A Bad Death: A DS McAvoy Short Story

by David Mark

  ‘Don’t mind the blood at your feet,’ says Roper, conversationally. ‘I’ve used this place a lot. You might find this funny but until a week or so ago there was a copper chained up just where you’re squatting. He’s moved on now. New place, new pleasures. He’s not the man he once was. Didn’t even tell me to fuck myself as I hurt him. But keep that to yourself, eh? There’ll be merry hell to pay if the missus finds out.’

  The implement in Roper’s hand is an antique butcher’s hook. Despite its age, there is no rust upon the metal. It was created to help abattoir workers and slaughtermen move large carcasses and the point of the hook is not particularly sharp. It was not designed to thrash human skin. But Roper is a man who spots potential.

  He brings the weapon down, hard.

  Takes comfort in the sounds of screaming, until the screaming ceases and there is just the thud, thud, thud of metal on meat.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The caretaker of the apartment block is a jittery, sixty-something man with acne scars so bad that McAvoy wonders whether he occasionally loses his razor while shaving. His name is Alan and he is making so much noise with the ring of keys that he may as well be shaking a tambourine.

  ‘It’s OK, sir. Please. Let me.’

  ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it,’ says Alan, and his top row of false teeth slides forward in his mouth like a baking tray being pulled from an oven. He drops the keys as he raises his hand to his mouth, making a noise like an animal being trodden on. McAvoy gives an understanding nod and retrieves the keys.

  It’s mid-afternoon on a dry, blustery Thursday, and on this estate of modern houses and tasteful flats, the men and women who seek entry to number 4B are in no mood for further delay.

  ‘It’s fine, sir. You’ve been a huge help.’

  Ben Neilsen steps forward and takes the caretaker gently by the forearm. He leads him towards the doorway of the neighbouring apartment block.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ says the caretaker, softly. ‘Do you think I’d have let it go on if I’d known?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ says Ben. ‘Nobody’s suggesting you did.’

  ‘She seems such a nice woman. Do you think she knows?’

  ‘Leave it to us, sir.’

  McAvoy identifies the correct fob and holds it to the sensor on the keypad. The door unlocks and he eases it open. He turns to the team of officers and tries to assemble his features into something encouraging. Looking at the unit, he realises he does not need to. They are ready for this. At the briefing, Pharaoh was honest with them all. She understood their desire to kick the living shit out of the men inside the apartment. She felt a similar urge herself. But a conviction was the important thing and they could not take any procedural risks. That being said, if anybody within the property looked like making a break for it, and their exit route should happen to lead down a flight of stairs, Pharaoh would not have a problem with them twisting an ankle or bumping their head a little on their way down the steps.

  McAvoy breathes in. The lobby smells of other people’s cooking. Something spicy perhaps. It did not take the Serious and Organised Unit long to put the operation together. With the assistance of the Technical Support Unit and a DCI from Vice, a warrant was signed that allowed technical staff to listen in to calls made on Michael Bee’s landline. Forensic officers have visited each of the empty properties registered to his partner’s portfolio. DC Sophie Kirkland and a PC seconded from Community Support have been trailing the former working girl identified by Ronnie as responsible for sourcing and grooming the pre-teens that Michael Bee has found so much more profitable than his stable of hookers.

  McAvoy leads the way. There is no lift in the building and the adrenalin squeezing his lungs makes him feel light headed as he slogs up four flights of stairs. Flat 4B is straight ahead of him. To McAvoy’s rear, a sergeant from Tactical Support is holding the long metal battering ram that the officers cheerfully refer to as a ‘love hammer’. At McAvoy’s nod, he plants himself in front of the door and waits for the order.

  ‘In place, guv,’ McAvoy whispers into the radio mic on the front of his stab-vest.

  ‘Make them sorry, Hector. Go, go, go.’

  The door smashes inwards and the sergeant stands aside to allow McAvoy and the team to thunder into the flat.

  ‘Humberside Police,’ shouts McAvoy, pushing down the corridor and into an L-shaped living room. ‘This is a raid.’

  He stops short and feels Ben Neilsen thud into the back of him. Neilsen rights himself and takes two quick steps into the room. He, too, stops at what he sees.

  The light in the room is unnatural. The curtains are drawn across the big rectangular windows and the room is lit by a large yellow spotlight. The sofa has been pushed back to create a space in front of the electric fire for an inflatable mattress. The bed is covered in soft toys. The pillows and quilt have a Hello Kitty cover. On the bed is an elderly man wearing a black leather mask. It has a zip for the mouth and mesh over the eyeholes, a muzzle at the front and ears stitched on to give it the look of a dog’s head. On the sofa sit three more men, naked except for bath towels. Each wears a different mask. The man on the blow-up bed is trying to cover his nakedness without exposing the tiny pink feet of the girl he is trying to hide.

  McAvoy absorbs the scene. Hears Pharaoh’s voice through his earpiece and struggles to identify words in among the rage and static of his thoughts.

  ‘Private party,’ says Michael Bee. He is sitting at the far end of the room, wearing headphones and looking at a laptop screen. ‘You can all get out of my fucking house.’

  Bee stands up. As he does so, he nudges the laptop and for an instant McAvoy gets a glimpse of a dozen different men. They fill the screen like playing cards. Young, old, white, black, fat, thin. Each are in states of undress, and each has paid a premium to log on to this live streaming site and offer the perverts in the room suggestions on what to do. McAvoy feels faint. Sees animal faces and grey hair, bare feet and tiny eyes, and feels an anger that threatens to shatter him.

  ‘You fucking sick . . .’

  Behind him, McAvoy hears the words give way to a sound of pure, unpolluted rage.

  He snaps to himself again. Sticks out an arm and stops Sophie Kirkland, who has produced her extendable baton and clearly plans to smash it down upon these men until there is nothing left.

  Bee approaches the group of officers and blocks McAvoy’s view of the small, pink feet with the chipped nail polish. ‘You can all fuck off.’ He stands in front of McAvoy, jaw locked. ‘She’s just having a nice day with her uncles,’ he spits, spraying McAvoy’s face. ‘She’ll tell you as much.’

  McAvoy flicks his hand and the officers move forward; their body language speaking of their desperate wish to hurt the men in this room. As Bee protests, McAvoy’s team start grabbing the men and pulling them towards the exit. All the while, McAvoy stands still, all but nose to nose with the bald, piggy-eyed man who made this happen.

  McAvoy tries to look into the very soul of Michael Bee. Wants to understand the heart of this man who started off by streaming sex shows for prisoners. Then he pimped his girls to prisoners on day release. Then he saw the profit in paedophiles. When Erskine cleaned out the Ponderosa, he started using his partner’s empty houses for his shows. Today he’s using his own home. He will do hard time, this time. He’ll be on the wing with the nonces. He’ll have to check every meal for piss and ground glass.

  ‘Ask her,’ hisses Bee. ‘You won’t make anything stick . . .’

  From McAvoy’s lapel comes a sudden burst of static. Then Trish Pharaoh’s voice fills his world. She’s watching the operation from the control room, looking into the apartment through the camera mounted on McAvoy’s shoulder.

  ‘Show me,’ she says, and McAvoy pushes past Bee. Ignores the man on the bed. Pulls down the quilt and looks into the brown eyes of a child. She’s no more than eleven. The bruises on her chin are in the shape of fingers and thumb.

  McAvoy feels a sudden s
hove in the back. He turns and Bee is squaring up to him, hands in fists. He’s almost vibrating with his desire to do bloody violence.

  ‘An ambulance,’ says McAvoy, softly, into his lapel. ‘Send the social worker up.’

  ‘She’s fucking fine!’ spits Bee. ‘It’s a private party . . .’

  ‘Hector, he’s resisting arrest.’

  For a fraction of a heartbeat, McAvoy considers taking the swing. He could hit Bee just below the hinge of his jaw and knock his entire chin two inches sideways. But the girl on the bed does not need to see such things. Here, now, he just wants for none of this to have happened.

  ‘Cuff him and read him his rights,’ says McAvoy, his eyes fixed on Bee’s. ‘Then take him down the stairs. Be careful, though. He looks like he wants to run.’

  Ben Neilsen moves forward from the throng of officers hovering in the doorway. To the sound of curses and threats, the cuffs snap over Bee’s meaty arms with a satisfying click. Ben hauls him upright and McAvoy steps in front of him, almost nose to nose. He’s trembling, as if wielding a pneumatic drill. He is holding his jaw so tight that the join between two molars is seamed with blood. He can taste it, rich and foul and energising: somehow magnetic.

  ‘You’re not even one of them,’ says McAvoy, in little more than a whisper. ‘You don’t get off on kids. You did this for money. You put yourself in a room with people like this for money.’

  ‘Good money,’ snarls Bee, trying to sneer. ‘You want to know what we’ve made . . .?’

  ‘We?’ asks McAvoy, voice hoarse, throat closed. ‘You and Kinchie? Well, you won’t get to spend your half, or his. Metropolitan Police found what was left of him on a railway line in Bermondsey. He was beaten to death with a meat hook. Pathologist says it took a long time. He wasn’t a paedophile either. He was a kid who knew how to use computers and told you how the dark half of the internet worked. And you bought his soul. He’s dead, but I hope to Christ that whatever happened to him in those last hours is a party compared to what your conscience does to you for the next twenty years.’

  McAvoy turns away and reaches out for something to lean on as the pressure in his head surges like the tide.

  Ben drags Bee through the throng of officers milling in the doorway, straining to catch McAvoy’s words. They look at the man who made this happen, and at McAvoy, the man who stopped it. He is too consumed by the crimson and dark to acknowledge the warmth in their eyes.

  ‘You should have fucking hit him,’ says Pharaoh, in his ear.

  McAvoy ignores her. Bends back down to the girl. He wants to stroke her blond hair and show her that not all men are bad. He resists. He couldn’t stand to see her flinch from his touch as if he were anything like those men.

  ‘Arrest them,’ he says, to the team. ‘Arrest the lot of them.’

  There is the distant sound of a large man falling down a flight of stairs with his hands behind his back. None of the officers allow themselves to smile.

  McAvoy surveys the men on the sofa. Their animal masks and naked torsos make them seem more ludicrous than monstrous.

  ‘Don’t let them change,’ he says. ‘Take them out just like that. And when you go past any reporters, say their names nice and clearly.’

  Pharaoh’s chuckle is loud enough for all to hear.

  McAvoy does not join in. He is staring at nothing and listening to the sound of his own blood thundering against the inside of his skull like fists on stone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On paper and above the door, the pub is called the Queen’s Arms. To locals and the staff of HMP Bull Sands, it’s Old Don’s: named in honour of the publican who took it on in his seventies and died while changing a barrel of cask ale aged ninety-one. To the inmates, it has come to be known as the Starting Blocks. It is the first watering hole on the journey to freedom and could turn a profit just on the money spent by released prisoners. It sits two miles from the main gates of the jail and a further two miles from the outskirts of Mablethorpe. It’s little more than a large cottage, with walls the colour of buttermilk and a sloping roof of shabby red tiles. Hanging baskets dangle from wrought-iron gutters, and in autumn peonies and gardenias flourish in the wooden window boxes. The wooden shutters that bookend the windows are painted a jolly red to match the front door and the blackboard by the porch proudly declares that the All-Day Breakfast is available from 12 noon until 2 p.m.

  Owen feels the warming coolness of Guinness flood into his belly. He has not had a pint for four years. Prior to his incarceration, he was a borderline alcoholic. He downed a bottle of half-decent Irish whiskey every couple of days and needed a couple of pints of the black by mid-morning. On the inside, accessing alcohol wasn’t difficult but Owen needed his wits at their sharpest. In drink, he might have given in to the beatings and told Roper’s underlings where to find the memory card. He might have mentioned the security guard at Hull Crown Court. So, he endured the shivers and sweats and the crippling stabs of pain from his liver and kidneys and within a few weeks he no longer craved alcohol.

  He craves it now.

  It is Christmas Eve and Owen Swainson is a free man. The parole hearing was sudden. It took fewer than five minutes. At 3 p.m. the previous day he learned that he was to be released early for good behaviour. He was told to pack his possessions and report to the Sentence Management Unit. The goodbyes from the officers were cursory and professional. His few friends told him to be careful and to put as many miles as he could between himself and the prison.

  Owen raises the beer to his lips again. Takes another pleasant, deep swallow. Puts the glass down on the bar and looks around him. Save for himself and the barman, the pub is completely deserted. He has time to examine it at his leisure. It’s an attractive place; all wooden timbers and horse brasses, varnished wood and old, spindle-limbed tables and stools. Owen would have spent a lot of time in here, back when he was a reporter. Could have happily spent a day in here with Tony Halthwaite, getting pissed and chatting up the bar staff and leaving with his notebook stuffed full of sellable tales. Owen has often wondered why he wasn’t suspicious of Tony. He never made any attempt to hide his unpleasantness. He was cruel and venomous in the things he said about women and he would go to any lengths to sabotage his competitors. But he and Owen got on. Owen has spent a lot of difficult nights wondering what that says about him.

  ‘Looks like that was a long time coming,’ says the barman, as he polishes the brass handle of a pump.

  ‘Four years,’ says Owen.

  ‘All up the road?’

  ‘No. Harder time than that.’

  ‘Hope it hit the spot, then.’

  ‘After four years I’d drink battery acid if it came in a pint glass.’

  ‘We haven’t got that one on the menu. I’ll see if we can get it as a guest ale in the summer.’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be here by then.’

  The statement has two meanings. Whatever happens, he’ll be long gone by summer. The more important question is whether he will still be alive.

  ‘You got plans, then?’ asks the barman.

  Owen considers him. He’s late forties. Grey hair. Thin but muscly. Frameless glasses and white patches on his forearms where tattoos have been removed.

  ‘I start work on January second,’ says Owen. ‘Warehouse work.’

  ‘Near here?’

  ‘North Yorkshire. Near Northallerton.’

  ‘Near the prison?’

  ‘No doubt. They’ve got a good relationship with the company, apparently. Job came up, I was put in the hat. We’ll see how it goes.’

  ‘Got a place to live?’

  ‘Halfway house. Hostel, sort of thing.’

  ‘Should be OK.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘What were you before, then? If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘I was a journalist,’ says Owen, and it sounds like a guilty confession.

  ‘You gonna write a book, then? Jeffrey Archer did and it was a bestseller.’

&
nbsp; ‘I’m not sure anybody would be interested.’

  The barman looks at Owen with a half-smile.

  ‘What did you do, then?’

  Owen finishes his pint. Nods for another. ‘I did nothing when I should have done something. Four years seems quite lenient in comparison.’

  The barman starts pulling his pint. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  Owen half-turns away. The drink is making him feel a little blurry around the edges. He was panting when he pushed open the door and ordered his first drink. He walked briskly, almost at a jog, throwing endless glances over his shoulders while flat green fields stretched away in both directions like a blanket laid upon the earth. He helped work that land. He and Will. He wonders whether the cabbages will deliver the yield the foreman predicted. The cauliflower crop was clearly a disaster. As he walked from the prison gates he saw sheep chewing the leaves off the failed crop. He found himself laughing at the sight, a nervous, delirious noise. It looked as though the sheep, with their bushy white coats, were trying to camouflage themselves against the cauliflowers. It made him giggle, then the giggle gave way to tears. He has held himself together for so long that when the tears came they threatened to become a torrent. This wasn’t how he imagined gaining his freedom. He always thought there would be somebody there to meet him, that he would be able to go to something that qualified as ‘home’. But he has no family left and nowhere to make for. He has only the money he earned on the inside, which will pay for little more than a bus and a train and a few pints of Guinness. Survival has been his goal these past four years. Now the greater challenge begins. He knows he has only been freed so his murder can happen outside prison grounds. He doubts he will see the morning. He is drinking so he’s numb when the bullet comes. Drinking so his death doesn’t hurt.

  ‘This one’s on me,’ says the barman, and Owen turns back to him.