Original Skin (15 page)

Russell takes another swallow of his drink. Says nothing.

Ray gives a nod of understanding. “You got another call, didn’t you? On the mobile. Same voice that tips you the wink on which factories to raid is now telling you who to put the frighteners on. Bloody hell, Aidy, they may as well have you on the payroll. What did they tell you?”

Russell looks down at the numbers on his arm. The flashes on his uniform that remind him he is a very senior officer. “Just told me that Alan Rourke was worth a look. That if we had a bit of a lean on him, we might get a few more phone calls and a few more raids. He’s got some lad staying with him. The voice on the line said that we should leave him alone. The teenager. That we should remind Rourke that he’s not the boy’s father, and that the lad has friends.”

Ray pushes himself back from the table. He is always pissed off. Always aggressive. Can only hold himself back for so long. It’s taking an effort now.

“You may as well be on the payroll.”

Russell reddens. “How can I be working for somebody when I don’t know who they are? It was the right decision. A professional decision. I passed on a message, marked his card, and the phone calls kept coming.”

Ray isn’t listening. “The lad,” he says. “It’s the same one. The one who set the dogs on Pharaoh. Yes?”

Russell nods. Takes a swallow of beer. “Soon as I saw the description and Rourke’s name I decided to call you. You just called me first. I would have rung, Col. Now you’re looking after this, we’ll get somewhere.”

Ray rocks back, the chair on two legs. “How did Rourke react when you went to see him? What did he have to say?”

“Did all but laugh in my face,” he says. “Didn’t scare. Didn’t flinch.”

“And the lad? He was there?”

“Turned up as we were leaving. Climbing out of some flash bloody four-by-four as if he was a Lottery winner or Wayne fucking Rooney.”

Ray drains his glass. His gaze meets Russell’s. The senior officer looks away first.

“I know why you didn’t tell Pharaoh what’s going on with the Vietnamese,” says Ray softly. “It’s because you didn’t have much to tell without making yourself look like a bloody gopher for some drug dealers. I even get why you went to see Rourke. What I don’t get, Aidy, is how you can’t see what’s going on.”

Russell narrows his eyes. “Go on, then, smart-arse.”

“The lad’s the bloody player. The teenager. He’s the one who’s valuable to your friends at the end of the phone. Rourke’s up to his eyes in all this, but he’s overstepping his boundaries. It’s the lad who’s connected. It’s his gyppo connections that are causing your friends the headache.”

Russell seems unconvinced. “You’re a fucking long way from proving any of that.”

“I just need to know it, not prove it,” says Ray, putting all four chair legs flat on the floor.

“What’s your move?” asks Russell, looking at his watch and clearly deciding that four pints is enough. “The lad’s top priority, yes?”

“He set the dogs on Pharaoh. So we want him. But we want to know what’s in his head, too. It’s all linked. I’m getting a fucking headache here . . .”

Russell gives a smile, and any tension that existed between them seems to evaporate. Both are old-school. Ray would never even consider grassing another officer up. But he does at least recognize that he suddenly has a useful ace up his sleeve.

“The next time you get a call from your friends . . .”

Russell’s face drops back into a scowl.

“Go on.”

“I want in on the raid. I want to talk to whoever you pull.”

Russell seems to think about it. Gives a quick nod. “It could be sooner than you think. It’s been a few days . . .”

“Whenever. I’m not planning on getting much sleep.”

“Where are you heading next?”

Ray gives a little smile, pulling his phone from his pocket. He punches in a number with long, yellow-stained fingers.

“Shaz? Roll off whoever you’re on and get yourself in the car. We’re going on our holidays, love. Off to visit a few lovely little caravan parks.”

From the other end of the line comes a barrage of confused questioning. Colin Ray shushes her. “The ginger lad. He’s run to what he knows. He’s back with his people. And we’re going to go and make him unwelcome.”

4:14 P.M. HA’PENNY BRIDGE WAY, ON THE VICTORIA DOCK ESTATE.

M
C
AVOY,
resting his head on the steering wheel, listening to his wife cry. Her sobs sound in tandem with the rain that beats on the glass.

“Come home,” she gasps. “Please.”

McAvoy looks out through the waterfall of rain that runs down the windscreen. The air is slate gray, the sky reaching all the way down to the deepening puddles and burst drains that are starting to obscure the roads and pavements.

“One stop, Roisin,” he says again. “One more stop and then I’ll come and take over.”

“She won’t stop crying,” she says again, and the desperation in her stabs into his chest like an icicle.

“An hour,” he says, closing his eyes.

“She’s screaming,” begs Roisin. “I can’t . . .”

She hangs up. She has never hung up on him before. He begins to call her back. His phone rings again. “Roisin . . .”

“No, lad. DCI Ray. Where the bloody hell are you?”

McAvoy winds the window down a crack. Lets some air into the vehicle. Watches the reeds sway in the tatty duck pond that separates the two modern apartment blocks that loom over the patchwork of semi-detached properties.

“I’ve been—”

“Don’t care,” says Ray. “Anyway, Tremberg’s been bending my ear about getting in touch with you, so I am, because it might make her shut the fuck up. Got her well trained, that one, ain’t you? We spoke to Alan Rourke. Gypsy bastard barely said a word. No ID on the lad who set the dogs on Her Highness, but Shaz is in with Rourke again now and is promising to stop his dogs getting the chop if he’s a bit more helpful. We’ve got fuck all on the Vietnamese or the petrol bombing. Nowt that would interest you, anyway. Reckon we should be checking the England cricket team from the way they threw that thing. Bloody awful bowling action. Anyway, Ben Neilsen’s over in Doncaster rounding up CCTV from when the Land Rover was nicked. Turns out they’ve got other vehicles missing, too. Merc, Audi, a Lexus or two. In Doncaster! You feeling in the loop now? Right. Fuck off. Bye.”

McAvoy is too tired to subject the exchange to analysis. He just nods to himself. Eventually closes his phone.

Beyond the glass, the storm is getting worse. The news headlines on Radio Humberside were starting to sound a little hysterical when McAvoy tuned in on the drive here. It is only a few years since Hull suffered near-biblical floods. There are still people living in caravans in their front gardens. Every time it rains the city holds its breath. The weather was top story, ahead of an appeal for witnesses following a nasty attack on Morpeth Street last night. A nineteen-year-old girl is in hospital with severe head injuries after being set upon by an unknown assailant around midnight. Friends have described her as a happy-go-lucky girl who would do anything for anyone. A spokesman for Humberside Police said it was too soon to speculate whether the incident could be linked to the escalation of violent crime in the city, rumored to be linked to the drugs trade.

It had made McAvoy grimace. Made him wonder, too, why he was chasing so hard after answers about Simon Appleyard when the living were being mercilessly persecuted.

With some difficulty, McAvoy hauls himself from the car. He is far too big for its cramped confines. Feels as though he should cut a hole in the roof to poke his head through. Worries he will pull the door off every time he grips the handle.

The wind and rain refresh him briefly. He looks up at the slate sky and allows the downpour to soak his face. Slicks back his hair and licks the collected droplets from his lips.

The flat he is after is on the ground floor, offering a decent view of the dense mess of reeds that all but obscure the water of the large rectangular pond. McAvoy and Roisin had considered getting a place on this estate when they first moved to the city. It is only a ten-minute walk from the center and was designed with upwardly mobile families in mind. The houses are small but neatly built and well looked after, but the sense of inner-city community that the developers had been aiming for when they called it an “urban village” has never truly materialized. Many of the properties are let to young flat-sharers by distant landlords, and there are too many
FOR SALE
and
TO LET
signs to suggest it is a place where people are desperate to stay. It is beginning to look tired, not least because of the moonscape that many of the streets are beginning to resemble, thanks to the widely predicted subsidence. A former working dock, it was landfilled to make way for the housing development. There are fears that the whole estate is beginning to sink.

McAvoy takes care on the damp timbers of the footbridge. Looks for signs of life in the duck pond. Wonders if there are any ducks hiding in there or if they, too, have left the estate for more comfortable accommodation in the East Riding villages.

He checks his notepad to confirm the address. Realizes he is already standing outside the doors to the apartment block and cannot put this off any longer. He rings the bell.

Seconds go by. Water drips down the back of his neck.

A burst of static from the intercom.

“Hello?”

“Councillor Hepburn,” says McAvoy, louder than he had intended. “I’m a policeman. Could I have some of your time?”

There is another pause.

“Come in.”

The door buzzes and McAvoy pushes it open. He finds himself in a wide, gray-carpeted, buttermilk-painted atrium. There is a set of stairs at the far end, and three brown wooden doors set in the remaining walls.

Number 29 is opening.

He recognizes the man in the doorway from the newspaper and TV appearances. He is in his late forties, with dyed blond hair swept back from a long face that nature has made unremarkable, but vanity has colored. The tuft of hair beneath his lower lip is dyed peroxide blond, and his sideburns are razored to a neat, almost devilish point. He has two rings in his left ear, and McAvoy doubts that his eyebrows are naturally as jet-black as they appear.

He is smiling broadly, a politician’s grin. He is wearing a purple V-neck sweater and loudly checked trousers that are more Rupert the Bear than Harris tweed. He is in relatively good shape, but the shape of sagging pectorals can still be made out through the material of his sweater.

“Plainclothes, eh?” Hepburn asks warmly. “Intriguing.”

McAvoy looks down at himself, standing in a puddle, all but raining on the floor.

“Still drizzling?” asks Hepburn.

McAvoy forces a smile.

“Come in,” Hepburn says. “I’ll get you a towel.”

He steps back inside the apartment and holds the door open. McAvoy wonders if he should offer to remove his boots, but remembers the fuss he had getting his shoes on this morning, and very much doubts that his socks match.

He follows the councillor inside and down a short corridor decorated with black-and-white prints.

He is led into a large living room, painted terra-cotta and designed the vaguely Javanese style. The blinds are raffia, and the prints on the wall are of elephants and traditional fishing skiffs, pots of spice and gentlemen’s club antique maps. There is an expensive-looking rug on the cream-carpeted floor, and the red chesterfield sofa gives the place the feel of a British Empire hotel gone slightly to seed. The two-seater table at one end of the room supports a huge vase of lilies. The other end of the long room is given over to a large flat-screen TV.

“Paula, can you bring me a towel, love?”

Hepburn shouts this last as he throws himself down on the sofa. There is a laptop computer on the middle cushion, and a mobile phone on the floor.

“What can I do for you?”

McAvoy is about to speak when a woman appears in the doorway. She is around the same age as Hepburn, and almost as imposing a physical specimen as McAvoy. She is pushing six feet tall, and broad across the shoulders. Her hair is a collage of different shades of blond and is cut in a choppy, neck-length bob that looks to McAvoy’s inexpert gaze as if it was expensive. She is wearing a white blouse and cropped trousers with wedged high heels. She hands McAvoy a fluffy yellow towel, which he takes gratefully, and uses to dry his face and hair.

When he has finished, he does his best to smooth down his curls, and is grateful that he is facing away from the mirror that dominates one wall.

“Paula,” says Hepburn to the woman in the doorway, “this is . . .” He pulls a quizzical face. “Did you tell me?”

“Detective Sergeant McAvoy,” he says, and is embarrassed by the squeak in his voice.

“McAvoy,” says Hepburn thoughtfully. Snaps his fingers, as if placing the name. “Indeed. This is Paula.”

“How do you do,” says McAvoy, extending his hand.

Paula gives a curt nod. Raises an eyebrow at Hepburn.

“Coffee,” she says, and it does not sound like a question. She turns her back. Leaves them to it.

“So,” says Hepburn again, “what can I do for you?”

McAvoy realizes he has been pressing his lips together. Takes a breath.

“Councillor, I probably shouldn’t be here, but today I received information that suggests you are the target of some kind of journalistic investigation designed to discredit you.”

He stops. Hepburn widens his eyes, and the playful smile on his face seems to grow.

“Really? Do tell.”

“I had reason to speak to a reporter from a national newspaper about another matter. He informed me they are planning a story looking into some criminal connections in your past.”

Hepburn gives a whistle.

“Anything else?”

“There is some suggestion that your nightclub has been financed by drug money.”

Hepburn is openly laughing. McAvoy feels sick.

“Councillor Hepburn?”

The other man pulls himself off the couch. Stands up straight and gives a wide grin. “And you’re bringing this to me because . . .”

McAvoy allows himself to look baffled. The answer should be obvious. “Because that’s not right.”

Hepburn pulls himself together. “But you don’t know me,” he says, looking straight at McAvoy. “People get shit written about them all the time. I got elected by people who either wanted a drink at midnight or liked the idea of pissing off Labour. Seriously, Sergeant, another story about me being a bad boy is not going to destroy me. Might even be good publicity. Come on, what’s the ulterior motive?”

McAvoy feels his cheeks flush. He had not expected to have his integrity questioned. Is appalled to have been seen through so easily. Fears what it says about him that he could so easily be identified as a liar.

“Come on, Sergeant,” says Hepburn.

McAvoy meets Hepburn’s gaze. There is a fierce intelligence in his blue eyes. He remembers his TV appearances. His quick wits and sharp tongue. Realizes he was wrong to blunder in here so ill prepared and cack-handed.

“Simon Appleyard,” he blurts, and then has to all but wrestle with himself to stop his right hand coming up to his face in a childish show of regret.

Hepburn narrows his eyes. “And who might that be?”

“Simon Appleyard was found hanged at his home last year. We are looking again at the circumstances surrounding his death. I’m going through the numbers in his telephone. Your number is among those that were stored.”

Hepburn shrugs, and it is not an unfriendly gesture. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t think I know the name. I’m a public figure. I run a club. I change phones quite a lot . . .”

“This is the telephone you were given by the city council.”

“Ah,” says Hepburn, with a grin. “Right. Had that about a fortnight, then it went missing. Probably nicked from the club. Felt a right fool reporting it missing. Been using my personal one ever since. Got two SIM cards in it. Really snazzy . . .”

“And you don’t know the name Simon Appleyard? He was in his mid-twenties. Tall. Ran a line-dance class . . .”

Hepburn shakes his head.

McAvoy plows on.

“. . . peacock feathers tattooed all over his back . . .”

For a fraction of a second Hepburn’s smile seems to die at the eyes. Then it is back. Wide. Charming. Naughty.

“Leave me your card, Sergeant,” he says, still being friendly. “I’ll have a think. Get in touch with you.”

Paula reappears at the door. She is not holding coffee cups. She is not smiling.

McAvoy looks at Hepburn, whose raised eyebrows represent a friendlier version of Paula’s hard stare. He is being invited to leave.

“My card,” says McAvoy, handing the councillor a damp rectangle of blurred ink. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I just thought you should know about the reporter . . .”

Hepburn is nodding as he gets to his feet. Makes a show of shaking the officer’s hand. Is only a pace behind him as he corrals him out of the door, past the bulk of his unfriendly companion, and into the hall.

“If I hear anything more . . .”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” says Hepburn.

The door shuts behind him and McAvoy finds himself back in the lobby.

He feels his cheeks burning, but this time it is with temper instead of shame. The way she looked at him. The playful little smirk on Hepburn’s face. He had felt like a teenager caught out in an untruth. Had been made to feel a fool.