Taking Pity (30 page)

Sees McAvoy standing there, motionless, his face a mask of confusion as he squints through the storm.

Mahon is an old man but he channels all the strength he has into a sprint across the cliff top.

Oliver doesn’t hear him approach. Thinks that the scream is that of gulls and gale.

Only turns at the last possible moment.

Mahon picks him up as if carrying a straw man.

They go over the cliff edge as one.

•   •   •

P
HARAOH
STANDS
in the doorway of the ruined house. Spits and gags and falls to her knees.

And then McAvoy is holding her in his arms and stroking her hair from her face.

“You knew,” she says through bleeding lips. “You came.”

McAvoy holds her close, expecting sobs. None come. She just clings to him, and breathes him in.

There will be time for everything else later. Time to fix this and make it work.

All that matters is the nearness of somebody who cares.

Someone whose face swam in her mind when she thought she was about to die.

S
ATURDAY
,
11:14
A
.
M
., C
LOUGH
R
OAD
P
OLICE
S
TATION
.

An upstairs office, furnished with thoroughly modern appliances and painted a shade of peach so sickly that its occupant worries it will affect her calorie count.

Pharaoh is at her desk. Her gums have stopped bleeding and she has an appointment to have an implant fitted into the hole. She thinks she may have swallowed the original tooth. Has no interest in its retrieval.

The fact she is at work at all is a cause of much appreciative comment in the canteen downstairs. Pharaoh is known to be tough. But last night she got caught up in a gunfight when some men tried to kill an old gangster at his hideaway on the East Yorkshire coast. According to her report, she’d tried her best to save him. If one of the local coppers hadn’t turned up, she might even have saved the old boy. As it was, she’d had to go and help the young uniformed officer. He’d been knocked out cold by one of the intruders. Pharaoh had saved his life. Lost a tooth and got a kicking for her troubles but had hit back twice as hard. Had stayed and supervised the scene and the initial stages of the investigation. Called her sergeant up at home and got him there inside the hour. Would be looking after the investigation herself. Pharaoh has her pick of the jobs for now. Her star has never shined brighter. Should enjoy it, while it lasts . . .

Pharaoh looks out the window at the busy road. The new offices face a retail park. It’s all electronics stores and furniture warehouses offering zero percent financing for the next three years. She’ll maybe pop across during her lunch hour. Help McAvoy pick out a sofa for the new house. Take the piss at his expense and try to find cushions the same color as his blush.

She reinstated McAvoy in her office at nine a.m. Won’t let him take the lead on the investigation into the events at Flamborough Head. She knows he’ll find out what really happened, and that’s the last thing anybody needs. She told him it was just some bad men. Perhaps a branch of the Headhunters, trying one last time to get a foothold in the North East. He’d taken her at her word. Silly sod always fucking does.

At no time had Pharaoh considered telling him the truth. Neither Mahon nor Oliver has washed up yet, and Pharaoh can’t institute a search for them without giving away more than she wants to. She had expected McAvoy to be furious when she told him where Roisin had been. Had expected him to bellow in her face or break down and sob. But he’d simply nodded. Kept it all inside that great big head and heart and told her that he would go and get them as soon as it was convenient for the squad. And then he’d told her about the bodies in the underground bunker.

The Home Office had been far from pleased with McAvoy’s discovery. It meant Peter Coles was innocent. Worse than that, he was some sort of fucking hero. If any of it came out, the headlines would be catastrophic. Pharaoh had enjoyed it. Had let her contact at SOCA vent a little spleen. And then she had told him what had happened the previous night. She’d told him how hard McAvoy had worked and about a few little problems he was having. Had suggested that, among friends, favors were commodities.

By this evening, the bodies will have been removed from the bunker and incinerated. Peter Coles will have been transferred to whatever kind of facility makes him happiest to live out the rest of his days. And Detective Sergeant McAvoy will receive a special discretionary payment for his brief secondment to SOCA. It will be enough to cover the repairs to his house and to fill it with things that will make him content. He won’t question it. He doesn’t know what politicians earn. Presumes that it’s all aboveboard and will simply be grateful that his work is appreciated.

Pharaoh crosses her legs and breathes out a lungful of cigarette smoke. She shouldn’t be smoking in the office but nobody is about to tell her otherwise. She’s hero of the fucking hour. The shipment at the docks was a terrific seizure on its own, but she’s wrapped up the murder of a city lawyer and given an eyewitness account to the cliff-top murder in the space of the past twelve hours. Piers Fordham’s murder is a long way from being tied up, but Shaz Archer has heard from one of her sources that he had upset the wrong people in prison. Reckoned it would either be tied up with a quick confession or never solved.

Pharaoh feels her eyes begin to fill with tears. Finally gives in to it. Finally lets the sobs come and her chest heave as she shakes and shudders behind the locked door of her office. Thinks of her kids. Of her crippled bastard of a husband. Of Tom Spink. Of her mam. The people that matter to her. She nearly lost it all. They nearly lost her. She doesn’t know why she does this job. Why it matters. Why any of it matters. She’s due a good pension. Could quit tomorrow if she chose. But she won’t so choose. This is who she is. It’s what she does.

Pharaoh slides open her desk drawer and looks at the bottle of whiskey. Indulges in a little pleasure.

She thinks of Dave Absolom, and knows. Knows beyond a doubt who is coming for her friend.

•   •   •

S
HAZ
A
RCHER
HASN
’
T
SHED
any tears for Mark Oliver. The bastard walked out on her without a good-bye. So what? Plenty more fish in the sea, though they may not be quite so good-looking or eager to indulge her kinky side. He knows where to find her if he wants her. Knows he’ll have to work hard to win back her favor . . .

That’s the story she tells her friends, anyhow. In truth, Shaz doesn’t expect to see Oliver again. Doubts anybody will. She’s heard what Pharaoh has told everyone about what happened on the cliff top. Doesn’t believe a word of it. She has her own contacts. Knows the sergeant at the local station and has it on good authority that the young copper whose life Pharaoh saved wasn’t even on duty and is planning on handing in his notice as soon as he can eat solid food again. Has it as gospel that McAvoy turned up with him while the bullets were still flying.

Shaz isn’t going to rock the boat. She’s worked too hard and for too long to spoil it by being heard to bad-mouth everybody’s favorite boss. No, she’ll keep her mouth shut. She’ll stick with the squad. She’ll use what she knows about a certain consultancy firm in London to secure some convictions for her big-city friends. And she’ll move when the time is right.

For now, Archer has only one problem to deal with.

She needs to stop thinking about Colin Ray.

Shaz is a pragmatist. She knows she has made the right decision. She doesn’t trouble herself with old-fashioned crap about right and wrong, but she does know that she owes Colin a lot. He deserves better than this. Her head is still full of the moment they took him away. The beat in time when he managed to get the bag off his head for just long enough to lock eyes with her. His whole appearance had spoken of sorrow and betrayal. A hurt beyond understanding. She had done that to him. Sure, she can justify her actions. The boys would have slit his throat and cut off his face and hands if she hadn’t asked them not to. She has a soft spot for her mentor. She hopes that the boys will persuade him to take the money. To go away and not come back. If not, they can be surprisingly resourceful. Colin has kids. Ex-wives. They’ll find his weak spot, and press. And if all else fails, they’ll shoot him so full of drugs he’ll be lucky to remember his own species. All in all, she should probably have just agreed to his death. She must be getting soft.

Sitting at the mirror in her perfect bedroom, Archer sprays her naked body with an extra squirt of the perfume she wears when she’s feeling pleased with herself, then looks at the figure in her bed. He’s lying in the same sheets where she fucked Oliver for the last time. Lying where Oliver would have died, had he not run out on her.

She blows him a kiss and walks to the kitchen for a glass of wine.

Archer has no doubts the man in her bed will find a way to make everything right again. He turned the Headhunters into a multimillion-pound organization. He became the poster boy of CID without anyone knowing who he really was. And he has a viciousness that eclipses that of any villain she has ever met.

He’s handsome, for his age. Cyrillic tattoos adorn his body. His name is Doug Roper. He came here to kill Mark Oliver, but Oliver was already dead. Roper doesn’t blame Archer for that. She did well, keeping him here. Was willing to do whatever it took. Put herself through some disgusting shit just to please Roper. She is looking forward to the rewards.

Of course, he still scares her. There is an emptiness in him that only power and violence seem to be able to temporarily fill. He has had a good week. Everything has happened as it was meant to. Mr. Nock is dead and his employer gone. Mark Oliver has played his part and been removed. Dave Absolom and Piers Fordham have been removed. Their deaths were a shame but a necessity. They knew too much. And for what Roper has planned, he cannot leave himself vulnerable.

The only hiccup is McAvoy. Roper had wanted the bastard to suffer longer. Had wanted his wife and child to be absent from his home until the Scottish cunt was on the edge of madness. And then Roper was going to break his heart and his body all at the same time. The sanctimonious prick got lucky. And Roper doesn’t like that. He has such pain planned for the man who cost him his career and his position that it makes him breathless just to think about it. The big man is going to suffer beyond enduring, however long it takes.

Archer drinks her wine and looks forward to the future. She’ll miss her friend Colin Ray. But the silly bastard thought he was her father. How could he be? After all, Shaz was beautiful, and everything about Colin was ugly.

Archer raises her glass and toasts her man.

They leer at each other; two sharks sniffing blood.

Let’s get started.

•   •   •

I
T
FEELS
LIKE
the edge of the world, this place.

Feels timeless.

Forgotten.

The last villagers left Slaggan in the Western Highlands in 1942. Gave their crofts over to the elements. Let the wind and the rain beat the stones to rubble and dust. Let the bog suck the foundations into the earth. Let it die beneath gunmetal skies.

McAvoy leans against the tumbledown wall and watches the sun throw silver highlights into the gray swell of the water. Sees two rocks appear from out of the surf. Marvels as one barks to the other, then disappears in a splash of fur and fin. He points the seals out to his son. Ruffles the boy’s hair and squeezes his hand. Tells him about the island in the center of the loch. The old folktales his dad used to tell him before he abandoned him for a life that offered more possessions, and fewer things worth treasuring.

He breathes in. Breathes in the smells of his childhood. The salt water. Seaweed. The distant tang of freshly dug peat smoldering on flame. Catches the faintest whiff of heather and water lilies.

And there, beneath it all, the stale taste of bones.

McAvoy feels the sun on his face. Feels the cold breeze roll in off the sea. He cannot call himself content. His insides twist at the unasked questions that grip and pull at him. He cannot help but keep replaying in his mind the events on the cliff top. Can’t help but think of Mahon and the other man, tumbling over the rocks and into the water. Wants to know what will happen to the bodies in the bunker. Wants to know who did this to him and who was so desperate to keep him and his wife apart.

Eventually, he will ask the questions. He will sit Pharaoh down and look into her eyes and ask her to tell him the truth.

But here, now, all that matters is the woman walking toward him across the heather and the thick green grass. She carries his child on her hip. She walks painfully, as though her legs trouble her. Black hair streams behind her, and her pretty, elfin features are flooded with delighted tears as she locks eyes with him. She tickles their daughter, Lilah, and points out the big man with the ginger hair who leans against the fallen wall of a crofter’s forgotten home. Lilah recognizes the man. Gives a huge smile and tries the word she has been practicing.

Behind her, McAvoy’s father sits in the driver’s seat of an old blue Ford and watches as his big, strong, silly bastard of a son collapses in the arms of his wife and child. He wants to follow her across the grass. Wants to run to his son and tell him he is sorry for the stupid things he has said and the ways that he has said them. But he won’t. Not yet. There will be time for that later.

Here, now, there is just the light, and the mingled scents of a place untouched.

There is a family, reunited.

There are many people who contribute to bringing a book to life. In my case, many of them are fictional and live only in my head and whisper things to me in my sleep, but I’ll thank them separately. In the real world, I remain forever grateful to the team who make my books considerably better. Jon, Rich, Ron, and Margot are true friends for whom I have nothing but love and admiration. At Blue Rider, I owe hugs and fist bumps to David, Phoebe, Eliza, and Wes. Gratitude, respect, and several cigars go to my agent and friend, Oli. In the crime-writing world, there are too many people who inspire me to name them individually here, but a special hug must go to Mari Hannah—a great writer and a true mate.

I have a lot to thank my grandfather-in-law Michael Duck for. This book came about as a consequence of the conversations we had while waiting for a variety of doctors, nurses, and well-wishers to come and fix the things that were knackering his body. We sadly lost Mike before he could see this book on the shelves, but wherever he may be, I’d love for him to know how much I admire him. He was a good copper, and a better man. Tall, clever, patient, and loving; it pains me not to have noticed how very “McAvoy” he was until so late.

Finally, thanks to family and friends. Rob, you’re the best first reader a bloke could ask for. Jess Geraghty, you’re my favorite young person. Nicole Helfrich, you’re my favorite German. Mam, you’re too skinny and you need to relax a bit, but you’re ace and I love ya. Dad, thanks for the genes—without you, I’d have hair but wouldn’t be able to write books.

Nikki, George, and Elora, you will always be my everything. Thank you for being weird.

And here’s to you, dear reader. Thanks for taking an interest. I’d look a right prat without you.