Taking Pity

by David Mark

  Despite her fury, Pharaoh cannot help but let her expression change as her thoughts turn to McAvoy. He and Fin had turned up at the hospital not long after six p.m. Pharaoh had heard his footsteps in the corridor and gone out to meet him. She hadn’t meant to cry on the phone and certainly hadn’t meant to dissolve into a puddle of snot and tears when she saw him. But it had happened anyway. She wept against him as he folded his arms around her and rested his chin upon the top of her head.

  She stubs out the cigarette and comes to a stop against the wall of the boarded-up pub.

  Roisin’s contact details had been stored in Tom Spink’s mobile phone. So had the address where she was staying in South Yorkshire. So had the notes from his breakfast meeting with Pharaoh; not to mention the list of properties belonging to Francis Nock that had been taken from the passenger seat. Pharaoh knows she has fucked up. Desperation made her incautious. She’d thought she could push the boundaries without them splintering. Thought she could manipulate the Headhunters without repercussions. They must have known she would edit the list. Must have known she would send her old boss and friend to make inquiries on her behalf. They’d simply made sure she understood how things worked. They were in charge. They took what they wanted. When persuasion didn’t work, they used force. And they had friends in patrol cars who were willing to help them beat a sixty-four-year-old man unrecognizable.

  Pharaoh had wanted to tell McAvoy everything. Wanted to tell him where Roisin has been these past weeks. Wanted to jump in her car with him and Fin and race to Sheffield to reunite the great hopeless lump and his bloody perfect little wife. She might have done, too, had the call not come in.

  Scowling, scrunching up her face, Pharaoh takes Bruno Pharmacy’s phone from her handbag and listens to the message that was left on the voicemail service as she sat in the canteen with McAvoy and halfheartedly listened to what he had been doing out at the woods and some shit about an underground bunker and a charity bin bag scam. She hadn’t been paying attention. Had been too busy texting the blokes in the forensics unit and warning them what would happen if they didn’t analyze the nails that had been removed from Tom’s feet before the morning.

  Pharaoh listens to the message again. Feels her heart squeeze.

  “Detective Superintendent. I had rather hoped we could talk properly, but I presume you are otherwise engaged, attending to your friend and confidant. Let me express my deep regret. I do not expect you to believe me, but it is important to me that I inform you we had given no instruction for the harming of Mr. Spink. We are restructuring our organization at present and some of the less reliable members of the workforce will soon be seeking new employment, or worse. I hope you appreciate that this is a sincere apology. As a demonstration of good faith, I will continue to personally ensure that Mrs. McAvoy is kept free from harm until such time as alternative arrangements can be made. I believe that the address in Sheffield has been compromised following today’s unfortunate business. Truly, I hope you appreciate that the vision we had for our organization does not correspond with some of our more recent indiscretions—”

  Pharaoh had hung up so hard that she’d snapped a nail. The bastards had known all along. Her well-spoken contact had kept Roisin’s whereabouts private, but there are others within the Headhunters who wish her harm. Pharaoh bites again at the fat of her thumb. Tastes her own sweat and sniffs the nicotine on her fingers. It’s clear the Headhunters are splintering. The organization may have started as a small collection of pragmatic individuals, but they have had to recruit muscle that is not respecting the rules. And somebody is refusing to play nicely. For whatever reason, they want Roisin. And Pharaoh has no idea where to put her.

  Pharaoh leans back against the damp brick of the pub. Used to be famous around the world, this place. The Earl De Grey. Known in every port on the planet as the seediest of dives and the place to go meet an accommodating lady. Had a cage in which varicose-veined grannies danced in bustiers and boas. Had quite the transvestite clientele, and on cold nights, one cubicle in the male toilets needed a revolving door for the punters to take their turns with whichever hooker the landlady had allowed to conduct her business in a slightly warmer environment. Used to be a couple of parrots on a perch in the eighties. One of them got stabbed by a burglar who feared it would reveal his identity. The other died of a broken heart and was buried under Clive Sullivan Way. Pharaoh had simply shaken her head when she’d heard that story. Added another entry to her list of reasons to think of Hull as a seriously weird place.

  As she stands and watches the clouds change shape in the black sky, Pharaoh suddenly feels bone-tired. She should be at home. But she’s standing in the cold, resting her back against a boarded-up brothel, chewing her tongue over her failures and lashing herself for not knowing what to do next.

  Pharaoh breathes in. Holds it. Pushes it out slowly. Repeats the process until she feels a modicum of calm. She decides not to let go of the rage. Just folds it up and stores it with the rest. A picture is starting to form in her head. It reminds her of an old portable TV with the circular aerials that could only pick up a picture when they were held at certain angles. The static in her mind is forming into something clear.

  She pulls out her phone. Calls for a patrol car to take her back to her vehicle. Wonders if there is anywhere between here and home that might serve fried chicken and red wine.

  Dials another number. Waits for the sound of a gruff Scottish accent to say a soft hello.

  Hopes, above all things, that she was right to contact this man she doesn’t know, and to ask him to take on a responsibility that could cost him his life.

  • • •

  “THAT RELEVANT, you think?”

  Colin Ray nods in the direction of the jeweler’s across the street. Helen squints and makes out the name of the shop.

  “McAvoy and Beardsmore? I doubt it. Just one of those things.”

  “Fucker’s everywhere,” says Ray, though there is no real malice in it. “I keep expecting to find him in the mirror behind me, looking all sad and heroic.”

  “Is that how you see him?” asks Helen, turning in her seat.

  Ray shrugs. “Don’t think about him much. I know he hits hard, I’ll tell you that. And chicks fucking love him.”

  Helen turns away. She winds the window down another inch and feels the cold evening air turn the sweat on her brow into a chilly veneer.

  They are sitting in Ray’s Saab 9-5 on Oakbrook Road in Sheffield. It’s a nice cosmopolitan area with delicatessens that sell tubs of olives, anchovies, and sun-dried tomatoes to people who spend their weeks browsing antique fairs and helping to organize art exhibitions in churches and community centers. Helen likes it. They are little more than an hour from Hull and still very much in Yorkshire, but the East Coast seems half a world away. There was even some blue in the sky as they made the drive over, though the evening has drawn in quickly and the blue-black air beyond the glass contains a fine mist that soaks to the bone.

  “This is her neck of the woods, isn’t it?” asks Ray, spooning up the last of his lamb bhuna with the edge of a CD case. He licks greasy sauce off Bruce Springsteen’s back then chucks the case onto the backseat. He pulls out his cigarettes and begins to puff, contentedly.

  “Her, sir?”

  “Pharaoh. She’s South Yorkshire.”

  “I think so. Mexborough.”

  “Brian Blessed’s from there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Always liked him.”

  Helen doesn’t know what to say. Gives a well-intentioned nod. “Good.”

  They have been here for more than an hour. The car smells of curry, cigarettes, and Colin Ray. Helen is used to the company of her male officers and is resisting the temptation to reach into her handbag and start spraying her surroundings with something floral. She contents herself with sticking her nose next to the gap between window and roof, inhaling
fresh air like a dog.

  “Somewhere nearby,” says Ray, nodding at the laptop on Helen’s knees. “Within a hundred yards. Fuck.”

  Helen is keeping an eye on Piers Fordham’s location. His car is parked a little way up the road. It’s a black Audi; immaculately clean and with a state-of-the-art sound system. According to the data that Dan from Tech Support is feeding her laptop, Piers’s office mobile phone is inside it. At some point he will have to return to the car and Colin Ray can get a proper look at the man he wants to hurt like no other. All they can do is wait.

  “Makes you wonder why we miss it,” says Helen moodily. “All the waiting. Sitting about.”

  “Never got used to it myself, love. Always tried to find a quicker way, that’s my problem.” Ray sounds oddly confessional. He must hear it in his own voice and quickly switches back to a more aggressive and sneery tone. “Would be worse with the Flying Scotsman in the back though, eh? Bloody hell, we’d have his legs sticking out the front windows.”

  Helen’s phone beeps and she looks at the message she has received from Dan.

  “Dan’s ready for home,” she says, sighing. “He’s going to leave the system on for us, but wants me to know that if he gets into trouble he’s blaming it all on you.”

  “I signed the forms, didn’t I?”

  “You’re suspended. Only a superintendent can request that a mobile phone be pinged for a location. And even then it’s up to the phone company.”

  “Yeah, but they played ball. And besides, I did sign it as a superintendent. Chief Superintendent Davey.”

  Helen looks at him for signs he is joking. Watches as he burps and enjoys the taste of curried lamb.

  “How are you still in a job?” she asks, aghast.

  “I’m owed a lot of favors,” he says. “And I know where the bodies are buried.”

  “I bet you bloody do.”

  They sit in silence for a time. The rain starts to come down more heavily and Ray switches on the windscreen wipers so as not to lose sight of the car up ahead. They are parked outside a nice old-fashioned property with a gable window and stone cladding. It’s part of a terrace that runs far down the hill and stops by a row of shops. The Indian restaurant was a welcome discovery in among the jewelers, hairdressers, florists, and delicatessens.

  “Hold up,” says Ray, sitting forward in his seat. “That’s the fucker.”

  The two detectives hold their breath and take in the short, plump man ahead of them. He has a big beard and a long cashmere coat that reaches almost to his ankles. He’s coming toward them, puffing on a cigarette.

  “Where did he come from?”

  “He must have got out of a car . . .”

  “Which car?”

  “I didn’t see!”

  “Fuck!”

  Piers Fordham stops at his Audi. He presses the button on his car keys and the headlights flash with subtle German precision, illuminating the columns of hard rain that are filling the gutters and forming puddles on the cracked road. He looks up. Scowls at the apartment above the gardening shop a few car lengths away. He gives a slow shake of his head. Climbs inside. Wipes the raindrops from his beard. A moment later, he is cruising back up the road, the sound of his car lost beneath the rain.

  “Do we follow, sir?”

  Ray is chewing his lower lip. “He must have come from a car.”

  “Sir, do we follow?”

  “We can find him again, yeah? On the tracker thing?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  Ray opens his car door. “Stay here.”

  Helen’s protests are lost as he steps out of the vehicle and into the rain. He inhales the South Yorkshire air. Expects steel and Brasso. Gets curry and wet grass.

  “Right, ya fucker . . .”

  Ray does a fine impression of a drunk. He begins to stagger. Looks up and lets the rain soak his skin. Giggles to himself. Totters and zigzags up the darkened road, bumping into parked cars and trying to free his hand from his pocket. In this manner it takes him a little under a minute to check the interiors of each vehicle parked in the street. He spots a Fiat 500 and barges into it, setting off the alarm. Suddenly the street is alive with noise and flashing lights.

  “Come on, son . . .”

  A little way ahead, a car door opens. It’s a nondescript vehicle. A Renault or a Vauxhall. Its driver is a thickset man. He’s wearing white sneakers, jeans, and a puffer jacket. He looks angry. Crosses to the pavement and approaches Ray.

  “What you fucking doing?” he asks as he comes closer.

  In his pocket, Ray switches on the tape recorder. The man’s accent is Eastern European. Russian, if he’s any judge.

  “You touch my car? You touch my car, I fucking kill you.”

  “Sorry, mate,” says Ray, slurring. “You Russian? Beautiful country. I met a Russian girl once. Dirty fucker. Probably your sister . . .”

  The man’s face twists and he lunges at Ray. Ray suddenly becomes very sober. He turns and twists at the hip and kicks his attacker beneath the kneecap with enough force to send him sprawling to the ground.

  “Back of the net,” says Ray, turning. “Now, I think that deserves a penalty kick . . .”

  He punts the fallen Russian in the ribs as he lies on the ground. A pocketknife tumbles from the man’s pocket and Ray grins evilly as he picks it up.

  “Carrying an offensive weapon? If I wasn’t suspended, you’d be fucked. As it is, I’ll just do this . . .”

  He unfolds the blade and crosses to the man’s car. He plunges the blade into the rear tire and looks on contentedly as air hisses out.

  “Your mate,” he says conversationally. “Piers. Lawyer, of sorts. I’d love to know more about him. Can I maybe borrow your phone and ask all your—”

  “That’ll do.”

  Ray turns around. He has his hand inside the man’s coat and his fingers around his mobile phone. He looks in the direction of the voice: clear and accented, despite the noise of the car alarm. A big man in a woolly jumper and a flat cap is leaning against the bonnet of a big 4×4. He has a gray mustache and a broad, weather-beaten face. He’s got a chest that convicts could crack rocks on. Behind him, a pretty, large-breasted girl with dark hair and too many earrings is holding a baby to her chest.

  “Police business,” says Ray offhandedly. “Go back inside.”

  “The police dinnae do business like that. I’d make yourself scarce if I was you.”

  Ray’s face twists into a sneer. “Jock, are you?”

  “No, lad. I’m a Scotsman.”

  “Good for you. Now fuck off back to Scotland.”

  “I can’t do that,” he says, walking forward. “I’m just that way. Now, I hate to use foul language in front of a bairn, but if I was you I’d piss off.”

  Ray considers his options. Realizes that doors are opening. Lights are going on. He’s caused too much of a scene. He pockets the man’s mobile phone. Holds the Scotsman’s stare and walks past him toward the waiting Saab. Helen is standing outside it, her phone in her hand; eyes wide and face pale.

  “Fucking jocks,” says Ray, slamming the door. “Pikey bitches.”

  Holding her phone to her chest, Helen winds down the window as they pull away from the curb in a squeal of rubber on wet road. They tear past the Russian’s parked car and see him clambering painfully into the passenger seat. The large Scotsman is fiddling with a child seat in the back of a large dark-colored car.

  Helen only locks eyes with the big man’s passenger for an instant but it is long enough for her heart to all but stop beating. She recognizes those blue eyes. That long, lustrous hair. The curve of the hips and the jewelry at her throat. Recognizes the baby against her breast.

  “Sir, I—”

  “Don’t say a word,” says Ray, spitting as he snaps at her. “Did she ring? Your swinger? Your slag? Suzie?�
��

  Helen can’t catch her breath. Her thoughts are reeling as the car screeches through unfamiliar streets and she looks through a windscreen fragmented by a billion raindrops.

  “She’s on now,” she says, light-headed. “Got the addresses of the sites he was looking at yesterday on the work computer. Some touristy stuff about Panama. The archives of the Newcastle Journal. A Google search on somebody called Mahon . . .”

  Helen lifts the phone to her ear again.

  “Suzie, yeah, that’s great. What else? BBC home page. News stuff. Science stories. A company in London. Some bigwigs in the city. And what? Personnel . . .”

  Helen closes her eyes as she hears Suzie speak. Can barely bring herself to thank her and hang up.

  “Well?” snaps Ray, eyes on the road and a cigarette between his teeth. “Why’s he even here? He’s the big man, yeah? What’s he doing sorting out surveillance and legwork? And who was that bloody jock?”

  Helen says out loud the name that Suzie has given her. Tries not to let her mind do terrible things.

  Ray says nothing for a while. Just smokes and hisses and twists his hands around the steering wheel.

  “We’ve got to tell her,” he says. “Or him. Somebody.”

  Helen nods. She doesn’t want to make that call. Doesn’t want to have to make sense of events that could not pass for coincidence.

  “That was his wife,” says Helen, trying to keep the tone of her voice neutral. “Roisin McAvoy. I don’t know why she’s here. Maybe she’s hiding.”

  “Not very well,” says Ray without malice. “Fuck, I don’t know . . .”