Taking Pity (20 page)

M
C
A
VOY
GAWPS
OUT
THE
WINDOW
.
It’s set in a wall painted the color of old newspaper and is bisected by rusting metal bars.

He jiggles his legs beneath the plastic table. Lines up his felt-tip pens next to his notepad. Sips at his plastic cup of water.

Waits.

He has never been to this place before. Has heard of it, of course. It’s got one of those names that kids throw out in the playground without really understanding. It’s a place for crazies. For nutters. For the dangerous criminals who climb in through your bedroom window and cut your face off for the fun of it. It’s home to some of the most dangerous people in Britain. It’s marketed as a place for healing but everybody knows its true role. It’s a prison ship, moored forever in the midst of open fields and winding back roads. It’s a mental hospital for the criminally insane. It smells of chemicals and school dinners. Feels like a cross between a hospital and an army barracks. It’s joyless, clinical, sterile, and cold.

For Peter Coles, it has been home for eighteen years.

McAvoy rubs his head. Pushes his hair back from his face. Smooths it down again with the palm of his hand. Checks his clothes for crumbs. He’s chosen to wear something less daunting than a suit, shirt, and tie. Made the decision to put Peter at ease. Feels a little odd in his dark trousers and a purple V-neck jumper. Doesn’t like the picture on the visitor pass he is wearing around his neck. He’d blinked as the flash went off at the reception desk. He looks half blind in the image. Puzzled and unsure of himself. Half pissed.

He hears footsteps. Takes a breath. Turns his head and stands as the door to the visiting room swings open.

A man in a blue uniform enters first, Peter Coles behind him. A young West African man enters last, closing the door behind him. He gives Peter a little pat on the back as he takes three strides forward and reaches McAvoy first. Sticks out a warm hand.

“Dr. Onatunde,” he says, beaming. “Gregory, if it’s easier. And can I introduce you to my patient, Peter Coles?”

McAvoy turns his attention to the man he has come to see. He’s small. A little stooped. He’s looking at the floor and exposing a crown of gray hair that has receded a good three inches from where it was in the mug shots taken in the sixties. He’s dressed in cheap blue jeans and a sweatshirt. Has pale, waxy skin, as if he hasn’t seen enough sun.

“Hello, Peter,” says McAvoy, extending his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

Peter Coles looks up. His eyes widen as he takes in McAvoy’s size. Gives a little nod and a mumbled hello, then turns to Dr. Onatunde.

“Is he the one?”

His voice is quiet and his words indistinct, as though he is talking through burst lips and broken teeth.

“This is Aector McAvoy, Peter. Remember, we talked about this. He wants to speak to you about some things you might remember from when you were a youngster. Are you going to be able to do that?”

Behind McAvoy, the warder lets out a sigh of sheer misery. McAvoy can almost hear his thoughts. Can sense him mentally scoffing at the do-gooders and touchy-feely
Guardian
readers who treat mass murderers like little boys in need of another teddy bear.

“Very good, Peter,” says Dr. Onatunde as his patient takes a seat on the cushioned, plastic-backed chair. “I’ll just make myself comfortable here, shall I? Or would you rather I left?”

Peter gives a shake of the head and Dr. Onatunde positions himself on a chair in the corner of the room. The warder stands next to him, his back straight and arms gripped at the wrists behind him. He looks like he’s been a military man. Looks like he doesn’t need much of an excuse to pull a patient’s arm out of its socket.

“I’m Aector,” says McAvoy in the voice he uses to soothe skittish horses. “It’s hard to say, I know. Hector’s okay, if you prefer that. My friend calls me Hector. What do your friends call you?”

Peter looks up. He has wiry black-and-gray eyebrows and stray black hairs curling out from his nostrils. He shaved a few hours ago and took half a dozen tiny scabs off his upper lip. They are scabbing over afresh; tiny pinpricks of crimson solidifying under the glare of the yellow strip lights overhead.

“People just call me Peter,” he says with a shrug. “I got ‘Colesy,’ for a bit. In a different place. There was another Peter, so I was Colesy.”

“Do you like Colesy?”

Peter nods.

“Would you like me to call you Colesy?”

Another nod.

“Not Daft Pete?”

McAvoy feels bad for saying it. But he wants to see what reaction it causes in the other man’s eyes. If he had expected temper, he is disappointed. Peter just looks a little sad. Shakes his head and shrugs again.

“That’s what people called you at Winestead, isn’t it? You were known as Daft Pete.”

“I didn’t mind,” he mumbles. “Was just nicknames. There was Big Davey, wasn’t there. And Alf the Hat. Mick Chicken, cuz he had poultry.”

“You seem to remember those days very well, Colesy. You haven’t been there for the best part of fifty years. It’s surprising you can recall names like that.”

“I’m good with names,” he says with a glint of pleasure. As he twitches his lips, he reveals crooked white teeth. “I can pronounce yours right, I’m sure. Listen: Aector.” He giggles innocently. “That was right, wasn’t it?”

McAvoy considers the man before him. Fifty years ago he took a shotgun and blasted a family to death because they caught him taking potshots at airplanes. That’s the story the Home Office believes. That’s the story that the papers will want to print. He violated Anastasia Winn. Exposed her breasts so he had something to look at until the police arrived. He’s a psychopath who deserves every day of the five decades he has spent deprived of liberty.

But McAvoy wants to reach out and squeeze his hand; to tell him it’s okay. He feels nothing but pity for the specimen before him. He wonders how other police officers would feel. Whether Trish Pharaoh would have charmed a full confession from him by now. Whether Colin Ray would be sitting on his chest and spitting in his eye.

“That was perfect, Colesy. Now, you do understand why I’m here, yes? It wasn’t easy getting in to see you. I hear you don’t get many visitors.”

“Nana used to come,” he says, looking away. “She didn’t like it very much, but she came whenever she could get away. She was always a bit cross with me, though. Sometimes it seemed she came to visit just so she could tell me off again.”

“Tell you off for what, Peter?”

He gives a tiny laugh. “For making her life difficult, I suppose. People were mean to her. It was all right for me—that’s what she used to say. I had a roof over my head and a bed each night and three square meals a day. She was right. I never argued with her.”

“She may have struggled to express her real feelings,” says McAvoy sympathetically. “She was working very hard to help you, Colesy. She kept writing to the authorities and bothering her MP. It was her efforts that are going to maybe get you a trial at long last.”

Peter flicks his head toward Dr. Onatunde. “He told me about that. Said they wanted to dig it all up. To make me think about it. I don’t have to, do I? I don’t mind staying here. It’s okay. It’s nice enough. I don’t think I really want people looking at me and asking questions. We have a big telly here and watch programs about crimes, if we’re good. I don’t think I’d like to be in something like that.”

McAvoy doesn’t really know how to respond. He picks up one of the felt-tip pens and writes some shorthand scribbles down in the center of the page.

“What’s that?” asks Peter, suddenly interested. “Is that Egyptian? Can you write Egyptian?”

McAvoy broods across the table. “It’s called shorthand,” he says. “It’s a way of keeping up with what people say.” He turns to a fresh page and draws two lines—one horizontal and one vertical. “That says ‘Peter,’” he says. “And here”—he draws a shape a little like an unfinished cartoon of a mouse—“that says ‘Coles.’”

McAvoy rips the page from the notebook and passes it across the table. Peter takes it like an excited child and aims a nod at Dr. Onatunde. “Can I?” he asks, and looks positively gleeful as his psychiatrist nods his assent.

McAvoy rubs his eyelids. Wonders what the hell he is doing here. Peter Coles almost certainly killed the Winn family half a century ago. He has no real reason to doubt it, save a sense of disquiet and some questionable paperwork. But to try the man before him for multiple murder seems positively obscene. He has spent most of his life locked up. He has had no liberty since he was nineteen years old. What would be the point of putting him in the dock and making him answer for the crimes of a man he stopped being before McAvoy was even born?

“If there was a court case, would you plead guilty, do you think?”

McAvoy asks the question quickly, while Peter is still excited by seeing his name on the scrap of paper and before Dr. Onatunde can clear his throat and suggest that the line of inquiry goes against what the two agreed upon when McAvoy called this morning and explained the urgent need to see his patient.

Peter’s face falls. “Would I have to say? I don’t want to say anything about that. Why do people keep making me think about it? I don’t like thinking about it.”

“It was a terrible night, Colesy. Snow was coming down, wasn’t it? And the ground was frozen—”

Peter shakes his head. “Wasn’t frozen. Was boggy. I nearly lost a Welly coming up the path. Made me laugh. Made a rude noise as I pulled it out.”

“You were at the church, yes? That’s where you liked to go?”

Coles shrugs. “Was peaceful. There was an angel in the grounds. Pretty face. I liked talking to her.”

“I understand you had been in trouble for causing mischief at the church, though, Colesy. Something about shooting at the planes . . .”

Coles shakes his head aggressively, like a toddler refusing to apologize. “It wasn’t me. I’ve shot rabbits, though I always felt a bit bad about it. But I told Glass, I would never shoot the church. And shooting at the planes was just silly. We’d had a few beers, that was all. Just being silly. I said sorry . . .”

“And Clarence Winn saw you, did he? And you thought you would get in trouble?”

Another fierce shake of the head. “It’s not like that. I didn’t. I mean, erm, yeah, that’s right. He caught me. So I did the thing. Y’know. The bad thing.”

McAvoy turns to Dr. Onatunde. The psychiatrist’s face is expressionless.

“So you did kill them?” he asks cautiously. “You killed all five of them?”

Colesy looks away. Nods.

“All five?”

He turns his eyes back to McAvoy. Gives a cheeky grin. “You’re trying to trick me,” he says, wagging his finger. “There wasn’t five.”

“I’m sorry,” says McAvoy, making a great show of writing on his pad. “It was just something John Glass said to me. Said to count the bodies.”

Peter scoffs. “I wouldn’t believe anything he tells you,” he says dismissively. “He was in a right state that night. Doubt he could remember very much without getting his wires crossed. He didn’t even have handcuffs, did you know that? I quite wanted to know how handcuffs felt. Had to use his tie! Left me tied up, all by myself, while he went running off in a fit. I was cross at him for that. And he didn’t stick up for me when the spitty man started shouting at me.”

“The spitty man?”

“The detective. Duchess, he said he was called. Kept spitting when he shouted at me. I told him I didn’t like it, and he spat right in my face. It went in my mouth. He knew I hated that. So I kept my mouth shut. Didn’t speak again.”

McAvoy stops writing. Looks at the shrunken, fragile spree killer across the table.

“Which one did you kill first?” he asks. “Clarence?”

“Mr. Winn,” corrects Peter. “We didn’t call him ‘Clarence.’ The lads, I mean. He was the boss, wasn’t he? Gave me a job because he said he knew I worked hard. He was a nice man. Stern but fair, my nana used to say.”

“But you killed him, Colesy. You took a shotgun and blasted him in the stomach with it. And you killed the rest of his family, too.”

Peter looks down. “Not all of them. Not the way you think. I mean . . .”

He stops talking. Folds himself up and shrinks in his seat.

“What is it you want to tell me, Colesy? Please, give me something. Just tell me why you did it. Why you thought it was okay. Was it Anastasia? Everybody has told me she was a pretty girl. And we know about the drawings you used to do of her. The thoughts that went through your head. It’s okay, we all have thoughts we’re ashamed of . . .”

Peter starts tipping his chair back on its rear legs. Starts bucking back and forth, as though riding a horse. “I’d known her since she was little. She was my friend. It was just stuff in my head. I would never hurt her . . .”

“But you did hurt her. You took a shotgun and blasted her pretty face right off . . .”

Peter Coles gulps in a stuttering breath. His eyes fill up. He lets out a squawk; a squeak of dismay. Bunches his hand into a fist and digs it into his temple until the knuckle goes white and his forehead turns red.

“Easy, lad,” says the warder from by the wall. “None of that.”

“Colesy, people need to know what happened. You remember Vaughn, don’t you? He’s in Australia now. He’s got a good life and he’s happy. But there’s this hole in his life. He deserves answers. And you deserve to sleep without the weight of all this crushing down on you.”

Coles clatters backward as the chair slips out from under him. He lands with a thud, and both hands slap the cord carpet as his head comes down hard. McAvoy is out of his seat in an instant, crossing to where Peter lies, sprawled and confused.

“It’s okay, Peter. You can talk to me. Get it off your chest. For Anastasia. For Vaughn . . .”

Peter Coles reaches up and takes McAvoy’s hand in his. He stares up into his eyes, his face a mask of conflicting emotions. He wants to talk. Wants to spill his guts. Wants to cough up the ball of lies that he has held like a hair ball for half a century.

“No touching, Sergeant,” says the warder, placing a hand on McAvoy’s arm and giving him a none too gentle shove. McAvoy stands his ground. Turns fierce eyes on the warder and plants his feet.