some shady stuff in his background, but nothing he hides.” She waggles her tongue thoughtfully. “And have they got a connection to Simon?”
“Cabourne has been meeting men for sex—using the same dating site that Simon posted his details on. Simon’s phone number is on there.”
“And does Cabourne remember Simon?”
“He thinks they shared some messages but nothing ever happened.”
“But?”
McAvoy shrugs. “Hepburn knows more than he’s letting on. And I think Simon might have met somebody on that site who didn’t want his secret getting out.”
“Cabourne?”
He considers it. “I don’t know.”
They sit in silence.
“Anyway, turns out Dan’s more of a technical genius than you are. He’s got plenty more info off it than you managed.”
She hands him another sheaf of papers, made almost illegible by the amount of creases.
“What’s this?” He looks at the images. Turns it around. Widens his eyes.
“Yep,” says Pharaoh with a smile. “That appears to be a picture of our dead man having a little bit of fun with himself, though quite why Dan thought I’d want that to be the picture I looked at over my breakfast is anybody’s guess.”
“He sent these?”
McAvoy looks at the images. They are unmistakably of Simon Appleyard, naked and pleasuring himself.
“Bloody hell.”
“Yes. And they were sent as picture messages at about nine p.m. on the day Simon was last seen.”
“That’s . . .”
“Yes, about an hour before the pathologist reckons Simon died.”
“So he was sending this kind of stuff at nine p.m. and then hanging himself at ten?”
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t bump himself off,” says Pharaoh, taking the pictures back. “Just means there is a hell of a lot to explore here.”
“What else?”
“Some more poetry. Messages he sent . . .”
McAvoy takes the report. Reads Simon’s words out loud: “‘You move inside me as a puppeteer. Take ownership of my body. Fold me into your vision of desire . . .’”
“You say the nicest things. Look at what he was getting in return. These were in the in-box.”
McAvoy turns the page. “‘Am going to hurt you. Take you. Make you my bitch . . .’”
“They were my wedding vows.”
“‘Will scratch my mark on you, tear open the ink on your skin . . .’”
“Yep, I do.”
McAvoy stops. “So he knew he had tattoos? Had they met before? Or did he send him pictures of his back, too?”
Pharaoh sighs. “What we can get is in there. Simon’s poetry, and this other person wanting to hurt him and dominate him.”
“Is it just a game?”
Pharaoh raises her eyebrows. “I’m not the expert,” she says. “I know people go online a hell of a lot looking for sex, and I know people have fantasies they want to come true and those that they don’t. Anyway, this is all just maybes. I’m not here on a Sunday for maybes. You haven’t got to the interesting bit yet.”
McAvoy turns to the last page of the sheaf. Reads the words underlined in red. The words Simon Appleyard received the night he died.
Want you on your belly when I arrive. Naked. Body waiting for my touch. Hold the rope in your hand. Leave the door unlocked. Show me your ink as I arrive, then let me take possession of you. Let me make you feel pretty . . .
McAvoy looks up. “Fuck.”
Pharaoh smiles. “Yes indeed.”
THE WATER tastes of early mornings. Of last night’s booze.
Dirt.
Grass.
Blood.
“Thanks.” She grimaces. Her throat is full of cold stones. “Lovely.”
She shuffles herself into a more comfortable sitting position. Watches the sunlight stream in through the conservatory glass. Dazedly soaks up the view. The flat green landscape and the swaying trees, the painted-on symmetry of the distant apple trees and the blueness of the clear sky.
“Still sore?”
Suzie winces again as she finishes the drink. “Will be okay when it opens up a bit. Christ, I sound like Louis Armstrong.”
She is in the large, L-shaped living room of a remote Lincolnshire farmhouse that, three nights a week, becomes a sex club. This morning it is just a home, and she is an injured guest, convalescing, wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa and with her hair stuck up on one side.
“Did you have bad dreams?”
Suzie gives a shrug. “I don’t remember,” she says. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter if you don’t remember, does it?”
Christine is up and dressed. She looks comfortable in old jeans and a rugby shirt. Big Dunc is doing something onerous out on the shingled drive. She can hear the scrape of a rake on the pebbles.
“You must be hungry,” says Christine. “Yogurt? Fruit?”
Suzie screws up her face. “I’m going to get off this morning. I’ll stop at a McDonald’s on the way home. I’m fine.”
“Suzie, you can stay as long as you want.”
“Honestly,” she says. “I need to go.”
Christine seems unsure. Suzie can understand her feelings. Here, on the sofa in the living room, she can be watched. She can be gently spoken to and nursed. She can be persuaded of the benefits of chalking Saturday night down to experience, and keeping her bloody mouth shut.
“Really,” says Suzie, stretching. “You’ve been good to me. I’m okay to go.”
Christine still looks worried, but she forces her lips into a tight smile. “I’ll make you a sandwich for the journey,” she says, and takes the empty glass from Suzie’s hand before heading back to the kitchen.
Suzie rummages around in her thigh boot and finds her watch. It’s just gone lunchtime. A McDonald’s breakfast is out of the question.
She fell asleep just after three, just as the last vehicle left the grounds, and as news filtered back from the hospital that Jarod had a fractured skull but was going to be okay. He’d been smashed across the head with a branch. It has been disposed of. Suzie did not have much to say about that, or anything else. She was on the sofa, knees curled up beneath her, sucking an ice cube, some of Christine’s hand cream turning the redness of her rope-burned neck into something ghoulishly shiny.
Last night is coming back to her in stages. Nobody had wanted to call the police. There had even been dissenting voices when Big Dunc said he was going to take Jarod to hospital. Were it not for the fact that she could barely swallow and that her heart was still racing, as if to justify its reprieve, she would have found the discussions of the previous evening comical. Even in her dazed, drunken, semi-throttled state, she could feel a bizarre giggle building inside herself as she took in the scene. A score of men and women—some in white dressing gowns, like Greek philosophers, and others with towels around their waist. One man entirely naked, sitting on the edge of a wicker chair with his shrunken manhood sitting on his balls like a hat. Jarod laid out on the patio in a mess of mud and blood. Angry voices and fist-shaking accusations.
The man who carried her back to the house said his name was Matt. He was a chartered accountant from Bradford, and spoke with a thick West Yorkshire accent. He did not let her go until she was ready. Held her in his arms as if comforting a chi
ld. Placed one large hand over her left ear and pressed the other ear to his chest, while the argument raged about what had happened and what should be done.
Suzie does not judge the others for wanting to keep their secrets. Few would be proud to have their names and addresses taken by detectives in connection with an attempted murder at a sex party. Fewer still would want their lives pored over by sniggering police officers, or their wives and partners to be questioned over their movements and bedtime habits.
Suzie’s attacker had not been found. Whoever it was disappeared into the shadows with barely a sound; the shouts of pursuers roused the rutting couples who were enjoying the party, and resulted in a hastily convened, babbling argument in the conservatory about what was for the best.
“My life will be over! This can’t get out. There’ll be interviews. Police. The papers. My wife!”
“It’s about right and wrong. Somebody’s attacked him. He could die!”
“No, it’s too important. Secrecy, remember. That’s what the website says. Discretion assured.”
“This changes things. It’s life and death. It could be one of us.”
“He probably slipped. She might have had too much to drink. It might even be her who did it.”
Like a tennis umpire, she watched the debate go back and forth. At length, they had convinced Suzie that her attacker was probably a local teenager. Big Dunc revealed that their website had received a few e-mails from youngsters who had heard there was a sex club upon their doorstep, promising to pay a visit next time there was a party. Suzie had merely nodded. Kept her own counsel. Swallowed painful mouthfuls of blood and picked the dirt from between her teeth.
Here, now, she knows. Knows full well that she has been running from her own thoughts. Knows that Simon did not hang himself. That she never truly believed that he did. Simply refused to let her fears take her to a conclusion that terrified her. She knows, more than anything, that whoever killed him is now after her.
Filling herself with a deep, painful breath, she rummages through her handbag and finds her phone. It has been switched off for days. She half expects her hands to tremble as she turns it on, but is surprised to find that she is in control. She feels detached somehow. Not numb, but somehow separated from what she is doing. She did not feel her soul leave her body as her attacker strangled her, but now she almost feels as if she were looking down on herself from above.