Taking Pity

by David Mark

  McAvoy chides himself for his lack of compassion. Fears, for a second, that he is becoming everything he hates.

  Gets his brain in gear. Turns his thoughts to the survivor, Vaughn.

  Vaughn was nineteen at the time of his family’s slaughter. Almost certainly still alive. Definitely entitled to know what could be happening to the man who killed his family.

  A sudden commotion in the treetops causes McAvoy to look up, startled. Two magpies are fighting with a crow in the topmost branches of the evergreen to his right. It is an unpleasant sound; all cawing and flapping feathers and falling leaves. McAvoy suddenly feels he has seen enough. He had half entertained the notion of walking deeper into the woodland at the back of the church, but the ground looks soggy and difficult to navigate and he is suddenly aware of just how very alone he feels. He wishes Pharaoh was here, to crack jokes and connect him to the world. He senses that without her he will eventually disappear into an internal world of corpses and memories. He wants to call her. Tell her that he has begun. Wants to run some initial ideas past her. Wants to ask if she can spare a detective constable or one of her civilian workers for half a day to track down witnesses from 1966 and put him in touch with Vaughn. Wants to hear her voice.

  McAvoy turns away from the landscape where four people lost their lives. The birds still squawk and flap and shake the branches as he walks back up the footpath to the gate. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel. Doesn’t know if he should phone the vicar and ask to take a look inside. Services are still held here twice a month. Every couple of weeks, a handful of parishioners gather within its thick walls and shiver in its cold, half-dark embrace. The font has been there since the twelfth century. Andrew Marvell was baptized within. It was erected when this part of Holderness was an important entry point to Britain and it has watched as the sea has nibbled the coastline and moved inland by inches. McAvoy doubts its embrace will bring him comfort. Nor will it help him better understand what occurred here.

  The gate squeaks on stone as McAvoy leaves the churchyard. He takes a deep breath, his feet on muddy earth, his hands on the bonnet of the car. He imagines how PC Glass must have felt. Imagines this place in the darkness. Wonders if he would have kept his nerve and his head with moonlight and snow slashing patterns in a graveyard full of blood.

  He climbs back into the car. Rests his head on the steering wheel. He feels cold. Soaked through, even though there is only a light veneer of rain upon his coat. He reminds himself what he has been tasked with. He has to check that things were done right. Has to check there are no embarrassing gaps in the established narrative. Peter Coles was here. He killed a family of four. And he admitted it.

  McAvoy nods as he turns the key in the ignition. He has to keep it simple. Has to do what he has been asked and not let his gut take him in some unhelpful direction. He has always been a methodical, disciplined policeman. He takes the rule book seriously and can quote official guidelines the way religious zealots can quote Scripture. He knows that it would be unhelpful to start reinterviewing witnesses when they gave statements nearly fifty years ago and are no doubt in their dotage now. And yet, he feels a need to reach out and touch these events from long ago. Policing was different then. Forensic sciences were limited. There was no DNA. Fingerprint analysis was a difficult and laborious process. He cannot help but think that something may have been missed. Already he feels himself forming a picture of Peter Coles. Instinctively, he feels compassion for the boy. These days, he would have been under supervision. Social workers would be watching. There would be pills and counseling to help him better fit into the world. He would be kept a long way from shotguns. Then McAvoy thinks of the Winn family. Two adults and two teens, shot to death and left for the crows. He doesn’t yet understand this crime. Needs to get a sense of what it did to this tiny community. Needs to hear real memories and look into eyes that once looked upon a scene of slaughter.

  He needs to talk to Vaughn. To PC John Glass. To the villagers who told investigators that Peter Coles was always trouble.

  McAvoy comes to a decision. He has not been tasked with reopening the investigation—just making sure that it’s watertight. He has been specifically told to be as low-key as possible. Media attention would be embarrassing for all concerned.

  But to find justice for the dead, he has to give a damn about those who died. And to do that, he has to understand them.

  The minivan does a complicated, wet-wheeled U-turn on the patch of grass that will be rich with snowdrops before Christmas. It bounces up the track and through the gap in the hedge.

  He heads toward the coast, knowing, despite himself, that he is about to start making waves.

  FIVE

  “WHAT IF HE RUNS?”

  Pharaoh looks at her pudgy, round-faced companion as sauce drips from his sausage sandwich onto the patch of hairy belly that winks from between the buttons of his pale blue shirt.

  “Then I should imagine he’ll get away, Constable.”

  Detective Constable Andy Daniells considers this and drops his head in anticipation of a telling-off.

  “I should have got the sandwich on the way back, shouldn’t I?”

  Pharaoh shrugs. “Doubt it would have made much difference. I don’t think you’re built for speed.”

  “Used to be,” says Daniells conversationally. “Four-hundred-meter hurdles. Was quite good at school.”

  “Yeah? Did they let you use a horse?”

  Pharaoh and Daniells are traipsing across the wet grass of East Park. The rain has eased to a drizzle and there are patches of blue peeking out from behind the low, concrete sky. To many, this is the heart of Hull. During the days of the trawling industry, East Hull provided the men and women who worked the docks and made a living from fish processing. The west of the city provided the trawlermen. It has seen hardship but maintains a sense of pride and community with a more pronounced local accent than across the river. Every o is an ur. The joke goes that, in East Hull, parents tell their children to “just say nur.”

  During the summer, East Park swarms with families. The city council spent a few million on it a few years back. Put in a miniature zoo and a swing park. Dredged the lake and bought a few rowing boats and pedalos. Scrubbed the graffiti off the stone walls and dotted the well-tended lawns with outdoor exercise equipment. Even built a little water park, though that seems to have attracted more geese than people. Despite fears that teens from the nearby estates would smash up the swings and abuse the wallabies, it’s actually become one of the council’s badges of honor. People like East Park. It’s a happy place. The circus comes twice a year and there’s a carnival in the summer. The occasional drug addict still turns up dead in the bushes, but nowhere’s perfect.

  “First time I came to Hull, my old boss brought me here,” says Pharaoh, who was born and raised in the little town of Mexborough in South Yorkshire and has never spent enough time in Hull to appreciate its dubious charms. “That was before they did it up. Some skinheads had taken to chucking anglers in the lake. Can’t remember why I was here but I tagged along with Tom. Weird job, it were. Happened every Sunday morning, so these poor bastards told us. They’d come down to cast their rods in this grotty puddle of rubbish and rainwater. Then the skinheads would come down and chuck the anglers in. Then they’d climb out and go back to their fishing. Was happening regular as clockwork. I couldn’t work out why the anglers kept coming back. They said they had every right to, and the skinheads were the ones in the wrong. I agreed. Just didn’t understand why they kept coming back. Said it was because they always did this on a Sunday. Couldn’t get their heads around doing something else.”

  Daniells looks at his boss, waiting for more. “And what happened?”

  “Can’t remember,” Pharaoh says. “I think the fun went out of it for the skinheads. I do remember we had to arrest some old bloke for trying to steal a duck for the Christmas dinner.”


  “Seriously?”

  “Honestly. Local sergeant said it was a problem every December. Families who were struggling to afford a bird for the table used to pop down to East Park with a carrier bag and nab something juicy.”

  Daniells creases his round, merry face into a laugh. “That still go on?”

  “Dunno,” says Pharaoh. “I reckon there will be one or two nippers sitting down to wallaby and chips this Christmas. Oh, hold up, lad, there he is . . .”

  Bruno Fa’amasino is known by all as Bruno Pharmacy. His Samoan surname was not designed with the Hull dialect in mind and the nickname he now goes by is appropriate, given his lengthy criminal record. He’s served two terms for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply, and another for grievous bodily harm. The crimes he’s been sent down for barely scratch the surface of his true criminal history. He’s become a significant player this past year. Graduated from the petty shit into a better class of scum. And it’s easy to see why he would seem an appealing prospect to any criminal enterprise looking to recruit muscle. He’s a big man. Came to Yorkshire from his native Samoa when he was still a teenager. Had a brother who played rugby for the Castleford Tigers. Got in with a crowd that liked being associated with a big, flat-faced bruiser with tattooed shins and shoulders. It didn’t take him long to get a liking for steroids. Took him a little while to start paying for his own addiction by selling other types of pills. And by his mid-twenties he looked after a good chunk of the Hull drugs trade. After a few stretches inside, he came to the attention of the Headhunters. Oversaw the transfer of the crown by bringing a dumbbell down on the head of his old friend and boss. And became number two to the slick little shit who blew up Aector McAvoy’s house.

  “He’s going to go on about harassment, isn’t he?” asks Daniells acceptingly.

  “I hope so, lad,” says Pharaoh, raising a hand in greeting. “We are harassing him. I’m enjoying it. How about you?”

  For the past few months, Pharaoh has been making Bruno’s life as miserable as she can. His prints were found at McAvoy’s house and all over the burned-out taxi office that used to be his boss’s base of operations. She can’t make anything stick, and the Crown Prosecution Service are being their usual unhelpful selves, so she is contenting herself with spoiling his every peaceful moment. Her team is doing its bit to make him unhappy. Even Detective Inspector Sharon Archer is playing ball. She spent a month undercover, flirting with Bruno and wearing more perfume than clothes. Got him on tape showing off about his connections, but she had her cover blown before she could get anything concrete out of him. Pharaoh doesn’t know how far Archer would have been willing to go for a collar, but has her suspicions. She doesn’t like the girl but can’t argue with her results. Were she to give as much of a shit about people as she did about her arrest record, she’d be a superb police officer. As it is, Pharaoh can’t imagine a world in which she and Archer don’t someday come to blows. Pharaoh’s looking forward to it, as are most of the men in the station.

  Bruno is busy grunting away on one of the pieces of bright yellow exercise equipment rammed into a large rectangle of cushioned asphalt. His big arm muscles are greasy with sweat as they poke out from beneath a sleeveless, hooded top. He’s doing chin-ups and pulling a face like an angry rodent as he pushes himself hard.

  “Afternoon, big boy,” says Pharaoh, leaning herself against one-half of a set of parallel bars. “Your fly’s undone.”

  Bruno drops to the ground. Takes a look at his visitors. Shakes his head. Swallows, like there’s dog shit under his tongue.

  “You can fuck off,” he says, waving with an arm like a farmer telling kids to get off his land. “This is harassment.”

  Pharaoh pulls a cigarette from her handbag and lights it with deliberate slowness. She doesn’t speak until her words are wreathed in smoke.

  “Yes, Bruno. It is.”

  The pair of them glare at each other. It was the same in the interview room. Pharaoh pushed the big man’s buttons brilliantly. Got him to explode so often there was a risk they would need to repaint the room. But he stuck to his story. Kept telling his lies. Pissed all over Roisin McAvoy’s name and walked out of the station a free man.

  “You know you’ve got nothing,” he says, wiping a big hand over a bigger face.

  “Doesn’t look like you’ve got much yourself. Struggling to get a gym membership, are you?”

  The barb seems to cut him. Bruno may have expected to slide onto the throne vacated by his boss’s demise but the Headhunters seem to have cut him loose. The taxi office he ran was torched within twenty-three hours of the blast at McAvoy’s home, and the team of Eastern European drivers and drugs couriers he ran had scattered and vanished. Bruno is the only member of Adam Downey’s old crew still on the scene. He’s got nowhere to go. His movements are still restricted by the terms of his last probation agreement and he owns a house in East Hull that nobody seems keen to buy. He’s adrift. Pharaoh has seen to it that he’s lonely. None of the gyms he used to frequent want the trouble that comes with having him as a member. Every pub where he begins to drink is soon raided by uniformed officers acting on information received. He can’t find straight employment. Every girl he meets soon gets a phone call warning them he’s a nonce. Life is getting unbearable for Bruno Pharmacy. And Pharaoh is proud to be the architect.

  “You’re tremendously loyal, Bruno. Considering.”

  “Fuck you, Pharaoh.”

  “Just saying, son. You’re being a good soldier. You’re staying true to your personal code of ethics. I like that. But they’ve moved on, matey. They’ve forgotten you. I want to forget you, as well. But you won’t give me anything. You keep telling lies. You’ve got every policeman in the city pissed off and talking about you. You can make it all better, Bruno. Just talk to me. Make me happy. Make your own life that little bit less shit.”

  Bruno turns away from her. Like all steroid addicts he has difficulty controlling his temper. Difficulty behaving himself at all. An ex-girlfriend told Pharaoh that he got his kicks by putting her in “sleeper holds.” Used to grab her around the throat while she was reading magazines and squeeze her into unconsciousness, just to make himself laugh.

  “You haven’t got a clue, love,” says Bruno, reaching down and taking a towel from a sports bag. “No fucking clue.”

  Pharaoh and Daniells share a look. These little jousts have become a part of their lives. This is what they do. They give him little jabs in the chest and shoves in the back. Despite what she has told the assistant chief constable and Breslin’s symposium, they don’t know much more about the Headhunters now than they did when they first learned about them a year ago. The organization still controls the cannabis production. Bruno’s old team sewed up the cocaine route pretty damn efficiently before the explosion at McAvoy’s place brought them more heat than they could handle, and they shut up shop. Pharaoh doesn’t doubt they have solved those problems now. The Headhunters will have fitted a new face. An ambitious young thing and some hired muscle will be making good money. Bruno is out of the loop. But he knows more than he is letting on. And the lies he told about Roisin McAvoy mean he cannot be allowed to slide away.

  “Was it their idea?” asks Pharaoh. “What you said about Roisin and her friend? Their little giggle, was it?”

  Bruno turns and spits on the grass at her feet. Then he treats her to a wide grin, full of genuine glee.

  “I just told you the truth, Pharaoh. Like you wanted. Me and Adam and a couple of the lads met that gypsy lass and her mate in a bar. She asked us back. We had a good time with them both and left it at that. She’s the one couldn’t take it for what it was. Got obsessed with my mate, she did. Texting him, turning up at his house. Said her husband was a loser. Limp-dicked ginger prick. Wanted a repeat performance. She must have pushed Adam too far. Threatened him. I don’t know how it ended up bringing the house down, but she was the one who caused the pro
blems. Some bitches just can’t be cool about stuff though, can they? Can’t enjoy the moment. That’s her. You should tell me where she is, really. I’d like to send her some flowers. See if she’s okay. Pass on my condolences about her mate. Horrible way to go, eh? Poor lass. Nice tits, she had. Bit weird to think of them flying across the room . . .”

  Pharaoh has spent her career knowing when to let her temper out and when to hold it in. Right now she just gives Bruno a little wink and grinds her cigarette out in the little pool of his spit.

  “You’re on borrowed time, Bruno. Borrowed time.”

  He snorts and pushes past her, stomping away over the wet ground in the direction of the main road.

  “I thought you were going to hit him, guv,” Daniells says regretfully. “Prick, isn’t he? Those things he was saying about Mrs. McAvoy. Christ, does the sarge know?”

  Pharaoh turns her cold eyes on the young constable. “He knows what I tell him, Constable. If he knows everybody’s talking about Roisin like this, he’ll either fall to pieces or kill everybody in Hull, and neither of those things are going to help the crime statistics, so let’s just keep doing what we’re doing.”

  Daniells watches Bruno as he disappears through the park gates. Then he pulls his radio from the pocket of his jacket and, with grease-stained fingers, releases a burst of static into the cold, damp air.

  “Ben, he’s moving.”

  Pharaoh rolls her head on her neck and wonders whether it would be against a specific guideline for her to ask Daniells to massage her shoulders. The train journey yesterday has left her with aching bones, and she spent last night asleep on the sofa with her neck wedged at a painful angle. She’d had no reason to go to bed. Has not had a warm body to press herself against since the colossal stroke that left her husband unintelligible and bed-bound; a living ghost in their converted front room.