by David Mark
McAvoy looks at her. ‘We don’t think that way. We can’t. Everybody does things wrong. We can’t deserve death as a consequence.’
Helen finishes her crisps and considers her companion. He has seen people die. Has found bodies and saved lives. He carries guilt and self-doubt as constant companions. He lives to try and make the world a little nicer for the people he loves. She wants to be like him but knows the price he pays for holding his emotions so close. She has never seen him let go. Not even when she was in the hospital, having saved the life of his wife and child. Even then, his tears were held inside. She fears he will break one day and wonders what he will become when the tears flood out. She wishes he were able to free himself of the barbed wire of conscience that he has wrapped in and around himself. Helen has suffered at the hands of bad men, and she feels no remorse for being glad that somebody is serving up a different kind of sentence. She will still try and catch whoever is doing it, but she will not grieve for those they have killed.
‘Look for connections,’ says McAvoy. ‘Do it quietly. Don’t boot down any doors. I’ll clear it with the boss when she’s back. Call me at home tonight and let me know what you’ve found. If there’s enough to take things forward, the boss will bring it under the unit’s purview. The Wawne link will be enough to sell it to the brass.’
Helen looks doubtful. ‘You think she’ll come through this unscathed?’
McAvoy looks momentarily displeased, like a schoolteacher who has seen a favourite pupil put an apostrophe in the wrong place.
‘She’s the boss,’ he says. ‘She’s done nothing wrong. We won’t catch anybody without her.’
Helen looks at him again. Sees in him a desperate desire to do good and a terrible fear of getting things wrong. He needs Pharaoh to remain an unsullied icon, somebody to look up to and impress. He needs Roisin to be his symbol for goodness and wonder, and his boss to be an example of how to behave. McAvoy is not an overly religious man, but Helen suddenly feels that he thinks of the two women in his life the way Christians think about favoured saints. They are his channel to something greater.
‘I’ll take the blame if there’s any comeback,’ says McAvoy, standing. ‘Say I told you to do it and you were powerless to resist.’
Helen grins and feels an urge to punch him on the arm.
‘That wouldn’t actually be a lie,’ she says, packing her things.
McAvoy looks at her, all sad eyes and tired smile.
‘I’m not irresistible,’ he says, confused.
Helen turns away, shaking her head.
You’ve no idea.
Chapter 14
Teddy has never drunk in a place like this before. Never sunk pints in a boozer where the toilets have ultraviolet lights so that heroin users can’t find their veins, or drunk whisky from a bottle that simply has the word ‘whisky’ written on the label in marker pen. It’s not that he is particularly sophisticated. It’s just that pubs with slices of bread and dripping on the bar seem to come from a different time and place. Teddy has just discovered that the time is now, and the place is Grimsby town centre.
He carries the drinks back to the table. Two pints of lager and two chasers. He didn’t specify which lager. The lass behind the bar didn’t ask. He was busy chuckling at the menu, wondering how an all-day breakfast could only be served between the hours of nine and three.
‘Get that down you,’ he says to Foley. ‘Chaser first – put the cart before the horse.’
‘Cheers,’ Foley grunts, and downs the whisky. He grimaces. ‘Tastes like raw potatoes.’ He is brooding. Pulling on his electric cigarette. Teddy considers him. The younger man has a nasty purple bruise from the hinge of his jaw down to the little dimple in his chin. It’s obviously fist shaped. Anybody looking can tell that he’s been thumped. Foley seems to be feeling a little precious. He’s used to being glimpsed with bruised knuckles and blood-stained shoes. To be seen as such an obvious victim is upsetting him. He’s been difficult company all day.
‘Good seats,’ says Teddy, trying to cheer his companion. He rubs the old, stained mahogany of the curve-backed and rickety chairs. From here they can see out through the big glass double windows. Can see the dark grey mass of Grimsby Minster and the semicircle of teenagers who sit on the grass with their backpacks and their outlandish hair and who read their schoolbooks in the warm spring air.
Foley just sucks at his cheeks and scowls. He’s wearing a tracksuit top and jeans, white trainers and a baseball cap, and two sovereign rings and a chain thick enough for a mountain bike. He smells of expensive aftershave and cigarettes and the sausage roll he ate for lunch. And also, ever so faintly, of the tea-tree stick he uses on his spots which Teddy does not admit to knowing about.
‘Might be a good place to watch the boxing,’ muses Teddy, looking around and up at the huge, pull-down screen. He feels quite at home here. It’s a place for serious drinkers, a place to drink in ones and twos. An old boy with hair like dirty meringue is seated at the table to his left. The bottom of his pint glass is the same thickness as his spectacles and every time he raises it to his lips he looks like he has three eyes. His suit is the colour that black goes when it has been boil washed too many times. He hasn’t spoken since he walked in. Just sits, and drinks, and reads the classified pages of the Grimsby Telegraph. Circles the dead that he once knew.
‘She’s had enough bloody hugs,’ snorts Foley, staring intently at the crowd of teenagers. His eyes are fixed on Sophia Pharaoh-Wilkie. She looks striking in her school blazer, grey skirt and white knee-socks. She back-combs her hair for school and wears just enough make-up not to be told off. She’s sitting with the older kids. Lads from Grimsby College. She’s reclining against a tall, androgynous-looking specimen who keeps flicking his hair out of his eyes and occasionally tickling Sophia’s ribs. Lots of the girls have given her cuddles over the past hour. She’s been telling them some sob story about the nasty men who came and hurt her last night. Has probably updated her Facebook status and taken a selfie looking violated. Foley wants to smash her face in.
‘Chill your boots, son,’ says Teddy, placatingly. ‘The boss is thinking things over. He’s a man of patience. He says the word, we can enjoy ourselves. He says no, we sit and drink in this lovely place. Life’s a peach. We’re on expenses. Don’t get so upset. He hit you in the dark, mate. You’d have fucking broken his spine if you’d seen him coming.’
Foley seems briefly mollified by his companion’s words. Were they still inside, Teddy would give his cheek a stroke. He’d hold his face in his hands and stare into his eyes and tell him he’s the man. Not to get upset. Then he’d lead him to their bunk beds and spoon him for an hour. Maybe slide a hand inside his jeans. Make him feel better. Here, now, he can only try and make the grumpy sod laugh.
‘The boss is fucking losing it,’ says Foley, slumping lower in his seat and rolling a mouthful of phlegm with his tongue. ‘We should have gone back there last night. Burned the fuckers to the ground . . .’
Teddy sighs. He has worked for many men over the years and is quietly fond of his current employer. For the past six years he’s been a fairly decent boss. He runs the Krakatoa Casino in Blackwell and a private members’ club in Mayfair. Lends money at an interest rate that puts most credit cards to shame. Offers security services and occasionally gets his hands on shipments of cheap booze and cigarettes. He helps people reach the UK. Helps employers find cheap labour. He’s an agreeable enough man in his late fifties and he earned his stripes when the serious gangsters still ran London. He doesn’t like to hurt people. Teddy has only had to open one throat since he began working for him. He’s cut the fingers off a couple of late payers and sliced a whore from her eye socket to her chin, but he took only minimal pleasure from it, and his boss none at all. The whore hadn’t even been a looker to start with.
‘Why are we here, Teddy?’
Teddy turns to his companion and gives him a warm, indulgent smile. ‘Getting philosophical again, my friend?’
/>
‘Fuck off – you know what I mean. This isn’t worth it. She’s a copper. It’s not that much bloody money. Barely worth paying us to come all this fucking way.’
Teddy shrugs. Finishes his pint. He’s been around long enough to know that times change. Sometimes, your boss on a Monday is in the ground come Tuesday. By Wednesday, you’re working for somebody else and refusing to look back.
‘You’ve heard the same stories I have,’ he says flatly. ‘The boss has bowed the knee.’
‘Them?’ asks Foley, cautiously.
Teddy shrugs. They have both heard the rumours. For the past two or three years, an organisation of ruthlessly efficient mercenaries has been taking over territory from established criminal outfits. Those that have refused to join them are dead or in prison. Nobody knows where they came from or how much influence they intend to assert but those who have crossed them have been hurt beyond enduring.
‘They did it to Carruthers,’ says Foley quietly. ‘His dad runs Blackpool. He was doing a spell in Lincoln. When the screws found him they’d nailed his hands to his knees and blowtorched his fucking chest . . .’
Teddy says nothing. He’s heard the stories. Knows what he will say if they approach him and ask him to join up. He’d shoot his mother in the face before he’d submit to such tortures.
‘You think they’ve asked to see the boss’s books?’ asks Foley. They’ve never let themselves talk about this. They’re feeling one another out like chess masters.
Teddy shrugs. The thought has occurred to him. If the boss has lost territory to a new outfit, perhaps the new chief is demanding more than he can realistically expect. The boss has been lending money to lost causes for years. Nine times out of ten, they pay up or sign over something useful. In the case of Anders Wilkie, the boss never expected to see it again. The debtor was a cripple. He had nothing to offer. His missus was a copper. The boss gave it up as a learning experience. This past month, the boss hasn’t been himself. He’s been drinking more. Losing his temper. Demanding swifter and heftier payments from his underlings. When he despatched Teddy and Foley to Grimsby he couldn’t meet their eyes.
‘Maybe whoever the boss is paying has it in for coppers,’ says Foley.
Teddy’s smile breaks the ice. Foley relaxes a little. They both seem to be on the same page. They both harbour the same doubts. Their boss is on borrowed time. Whoever is making demands of him has ordered that Pharaoh be hounded. And that suits them fine.
‘Speak of the devil,’ says Teddy, and answers his phone.
The man at the other end of the line is their boss, Dieter Helfrich. He grew up in East Berlin, under the boot of the Communists. Played the black market as a teen. Hurt people where he had to. Sold vaguely useful secrets to the West until his life became difficult and then enjoyed the hospitality of his British paymasters when they helped him defect in 1986. He sold guns to gangsters in east London. Channelled money into clubs and security. Played the game. Brought over a couple of old pals after the fall of the Berlin Wall and became a player in south London. He’s pushing sixty now and looks like a geography teacher. He’s short, with unkempt grey hair and big, square glasses. He tried smaller, frameless spectacles but they made him look too much like a German caricature. He used to spend his spare time at his riverboat home by the Thames, but then the Headhunters entered his life, hurt his businesses, and told him he now worked for them. His Ukrainian mistress disappeared. They demanded a set sum each month. They looked through his books and recognised a name. And then a voice in his ear told him to go and make Trish Pharaoh’s family pay.
‘You’re looking at her?’ asks Helfrich. ‘The girl?’
‘I can see her now,’ says Teddy quietly. ‘My friend here is feeling a little put upon. He’s just itching to take out his frustrations.’
‘Tell him to rein in his impulses. This isn’t about anything more than money. You played it wrong. Pharaoh should have been on the phone begging to be allowed to pay back what her husband owes. You’ve missed your chance. Don’t go for the daughter first. Find somebody else in her life and squeeze.’
Teddy sucks his teeth. ‘A friend?’ he asks.
‘Do what you do best. But the money is the key, Teddy. I have commitments. This is important.’
Teddy looks at the phone quizzically as his employer hangs up. He wonders how he will break the news to Foley. The lad has been so looking forward to making the copper’s daughter beg. He feels bad that his young friend will be disappointed. He pulls a face as he works out a compromise, then his face splits into a big grin as he remembers the pikey. She ticks all the boxes. She’ll be perfect, in fact. Pikeys don’t tell the police. They don’t matter, truth be told. She said her husband was a copper but that was obviously bollocks. And by Christ she had some spirit. Shouldn’t be hard to find, neither. He turns to his friend and puts a hand on his shoulder. Looks across the blackheads and bruising around his nose.
Grins as he speaks.
‘Foley, my lad, there’s good news and bad news . . .’
In the back room of his casino, Dieter Helfrich dabs at his forehead with a silk handkerchief. The fourteen-year-old Ukrainian girl remains spread-eagled on his desk, reading a magazine. He pats her backside, absent-mindedly, as he mulls things over.
He’s growing poor under the Headhunters but if he can prove his worth he’ll survive and flourish. They’ll make him rich. He’ll be able to retire years ahead of schedule, pockets bulging with a payday that they promise will be like no other.
He pulls the thong from the perfect white buttocks of the girl. She mumbles a word of thanks in her native tongue then apologises for not using English.
He’s grateful to the Headhunters. They have sent him girls worth far more than the dead-eyed addicts who proved good enough for his customers for years. But, like all their gifts, the girls have come at a price.
Look after him.
That had been their instruction. He’d done as he’d been told. Found a room in one of the houses he owns and deposited the yellow-toothed, sallow-skinned zombie on a stinking mattress under the eyes of two East European guards. He was barely human. Long teeth, dirty nails and greenish skin. Must be pushing sixty. Slack jaw and features like a dead rat.
He’d barely been able to say his name when pressed by Dieter’s men.
Fuck you, he’d managed, then coughed on bile.
His captors had made a mess of him. Shot him full of a chemical mix that turned his skin into a patchwork of sores and his mind to a sack of screaming snakes.
I’m a policeman . . .
Chapter 15
‘I’m sorry.’
‘If you say that again I’m going to elbow you in the throat.’
‘Really. That wasn’t what I brought you here for. I’m sorry if you misunderstood . . .’
‘Stop talking. Save your life.’
On the steps of the caravan, Reuben Hollow hangs his head. He’s been rolling and unrolling a cigarette for the past five minutes. It’s starting to annoy Pharaoh and she’s annoyed enough already. Annoyed and hot and embarrassed. Burning with shame.
‘Do you want me to roll that?’ she asks, through gritted teeth.
Hollow notices the cigarette, seals it shut with the tip of his tongue and lights it with his black Ronson lighter. It’s a classic, expensive-looking object. He plays with it nervously. Raises his head and stares at Pharaoh. She’s standing by the fire, chain-smoking. Her hair is stuck to the sweat on her head and neck. The right leg of her tights is laddered and there is dirt on the back of her black dress.
‘If you tell anybody . . .’ says Pharaoh, her teeth clamped around the filter. She softens her face a little, then hardens it as tears prick at her eyes. ‘Why did you carve those figures? What did you expect me to think?’
Hollow scratches at his stubble. He’d only let her kiss him for a moment. She came at him hungrily. Her mouth was hot and wet and tasted like his own. Her body felt warm and her breasts had squashed against him as
she pulled his mouth onto hers and grabbed a fistful of his shirt.
It was when her tongue slithered against the roof of his mouth that he reacted. Pushed her away as if she were a vile thing. Pushed her too hard. She had fallen backwards. Snagged her tights and landed on the ground among the dead leaves and the scuttling, crawling things. She had looked up through a veil of hair and her face had contained more hurt than he had ever seen.
He had rejected her. Led her on just so he could say no. Had played with her like she was a schoolgirl. She hadn’t even known she was falling for him. Had surprised herself as much as him when she clamped her mouth onto his. It has been so long. So long since somebody has touched her. So long since she felt beautiful.
Here, now, she repels herself. She has never felt so unclean.
‘I thought you might like something to drink.’
She turns, wiping her eyes and trying to hide her laddered leg behind the good one. A girl is walking towards them through the grass, holding a thick green bottle and two glasses. She’s good-looking. Red hair and freckles. She’s wearing a man’s jumper and a pair of denim shorts, her hair tied back with a scarf that puts Pharaoh in mind of munitions factories and overalls. She’s wearing glasses with a chunky frame and her features are pleasingly mischievous. Delphine.
‘That’s so thoughtful,’ says Hollow. He comes down the caravan steps and greets his daughter with a kiss on the forehead. He lingers there, sniffing her hair. Gives her a squeeze. ‘This is Delphine. You’ve met before, yes?’
Pharaoh’s throat feels dry. She raises her cigarette to her lips and realises it has burned down to nothing. She and Delphine have never spoken but she saw her every day during the trial. She sat in the public gallery with a quiet dignity and took notes. Every night she took two buses home. Walked the last mile to this lonely place, with its headstones and ghosts. Didn’t cry when he was sentenced. Only let her tears go when he was released. Then she held him on the steps of the Court of Appeal and sobbed into his chest as he held her and the scrum of photographers snapped their pleasure and pain from every angle.
