Original Skin (5 page)

“Come on, then,” she says, when it becomes clear he will not respond. “Let’s get wet.”

Pharaoh pushes herself off from the wall. Early forties, curvy, and habitually dressed in biker boots, a knee-length dress, and a cropped leather jacket, she does not look much like the head of Humberside Police Serious and Organized Crime Unit. But she’s damn good at a job she inherited under difficult circumstances, and she marshals the egos and neuroses of her team like an inspirational primary school teacher.

“She really didn’t want to meet somewhere neutral?” asks McAvoy, squinting into the rain. “She wanted us to come to the house?”

Pharaoh shrugs. “I gave her the option. She said to come to her place. I warned her, if you were wondering. Said I didn’t advise it.”

McAvoy nods. “She knows what she’s doing, I suppose.”

This time it is Pharaoh who remains silent.

They turn off Trinity Square and walk in silence until they reach the damp cobbles of Dagger Lane. It’s only a minute from the Old Town and a quick sprint across the busy divided highway from the bobbing pleasure craft and empty pubs of the marina.

“One at the end,” says Pharaoh, nodding at the row of redbrick terraced houses that occupy this old street, the origins of its intriguing name lost to history.

“And she’s sure?” asks McAvoy.

“Sounded it.”

Pharaoh leans on the bell outside the slim, nondescript terrace. Turns to McAvoy.

“Smarten yourself up, man. You know she fancies you.”

“Guv, I . . .”

The door swings open.

Leanne Marvell is forty-one years old, and though she no longer works as a bouncer or competes in the bodybuilding contests that first tempted her into trying steroids, she remains a powerfully built and imposing physical specimen. Though she is not particularly tall, she has a masculine physique, and while her muscles are not as clearly defined as they are in the photographs that McAvoy has seen from her weight-lifting days, she still looks like she could beat him in an arm wrestle.

Her large nose is the only wrong note in a relatively pretty face, which creases into a smile when she sees McAvoy on her doorstep.

“Aector,” she says, looking past Pharaoh, “I wasn’t expecting you as well.”

Self-consciously, Leanne begins to straighten her gray tracksuit trousers, and the belly that sticks out from beneath her workout top miraculously disappears as she breathes in and holds it.

“Let us in, Leanne,” says Pharaoh, rolling her eyes. “And don’t feel obliged to say his name in Gaelic. It should be bloody Eichann, if you’re being picky. I read up on these things. Nobody else is called Aector. It’s just him being bloody awkward.”

Leanne beckons them into the hallway. Presses herself against McAvoy’s damp body as she pushes the door closed.

McAvoy begins to speak. Begins to outline the origins of his name, and the compromise his Gaelic-speaking father and English-speaking mother came to when they chose to name their second son. But he decides to close his mouth instead.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess . . .”

Leanne opens the door and ushers the two officers into a joyless and compact living room. It contains a floral two-seater sofa, a cheap coffee table covered in pouches of tobacco and rolling papers, and a huge flat-screen TV. The old-fashioned stone fireplace that is set into the far wall contains no fire: just two wires gaffer-taped to the stone. The walls are papered in a swirl of peaches and pinks, and the only picture that stares down at them is hanging askew. It shows a younger, fitter Leanne, flexing in a purple bikini and fake tan, collecting an award from a man with a shaved head and too many teeth.

“Shaun’s not expected?” asks Pharaoh, taking off her coat and hanging it over the back of the sofa, then reaching into her handbag for a hairbrush, which she uses to slick back her hair.

“Not for hours,” says Leanne to McAvoy. “You taking yours off, Sergeant?”

“I’m fine,” says McAvoy, refusing to catch Pharaoh’s eye.

“Sit down, Leanne. Tell us what we’re doing.”

Leanne perches on the edge of the coffee table. She reaches under the sofa and pulls out a formidable-looking dumbbell. Begins to perform curls with her right arm. If the effort pains her, she does not show it.

“Tonight,” says Leanne, looking down at the dirty white sneakers on her feet and the dirtier carpet beneath. “I promise. It’s going to be there tonight.”

“You sure?”

“I read his phone. He was passed out. I’ve been reading it all the time. I feel like I’m spying on him.”

“You are, love.”

“I know, but I don’t like the feeling.”

“He doesn’t know? He’s got no idea?”

“He trusts me.”

“And you’re sure? Really sure you want to go down this road?”

“I’ve got no choice.”

Pharaoh nods. Leanne has already made her decision. She made it months ago while leaning, wet-faced, against the wall of Hull Royal Infirmary, with blood on her clothes and Trish Pharaoh’s cigarette at her lips.

Leanne has fallen far since the days she represented her country in weight-lifting championships and landed rosettes and trophies for her bodybuilding. She’s one of the Old Town’s more colorful characters. Sober, she’s caring, thoughtful, and considerate. A good friend. A decent neighbor. Drunk, she’s a demon. She’s a ferocious ball of anger, who lost her two kids to social services and her job to her criminal record. She has convictions for dealing, possession, wounding, and only escaped a charge of attempted murder when an ex-boyfriend refused to press charges.

McAvoy has read and reread her file, and always found it difficult to reconcile the flirty, friendly woman with the photos of the damage she has caused when the steroids in her bloodstream exploded into rage.

It was temper that brought her to Pharaoh’s attention. The night that the two Vietnamese drugs farmers were found at Hessle Foreshore, Leanne was in Accident and Emergency with her boyfriend, Shaun, handcuffed to two different police officers, having been arrested for attacking her partner with a corkscrew. She had managed to get the weapon halfway into his ear, and twice into his chest, before he managed to wriggle free by braining her with a brass ashtray. Quite what they had been arguing about they had been unable to tell the uniformed officers who broke their door down and carted them off to hospital. But it had clearly been important.

As they were being dragged into reception at Hull Royal, Pharaoh was standing at the nearby coffee bar, listening as one of the junior doctors gave her his appraisal of the condition of the two Vietnamese men. She had been scowling into her latte, wincing at the calmness with which he described the nail-gun wounds to the victims’ hands and knees, to the burns on their backs and torsos. A paint stripper, he had speculated. Turned the skin to jelly . . .

The doctor had recommended both victims be taken immediately to a specialist unit in Wakefield, where their wounds could be better treated. Pharaoh had acquiesced. Made arrangements. Had the two men wheeled down from the ward, cuffed to the sides of the hospital bed. There was an ambulance waiting outside for them. A police escort, too. Pharaoh had been taking no risks.

And then one of the Vietnamese men spotted Shaun. He was wrestling with two of the constables, trying to get his hands free, desperate to be allowed to speak to Leanne. He was shouting that he loved her. That he would kill anybody who came between them. That he forgave her the fact he was bleeding from his ear and his heart.

Then Shaun stopped. Fell utterly silent. The sudden cessation of noise was more potent than a shout. Heads turned, including Pharaoh’s. And she saw the way Shaun was staring at the two men in her care.

The color had drained from his face. The officers holding his arms found the strength had gone out of him, and wrestled him to the floor.

And both of the drugs farmers let fly with a stream of impassioned invective, a gibberish that meant nothing to anybody in the great open lobby, but which told Trish Pharaoh that her victims knew this man, and knew him well.

With the victims safely transported to Wakefield, Pharaoh played a hunch and insisted upon Shaun and the woman he was brought in with being kept apart.

She got their names. Pulled both their records. Acquainted herself with their criminal pasts. Shaun’s rap sheet was petty. He had never done more than a week on remand. Had convictions for drugs possession and public violence. She had been more impressed with Leanne’s. She had done serious time, and was looking at more.

Pharaoh had found her in a private room, cuffed to a constable, a doctor stitching up the wound on the back of her head and asking that she do her best to stop crying, as it was making it difficult to keep the stitches small.

“He’s going to leave me, I know it,” said Leanne through the sobs, talking to nobody and barely registering Pharaoh’s presence. “He’s too young for me. He’s got his whole life. He doesn’t need this. I’m dragging him down . . .”

Pharaoh had asked the constable to slip the cuffs off. Asked the doctor if he was done. And then she had led Leanne Marvell outside and pressed a cigarette to her lips.

Vulnerable, scared, and doped on a cocktail of painkillers and steroids, Leanne had been perfectly primed for careful questioning. And Pharaoh had obliged. Told her that two Vietnamese drugs farmers had been found tortured and mutilated at Hessle Foreshore, and that they had identified Shaun. Pharaoh had been careful to keep it vague. Had left most of the work to Leanne’s imagination. And she had thanked her lucky stars that McAvoy was not there to tell her off.

Despite her formidable appearance and the time she had spent inside, Leanne crumbled. Told her what she knew and begged her to help keep Shaun out of prison.

She had promised to help Pharaoh however she could.

Now, safely registered as a police informant and fully briefed on what will happen if she lies, Leanne is about to earn her pay.

McAvoy, who is legally bound to appear at all meetings between Pharaoh and any of her registered snouts, has an affection for Leanne. She is almost schizophrenic in the change that comes over her when in drink, but here, now, she seems a good person, trying to do her best by her man.

“You can’t ever tell him,” she says, though she has already had assurances on this point. “You have to say you lost the evidence or something. He can’t be the only one to go down for this.”

Pharaoh puts a hand on her knee. Offers her a cigarette and then lights it for her. “It’s all taken care of, Leanne. We’ll look after you.”

Over the course of several interviews, it has become clear that Shaun is a relatively minor player in the hierarchy of the gang which has taken over the cannabis supply. His job has been that of a glorified deliveryman, overseeing the movement of crops from one factory to another, and transporting the remaining handful of the Vietnamese workforce around the various properties, where they have been reduced to virtual prisoners. He knows nothing about the muscle side of the business. Doesn’t know where the orders come from. Even in drink has confided little in Leanne about his employers, save that they are white and scary as hell.

“I’m not a snitch,” says Leanne, and it is a mantra she has repeated endlessly in their meetings. “I know he’s been a bad lad. But he wouldn’t do that. He’s not a violent person, not really. I don’t know why they’re pinning it on him . . .”

Pharaoh coughs, trying to move the conversation on. She knows McAvoy disapproves of the fact that she is letting Leanne think her boyfriend is in the frame over the torture of his two associates. In truth, he is not a suspect. Through an interpreter, the victims had given only the sketchiest of details about their attackers, but they made it clear that the men who hurt them were higher up the food chain than the man who drove the van. The descriptions they had given were sketchy. Big. White. Well built. Acting under the instruction of a smaller man, who seemed to be enjoying it all far too much . . .

“Do you think we could have a fresh start?” asks Leanne suddenly, putting her dumbbell down to concentrate on her cigarette. She looks at McAvoy. “Do you think you can start again?”

McAvoy tries his best to summon up an encouraging smile. Tries not to let his eyes linger on her paltry possessions, or the signs of frailty and abuse that are starting to creep into her physique.

“We’ll take care of you,” he says. “I promise.”

The words somehow seal it.

Leanne nods.

“The warehouse next to the Lord Line building,” she says. “St. Andrew’s Quay. Where they used to fish from. Near the memorial.”

McAvoy holds Leanne’s gaze as Pharaoh begins dialing a number in her mobile phone. He pictures the location. The darkness. The nearness of the Humber and its cold depths.

Sees, in his mind, an area that has witnessed death enough times to make the waters run red.

6:24 P.M. THE CAR PARK AT PETER PANG’S.

RED GLASS LANTERNS
clink and sway, disappear, and then reemerge from the shadow of the pagodalike roof.

McAvoy looks. Listens.
Sees.

The sound of waves slapping wood and stone beyond the gray seawall; the broad, brown Humber fading into cloud and drizzle.

The morning’s storms have not blown themselves out, but instead hang heavy and threatening in a headstone-colored sky. The river, swollen by the cloudburst, slaps against the rotting timbers of St. Andrew’s Dock. Dead flowers and plastic memorial cards skitter and tumble on the wind. Flowers are often left here. This dock was home to the Hull fishing fleet. It is the last glimpse of home that thousands of dead trawlermen ever saw.

On Pharaoh’s orders, McAvoy has switched off his phone, but after two hours in this cramped vehicle with nothing to look at but car bonnets and brick, he needs to do something to keep himself alert.

The phone bleeps into life at the push of his thumb. Two hands shake on the blurry, liquid crystal screen. A moment later it vibrates to alert him to three new text messages. One is from Roisin, telling him she loves him and will be wearing nothing but the red leather jacket he bought her for Christmas when he gets home. The other two are from Pharaoh, telling him first that she is BORED, and second that she needs a pee. He presses his lips together to stop himself from laughing.

“Lemon chicken,” says DC Andy Daniells, sniffing the air. “Maybe prawns in oyster sauce.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Black bean, definitely. Not satay.”

McAvoy drags his eyes from the distant bulk of the warehouse, looks across at his colleague.

Daniells, who had told him within the first ten seconds of shaking hands that the double L in his surname was originally Scandinavian and not Welsh, is new to the unit. He’s an affable, likable lad in his late twenties, with a bald head and a healthy, ruddy complexion. In the month since Daniells moved across from regular CID, McAvoy has only ever seen him in one outfit. He had clearly decided in his youth that he would never look better than in rumpled navy chinos, a pale blue shirt, and a striped red tie, and had decided to stick with it.

The windscreen wipers squeak inelegantly across the glass of the Corsa, smearing the drizzle into streaks. McAvoy winds down the window, reaches out, and uses the cuff of his jacket to try to make the glass better equipped for surveillance.

“You think this place has got owt to do with it?” Daniells asks, nodding in the direction of the restaurant.

McAvoy, pleased to be back on more familiar ground, gives a shake of his head. “No, we’ve spoken to the owner. Clean as a whistle. Making a mint and wouldn’t want to risk it. Did you know John Prescott’s a regular here? Once got in trouble for parking in a disabled bay. Was in the papers . . .”

“Prescott. Deputy prime minister, wasn’t he?” asks Daniells, without any hint of embarrassment.

McAvoy pauses for a moment, wondering whether he should instruct the detective on the importance of sound political and local knowledge, but decides that the cheerful, chatty young man will probably pick it up as he goes along. He’s only lived on this coast for a year or so, and his Midlands accent remains strong.

“Yeah, he was Blair’s number two.”

“Must have done a lot for this city, then . . .”

“Yes, you’d think.”

They sit in silence for a moment, and McAvoy, who has never felt comfortable in one-on-one situations with colleagues, begins to feel self-conscious. He goes back to his notes, shuffles through the papers in his lap, and checks his watch again.

“Late,” says Daniells, lifting his left arm from the steering wheel and showing McAvoy his cheap watch. “She said six.”

McAvoy bristles. Can’t help himself. “She?”

“Pharaoh. She said six.”

McAvoy’s mouth becomes a tight line. “Do you mean Detective Superintendent Pharaoh?”

“Yeah,” says Daniells, not detecting the warning note in McAvoy’s voice. He laughs suddenly, at a memory. “Did you see her trying to get the stab vest on? Could put that on YouTube . . .”

“I beg your pardon, Constable?”

This time, Daniells spots the danger. “Wouldn’t want to mess with her, though,” he says hurriedly. “Great boss.”

“Yes. She is.”

He stares out of the window across the gloomy car park.

Spots the rear tire of the surveillance van. McAvoy tries to picture the scene inside: Trish Pharoah, Helen Tremberg, Ben Neilsen, and half a dozen uniformed officers, all sitting cramped and anxious in the half-light, extendable batons greased and palmed, jumping with each crackle of the radio . . .

“We’ve got movement.”

The voice on the radio belongs to Detective Chief Inspector Colin Ray, the second in command of the unit. He’s a gangly, goggle-eyed, rat-faced man with a fondness for pin-striped suits. Pushing fifty, and with a greenish pallor to his skin, he is at once feared, respected, and reviled. In the event of impending apocalypse and the collapse of the rule of law, he would find himself getting punched in the face by a lot of colleagues.

McAvoy tries to heighten his senses. Hopes Daniells will do the same.

A black Land Rover glides into the car park, its tires making an expensive-sounding swish on the wet tarmac.

Daniells appears to be about to duck his head below the steering wheel, but a warning hand from his sergeant holds him steady.
No sudden movements
, suggests McAvoy with his eyes. Nothing to alert the occupant.

“Is it our guy?”

This time the voice is Pharaoh’s.

“Too dark. Can’t say.”

“Fuck.”

McAvoy can hear the frustration in his boss’s voice.

“This them, d’you think?”

Daniells’s voice sounds excited and nervous. McAvoy wonders how many of these operations the young officer has been a part of.

“We’ll just have to wait.”

McAvoy wishes he were in the van with Pharaoh; able to give her the kind of encouraging smile that tells her he believes in her and that this will come good.

“Steady now,” comes Pharaoh’s voice.

The Land Rover still has not moved. It remains at a stop, diagonally opposite where McAvoy and Daniells sit. If they are lucky, two burly men will get out and walk across the five hundred yards of wasteland between here and the disused warehouse. Once they are inside, Pharaoh will give the signal, and her team will move in to arrest everybody inside. McAvoy is here in case anybody slips the net: ready to block off the road if someone flees in a vehicle. DCI Ray and DI Shaz Archer are hopefully shivering as they keep watch on top of the giant furniture store that marks the end of the retail park that the road winds through on its way down to this washed-out, run-down location. At the far side of the warehouse, two patrol cars from the Operational Support Unit are parked up behind a wall of containers, ready to block off the escape of anybody who makes it into the storage area of the still-working dock.

Pharaoh’s voice: “Keep it together, children . . .”

Seconds tick by.

Minutes.

“Hell of a place, isn’t it?” says Daniells broodingly, staring through the glass at the brick building opposite. “All those fishermen . . .”

“Trawlermen,” McAvoy mutters under his breath. “Fishermen stand on a bank with a rod. Trawlermen risk their lives in seas harder than you can imagine.”

“I’m just saying . . .”

Daniells does not get a chance to say anything more. In a shriek of rubber, the Land Rover roars out of the parking space.

DCI Ray’s voice on the radio . . .

“Fucking hell . . .”

The vehicle tears out of the car park, but instead of turning left back onto the road through, it spins right, barreling across the area of wasteland and rubble between Pang’s and the nearest tumbledown warehouse.

“. . . what’s he doing?”

McAvoy feels a fist close around his esophagus. He grabs the radio, but in his haste it slips from his hand and into the footwell. He grabs for it, papers falling from his lap, scrabbling desperately until his fingers close around its bulk.

“Guv, get out of there, it’s a setup . . .”

McAvoy doesn’t know why, but he is flinging open the car door. He could have instructed Daniells to drive. He will never know why he did not.

He has run only a half-dozen steps when he sees the light. Sees the flame emerge from the dark glass of the Land Rover. Sees it flicker and bounce as the vehicle smashes its way over the ragged landscape. Sees a figure climb halfway out the window of the moving vehicle and draw back its hand . . .

The Land Rover spins 180 degrees and barely slows as it approaches the small outbuilding where McAvoy had seen the telltale smudge of a police van’s back tire.

His shout of warning dies in his throat. The light is momentarily airborne, arcing upward, bright against the dark sky, before it tumbles down, down . . . and smashes against the double doors at the back of the police van, stuffed to the gills with police officers: sudden prisoners in a vehicle clothed in flames.