Taking Pity

by David Mark

Helen focuses on the computer in her lap. The company mobile is beeping its way back toward Hull. The Russian that Ray left on the ground has no way of alerting his employer about what has just happened. They can talk to Piers tonight. They can get answers and maybe save a life. But they aren’t police officers right now. She doesn’t know what to do.

  “Shaz,” says Ray, as if reading her mind. “We’ll let her put all this through the books. Get him in. Get a nice interview room and see how big he is then . . .”

  Helen is barely listening. She is staring at a picture at the front of her mind. She is looking at the absolute fear in Roisin McAvoy’s eyes. She is wondering how much horror it has taken to break such a powerful soul.

  FIFTEEN

  THE PUDDLES REFLECT Mahon’s hulking shape as he crosses the pitted, cracked tarmac of the car park.

  He can’t feel the rain as it pelts the deadened surface of the small rectangle of skin that is visible between his scarf and sunglasses, but he enjoys imagining the caress of the downpour upon his ruined features.

  He steps between the lorries parked up in the truck stop, his eyes fixed on a vehicle at the rear of the compound.

  Nobody sees him. The drivers are either stealing a nap in their wagons or holed up in the greasy spoon at the front of the service station, tucking into a variety of brown foods dished up with toast and fried bread.

  He passes a wagon with purple livery and slides into a shadow as the door opens. He slows his heart. Stops his lungs. The ligature eases down from his wrist and into his gloved hand.

  A man, bulky, with a shaved head and a rash on his neck, turns up his T-shirt collar and half runs, half waddles away through the rain in the direction of the café.

  Mahon steps out of the blackness and continues on to the dark green cab that stands at the back of the yard. It’s hauling a nondescript blue container.

  Without pausing, Mahon pulls open the driver’s door. He climbs up the three steps and into the cab. Swishes back the curtain to the sleeping quarters.

  The man asleep on the bunk is in his twenties. Wearing a black round-neck T-shirt and combat pants. He has a thin, pinched, Eastern European face, and a golden crucifix has snaked out of his top to lie coiled by his face as it rests upon the makeshift pillow of a luminous yellow coat.

  The man wakes as Mahon takes hold of both his legs and pulls. He is wrenched forward, arms flying up to claw at the curtain as he’s hauled through the gap in the seats. He looks up and, for a fraction of a second, sees the colossal, deformed man in the black leather jacket and cloth cap who blocks out the dull autumn light of the rain-lashed car park.

  Mahon leaps gently down to the tarmac, the man’s ankles still held in his grip.

  Groggy, spluttering, fuzzy with disrupted sleep, the man gives a half-strangled yell as he slithers into a seated position in the driver’s seat.

  Mahon’s grip is immovable. He stands bolt upright, and without ceremony, as though pulling a soiled sheet from a mattress, he wrenches the man from the cab, taking two quick steps backward.

  The man’s entire body leaves the vehicle, pulled far out over the hard, wet, glistening blackness of the pavement several feet below.

  There is an instant in which the man feels he is flying; his whole frame four feet from the ground—face, chest, groin, toes, all pointing skyward.

  Then a sensation of movement.

  A push in his chest.

  The cessation of his trajectory and a sudden rush downward.

  And he slams into the ground.

  His skull cracks like an egg.

  Mahon stands over the man and waits for the gurgling sounds to stop. He pauses until the jamlike blood that seeps from the fissure in the cranium is running almost to the corpse’s waist.

  Then he turns and walks away.

  It was not the man’s fault. Not really. He’d been given the chance at easy money. All the reports Mahon had heard suggested that he had done his best to look out for the girls in his care. But Mr. Nock controls the working girls around here. He runs a profitable service providing girls for the minimum-wage building crews and meatpackers who come over from the Balkans each year to earn themselves a wedge of illegitimate cash and then bugger off home before immigration officials catch up with them. He doesn’t want any competition. Doesn’t want anybody to spread their legs between Whitley Bay and Hadrian’s Wall without him getting half the profits. The dead young lad hadn’t known that. Had just done what some enterprising villain had asked of him. He was probably not even aware that Mr. Nock wouldn’t approve. Maybe didn’t even know the name and what it meant.

  Bloody Eastern Europeans.

  Mahon is pleased to be back in the North East. The couple of days away seem to have done him some good. He feels fit and well. Ready for what will come next. And Mr. Nock is in fine form. Had made his feelings clear on what should be done to the driver who deposited a dozen shivering and emaciated Slovenians at a house in Jarrow last night. An example needed to be made. It should look to the casual observer like an accident. But to those in the know, it should be a very clear statement of intent.

  There’s a gap in the chain-link fence at the rear of the truck stop and Mahon slips through it without snagging his clothes. He crosses a patch of waste ground and emerges at the back of a housing estate. One of his favored lads is waiting for him in the driver’s seat of a nondescript Peugeot. Mahon grunts a hello as he climbs into the passenger seat. Lights himself a cigarette as the lad pulls away from the curb.

  “All grand, boss?”

  “Champion,” says Mahon.

  He settles down in the seat, wreathed in blue smoke. Watches the houses whiz by. Apparently it’s a rough neighborhood, this. Full of bad sorts, according to the papers. It’s a warren of narrow streets and alleyways: back doors facing each other across strips of concrete, where kitchen appliances sit abandoned and rotten mattresses lean against graffitied walls. The main streets are all steel shutters and speed bumps, and the few patches of greenery have been churned to mud by the tires of stolen cars.

  “Now then,” he says at length, to his companion. “What you got for me?”

  Mahon’s driver is called Hughie Lowes. He’s in his late thirties and has been a friend of the Nock family since he was a boy. He’s a safe pair of hands and a solid set of biceps. He also has an inquiring, tactical mind. Can punch his weight but can finish the Sun crossword in under ten minutes and knows how to work a computer and forge official documents with the same aplomb that he can snap a knee in ways that will never heal. He’s a good-looking sort. Looks like a sports teacher on his day off. Sneakers, cords, stripy T-shirt, and a baggy cardigan. Frameless glasses and a wedding band. Hair shaved with a number-two guard and a day’s growth on his chin and upper lip. He may run the firm some day. But that day won’t come until Mahon says so.

  “Benny Pryce,” says Hughie. “That’s whose piss you can smell, if you were wondering. We’ll have to torch the Peugeot.”

  Mahon nods. He hasn’t got a great sense of smell. Hadn’t noticed anything unpleasant but is willing to take his underling’s word.

  “I don’t think he took their silver, Mr. Mahon,” continues Hughie. “I think he was trying to do us a good turn, to be honest. He says some ex-copper from Yorkshire got in touch with the lads at the Journal. Gave them some bullshit about a book he was writing. Benny had offered one of the young reporters there a favor if they alerted him to anybody asking questions like that. He got a call and said he’d look into it. Turned out the writer was an old colleague of Benny’s. He’d told Benny the truth of it. Wanted to know any and all properties associated with Mr. Nock. Benny did his old mate a favor and gave him the list but left half of the addresses off and stuck a few dead ends and red herrings in there for good measure. Met the fella at Scotch Corner and gave him what he wanted. Then he said his good-byes.”

  Mahon sniffs loudly as
the car turns right, past a small church erected from chunky, crudely cut bricks. There is no graffiti on the church wall. The local kids know better. Some things are sacred, even to the damned.

  “He got hurt, yeah? The bloke? The ex-copper?”

  Hughie nods, keeping his eyes on the road. “He’s in hospital. Shit kicked out of him. You know that shit with the nail gun that happened in Hull and down south? He got a couple of nails in him down some side road near Goole.”

  “Goole?”

  “Shithole between Leeds and Hull.”

  Mahon sniffs again. Lights another cigarette. “Changing a tire, was he?” he asks cynically.

  “Some traffic cops pulled him over, then buggered off. A car rammed him from behind. Dragged him out and went to work. Put nails in his feet.”

  Mahon sits, not speaking. Wonders whether the attacker would have thought to wipe his prints from the nails.

  “Where did we get all this?” he asks with a jerk of his head.

  “Fat fucker who used to be CID down in Hull. Don’t know if you’ve met him. Linus. Back in uniform now, but still has his ear to the ground.”

  Mahon tries to put a face to the name but can’t come up with anything. Wonders if he’s ever met the bloke or if age is simply wiping his memory a little at a time.

  “He’s solid, is he? This Linus?”

  “Knows how the land lies, that’s all. Used to work for a bloke who liked to put a few quid in his personal pension fund. You remember Roper? Absolom? Crooked as a cat’s cock.”

  Mahon nods. “All roads lead to Hull, eh? Fucking hell, we just got back.”

  Hughie looks across at him apologetically. “Don’t know if we have to get involved any further, really,” he says diplomatically. “Benny says there’s no way that list will lead anybody to Mr. Nock. There’s only you who knows where he’s having himself a little rest. If these new villains want to beat up an ex-copper and piss off the law, that’s their concern, not ours. As long as they stay out of Newcastle, why do we give a shit?”

  Mahon says nothing. Inhales cigarette smoke and holds it until his eyes water and his lungs hurt. Hughie’s right, of course. They’ve got enough things to think about. Mr. Nock’s health, for a start. On the drive back from Yorkshire, the old man had been coughing up something that looked a little like shit. Mahon is no doctor but can’t imagine that such a thing can be a positive step.

  “Got history, that house,” says Hughie conversationally, nodding at the glass. “Remember my dad telling me about it.”

  Mahon had barely registered which street they were traveling down. Hadn’t noticed the shabby end-terrace property that somebody has covered in a shiny pebble dash and hanging baskets. Mahon slows his breathing as soon as he realizes where he is. Doesn’t close his eyes in time. The vision of the property sets off a flip book of memories. Sees himself, handsome and unscarred. Sees his old Ford Popular parked at the curb. Mr. Nock used to take the piss out of him for driving such a nondescript motor. Told him to splash out. To enjoy himself. To put his money into something with a bit of muscle and sex appeal. Mahon had shrugged it off. He’d liked the car. Liked blending in. Liked the fact it had enough room in the boot for a trio of bodies and a spade. Wonders what happened to the car. Whether they sold it or scrapped it after the southerners came for him. Whether he’d left anything sentimental in the glove box . . .

  Christ, but the memories hurt . . .

  He remembers opening the front door and climbing those stairs and smelling the blood, the beer, the cigarette smoke, sweat and cum. Remembers the feeling in the pit of his stomach: the knowledge that everything had just turned to shit. Remembers their bodies. Him, heavy and slippy: a dead dolphin sliding around in his grip. Her, featherlight and perfumed: fragile and breakable, like a baby bird.

  “Belonged to what’s-his-name, didn’t it? One-armed-bandit bloke. Got sent down, didn’t he? Wouldn’t stop banging on about being innocent—”

  Mahon holds up a hand to stop his companion. He can’t stand listening to any of it. Can’t stand listening to the past being so misrepresented. He has lived through all the local legends. Has been at the heart of most of them.

  “Sorry, boss,” says Hughie, shutting up. “Like I say, that’s where we’re at. Benny’s a team player. Got a bit of useful info out of him, too. Shipment coming in, according to his snout. Thought we might divert it . . .”

  Mahon nods, drinking it all in. He was killing somebody ten minutes ago. Is buggered if he can remember why that was . . .

  “Linus said we should watch out for the bloke’s mate,” says Hughie suddenly. “She’s a superintendent. Bit of a looker from the picture I found. Anyways, Linus didn’t like to admit it, but apparently she’s good. And she’s got this giant of a lapdog. Scottish bloke. Redhead. Jock name, he said. Told us not to even bother making an approach. Holier than thou, said Linus.”

  Mahon turns his head.

  “McAvoy,” he says, plucking the name from the air. He’d heard it spoken on John Glass’s doorstep. Had watched the giant copper’s back get smaller across Pearson Park.

  “That’s it,” says Hughie. “You know him?”

  Mahon settles himself more comfortably in the seat. He gives a tired little chuckle and finds himself almost sad at the thought of what is coming.

  He stares out the window at the gray air and misery. Wonders, for an instant, what the big man’s throat will feel like beneath his hands.

  “Don’t know him yet,” he says. “But I will.”

  SIXTEEN

  MCAVOY GAWPS OUT THE WINDOW. It’s set in a wall painted the color of old newspaper and is bisected by rusting metal bars.

  He jiggles his legs beneath the plastic table. Lines up his felt-tip pens next to his notepad. Sips at his plastic cup of water.

  Waits.

  He has never been to this place before. Has heard of it, of course. It’s got one of those names that kids throw out in the playground without really understanding. It’s a place for crazies. For nutters. For the dangerous criminals who climb in through your bedroom window and cut your face off for the fun of it. It’s home to some of the most dangerous people in Britain. It’s marketed as a place for healing but everybody knows its true role. It’s a prison ship, moored forever in the midst of open fields and winding back roads. It’s a mental hospital for the criminally insane. It smells of chemicals and school dinners. Feels like a cross between a hospital and an army barracks. It’s joyless, clinical, sterile, and cold.

  For Peter Coles, it has been home for eighteen years.

  McAvoy rubs his head. Pushes his hair back from his face. Smooths it down again with the palm of his hand. Checks his clothes for crumbs. He’s chosen to wear something less daunting than a suit, shirt, and tie. Made the decision to put Peter at ease. Feels a little odd in his dark trousers and a purple V-neck jumper. Doesn’t like the picture on the visitor pass he is wearing around his neck. He’d blinked as the flash went off at the reception desk. He looks half blind in the image. Puzzled and unsure of himself. Half pissed.

  He hears footsteps. Takes a breath. Turns his head and stands as the door to the visiting room swings open.

  A man in a blue uniform enters first, Peter Coles behind him. A young West African man enters last, closing the door behind him. He gives Peter a little pat on the back as he takes three strides forward and reaches McAvoy first. Sticks out a warm hand.

  “Dr. Onatunde,” he says, beaming. “Gregory, if it’s easier. And can I introduce you to my patient, Peter Coles?”

  McAvoy turns his attention to the man he has come to see. He’s small. A little stooped. He’s looking at the floor and exposing a crown of gray hair that has receded a good three inches from where it was in the mug shots taken in the sixties. He’s dressed in cheap blue jeans and a sweatshirt. Has pale, waxy skin, as if he hasn’t seen enough sun.

  “Hello
, Peter,” says McAvoy, extending his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Peter Coles looks up. His eyes widen as he takes in McAvoy’s size. Gives a little nod and a mumbled hello, then turns to Dr. Onatunde.

  “Is he the one?”

  His voice is quiet and his words indistinct, as though he is talking through burst lips and broken teeth.

  “This is Aector McAvoy, Peter. Remember, we talked about this. He wants to speak to you about some things you might remember from when you were a youngster. Are you going to be able to do that?”

  Behind McAvoy, the warder lets out a sigh of sheer misery. McAvoy can almost hear his thoughts. Can sense him mentally scoffing at the do-gooders and touchy-feely Guardian readers who treat mass murderers like little boys in need of another teddy bear.

  “Very good, Peter,” says Dr. Onatunde as his patient takes a seat on the cushioned, plastic-backed chair. “I’ll just make myself comfortable here, shall I? Or would you rather I left?”

  Peter gives a shake of the head and Dr. Onatunde positions himself on a chair in the corner of the room. The warder stands next to him, his back straight and arms gripped at the wrists behind him. He looks like he’s been a military man. Looks like he doesn’t need much of an excuse to pull a patient’s arm out of its socket.

  “I’m Aector,” says McAvoy in the voice he uses to soothe skittish horses. “It’s hard to say, I know. Hector’s okay, if you prefer that. My friend calls me Hector. What do your friends call you?”

  Peter looks up. He has wiry black-and-gray eyebrows and stray black hairs curling out from his nostrils. He shaved a few hours ago and took half a dozen tiny scabs off his upper lip. They are scabbing over afresh; tiny pinpricks of crimson solidifying under the glare of the yellow strip lights overhead.

  “People just call me Peter,” he says with a shrug. “I got ‘Colesy,’ for a bit. In a different place. There was another Peter, so I was Colesy.”

  “Do you like Colesy?”

  Peter nods.