Original Skin (20 page)

“All men?”

“All sorts.”

They stop talking. McAvoy stares hard at the other man. He is trying to decide how he feels about him. He wonders if Cabourne has done anything wrong. What “wrong” even means.

“You really don’t know Simon?” asks McAvoy at length.

“I could have e-mails from him,” Cabourne says, trying to be helpful. “So much of this stuff happens online. Most times it leads to nothing. Some people leave their mobile numbers on the site but I could never do that. Too risky. I could check . . .”

McAvoy waves him into silence. “Dial this number,” he says, flipping open his notebook and showing Simon’s digits to the councillor. “Dial it and show me your phone.”

Obediently, like a child, Cabourne does as he is bid. The councillor punches the final digit, and waits for it to ring. Before the warning message flashes up to tell him the number is unavailable, the phone does the hard work for him. The number is linked to a contact called “Peacock.”

Cabourne’s mouth drops open. “Him?”

McAvoy looks at the other man with an expression that says he does not appreciate being lied to.

“I swear I just took the number down,” he says desperately. “I’ve contacted so many people on there. I just kept the numbers when they gave them. Look, look . . .”

Cabourne is turning the phone around, scrolling through the contacts. Names flash by.

“Paul T,” he says, pointing. “That’s for ‘throat.’ He said he liked having his neck squeezed. And there, look. Vampire. He said he was into biting. They’re just for me to help remember who is who . . .”

“And Peacock?”

“I think he said he had tattoos.” Cabourne stops, memory dawning. “He e-mailed me,” he says, eyes wide. “There was a line of poetry on the bottom of his message. Something he said he liked. Peacocks and lilies.”

McAvoy drops his head to his hands. He has more questions than answers.

Suddenly he looks up. “He e-mailed you? Not texted?”

“Definitely.”

McAvoy begins rummaging through his papers. He is trying to find a mention anywhere in the various reports that suggests Simon owned a computer.

“I’m an idiot . . . ,” mumbles McAvoy.

“I’m sorry?”

“Were the e-mails from a smartphone?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t, I don’t think so . . .”

McAvoy stops. He realizes the man in front of him is guilty of betrayal. Of confusion. Of weakness and lust. But he does not see a criminal.

“Keep your head down, Councillor Cabourne,” he says, sliding himself out of the booth and picking up Lilah’s car seat. “Ed Cocker isn’t after you. He’s after somebody much bigger.”

Cabourne looks up at him, unsure whether to give in to the magical sense of relief that threatens to flood him.

“I’ll check my old e-mail account,” he begins. “I’ll do anything I can to help you.”

McAvoy nods. “Yes. You will.”

11:47 A.M.

A BLUE
twelve-year-old Vauxhall Frontera, steamed up and idling on the double yellow lines that edge this quiet side street off old Hessle Road.

Four cops inside—damply smoldering, jittery with unused adrenaline.

There’s a brightly lit takeaway to their left. It’s all glass and white paint, cartoon characters, and gaudy lettering. The relentless rain jewels the large, dirty windows and turns the skinny, fifty-something woman behind the counter into a fragmented caricature of herself: mechanical, joyless, shaking spice into paper bags full of chips.

There’s a barbershop to their right. Black gloss—bought in bulk and applied too thickly, collecting in rivulets in the gaps between the bricks.

Shutters down today. Down most days.

Helen Tremberg sits in the back of the unmarked car. A sergeant from the Drugs Squad stares out of the window beside her, watching the raindrops dribble haphazardly down the glass. He hasn’t spoken since giving her a grunt of acknowledgment as she slid into the back of the car and wiped the rain from her face with a warm palm. He smells faintly of stale beer and wet dog.

DCI Ray is sitting in the front, passenger side, sucking the chocolate off a Twix.

At the wheel is Detective Superintendent Adrian Russell. Everything about his manner suggests he is in a foul mood. He is moving chewing gum around his mouth, but the look upon his face is more in keeping with that of a man trying not to acknowledge the gone-off oyster under his tongue.

There is silence inside the vehicle, save the drumming of rain on the roof, and the occasional swish of damp tires as cars pass by on Hessle Road.

Tremberg feels uncomfortable. Out of place. Unwelcome. She has never worked with Russell or his underlings, and has no bond with her DCI. She is here because the opportunity arose. Here because she is an ambitious officer who wants to be there when a high-profile raid goes down. Here because Shaz Archer can’t be rustled up, and because with Pharaoh out of the picture and McAvoy out on a limb, she is feeling lost. There has been no fanfare to welcome her return. No hugs or tears. She came back after risking her life to catch a killer, and was very nearly on fire before the end of her first shift.

“Should have parked ourselves in Rayner’s,” says Ray chattily, throatily, while jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the legendary pub across the street. “Could have bought you a Babycham and a packet of peanuts.”

Ray angles the rearview mirror until he can see into the back. A bite of Twix moves around in his mouth as he talks.

“Never been in,” says Tremberg, turning in her seat to stare across at the building on the corner. “Doesn’t look welcoming. They do scampi in a basket?”

“Proper pub,” says Ray. “I read up on it when I moved to this shitty city. Hessle Road was already on its arse by then but, fuck, that place had character.”

It is not the first time Tremberg has heard about this boozer, or its place at the very heart of the old fishing community. This is where the trawlermen drank on their three days home, their refuge after six weeks risking their lives in distant waters. It is where scores were settled and where tensions erupted into bloody violence. Where feuds ended in bloodshed or in forgiveness. Where men tried to dilute the ocean in their veins with pint after fucking pint. It was a hard man’s watering hole. A place of mourning and of celebration. A place that numbered countless dead among its regulars, and where it was said that the ghosts of recently dead trawlermen would call in for a drink before sailing on to purgatory.

“What’s it like in there now?” asks Tremberg, for something to say.

Ray shrugs. “Only been in there once. Decent pint. Few old boys with a story to tell. Bit sad, really, when you think what it was. What all this was . . .”

Ray stops talking as he realizes he is sounding soppy. He gestures at the run-down side street beyond the glass. Waves an arm halfheartedly at the cut-price furniture shops and the empty greasy-spoon cafés.

“It was probably all shit in the good old days, too,” he says, by way of antidote to his display of nostalgia. “Fifty years from now Hull folk will reckon life nowadays was fucking peachy.”

Silence again.

Adrian Russell, chewing his gum.

The sergeant beside her stifling a burp and then blowing out the faint smell of last night’s beef Madras . . .

Tremberg wondering if she should text McAvoy. Tell him what Ray has arranged. Ask him if he knows why the fuck the detective superintendent seems to have ceded operational authority to his junior officer, and appears to be swilling sick around his gob.

They all jump as Russell’s phone rings, the riff from Gary Numan’s “Cars.”

A look passes between Ray and the detective superintendent.

Russell closes his eyes. Answers in little more than a whisper.

“Russell. Yes. Yes, as a matter of courtesy . . . No. Well, obviously. I do appreciate that. No. It’s not my call. There are limits, you understand . . . I’m not sure that would be wise . . . No, I realize that. Different breed, you might say. Of course I understand the benefits. Yes. If you’re sure . . .”

Russell hands the phone to Colin Ray.

Ray is all smiles.

“Detective Chief Inspector Colin Ray. Very Serious and Vaguely Organized.”

He puts the phone onto speaker. Seems to take pleasure in the other officer’s shiver of discomfort.

The car is filled with a stranger’s voice: tinny and robotic.

“Mr. Ray, I’m sorry we have not had a chance to be properly introduced before now. I would have made it my business to do so, but I was unaware of your existence till today.”

The voice is almost accentless. The enunciation clear but giving nothing away.

“That’s okay, son, I don’t know much about you, either. Know you’re going to have a bad day, though.”

Ray’s words seem not to register with the speaker.

“In the past hour I have remedied my aberration. I have acquainted myself with several of your personal details. Allow me to express my sadness that such an experienced officer should find himself so poorly remunerated at such a time in his career. You have given up so much for this job, and you are rewarded with a childless existence, and more ex-wives than a man can afford. To be only a few years from retirement, and still to be an underling . . . it saddens me. A man of your experience should be better rewarded.”

In the mirror Tremberg watches Ray’s face for any glimmer of discomfort. Sees none.

“Aye, you’re right there,” he says, as if chatting to an old friend. “I’m surrounded by fucking ingrates and incompetents. I’m sure you know the feeling. That’s what you get for working with Chinks and pikeys. You should put your hand in your pocket, son. Bring in some lads who can think and tie their shoes at the same time.”

For an instant there is no reply. Then the voice continues, as though Ray has not spoken.

“The house on Division Road is not expecting you, Chief Inspector. The details of my arrangement with your colleague were clearly miscommunicated.”

Russell reaches out to take the phone, mumbling words of protest. Ray raises his arm and splays his fingers. Keeps the phone beyond the other man’s reach, until Russell sinks back into his seat.

“Like I said, son, bad day for you.”

“I have experienced bad days before. What happens today will be of significance to you, but of little or no consequence to me and the people I represent.”

“And yet you took the time to ring . . .”

“If inconvenience can be avoided, I believe it to be worth the gesture.”

“You’re not going to avoid this inconvenience, boy. One of your little helpers took a swing at me with a fucking crucifix. That doesn’t buy you much in the way of goodwill.”

Ray catches Tremberg’s eye. Winks. He seems to be enjoying this.

“Some of my associates are spirited individuals,” says the man. “They have unique character traits and skill sets that we attempt to harness. I am not one to stand in the way of youthful exuberance.”

Ray laughs. “That what you call it when you nail somebody’s hands to their knees? When you petrol-bomb a police van? You’re no fucking big shot, whoever the fuck you are. You run a few cannabis factories. You’ve scared a few Chinks. You think you’ll make my memoirs when I retire?”

Now it is the other man who emits a chuckle. “I presume that you are recording this conversation, Chief Inspector, so I will refrain from unburdening myself with regards to my regret for recent incidents. But to presume my associates are limited to such matters represents a degree of shortsightedness that they will find amusing.”

“Did you actually want something, lad? Only I’ve got a drug den to raid and a couple of fucking Chinks to arrest.”

The man does not speak for several seconds.

Finally he gives a little sigh.

“Your colleagues,” he says. “The large gentleman who looks like he should be carrying a claymore. The lady in the biker boots and breasts. Tell them not to feel guilty. They had a job to do. Miss Marvell was big enough to make her own decision. And do tell Detective Superintendent Russell that I will be in touch.”

The call is terminated. The speaker begins to emit slow beeps, like a life-support machine.

Ray looks at the side of Russell’s face for a spell. Looks as though he is about to spit.

“Sir?” Tremberg is the first to speak. “Do you think that bloke runs this lot, then? That he’s the boss? He didn’t sound right. Didn’t sound like just some drugs thug . . .”

Ray picks his teeth for a spell.

Says nothing.

Finally picks up the radio from between his legs.

“Go.”

A dozen car lengths ahead, the double doors swing open at the back of a white van. Half a dozen uniformed officers emerge, fast and furious.

Farther up the street, four plainclothes Drugs Squad detectives step into the rain.

As one they descend upon a deceptively large town house halfway up the street.

Tremberg opens her own door. Puts her left foot down in a puddle. Pulls her extendable baton from the pocket of her raincoat. Listens, above the footsteps and the resurgent rain, for the sound of the police dogs as they pour into the property’s backyard, straining at the leashes of their handlers . . .

Watches a burly officer muscling his way to the front of the pack.

He hefts the Enforcer, the rubber-ended metal battering ram that can deliver three tons of kinetic energy in a single swing.

Brings it forward: expert and practiced.

The wooden door at the front of the house is smashed back off its hinges.

She hears shouts. Warnings. Watches the officers streaming forward—a blur of color and rain—as they surge through the busted door.

Colin Ray puts out a hand.

“No point being in there first, love. Being last out, that’s what you want. Slapping the cuffs on and watching as the bastards take their last look.”

Tremberg looks at him. At the rain running down his sallow, unhealthy-looking face. At his stained teeth and sodden, stained pin-striped suit. Wonders whether, if he could just be a bit less of a cunt, she could learn a lot from this man.

More shouts. A roar, full of frightened energy.

“Fuck! Fuck!”

One of the detectives emerges from the property. He is breathing hard. Puts out a hand to steady himself against the redbrick wall.

Tremberg follows Ray as he walks briskly up to the house.

“Well?”

The officer is around Tremberg’s own age. Fleshy cheeked and earnest, all supermarket suit and inoffensive haircut.

“Fucking forest up there,” he says, wheezing. “Got one lad. The other did a bunk out the back.”

The radio in Ray’s hand crackles. The dog unit has cornered an Asian-looking gentleman in the backyard.

“Job well done, then,” says Ray, about to step into the property.

The constable shakes his head. Something is wrong.

“There’s a woman up there, sir. Big girl. There was a report, couple of days ago, a misper . . . missing person . . . I think it’s her . . . fuck, sir, what they’ve done . . .”

Tremberg steps inside the house. Pushes past the throng of uniformed officers who line the hallway and staircase, uncomfortable in their damp raincoats, and makes her way up the stairs.

The carpet beneath her feet is patterned with swirls, and her head spins as she pushes open the doors to room after room set up for the cultivation of the finest-quality marijuana. Here blocks of resin, stacked like house bricks, set up for collection. There sacks of leaf, dried out and also ready for collection, sitting like bags of Christmas presents against white-painted walls.

She follows the sound of foreign shouts. Of brutal curses and angry threats, frothing on a tongue bitten bloody by gnashing teeth.

Sees a young, dark-haired Vietnamese man, in vest and shorts, writhing on the ground, tie-wrap cuffs behind his back, an officer on his legs and another pinning his shoulders.

Looks past him. Past the detective leaning against the door frame of a bedroom wrapped in plastic sheeting and hemmed with snaking wires.

Takes in, briefly, the plants in their varying stages of growth: some flowering, verdant and glossy, beneath yellow hydroponic lights.