Taking Pity (16 page)

“Abdomen and head, abdomen and head . . .”

McAvoy mutters to himself as he examines the documents afresh. Could one shot cause such damage? Or would it take an extra cartridge? Two shots to the boy, one for each of the others . . . five cartridges?

How did nobody get away? If Clarence was killed first and his daughter immediately afterward, his wife and son would have had time to turn. Would they not have covered more ground? Or were they walking in two groups? Perhaps father and daughter were walking ahead and mother and son behind?

McAvoy slaps the steering wheel and lets out a grunt. He realizes that his answer to every question he poses is “I don’t know.”

He steps from the vehicle and checks his watch. It’s not quite four p.m. Fin will be at his after-school club for a little longer. He has time. Time to get himself damp and mucky, should he so desire.

McAvoy’s boots sink into the mud as he closes the car door. He notices a fresh set of tire tracks scored into the damp ground. Recognizes his own from the last visit he made here and wonders whether the tread is that of the vicar. He knows that she still preaches here once in a while. Wonders if perhaps somebody has visited a grave. Makes a note to look for fresh flowers or a scrubbed headstone.

The gate creaks as he pushes it open; loud and eerie in the absolute stillness of the churchyard. He crunches over gravel and then onto the soaking, spongy grass. Walks straight to the place where Clarence Winn fell. Turns his head and tries to work out where Peter Coles would have been standing. The church itself sits at the top of a slight slope. Clarence would have approached from out of the trees. He would have been lower than Peter Coles. The shot took him in the stomach, so Coles would have had to be aiming down. And yet, his next shot took Anastasia in the face. Did he come stalking down the slope, raising his gun like a hunter? Or did Anastasia die first? Was she the first to reach the church? If Peter Coles killed her and bent to strip her corpse, he might have been disturbed by the unexpected approach of her father. He could have turned and fired. It would make sense. He would then be at a lower angle and more likely to aim for the torso than the head.

McAvoy raises an imaginary gun and goes through the various permutations in his head. He has fired a shotgun himself. Knows how it kicks. His dad has always owned a shotgun. Taught McAvoy how to hold it. How to tuck it into the shoulder and absorb the power. How to shoot while breathing out and to squeeze the trigger, not pull. McAvoy had been eight years old when he mastered it. Doubts he would be able to hit a barn door from ten feet if asked to do so now.

McAvoy tramps down the slope and pushes branches aside to wrestle his way into the copse of trees. He shivers as raindrops splash down the collar of his shirt. Feels himself sinking into a mulch of mud and foliage and quickens his pace as he steps into the dip at the far end of the churchyard. This was the moat that surrounded the Hildyard mansion. This is where the lord of the manor lost his son. McAvoy takes larger steps and comes up the other side of the moat. A low wall bars his way into the neighboring field. He climbs over it and feels his trousers growing cold and damp as he comes into contact with the old stone.

He crosses the neighboring field. Rotten turnips sit in rutted grooves, the grass half folded into a bed of mud and stone. He is across the field in no time. Makes for the woods. Feels his hands slip on the greasy wood as he climbs over the moldering, flaking fence, and climbs down into the deep embrace of the forest.

McAvoy finds it hard to imagine that this would be a popular place for an after-dinner stroll. Even if the woods were better tended half a century ago, the ground in March would have been muddy and slimy underfoot. Were the Winns dressed for the conditions? He wishes the evidence log contained anything to help him, but all he has is John Glass’s vague description of what Anastasia was wearing, and that did not include any mention of what she had on her feet.

He pushes farther into the woods. There are no paths, or any suggestion of which way to go. It is simply a thick, wet forest at the beginning of autumn. Dead leaves hang and fall from saturated branches. Rotten timber is mashed under his feet as he fights his way through a spiderweb of spindly, clinging tree limbs. He feels his clothes snag and his feet sink and wonders what on earth he is doing. For an instant he feels like a storybook prince, hacking his way through a wall of thorns to rescue a sleeping maiden. Then he winces as a branch digs into one of the wounds on his back, and the pleasant sensation of doing something noble disappears to be replaced by frustration and pain.

He pushes on, hoping the woods will thin out. He tries to remember the names of the trees but cannot quite get his thoughts together. He sniffs, loudly and unpleasantly, swallowing scents of dead vegetation and turned earth. He looks back the way he has come.

Breathless, sore, soaked to the skin, McAvoy pushes a thick branch aside and stumbles into a small clearing. He bends forward, hands on hips, and sucks in a breath of air. He has only walked through a hundred yards of woodland but he feels as though he has had to push his way through the crowd at a rock concert. His limbs ache and he can feel scratches and bruises upon his skin. He hopes to God there is another way back to his car. Isn’t sure he can face battling back the way he has come.

McAvoy leans against the trunk of the nearest tree. It’s reassuringly solid and cold. He wipes his forehead and looks around him. He needs to know what this woodland was like in 1966. Surely the Winn family would find a better route for an evening stroll than through this maze of thorns and branches.

He looks up, through the tops of the trees, and sees a vast black cloud slide elegantly overhead. It seems to be bringing the night with it. It’s getting dark. Rain still tumbles from a sky that seems to be sinking toward the earth.

McAvoy squints as something catches his eye.

Across the clearing, behind a low, tumbledown wall, sits something solid and man-made. He squints through the gathering gloom. The shape seems familiar. He moves closer. Realizes it’s an old horse trailer, abandoned long before. He walks toward it. Sniffs again and feels a pain in his chest. Christ, he feels cold and lonely . . .

There is a camouflage net draped across the horse box. Its sides have been painted a mottled green and brown. There are deep grooves in the forest floor where its thick black wheels scored their progress into the damp earth.

McAvoy wonders how long it has been here. The registration plate at the back of the large, oblong vehicle has been ripped off and the paint job obscures both its origins and age.

He makes his way to the far end of the container. The door is padlocked shut. There is no doubting the age of the padlock. It is shiny, new, and very solid.

McAvoy holds the lock in his hand and presses his other to the metal door. If he pulled the door, he would perhaps be able to see through a gap in the hinges. But should he? Has a crime been committed? Is he being a policeman or just a nosy bastard? He stands, sodden and conflicted, and pulls on his lower lip as he tries to decide what to do . . .

“Worst mistake of your fucking life, mate.”

McAvoy spins. Loses his footing and grabs for the nearest branch.

A middle-aged man is standing in the clearing. He’s wearing a waxed jacket and Wellington boots over an expensive shirt and trousers. He’s sporting rain-dotted spectacles and is shaking his head. He looks distinctly pissed off.

“I’m sorry, I was just—” begins McAvoy.

“Don’t bother” comes a voice to McAvoy’s left.

He turns his head. A hefty young man in a flat cap and camouflage coat is standing three feet away. He’s holding a length of branch. A twig snaps and McAvoy turns to see another young man step out from the bigger man’s shadow. He is Asian. Skinny and well groomed, save the leaves in his hair and the mud up his calves.

McAvoy feels a tightening in his chest. Reaches for his warrant card then stops as he sees the middle-aged man produce a shotgun.

“We told you,” says the man. “We’re doing fine on our own. We don’t need you or your protection. We won’t pay. And you’re a silly bastard for coming on your own, no matter how big you are.”

“Protection?” says McAvoy, confused. “No, you don’t understand. I’m a—”

“You’re a dead man. That’s what you fucking are.”

“Please, give me a moment . . .”

McAvoy turns his head just in time to see the nearest of the two men dart forward, arm raised. He flicks his eyes upward.

And sees the branch come crashing down upon his head.

•   •   •

“H
ONESTLY
, I
PROMISE
YOU
.
A double espresso with a Red Bull in it. He necked it, right in front of me. You should have seen his eyes! Looked like somebody had put a piece of raw ginger up—”

Tom Spink breaks off before the end of the sentence, switching the mobile phone to his right hand as he signals his intention to cruise past the Land Rover in the middle lane.

“No, he sort of jiggled off after that,” he says, steering his old Vauxhall back to the inside lane and wincing as his windscreen wipers squeal another veneer of raindrops from the glass. “Jittery? I’ll say. Looked like a lorry with its engine running. I don’t know where he was going, but he won’t have needed a car. Could sprint there in ten seconds flat.”

Tom is returning to the East Coast after a quick trip north. He’s spent a pleasant hour with a detective sergeant from Tyneside who had been a raw PC when Tom Spink had shown him the ropes three decades earlier. That young lad is close to retirement now. Got a gut and a bald patch. Got a red sheen to his skin and hair sprouting thickly in his ears. The meeting had done little to ease Tom’s sense of his own mortality, but it had proven useful in terms of pleasing Trish.

“I’ll send it all over as soon as I pull in. The bladder will be demanding attention soon, Nefertiti. You don’t know you’re born, you young ’uns . . .”

Tom marvels at the enthusiasm in Pharaoh’s voice. She sounds relieved. He likes being the source of that. Likes the fact she sends him a jokey card every Father’s Day. He reckons he’s done a better job raising her than her real dad ever did. Useless bastard. Sodded off when she was ten and left her to cope with a drunken mum, two younger brothers, and a senile granddad all by herself. They said it was too much for her, and it probably was. Didn’t stop her, though. She was a copper in her head and heart long before she put the uniform on. Her childhood experiences were perfect training for the job she would eventually do. She learned how to care while not taking any shit. Turned her into the person that has enriched Tom Spink’s life for twenty years.

He’s feeling pretty good about himself today. He’d expected his little mission to be trickier. Thought he would have to travel all the way to Newcastle and buy a few pies and pints before anybody remembered what they owed him and agreed to a favor. But the call from DS Benny Pryce had come through to his mobile only twenty minutes after Tom phoned the news desk at the
Newcastle Journal
and introduced himself as a writer putting together a book on the time Newcastle’s crime bosses turned the twins away at the train station. He’d only had to mention a couple of names from the golden age of crime and the bloke at the other end of the line was promising that one of his reporters would be back in touch within the hour. Tom had left his number and waited for the call. He’d been surprised to hear from Benny. Hadn’t spoken to him since a funeral they both attended a few years back. He’d been friendly enough on the phone. Told him the reporters at the local paper were all kids and wouldn’t know anything useful. Asked him what he wanted to know and said he was happy to help an old friend. Agreed to spare him the drive all the way up to Newcastle and met him in the car park of the service station at Scotch Corner, two hours from Hull and an hour from Newcastle. Benny had brought with him what Tom had asked for. Slipped him a single piece of paper containing all the properties with links to one Francis Nock. Filled him in on the latest developments on Tyneside.

“No movement on the severed arm yet,” says Tom, squinting into the cloud that seems to darken and bruise as he heads farther east. “Not much more to say than you got at Breslin’s briefing. They want to talk to Mr. Nock and his big brute of a right-hand man. They knocked on the door at his mansion half a dozen times but the only person there is a private security man and he says the old man is away convalescing. Doesn’t have an address for Mahon, though Benny reckons he lives somewhere on the grounds. None of the usual grasses in the city center have much to say and Lloyd’s family is saying nothing. Proper old-school wall of silence, but there seems no doubt what’s happened. Lloyd was considering his options. Mr. Nock showed them what his options really were. He could stay loyal or he could die. And the Headhunters are missing one of their own. Questions are being asked. Word is, Mahon got to him. Wherever he is, he’ll be having no fun.”

Tom looks at the sheet of paper on the passenger seat of the car. It’s handwritten. A few addresses, some scribbles, and a couple of asterisks denoting that certain properties are owned by third parties and sham companies but have connections to Nock’s empire.

“No, he’ll keep his gob shut,” says Tom in reply to Pharaoh’s query. “Benny wants the easy life. He didn’t ask many questions, really. I think he knew there was more to it than just my literary leanings, but he’s been a copper a long time and has seen Nock get away with murder time and again. Maybe he wants to see him exposed a little. Either way, it was good of him to help. Poor bugger looked knackered. Whole trip out only cost me a cappuccino in the end. Couldn’t believe that bloke though. Red Bull and a double espresso? Seriously? How tired would you have to be? Oh shit, what’s this . . . ?”

Tom sees the blue light flash in his rearview mirror. He pulls a face and groans. He’s got three points on his license already and knows he’s about to get three more.

“Bloody traffic police,” he says into the phone. “Fuck, I’ll have to pull over. Look, I’ll edit the list and get it to you, then you can send it on to your slimy Headhunter friend. Take care. Bye.”