by David Mark
“Shit, has he spiked her? Has the bastard already done it?”
“Can you drive?” asks McAvoy, approaching the car. “I know you’ve had a few to drink but she needs a hospital. Call for a patrol car or an ambulance if you think that’s better. I don’t know what’s right and wrong right now. But she needs help and—”
The words are cut off as Ellison appears from the alleyway and strikes him across the back of the head with a china cup. McAvoy’s first thought is for the girl in his arms and he does not allow himself to turn and face his attacker for fear of hurting her. Three more blows strike the back of his head and he hears Ellison swearing and cursing at him over the sudden ringing in his ears.
Everything seems to slow down. To McAvoy’s left there is a sudden movement. He looks up and sees Alto’s face appearing over the top of the vehicle like a rising sun. He sees him extend his arm, black gun in his fist.
“No. Alto, no!”
McAvoy swings the unconscious girl over his shoulder like he is carrying a sack of coal and twists where he stands, placing himself in Alto’s line of fire. Ellison starts to swing a punch at McAvoy’s face.
McAvoy has his right hand free. Though Ellison is tall and fit, McAvoy’s fist is the size of a skull. Were he to punch this murderer and rapist, Ellison might not get back up again. So the blow that McAvoy connects with is open-handed. The sound of the slap echoes off the tall buildings. So, too, does the strange, guttural bellow that Ellison emits as his feet give way and he starts sliding into unconsciousness from the knees up.
“Christ!” roars Alto. “Christ, I could have shot you!”
McAvoy slides the girl back into a more comfortable position and checks her face. Her eyes are closed and when he opens one with a gentle thumb and finger, she does not seem to see him.
“Take her,” says McAvoy in a voice that brooks no argument. He hands the girl to Alto and bends down to where Ellison lies limp on the snow. McAvoy checks the man’s pulse. He’s breathing. There is a red palm print on his left cheek that makes him look as though he has pressed his face against hot stone.
“Do what you must,” McAvoy adds, checking Ellison’s pockets. With grim satisfaction, he retrieves a small packet of white pills.
“He holding?” asks Alto, opening the rear door of his car and sliding the girl onto the backseat.
“Very much so. This might get a little chaotic. I think I should go.”
McAvoy stands and looks at Alto, who looks back at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“We need to talk properly,” says McAvoy. “Valentine. This matters, Alto. We need to do things properly.”
Alto nods, and his glasses slip down his nose. As he struggles to right them, McAvoy turns and begins to walk away, in the direction of Ludlow.
McAvoy makes sure he is out of sight before he presses himself against the brick wall of a high-rise and lets his breath come out in one long, low stream. His heart is thudding and he feels an urge to throw up. Stars are dancing in his vision. He closes his eyes and waits for the feeling to subside, barely registering the soft whisper of tires on the wet road.
When he opens his eyes, there is a black Lexus idling in the road. He wonders if he is about to be asked directions and tries to remember whether he has a map in his bag. Then he remembers that the bag is in Alto’s car—
“Get in,” comes a female voice, and McAvoy squints, trying to focus. The back window of the car is open and a girl is grinning at him. She seems familiar, like a picture of somebody he once met.
“I’m sorry . . . ?”
She pushes a gun all the way out the window and the streetlights bounce off the shiny black metal of the barrel.
“I said get in.”
McAvoy is too dumbfounded to speak. He is torn between asking whether she is being serious and the urge to run. Instead, he does nothing. Just looks at the gun and the girl, barely registering the large man who smells of garlic and pickle who gets out of the front passenger side of the car and takes him by the forearm.
Within moments, he is inside the car and the girl has her gun beneath his chin.
“Put this on,” she says, and hands him a bag for a bowling ball.
“I think you’ve made a mistake,” begins McAvoy, finding his voice.
The girl hits him in the windpipe with the handle of the gun. For an instant he cannot breathe. He feels as though his eyes will pop. Feels as if he is drowning.
The next time she tells him to put his head in the bag, he acquiesces without a word.
Only when McAvoy’s eyes are obscured, his mouth and nose full of the smell of leather and sweat, does the girl sit back in her own seat. She pulls out a cell phone and sends a simple message.
We have him. Get ready.
As she watches the lights of New York flash by her window, she allows herself a blush of pride. This man is strong. He slapped that other man to the ground like a child. She did well to take him so simply. It will score her points and further cement her growing reputation. She is becoming important. Trustworthy. A good soldier.
She considers her prize. He is big and strong and scarred and handsome, in a broken sort of way.
It is a shame, she thinks. He will not look so fearsome come the morning.
TWELVE
There is a pleasing sterility to the room in which the Penitent now stands. It is a space of white sheets and straight lines—the air marbled with the smells of antiseptic and fresh paint. Were it not for the milky foulness of his own suppurating skin, he would be pleased to stand here and take deep, cleansing breaths. Such pleasure is denied him. He is never free of his own odor. It has grown stronger these past days. He reminds himself of out-of-date food. He is cloaked in an intrusive, cloying stench that serves, as God wills it, to remind him of his own advancing mortality.
The smell has grown worse since his talisman was taken. For a long time, the Penitent believed his sin was in keeping the idol—a pagan, superstitious act that cheapened him in the eyes of his God. Now he believes that the true sin was in allowing it to be taken. He was right to venerate the token. It was a thing of purity, a relic to be cherished. And he gave it away as if it were a trinket.
The Penitent allows himself a moment’s contemplation. He would like to open the curtains and consider the city beyond the window, but to do so would be to risk seeing his own reflection and such vanity is not permitted. Instead, he puts his plump, pink hands upon the crisp white sheets and adjusts his posture so that, for a blessed moment, his shirt no longer sticks to the bloodied ruin of his back. He makes the sign of the cross as he does so, thanking the Lord for allowing him this one small act of mercy.
He prays, his lips moving soundlessly, words tumbling over one another in his head.
“Behold me at thy feet, O Jesus of Nazareth, behold the most wretched of creatures, who comes into thy presence humbled and penitent! Have mercy on me, O Lord, according to thy great mercy! I have sinned and my sins are always before thee. Yet my soul belongs to thee, for thou hast created it, and redeemed it with thy precious blood.”
It is a favorite prayer, taught to him parrot-fashion by his mother. It was she who showed him the loving God with whom he has been enraptured for so many years. His father’s God was a stern, unpleasable patriarch, unquenchable in his thirst for praise and unyielding in his commandments. His father’s God was created in his father’s likeness. The Penitent’s father was a brutal, joyless stoic who did not even seem to take any pleasure in the beatings he rained upon his son. He beat the Penitent so he would become a better man. Only through his mother’s God did he find love. Only through his mother’s God did he find a deity to adore instead of fear.
The Penitent straightens and feels the cloth of his shirt touch the open wounds upon his skin. The hiss of pain causes him to cough, and the cough becomes a wet and ghastly succession of retches and gasps. Blood sprays upon
his chin. He knows his insides are bleeding. But he has so much to atone for and he does not know if it is God’s will that he should be healed by the medicine of man, or to place his fate in his savior’s almighty hands.
The Penitent is aware of the lightness at his sternum, the absence of a familiar weight. For many years, a small leather pouch hung there, made of the same dark substance as the surface of his Bible. Inside the pouch was his talisman. He took it from the faceless child, the miracle infant. And he kept it on his person throughout his own transformation from sinner to redeemer. He feels the absence of the talisman the way others would experience the loss of a loved one. Everything has begun to unravel since it was taken away. He believed the act to be a kind one, a noble and decent thing. But he was deceived. The Penitent allowed himself to stray from the path. He betrayed the guidance of his intercessor. He made a terrible, terrible mistake. He acted more as man than angel and invited a demon into his home. And there is not enough holy water or blessed earth to undo his foolishness.
The Penitent knows himself to be a sinner. He also knows himself to be absolved. He will not burn for his indiscretions. And yet his sins weigh upon him like a cross. The Penitent has two lives that should never have bled together. He is skilled in presenting the correct face to the correct witness.
Here, now, he feels as though the two sides of his nature are mixing, like different-colored candle wax squashed together in a fleshy hand. His mistake has undone a miracle. His humanity is a fissure in the earth into which good men have tumbled.
Limping slightly, taking his weight upon his better leg, the Penitent leaves the pristine sanctuary of the white-painted room.
He walks gently down the corridor and returns to the bedside.
He leans over Brishen Ayres, and waits for the miracle to awake.
The Penitent wants to see how the man’s eyes look when he pulls himself out of hell.
THIRTEEN
McAvoy feels as though he is being baked alive, cooked in the oven of his own hot breath. The bowling bag presses in tight on his nose and mouth and the pain in his throat makes every inhalation agony. He tries to force his breath to come out softly, gently, through gritted teeth, but the action pains him and threatens to make him give in to another burst of coughing. He no longer knows whether the rumbling he can hear is from the car tires on asphalt or the sound of blood in his head. He can feel himself beginning to panic. He wants to lash out. His hands are free, held in fists at his side, and it takes all of his resolve not to wrench the bag from his face and start swinging blindly at the people who have taken him. Instead, he forces himself to stay calm. Talks to himself. Tries to focus on being a policeman. In his mind, he starts trying to put together a physical description of his abductors, but his thoughts are becoming blurry and he finds his memories morphing, blending, until the man driving the car becomes some ghastly hybrid of the men that have hurt McAvoy in the past. He conjures up memories of a man with blue eyes, his scarred features ripping apart as the blast from an exploding car tore through his skin. He feels the sudden impact of a blade and sees the fury in the face of the man who hacks down at his bleeding features. Each of McAvoy’s scars stings afresh as his mind dissolves in a swirl of past agonies and fears. Instinctively, he reaches out for Roisin. Tries to imagine her face pressed against his own, her cool fingers stroking the sweat at his temples and her gentle voice shushing him as she does when she eases him from his nightmares. He tries to remember her songs. The greasy lining of the leather bag becomes her cheek and he softly rubs his damp beard against it.
He jerks to the right, sudden and instinctive, as he feels hands in his pockets. He raises his own hands but a sharp tap of the gun barrel against his throat makes him force them down. He feels the nimble, dexterous fingers remove cell phone, wallet, and reading glasses. He wonders if he should speak, or whether the effort of doing so would simply fill his cramped prison with more hot, desperate air.
He loses his sense of time. At first he had thought he would be able to remember lefts and rights or intuit whether the vehicle was heading north or over water. Now he does not know whether he has been in the car for minutes or hours.
Sweat begins to pool at the base of his throat. Across his back and shoulders his clothing sticks to him. It feels as though he is drowning.
The car slows and abruptly comes to a halt. McAvoy twitches. This is an expensive vehicle and it made little noise as it purred through the quiet New York streets. Even so, McAvoy can sense the difference in the vibrations. This is not a stoplight. Wherever they were heading, they have arrived.
A blessed blast of cool air billows up and over McAvoy’s face as the bag is lifted slightly from his head. He catches the faintest whisper of perfume and realizes the girl has given him a moment’s respite. Perhaps she has been in a similar prison and pities his pain. Perhaps she simply does not want him to die before they get whatever it is they need.
“You breathing, big man? Here.”
Cold water dribbles over his lips and the plastic bottle lifts the bag just enough for him to catch a glimpse of her features. She is almost completely in shadow, the interior of the vehicle illuminated only by the soft blue lights of the dashboard. Wherever they are, there is no street lighting. Greedily, he swallows down two great gulps of water, then gives in to a fit of coughing as he tries to drink in too much cold air.
“Careful, careful,” says the girl, withdrawing the bottle. She is silent for a moment, then: “Close your eyes. If you open them I’ll hurt you.”
McAvoy nods and does as he is told, screwing up his face like a child presented with an unpleasant mouthful of food. He feels the bag being removed. Moments later, a softer material is wrapped around his head and face. He can smell perfume again. The faint trace of cigarettes and sweat. She has removed an item of her own clothing and masked him with it.
“Can you hear me? He’s coming. You sit quietly and you nod, and you behave yourself. You try anything else, you will be very badly hurt.”
McAvoy nods. Already the soft wool of the mask is beginning to grow damp from the sweat on his forehead and cheeks but at least he can hear better. He opens his eyes. He can still see nothing through the material of the mask.
He hears doors opening. Senses the shifting weight in the vehicle. The door to his right is pulled open and a sudden swell of cold air encircles him. He finds himself beginning to shiver.
He hears voices. Low, mumbled, male voices. Then the girl. Has she got out? He can feel his hands twitch. He feels as though he is losing control. He feels as though he should sit on his hands for fear of tearing off the blindfold.
“This is him?”
The voice is precise, the syllables neat. McAvoy senses the closeness of a newcomer. He can feel himself being inspected. Is not sure whether to thrust his head forward in defiance or push himself back in his seat.
“He’s a big man,” comes the voice, appraising him. McAvoy feels a hand squeeze the muscles in his forearm. “Strong, too.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are,” blurts McAvoy, his words muffled by the cloth around his lips.
“Shush. Spare your lungs. We know how you are feeling, and I promise you, your breath could be better served. I have never been fond of those who plead.”
Inside the mask, McAvoy realizes he can no longer hear his own ragged breath. The man’s words have slowed his lungs. Despite his fear, he finds his temper prickling.
“I’m not pleading,” he says with a note of irritation. “I’m talking.”
There is a soft laugh at his ear and then the weight of the vehicle shifts again as somebody heavyset climbs inside. McAvoy feels the figure’s big, muscly limbs brush his knees as he maneuvers past him and into the back of the vehicle. There is silence for a moment and then the rasp of a match being struck. McAvoy smells burning, then the pungent aroma of expensive tobacco.
“This badge of your
s,” comes the voice, and McAvoy wonders if the man is holding it in his hand for inspection. “This real?”
“Of course. I’m a sergeant with Humberside Police—”
“Shush,” says the voice, more sternly this time. “I had my doubts, you see. The hair. The scars. I figured that was just your story. Brishen swore vengeance and I know his people do not make such threats without having men at their disposal to back it up. It had occurred to me that you were that man. But you are Scottish, not Irish. Perhaps I am becoming paranoid.”
McAvoy catches the faintest whiff of an Eastern European accent. He wants to speak. To tell his captors who he is and what he is here for. But some inner sense counsels him to simply listen.
“If you had been this implement of vengeance, I would have known what to do with you,” muses the man by McAvoy’s ear. “But my darling girl has been reading your telephone and it seems you are a policeman of some reputation. I do not envy your situation. Families can be burdensome things.”
McAvoy locks his jaw. He feels violated at the thought of these people probing through his personal life. He suddenly remembers the e-mails that Trish was sending. Remembers how much of his investigative notes have been saved onto his cell phone.
“I am not good with the technology but my darling here can open a locked cell phone the way you or I would unscrew a jar of pickles. And she has found things inside that make me wonder if perhaps it would not be best to simply end your little investigation in a manner that has proven effective in the past.”
