Fire of Lies

by David Mark

  Fire of Lies

  David Mark

  www.mulholland.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Mulholland Books

  An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Dead Pretty Ltd 2016

  Extract from Cruel Mercy Copyright © Dead Pretty Ltd 2017

  The right of David Mark to be identified as the Author of the Work

  has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 65394 8

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For the people of Hull.

  May you forever remain uniquely inspirational

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  COMING SOON

  PROLOGUE

  There is a scream as the angle grinder bites into the steel lid of the beer keg. It’s an ugly noise; a grating, brutal squeal that makes the quiet man think of dentists’ drills and car crashes.

  ‘C’mon, you ffff . . .’ grunts the man with the muscles, biting his lip as he puts his full weight on the tool and continues to cut a neat circle through the gleaming metal. The resulting shower of pinkish sparks is the only light in this dark, claustrophobic space, with its damp walls and its stink of spilled beer, cold stone and fresh blood. ‘Worthington’s, is it?’ he asks, feeling for the label on the belly of the keg. ‘Shame there was no guest ales with a more suitable name. Anybody ever tried a pint of Wanker?’

  The quiet man leans back in the darkness. His whole body is rigid with the effort of staying still. He knows what is lying at his feet. If he were to take a small step to his right, he might put his foot on Paul.

  There is a sudden clang of metal on metal and the muscled man gives a satisfied shout. He stands up straight, holding the lid and peering, through the gloom, at the long, firm pipe that protrudes from it.

  ‘Get in,’ he says, triumphantly, and switches off the angle grinder.

  The quiet man focuses on the area of darkness in front of him. The mechanical sound continues to echo off the off-white walls. He senses the change in the quality of the darkness and turns his head to follow the muscled man as he moves. Watches him the way cats watch one another; working out the next dozen moves. He sees a huge silhouette move through the grey air towards the door. There are curses and mumbles and then a sudden flicker of light as the solitary bulb, hanging like a fat corpse, flares into life. It throws a gaudy yellow glow upon the scene beneath: exposing the three dirt-streaked men who stand among the kegs and barrels and try not to rub their faces for fear of tasting another man’s blood.

  ‘He’s not going to fit,’ says the tall man with the glasses. His white trainers are stained red up to the laces. ‘No way.’

  ‘He’ll bloody fit,’ says the muscled man, dismissively. He is a great believer in the benefits of power over finesse.

  ‘He bloody won’t,’ snaps the tall man. ‘It’ll be like trying to get a chicken in a jam jar.’

  ‘I could do that too. Don’t bitch about it. We can just give him a good shove.’

  ‘He’ll come apart, mate. You saw what it was like getting him down the stairs. His head . . .’

  ‘Stop moaning, man. He’ll fit.’

  The quiet man says nothing. Just stares at the silver barrel. With the lid removed it looks like an empty eye-socket, or a toothless, desperate scream.

  I did this, he thinks. The thing I swore I would never do again.

  ‘It’s not right,’ mutters the tall man. ‘He was a wanker but we can’t . . .’

  ‘We’ve talked about that,’ says the muscled man. ‘We can’t risk it.’

  ‘This is more of a risk! I did nothing. He was already dead.’

  ‘You know that, do you? How do you know it wasn’t you that finished him?’

  ‘Piss off, he was twitching like a fish on deck.’

  ‘Aye, but not dead.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ says the quiet man, and the others fall silent. He has a thumping headache. It feels as though his brain is growing too big for his skull. He rubs at his temples and the pain in his knuckles shoots into his wrist. It hurts when he swallows and he closes his eyes in response. His bones are aching. As his eyelids slide shut, his mind fills with recent memories. They flood his cranium like spilled paint. For a moment he is back at his favourite table, circling the day’s winners in the Racing Post and transferring the information to his little black jotter. He wasn’t really listening to the conversation of the others; only half aware of the change in the air as the banter became a darker thing; all low voices and growled threats. And then there was the unmistakable thud of flesh meeting flesh and bone upon bone and chair legs and table legs scraping along the wooden floor and he was looking up to see a streak of steel and an arc of blood and a sudden explosion of hair and teeth amid a crescendo of screams . . .

  In the end they have to use a broom to force the body into the cramped space. When the muscled man withdraws it there is skin and gore upon the bristles.

  ‘We should weigh it down,’ says the tall man.

  ‘We’d never get it back out the cellar.’

  ‘I could,’ says the muscled man. He flexes his shirtless torso, and his steroid-enhanced frame looks, for a moment, like a stuffed animal skin filled with triple the necessary sand. The quiet man wonders what would happen to him if somebody sliced him. Whether he would swoop around the room like a deflating balloon or simply explode with a sad, damp ‘pop’.

  For the next half-hour the only sound in the cellar is of a blowtorch melting steel: repairing the severed metal to craft a perfect ring of scar tissue on the barrel’s shiny surface.

  Before the dawn, the barrel will be floating down the River Hull.

  It will be eight months before anybody looks inside. By then, for most, this night’s work will be a receding nightmare; reduced to a patchwork of glimpsed memory. It will be a flicker pad of shouts and barks and cries for help; gunshots and knife-wounds and the sight of blood upon a dirty wooden floor.

  ‘Anybody got a eulogy?’ asks the muscled man, with a twitch of a smile. ‘A prayer? Something to mark his passing?’

  It falls to the quiet man to say what the others are thinking.

  ‘Aye,’ he says. His accent is pure East Hull. ‘Rest in pieces, you silly bastard.’

  The others gave it a moment as they compose their thoughts. Their voices are united.

  ‘Amen.’

  Chapter One

  Sunday, 14 August 14, 4.02 p.m., Hessle Foreshore

  A row of white-painted cottages with green gates and pastel doors; a collage of hanging baskets and ornamental planters; pebbly front yards and shabby-chic garden furniture.

  The roses and peonies in the b
askets at number four bloom a little more brightly than those of their neighbours. The reds are a livid explosion against the white walls: crimson splashes upon a pristine quilt. They would be the first object to catch the eye were it not for the colossal, red-haired man who stands at the window and stares, disconsolately, beyond the glass.

  Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy has come to the conclusion that if he ever felt any kind of urge to paint the view from his living-room window, he would require only three colours to do it justice. The grass on the other side of the grey road is kept as short and stubbly as a soldier’s hair. Beyond, the muddy strip of beach is the sludgy brown of cold, forgotten coffee and the sky is the sharp blue of cheap denims. As he stares out, his face twists into a grimace. He doesn’t look accustomed to the action. Despite the scars that line his large, handsome face, he has kind eyes and a mouth tuned for soft words and gentle smiles. The grimace is in response to a comment addressed to his broad back by the woman who sits on his sofa with a glass of red wine and a chicken leg, waving it around like a cross between a medieval king and the conductor of a symphony orchestra. She is busy offering her opinions on the anatomical peculiarities of the witness that McAvoy has just returned from interviewing.

  ‘Nude? On the East Coast? In this? I bet his tackle looked like somebody had shaved a baby dormouse,’ says Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh, to the rapturous giggles of the children playing on the floor around her. ‘Top me up,’ she adds, smiling at the three-year-old girl earnestly massaging her feet and drawing the occasional words of praise from her Auntie Trish. The girl takes the wine glass and runs to the kitchen.

  ‘She’s a bloody diamond, that girl,’ says Pharaoh, as Lilah returns with a glass full to the brim with deep red Merlot. ‘You are, aren’t you,’ she says. The little girl in the pink and white leotard and bolero jacket beams at being recognised as such. ‘I mean, you look like you’ve been covered in glue and dropped in a dressing-up box but I’d say that’s not so much your fault as your parents’.’

  McAvoy continues to try to lose himself in the view. It is a cold, blustery day but the wind that slashes in off the water has done little to drive the tourists away from the attractive straggle of land forming a right angle with the concrete and steel of the Humber Bridge far above. Every parking space along this popular stretch of road is taken up by family estate cars and people-carriers. Most of the vehicles are occupied by families eating picnics or passing ice creams back and forth. Others have wrapped up warmly enough to actually head on to the beach, where children with runny noses and chapped cheeks weep into their scarves as they dig in the mud and shingle with freezing hands while parents brandishing camera-phones urge them to smile.

  ‘Go on,’ says Roisin McAvoy, seated on the floor with her back against the wall and looking equally unique in her purple leopard-print catsuit and wedge-heeled white trainers. ‘She looks a million dollars. More. Take no notice of the nasty lady, Lilah. It’s jealousy, ’tis all.’

  Lilah enjoys the attention, whipping her head back and forth between them. She likes it when Auntie Trish and Mammy have one of their ding-dongs. Daddy has explained it to her on more than one occasion. They like each other really – they just need different things from Daddy and sometimes those things overlap and cause them to start bickering. Then Daddy’s day becomes difficult, and he has to eat a bar of chocolate and bang his head on a tree until he feels better.

  McAvoy continues staring out of the window. There’s a little smile on his face as he listens to his boss and his wife bicker. They are very different people but they have the same motivations in life – they both want as much of him as he can spare. Roisin has been his wife for close to ten years but still looks as much of a traveller as she did when they fell in love. Pharaoh is pushing fifty but is still a figure of lust for most of Humberside Police. There are few officers who haven’t enjoyed a fantasy about being handcuffed and slapped about by Trish during one of her infamous bouts of temper. She’s short and curvy with bottle-black hair and red lips and habitually wears sunglasses to disguise the fact that she is hungover, or in the process of ensuring she will be tomorrow.

  Pharaoh and her two youngest daughters have been for Sunday dinner. During the first course she had a brainwave that necessitated McAvoy changing into his suit, climbing into his car and driving down the Lincolnshire coast to ask a witness something. He returned home to find that Pharaoh had eaten her own meal and was now helping herself to the portion that Roisin had placed under clingfilm in the microwave.

  ‘Was he really nude?’ asks Roisin, a giggle in her voice that makes his heart clench. ‘You didn’t join in, no?’

  ‘I don’t need that image in my head,’ protests Pharaoh.

  McAvoy sits down on the floor. He’s still wearing his grey three-piece suit and his face is rosy from walking into the wind. He spent part of the afternoon at Northcoates Point on the Lincolnshire coast, trying to keep up with a fifty-nine-year-old naturist called Barry Payne as he strode nakedly through waist-high grasses and repeated his account of how he stumbled on to what was left of a man who went missing last November.

  ‘He’s definitely recovered from the shock,’ says McAvoy. He thinks for a moment about asking the children to leave the room but decides, as always, that they would be better off knowing about the good men and women who are trying to protect them from terrible deeds than just hearing about the terrible deeds themselves.

  ‘And his wife?’

  ‘Still a bit twitchy,’ confides McAvoy.

  Fifteen days ago, Barry and his wife Jan were enjoying their biweekly ramble along the naturist beach on the wild, windswept curve of coastline that leads down towards Horseshoe Point and Mablethorpe.

  Today, Barry was back there waiting when McAvoy arrived. He was already dressed in nothing more than a camera bag and a pair of walking sandals. His body was a ruddy colour that put McAvoy in mind of cured ham. He was covered in a scattering of grey, downy hair. He had his car keys and a compass on a chain around his neck and on his arm he had scrawled the exact coordinates for the spot where he’d found the keg. He was waving madly at McAvoy as he pulled the car into a space beside Barry’s sensible Volvo: smiling widely and delighted to have company. McAvoy has long since accepted that he has no power to control his blush. His cheeks were positively crimson as he climbed from the car and made a great show of putting on his knee-length cashmere coat. There were handshakes and pleasantries during which McAvoy gave himself a headache through the sheer effort of not allowing himself to glance in any direction that might show him something that would remain burned into his retina long after his career was over.

  ‘Normal day, according to Barry,’ says McAvoy, shrugging. ‘Apparently it’s a popular spot with the naturist crowd. They don’t like to say nudist, so Barry tells me. And they refer to people who wear clothes as “textiles”, if you can imagine that. Apparently he and Jan get a couple of miles of naked walking in along the beach and then they turn inland and try to pick their way through the reeds and channels back towards the car. It’s all part of the experience, he says. It’s nice to get your feet wet and really “feel” nature. All I can say is that there was a lot of nature to feel and if he tried that back home, he’d realise why we stopped wearing kilts.’

  Pharaoh and Roisin chuckle as he talks. McAvoy was raised on the family croft in the western Highlands. He has told them eye-watering stories about vindictive thistles before.

  ‘They spotted the barrel lying on its side in one of the little channels that come in off the water. According to Barry, it was Jan who first suggested finders should be keepers. She’d seen a video online about turning beer barrels into barbecues. They weren’t far from the car park by then so Barry manhandled it on to the grassy area and together they started rolling it back to the car. He didn’t notice the smell. As he says, the wind there is so harsh it blows any smells away. Well, they huffed and puffed it back to the car and then Barry tried to lift it into the boot. It was heavi
er than he thought. Jan came to help him but their hands were wet and they started to feel it go. They jumped back as it dropped from the lip of the boot. That’s when the welds in the lid gave way. The gases inside had built up to such a level that when it blew the lid open and most of what was inside erupted like somebody had put a firework in a lasagne. They were covered. And there was no way the wind was going to blow away that smell. So they just stood there, covered in all this horror, and then, Barry said, all matter-of-fact, they decided to phone the police.’

  ‘Sensible plan,’ muses Pharaoh. ‘I don’t think I’d have been as good at making the right call in those circumstances. I’d probably have been rocking back and forth and ripping my clothes off and chugging bleach straight from the bottle, which isn’t a major departure from what I intend to do when I get home.’ She slumps, appearing to examine what her evening has in store. Then she sits up a little straighter again. ‘What did he say about the contents? Why exactly did he think it might be a body? The pillock who took his statement never asked and they’ll have a field day in court with that kind of gap – if it ever comes to that.’

  McAvoy takes a deep breath. ‘I asked him that exact question. Forty-five miles for one question but I asked it. You wanted to know why he thought it was a human and not some kind of rotten meat, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, in his own words . . . “because meat doesn’t wear trousers”. Through all the mess he saw a belt buckle. The same belt buckle that Lincolnshire Police matched to our missing man. The same belt buckle that Paul Rouse was wearing the last time he was seen alive.’

  Chapter Two

  Gone to seed, thinks Shania, glancing up from her computer screen and taking in the chaos of her kitchen. Sort it out, you lazy cow. Make it better. Get a grip of your bloody self . . .