Taking Pity

by David Mark

  “Pharaoh’s got her hands full,” says Batty. “This shit with the new villains has gone national. She’s up and down to London every five minutes. Hard to tell if she’s making progress. Hard to see whether she needs to, to be honest. Ninety percent of the people these bastards hurt are bastards themselves. Let them get on with it, I say.”

  Ray shrugs again, not really caring what inroads Pharaoh has made. He reckons he’s doing better than she is, whatever she’s got.

  “You going to give me something useful, Phil?” he asks, turning back to his friend. “Tell me you’ve got a pretty picture for me.”

  Batty’s face falls a little. The news is not going to be good.

  “I’ve had two uniforms and one civilian checking every camera within three square miles,” he says, sounding put-upon. “You know how many lies I had to tell to requisition them? They played a blinder, though. Even called in some favors from the traffic lads.”

  “And?”

  “At that exact time, we saw eighteen separate individuals talking into mobile phones within the network of streets you asked for. Of those, ten were female. That leaves you with eight . . .”

  “I can do the fucking math, Phil.”

  “Of those, two were teenagers, which leaves you with six.”

  “Piss off.”

  “And here are the six.”

  Phil pulls an A4 page from his inside pocket, folded into quarters. He hands it to Ray, who looks at six blurry images. Men, phones held to their ears. A bloke in a tracksuit. An old boy outside a bookie’s. A security guard, outside the coroner’s court. A bloke leaning against the wall outside of Courts Bar on Land of Green Ginger, swigging from a bottle of milk. The Hull Daily Mail salesman in his booth at the bottom of Whitefriargate, a finger wedged in his ear. And the owner of the Manchester Arms on High Street, in animated conversation on a mobile while the delivery driver who brought the wrong wine sits on a beer barrel.

  “Any takers?” asks Batty.

  Ray sighs, crumpling his face. He can taste something vile at the back of his throat. Suddenly needs a cigarette and a pint.

  “Nobody fits.”

  “Shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, Col.”

  “Yes you should. These are just blokes, mate. I’m looking for somebody with swagger. Somebody who would piss me off and not worry about it.”

  Batty gives a little shrug. “I did my best, mate. I’m sorry if you were expecting more.”

  Ray turns away wordlessly. Watches a group of raindrops dribble together and trickle down the glass. He hadn’t known what to expect, but he had known what to hope for. He wanted a photo of a man in expensive clothes and sunglasses, smoking a cigar and smirking into a state-of-the-art mobile phone—preferably with his name and address embossed on a designer leather jacket.

  “Maybe for the best,” says Batty, making conversation. “You’re suspended, remember. Maybe best not to rock the boat. I’m sure you’ll be back at your desk in no time anyway. I mean, the lad’s dead. What can he do? You’re best just taking it easy. Kick your heels a bit. That’s what the tall lassie’s doing, I’d say. Brave girl, that one. Deserves a rest . . .”

  Ray coughs and swallows down the results. He’d forgotten about Detective Constable Helen Tremberg. Good lass. Quick brain. Hard worker. Nowt to do . . .

  “She match fit?” asks Ray. “I know she took a bad knock . . .”

  “She’s home, I know that much. Wasn’t in hospital as long as the jock. Malingerer, that one. How long’s he been on the sick now? Shouldn’t even be in the job after what he did to Roper. Give me five minutes in a room with him, that’s all. Christ, it was a scalpel he was stabbed with, not a samurai sword . . .”

  Ray isn’t listening. He waves a hand at Batty: his gesture of thanks. Then he lets himself out of the vehicle and steps back into the drizzle and the cold, gray air. He stamps away, heading for the Punch Bowl, passing the impressive Victorian frontage of the city hall. Posters for comedians he hasn’t heard of and operas he will never see are trapped behind the glass display posters nailed to the big gray walls. The only paving slabs in the city not to be turned mud-brown by the rain are those beneath the big balcony jutting out above the columns and double doors.

  Somebody has spat on the front wall.

  Ray pulls his old mobile from the recesses of his coat and scrolls through until he finds the number he is looking for. It doesn’t occur to him that she will say no. Doesn’t occur to him she may be traumatized and ill and too broken to start looking for the bastards who did this to her. She’s a copper, after all.

  She answers on the fourth ring; whispering and wary.

  “Helen,” he says, pushing his way into the warm embrace of the pub. “Got a little job for you . . .”

  • • •

  4:12 P.M. FLAMBOROUGH HEAD.

  Mahon’s feet sink into mud and sodden grass as he walks quickly along the cliff top. He’s leaving footprints and is quite enjoying it. The rain will come again soon and remove all trace he was here. He is free to make an impression. Free to enjoy the salt and spray of the ocean. Free to accept the screams of the whirling seagulls and the lash of a gale which cuts to the bone.

  Mahon is making for the lighthouse. Hasn’t seen the place in years. Has pleasant enough memories of the last time he and the old man took a little time for themselves and popped down to this untamed and ragged stretch of coastline. Mahon had needed to have a word in the ear of a couple of likely lads who had held up the local boozer after hours. They hadn’t known that the landlord had friends. Hadn’t known just what was coming after them. That must have been ten years ago, at least. Mr. Nock was still pretty nimble. Still had it all upstairs. Had even managed to squat down to help clean up the mess without needing help to stand back up again.

  Mahon pauses and admires the view. Squints through the driving rain at the distant exclamation mark of the lighthouse and wonders whether he should carry on to his destination or turn around now. He’s left Mr. Nock on his own. Has to think of his own physical limitations. He’s going to need his strength in the coming days. Has to eat and sleep and save what he’s got left. He’s feeling his age. Feeling a pressure on his chest and noticing the odd bit of blood in his piss. His good eye aches after too much close reading, and sometimes when he coughs he finds himself vomiting something ghastly and brown. He can’t take unnecessary risks with himself. Mr. Nock likes to tell him he’s invincible and laughs whenever Mahon tells him his fingers are aching or his back is playing up. As far as Mr. Nock is concerned, Mahon remains the scariest and most brutal bastard he has ever met. And he has met them all.

  Mahon turns to the ocean. The sea, beyond the cliffs and the shingly, oil-streaked strip of beach, seems to have been drawn in muddy gray, then striped with the frothy white chaos of rolling waves. Nobody would take a picture of this scene and put it on a postcard, but there is a kind of rugged, wild beauty to it that Mahon enjoys. He looks through the amber filter of his ruined eye and surveys the ocean. Stares down at the jagged limestone and quartz-seamed boulders of the cliff. Remembers. Pictures his first meeting with the man who would become his benefactor and his friend, his keeper and confidant. Looks inside himself at the memory of a young man. Twenty-something and formidable. Polished and dangerous.

  Mahon sees . . .

  The cell door opening and a young man standing in the green light of the hall, a pocket of dark inside the frame of the door. A half smile on his face, as though he’s the best-dressed guest at a cocktail party. Dark hair slicked back, and clean-shaven. Prison overalls somehow cut to look like a designer suit. Slipping the screw a few notes, as if he’s a bellhop at a posh hotel. Peeking in, at the creature on the lower bunk. Thinking. Nodding. Extending a hand, rigid as steel, smooth as silk. Clasping Mahon’s shovel of a fist in his.

  “Nock,” he’d said. “Francis Nock.”

  And so it h
ad begun. More than fifty years later, Mahon remains loyal and irreplaceable. He remains the reason that Francis Nock lives and that he hasn’t seen the inside of a prison cell in decades. Together, they have ruled the North East from the shadows. They have stayed in business while partners and rivals have gotten caught and died. Nock is in his eighties now but has managed to get old without losing any of the drive or ambition that first won him his empire. He’s not an imposing physical specimen anymore, and there are times when his mind seems to wander, but Mr. Nock looks like nobody’s sweet old granddad. He took care of Lloyd personally. Pulled the trigger with a liver-spotted hand and didn’t blink as the blood sprayed on his face. Sat there with a cup of tea while Mahon bled the body and cut it up. Took himself to bed and slept eight hours; got up to a breakfast of toast and marmalade, then let his pretty, black-skinned nurse run him a bath and tug him off. He’s still the boss. Still the man who holds Mahon’s collar. They have been friends for more than half a century but Mahon is still a little afraid of his employer. Still can’t look him in the eye without experiencing a chill. It’s just the certainty of Mr. Nock that unnerves him. All his life Mr. Nock has believed himself to be right. Believed himself entitled. Believed himself within his rights to take what he wants and end lives with a nod. Mahon cannot fathom what made Lloyd embrace disloyalty. He would have liked to have asked him. Would have liked to have hurt him until he knew every last detail. But Mr. Nock had been too busy shooting Lloyd in the face to ask questions.

  Pleased as he is to be away from the North East for a few days, Mahon is mildly disquieted by the chain of events that has disrupted his routine. He has had to deal with many interlopers and threats during his years beside Mr. Nock, but there is something too calculated and disciplined about the new organization that has so many of his outfit’s allies and competitors running scared. Mahon has seen pretty much every type of criminal organization over the years. The Headhunters are a new breed. They seem unencumbered by the kind of petty territorialism that has undone so many crime families and syndicates. They do not trouble themselves with boundary disputes or staffing issues. They simply take over existing firms. They come in at the top, promise resources and rewards, and demand that those in command bow down, or end up nailed to their own knees. Those who fight back, lose. In those cases, underlings are approached with a similar offer. Eventually, they find somebody willing to play along. It is a merciless, brutal, and very corporate way of running a criminal enterprise and Mahon half admires them for it. In another couple of years he imagines they will be running the North East in Mr. Nock’s place. But for as long as the old man is alive, it is Mahon’s duty to protect what he owns.

  Mahon turns his back on the lighthouse and heads the way he has come; walking in his own bootprints and obscuring his own tracks. He hasn’t been gone too long. Mr. Nock will be happy enough. He’ll be sitting where Mahon left him, drinking tea and watching the waves, lost in memories and schemes. He lives inside his own head. Doesn’t watch TV or read books. Just sits and thinks with that little half smile on his face, as though he is listening to a radio show playing in his head. He’s doing it more of late. There are moments when he almost seems to have disappeared from himself. There are times his body looks like an empty suit. Sometimes he’ll mutter a sentence from a conversation he had twenty years ago. Sometimes he’ll take an extra couple of seconds to remember where he is. Mahon worries that such incidents are signs of old age, but as soon as he gets himself together, Mr. Nock is quick to reassure him.

  Never been fitter, Raymond. Never felt more alive.

  It was Mahon’s decision to get Mr. Nock away for a time. He has been left perturbed by Mahon’s interrogation of the man who turned Lloyd’s head. The man held on for a long time before giving up the information Mahon had pressed him for. And Mahon has no doubts that the organization will be displeased to have lost somebody who is clearly a key player. He has no doubts they will come for Mr. Nock. It will be easier to persuade some ambitious young lad from Newcastle to represent them if the specter of Mr. Nock has already been removed. Mahon is not afraid of the people who will come, but there are other matters that require his attention and he doesn’t trust anybody to look after Mr. Nock in his absence. So he has brought the old man with him. Here. To this wild, ragged bit of coastline with its screaming gulls and feasting puffins and clouds of kittiwakes. Here, where gannets drop as stones into water the color of earth.

  They are perhaps an hour from Hull.

  A little farther from the church that Mahon hasn’t seen since he was handsome.

  Winestead, he thinks to himself as he traipses back along the cliff top. Then under his breath: “Flash Bloody Harry.”

  Mahon has had decades upon which to think of that night. Remembers every second of it. The snow. The gunsmoke. The wet branches that slapped his face as he made his way through the woods. The sight of the girl’s pretty, delicate foot in the gravel and the broken bones. The way the skull disintegrated in a tornado of shot and stones.

  That night cost him dear. Cost him his looks. Changed him, inside and out. He’d known his decision would come at a price. He simply hadn’t known how high.

  “Y’all right?” says Mahon in greeting to a woman walking a little terrier and who is trying to maneuver herself out of the way of the big, lumbering man in sunglasses and a scarf. “Not much of a day for it.”

  The woman is in her seventies and seems as nervous as the shivering creature that leaves muddy paw prints on her legs as it leaps up and asks to be carried.

  “We get worse,” she says, trying to be conversational. “Sea air’s good for you, apparently. I like it when it’s bracing.”

  Mahon gives her a nod and moves past her. Doesn’t look at her too closely. He knows that he unnerves people. Frightens them, even. He doesn’t want to frighten her. She seems pleasant enough. He doesn’t like to cause displeasure to people who don’t deserve it, though he would happily cut her head off with a big fucking knife if Mr. Nock insisted. Mr. Nock used to mock him for his scruples. Would call him a soft shite and roll his eyes. But he indulged his monster his conscience. Used to give some of the less palatable jobs to loyal men who didn’t share Mahon’s peculiar code of ethics. Mahon wishes that had been the case in 1966.

  It was always going to end in bloodshed, of course. Mr. Nock was an established name. He had the area sewn up. He’d greased the right palms and broken the right skulls and ran the city in a way that everybody could tolerate. He didn’t need extra muscle or men from London with big ideas. He should have said no. Should have done what the papers said he did and seen them off at the station when they dared set foot on his turf. But Mr. Nock had liked the brothers. Liked their London swagger and the way their men responded to them. He offered a hand of friendship and extended the freedoms of the city to the two tall, dark-haired Cockneys who had such big plans. It had been fine, at first. No areas of conflict. No ill feelings. Sometimes the brothers would send a couple of men north to assist Mr. Nock with a job that required an unfamiliar face. Sometimes that favor would be returned. It was all fucking peachy, for a while. Then one of the brothers had lost the plot. Took an insult personally and put a man in the ground. Started himself a war with another London gang. It all got out of hand. Bullets, and blades, and pigs growing fat on flesh and bone. The brothers had reached out. Asked Mr. Nock to provide a safe haven for one of their boys. A good boy, who needed to keep his head down for a while. And Mr. Nock had agreed. Handed the job of keeping his guest happy over to the new boy, Flash Harry.

  Savile Row suits and Mr. Fish ties.

  Ruffle-fronted shirts and a lacquered pompadour.

  A dandy, with pretty-boy looks and eyes like a dead fish.

  The young lad whom Mr. Nock wanted to groom for the future and who hid the fact he was a psychopath right up until he stuck a knife in the London boy’s guts and ripped it up to his throat.

  The man whose mess Mahon
is still cleaning up, all these years later.

  Tomorrow, Mahon will go and say hello to an old copper he hasn’t seen in years. He’ll make sure that memories remain hazy and lips remain sealed. If necessary, he’ll close them forever and open a new mouth in the man’s throat. He won’t take Mr. Nock. He’ll leave him to enjoy the sea air and the view. Let him listen to the radio show in his head and leave him a note with the times to take his pills.

  Mahon will do what he has always done. He’ll take care of it. Then he’ll take Mr. Nock home and prepare for what the Headhunters have planned.

  Giving the sigh of a tired old man, Mahon lets himself into the tiny, one-bedroom chalet that clings to the rain-pummeled, wind-scarred cliff. He shouts a hello to his employer and goes into the kitchen to make tea. As the kettle boils, he pulls a phone from his pocket. It belonged to a slick piece of work who is still dying, hundreds of miles away, on Mahon’s living room floor. The device is too complicated for him. It does things he thinks of as positively science fiction. But he knows how to read the messages it contains. Knows a code when he sees one. And he can press the play button in the video messages.

  He wonders who the girl is.

  She’s pretty. Dark-haired and tan. Has a gypsy look about her. Hoops at her ears and gold at her throat. There’s a sadness in her eyes, despite the red-haired, big-eyed baby that she holds in her arms: rocking gently, from side to side—framed in the window of some ugly apartment in a city Mahon doesn’t recognize.

  He wonders idly what she has done to become the focus of the Headhunters’ attention.

  Hopes that, if he watches the video enough times, he will eventually see her eyes fill with something other than loss.

  Mahon fancies that the girl must be beautiful when she laughs.