Taking Pity

by David Mark

  That thought makes him contort his face afresh. Pictures his friend Shaz Archer. She’s been riding his coattails for years and he has enjoyed her company all the way. She’s from money. From good stock. She’s good-looking, fashionable, and sexy as hell, though Ray has never entertained the notion of bedding her. He cares for her. Thinks she could make a good cop. Admires her tenacity and willingness to do whatever it takes to get ahead—even if that means undoing a couple of extra buttons on her blouse while interviewing reluctant witnesses. But she’s let him down during his suspension. Fallen in love with some slick bastard she hasn’t even had the courtesy to introduce him to. Left him lonely and ignored while she has been throwing her legs over her shoulders and making pretty eyes at some ponce from London. Silly cow should know better. She’s got a case of her own that could be the making of her. Lorry driver, stabbed to death while on remand at Hull nick. She’d even known the prick. Had interviewed him months ago while the Headhunters were in the ascendancy and got nothing more for her trouble than a cup of piss to the face. His status as prison hero didn’t last long. Within six weeks, he’d had his throat cut with a sharpened phone card and been left to bleed out in the urinals.

  Colin watches the street. Tops up his wine and takes a sip. Wipes his nose with a knuckle and wonders why the fuck he still bothers to put on a tie when the most exciting thing he will do today is go to the market for a couple of slices of cold meat and a six-pack of beer . . .

  His phone rings. He doesn’t hear it at first. It doesn’t ring very often, so he barely recognizes the tone. Finally, he pulls the old-fashioned, coffin-shaped phone from his trouser pocket. It’s from a withheld number. He holds his breath. Reaches into his pocket for the battered old pocket tape recorder. Begins recording even before he answers. Wonders. Sneers . . .

  “Col Ray,” he says, settling back into his chair and putting the electronic cigarette to his lips.

  “Well, hello, Detective Chief Inspector.”

  It’s a voice Colin Ray last heard months ago. It’s accentless but refined. Posh without giving much away. It belongs to a man whom Colin Ray has spoken to twice before. The first time it contained promises, and then threats. The second, it adopted a superior, mocking tone, and goaded him into taking a key chain to a drug dealer in the cells. Some people call him Mr. Mouthpiece, but Colin files him under the mental heading of “Gobshite.”

  “Well, I never,” says Colin, scratching his armpit with the edge of a laminated menu. “I was just thinking about you. I had dog shit on my shoe, you see, and my mind wandered . . .”

  “Excellent, Detective Chief Inspector,” the man says in reply. “I’m pleased to see you have lost none of your spirit. That’s commendable and remarkable, considering the sorry state of your life. You would think, would you not, that if your colleagues really wanted you back they would have resolved the uncertainties surrounding your suspension. One would have expected you to be back at your desk, making a nuisance of yourself, and providing me with the occasional, albeit almost infinitesimal, problem.”

  “I’ve missed you,” says Ray, blowing out a tiny puff of smoke. “I knew you’d ring, like. Knew that eventually you’d have to have your say. I hear things are going well for you. Branching out. ‘Expanding,’ I believe is the word you would use. Hope you’re staying on top of things, son. You must be having to recruit faster than you did in the beginning. You sure no bad apples are slipping in? I’m not fishing around for information, you understand. I’m being conversational. Truth is, I’ve heard the rumors. A lot of people have. You’ve made some mistakes, eh? Recruited some right dangerous bastards. You can’t keep a shark on a leash, you know that, don’t you? Comes as no surprise to a tolerable old twat like me. That’s villains for you. Bad lads want to do things their own way. Nobody wants to take their orders from some invisible prick at the end of the phone. Charlie’s Angels was a long time ago, mate. People like face-to-face these days.”

  After a spell, Mr. Mouthpiece speaks again. There is an edge to his voice that Ray has not heard before.

  “There are no problems within my organization, whatever you may have heard. Any business enterprise suffers from the occasional recruitment miscalculation, but I assure you and your colleagues that steps are being taken to remove those obstacles.”

  Ray sits forward. He had been stabbing in the dark. Had not expected to hit a nerve.

  “That’s the thing with villains, mate—they’re not to be trusted.”

  “I did not ring you to discuss the structure of my organization,” says Mr. Mouthpiece sharply. “I rang because I have been informed of the pitiable picture you currently present and wondered if you might at last see the good sense in receiving a regular stipend from my associates in exchange for occasional helpful behavior and information. I hate to think of you sitting there in your shabby clothes, eating a fried breakfast, drinking wine, barking at the poor barman for trying to do his job . . .”

  Ray looks around him. Takes in the sea of average men and women. Looks at tabletops covered with crisps packets, empty glasses, and the occasional mobile phone.

  “You’re watching me?”

  “We watch everything, Detective Chief Inspector. A lot of thought has gone into this operation. We are expanding at precisely the speed we had planned. And as I have always tried to explain to your accommodating colleagues, we do not plan on being here forever. We are a temporary migraine for your officers. Simply look in the other direction for a while and soon you can go back to catching the imbeciles and thugs who have run organized crime so ineffectually for so long.”

  “Who you got watching me?” asks Ray, temper flaring. “There’s nobody in here would fucking dare . . .”

  Mr. Mouthpiece gives a little laugh. As he speaks again, the faint sound of a siren drifts from the phone.

  “Can I presume then that whatever I say to you, you will persist in being obstinate? You will continue to bumble on with your shambolic existence just because you find the nature of my operation so distasteful? Have I not been a better friend than an enemy? I have done what I can to keep bloodshed to a minimum. I have always kept my word. I have brought you good headlines, and though you may not know it, I am actively taking steps to keep one of your number from serious harm. I would expect a little gratitude.”

  “Expect away. I just think you’re a knob.”

  Mr. Mouthpiece’s next words are drowned out as an ambulance turns right onto Lowgate and whizzes past the window. Colin freezes in his seat. He heard that siren a few seconds ago, coming from the phone. It had passed Mr. Mouthpiece.

  Fuck, he’s somewhere nearby!

  Ray hears the line go dead. Realizes that Gobshite, that most cautious of men, has just fucked up.

  Ray plays back the recording. He’s been waiting for that call for three months. Been carrying around a tape recorder like a fucking journalist ever since he spoke to the oily bastard and realized that a tape recording of his voice would be a hell of a good bit of evidence if it ever came to court.

  He takes a huge sniff and swallows the last of his wine. Wipes a smear of egg from the tabletop and sucks his finger thoughtfully. He’s too old and knackered to start running around the block looking for suspicious characters. But the city center cameras may do the job for him. And he knows a man who owes him a favor.

  As Colin Ray begins scrolling through his phone for a number he should know by heart, he finds himself beginning to feel like a policeman. More than that, he begins to feel like a man who just got a little closer to revenge.

  • • •

  MIDMORNING. HEADING EAST.

  Through the city and past the docks. Past the prison and the neighboring cemetery; the open graves of countless boarded-up factories. Past the abandoned shops and the burned-out taxi office. Past secondhand cars being flogged for cash behind chain-link fences and chipboard signs. Past the ferry terminal; the towers of the great
vessels looming like shark fins above the cargo containers.

  McAvoy presses east, through towns and villages that cling to this wild, flat, tongue of dirt. Through uncultivated fields and straggly patches of still-farmed land. Through air the color of smoke and a listless rain that falls ceaselessly onto this torpid, half-deserted world.

  Hedon.

  Keyingham.

  Ottringham.

  On the right, the sign to Sunk Island. McAvoy remembers reading about it when he moved here. Remembers being fascinated by the tiny hamlet that emerged as a large sandbank from the River Humber a few centuries before and which caused maps of the coastline to be redrawn.

  On. Toward the coast. Toward dead seaside towns and villages that are slipping into the sea.

  Toward a church where a family was killed by a boy they had never felt reason to fear.

  McAvoy misses the gap in the hedge the first time he drives past it. Finds himself on the edge of Patrington and knows he’s gone too far. Turns around in the car park of a pub and heads back down the winding road. Spots the church through a gap in the high privet and swings the vehicle left onto a muddy, rutted track.

  McAvoy winces as the car jolts in and out of the deep grooves that other people’s tires have left in the sodden grass. Pulls up outside a white-painted gate and switches the engine off.

  Takes in the view.

  St. Germain’s Church is nestled in a grove of trees, some hundred yards from the main road. It’s a tiny, towerless construction: two rectangles of old stone and stained glass surrounded by a low wall. To the right of his vantage point, an empty, grassed-over field stretches away toward the main road. The rear of the church is shielded by a straggle of denser woodland.

  McAvoy kills the engine and gets out of the car.

  The first thing he notices is the silence. A light rain still falls and the wind plays with the tails of his coat, but besides the rustling of the trees he can hear almost nothing. He strains his ears for the sound of passing traffic or the chatter of agricultural workers in the nearby farmland. Can’t hear a damn thing. Just the low whistle of a harsh wind, breaking around the stone statues and gravestones that dot the church grounds.

  He lays his hand on the flaking paint of the gate and enters the grounds.

  Despite the solitude, it does not strike McAvoy as an eerie location. It seems quite peaceful. The gravestones in this churchyard stretch back centuries. A vast tomb stands immediately to McAvoy’s left; all black railings and angular blocks of stone. Around it, headstones jut at random angles from the spongy, deep green grass. As he walks along the short, overgrown path, McAvoy sees a tall gray angel looking down at him; face serene and shiny with rain. It stands atop a square slab and seems to survey the grounds with an air of timeless ownership. It has been here for at least two centuries. Those gray eyes witnessed the events McAvoy has come here to excavate and explore. They have seen gravestones sunk into black mud and watched soil patter down on coffin lids. They have watched grief in all its forms. Seen mourners come and go. Seen the bereaved lose interest in pulling up daffodils and weeds to then honor their loved ones with handpicked blooms. Seen the living forget the men and women beneath the ground. Seen grave markers turn green. Seen headstones crumble. Slip. Fall.

  McAvoy walks to the rear of the church, past newer, shinier headstones decorated with the odd bouquet of half-dead flowers and the occasional sad teddy bear, saturated and rotting among shingle and dirt.

  This is where it happened.

  Here, at the rear of the church.

  This is where they were found.

  McAvoy takes his notepad from his pocket and reacquaints himself with the names and timeline he jotted down in perfect shorthand as he sat squinting at the computer screen. Looks at the little map he copied from the photographs in the file. Looks, with soft eyes, at the little crosses he has drawn on the map of the graveyard, and the four corresponding names.

  Nods.

  Puts the notepad away.

  Listens to the nothingness.

  Tries to picture what happened here.

  On the night of March 29, 1966, Police Constable John Glass was alerted in Patrington to shots having been fired from the church grounds in nearby Winestead. He had presumed that this was a troublesome young man from a nearby farm cottage whom he had spoken to before about using firearms without supervision. PC Glass and a resident of Patrington drove to the scene. It was dark and beginning to snow. A short time later, PC Glass found the first body. Soon, he discovered three more. He had also found Peter Coles, sitting on a gravestone, cradling a shotgun, and mumbling about how sorry he was. Glass had arrested the lad and instructed his companion to drive to the nearest telephone and alert his superiors. Uniformed officers and a team of CID men from Beverley Police were at the scene within the hour. By morning, Peter Coles had been charged. Following his initial statement to PC Glass, he did not speak again. A search of the house he shared with his grandmother led to some unsettling discoveries. A notebook beneath his bed was filled with scribbled fantasies about the pretty, blond teen whose face he had just blown off with a shotgun. A search of an outbuilding revealed a cache of underwear he had stolen from his neighbors’ washing lines. A series of interviews with nearby villagers revealed that Peter Coles had always been a peculiar, unhinged kind of boy whose mother had left him when he was just a toddler and who had been brought up by his grandmother in one of the cottages belonging to the nearby manor house. The manor house and the surrounding farmland had been owned and operated by local businessman Clarence Winn. And Peter Coles had just killed Clarence Winn; his wife, Evelyn; his son Stephen; and his daughter, Anastasia. Only the eldest son, Vaughn, had survived the massacre, having left a day earlier to return to the North East, where he was working. Vaughn later provided identification of his mother’s and father’s bodies. His brother and sister were too disfigured by the shotgun blasts for him to be allowed to see them.

  After being remanded into custody at York Crown Court, Peter Coles was quickly declared mentally unfit to stand trial. He was sent to an institution in Shropshire. He has been in mental hospitals ever since.

  McAvoy pulls on the stubble beneath his lip and breathes deep. He looks around him at the attractive, peaceful scene. He finds it hard to picture what occurred here. In front of him is the low, mossed-over gravestone upon which Peter Coles had sat and confessed. To his right is the sloping patch of grass where Clarence Winn was found with a hole the size of a pumpkin blasted from his back to his front.

  Why had they been here? What had they been doing at this remote spot on a hushed, snow-filled night?

  McAvoy opens his notepad again. Refreshes his memory. Flicks through the pages and pulls a face. He returns to the car and opens up the laptop, accessing the files of saved witness statements and photographs. He has only just dipped a toe into the investigation and already he feels that the info he has been sent is a little thin for a case of this size. Things seem to be missing. There are gaps. Entire witness statements seem to have vanished from the files. And the numbers for the evidence log are blurred and indecipherable. McAvoy senses he is going to go to bed tonight with a headache.

  Slowly, reading as he goes, he returns to the rear of the church.

  According to witnesses, Clarence was in the habit of taking a walk each night with his pet spaniel, Digger. Sometimes his wife would accompany him. On this night, his children had clearly decided to come, too. This was rare, but not unheard of. Stephen was sixteen years old; his sister two years younger. Still young enough to enjoy their parents’ company and the thrill of a walk in the moonlight. And unlucky enough to stumble upon a deranged young man with a shotgun, out taking potshots at passing airplanes.

  McAvoy leans back against the church wall. Lets his eyes slide shut and tries to see it. A family, wrapped up against the cold. Laughing. Sharing stories. Missing the older brother, who had just sa
id his good-byes. Bumping into a dangerous, excitable boy holding raw power in his hands. Had they spoken? Were there pleasantries exchanged before he raised the shotgun and blasted Anastasia Winn in the face from a couple of feet away? Certainly the family knew him well. He had been raised alongside the oldest boy, Vaughn. Had been friends with him during their adolescence. Had even worked occasional shifts as a laborer on the farm and was a regular visitor to the manor house, where his grandmother would pop in most mornings for a cup of tea with Evelyn. There had been no bad blood between them. Clarence had even defended Peter to PC Glass when the boy had gotten in trouble for using his shotgun on the church grounds. Had that been the tipping point? Had Coles feared getting into trouble for letting down Mr. Winn? Winn was a big man. Had he threatened the boy with a slap for being silly? Or had the sight of Anastasia set off something primal in the boy? Had the throbbing steel of the gun in his hands chimed in his troubled mind with the soft flesh visible between Anastasia’s knee socks and her skirt? Had he simply wanted her?

  There were plenty of theories and each was put to Peter Coles as he sat in the police interview room. But he kept his mouth shut. Whimpered once or twice, but refused to say another word.

  McAvoy realizes he does not know enough about the victims to be able to feel anything other than a vague, ephemeral kind of pity for them. He wants to know them. To understand them. To feel them as individuals. As people. He looks at the laptop again and tries to find something in the witness statements that will help him get a sense of who they were. They have been dead so long, he briefly wonders if there is any benefit to any of this. The boy’s grandmother is dead. The manor house has since been sold and redeveloped. The cottage where Coles lived has been bulldozed to make way for a grain silo. The blood has long since sunk into the grass in the churchyard. There are no bullet holes in the stone. Time has healed this place. The bodies have been laid to rest two miles away in the grounds of St. Patrick’s Church in Patrington.