Taking Pity

by David Mark

  “Leave off,” says Pharaoh, uncaring. “You don’t frighten me, mate. Even if I slapped the cuffs on you right now I don’t know what I’d charge you with. You’re a mouthpiece. You’re the talker. You might have some people who can put the frighteners on, but I reckon that when you put a group of ambitious young criminals together, it’s hard to persuade them to play nicely. Your team isn’t your team anymore. And I’m getting a good idea whose they are.”

  Pharaoh listens to nothing but breathing. Sniffs and realizes she is trembling a little. Wonders if he’s sweating. Whether he will call her bluff. Pictures Dan, sitting in the tech unit, listening in and recording every word of the call that has been forwarded to her own mobile from Bruno Pharmacy’s. Right now he’ll be pinging the mobile phone for a location on the caller. Will be looking at a satellite image and finding wherever in the world this coldhearted shite is calling from. She’s one of the few officers with the authority to request the pinging procedure. She needs to make the request in writing and have it countersigned by another senior officer and has promised to do all that if it turns anything up. For now, she’s simply calling in a favor. Her ledger of favors owed is filling up.

  “You don’t know where she is anymore, do you? Mrs. McAvoy, I mean. You lost her, I know you did. We watched the car for miles and there was nobody behind her.”

  Again there is nothing, and Pharaoh pushes her luck.

  “I don’t think you want to find Mr. Nock to kill him anymore. I think you want to find his monster because you need his help. You’ve shown your protégés what to do and now they’re branching out. But they’ve branched out in the wrong direction, mate. They’ve hurt somebody they shouldn’t have hurt. And they’ve pissed me off.”

  After a pause of a few heartbeats, Pharaoh hears the man clear his throat.

  “My apology last night was genuine,” he says. “I am sorry this situation has arisen. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we have expanded too soon. But we do hope to trim the fat. And the gentleman whose name you are guarding so jealously could be a place to start.”

  Pharaoh says the name. Takes the man’s silence as confirmation.

  “I want to speak to Mr. Nock,” he says eventually. “Or the large gentleman who has proven so—”

  “Stop talking like a lawyer,” she says coldly. “You give me a fucking headache. Now listen to what I’m about to say, and maybe only the right people will get hurt . . .”

  SEVENTEEN

  THE E-MAIL CAME THROUGH while McAvoy was driving back from the Midlands. His phone gave a little vibration next to his heart and he knew, with cold inevitability, that he was in trouble.

  He allowed himself ten whole minutes without pulling over and reading it. Ten minutes in which he listened to a program on Radio 4 and refused to give in to his thoughts and fears.

  Then he swerved into a lay-by and opened the message. He read it twice. Found himself wishing it contained more words. Instead, it was short and to the point. He had overstepped his boundaries. He had done more than the Home Office had wanted him to. He had alerted Peter Coles to the possibility of both trial and freedom, and explanations were wanted. He was hereby requested to cease his digging into the events of 1966 and to file his report before close of play on Friday.

  McAvoy had felt sweat prickling at his back. Had felt his skin turn crimson and hot. Had grown clammy at the temples, and his hands were shaking as he buried his face in them. The message had been sent to Trish Pharaoh as well. Would she be in trouble because of him? He should have told her. Should have said what he was going to do. But she’d had so much to think about. So many other worries with Tom Spink and Bruno Pharmacy’s death. Christ, he’d fucked it all up again . . .

  He didn’t speak very much when he picked up Fin from his after-school club and the boy had seemed to know that his father needed some quiet time. He’d sat patiently in the passenger seat, doing his spelling homework and moving his lips as he read. McAvoy had seen him out of the corner of his eye. Had a sudden memory of Roisin doing the same—concentrating with furrowed brow on a word she didn’t recognize and gently mouthing the letters as she spoke. He had felt as though he were folding inward. Had felt her absence in every pore. Saw himself as a hollow thing; a husk or cocoon around absolute nothingness.

  McAvoy had felt guilty about his silences with the boy. Tried to make amends with a takeaway pizza and chips, which they ate in one of the parking spaces on Hessle Foreshore, watching the sky darken and the waters turn from vinegar-brown to metallic black.

  “Is it Mammy?” asked Fin through a mouthful of ham and cheese. “Are you missing her?”

  McAvoy had softened his countenance and pressed his damp forehead against the boy’s own. “It’s a bit of everything, son. I think I’ve done things the wrong way again. Got carried away. Lost sight of myself.”

  Fin looked at him, all brown eyes and innocence. “I don’t understand,” he’d said. “Is it Mammy?”

  McAvoy had smiled then; a tired, accepting kind of look. “Yes,” he’d said. “I just miss her. Miss her like you do.”

  “Bet she misses us, too,” said Fin, poking a chip into the top of his triangle of pizza. “At least she’s coming back. Emily at school has a mummy in Africa. And there are lots of people with mummies and daddies who live in different houses. This is like a long holiday. That’s what you said, remember. Do you think she’ll say I’ve got big?”

  “You’ll be bigger than me one day,” said McAvoy, wiping a greasy knuckle across his nose. “Bigger and better.”

  Fin beamed, delighted. “Will you still be a policeman then? We could be a team. We’d scare the baddies.”

  McAvoy was pleased then. Both at the boy’s sheer joyfulness and the sudden realization that he had made up his mind. He was already in trouble. He may as well be truly damned as slightly damned. Hears his dad’s voice bleating on about it being as well to hang for a sheep as a lamb.

  Here, now, McAvoy is feeling energized. He doesn’t know what cause he is fighting for but knows he cannot walk away without knowing what happened that night and the nature of the big man with the blood on his lips.

  His first call should have been to Pharaoh. But instead he called Vaughn Winn.

  The entrepreneur had sounded less than enthusiastic to hear from him.

  Haven’t we already been through this, mate? I’m a busy man. I don’t need reminding of the past every five minutes . . .

  McAvoy had been professional and businesslike. Kept himself on a tight leash. Had told Vaughn that he had visited Peter Coles in prison. Coles had made mention of another man at the scene of the crime. Somebody who knew Vaughn . . .

  Vaughn had tried to laugh it off. Told him that Daft Pete was still making things up. Why was McAvoy talking to the man who killed his family as if he were no more than a witness? What was he implying . . . ?

  McAvoy had not even had time to apologize or explain. Vaughn had terminated the call brusquely and informed him that he did not wish to be contacted again.

  McAvoy had sat looking at his phone for a while, trying to make sense of it. In the passenger seat, Fin had looked at him expectantly, awaiting a progress report and an explanation.

  Outside, the lights of the distant shore become a line of fool’s gold, sandwiched between the twin darknesses of sky and land . . .

  The phone rings. McAvoy and his son both jump and the phone clatters into the footwell. Fin picks it up, pressing the answer button with his tomato-stained fingers. “Here, Daddy . . .”

  “You got a receptionist, Hector?” asks Trish, her voice light. “Hope he’s getting a living wage.”

  “Hello, guv,” says McAvoy proudly. “Did you see—”

  Pharaoh cuts him off with a sigh. “I did. Do I want to know?”

  “I needed to speak to him. You can’t conduct a murder investigation without speaking to witnesses.”

 
“It wasn’t a murder investigation, Hector. You were just meant to see if it would stand up in court.”

  “Well, it won’t. The investigation was a shambles. All the evidence is missing and the statements are the words of dead people. I needed to know.”

  Pharaoh gives a soft laugh at the other end of the phone. “You really know how to make powerful enemies, Hector. You could probably use some friends.”

  “I’ve got Fin,” he says, winking at his son. “My new partner.”

  “He looking after you, is he? He’s a good boy.”

  “How’s Tom?” asks McAvoy suddenly. “How’s it all going?”

  Pharaoh makes a noise that sounds like a shrug. “I’m making progress. I’ve got some things to talk to you about, but we’ll have a proper chat when I see you, yeah? It’s all good. Everything’s happening for a reason.”

  McAvoy senses something in her voice that he hasn’t heard before. It’s a note of doubt. A timbre that is almost apologetic in tone.

  “I’m sure you’re doing what’s right, guv.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Hector. You’re good for my soul.”

  McAvoy feels better for the chat. He had expected a bollocking and has instead been rewarded with faint praise. He finds himself nodding. Warming to the ideas that his mind is presenting him with.

  An hour later, McAvoy and Fin are parking the minivan on a muddy grass verge on Station Road in Patrington. To their left, a row of trees blank out the wide, open fields. The property they are visiting is a sturdy, two-story construction from the 1950s with outbuildings off to one side and a large, comfortable station wagon in the driveway. McAvoy wonders if the owner still drives it. Hopes, given his age, that he doesn’t.

  “You want the radio on?” asks McAvoy, stepping from the car and switching on the reading light above Fin’s head.

  “No, I can’t concentrate. I’ll write up our progress in my incident book.”

  McAvoy wants to hug the boy so tightly that the nearness plugs all the gaps within himself. Instead, he ruffles the boy’s hair and closes the door. Crunches over shiny white pebbles, past well-tended flower beds and a front lawn mowed in perfect vertical stripes. Raps on the wooden door. Waits for the light in the hallway to switch on.

  Algernon Munroe is in his nineties now but could pass for somebody much more recently retired. He’s a short, stocky man with a perfectly bald head and soft brown eyes. He’s wearing a quilted robe over smart trousers, a shirt, tie, and jumper, and the monogrammed slippers on his feet look as though they were handcrafted at considerable expense. He greets McAvoy warmly.

  “Will you come in?” he asks.

  McAvoy points back to the car. “Flying visit. Don’t want to leave my son if I can help it.”

  “You sound even more Scottish in person,” says Munroe. “Western Highlands, is it? Maybe a touch of Inverness?”

  McAvoy doesn’t want to be distracted by small talk. But the progress he has made in his career has been made through bloody-mindedness and an ability to make people warm to him. So he smiles and nods.

  “I’m a bit of a mongrel,” he says. “Family croft’s a couple of miles inland of Aultbea. And the accent got the edges shaved off at boarding school.”

  Munroe winces theatrically. “Boarding school boy, eh? All cold showers and buggery, was it?”

  The words sound strange coming in the refined English accent of this characterful old man. McAvoy gives a shake of the head.

  “Soft sheets and three-course meals, as a matter of fact. Not sure on the buggery. I don’t think I was anybody’s type.”

  “Count your blessings, eh? I haven’t been anybody’s type for years. Anyways, this won’t get you back to your boy. I dug out what you asked for. Well, a friend did. I won’t be climbing about in the loft again, I don’t think. Could well be a family of asylum seekers up there and I wouldn’t know about it.”

  He reaches behind the door and pulls out a brown file. The words Clarence Winn are written in blue ink on the label at the top. Algernon Munroe was Clarence’s solicitor from 1953 until his death. Had attended his funeral. Wasn’t in the country when the family lost their lives but had grieved the loss of both client and friend.

  “It all went to Vaughn,” he says, handing the file over. “He’d rather have had his family, of course, but he did well out of Clarence’s death. I handled the sale of the house. Transferred all monies over to his new pad in Queensland. He’s done well on the back of it. He was always ambitious, but I never had him down as a philanthropist. Wasn’t exactly a black sheep, but there was an edge to him that his brother and sister didn’t have. He must have grown up quickly after what happened. Got his name on a few plaques around here, I’ll tell you that.”

  McAvoy opens the file and leafs through it. Reads legalese and numbers; letters written on typewriters and dates decades back.

  “And this?” asks McAvoy, nodding at a photocopied letter sent to Clarence Winn in 1964.

  “Giving him a telling-off, I was,” says Munroe. “We’d done a bit of work on a land registry issue for him and needed to show he had the funds to seal the deal, as it were. We needed to see bank records. Clarence was old-school in that regard. He was the sort who kept his money under the mattress. A lot of them did round here. We found him some high-interest accounts and explained that certain policies would be rendered null and void if he was found to have a large sum of money in the house.”

  “What sort of policies?”

  “Life insurance, of course. They paid out to Vaughn as well. He’d put his money where we advised by then so there was no battle with the bloodsucking insurance companies.”

  McAvoy presses his hands together, folder under his arm. “You knew Peter Coles?” he asks tactfully.

  “Daft Pete,” says Munroe, nodding. “Everybody knew him. Not such a bad lad before that night. Just a bit light-headed, if you understand me. His grandmother was a good soul. Hurt her, what happened. I was surprised she stayed here as long as she did. Still, by the time she moved away she could afford something worth getting excited about.”

  McAvoy looks at the old lawyer and looks puzzled. “She came into money?”

  “Just what she’d been putting by. But Vaughn’s a generous man.”

  McAvoy’s expression changes. “She received money from Vaughn?”

  “A monthly sum, administered by myself. Not insignificant. And it went up as he did better for himself. She was grateful, I know that, and kept quiet about it. Would have been a bit strange, wouldn’t it? And she deserved a bit of good fortune. Bit of a spinster, despite the ‘Mrs.’ Her husband was a soldier who went off with a bit of stuff. Moved a couple of villages over. Tried to stay in contact with the family but never got much of a warm welcome from his ex or her family. Shame, really. Seemed good for Peter, the few times old Jasp was around . . .”

  “Jasper?” asks McAvoy, closing his eyes. “Does he have a grandson of the same name?”

  “Bit of a wide boy, so I’m told. Causes a bit of mischief here and there. Doesn’t tell anybody he’s got some of Peter Coles’s blood in him, though I bet he would if he knew that Vaughn’s money still gets paid to Daft Pete every month. Must be a tidy sum, eh?”

  McAvoy isn’t sure what to say. Just looks at the old man and lets his expression of puzzlement say it all.

  “Not the most normal thing, is it?” says Munroe. “But it wasn’t Mrs. Coles’s fault, was it? And she suffered for what Peter did.”

  McAvoy leans against the doorframe. “If he did it,” he says, half to himself.

  Munroe raises his eyebrows, gleeful and intrigued. “They’re not going to give him a trial, are they? Not after all this time? Christ, I never thought Mrs. Coles would persuade them. The home secretary must be wanting to hide some bad news.”

  It suddenly feels cold on the doorstep. The warmth and light of the
interior of Munroe’s home looks inviting. McAvoy shivers in his jumper and pushes his hair from his face with a clammy hand.

  “There are some peculiarities to be looked at first. Can I ask you, in all honesty, did you ever have any doubts about Peter’s guilt?”

  “He admitted it, didn’t he?”

  “He admitted being sorry for what had happened. And the detective who took that statement was perhaps not the most softly-softly of officers.”

  “Duchess, wasn’t it? Disappeared in the seventies after feathering his nest once too often. Weren’t many tears shed for him here.”

  “You knew him?” asks McAvoy, impressed at the old man’s memory.

  “Vaguely. Spent some time with a criminal practice when I was a younger man. Len Duchess had a knack of making evidence appear and disappear almost at will. And rumor has it he had enemies and friends in low places.”

  McAvoy soaks it all up. Wonders what to do next.

  “John Glass told me to count the bodies,” he says finally. “Do you know what that might mean?”

  Munroe wrinkles his face. “John’s no spring chicken anymore, Sergeant, so don’t be taking anything he says too seriously. But maybe that’s what Peter had planned. Maybe he was going to stick them underground. Who’d notice another corpse in a place built on them, eh?”

  McAvoy doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just holds the old man’s gaze. Then he gives a brisk nod and a word of thanks and half walks, half jogs back to the car. He pulls open the door and Fin turns to him.

  “How do you spell the name of the church?” asks the boy, his pencil poised above a page of neat joined-up words.

  “You can see for yourself,” says McAvoy, starting the engine. “We’re going for a walk in the dark. A bear hunt in the woods, just you and me. Would you like that?”