Original Skin (14 page)

“Did you order food?” asks Ed Cocker, raising his hand and manfully trying not to wince as it is taken in McAvoy’s great paw.

The man, whose business cards declare him a “political consultant,” is as tall as McAvoy, but only half the size. He is skeletally thin, with cadaverous cheekbones and sunken eyes. His flesh is stretched so tightly over his skull that McAvoy wonders whether his shaving cuts ever nick bone, and his dark gray, old-fashioned suit covers legs that put McAvoy in mind of a stilt walker. He is perhaps thirty-five years old, and if he is earning a good living, he is not spending the proceeds on his appearance.

McAvoy shakes his head. “I’m not stopping long.”

Ed nods. Sips from his bottle of lager. Reaches down and picks up a sheaf of printed pages from the seat next to him. “You’ve been involved in some very high-profile cases,” he says, respectfully flicking through the papers.

“What do you mean by that?” asks McAvoy, coloring. Instinctively, childishly, he presses his cola glass to his cheek.

Cocker brushes past the question. “Gets its fair share of big cases, Hull. Bad business last year with that poor girl in the church.”

McAvoy realizes his leg is jiggling.

“New problems, too, I hear. Some new outfit getting in the faces of the Vietnamese? You don’t want to go upsetting them, do you? Crazy. What is it about this city?”

McAvoy breathes out. He is on safer ground here.

“There’s a thesis to be written on that,” says McAvoy. “A sociopolitical doctorate.”

“On why it’s a shithole?”

“It’s not a shithole,” says McAvoy, and his words surprise him. “The fishing industry died. Nobody had any work. And the Germans bombed the hell out of the place in the war. No investment. Culturally, a historic lack of impetus on education. And from a geographical perspective, it has a sense of isolation. It’s the last stop on the line. It has to deal with more than most. That leads to high crime . . .”

Cocker is listening. He appears to be taking it in.

McAvoy stops. Wonders if he should shut up. Wonders how to explain this city to a stranger.

He turns to stare through the dirty windows. A teenage couple are wincing into the wind and rain, trudging past the glass with their arms folded and faces set in grim determination, their blue jeans made black by the downpour. They are not holding hands. Not talking. Just making their way in resigned silence. McAvoy thinks it would be easier to answer Cocker’s question were he just to point at them and tell the southerner to take a look.

“It could be so much,” he says, turning back to Cocker, “this place. This city. Used to be. You know that. Biggest fishing port in the world.”

Cocker pulls a face. “Doubt it made the workingman a millionaire.”

“No,” says McAvoy thoughtfully. “But it was something. Something to cling to. An identity. That’s what it lacks now. Something to be.”

“You got any suggestions?” asks Cocker through a smile.

“I leave that to the politicians,” he says, turning away. “I have to hope the people who get paid more than me know more than me.”

They catch each other’s eye and smile, though for different reasons.

“Anyway,” says Cocker.

“Councillor Hepburn,” says McAvoy. “You have an interest.”

“In him? Not very much. In who he’s friends with? Yes, quite a lot.”

McAvoy decides to stop dancing around the subject.

“Why are you here, Mr. Cocker? What’s your job?”

Cocker gives a nod, as if making a decision. Shrugs. “Your new boss. Peter Tressider. Chairman of the Police Authority.”

McAvoy says nothing. Waits for more.

“You must have heard the rumors that the party is interested in him. He could be set for great things.”

“He may run at the next election, you mean.”

Cocker nods. “And if that goes well . . .”

“People have plans?”

“Indeed.”

They sit in silence, both eyeing each other up. McAvoy speaks first.

“And you’re seeing if there are any skeletons in his closet.”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m a political consultant. I dig. I find out whether we should be worried down the line.”

In his mind, McAvoy quickly runs through the many political scandals he has flicked through in the tabloids these past few years. He pulls a face. “There always seems plenty to be embarrassed about in politics.”

Cocker gives a grin. “I can’t be everywhere.”

“And what is it about Councillor Tressider that worries you?”

“Councillor Hepburn.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No. You don’t.”

Cocker reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a crumpled roll of paper, covered in photocopied newspaper articles and scribbled notes.

“Let me read you something,” says Cocker, clearing his throat. “If you don’t mind, that is . . .”

“If it’s important,” says McAvoy.

“Important? Possibly. Interesting, certainly.”

McAvoy waits. Wonders when the other man will make his point.

Cocker reads the words on the page. “‘He’s the politician who has made a fortune from the pink pound—and who swings to the left, the right, and straight down the middle . . .’”

McAvoy closes his eyes. “Classy. Where’s it from?”

Cocker stops. “Political website. One of many. They’d tone it down for a broadsheet feature but the few times he’s been in the national headlines, the tone hasn’t been far away from this tripe.”

McAvoy nods at the papers. “Carry on.”

“‘Stephen/Steve Hepburn, forty-seven, is the flamboyant, colorful, and rabble-rousing independent councillor and gay-bar owner who is shaking things up in the guildhall in Hull. He’s also the man who saw a hole and decided to fill it—and who has yet to hit a bum note on his rise to power. A local boy who was involved in the music scene during the Manchester explosion of the early nineties, he managed bars in London for a time before coming home to Hull a decade back. Hepburn purchased a run-down gay bar not far from the city center and planned to make it the biggest, boldest, and campest club in Britain. Apparently the idea for Slammers came to him in the night. Hepburn faced fierce objection from locals and various civic dignitaries, but despite recommendations that they block the proposals, Hull Council’s planning committee allowed Hepburn to proceed with the application. Yes, they bent over and took it. Rumors have since abounded that the authority feared accusations of homophobia, and that Hepburn played on those fears during the consultation process. The high-profile case turned out to be the making of Hepburn, who gave several interviews on radio and TV in which he came across as charming, bold, determined—and very funny. He had the presenter in tears of laughter as he plowed into the objectors and the different members of the committee: mimicking their mannerisms and questioning their motives in a speech that was full of double entendres. The opening night of his new club saw several big names from the music scene put in an appearance, and high-profile gay rights activists applauded his victory—bringing him to national attention. Slammers has gone on to become a hugely popular venue, attracting clubbers from across the country and reveling in a reputation for controlled hedonism where people can gleefully dance on the bones of Hull Council’s cock-up . . .’”

McAvoy stops him, holding up a hand. “This is vile.”

Cocker spreads his hands. Takes a drink. “This is politics.”

“It’s not. It’s—”

“‘During the dispute, Hepburn clearly tasted something he liked,’” continues Cocker. “‘He swallowed the plaudits, and so much more. When the next local elections came around, Hepburn put himself forward as a man with something big to offer. Due largely to a low turnout and the fact that the sitting Labour councillor didn’t bother to try to drum up any support, Hepburn was elected to the council. When the ruling Liberal Democrats of the time needed an extra vote to get through a key part of their manifesto, they persuaded Hepburn to join them in a loose coalition that gave him a position on the authority’s cabinet. He has since been sticking it to the cabinet on every occasion, making political allies along the way, impressed with his silver tongue . . .’”

“Stop.”

“Horrible, isn’t it? But people read it.”

McAvoy screws up his face. Tries to remember who he is and what he’s doing.

“And what has this to do with Peter Tressider?” he asks.

“I’m getting to that. Look, known about Hepburn for ages,” he says. “His name has come up once or twice. He’s a playful man. Every bit as flamboyant as he pretends. That’s not what worries us. It’s the shadier side. The money. There are questions over where it came from. It wasn’t cheap, building that club.”

“Shady?”

“Loan from a criminal associate, perhaps,” says Cocker, speculatively. “Or perhaps somebody with dough to spare who might not like being linked to that sort of place.”

Realization dawns. “You’ve been through Tressider’s financial records, haven’t you?”

Cocker does not look away. “That’s basic. That’s the first job on the list.”

“Hepburn’s name came up?”

“In a roundabout way.”

McAvoy makes no attempt to hide his contempt. “Has anybody done anything wrong?”

Cocker puts his hands flat on the table. Looks away. “That’s not the point.”

McAvoy waits for more. “Tressider’s a businessman. What are you getting at? What does this matter?”

Cocker loses patience. “Look, in this business, rumor can kill you. A whiff of impropriety, you’re out on your ear. It doesn’t matter how good you are, or even if you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s what people think. And the party has got wind of whispers about a business relationship between our new paragon of virtue and a gay troublemaker, and it’s up to me to see if that is something we can swallow.”

“You don’t care about the truth?”

“I care about the appearance of truth.”

McAvoy has to remind himself to breathe. He wants to see if he could fit the man into the empty lager bottle. Wants to pummel this walking embodiment of all he despises about the world.

“And this is a job? A real way to make a living?”

“A good living,” says Cocker unashamedly. “And I’m worth every penny.”

McAvoy scowls as he puts together the chain of events that have brought him here.

“You slipping cash to some of the officers at Hull City Council? Asking to be told about anything involving Hepburn?”

Cocker grins. “That would be frowned upon, I imagine.”

“Mr. Cocker?”

“I have sources.”

McAvoy nods.

They sit in silence for a minute. Cocker looks at his watch and then in the direction of the pub kitchen. From the state of him, he could have been waiting for this meal since the mid-seventies.

“There will be eyes on this place soon,” he says, gesturing out the window at the dismal, half-empty marina. “The national media will be taking an interest in Tressider if he gets the nod. Right sort of man. Successful. Straightforward. Beautiful wife. Right background. Could go far.”

“If you let him.”

“Yes.”

Silence falls. The sound of glasses being stacked and plates laid on sticky, varnished tables occasionally rises above the relentless patter of the rain on the glass.

McAvoy runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth and wonders if he has missed something. Whether the past half hour has been worth his time.

“We’re not investigating Councillor Hepburn,” says McAvoy eventually. “I don’t think you should be, either.”

“What were you ringing about this morning?” asks Cocker, appearing not to register the firmness of McAvoy’s gaze.

“It’s nothing. We’re trying to find out why a certain telephone number was in a certain telephone . . .”

Cocker sits forward, like a jockey planning on giving a horse a few extra kicks toward the finishing post. He can clearly smell a story.

“Hepburn’s phone, you mean?” he asks, all smiles.

“I can’t tell you that,” replies McAvoy, willing himself not to blush.

“The number you gave my contact,” Cocker muses to himself. “That was Hepburn’s phone. Only had it a month, then reported it lost. Got a new one from his own pocket.”

McAvoy looks away before his face betrays him. “And?”

“And what?” says Cocker. He is not in the least bit deferential in his manner. He is talking to McAvoy as if they were mates. McAvoy bridles a little.

“I think we’re done,” says McAvoy, and begins to stand.

“Are we going to mention it?” asks Cocker. “The thing we both know?”

McAvoy sits back down. He had not wanted this conversation to reach this stage. Yes, he knows about Hepburn’s record. Flicked through it as he sat in the car outside the pub. He knows that, as a twenty-something, Hepburn was arrested for the alleged rape of a teenage boy. Knows, too, that the evidence was circumstantial and that the case collapsed well before trial.

“He hasn’t been convicted of a thing,” says McAvoy. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. You’re out to get him just because you don’t like what he stands for.”

“What does he stand for?” asks Cocker, incredulous.

McAvoy colors. “Alternative lifestyles” is the best he can do, and he is embarrassed by the pomposity of his tone.

Cocker does not disguise his laugh. He shuffles his papers and looks as if he were about to read some more. “You want to hear how the papers reported the case?”

This time McAvoy does stand. “If you try and pay off any more council officers I’ll arrest you,” says McAvoy, walking away.

“I’ll be in touch,” shouts Cocker at his departing back. McAvoy pulls open the double doors to the pub and all but throws himself out into the gusting wind and rain. It takes all of his willpower to say the word “tosser” only in his head.

GOING FOR
the three-course lunch today. Bag of peanuts, packet of crisps, and a pickled egg. All swilling, like croutons, in the red wine Colin Ray has been pouring down his neck for twenty minutes.

It’s 1:24 p.m.

He and Detective Superintendent Adrian Russell are sitting by the hearth in the George, representing two-fifths of today’s clientele. Warming themselves on the open fire. Ray’s got his back to it. There’s steam rising from his damp clothes, as though from compost.

It’s an unashamedly old-fashioned pub, this. Dark. The smell of cigarette smoke still lingers even now. It has atmosphere. Style. It’s a proper boozer, all fingerprints and greasy brass. All leather-studded seats and dust-caked lightbulbs.

Ray looks around. Breathes it in. Wishes he could smoke. Closes his eyes and plays his game. Tries to bring the scene to life in his memory. To paint the picture in his mind and then compare it to the reality. To see how much he can remember.

Hardwood floor, darkened and scuffed.

Mahogany walls, almost black.

Thick, frosted windows.

Old newspaper articles on the wall. Dartboard, more holes than cork. Drawing of something obscene on the blackboard by its side. Warm. Friendly. Comforting. Like crawling inside a hamster’s cheek and lighting a fire . . .

Ray opens his eyes. He has every detail memorized. Could draw this place, if asked.

It sits at the bottom of the Old Town, on a deathly quiet cobbled street that carries the most unlikely of names. Land of Green Ginger, the street signs declare. A narrow road which was named either for the profitable trade in exotic spices that brought money to the area centuries back, or in honor of a Dutch joiner who had a yard here once upon a time. Nobody is really sure, but the street name is an interesting enough discussion to knock back and forth over a few drinks.

“Should have come to us in the first place,” says Russell. “Drugs bust. The foreshore. You could have had the collar, but when it comes to a bust, that’s our territory. That’s what we do.”

Colin Ray is uncharacteristically diplomatic in his response. He knows that now is not the time to criticize Pharaoh. She’s just had her throat torn open by a pair of Rottweilers, which buys her some goodwill among the troops. Has decided to be sympathetic, at least until Russell lays his cards on the table.

“Order came down from on high, Aidy. Don’t think she wanted it in the first place. And you’ve had plenty of results this year, if the
Hull Daily Mail
is anything to go by.”

Russell gives a begrudging nod. “Yeah, we’ve had some wins.”

“We’re going to put it all back together,” says Ray. “Shaz and me.”

Russell takes a swallow of his second pint of bitter. “You’re a lucky boy, having Shaz to play with.”

“She’s lucky to play with me,” says Ray as he sips his wine. He drinks lager in the evening.

Russell waits for a juicier tidbit, but when none is forthcoming he picks up his drink again. “Should have come to me in the first place,” he says again. “It should never have come to this.”

Ray nods his assent. Has the sense to keep his mouth shut. Just picks his back teeth with his tongue and wonders if it would be taking the piss to claim the senior officer’s drinks back on expenses. He lets it play out. Doesn’t push. Keeps his temper.

“It wasn’t that I wouldn’t have shared,” says Russell slightly petulantly. “Just nobody asked. We’re supposed to be the fucking experts . . .”

The boundaries that separate the roles and responsibilities of the different units within Humberside CID may as well be written in water. For every specialist section in the service, there is another team that feels better placed to do the job. For every case that goes to a particular unit, there are half a dozen disgruntled officers who believe the crime comes under their own remit. The Drugs Squad is unsure how to feel about the Serious and Organized team. Their duties frequently overlap, but rarely to anybody’s satisfaction. The balls-up during the failed cannabis factory raid at St. Andrew’s Quay has given the officers on the Drugs Squad a reason to feel a little better about themselves. They felt they should have been given responsibility for the raid—rather than being reduced to a peripheral role. And their boss, Adrian Russell, has made no secret of the fact. The only thing he has made a secret of is how much he could have helped, had he so chosen.

Despite his rank, Russell is neither liked nor trusted by the majority of the CID team. He is one of the few members of the old CID to have survived the internal inquiry into the corruption so endemic under Doug Roper, Pharaoh’s predecessor. Nobody really understands how he scraped through it all—or landed a promotion and a cushy number running a headline-grabbing team. The consensus is that he has friends in low places.

Ray considers him. Russell is in uniform today. Despite being one of the most senior plainclothes officers, he has been called to HQ for a meeting with some local dignitaries and been told to wear his best blues. He and Ray met a decade or so back, when both were unwilling participants on a “community assurance” training course. They were so vocal in their contempt during the two-day seminar that they might as well have stood up and pissed on the course tutor. They had hit it off. Found enough in common to form a halfhearted friendship based on drinking, football, and in-depth discussions about breasts. It was Russell who suggested Ray get on board when the top brass announced the formation of the Serious and Organized Crime Unit. Ray has sometimes wondered whether it was Russell’s recommendation that cost him the top job and instead reduced him to Pharaoh’s understudy.

“If she’d only asked . . . ,” says Russell again, and looks away. Once upon a time the action would have caused a ripple in his fleshy face. These days he’s leaner and a damn sight more presentable. When Ray first met him, his gut was spilling over his beige suit and there was a sheen of sickly-looking perspiration on a jowly face that sloped upward to a shock of bristly gray hair. He hasn’t been much to look at, but a routine medical had given Russell enough reasons to clean himself up a little, and he had started hitting the gym. He’s still a large specimen, but there is now more muscle under his shirt than fat.

Ray finds himself drawing crosses on the hardwood floor with the sole of his shoe. He wants to tell his friend to get on with it. To shit or get off the pot. To give him what he’s come for.

“If it had been you running the show, Col . . .”

Ray gives an understanding nod. Condones his senior colleague for being deliberately obstructive. For holding back. For not telling Pharaoh what he’s about to spill to one of the good old boys . . .

“Just a steer, Aidy,” says Ray, turning away at the sound of the front door opening. A man in a suit pokes his head in. Takes a look at the virtually empty bar and then withdraws. The door bangs again. “We all know it should have gone to you. But it came to us, and Pharaoh played it her way. Maybe she didn’t know how much you know. I won’t make that mistake, mate. Straight to the horse’s mouth.”

Russell knows he is being flattered, but the smile on his lips does not suggest that he minds. He takes a longer swallow of beer, and then leans forward, bringing himself closer to Ray.

“I’ve skimmed the operational reports,” he says, and then sneers. “She didn’t know half of what she was dealing with. They were never going to be there. This snout she had? This lass who told her where to raid? She’s bottom rung, mate. And if she had any sense, she’ll have told her bosses what she told Pharaoh the second she had the chance. They’ll have cleared out about thirty seconds after she told the brass she had located the latest farm. They’re too well connected. We only raid what they can afford to lose. There’s a system here, and she’s messing with it.”

Ray wrinkles his brow. His eyebrows meet in the middle and he blows air into one cheek, as if he has a toothache.

“There’s a deal in place? An arrangement?”

Such things are not unknown. During his career he has worked with plenty of senior officers who view their criminal targets as little more than professional associates. He has known officers who have turned a blind eye to wholesale criminality in exchange for being allowed to nab some headline-grabbing, midlevel dealer.

Russell waves the suggestion away. “It’s not like that. Not like it used to be. You and I both know the Vietnamese have been looking after cannabis for years. It’s almost their national dish. Nobody else even bothers. That’s what they do. It’s like Colombians and cocaine. Some people have just got a gift for it.”

“So who’s making waves?”

Russell sighs. “Pharaoh knew a bit of this, but she’s only scratched the surface. You think those blokes who got nail-gunned were the only ones? Man, the shit we’ve heard! We don’t know much about where they’ve come from or how far their ambitions stretch, but there’s a new outfit which has got the Vietnamese running scared.”

“The Vietnamese don’t scare.”

“Maybe it’s not fear,” says Russell irritably, gesturing with his pint glass. “Maybe it’s more pragmatic than that. We know these new lads have muscle, but maybe they have money, too. The Vietnamese farmers don’t make enough money to even pay the electricity bill on the places where they set up shop. They’ve got bosses. Paymasters. Maybe our new boys have bought the local labor and are backing it up with a few demonstrations.”

Ray raises his eyebrows, expecting more. “That’s a lot of maybes, Aidy. You’re in charge of the Drugs Squad, mate. Come on, now.”

Russell bristles. “You seen the last quarterly reports? You want to know how many raids we’ve successfully carried out these past few months? It’s almost daily. The scale of the operation is enormous. Somebody with a bit of vision has realized that most of the force don’t give a damn about cannabis, and they’ve taken advantage of that to make some serious money.”

“Where’s your intel coming from?” asks Ray. “The raids? Your targets?”

“Some we get from street dealers who’ve got an ear to the ground. Deals with people trying to shave a few months off sentence.”

“And the bigger raids? The ones that make the papers?” Ray fancies he already knows the answer.

Russell looks into the bottom of his empty glass, but Ray makes no move to fill it. The senior officer sighs. “Anonymous tips,” he says. “Good ones. Straight through to the mobile phones of me or a couple of my lads. They’re never on the blower more than a few seconds. Just give us an address and a time. We hit the place and the cameras start flashing. Nice picture opportunity, and the chief constable is happy.”

Ray sips his wine. Decides it hasn’t taken the edge off what he’s feeling. He finishes it in a gulp.

“They’re pacifying you,” he says. “Either that or taking out the competition.”

Russell shrugs. Looks at his glass again. Ray turns to the bar and nods to the young, skinny lad in a black Ramones T-shirt, who is fiddling with his mobile phone behind the bar. Signals for two more drinks.

Russell doesn’t speak again until he is wiping beer from his upper lip. “It’s all part of the business these days,” he says. “You know as well as I do we can’t get drugs out of our lives. We can’t get them off the streets. We can’t get them out of bloody prisons. It’s about showing that we’re trying. And we are trying, Col. But with the resources I’m putting into cannabis raids, the smack heads and coke dealers are having a ball. And how do I know the lads who’ve taken over the Vietnamese workforce aren’t looking after the harder stuff, too? I know bugger all about them except they’re hard as nails, very good, and very well informed.”

Ray purses his lips. Holds his tongue until the barman has brought him his change. Pockets it and then places his palms flat on the table, as if taking part in a séance. He appears to be thinking.

“Alan Rourke,” he says. “I don’t take him for some criminal mastermind.”

Russell gives a smile. “He’s hard, I’ll tell you that much. Nearly as hard as his old running partner. The stories I could tell you about him and Giuseppe Noye—”

Ray waves a hand. “Tell me the story I want to hear. Why is Rourke’s fingerprint on the bottle that smashed against a police van outside a bloody cannabis factory?”

Russell squeezes one hand with another. “The travelers aren’t much different from the Vietnamese,” he says, rapping the table with his knuckles to emphasize the words. “They do their thing. They stay in their own community. They fracture some laws and they cause us headaches. That’s always been the way. But we live in a multicultural society, Col. Sometimes they branch out.”

“And Rourke has branched out? He’s connected to this?”

Russell shrugs. “He’s a known commodity. He’s a tough guy with respect and backup. You’ve seen the witness reports. It was white guys. Big white guys. What’s to say it’s not the gypsies who’ve moved up in the world?”

Ray considers it. Thinks of Rourke: brimming with confidence and utterly unafraid as he kept his silence across the interview table, with a look in his eyes that suggested he would rather bite his tongue off than give up his secrets.

“Where is this coming from, Aidy? I wouldn’t even have known you knew the fella if he hadn’t mentioned your name. He only did that to see if I’d bite. To show he knew more than me. Made me look a right cunt. Why did you pay him a visit?”