Cruel Mercy

by David Mark

  “You’re not serious,” he says, just as McAvoy reaches the grandfather clock and peers at the face.

  “Fifty minutes late,” says McAvoy, checking his watch. He reaches forward and takes the gleaming pendulum in his left hand. He tugs, and there is a satisfying click as one whole section of the bookcase glides slowly away from the wall.

  “Fuck,” says Alto, who appears to have downsized his vocabulary.

  McAvoy slides himself between the bookcase and the wall and into the open space behind. The space is perhaps six feet by six feet. There is no carpet, and dirt crunches beneath McAvoy’s boots as he steps inside, lowering his head as he does so. A metal ladder is fixed to one wall.

  “Christ, this is an old elevator shaft,” says Alto, stepping inside and peering upward. “Can you make anything out?”

  McAvoy uses the lighter, holding it above his head. He fancies that around twelve feet above his head, there is a darker space.

  “After you,” says Alto, pointing at the ladder. His voice has gone quiet. Neither man looks as if he is sure what to do next. Both look nervous.

  The ladder makes no protest as it takes McAvoy’s considerable bulk. Soundlessly, he climbs into the cool and the dark above him.

  “Anything?” asks Alto from beneath.

  McAvoy struggles to make anything out but as he climbs higher, a shape becomes clear. There is a doorway a little above him and a soft light is emanating from within. McAvoy reaches up and his hands touch a length of rope. He lets out a breath, staggered and shallow. Without thinking, he pulls himself up and over the lip, slithering over hard ground. He yelps as his hands brush something soft and organic. He scrambles to his feet, heart beating hard and fast, and takes in the scene before him.

  He stands in a huge, open space, a hidden floor not visible from the outside. It is a chilly, half-dark place. What little light there is comes from the colossal pyramid of candles that flicker and dance amid a pulpy mass of melted wax halfway down the room.

  “Jesus,” says McAvoy as his eyes adjust and he sees what his fingers touched as he emerged into this extraordinary place.

  The entire floor of the apartment is covered with soil. In places it is mounded up in tiny molehills; elsewhere it as flat and featureless as glass.

  McAvoy takes a breath. He catches the traces of something familiar, an aroma that makes him makes him think of disturbed waters, the stench that rises when the silt and bones and decay at the bottom of a fishpond is stirred with a stick.

  McAvoy moves slowly forward, using the lighter to examine the ground beneath him. It shows footprints. Different shapes and sizes. Sneakers, dress shoes, bare toes.

  McAvoy shudders as his feet crunch over dry earth. A sudden tinkling sound causes him to snap his head to the left and he is unable to stop himself from releasing a long, low groan. There are hundreds of them, stretching away like stepping-stones, their smooth, sleek sides reflecting in the flames. Urns. An endless walkway of empty urns, black openings like dead eyes, dead mouths. McAvoy puts his hand over his mouth, suddenly aware of the dust in the air. He finds himself struggling to breathe. The air is full of burned bodies; he is in a place of earth and ash and dust. He feels his feet lose grip on the carpet of earth, and as he stumbles, his hand plunges through the gray crust of soil and into the damp loam beneath.

  “What the fuck?” asks Alto as he emerges into the darkness behind McAvoy.

  “Get back,” says McAvoy. “We can’t be here. This is . . .”

  Alto has a flashlight and is swinging it wildly from side to side, illuminating the empty urns and exposing the haze of dust that fills the air. Suddenly, the light stops on the wall next to the candles. McAvoy catches sight of metal, flickering like flame.

  He cannot help himself. Every instinct is telling him to leave this terrible place, but he cannot bring himself to do so. Slowly, he crosses to the wall.

  The image is a tree, each individual leaf made of brass and screwed into the bare brick of the wall. McAvoy holds up the lighter. Each leaf bears a name, save for the first. It shows a simple rose, engraved with reverence into gold.

  McAvoy has seen such a creation before. In the entrance of St. Colman’s, it served as a wall of remembrance, each leaf carrying the name of a soul departed but not forgotten.

  The tree on the wall of Peter Molony’s hidden place carries many names. Some are Hispanic, others Jewish. Others are mere descriptions: Blonde, early 20s, 1979.

  Among them, McAvoy sees one name he recognizes. Alejandra Mota Valverda. It is almost lost among the forest of names.

  McAvoy lets the light guide him. Finds the most recent leaf, high to the right of the sinewy trunk. It reads simply Shay Helden.

  McAvoy feels as though he is choking on air suffused with particles of dead, burned skin.

  “We have to go,” says Alto, pulling out his cell phone. He stops before he has a chance to make a call. Reads the words on the screen.

  “Tell me, Ronnie,” says McAvoy softly.

  “Uniforms picked up a Chechen walking around Brooklyn with blood all down his face. He wants to talk. Wants to make a deal.” Alto’s eyes gleam in the twitching light. “He wants to tell us about the Irishmen.”

  McAvoy cannot take his eyes off the wall.

  “We have to go,” says Alto.

  “I can’t,” says McAvoy. “I can’t just leave this.”

  “But the Chechen has information. We can come back. Do things properly.”

  “You go. I’ll take photographs. Try to understand . . .”

  “He could be back any moment.”

  “I want that,” says McAvoy, his jaw set. “I really want that to happen.”

  “Aector, you came here for your brother-in-law. This isn’t your responsibility.”

  McAvoy looks at the names. Sees girl after girl after girl. Sees the aberration that is Shay. His mind fills with the sad eyes of the lady at the church, lighting candles for her daughter thirty-five years after she disappeared on her way home from church.

  “I just need to understand. You go. Call me if it’s genuine.”

  “I’ll come back,” says Alto, looking desperate to get away from this bleak place with its rank stench and its clouds of human dust. “I’ll come back and we’ll do things right. I need to think. We both need to think.”

  Alto is already descending the ladder, almost falling in his hurry to get away.

  McAvoy reaches over for the nearest urn. He holds it in his palm like a bear with a honey pot, looking into its depths as if it contains answers.

  He wants to call home. Wants to ring Pharaoh. Wants to be told what to do.

  Instead, he lifts his cell phone and begins snapping pictures of the names on the tree, the urns at his feet, and the candles that burn like dying suns.

  And all the while he yearns to be disturbed, to be interrupted by a creature whose actions reek of evil and despair.

  TWENTY-ONE

  6:18 P.M., THE PINK PUG, LUDLOW STREET,

  Lower East Side

  McAvoy has taken care to position himself as far away from the large mirror on the bare brick wall as he can. He is horribly aware that he looks as though he has been recently excavated. Dirt and dust cling to his clothes, and despite washing his hands and face continually in the restroom, he feels that a miasma of soil and pulverized bone still encases his skin. He has found a table at the rear of the small, stylish bar and wedged himself into the angle created by two walls. Nobody can approach him from behind. From where he sits, peering over his laptop, he can see the entirety of the Pink Pug. The vantage point offers him some comfort. He hates the thought of people laughing behind his back, but at least from here he can see their sniggers unimpeded. He does not begrudge them their smiles. He knows how he looks—this huge, dirt-streaked, red-haired behemoth who whispers into his computer and sips a cocktail from a coconut shell p
acked so full with straws, umbrellas, and sparklers that it is less a beverage and more of a cry for help.

  McAvoy stares at the computer screen and listens to the sounds of the dozen or so drinkers and diners who are knocking back tequila slammers or nibbling on olives, cheeses, and meats presented on planks of wood. It’s a fun bar and painfully cool. The barman flips bottles and shakes cocktails with the grace of a circus juggler. He wears a stripy shirt without a collar, round glasses, and a bowler hat. The ends of his mustache have been waxed into little tips. Here, on the Lower East Side, he is the absolute pinnacle of sophistication. McAvoy cannot help but think that back home, in Hull, the man would be found in a wheelie bin with a cocktail shaker wedged somewhere invasive.

  “It’s never simple with you, is it,” says Pharaoh, suddenly filling the screen. “‘A few days off,’ that’s what you said. ‘Going to see if I can track down my brother-in-law,’ you said. I’ve checked my notes, Hector, and there was absolutely no mention of cremated remains in swanky loft apartments or lawyers cutting their balls off. I’d remember that sort of thing. I’ve got a good memory for balls.”

  Pharaoh drops her head and then gives him a little smile that means the world to him. He can tell she wishes she were with him, that she knows what he is going through and would give anything to help him feel less alone.

  “I didn’t want any of this,” says McAvoy quietly.

  “Shush. Sip your coconut and be quiet while I read through this lot.”

  McAvoy does as he is told and watches as Pharaoh leafs through a sheaf of documents. Her dark hair falls forward like curtains and he knows it will only be a second or two until she pushes it behind her ears. It will slip forward again in moments and she will blow it out of her eyes without thinking about it. Behind her is the familiar sight of the Serious and Organized Unit at Courtland Road Police Station in Hull. The computer that Pharaoh is using to talk to him is on McAvoy’s own desk, and he is experiencing the surreal and disembodied sensation of staring out from the screen at a location where he usually sits. When Pharaoh disappeared to go and pick up some documents from the printer, he had given Detective Constable Andy Daniells a nasty scare—Daniells walking past and seeing his sergeant’s motionless head and shoulders looming out from the screen. When McAvoy had muttered a “Hello, Andy,” the pleasant, corpulent young detective, who had elected to stay late and catch up on paperwork, had made a noise that McAvoy had previously associated with mating foxes.

  “I think the Yanks expect me to eat this when I’m finished with it,” says Pharaoh, looking up. “I thought we were all supposed to be friends these days. ‘Special relationship,’ isn’t that what Blair called it?”

  “They’re worried about jeopardizing an undercover operation,” says McAvoy, even though he has already told her this several times. “We’d be just the same.”

  Pharaoh shrugs. “He seemed okay, this Redding bloke. Sounded very New York.”

  “Of course he did,” says McAvoy. “He’s from New York. He probably thinks you sound very Mexborough.”

  “What did he make of your accent?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him,” says McAvoy.

  “And yet he’s calling your colleagues in little old Hull and risking his neck to share information with us,” says Pharaoh accusingly. “You do have a way with people. Why is he doing that, by the way? Just asking, you understand.”

  “Like I said, he’s friends with Ronnie Alto—the detective who’s been helping me. Alto and his colonel were the only ones at the Seventh who knew the feds had an operative in the Chechen organization. Alto has a good relationship with the Italians, and he was brought into the circle of trust when Brishen and Shay were attacked to see if he had anything he could share. When I turned up, he was the poor sod tasked with keeping me out of it and then making me go home. He feels bad at not telling me the truth. So he’s sticking his neck out and sharing information with me. Or at least with you.”

  Pharaoh shakes her head, licking her lips. “We’re all quite enjoying this, anyway. Ben has got a twenty-quid bet with Sophie Kirkland that you’re going to be deported by Monday afternoon.”

  “What does Sophie say?”

  “Monday morning,” says Pharaoh distractedly as she looks again at the information Detective Hugh Redding sent her at Alto’s request. She looks up at him and her expression softens. “I know that a big part of you wanted to keep this all to yourself. I appreciate the fact you asked for help.”

  “Keep it to myself?” asks McAvoy.

  “Not for the glory, Hector, not anything like that. I just know you’d want to shoulder it all, like it’s all your responsibility. It’s not. You were right to share.”

  McAvoy looks away. She knows him too well. As he stood at the lip of the loft and stared at that landscape of earth and ash, something inside him felt a personal connection to the scene. It evoked something intangible, some hazy sense that it had been laid out just for him. It was a vista that held an undeniable power. Almost an allure. McAvoy wanted to thrust his hand into that damp soil. The desire had been close to overwhelming. It took self-control not to disturb the scene. Much as he wanted to cross the floor and take detailed notes of all the names on the brass leaves, he knew to do that would leave footprints that could betray his presence. He wanted to lift the urns and the cardboard boxes and examine each for identifiers that could help him make sense of his discovery. But such action would be detected. So McAvoy did what he could. He took pictures from the doorway and then scurried back down the ladder and out into the light. He made sure not to leave footprints and as he closed the door behind him, he felt as though he were shutting something inside. It was only as he emerged onto the cold, snow-blown street that he realized he had been sweating so profusely that his clothes were clinging to his skin. The cold air caused the perspiration to turn to ice, and he was soon shivering so badly that he struggled to key in the right buttons on his cell phone. Any thoughts he had of keeping his discovery secret disappeared the moment he heard Pharaoh’s voice. He told her what he had found. She listened, and told him what to do. He did as he was ordered. Got himself something to eat and sent her all the images from his phone. He sent a text message to Alto and received two letters back in response: OK.

  For the past couple of hours McAvoy has been trying to make sense of his thoughts, while back home Pharaoh and Ben Neilsen have been ignoring the lateness of the hour to sift through the pictures and try to find a pattern amid the different names. Half an hour ago, Redding e-mailed Molony’s psychiatric history to Pharaoh and told her that McAvoy had helped his buddy catch a serial date rapist and would never have to buy a drink in his town ever again. McAvoy would have taken more comfort in the prediction if he had not been spending $12 on a Tropical Scream.

  “You’ve got that look on your face,” says McAvoy, turning his attention back to the screen. “You look like you’ve got the scent in your nostrils.”

  “Are you calling me a hunting dog?”

  “No, you know what I mean. You’ve got something.”

  “Hector, if I handed this report to one of the ladies in the canteen, they would be able to see that this is not a guy you would want babysitting. It’s interesting reading, that’s for sure.”

  “Well?”

  Pharaoh looks at the paperwork again. “We’ve got a lot of stuff here. It worries me how much stuff we’ve got, if I’m honest. I don’t even know if these records would have been digitized as a matter of course. Alto was right when he said he only scratched the surface. How much do you trust him, Hector? He got close to this guy and then the next minute he was ordered off and the whole thing was dropped. And then next thing he’s trying to tie your own bumbling investigation into something that’s been eating away at him. Sounds fucking fishy, my lad. I know they do things differently but you don’t become a cop unless you want to lock up bad people. Am I being horribly naïve?” She stops, an
d appears to file the thought away for further analysis when she has the time. “Point is, he might be a corrupt lawyer or a money launderer but this is something else. Why’s he got a room of ashes in his loft? Why is Ronnie not there right now with squad cars raiding the damn place?”

  McAvoy massages his hands. He has a headache at his temples and his eyes are stinging.

  “He’s using you,” says Pharaoh tactfully. “The feds—and I warn you, I feel like a prick just saying the phrase ‘the feds’—are going to go bananas at him for getting in the way of a bigger investigation, so he’s letting you be the fall guy. I thought it was all too easy, the way they agreed to help, the way they let you wander around like a bear at a model village. You heard what that cow said in the restaurant, the daft bitch with the purple hair and the tramp stamp on her arse. They’re letting you shake the tree to see what falls out. None of this feels right, and I can’t make up my mind whether to drag you home or buy a bucket of popcorn.”

  McAvoy sighs. He shares her misgivings but he knows that he has come too far to give up.

  “Whatever,” says Pharaoh, waving a hand. “But I warn you, there will be repercussions, and I only have so many aces up my sleeve.” She looks at her documents afresh and huffs her hair out of her eyes. She and Ben have been digging for only a short time, but already they have fleshed out the file that Alto had first shown McAvoy at the hospital. With his mind a whirl of different and conflicting theories, he is grateful to hear her read the details afresh.

  “Peter Molony,” she says musically in her best nursery rhyme voice. “Born October nineteen fifty-two. Only son of Orla and Conor Molony, who emigrated to the States from County Wexford in nineteen forty-nine. Dad was thirty years older than Mum. Already in his fifties by the time Peter came along. They lived in an area called Hell’s Kitchen, which is a place I’ve definitely heard of and which, from a marketing perspective, I’ve always thought of as a poor choice for a name. Anyway, Dad worked as a delivery driver for a brewery, Mum looked after her boy at home. Dad died in nineteen sixty-six, leaving Orla and Peter without a great deal of money. Death certificate said he suffered complications following a car accident. Mum remarried within eight months. Gianluca Bucco. I’m only guessing, but he sounds Italian . . .”