Taking Pity (3 page)

Pharaoh sighs. Takes a handful of her hair and wrings it out onto the carpet.

“It started in Hull. Or at least that’s where they got good. We reckon it was no more than a year ago. Couple of blokes turned up at a cannabis plant run by the Vietnamese. Held a phone to the foreman’s ear and he got the message from their boss that he now worked for somebody else. Next thing, every dealer who got their supply from anybody else was finding themselves on the wrong end of a nail gun. The new firm recruited. Picked some rising stars. Couple of serving dealers. Some muscle. Even got a big name in the traveler community to join them. We had some successes. Put some away. But we haven’t scratched the surface. They’re too well-connected—”

Breslin holds up a hand. Looks down at the papers in front of him.

“I understand one key prosecution had to be dropped following allegations of assault by one of your senior officers.”

Pharaoh bites her cheek but can’t keep the sneer from her face.

“That’s not strictly true, Nick. DCI Colin Ray was suspended following an accusation from a suspect. The prosecutors were still debating the merits of bringing charges when the other incident took place. Fortunately for all concerned, that suspect is no longer an issue. Or a person.”

Pharaoh keeps her eyes on Breslin’s. Forces him to look down. Counts to ten in her head as she waits for the next question.

“The suspect in question is now dead, yes?”

Pharaoh rubs a hand across her face. Takes a sip of tea then a swig of cold coffee. Remembers the phone call that shattered everything.

“Yes, Nick, he’s dead. So’s a civilian. One of my officers may never come back. A good man lost everything that mattered. But yeah, the little bastard’s dead. We’ll miss him.”

Pharaoh throws herself back in her chair. She’s breathing hard. Thinking of Roisin McAvoy. Of Helen Tremberg. Of the poor dead bitch who took the full force of a hand grenade blast to the chest. Of her sergeant and friend, Aector McAvoy. Of what he has become in the three months since he left the hospital and returned home to charred masonry, broken timbers, and dried blood.

Breslin seems about to speak when the woman beside him leans in. Her lips brush his ear as she speaks. He seems to like it.

Through an awkward expression, Breslin suggests they adjourn for a short break. It’s met with considerable enthusiasm from the assembled cops.

Pharaoh is first out the door, reaching into her handbag for her little black cigarettes and lighter. She thunders down the wide spiral staircase, knocking over ornamental tea lights with her clumsy feet. She’s already inhaling nicotine as she barrels across the broad, tasteful lobby and out through the revolving door into the rain and smog of a city that doesn’t give a shit if she lives or dies.

She leans against black railings and watches two black cabs try to nudge a bus into a bicycle lane. Listens to the British flag flutter damply above her head as it drips water onto the feet of the homeless man in the sleeping bag curled up by the wall. Watches pedestrians skip through puddles and between cars, clutching takeaway coffees and mobile phones. Watches the commuters pour in and out of Charing Cross Station. All individuals. No conversation. All headphones and iPads and paperback books. No new friends. No neighbors.

Christ, she wants to go home . . .

“Trish. Could I borrow you?”

Pharaoh spins and finds herself facing the mysterious woman from the meeting room. The woman’s not panting. Not damp. She looks poised and cool, and appears to be holding back a laugh. She gives off the impression of having followed Pharaoh through the revolving door and emerged first.

Pharaoh turns her head to avoid blowing smoke into the woman’s face. Gives her a wary look.

“Don’t worry,” says the woman. “Breslin. I think he’s a prick as well.”

Pharaoh leaves it a whole half second before letting her emotions show. “He’s just so . . .”

The woman whom Breslin had called “Anne” finishes the sentence for her. “So oily?”

“Oily,” says Pharaoh, mulling it over. “Yeah, that would do it. I’m sure he’s very good, but . . .”

“He’s not,” says Anne dismissively. “Not good at what you do, anyway. He’s good at the media and public appearances and coming up with information-sharing working groups like this bullshit, but I can’t imagine him holding back a dozen rioting Millwall fans, can you?”

Pharaoh gives Anne a more considered appraisal. “You’re a cop?”

Anne shrugs. “Sort of.”

Pharaoh runs her tongue around her mouth. “SOCA?”

“I’m on secondment.”

Anne nods in the direction of the Thames, vaguely indicating the general direction of Westminster and the politicians who hold the Serious Organized Crime Agency’s leash.

“Home Office?”

Anne smiles. “Can I have one of those?”

Pharaoh is about to retrieve a cigarette from her bag when Anne takes the one from Pharaoh’s lips. She sucks on it deep and breathes out with a wince.

“Gasping,” she says by way of explanation.

Pharaoh pushes her wet hair back from her face. Lights herself another cigarette.

“I think I like you,” says Pharaoh, nodding.

Anne shakes her head. “You won’t soon.”

“No?”

“We need a favor.”

“We?”

Anne uses her left foot to point tiredly in the direction of Westminster again. In the direction of Parliament. In the direction of a viper’s nest full of people like Breslin.

Pharaoh holds Anne’s gaze.

“I thought you were here for Breslin’s symposium,” she says. “Thought you were making sure we hadn’t missed anything obvious, like bodies on the lawn or a surge in nail-gun purchases.”

Anne sucks half an inch off the cigarette and lets her smile drop.

“No, I’m here for you. You and McAvoy.”

Pharaoh seems to freeze. Every protective instinct in her being comes rushing to the surface.

“He’s on sick. Will be for as long as he wants to be. What he’s been through. What he’s done . . .”

Anne nods. Looks at the ground.

“We understand. We also understand the situation he’s currently in. The financial problems. We don’t need very much. Just somebody thorough to check that somebody else has done their job right. It might be good for him. It would be very good for you.”

Pharaoh examines her, hard.

“Tell me,” she says.

Anne grinds out the cigarette beneath an expensive heeled boot. “Can you imagine spending nearly fifty years in prison for something you didn’t do?”

“Well, I’m married. So, yeah . . .”

“Can you imagine spending fifty years locked up without a trial?”

Pharaoh winces. “I bet the press could fill in any mental gaps.”

Anne nods. “A test case is coming to court. The home secretary has a personal interest. A certain man has been locked up under the Mental Health Act since 1966. And now his doctors say he’s sane. So the home secretary wants him tried for a mass murder committed back in the days when England could still play football.”

Pharaoh scowls, confused. “But the law doesn’t work like that . . .”

“We just need a case building on the off chance our minister gets his wish. We need to show we’re doing what he wants and that if it comes to court nobody will end up looking silly. We need to know everything was done right.”

The two don’t speak for a time. The rain continues to fall. A businessman marches past shouting the word “cunt” into a mobile phone. An attractive black woman thrusts leaflets into the hands of some passing tourists while eating a pot of cold salad and trying to send a text message.

“I can’t promise anything,” says Pharaoh at last. “What he’s been through. If you saw him. He’s living out of a suitcase. He’s broken.”

Anne traces the outline of her mouth with a finger. Purses her lips. “Would be worse if his sick pay was withdrawn.”

Pharaoh’s face seems to turn to stone.

“You couldn’t do that.”

Anne simply gives another nod in the direction of Westminster.

Pharaoh grinds her teeth and looks at her fingernails. Wonders when she began to chew them down so far.

“He’s good, this McAvoy?” asks Anne tactfully. “His file could be read in one of two ways.”

Pharaoh lights a fresh cigarette. Holds the smoke in her lungs until stars explode in her eyes.

“Good?”

“A good detective, I mean.”

Pharaoh blinks slowly. Says nothing and just lets the rain fall upon her face. She remembers the day when the call came through. McAvoy had been found, half-dead, with a serial killer cuffed to his wrist. Ambulances on the way. And then, seconds later, the call from Hessle Police. McAvoy’s home destroyed in an explosion. People trapped inside. At least two dead . . .

Pharaoh has wanted him to come back to work for weeks, and he has pushed and pushed to be allowed to. But her duty as a friend has outweighed all other desires and she has insisted he be a father first and a policeman second. His wounds still weep when he exerts himself. He is suffocating under the weight of death and separation. Can’t seem to find the strength to put a kiss on the end of his text messages anymore. Can’t seem to find the strength for much more than holding his son and squeezing him until they seem to fuse.

She will agree, of course. She will do the Home Office their favor. She will let McAvoy loose on a case full of ghosts and long-dried blood. She will do so for many reasons, but more than any other, she will agree so that she has a reason to call him. To visit him in that hellish place. To give him the hug and the kiss on the cheek that sustains her in a life where the only love and affection she receives is from her children.

To remove her guilt for robbing him of his wife and child.

Pharaoh looks at the other woman and wonders whether she knows. Wonders if the Home Office and the various intelligence services know of the threats to Roisin McAvoy, and the way Pharaoh broke the rules to spare her sergeant’s heart.

She pushes out a lungful of smoke and nods her assent. Then she turns on her best smile.

“I’m going to need a favor . . .”

M
C
A
VOY
’
S
SIGH
paints a patch of condensation on the window. It does little to change the view. It simply makes the wet car park and the pewter sky a little more fuzzy around the edges. For an instant the scene appears in soft focus. It takes on the appearance of a soggy watercolor: hung on the wall too early and reduced to puddles, trickles, and smears. Then his breath clears and the scene returns.

Drab.

Soulless.

Home.

It is 8:06 p.m. and McAvoy is leaning against the window in the largest bedroom at The Lodge, a few miles west of Hull. It has been home for more than three months. Were he to use a mirror on a stick he would be able to see the Humber Bridge. Would be able to watch the waters of the estuary ripple and pop beneath the teeming rain, as though millions of fish were rising up to feed. But the only window in this small, rectangular room faces the car park, and the most exciting thing he has to look at is the arse-end of a Transit van. It has at least given him a brief bit of cheer. In the dust on the double doors, somebody has written
Please overtake quietly—refugees asleep.

The Lodge is a squat, red-roofed, cream-painted building that backs onto the dense woodland of the Country Park. It offers easy access to the foody pub a hundred yards away across the patch of rutted tarmac he has come to think of as his front garden.

He used to like it here. Used to come here with his wife . . .

He shakes the thought away. Fills his head with the first memory he can think of. Finds himself remembering this view during the summer months. He had gone to sleep to the sound of laughter and clinking glasses during the brief spell of warm weather. He may have gone to sleep in tears, but the sounds that bled into his nightmares had at least been cheerful ones.

Summer has come and gone. The leaves have turned and begun to fall. Black clouds hang heavy over a city the rain never seems to wash clean. On a gray, miserable autumn night, the car park is home to only a dozen cars and most of them belong to the staff. McAvoy has gotten to know them pretty well these past few weeks—the employees and their vehicles alike. Has heard life stories over his daily cooked breakfast. Has learned which duty manager will make a fuss if he fills a carrier bag with bread rolls and fruit from the buffet table. Has made friends with the dumpy little chef who works two nights a week and who hasn’t made up her mind whether she wants to mother him or ride him like a racehorse. Whatever her motivations, she has yet to run out of excuses for making him and Fin an evening meal, which they haven’t paid for whenever she’s on duty.

McAvoy turns from the window. Looks at his son, asleep in the bed they share. Fin is five and the double of his father. Big for his age. Red-haired. Soft brown eyes and a wary smile. A look of worry on his face when in repose. He’s a handsome lad with pale, freckled skin, unsullied and perfect. That is where father and son differ. Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy has scars. A livid furrow runs from his left eyebrow to his cheek, bisecting a faint, jagged line that travels from the corner of his mouth to disappear into the permanently damp hair at his temple. Fire has made its mark upon his back. A blade has carved a trench into his clavicle. The puncture wounds upon his shoulders still need to be redressed each morning and night. He’s six-foot-five, with limbs like railroad ties and huge, broken hands. He looks the way his people have for generations. He may be a crofter’s son from the banks of Loch Ewe but it would not take much effort to imagine him wielding a broadsword and cutting soldiers in half.

While McAvoy hates the image he projects, Fin finds his father’s appearance fascinating. Even got himself into trouble at school for drawing a particularly accurate portrait of his dad when his class was doing a project on heroes. He’d told his teacher his dad was a detective. A knight in shining armor. And he’d used a red crayon to show the gruesome toll that such work has taken on him. McAvoy hadn’t told the boy off. Had been too busy blushing at being thought of as a hero.

McAvoy readjusts the covers around Fin’s sleeping form. Brushes his hair back behind his ear and breathes the boy in. These are the hardest moments. After tea. After Fin’s shower. After a story and a kiss and some memories of Mammy. By eight p.m., Fin is always softly snoring and McAvoy is alone with his loneliness.

Several months ago, McAvoy’s new home was partially destroyed in an explosion. Roisin’s best friend, Mel, took the brunt of the blast. Blameless, guileless, she had done nothing to deserve the destruction wreaked upon her slim body by the shrapnel and flames. Roisin had been concussed by falling masonry and suffered gruesome wounds to both legs. Despite that, she had managed to crawl to their baby daughter, Lilah, and had been cradling her among the smoke and flames when the fire crew pulled her out of the wreckage. She’d bitten one of the paramedics to the bone when they’d tried to take Lilah from her grasp. The firefighters found Detective Constable Helen Tremberg, too. Her wounds were worse. It was touch and go whether she would survive. Touch and go whether she would ever wake up to explain why she had been in McAvoy’s home, or accept his pitiable sobs and embraces for saving his wife and child.

McAvoy was a patient in the same hospital as the survivors. He’d needed a blood transfusion and microsurgery on the nerve damage to his shoulder and neck. Had needed to be told on half a dozen different occasions what had happened at his home. Had collapsed in the same heap of snot and tears each time Trish Pharaoh explained that his loved ones were okay. They were going to be fine. But they couldn’t come home . . .

McAvoy tears his eyes from Fin and takes up his position in the corner of the room. He should probably have said no when the insurers told him they had found him accommodations fewer than five hundred yards from the ruin of his family home. Should probably have left this place when the insurers began to find fault with his policy and warned him he was almost certainly not covered for the damage. McAvoy should probably find a low-rent flat for himself and Fin. Somewhere with a bed long enough for his body. Somewhere with a kitchen and a bath. But to do so would suggest that he was starting a new chapter. That he was putting down roots as a single father. That the way things used to be were dead and buried. So they stay in their little room. They live out of carrier bags. McAvoy washes their clothes under the showerhead and he ensures Fin eats a good complimentary breakfast each morning over at the pub. He’s still paying the mortgage on a house that structural engineers have condemned. He’s still on sick pay from work but is drowning in debt. He can barely afford the petrol for the school run. Has begun to experience migraines brought on by the discomfort of sleeping in too small a bed, and lack of sugar.

Looking up at the small, wall-mounted TV, McAvoy catches a glimpse of his own reflection. Tracksuit trousers. White sneakers. A crumbled lumberjack shirt and an unshaven, hangdog face. He closes his eyes. Reaches out for the remote control. Lowers the volume and checks that Fin is comfortable and undisturbed.

For an hour, McAvoy flicks through the six free channels that the TV offers. Learns a little about an artist he had never heard of and salivates over an advert for a new cookery program. He tries to close off his senses to the adverts offering payday loans. Quick. Simple. Effective. A few hundred quid would tide him over. But paying it back the next month would tip him into genuine penury. The problems are getting too big. The postman knows where to find him and every letter is a request for money. Unpaid utility bills on a house reduced to a shell on his second day of living there. Council tax. Credit card bills for presents he bought Roisin back when it seemed that a new leather jacket and a necklace were worth declaring himself bankrupt for.

Predictably, slowly, McAvoy’s eyes begin to close. This is his routine. He will climb into bed next to Fin in a little while. Will say a silent goodnight to Roisin. Will kiss his baby daughter in his mind. Will fall into a fitful sleep, waking every time he rolls onto his back and the tears in his flesh sing with pain.

There is a soft, policeman’s knock at the door to his room. McAvoy sits bolt upright. Rubs his face with rough hands. He doesn’t know what he fears. Criminals? Debt collectors? Knows simply that it has been a long time since a knock at his door meant anything good.

“Hector. You dressed?”

The door handle jiggles and there is a thump as the body on the other side puts their weight against it. After a brief silence, a boot hits the wood.

“Hector!”

McAvoy doesn’t know whether to pretend to be asleep or leap up and hug the person beyond the wood. He hates her seeing him like this. Feels sudden shame that he allows his son to be raised here when he thinks of it as too pitiful a place to welcome guests. And yet, she helped put him here. It was she who took the phone call. She who heard from the plummy-voiced man using the unregistered mobile phone. She who told him of the threats to Roisin’s life. She who said that Roisin needed to be taken somewhere safe. She who said that Lilah’s place was with her mother. She who dictated there was no time for good-byes.

McAvoy hauls himself up. Runs a hand through his hair and uses the hem of his shirt to polish his front teeth. Wishes, on occasion, that he could afford a hotel with a receptionist and an escape route.

“Hector, it’s pissing down.”

He opens the door a few inches. Looks into her scowl. Streaks of black hair cling to the lines in her forehead. The red lipstick at her mouth has been recently applied. She smells of expensive perfume and her little black cigarettes. As she raises a hand to push her hair back from her face, her gold bangles jangle beneath the cuff of her biker jacket. He can’t see her little convertible car but she looks as though she may have driven here with the top down.

McAvoy is incapable of rudeness so greets his boss with a slight twitch of his lips. Puts his hand out as if to shake, then bends down for a clumsy, awkward kiss. Pharaoh rolls her eyes. Reaches up and takes this big bear of a man in a hug that takes the air from his lungs.

And then she is inside the room. Picking up clothes and sniffing them. Hanging towels on the radiator. Straightening the row of shoes at the foot of the bed. He feels like a teenager whose mum has had enough. She opens a window and cold air floods the room.

“He gets a bad chest . . .” says McAvoy weakly, gesturing at his son.

Pharaoh looks scornful. “It’s fresh air, Hector. It’s good for people. You should try it.”

“We go for walks . . .”

“Yeah? Does he make you wear a collar or are you allowed off the lead?”

“Could we use indoor voices, please, guv? He’s a light sleeper.”

Pharaoh points at the snoring child. “Does he know that?”

They stand, a few feet apart. McAvoy’s mouth twitches and then he lets himself smile properly. It’s a nice feeling. He feels almost immediately guilty for it, but for an instant it’s a simple, uncomplicated pleasure.

“Can I make you a tea? There’s some fruit, in a bag. Oh, it was London today, wasn’t it?” he asks, agitated and gabbling. “The Met’s symposium?”

Pharaoh mimes cutting her own throat.

“Nothing earth-shattering to report on that score,” she says with the air of somebody who expected nothing and got less. “It’s what we thought. Headhunters are moving up. Hopefully they’re moving out. The Met’s going to liaise with Interpol and all the big boys to see if the nail-gun and blowtorch thing has been used overseas. Bloke from Liverpool reckoned he’d heard about something similar in Eastern Europe, years back. They’re checking it. Anybody with informants inside the major gangs is getting their palms greased to listen twice as hard. A lot of scary people are feeling scared, which is no bad thing. The Headhunters may have picked a few bad apples who are causing them headaches, but other than that, we’re no further on. I’m not running it. Never thought I would be. This prick Breslin from SIS had the chair. Seriously, you’d have loved him. Three different types of notepads and his ballpoint pen matched his socks. Reminded me of what you’d have become if I hadn’t dirtied you up a little.”

McAvoy plucks at his eyebrows, listening hard. He is desperate for new information. Desperate for Pharaoh to tell him that the gang is about to be taken down, and that Roisin and Lilah are safe. It takes him a heartbeat to register the faint praise in Pharaoh’s words. He doesn’t know what he would have become had Pharaoh not spotted his potential, shortly after taking over as head of Humberside CID’s newly formed Serious and Organized Crime Unit. Before that, he had been a pariah. He’d been the cop who helped push out Doug Roper: the slick, Machiavellian, coldhearted media darling who had let murderers walk free and locked up any innocent on whom he could pin a charge. Roper had been a popular man. McAvoy could never claim to be similarly appreciated. But at least as Pharaoh’s right hand, he has earned back some respect. Taken his lumps and his broken bones and bleeding sores, and worn them like badges of honor.

“Were there awkward questions?”

Pharaoh holds her hands wide, as if hosting the Last Supper.

“Some shit about Colin Ray. Few questions about how we failed to capitalize on the info we got from our traveler friends. Some raised eyebrows about the way we let our big, brutish sergeants swan around like pirates, getting themselves stabbed. I told them the slogan’s right: ‘It’s never dull in Hull.’”

McAvoy nods. Wonders if she’s popped in just to keep him in the loop, or whether she’s going to deliver bad news. The last time she came over it was to inform him that, despite her best efforts, the Police Federation rep was refusing to put him and Fin into one of their rental properties. Apparently he didn’t fit the hardship criteria. In truth, the rep had served under Doug Roper and was simply enjoying saying no to the man who had spoiled his comfortable life.

Pharaoh looks at her sergeant. At the state of him. He looks broken. Looks ill. Looks like he’s had his heart torn out and replaced with cold stones.