Taking Pity (27 page)

He picks up the other phone and calls the last number that Piers Fordham rang before he died.

Baits a trap.

He can barely keep the smirk off his face as he rings his driver and tells him to bring three good men. They’re taking a trip to the seaside. They’re going to put everything right. An old man is going to die, and they’re going to take his enforcer apart piece by piece. And if he plays this right, he’s going to get his drugs back and take out his frustrations on an interfering bitch.

Mark wipes himself down with a tissue and slips into a silk shirt. Makes himself look good. Preens and poses and pampers himself to perfection. By the time he’s done, he doesn’t want to soil himself with Colin Ray’s blood. Decides to leave the fucker where he is. He’ll be a treat for Shaz when she gets home.

Silly cow didn’t know what she was letting herself in for.

She will soon.

•   •   •

B
EFORE
T
RISH
P
HARAOH
and Deputy Chief Constable Bruce Mallett entered the squat, pea-green pub off Hedon Road, it had six customers. Six customers, and perhaps twenty-three teeth. It is not a sophisticated establishment. It sits fewer than two hundred yards from Hull Prison and is the first stop for many of the inmates spewed out of the big wooden double doors and onto the busy road that leads east to the docks and west into Hull. A previous landlord used to provide a free pint for anybody who could prove they had been inside for doing harm to a copper. Those days are gone now. The bar does well off of the prison’s guards, who stop in for a drink after their shifts and drain a few jars with people who, a few hours before, they were responsible for locking up.

Pharaoh wouldn’t have picked the place for a celebratory drink but her senior officer is the kind of man who likes to get his feet wet in the gutters from time to time. He’s new to Humberside Police’s top tier of officers but knows Hull from way back. He started out here in the early eighties and learned the ropes from old-school coppers. His career has been an impressive one. He was a sergeant by twenty-five, an inspector by thirty, and was running a CID team in Worcester by the time he was thirty-four. He’s pushing fifty now and was a surprise appointment when the new Humberside Police crime commissioner appointed him as deputy chief constable a couple of months back. Mallett is popular with the troops. He’s big, forthright, and ugly. He has a perfectly round head, shaved clean as a watermelon, and his teeth look like he ordered them off the Internet and hammered them in himself. He has already proven himself to be one of the lads by downing a pint of vodka at a farewell party, and there are plenty of officers who would put money on him to last more than five seconds with McAvoy in an arm wrestle. Pharaoh likes him, which is why she allowed him to pose for the photographs in full uniform at the docks this morning; looking serious in front of a table that groaned under the weight of seized cocaine, heroin, and firearms. Pharaoh hadn’t felt the need to get her mug in the photographs. She’s tired after a sleepless night and has black bags under her eyes that would probably drive her to suicide if splashed on the front of the
Hull Daily Mail
, so is content just for those in the know to be aware of where the intelligence came from. Her friends at Border Force are busy toasting her name with expensive champagne. Her own treat is a double vodka in this shitty pub half a mile from the scene of her triumph.

Pharaoh looks around at the now deserted bar. Mallett’s presence has been enough to persuade the usual drinkers to bugger off and get pissed somewhere else. The two of them are sitting at a circular table beneath a dirty rectangular window obscured by an even dirtier lace curtain. Mallett is drinking bitter from an old-fashioned tankard and tearing the beer mat into strips.

“Bloody good result,” he says loudly, for what must be the twentieth time. “Bloody good. I hate to think in headlines, but this kind of thing always helps us look a bit less shit, don’t you think? Somebody’s going to be spitting blood, don’t you think?”

Pharaoh sips her drink. She wants to make it last. Doesn’t know her boss well enough yet to drain four doubles, then drive home.

“Got lucky with a tip, sir. Friend of a friend, favor owed—that kind of thing.”

Mallett examines her over his glass. Gives her a look that suggests he knows she is being evasive and that he doesn’t mind in the slightest.

“You got somebody hidden away with their balls in a mincer, Patricia? I don’t give a shit where it came from. Border Force is doing cartwheels, I’ve got a nice seizure to keep the suits happy, and your unit has proven why it was set up. It’s a good bloody day, love. If you tell me you had to put the thumbscrews on to get it, I’m not going to stop enjoying my pint. Just a shame it’s going to get bumped for that pissing lawyer, eh?”

Pharaoh nods and twists some life into her neck and shoulders. CID has spent a busy day trying to piece together why somebody would want to beat a disbarred lawyer to death in his own house in Newland Park. Pharaoh’s not involved in the case but has at least used the investigation to rid herself of one annoyance. Shaz Archer had requested to be seconded to CID to lead the investigation into Piers Fordham’s death and Pharaoh had been happy to agree. She reckons Archer was pissed off at not being invited along on the early-morning raid at the docks. Hopes the rich bitch will use the incident as an excuse to make the transfer permanent. Colin Ray will be back at work soon and the last thing she wants is the two of them plotting her downfall at a time when she has just given the unit its biggest success to date. She wishes McAvoy had been there to share some of the praise, but he’s still officially on sick and wasn’t even answering his phone when Pharaoh called him last night to update him on developments. She wonders if he’s upset with her. God knows, the Peter Coles case is a thankless task. She can’t help feeling that she may have stitched him up by accident, and even if she hasn’t, she expects to break his heart when she tells him where his wife and child are. She has tried to do everything the right way and ended up wronging only one person. But that person is the one that matters most.

“Arrests would be nice,” says Mallett thoughtfully. “One driver isn’t going to cut it.”

Pharaoh agrees. The driver of the lorry was Albanian and had taken his arrest with good grace. There had been no tantrums or protestations. He’d known what was coming as soon as the officers threw open the back of his wagon and the dogs climbed aboard. The stash was found inside the hour, hidden inside adapted metal bars and pipes that his manifest claimed were destined for a welding company in the East Midlands. Pharaoh doesn’t reckon he’ll talk. Not yet, anyway. The breakaway crew from the Headhunters is too dangerous to risk upsetting, though whether that will still be the case for long is hard to say. The new crew will be unable to keep its promises. The guns and drugs they have promised their associates will not materialize. The Headhunters have crushed the uprising. Whoever it was they employed to extract the information that led to the raid had carried out the job with aplomb. Pharaoh just wishes she could shake away the feeling of unease. She has received information from dangerous sources before, and she cannot argue with the feeling of a job well done. But she fears that blood has been spilled to provide her with that information. She feels again as though she has been steered from the start. She worries that perhaps her own idea of right and wrong is blurring. She wishes she could talk it through with McAvoy and knows that she never will. His own ideals are too painful to live by. She’s just grateful that she is the one who has to make the decisions and that he is spared them. The man would screw himself into the ground like a puppy chasing its tail if asked to wrestle with such moral conundrums.

“I got a nice e-mail from some prick in London,” says Mallett conversationally. “Breslin. Slick chap. Very southern. All the words spelled correctly. Said to pass on his congratulations over the raid. Good result. Reckons you’ve got them on the ropes but wonders if perhaps, next time, you could share the information with the rest of the symposium before rushing in. I’ve subtly suggested he fuck off. What’s a ‘symposium’?”

Pharaoh drains her drink. Holds up her glass and waits for the barman to grudgingly bring her another.

“A meeting of minds, was how he described it,” she says, thinking. “Talked about starbursts and popcorn.”

“He taking you to the pictures?”

“Popcorning, apparently, is when ideas bubble up and burst open, like popcorn . . .”

“Christ.”

“Yeah, well, was useful, I suppose. We got some handy information. Something about the Headhunters imitating some Eastern European MO from years back. And we found out about the problems they were having. Even so, I reckon we gave away as much as we discovered.”

“There was a security breach?”

“They know more about us than we do about them.”

“But they’ll be hurting from today’s raid, yes?”

“The Headhunters? No, they’ll be laughing, sir. It’s one of their teams that has been causing the bodies to pile up. They recruited the wrong man and he’s brought a lot of ambition with him. He’s stopped taking orders. I think today’s raid has only served to help the Headhunters show who’s really in charge. And I’m not sure it’s us.”

Mallett broods. Ponders. Shrugs.

“At least it’s off the streets, eh? A drop in the ocean is better than no drop at all. And say what you will about these Headhunter bastards, they don’t hurt civilians if they can help it. I was sorry to hear about Tom Spink, by the way. How’s he doing?”

Pharaoh looks down. Clinks the ice in her glass. “He’s tough. Will be back on his feet, eventually. I didn’t know you knew him.”

“Tom? Showed me around when I first started out. Him and Mike Canard. Tall bloke. Into trains. Big brain on him, though his missus was a terror. They were my teachers when I was green as grass. Lost touch over the years, but I saw his name on the incident report. Send him my best, will you? I know you’re close. Was a real shame that had to happen. Somebody clearly went too far.”

Pharaoh peers through the grimy window at the stream of cars making their way up Hedon Road in the drizzle and gloom of a wet weekday afternoon in East Hull. She’s unsure how she feels about her friendship with her old boss being common knowledge in the top tier. Wonders if Tom had tried to grease the wheels of her promotion. Called in a favor or two with other grateful protégés who have risen to the top. She knows he will have done it purely out of his fondness for her, and that thought seems to catch behind her eyes. She feigns a cough in case tears threaten to spill.

“He’s one of the few ex-coppers who doesn’t seem lost,” she says, turning back to Mallett. “He’s found something else to be. So many coppers just lose themselves when they hang up the warrant card. You’ve seen them. Drunks and security guards. Or both. Sends shivers right through me, the thought of what I’ll be if I’m not this.”

Mallett seems to be thinking. He scrutinizes her. Takes in the wavy black hair and blue eyes; the strong scent of perfume and cigarettes, the irrefutable swell of cleavage, and the halfhearted makeup around the wrinkles on her forehead and neck. When he speaks again, his voice is lower than before.

“I’m nearer the knacker’s yard than you, love. People don’t get it, do they? What it means to do this job. What it does to you. It pays to think ahead. There’s a company in London that always needs good coppers when they’re done locking up villains. They know how to compensate people for their expertise. Consultancy work—that’s the future for old campaigners like you and me. You should give my mate a ring—he’d be glad to hear your voice.”

Pharaoh nods, looking down at the shredded beer mat in front of Mallett’s big white hands.

“There are some coppers who go to the dark side,” says Mallett. “Some bastards slide across and become the thing they used to chase. They see opportunity. They see how little difference they’ve made on the side of law and order and decide they may as well make some money.”

Pharaoh takes a breath. She examines Mallett for signs of duplicity.

“Any copper who doesn’t think we’re winning needs to catch more crooks, sir. No problem’s going to be fixed by joining the enemy. It’s hard, sure. But at least we do a job where we make a difference of some kind.” She stops herself and checks her watch. “I sound like my sergeant.”

“The big lad?”

“McAvoy, sir. My best.”

“Still on sick, I’m told. Bad business at his house. His missus had been shagging one of the villains. Am I right?”

“It’s complicated.”

Mallett’s countenance grows dark and his face becomes hard. “I’m a bright man, Superintendent. I can handle complicated. Let’s hope McAvoy can. That missus of his is going to hold back his career, you know that, don’t you? Poor lad. How did he get tangled up with a gypsy?”

“A gypsy, sir?”

“Come on, love, we all hear the rumors. Threesome, wasn’t it? With that other fella who got splattered on Holderness Road. That McAvoy’s a fucking Jonah, isn’t he. He should watch his step. Get rid of that lass before she causes him any more bloodshed or harm. You’ve had a good result today, love. We’re all happy. You should be able to relax and enjoy it, and instead your mind is a million other places. Maybe you should unburden yourself a little. I can help, love. I can even make sure somebody has a word in the pikey’s ear—make sure she doesn’t come back. Would be best for him in the long run. She’s away, isn’t she? Give me a clue or two. Where would we find her . . . ?”

Pharaoh rubs a knuckle with a cold, dry palm. Keeps her eyes on Mallett’s. She doesn’t know where the conversation is going. She’d accepted the invitation of a drink without question. But she knows little about her new deputy chief. She feels suddenly vulnerable. Can’t help but think of the piggy little eyes of Dave Absolom poking out at her from the computer screen as she sat beside Dan in the tech department. Wonders why her boss has chosen this tiny, deserted pub. Wonders whether she has been a fool . . .