The Mercy Seat

by Martyn Waites

  The man waited until the last flicker of life had left Keenyside then let out an enormous sigh.

  As Donovan, Colin and Caroline watched, he began to cry.

  The effort seemed to sap all the life from him. He rested his back against the wall, slid down it. Curled up foetally on the floor. His sobs threatening to engulf him.

  He placed the barrel of the gun, still hot, into his mouth. Slowly, tenderly, like kissing a considerate lover. He winced from the heat.

  ‘No,’ shouted Donovan, ‘Don’t …’

  The man either didn’t hear or ignored him. He said something that Donovan didn’t hear properly. Something about blue skies and green fields. Something about love.

  ‘Don’t!’

  He pulled the trigger.

  And Mikey Blackmore was dead.

  Outside, distant but getting nearer, was the sound of sirens.

  EPILOGUE

  A SECRET GARDEN

  Donovan put down his paintbrush. He stepped back, admired his handiwork.

  Where once the wall had been rough, flaking plaster, it was now smooth, taking its first coat of paint. It was already an improvement. Brightening the room, giving hope to what would follow.

  Outside, the rain was holding off. Inside, the house was warm, oil-fired central heating having been recently installed.

  Changes. For the better.

  He looked around. Jamal, in an old T-shirt of Donovan’s that hung ludicrously down to his knees and an old pair of tracksuit bottoms, was applying paint to the skirting board in the far corner. He was working intently, tongue lodged in the corner of his mouth in concentration, eyes narrowed, making sure his paint distribution was even, that he stayed in the lines. Determined to do a good job.

  Four weeks. Since that night at the Baltic.

  Donovan had been led over the bridge back to Millennium Square, outside the Baltic. Ambulances, paramedics and police all milling about. The area had been cordoned off; Friday-night rubberneckers out in force, thrilled that this had brightened up their evening, TV crews arriving, making suppositions into camera.

  In the middle of all this, Donovan had spotted Jamal. Peta and Amar had been taken off to hospital along with the other wounded. Donovan would see them later. As soon as he could. But there was Jamal, on his own. Sitting on the back steps of an ambulance, huddled beneath a blanket that made him seem even smaller, staring at everything going on round him as if he was in a dream. He seemed alone.

  More than that, lost.

  He walked up to him, sat next to him.

  Jamal slowly started to tell him what had happened. Donovan had been told already but listened. Jamal needed to talk. He reached the end of his story, tears in his eyes.

  Donovan sighed. ‘Where you going now?’ Donovan asked. ‘What you going to do?’

  Jamal shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ Kept his eyes averted from Donovan.

  Donovan looked at him. Jamal had nothing to go back to, no home, just a drift back on to the street. More drugs and unsafe sex and an early, probably violent death. Donovan’s heart went out to him.

  Donovan looked around, checked that no one was in earshot. ‘Let’s get out of here. If the police want to talk to us, they can find us later.’

  Jamal nodded.

  They walked back to Donovan’s hotel. ‘Where you off to now?’

  Jamal shrugged.

  ‘I’ll get you a room.’

  Jamal’s face brightened. ‘Yeah?’ He smiled. ‘Thanks, man.’

  Donovan booked Jamal into the hotel.

  ‘You want something to eat in the restaurant? Or room service if you want to be on your own?’

  ‘I don’t wanna be on my own.’ Jamal not able to look at him while he spoke the words.

  ‘OK, then.’ Donovan bought him dinner.

  While they were eating, he looked at the boy sitting opposite him. Just an ordinary teenager. Or should be. He made his mind up, came to a decision.

  ‘Listen,’ Donovan said. ‘If you’ve got nowhere to stay I’ve got a spare room.’ He told him where.

  ‘A cottage?’ Jamal had said. ‘In Northumberland? Is that in Scotland?’

  ‘No, it’s just up the road. Anyway, it’s up to you. You can make the room your own but you’ll have to help. The place needs doing up, making habitable.’

  Jamal had frowned. ‘Dunno how to do that, man,’ he said earnestly.

  Donovan smiled. ‘Don’t worry, neither do I. Be a laugh, eh?’

  Jamal had tried to hide his pleasure at the offer, knowing it would be uncool to be too excited. But he gave a smile that almost threatened to split his face.

  ‘Yeah, man,’ he said, ‘that be cool.’

  Four weeks.

  Donovan still had nightmares. Still saw ghosts.

  More to add to the collection.

  The deaths, the maimings. The funeral season, as Donovan thought of it.

  Four weeks. Time for the dust to settle. Not enough time for wounds to heal.

  Two people killed, six injured in the attack on the Riverside Café Bar. Not counting Hammer, Peta and Amar. Not mentioning Alan Keenyside and Mikey Blackmore.

  Colin and Caroline Huntley had been rushed straight to hospital. They were recovering. ‘Stable’ was the catch-all phrase the hospital spokesperson at the infirmary used. There had been no decision made on what proceedings, if any, would be taken against Colin Huntley for his actions against the travellers and his other collusions with Keenyside. Whatever happened, Donovan doubted either of them would be fully whole again.

  Peta and Amar were on the mend. They had been allowed out the next day, were recuperating back home. Donovan had been to see them and realized, while talking to them, that a bond had been established. Even in such a short space of time. They would keep in touch. Perhaps work together again. He really believed that.

  However, their business, with no one to tend to it, was back in trouble. Despite their recent successes, Knight Security and Investigations was back to square one.

  The Herald and the Northumbria police were at each other’s throats. Each blaming the other for the débâcle. Neither backing down. Donovan knew it was just for show, a shouting match to indicate to the public how seriously they took these matters. More heat than light. He also knew, from experience, that once the public got sick of hearing about it and another story came along to take its place, that would be that. And matters of outrage, responsibility and blame would be quietly laid to rest.

  Sharkey had been the Herald’s scapegoat. Sacked straight away, sacrificed to satisfy a supposedly outraged public. Donovan took a vindictive pleasure in hearing the news.

  He also expected Nattrass to be demoted as a sign of public appeasement from the other side. But it hadn’t happened.

  ‘I’ve been carpeted,’ she told him over a coffee at Intermezzo, a place she was developing a taste for, ‘but mainly as a matter of course. No one blamed me. I mean,’ she said, making an expansive gesture that masked a great degree of relief, ‘the fact that a rogue element chose that night to target the café Bar wasn’t my fault, was it?’

  No action had been taken against her or her team. It had even been intimated that had the loss of life not been so great, a commendation might have been in order.

  Keenyside’s bagman and second-in-command had rolled over. They knew about his network of dealers. Keenyside’s empire was over.

  Lip service was paid in the papers and on TV about a blow being struck in the war against drugs, but no one believed it would change anything. Not really.

  Justice, in its skewed, sad way, had been seen to be done.

  The first funeral was Mikey Blackmore’s, the Social Fund covering the expenses.

  The church in Scotswood, pollution-darkened almost to black. The vicar young, watch-glancing, speeding through as a matter of duty.

  Donovan thought he would be the only mourner. But there were three college student types standing at the back.

  Their presence puzzled him and they left lo
oking disappointed. Donovan heard the words ‘big-time gangster funeral’ followed by a collective shake of their heads. The vicar looked at him almost in embarrassment.

  ‘Friend, relative?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Donovan. ‘He saved my life. I just wanted to thank him.’

  Maria’s funeral came a week after the night at the Baltic.

  Donovan was still torn up inside. But he felt he had to go.

  Amar, Peta and Jamal also wanted to go. Pay their respects. Amar and Peta on crutches, Jamal very uneasy. The service took place in Didsbury outside Manchester, where her parents had moved to. The trees were almost denuded, the last few curled and crinkled brown leaves blowing about as the mourners made their way into the churchyard. The church was old, picturesque. The surrounding streets pleasant 1930s semis. Almost impossible to believe, thought Donovan, that violent death could touch lives in an area that seemed as self-protected as this.

  But it had. Lives could be broken anywhere. There was no protection. Donovan knew that.

  The four of them stood at the back, listened to the service. Donovan became quietly enraged. All her work colleagues were there, or at least the ones who had bothered to make the trip up from London, but none of them seemed to be touched by her death to any great depth. There was a sense of sadness, but also of duty. Death meant promotion. And they all wanted to be next.

  He tried to shake the thought away. Perhaps that was just his own sense of bitterness and loss manifesting itself. He hoped so. Because he couldn’t shake off the feeling.

  The new editor had already been appointed. Maria’s hated old dep., the one who had made no secret of coveting her job. He came up to Donovan afterwards, shook hands, expressed his condolences. Smiling smugly all the time. Then, on behalf of the Herald, asked him to write his own account of what had happened.

  ‘An eyewitness account from the eye of the storm,’ he said. A phrase which, Donovan thought, didn’t bode well for the future of quality journalism at the paper.

  His first reponse was to punch the guy and walk away. But he didn’t. Surprising even himself, he accepted the commission.

  Back in Northumberland, he laboured on it day and night, determined to turn it into a truthful piece of work. He thought Maria’s memory deserved full honour. And others who could no longer speak, the chance to have their story heard.

  In doing so, it became more than that. Catharsis, writing as therapy; a piece that would exorcise the demons of the last few weeks, purge the ghosts from within. He created a safe working environment for himself out of the defined boundaries of the article. Then, taking his memories of events, and emotions concerning them, as raw ingredients, he began. He shaped and reshaped, striving for an emotional clarity and honesty, depth behind the words. In doing so he sculpted something that went far beyond the limit of his original brief. It became universal, a treatise on the nature of grief and anger, remorse and revenge.

  It was undoubtedly the best piece of writing he had ever done, possibly the best he would ever do.

  The Herald paid handsomely for it, realizing they had something special. In addition to that, they offered to broker him book deals, film rights. Anything to keep him writing. Donovan declined everything. While working on it, he had decided it would be the last piece he ever wrote. For them or anyone. He was finished with the Herald, finished as a journalist.

  The piece had served its purpose.

  Something else also happened at Maria’s funeral. Just as the article was the past, so this could have been the future.

  ‘There’s Sharkey,’ said Peta, pointing from the pew they sat in.

  They were standing, collectively making their way outside after the service.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Donovan.

  They didn’t need to be told. However, it was clear that Sharkey wanted to talk to them. As they made their way to the graveside for the final part of the service, Sharkey sidled up beside them.

  He wore his usual immaculate pinstripe suit, with his left arm strapped up and a camelhair coat draped theatrically over his shoulders. Gave a respectful bow.

  ‘You’ve got a fucking nerve turning up here,’ said Donovan.

  ‘We should find a spare hole and bury you as well,’ added Peta.

  Sharkey placed his good hand on Donovan’s sleeve. Donovan turned.

  ‘Please. Not here. I’ve come to pay my respects too.’

  Donovan looked at him. There seemed to be genuine emotion behind his words. He looked to be grieving. Donovan gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  They walked slowly on.

  ‘The Herald chucked you out, then?’ Donovan asked.

  ‘They needed a sacrificial scapegoat,’ Sharkey said. ‘Someone to shoulder the blame and apologize in public. I am now, officially, a penitent.’

  ‘Good. Because it’s all your fault.’

  Sharkey sighed as if about to argue. But said nothing.

  They reached the graveside. Maria’s mother, who so far had been stoical, let go all her tears as her daughter’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Donovan looked away, trying to mask his own, private grief.

  Afterwards, he turned down an offer to go back to Maria’s parents’. He couldn’t face it. Her mother saw his face, understood. As he, Peta, Amar and Jamal walked away, Sharkey found them again.

  ‘Glad I caught you all,’ he said. ‘Wanted a word.’

  ‘I can think of a good one,’ said Amar.

  Sharkey stood in front of them, blocking their path. ‘Can we call a halt to hostilities and have a decent, civilized conversation? Please?’

  ‘What have we got to talk about?’ asked Donovan.

  ‘I have a proposition for you which could be to your benefit.’ Sharkey looked at Peta and Amar. ‘All of you. Please hear me out.’

  They said nothing.

  ‘I’ll take you to dinner.’ He smiled. ‘Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’

  * * *

  Chinatown in Manchester. The Yang Sing restaurant. Gold and red décor. A round table piled high with dishes. The food excellent. Jamal ate like he had never been fed. Donovan, Peta and Amar picked. Sharkey tried valiantly with chopsticks, gave up and used a fork.

  ‘So what was this proposition?’ said Donovan, taking a sip of his gin and tonic, looking at the solicitor.

  Sharkey put down his fork, settled back in his chair. Donovan sensed a lecture coming. He wasn’t disappointed. The price he paid for the good food, he thought.

  ‘Heavy industry,’ he began, ‘manufacturing. Mining. All the old industries. Here in the West, and particularly in Britain, they have declined to the point of extinction.’

  ‘Anybody want the last chicken ball?’ asked Jamal.

  Donovan almost laughed out loud. He told him to take it. Sharkey, irked at having been interrupted, continued.

  ‘What our blighted land of Albion now exists on,’ he said, waving his fork as if that in some way emphasized his point, ‘is information. It passes back and forth across the world at great speeds; it informs, if you will, every aspect of our lives.’

  ‘Is there a point to this?’ asked Peta. ‘We’ve got a long drive home.’

  ‘Yes, Peta, there is a point,’ he said, angry now at his perfectly prepared speech being interrupted again. He indicated Donovan. ‘Now you, Joe, I know you don’t want to be a journalist any more. But you have first-class investigative skills. It would be a shame to see them go to waste. And you, Peta and Amar, you have a framework, a business structure already in place. Perhaps not as successful as you would wish, but the basics are there.’ He sat back, looked at them.

  ‘That’s it?’ said Donovan. ‘The big idea? I should go and work with these two? Well, thanks, Francis.’

  ‘Just hear me out. Not private investigators. Not investigative journalists, even.’

  ‘Then what?’ asked Amar.

  Sharkey smiled. ‘Information brokers.’

  He explained. Information, he said, was sometimes hard to come by
. Sometimes even deliberately kept secret. Sometimes not in the best interests of the majority. He proposed that they set up a company that utilized their individual skills for the express purpose of gaining information to sell.

  ‘Who to?’ asked Peta.

  ‘Whoever wants it.’

  ‘What if that doesn’t turn out to be ethical?’ said Donovan.

  Sharkey shrugged. ‘That’s up to you. I’m sure a team with your collective intelligence could find a way to salve your conscience and maintain your company’s integrity.’

  ‘How will it work?’ asked Amar.

  Sharkey would make initial enquiries, use his contacts to find potential buyers. The three of them would get access to this information; Sharkey would sell it on. They’d all be paid. ‘And handsomely,’ he added. ‘I am as in need of funds as you are. But this is the deregulated private sector in the twenty-first century. A very lucrative place to be.’

  ‘Who has this information?’ asked Donovan.

  ‘Anyone and everyone. I doubt two jobs will be the same. It might be easy or it might be dangerous. But I’m sure it’ll never be dull.’

  Donovan stared. Sharkey had seen that look before. He swallowed hard.

  ‘You’ve made promises before,’ Donovan said. ‘About David. Why should I believe you now?’

  Sharkey looked suddenly hot. His features coalesced into a kind of frightened sincerity. ‘I meant what I said about your son. I have contacts in the police force, the media, social services even. If I get to hear anything, a sighting, a body even – God forbid – I will let you know. I’ll even give you support in setting up your own investigation, if needs be.’

  Donovan looked unconvinced. ‘Why?’

  All pretence seemed to drop from Sharkey’s features. ‘Because I believe it’s something I owe you.’ He sat back. ‘And because I know what you’d do to me if I don’t.’

  Donovan almost smiled.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Peta, unconvinced. ‘But can we trust you?’

  Sharkey smiled. ‘If there’s money involved, then we’re all on the same side.’