by David Mark
“Why are you telling me?” he asks, gently. “Surely I’ll have to explain that I saw you here. You’re telling me that you’ve purposely avoided involving yourself. You clearly hate Roper and his unit, yet you’re handing him a double murder. And you don’t know me at all and yet you’re talking to me like I’ve personally affronted you. Is there something wrong? I’d be glad to listen. I’ll call it in, and we can go and talk. I can see you’ve been crying… I’m OK at listening. My wife says I am…”
Pharaoh glares up at him, a sheen of moisture veiling her blue eyes. She looks at him the way Roisin often does: baffled and exasperated, unsure whether to throw something at his head or bite his lip.
“You’re an interesting man,” says Pharaoh, shaking her head. Then she walks past him. “Tell Roper you saw me and that I told him this was more up his street than mine. And tell your wife to start dressing you as if somebody loves you. That suit’s too small for you. And so’s she.”
McAvoy stays silent. Watches her storm across the car park towards a little two-seater convertible. She pauses, momentarily, by McAvoy’s people carrier. Gives Roisin a stare that she returns. Shakes her head, and trudges on.
McAvoy watches her go. Wonders what the hell just happened. Then he pulls out his mobile, takes a breath, and calls Doug Roper.
“Sir, this is McAvoy. Yes, that one. The sergeant. Erm, I think, well…”
He clears his throat. Closes his eyes. Winces, as the words come out in his low Scottish accent.
“We’ve got a murder.”
6
The lads from the Mail appear at the top of the stairs. Tom, Tony T and Tony H. Tom’s a young lad, first job out of college. A middle class southerner, he’s doing his best to fit in with the pack and laughs along at in-jokes he doesn’t understand, but has an eye for a good story and a nice turn of phrase.
Tony T has been at the Mail for an age. The running joke is that he’s approaching the end of some unique prison sentence, imposed for a despicable crime. Mid-fifties, he’s one of those blokes who earns more than the editor because he joined the company in the days when journalism was well paid, and has watched his salary creep up ever since, on a contract written in stone. It’s been a long while since he was bothered about being any good at his job, but he knows Hull better than anyone. He’s one of the few Mail reporters I’m ever likely to bump into in the pub, but can become a little maudlin by his third pint. His wife and daughter died within weeks of each other about ten years ago – wife from cancer, daughter from three bottles of paracetamol. We indulge Tony T for his moments of despondency. He doesn’t do much. Picks and chooses his jobs, and takes pleasure in fuck all.
Tony H is something altogether different. He belongs to an age when reporters smoked cigarettes without filters, bashed out genuine stories on Imperial typewriters that made the floor shake, and when 600 words of half-decent scandal could bring down governments. When readers actually believed. He looks sepia. Black suit, white shirt, black tie, ashen face. Dirty mac. Yellow fingers. The only thing missing from his general appearance is a trilby hat with a ‘press’ ticket stuck in it. He’s a walking cliché, a proper ducker and diver, a wheeler-dealer, a heartless, compassionless hack who’s always one last warning away from losing his job. He’s an utter wanker and I like him immensely. Any decent story the Mail ever runs comes from Tony H. He arrived in the city six years ago after leaving a paper in the Midlands under a cloud, and within days had found out the name, address and inside leg measurement of the thirteen-year-old boy rumoured to be providing a service to the then-assistant chief constable of the local police force. Tony H’s legend continues to grow. The villains in Hull think of him as more of a threat than the coppers. We usually share information if we turn up on the same job, which we frequently do.
“Owen Lee the Lonely,” says Tony T with a smile, as though he’s the first person to think it up. “You’re up early.”
“Well Simmo told us local lads to get a good seat, didn’t he? Good old Simmo. Always thinking of us.”
“You consider yourself local, do you?” asks Tony H, showing teeth the size of tombstones.
“I’ve got a foot in both camps, mate,” I say. “Local contacts and national interests, community stories with national acclaim. Best of all possible worlds, Rat-boy.”
“Fuck you, Voltaire. Nice shiner.”
Tony H and I grin at each other, and young Tom looks nervous. The three lads slump down into the seats beside me, one on either side, Tom furthest away. He’s the only one who bangs his head. I remember the days.
“Looking flashy,” says Tom.
“That’s me.”
“King of Bling, ain’t you,” smiles Tony H. “Terrified of magpies.”
“Doesn’t hurt to look good.”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“Court One, is it?” asks Tony T.
“Yeah, we should all fit in OK.” I say. “Judge Skelton. Won’t take any shit.”
“Going to be a bloody circus,” points out Tony H, gleefully. “What did you bring?”
“Oh shit,” I say, suddenly remembering that the stakes in our long-running competition have risen dramatically over the course of the last few court cases. “Forgot, mate. What about you?”
Tony H reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a cut-throat razor and a toy hand grenade. There are whistles of appreciation as he says “Beat that”.
We’ve been playing this game for a while now. Court cases get fucking boring after a while so we like to pretend we’re terrorists. It started when a young lass from the Grimsby Telegraph got into court with a fruit-knife in her handbag and mentioned it to me and Tony. We wondered how far we could take it. We knew security was shit but we really wanted to push it. We’ve been getting more competitive ever since. Tony brought in a rocket launcher he had made out of the insides of toilet rolls a few weeks back. Security didn’t say a word.
Young Tom, who wants to show willing, pulls a hammer out of his coat pocket. “What do you think of that?” he asks.
“Fucking hell,” we all say.
“Put that away, you daft bastard,” says Tony H, pissed off. “Christ, you’re not all there, are you?”
Tom sulks, and wonders if he misunderstood the rules.
Tony winks at me, then says: “Did you hear Cadbury sacked his barrister not three weeks ago? Got a last minute replacement.”
“Oh aye? Who?”
Tony H grins and lights a Hamlet from the tip of his last one. He blows a smoke-ring which drifts away and expands to frame the ‘No Smoking’ sign. He strings out the moment. “Your old mate. Tin-Tin Choudhury.”
Oh fuck.
“Seriously?”
“He might be bringing you your thank you card.”
I give in to a rueful laugh. “As long as it’s got a fat brown envelope inside. By Christ I earned it. Fucking hell.” I spit the words and think about the implications. “Well there go my chances of getting a copy of the opening defence statement. Or a chat with Cadbury when he gets sent down. Fuck.”
Tom looks for a moment like he’s about to put his hand up and ask a question, but stops himself when he remembers he’s a big boy now and is allowed to speak to the naughty men without getting told off. “You got history, have you Owen?”
I sigh and stub out my cigarette on the underside of my boot. It’s still encrusted with mud. “Nothing a little bullet in the brain wouldn’t sort out,” I say.
Tin-Tin Choudhury: the barrister responsible for the biggest embarrassment of my professional life. I picture him, floating there like the Cheshire cat. Face an amalgamation of Saddam Hussein and Bagpuss. Body like a bag of custard in a three-piece suit, or in Choudhury’s case, a three-piece suite. Poirot moustache. Trumpet-player cheeks. Hair dyed bottle-black under a blood-red turban. Shoes shiny enough to see up junior solicitors’ skirts. White teeth. Likes to play with a cricket ball while he’s thinking. Fat. Monstrously fucking fat. Polished. Syrupy. Kisses women’s hands when
introduced. A fucking crook.
Four years ago, when I was still working at the York Evening Press and knackering myself and my car with the daily journey through to York, Choudhury fucked me over. Richie Prospect, a local lad and king of the daytime quiz show, was up at court charged with a fairly nasty attack on a young girl. Prospect, he of the orange tan, capped teeth and infinite smugness, was unbelievably guilty. The police had his teary confession, and they had the sworn testimony of umpteen ex-girlfriends about the weird games he liked to play in the bedroom. But Prospect had Tin-Tin Choudhury. He rubbed his jewelled hands together and rose to the challenge. Prospect pleaded not guilty. Tin-Tin strung out the legal wrangling, got adjournment after adjournment, while the screams of the press reached fever pitch. Entire teams of reporters were taken off-diary, and digging into Prospect’s seedy past became a full-time job. I got the lot. By the time the trial came, I knew everything from Prospect’s dick size to the wattage of his microwave. I was just itching to go to print with it. The trial lasted a fortnight, punctuated by the most cut-throat defence case ever seen at York Crown Court. It didn’t do any good. By the time the jury retired, it was clear that Prospect was going down. Then Choudhury had his master stroke.
Me.
The jury retired on a Friday at 2.30 p.m. – the worst time imaginable, missing any useful deadline, and threatening to spill the case over into the next week. I couldn’t see the jury coming back with a verdict that day, and made a judgement call. I went to the pub. Choudhury saw me leave. He caught me on the way out, and suggested I give him my business card. Out of the goodness of his heart, he promised to let me know if the jury suddenly came back. Two hours later, he called. Choudhury told this panic-stricken, hapless reporter that I had missed the verdict, and that Prospect had been convicted. He offered to bail me out, gave me details of the sentence, and waited patiently by the phone, feeding me details, as I cobbled the case together.
It all landed perfectly – just in time for the evening deadline. I told the newsdesk it was over, sent my story – and told the IT department to launch my background features onto the website, detailing every sordid encounter in Prospect’s past, safe in the knowledge that there was no jury to prejudice and no risk of contempt of court. I sat back, feet on my desk, proud of a job well done, and waited for the plaudits to roll in. Then the phone rang. John, a decent freelancer from York who died a couple of years back, asked me what the fuck I was playing at. The tumblers of recognition began to fall into place, as the agony of comprehension poured ice water into my veins. Choudhury had played me. The jury hadn’t come back with a verdict at all. They were still deliberating. I had just released months of work into cyberspace, labelling Prospect every variety of pervert. I had just been fucked, and my ass, busily augmenting and diminishing from the size of a manhole cover to a poppy seed and back again, was suddenly all too aware. Other news sites spotted the story and lifted it. Within an hour, half the country had seen or heard all about Prospect’s past, while the jury were still sitting in their cosy room trying to decide if he was guilty of anything whatsoever. Of course, the entire case collapsed. Choudhury argued that his client could never get a fair trial. I was roasted by my bosses and the Press Complaints Commission until my brain was running out of my ears. Of course, I fought my corner, pathetically pointing the finger at Choudhury; even making a complaint to the Bar Council, but nothing stuck. I kept my job by the absolute skin of my teeth. When Prospect was finally sent down for raping a teenage girl, I was there in the press box to watch. By then, even Choudhury wouldn’t go near him. Those in the know, knew. Knew exactly what Choudhury had done. He had made his point. He had pulled a stroke so beautiful, it made him want to pull and stroke. And when he finally saw me again, eyes meeting as we crossed paths one cold November day at the Old Bailey, he had the temerity to smile, raise an eyebrow, and turn away. It was a wound that had never healed.
I let the weight of the gun rest on my arm.
And stroke it like a puppy.
7
Getting bored of small talk, now. Of Tony’s tall tales and Tom’s questions. They’re running over the details of the case in voices too loud and too unfeeling, oblivious to the milling crowd around us, waiting for their own trials and hearings to begin – unused to this. Unaccustomed to the violence that we chronicle daily, and to which so many of our number have become immune.
I want to distance myself from them. I find myself scanning the faces in the crowd, the cheap shirts and ties, the tracksuits, wondering if any of them knew her, if they loved her, if they can hear Tom setting out the details of the autopsy at maximum volume.
I stand, stretch, feel the pressure of the gun and the notebook.
Walk away, through the bodies, no direction but somewhere else.
“Now there’s a shite for sore eyes. Looking good, sunbeam.”
A voice that likes the way it sounds kicks me in the side of the head. I turn and see Detective Superintendent Doug Roper treating me to his very best smile. Supercop. Shirley fucking Temple. Celebrity copper and tabloid darling. Thirty-nine. Expertly-trimmed moustache, with a tuft beneath his lower lip. A tan he’s worked at. Six foot one, straight-backed, but casual. Eyes that twinkle like the last embers in the hearth, and with about as much genuine warmth. Smile like a string of pearls, and a smirk like a bear trap. Leather, knee-length coat, brown Ben Sherman suit and Gucci loafers. A cloud of Aramis. The faintest whiff of violence, and cunt.
“Now then, sunbeam, you here on time, are you?”
“I wanted to give myself the best possible chance to get close to you, Doug – I knew there would be an admiring throng.”
“Ah yes, it can be distracting. Told them to give me a moment’s peace, actually. They’ve thronged off to do whatever throngs do. Nice to have a bit of peace – a bit of one-to-one time with a sophisticated gentleman.”
“Kind of you to say so. You’re looking good, though you know that, of course.”
“Not so bad yourself, son. Bit rumpled around the edges, few creases that wouldn’t sit well on a chap like me, but you just about pass muster. Few bruises though, lad. Bit of yellow under the old eye, there. Bit of a scuff on the right hand too. You been up to mischief, Owen?”
We stand, inches apart, enjoying the game. He likes me about as much as I like him, but we engage in pretence because we both suspect we might not like anybody else very much either.
“So,” I say. “This going to be a walk in the park?”
“Doesn’t do to count your chickens,” he says, talking into my eyes in that way of his, where you can see your own reflection floating, as though trapped, on the blue irises. “The Butterworths are in with a couple of my lads and it doesn’t half bring it home how important this one is. Got to get this monster put away, sunbeam. Got to.”
“Come on, Doug, you don’t need to give me the speech. The cameras aren’t on you. We both know he’s going down. It’s open and shut.”
“Wish it was,” he says, taking a tin of cigarillos from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and lighting one with a match he has ignited on his thumb in a deft and slightly showy motion. “He’s got Choudhury, now, hasn’t he? Which means all bets are off. And if what we’re hearing is right, we could be in the shit.”
“Can you say?” I ask, wondering if I should pull out my notebook or keep it chatty. “You know we can’t write anything that might fuck up the trial so there’s no harm.”
The grey sky beyond the glass suddenly darkens further, as if the sun just shivered and closed its eyes. A heavy rain begins to pummel the windows and the walls and we have to raise our voices to be heard over the tattoo that the raindrops are drumming on the roof.
“You’ll find out soon enough anyway, laddo,” he says through a delicate puff of smoke. “There’s a so-called witness that has suddenly appeared. You know Lewis, the lad who told us where to find Ella? Well he got sent down a few months back for some minor stuff, and this witness that Choudhury’s come up with was
Lewis’s cellmate for a few weeks. We have a feeling this lad is going to tell the jury Lewis confessed all to him. Bragged about framing his thick mate. Could be enough to create a reasonable doubt.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck indeed.”
I lower my voice, two old friends having a chinwag. “If I was in your shoes I might be tempted to find this new witness and explain the importance of all this to him. Might be tempted to persuade him of the joys of silence.”
“Would love to, my friend, but Choudhury’s got him secreted away somewhere safe and plush and, besides which, I’m an honest copper and wouldn’t dream of trying to get away with such a thing.” He twinkles, then adds: “Might get found out.”
We stand and brood in silence for a moment, then he says: “Still, it’s all good copy for you boys, isn’t it?”
“You know this one isn’t like that,” I say, feeling the hint of sickness rising in my throat. “Ella was an angel. We all want the right man put away. The Butterworths don’t deserve this.”
“Nobody deserves this,” he says.
“Some do,” I say, quietly. “You know that.”
“Catch you later,” he says, with a wink.
There’s a prickling starting to spread all over my back. I don’t like this. My teeth are hurting. My jaw tight and wired. Cadbury needs to go down. He must. The Butterworths need justice. This case has affected us all. I wrote metres of copy when they were searching for her. Tony and me had been out for a drink not more than a mile from where the attack happened that very night, and we both felt real closeness to her family as soon as we knocked on their door and they invited us in to share photo albums and drink sweet tea and eat their biscuits and talk about their daughter while a monster was brutalising her corpse not far away. They’re good people. Their daughter an innocent. In most murder cases you can rationalise it. You can tell yourself that the victim shouldn’t have got in that car, or acted that way, or raised their voice at the wrong person, or acted like a slag. But Ella was sweet. She was good and caring and pure, and loved her family and her cats and her fiancé, and she squeezed her wicked thoughts until they disappeared, and she lost her life because she was an angel who stumbled onto a demon’s blade.