Original Skin

by David Mark

  You’ve got enough on. I wasn’t trying to make you cross.

  You don’t understand. You break my heart when you are like this. I hate you.

  McAvoy carries on scrolling through the in-box. The messages were sent between five and six p.m. He flicks to the SENT ITEMS and finds only two messages in return.

  Wish I could be what you need. Xx

  I give a damn about you. Xxxx

  He opens the phone’s diary function. Leafs through Hepburn’s schedule. Council meetings. Officer reports. Interview with Mixmag.

  Then:

  Plmtz, 8pm, Saturday. Birthday bash.

  He closes his eyes again. Wonders if it is the right thing to stop now. Asks himself, in all seriousness, whether Hepburn deserves to have his personal details pored over like this when he has done, so far, nothing wrong.

  He opens his photo files. Flicks, quickly, through hundreds of party-night pictures; all neon lights and shadows; sweating shapes and amplifiers, half-empty glasses and screaming girls.

  Opens another file. Pictures from a holiday. Hepburn, in a blue Speedo, on a sun lounger with something exotic and fruity. Two young men, grinning for the camera: shirtless and tanned. A figure on a Jet Ski, far out on a blue sea . . .

  McAvoy cannot help it. He opens the file marked FUN.

  He does not look for long. The images are clear in their content.

  Naked male flesh. Hard cocks and bare buttocks, wet mouths and body hair.

  Men making love.

  He recognizes Hepburn. All smiles. A man having fun.

  Opens another file. More of the same. So much skin.

  As he watches, a message flashes up on the screen.

  He can’t help it. He opens it.

  Needed you tonight. You said you would call. X

  The message is from a contact called MC. McAvoy jots down the number. Picks up his laptop. Enters it in Google with one hand, while keying Simon Appleyard’s number into the mobile phone with the other.

  There are no hits on Hepburn’s phone. Nothing that links him to the dead man.

  He looks at the laptop. Closes his eyes.

  MC is Hull City Councillor Mark Cabourne. Vice-chairman of the Planning Committee, and member of the Police Authority. Portfolio holder for health and equalities and executive member of the Yorkshire Regional Flood Defence Committee. A face. A name. A former council planner turned politician.

  He tries to make sense of this. Tries to diminish the impact of his string of semi-discoveries and fresh questions. Two colleagues texting? So what? Perhaps the kiss is an accident. Perhaps the message is non-sexual. Perhaps none of it is any of his fucking business.

  He switches off the phone. Makes a decision.

  Achily, exhaustedly, he pulls himself out of his chair. His wife is waiting for him to thank her properly. Tomorrow is a new day. The rain has blown itself out and none of his crimes so far cannot be remedied.

  He feels a sudden tremble against his chest. Feels like crying as he pulls out his phone.

  “McAvoy? It’s Helen. Helen Tremberg. I just bumped into Shaz Archer. Detective Inspector Archer, whatever. Colin Ray’s been following a lead. Reckons the lad we’re after is with the gypsies on the playing fields. There’s a link to Rourke. He’s been gone ages. He didn’t take backup. She’s going up there after him. I think you should come . . .”

  MIDNIGHT. DEAD ON.

  MCAVOY RUNS across the wet grass, mud splashing his trousers and lapping at his boots, acid belching into his throat.

  He can hear dogs barking. Raised voices. The crackle of throaty laughter.

  He squints ahead at the semicircle of caravans. There are black figures etched against the darkness, the lights spilling from the curtained windows and the melee of parked cars making the picture dance and flicker.

  Tremberg filled him in on the way here, shouting into the phone he held guiltily to his ear as the little car whined its way to seventy miles per hour on the divided highway.

  It was pure luck that Colin Ray had made the connection between Alan Rourke and the makeshift traveler camp that had caused McAvoy so much embarrassment on the first day the rains came. Ray had been taking a break from the endless “No comment” interview and had used it to go through the report of Rourke’s known associates that one of the civilian workers had left on his desk. He had been looking at a printout of an armed robber by the name of Daragh Fitzroyce when Helen Tremberg came back to the office and recognized the mug shot as that of the leader of the gypsy camp causing chaos up at Anlaby. “Buttercup’s owner,” she had told the confused DCI, smiling, only to find out that the tall, gray-haired, scowling detective inspector had not heard about the incident or, as far as she could tell, the invention of the Internet. She had filled him in on McAvoy’s horse wrangling of a couple of days before.

  Ray didn’t believe in coincidence. Reread Rourke’s own file.

  Suddenly convinced of some gypsy conspiracy, he retrieved Shaz Archer from the interview room, told her where he was headed, and went off to the playing fields. That was some time ago, and he has not yet checked in.

  “McAvoy!”

  He spins his head. Helen Tremberg is running toward him out of the darkness, having parked on a nearby side street and waited for his arrival. He recognizes her shape and instantly feels bad for it, while noting that she, too, must have identified him from his mass.

  “Nice timing,” she says as she gets close enough for him to make her out. The front of her pin-striped suit is covered in mud and her face is flushed, though she is not out of breath.

  “Have you called for uniform backup?” he asks.

  Tremberg shakes her head. “What if he’s fine? He’ll go bloody spare. He’s our superior, not the other way around. He can go in guns blazing if he wants.”

  McAvoy can see her point, but knows that procedurally they are in serious trouble. “What if he’s not fine?”

  “That would be a mixed blessing,” she says, meeting his eye. “I’m sorry for calling you out. I just thought . . .”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  They stand in silence. “They wouldn’t hurt a policeman . . . ,” he begins.

  “Let’s see,” Tremberg says, and nods in the direction of the caravans.

  Sighing, unsure, hating himself, McAvoy nods, and together they walk briskly toward the lights.

  The dogs bark more loudly as they get nearer, and moments later figures are emerging from caravans and cars, lifting themselves from the sofas that sit in the center around what looks, at this remove, like a selection of patio heaters.

  “Police,” shouts Tremberg at the approaching crowd.

  “Serious and . . .”

  McAvoy falls silent.

  Half a dozen men are approaching the two officers. Their faces are angry and territorial. McAvoy recognizes one of them from the other day and tries a half smile, but gets nothing but anger in return.

  “We’ve done nottin,” says one man, over shouts and protests from the others.

  “We’re not fucking going anywhere, I’ll tell you that!”

  “Leave us be, ya guard bastard.”

  “Jaysus, look at the size of the fucker.”

  McAvoy raises his hands, as if trying to pacify an angry dog. He pushes through the crowd into the center of the clearing.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Ray! Detective Chief Inspector Ray!”

  He wonders what he will do next. Whether he will start opening doors and checking under caravans. Wonders what the fuck is the point of thinking of himself as an asset.

  “Christ, it’s the Highlander!”

  On the sofa, next to the patio heater, Colin Ray and Shaz Archer are sitting as if in their living room. Ray is drinking from a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. Archer is sipping tea from a mug. Opposite them, on a leather recliner, lounges
the man McAvoy now knows as Daragh Fitzroyce. He is drinking from a glass bottle of fresh orange juice, and welcomes McAvoy and Tremberg with big smiles.

  “Mr. McAvoy,” he says warmly. “Buttercup’s been missing you!”

  There is laughter from the rest of the group, who assemble like Roman senators to watch what will follow.

  “What are you two after?” asks Ray angrily. “And how do you know McAvoy?”

  Fitzroyce grins, mischievously. “Just for his cowboy skills, Mr. Ray, just for his cowboy skills.”

  Ray nods, suddenly remembering the connection. McAvoy breathes out, relieved beyond explanation that his wife’s name has not been mentioned. He tries to catch Fitzroyce’s eye to see if this omission has been deliberate, but the camp leader has turned his attention back to the two people on his sofa.

  “If we’d known there would have been this many of you, I’d have got the wife cooking,” he says. “Does the best cottage pie. Can do a Sunday dinner on a two-ring hob. Wonderful woman.”

  On the doorstep of the largest caravan, the woman who was sitting with Fitzroyce the day the horses escaped is smoking a cigarette and raising a mug of tea, as if saluting her husband’s words.

  “Can I get you a drink? Beer? Cider? Got some crème de menthe if you’re partial.”

  McAvoy stands still, unsure how to steer the situation. He is suddenly conscious of how he looks. The mud on his clothes, the redness of his face.

  “By Christ, you’re wearing some funny stuff for jogging,” says Fitzroyce, and there is laughter from the crowd.

  He turns to Ray. “Am I going to have to say all this shite again?”

  Ray glowers at the two newcomers, and Shaz Archer gives a condescending shake of her head. “You’ve said nowt as it is, Fitzroyce.”

  The other man grins warmly. He turns to McAvoy. “Your boss man reckons I’m hiding me a dangerous fugitive,” he says. “Reckons a lad I used to do a bit of naughtiness with has told him I’m looking after somebody you want. Ginger little scrub-headed bastard, by the sounds of it. Set another man’s dog on a woman? Wrong. Just wrong. If them dogs are destroyed . . .”

  He shakes his head, tailing off.

  “I told your man here I ain’t seen Big Al in bloody years. Your man says he lives around here. That’s grand. Pint would be nice sometime. But I haven’t seen him, and I don’t know nothing about this lad you want. I’ve got enough problems . . .”

  McAvoy is watching the crowd. There must be thirty people here now. He tries to put his finger on what is bothering him, besides the hell of it all.

  Fitzroyce beats out a little rhythm on his thighs and finishes his juice. He looks as though, were they not already outside, he would like to politely show them all the door.

  “You want a few more of the bottles?” he asks Ray, gesturing at the ale. “Got plenty. Take them away with you. Make sure it’s not a wasted trip . . .”

  “Kids in bed?” asks McAvoy suddenly, looking at Fitzroyce. He realizes what is wrong. He has been to many traveler sites and has never seen one without children, even at this hour. Indeed, he can only see a couple of women. The rest are aged between their mid-teens and mid-fifties.

  The moment of concern that ripples across Fitzroyce’s face is soon replaced with a smile. “Tucked up warm,” he says. “Been cold. It’s late.”

  “Must be tucked in cupboards, if all these lads are sleeping here, too,” says McAvoy, gesturing.

  As he looks around, he takes in the various vehicles parked around the camp. There is only one that looks expensive, a black Lexus. He squints. It has been here some time.

  “We’re good at making room,” says Fitzroyce, though his eyes flick to where his wife sits.

  Colin Ray notices the gesture and glances at McAvoy. He levers himself out of the chair and motions to Shaz Archer to do the same.

  “Nice motor,” says McAvoy, pointing at the Lexus. “Yours?”

  “I wish,” laughs Fitzroyce. “Belongs to a pal. Letting me have a play.”

  “Insured?”

  McAvoy says it playfully—two mates having a laugh. Fitzroyce gives a grin. “Of course, sir, of course.”

  McAvoy nods. Scans the crowd again. Reaches into his jacket and finds the clunky radio he had the presence of mind to pick up on his way out the front door. Flicks it on and fills the sudden silence with static. “Control, this is Sergeant Aector McAvoy. I need a PNC check on a vehicle . . .”

  “Oh, now, Mr. McAvoy, there’s no need . . .”

  “Close the lips, fella,” says Ray, holding up a hand. “Let the officer do his job.”

  Fitzroyce looks again at his caravan, then back into the crowd.

  McAvoy moves around as he talks into the radio. Changes his position.

  “You,” he says, and points at the crowd. “Name?”

  The man in front of him is tall and heavily built with a shaved head. He is wearing a black T-shirt over large muscles, and his forearms are covered in amateurish prison tattoos.

  He looks McAvoy up and down. Gives a little snort of laughter, full of contempt.

  “Fuck this . . .”

  McAvoy’s feet slip from under him as the man pushes him in the chest and muscles past him. As he falls, he hears a thud from the caravan. He turns and the air leaves his body as he hits the ground. He hears shouts. A scream. Glances up and sees Fitzroyce’s wife sprawled on the floor. A scrawny ginger lad is struggling to get past her.

  Through a mass of bodies, he sees the man who had pushed him over sprinting for the Lexus. He hauls himself up, begins to run, but a shout behind him pulls him up short.

  He turns back. In front of him stands a ginger teen. He is unmistakably the weaselly little bastard who set the dogs on Trish Pharaoh.

  Behind him, Colin Ray is on his knees, holding a hand to his head and struggling to gain his feet.

  McAvoy blocks the lad’s way. “Don’t you fucking try it . . .”

  The lad, clad in a white vest and tracksuit trousers, suddenly swings wildly with an object in his left hand. It is a large crucifix, and McAvoy only just manages to dodge backward as it arcs up toward his chin.

  Helen Tremberg, trying to grab him from behind, is not so lucky. He chops down with the crucifix, and there is a sickening thud as it cracks into her kneecap. She goes down, roaring.

  Triumphant, furious, the teen turns back to McAvoy. “Out of my way, ya jock shite . . .”

  He swings the wooden crucifix like it’s a hatchet, and McAvoy has to fight to keep his feet as he steps backward. He looks up and sees Fitzroyce tending to his wife. Sees Ray and Tremberg on the floor. Sees Shaz Archer disappearing into the darkness, sprinting after the disappearing lights of the Lexus, which roars, wetly, into the distance . . .

  “Come on, then!”

  The ginger lad is screaming in his face, spittle hissing from bared teeth. He lunges, the crucifix hacking down as if chopping wood. McAvoy sees the blow coming and dodges backward, his gait that of a boxer, his hands becoming fists. He throws out a right hand, and snaps it back just before it collides with the young lad’s face.

  The lad, furious to know he could have been so easily knocked out, snarls again and begins to turn away.

  McAvoy lunges forward. He barrels into the young lad with all of his weight, a rugby player to his core, and plants him in the dirt.

  “Backup urgently required . . . ,” he begins, fumbling again for his radio.

  “We’ll kill you,” screams the lad, squirming underneath him. “We’ll fucking kill you all . . .”

  THERE IS milky breath in McAvoy’s face.

  He kisses Lilah on the eyebrow and she snuggles in closer. He looks up and locks eyes with Fin. His son is lying on his tummy at the bottom of the bed, laid out across McAvoy’s legs. He is reading a photocopy of McAvoy’s report into the mess at the gypsy camp. There are page
s all over the bed.

  “What’s a crucifix?” asks Fin quietly.

  McAvoy smiles at him. “Tell you later,” he whispers. “Put that down now, son. You go play.”

  Fin does as he’s told. Shuffles off the bed and heads to his room, where moments later McAvoy can hear the sound of a five-year-old boy telling one of his toys not to mess with Detective Sergeant Finlay McAvoy, and then pretending to fight a bad man.

  McAvoy snuggles into the blankets. He looks at the clock by the bed and realizes he has been asleep for nearly thirteen hours. It feels good. He is warm and contented: happier than he has been in a while.

  He has no right to feel this way, of course. Yesterday was a catastrophe. The well-muscled man in the Lexus got away. A search of the database showed it had been stolen from a car showroom in Doncaster.

  The lad with the ginger hair has been named by Fitzroyce as Ronan Gill, though the traveler is giving no further information, and volunteered that much only through gritted teeth. Ronan is sixteen years old, a minor in the eyes of the law, who can be interviewed only in the presence of an appropriate adult. He is not cooperating. Has not stopped screaming and swearing yet, forcing every attempt at interview to be abandoned. Grabbed the left breast of one of the well-meaning volunteers who had agreed to sit in on the interview in the absence of a parent or guardian.

  A psychiatric consultation had been ordered by the force’s medical examiner, but so far they have not been able to find anyone who is available. As a result, time is ticking on, and they have no answers about who the man in the Lexus was, why Ronan set the dogs on Trish, or why Alan Rourke’s fingerprint was on the petrol bomb.

  Rourke was released last night, having stuck to his “No comment” answers throughout, breaking his silence only to thank Shaz Archer with all his heart when she revealed his dogs were still okay, and were being cared for at a nearby shelter until a decision could be made as to whether they were to be destroyed.

  The plus side of having such a busy day of form filling, paperwork, and desk-bound inquiry was that McAvoy was able to get home at a sensible hour. He had come home to cottage pie and a four-pack of bitter. Drank one. Watched his bride polish off the other three. Had told his children stories.