Original Skin (8 page)

LILAH IS WHIMPERING.
Thrashing. Kicking fat little limbs the color of uncooked sausages. Turning her cheeks into cold, slapped flesh with the power of her sobs.

“Please, baby girl. Please . . .”

McAvoy’s giant hand is splayed upon his daughter’s heaving belly, trying to soothe her with his gently massaging fingers.

He leans over the cot. Fills her world with his face. Tries to saturate his eyes with truth, to wordlessly convey to his frightened, agitated child that she has nothing to fear. That Daddy is here. That she need never be afraid or lonely or sad . . .

He scoops her up. Holds her to his chest. Strokes the soft down that covers her warm crown. Shushes her, his stubbled cheek against her soft, untainted skin.

Gradually Lilah settles. One of her tiny hands finds McAvoy’s lower lip, and she grips it territorially as she begins to drift back into sleep.

Content to let her keep whatever part of his face she wants, McAvoy leans back against the wall and stares through the glass. Takes in the symmetry and newness, the bland homogeny of the estate.

Allows himself a brief moment of memory. Recalls the gloss of condensation. The smell of smoldering turf. The chill stone floor of the family croft. That view: across the heather and peat of the undulating fields down to the glassy black waters of Loch Ewe . . .

He shakes it away. Concentrates on now. On Hull. Its sky and its streets.

McAvoy has never had cause to use the word in conversation, but he fancies the color of the morning sky, as it bleeds from the orange-tinged black of night to the cloud-covered gloom of day, it could be labeled
isabelline
. It is a word he read in a book as a child, and its cheeky definition ensured it would lodge in his head forever. The word lends itself to the gray-and-yellow parchment hue reputed to be the color of the underwear worn by Isabella, archduchess of Austria, at the end of a three-year siege of her castle home.

It is a word that always makes his nose wrinkle, but it seems strangely appropriate for this damp and ghastly morning.

McAvoy checks his watch. It’s just gone six a.m.

He listens for any other sounds inside the house, but there is silence save Lilah’s gentle snuffling against his chest. Roisin and Fin remain asleep. He has a moment to himself.

Soundlessly, he crosses back to the cot and tenderly lays Lilah back down. Moving on tiptoes, he leaves the room and closes it behind him, conscious even as he does so how foolish he must look; a man of his size tiptoeing like a burglar, clad only in boxer shorts and suffused with the scent of smoke and too little sleep.

He retrieves his mobile phone from the pocket of the trousers which lie outside his bedroom door, alongside the tie, socks, and underpants he has already picked out for the day. He is used to leaving at strange hours. Does not like to wake his bride by dressing in the bedroom.

McAvoy pads downstairs, checking the messages on his answering service.

He enters the kitchen. Pours himself a glass of milk and adds a squirt of strawberry syrup, then downs it in a gulp.

Within moments he is heading back upstairs. Pulling himself into his clothes and replaying the message that he wishes to God he had picked up when it was left for him at two a.m.

“McAvoy. This is Desk Sergeant Pulis from Queens Gardens. Your request just crossed my desk. I’m sorry, this didn’t ring any bells before now. Shaun Unwin, yes? You’re looking for him or Leanne Marvell, I understand. Shaun’s been with us. In the cells. He’s due to be released first thing, but I’ll hold him if I hear back from you . . .”

•   •   •

TWENTY MINUTES LATER
McAvoy is walking briskly across Queens Gardens. The skies have not yet unleashed the lake they hold in their bellies, but the air is damp and the morning gray. He is grateful for the long woolen coat he took the time to pick up off the back of the sofa before silently slipping out of the house. He had pushed the car, hand brake off, for two whole streets, before turning the ignition. He wants his family to sleep soundly.

He follows the paved walkway through the neatly tended landscape of duck ponds and grass and up the stairs to the glass-and-concrete frontage of Queens Gardens Police Station.

The sergeant behind the glass raises his eyebrows as the detective walks in, and swivels his eyes to look up at the clock behind him.

“My, you’re up with the lark.”

“Shaun Unwin,” says McAvoy, crossing to the desk. “Has he been released?”

The sergeant, whose name McAvoy recalls as having a military connection, opens a plastic folder and runs a finger along a list of names.

“Released at four forty a.m.,” he says. “Pulis told him he could have breakfast before he went home but he was itching to get going.”

McAvoy closes his eyes.

Remembers the sergeant’s name.

“I gave instructions, Sergeant Uxbridge. It was essential I speak to him . . .”

The sergeant bristles. “I wasn’t on shift, mate. Was it a paper request? Only they sometimes get misfiled, see. Now, when it’s on the computer, it should flash up to tell you not to let any bugger go if somebody still wants them, but even then it’s a hit-and-miss business . . .”

Exasperated, McAvoy turns away. Runs his tongue around his mouth and rasps his hand over his unshaved face.

His mind fills with the snippets of information he was able to piece together on the drive over, in between phone calls to Pharaoh, that had left his head ringing.

Shaun Unwin had been arrested for disorderly conduct at 3:15 p.m. the previous day, even as Pharaoh and her team sat planning the raid at St. Andrew’s Quay. He had been knocking back drinks in the Mission. Sparked up a cigarette and refused to put it out. Swung a punch at the barman and smashed his forearm into the Plexiglas frontage of the jukebox. Made a prick of himself, and told the owners that if they didn’t like it, they should call the cops.

He didn’t run when the police turned up. Seemed to give himself up without any of his usual aggression.

The constable who made the arrest said he could get nothing out of Unwin. Had got no reply when he, like so many others, tried to find Leanne Marvell to inform her of her partner’s arrest.

McAvoy closes his eyes. Last night’s bust was doomed to failure from the start. Leanne had told her boyfriend that she had told the police. He had gone and got himself banged up, and whether intentional or not, that news would have rung alarm bells with the gang who paid him. Calls would have been made. The cannabis relocated. And then some bastards in a Land Rover dispatched to deliver a flaming warning to the coppers who had thought they were dealing with the usual class of scum . . .

His phone rings. Wincing in advance, he answers as quickly as he can.

“Guv?”

“I already know,” says Pharaoh, shouting above the noise of her sports car on the noisy road that leads from her home across the water up to the Humber Bridge. “Fucking idiots. Have you tried the house? He’s just thick enough to go back there.”

“No, guv. I came straight to Queens Gardens . . .”

“Right. Well, fucking run. Why do these people think they can think? If he wanted to be out of the way, Leanne could have asked us. We could have planned it another way. He could have had nothing to do with any of it. To be sitting in the cells while we were sitting waiting for him—what does he think his bosses were going to think?”

The doors swing open as McAvoy walks back out into the cold. The rain is still holding off, and his feet are steady on the slick pavements as he jogs back across the gardens and over Parliament Street, down onto Whitefriargate, with its shuttered chain stores and its full gutters stuffed with dead leaves, empty bottles, and polystyrene takeaway cartons.

He makes his way across Trinity Square and onto Dagger Lane.

Answers his phone as it vibrates against his thigh.

“Well? Anything? Shaun?” A pause. A note of real concern. “Leanne?”

The street is deserted. The light from the streetlamps shows up the haze of moisture in the gray air, and McAvoy instinctively shivers as he looks at his coat and sees that somehow, despite the absence of rain, he is soaked through.

A voice in his ear: “McAvoy?”

“Nearly there, guv.”

“She’ll be okay. You’ve seen her. She’s hard. It’s not her that told. They just put it together themselves . . .”

They both attempt to persuade themselves into happier, more positive thoughts. They fail.

“Not a sound, guv. He wouldn’t come here, though, and we’ve been trying Leanne all night . . .”

McAvoy stops.

Swears.

“Aector?”

The door to Leanne’s terraced house is an inch ajar.

He closes his eyes for a moment.

“The door’s open, guv.”

“Fuck, Aector. Right, I’m on my way. Call for uniform immediately.”

McAvoy eyes the doorway. Reaches out a hand and touches the wet wood. Pushes it open and steps inside.

“Aector, I’m not far off the bridge. I can be there in twenty-five minutes maximum. Don’t you even think about going in there.”

McAvoy nods, steps back.

Then he smells it. Smells the soft, earthy scent of suffering: of tears and pain. It is an infusion in the air, a whisper of a taste. It catches in his nostrils and stuffs its fingers down his throat.

“Guv, there’s somebody inside.”

McAvoy says no more. Ends the call and then switches off his phone. Moves, as if trying not to wake a child, back within the embrace of the house.

His feet make no noise as he takes the stairs. He moves slowly, but takes the steps three at a time so as to cut down on the likelihood of one creaking.

He sniffs: a great stag checking the morning air for predators. For prey.

He finds himself moving toward what he presumes to be the bedroom. The door, white-painted and featureless, has been pushed to but not fully closed. He inches toward it. Pulls the extendable baton from his pocket, and then puts it back. He has never swung the weapon. Has seen what it can do. Does not want to add his name to the list of officers who have found themselves disciplined or guilt-ridden after allowing their adrenaline to overtake them while armed with something so deadly.

He pushes open the door.

Shaun Unwin has been tie-wrapped by the ankles to a hard-backed chair. He is naked. His hands are palms down upon his knees, a gory mimicry of a well-disciplined schoolchild.

The room smells of blood. Of lighter fuel. Of burning flesh.

The skin on Shaun’s torso has been melted down to bone.

His feet sit, unmoving, in a puddle of blood that runs down from where the nails have been driven through the backs of his hands and deep into his kneecaps.

His head lolls forward: lifeless.

McAvoy crosses the room. Lifts Shaun’s head. Recoils as he stares into the slack-jawed ruination of the man’s mouth. At the stumps of broken teeth. The blue-black blood. The perforations in his gore-lacquered cheeks.

Shaun’s mouth has been filled with a fuel-soaked rag and then set on fire. His tongue is melted black.

McAvoy, fighting his instincts, reaches out a hand and presses his fingers to Shaun’s neck.

Moves back to the wall and retrieves his phone.

Pharaoh answers before he can speak.

“He’s dead, isn’t he, Shaun. I bet the fucking idiot walked straight in the front door.”

“They hurt him, guv,” says McAvoy, softly. “Must have worked on him for a time. I can’t see Leanne. Fuck, what a mess . . .”

A sound behind him makes him stop short.

Shaun would have been home by around five a.m. It’s just after seven a.m. now. It would have taken time to do this. Could they still . . .

This time the noise is unmistakable. The bang of wood on brick, and then feet on cobbles.

McAvoy sprints across to the window. Peers left and then right, frantically searching for the source of the sudden sounds.

He catches a glimpse of three figures. A flash of black leather and bristled, porcine skin. Of broad backs and raised collars. A flash of auburn. An insinuation, in the chaos of the picture, of a smaller, more delicate form, quicker than the others, a blur of color and a flash of white.

And they are gone.

McAvoy finds himself alone in a missing informant’s flat. Finds himself sinking to his knees, bringing himself level with the ruined body of a man tortured to death for allowing his woman to open her mouth.

“Nobody here,” says McAvoy, into the phone, and the words seem to make his tongue swell—make bile rise in his mouth.

He stops himself. Bites back the lies.

“Guv, I’m so sorry . . .”

HOME AGAIN.
Tired and guilty, aching and sick.

It’s not your fault. They were playing with bad people. It happened. Leanne could still be okay . . .

He has heard lots of soothing words in the past few hours, but none has helped him feel any better or cleansed his senses of the stench of Shaun’s skin.

Pharaoh has taken over. A murder investigation has been launched, but the top brass have yet to decide whether it is to be folded into Pharaoh’s existing investigation, or handed over to a separate CID team. McAvoy believes any attempts to remove it from Pharaoh’s grasp would be madness, but knows, too, that his opinion counts for nothing. He’s just the cop who found the body. The cop who has spent all day giving statements and having his clothes bagged by forensics officers because he went into the flat without a white suit on and contaminated the crime scene.

He shakes his head, hating everything. Wishing he had listened a little harder. That he had run faster. Caught even one of them. They have nothing to go on. His description is even weaker than that given by the Vietnamese farmers who suffered the same injuries months before. The initial reports on the nails driven into Shaun’s knees suggest they came from the same weapon as that used in the first attack, and the doctor’s initial impression is that Shaun endured an hour of abuse before his heart gave out.

He has never been as grateful to leave the station. Never wanted to hold Roisin more.

She is upstairs now. Changing Lilah. Pleased to have her husband home early and hoping his presence in the house will allow her a few hours of proper sleep.

McAvoy should be enjoying it, too. Should be up there, making them all giggle. Should maybe be getting his boots on and wandering around to pick up Fin from school. Should be reveling in the look on his son’s face, the pleasure and pride at having the biggest dad in the playground.

With no instructions to follow or any other ideas about where to look for Leanne, McAvoy had decided to have one last little look at the contents of the mobile phone he had fished out of the mud of the River Hull. He entertained a hope that by looking at it again he would satisfy his curiosity and be able to sling the damn thing away. Would be able to get focused. Get busy. Make amends.

He plugs the phone into his laptop. Begins to play.

Opening the contacts box, he scrolls through the dots and numbers, whorls and compressed digits. He squints as he tries to make out something intelligible. Mc? MC2? Me?

McAvoy gets up and grabs a piece of paper from the pad by the landline and writes down the half-dozen variations that the numbers may be making up. He crosses back to where his laptop is plugged in, and sits down in his armchair, his computer’s battery pleasantly warm on his bare legs.

He logs on. Types in the first number that could vaguely fit with the jumble of numbers. Finds nothing but a string of serial numbers for a courier firm. Tries the next: 07969 . . .

Bingo.

There are three hits. The phone number is linked to a trio of sites.

McAvoy clicks on the first.

“Black cat, three years old, lovely temperament, missing from Anlaby area since last Sunday. If found, please call . . .”

McAvoy, hoping the animal turned up, clicks on the second link.

“New line-dancing club. All ages and abilities welcome. Experienced instructors and fun atmosphere. Every Wednesday at St. Mark’s Church Hall, Anlaby Common. Call Simon, 07969 . . .”

McAvoy nods. He is building a picture. Starting to care.

The third link takes him to playmatez.co.uk. He stares at the white screen, its gaudy purple banner; thumbnail pictures of women in fishnets, and men showing off bare torsos, exposed genitals.

The Number 1 Hook-up Site on the Web! Swing When You’re Winning!

McAvoy turns from the screen. Looks at the door. Prepares an explanation in case Roisin walks in.

Turns his attention back to the laptop, unsure whether he is prying or being a policeman.

He scrolls down until he finds the phone number.

FILL ME UP. MAKE ME YOUR SLAVE. YOUNG, SLIM, OH-SO-EAGER MALE SEEKING DOMINANT MAN. ANLABY AREA. Call 07969 . . .

“Has somebody hurt you?”

His words are said under his breath, but they are laden with the weight of a growing unease.

McAvoy copies the posting. Creates a file on his desktop and saves the link and the words. Does the same with the lost-pet forum and the line-dance club. Wonders why this matters. Why he needs to know. Why he doesn’t just put the phone in the bin and agree that it’s none of his business unless a crime has been committed. Wonders just how he has convinced himself, with such certainty, that this warrants his time.

“You want to help me?”

The voice floats down the stairs with none of its usual music. Roisin is growing more tired and irritable. She told him earlier that it has been three days since she spoke to another adult. That she had found herself humming the theme tune to
Wibbly Pig
while walking back from taking Fin to school. That she had to make a conscious effort of will not to ask for the cake in the shape of the “moo-cow” when popping to the bakery last weekend. She is craving stimulation. Needing adult time. Needing to be a young woman rather than a mum.

McAvoy runs his tongue around his mouth to make sure there are no biscuit crumbs to give him away. Gives a slight nod. Makes up his mind.

“I’ve got an idea . . .”

He hopes she’ll squeal when he tells her that this evening they are starting a line-dance class in Anlaby.

•   •   •

“YOU HAVE TO HOLD ME CLOSER . . .”

The dancer smells of red wine and garlic bread, microwave lasagna, and menthol cigarettes. She’s angling her pretty face upward, eyes heavy-lidded and sweat moistening her face at the temples. She is in her mid-twenties, and has clearly done this before. She is grinding her toes into the hardwood floor and lifting her red dress above pink young knees to show firm calves and red-painted toenails. Her arms are shooting out with such ferocity that McAvoy wonders whether she is being operated by remote control. She is even managing to hum along to the music, which, to McAvoy’s ear, would sound the same backward.

He tries to ignore her nearness and warmth. Concentrates on his footwork. Counts in his head. Holds her hips as if she were made of glass. Tries to remember whether the hold he is about to place her in is called a hammerlock or a full nelson, and wonders whether the “Suzy-Q” she is performing will lead to osteoporosis in later life.

“One, two, three . . .”

He squints over her shoulder at where his wife is having the time of her life in the arms of a seventy-year-old man wearing yellow corduroy trousers and a designer shirt. His hands are on her buttocks. He appears to be mentally testing a cantaloupe for firmness.

McAvoy and his wife came dressed for country and western. They found it was salsa night.

“Yes, it used to be Wednesdays, but we changed it,” said the nice middle-aged woman at the door. “Salsa’s more fun. Great for the youngsters. Beginners welcome. Only five pounds each. Refreshments at halftime. And Mike used to be a county champion . . .”

Roisin had squealed and begged him to give it a go. Told him they could still go line dancing another night if that was what he had set his heart on. Said it was a shame to waste the babysitter, and that he might love it.

He is not loving it. Salsa merely gives him indigestion.

“It’s in the hips,” says Mike, rotating his own in a manner that, if performed outside the confines of the church hall, could see him locked up for indecency. “Excellent. Yes, grind it. Grind it!”

Mike is shouting this last at McAvoy’s current partner, and she obeys, putting enough twist into her movements that he wonders whether her high heel will remain screwed to the floor when they separate and move on to the next person in the circle.

“That’s it, my lovely. It’s about sex!”

McAvoy looks as though he has been running in the rain. He is soaked through with sweat, his white shirt clinging to his skin and his jeans uncomfortably damp. His face is bright red with embarrassment and exertion, and exposed in its entirety due to Roisin’s decision to slick his hair back from his face with her hand when she spotted him beginning to drip on his partners.

“. . . and rest.”

The sound of drums and Spanish guitar crashes to a stop, and the dozen people in the circle give a little cheer and clap for one another.

McAvoy is breathing like a hot bullmastiff, and can barely even muster a polite smile when his partner squeezes him on his sodden arm.

“It takes some getting used to,” she says sympathetically. “I took to it straightaway, but some people can take longer.”

“There are fish on dry land who dance better than me,” says McAvoy, gasping, bending over and placing his hands on his thighs as if he had just run a marathon. He feels her pat him on his broad back.

“Don’t give up on it. You’ve got rhythm.”

He straightens up. Manages a little laugh. “Just not the same one as everybody else.”

The girl extends her hand. McAvoy wipes his own on his jeans and takes hers in his palm. “Mel,” she says.

“Aector,” he replies. It feels odd that he has introduced himself by anything other than his rank. He wonders why he has done so. Wonders if he is subconsciously reminding himself that he is not here as a policeman. He is not here on official business. That he’s just a nosy bugger, lying to his wife . . .

“Aector, did you see me?”

McAvoy turns as Roisin excitedly bounds up to him. “You were great,” he says instinctively.

“I know! This is awesome, Aector.”

“This is Mel,” he says, by way of explanation for the attractive, sweating woman at his side. “I’m turning her feet into flippers. I don’t think she sees me as a potential rosette winner.”

Roisin seems to notice her husband’s dance partner for the first time. She looks her up and down. Red dress. Hair tied back into a ponytail and tethered with a silk red rose.

“We thought it was line dancing tonight,” she says brightly, gesturing at her own red-and-white gingham blouse, tied above her belly button, denim shorts, and fawn, knee-length leather boots. “This is so much better.”

“The line-dancing club’s changed nights,” says Mel.

“So they said.”

“There aren’t many people go to it now anyway,” she says, and she shifts the direction of her conversation from McAvoy to his wife. “And they’re all ancient. I went to it a couple of times when it was half decent. Was a real giggle. These days they’ll be lucky to get enough people to make an actual line. Not like it was.”

“People got bored with it, did they?” asks McAvoy.

Mel shakes her head. “Different tutor,” she explains. “Boring lady took over and all the people who used to come for the giggle packed it in.”

“The giggle?”

“Simon,” she says, and instantly breaks into a smile. “He and his aunt used to run it. Was more of a cabaret night. Was such a laugh.”

“Has he gone to another club?” asks Roisin. “We could maybe go there . . .”

Mel shakes her head. “No,” she said. She looks away. “It’s sad.”

McAvoy pinches the sweat from his nose. Forces himself not to push it. Lets the two girls talk. Listens and takes notes in his head.

“We didn’t know he was so unhappy,” says Mel.

“Quit, did he?” asks Roisin.

“Killed himself,” says Mel, matter-of-factly. “Put a rope around his neck and hanged himself in his flat.”

McAvoy sniffs.

Blinks once.

“Poor lad,” says Roisin.

McAvoy nods. Tries to sound cool. “What was his name again?”

Mel pulls out her phone. Scrolls through. “Simon,” she says sadly, and holds up the screen to reveal a grainy picture of a tall, thin, sweaty, and smiling young man. “Simon Appleyard.”

McAvoy looks at the phone number displayed across the young man’s image. He blinks once, like a camera taking a picture. Files away digits he already knows.