Blind Justice, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also by David Mark
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Also by David Mark
Novels
THE ZEALOT’S BONES (as D.M. Mark)
THE MAUSOLEUM *
A RUSH OF BLOOD *
BORROWED TIME *
SUSPICIOUS MINDS *
CAGES *
The DS Aector McAvoy series
DARK WINTER
ORIGINAL SKIN
SORROW BOUND
TAKING PITY
A BAD DEATH (eBook only)
DEAD PRETTY
CRUEL MERCY
SCORCHED EARTH
COLD BONES
PAST LIFE *
* available from Severn House
BLIND JUSTICE
David Mark
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2022 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © David Mark, 2022
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of David Mark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5054-6 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0901-6 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0902-3 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
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Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
In Loving Memory of R Ashcroft, gentleman and scholar.
‘There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.’
Cicero, at the moment of his execution
PROLOGUE
Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. You move and you’re dead.
He starts to tremble. Grips himself wherever he can find purchase. Wills himself still. Shivers, as if icy breath were caressing the nape of his neck. He pleads with his own disloyal bones.
Stay still. Be a fake corpse now or a real one later.
The cold is leaching into his skeleton now. His jeans are soaked with rain and piss; mud on the knees, blood on the cuffs. His T-shirt clings to his outline like a second skin. He feels his teeth rattling inside his head. Bites down until his mouth fills with the iron reek of keys and coins.
Keep your head down, dickhead. Be the earth. Be the bloody floor!
He raises his head in tiny increments. Opens his eyes as if expecting the hinges to squeak. Stares into darkness and rain.
He blinks some detail into the static fuzz in front of his face. Makes a picture of the long grass and tangled wildflowers; sees black whorls and snarled stems. Sees headless dandelions: bodies bent double by the gale.
His nostrils fill with the stench of damp earth; of mildew and bog weed; the sweet reek of horse shit and potato peelings; the static tingle of the gathering storm.
His eyes adjust; pupils opening like bullet holes.
Slowly, the darkness delineates into palpable shapes. The murky columns become tall trees; bark shimmering like fish skin as the rain and the wind turn the air into a million prisms – moonlight splintering in a chaos of silvery iridescence.
He raises his head another inch. Glimpses the great oblong of inky dark that pokes through the maze of trees. Thinks his way inside it. Remembers. Sees himself wriggling in through the sash window, scraping his belly on the sill, clattering down on the sawdust and metal filings of the workshop floor. The glitter of metal and oil. The cordite. The sulphur. The blood and the gold.
It was supposed to have been so damn easy. Straight in and out. A chance to make serious money for minimal risk. Even split three ways it was going to set him up for life. All he had to do was follow his new pal through the dark of the cramped little outbuilding and into the poky dampness of the pit beneath the floor. The treasures would be inside. He already had the code for the safe. Had a buyer lined up. They were doing something important, something noble, and it was going to make them rich. It was sheer serendipity. Two momentous things happening at once. Trudy’s news, and the immediate chance to put things right. He just had to keep his nerve, and help him carry the stash. There would be nobody there. The dad was away at sea, the mum on a course – the lad long gone. It would be criminal not to help themselves.
Seventy miles east. An hour and a half in the silly little car. Dark roads, and black trees and the storm becoming tempest overhead. They had found the place eventually, just where he’d said it would be – found the strange house a little way back from the silent road; shielded by the kind of trees that harbour wolves and witches in fairy stories. He had kept his nerve. Followed his pal. Climbed through the window and kept himself silent as the grave.
Then came the great flare of blinding light, a roaring blaze of unbearable whiteness: bulbs blowing out and spraying tiny daggers of glass; filaments burning with their hot metal tang; bulbs bright as a nuclear dawn. He had fallen. Stumbled into the place below the floor, his senses reeling from the sounds of planes taking off inside his head. He had felt his bones coming apart inside his skin.
He closes his eyes again. Sees his companion. Looks again at a memory so fresh that the colours still haven’t dried. Sees him. Sees the flash bastard who thought he was too clever to get caught. Prone, in the pit. Starfished: a Vitruvian man, gulping and bleeding; eyes like pickled eggs. He’s making strange shapes with his mouth, gasping soundlessly, his hands opening and closing as if an anatomist were pulling at the tendons in his wrist. There’s blood leaking from the ugly trench in his shin. Blood puddling on the floor.
He had moved to help him. Stumbled blindly forward through the shards, feeling for the edges of the place beneath the ground.
Then absolute blackness. Dark like the inside of a coffin; the centre of a skull.
He had turned away. Fumbled his way to the open window. Slid back into the cold of the hard December air.
Shouts followed. Pleas. Desperate screeches for help, scything down from somewhere behind him; a discordant screech against the song of the gale. He had felt himself pursued. Heard footsteps echoing his own. Thrown himself down into the mud and the leaves and wrapped his hands around his head, pain singing inside the marrow of his ruined leg.
Here he lays.
Don’t move. Don’t raise your head. Wait until dawn. Get back to the car, back to your friends. He’ll be OK. It was his idea. His damn plan. You don’t know him. Not really. The other one doesn’t even need to know. Cut your losses, save your life …
He catches a whiff of something incongruous. Smells roasting meat. Feels his tongue and stomach respond to the momentary scent of burnt pork. Pushes his face back down into the grass and feels sharp little pebbles digging into his skin.
An animal sound from somewhere nearby. The shriek of a creature in pain. Goose pimples rise all over his body as some ancient sense memory takes hold of his synapses and sinews. He feels himself shake as adrenaline floods him. Knows, suddenly, that if he doesn’t get out of here right now, something terrible is going to happen.
He wriggles through the damp grass. Slides and slithers over tree roots and thistles, sodden branches and the mulch of dead grass. Moves like a snake emerging from dead skin.
Another scream. A cry of absolute horror; as if somebody were looking at parts of themselves that they were never meant to see.
He shakes his head. Refuses to allow his thoughts to take the shape they want to.
No. Don’t. You’re not a hero. Don’t be a fool.
He reaffirms his decision. Tells himself that the howl is that of a fox or a frightened cat. Tells himself that this has all been a big mistake. He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be shivering against the cold wet earth in this little patch of woodland in some secluded little pocket of East Yorkshire. They got carried away with themselves. Talked themselves into attempting something they weren’t cut out for. He’s learned his lesson now. He’s had his scare. He’s going to change his ways. Going to work harder; get his grades up to scratch, take his studies seriously, lay off the fags and the booze.
He pulls himself into a crouch. Holds himself like a sprinter in the blocks. Looks up, rain pummelling his features, and sees the great rotunda of bone-grey stone. Glimpses the name carved into the marble tablet. Flashes his eyes over the inscription.
Mortui Vivos Docent
The Crypt. The house of bones at the edge of the woods, where mortal remains lay in their silken coffins and stare sightlessly at the curved dome far above. Tries to make sense of the words, to remember their meaning, but his mind is all storm and blood.
Another scream. The gale upon his skin. The sound of branches snapping far overhead as the elements clash in the dark sky. Feels his feet sliding on mud. Feels spindly branches whipping at his face, his chest, grabbing at his ankles like the hands of the dead.
Running now. Through the woods, slipping and stumbling as the rain lashes down and the ground seems to tear itself apart beneath his feet. A roll of thunder, out there, past the village and the motorway to where the storm gathers above the deep, dangerous waters of the Humber.
A crash, somewhere nearby. Tree roots rising from the earth as if some long-buried monster were emerging from its slumber. Trunks splitting; earth and stones cascading down from the maggoty whiteness of exposed roots.
Headlights, just beyond the fence. The car, back where they had left it. His companions. His friends. Safety, warmth. He lets out a ragged breath, fixing his gaze upon the big yellow eyes of the little Fiesta, illuminating the billions of raindrops that tumble from the demented sky.
Don’t stop. Keep going. You’re nearly there. Don’t say a word. Say he abandoned you. Say he did a runner. Say anything. But don’t let them know. Don’t let them know what you saw, or heard, or smelled. Don’t …
He doesn’t even feel the teeth of the metal trap crunch shut around his leg. Has taken two desperate steps towards sanctuary before he looks down and sees the gruesome steel contraption chewing into the bone of his shin. Tumbles down with such force that the tibia rips clean in two – spears of bloody whiteness skewering the tattered meat beneath his knee.
The pain, when it comes, is beyond endurance. It is as if red-hot knives and shards of glass were being pushed directly into the marrow beneath his shattered bones. He opens his mouth to scream and feels mud and earth spill onto his tongue, down his throat, flooding his gullet. Tries to turn right way up, to focus himself upon the lights of the car; the nearness of escape.
A shadow falls across him. An outline of rippling silk. Bare feet. Exposed shins. Robe flapping and billowing around defined well-muscled flesh.
I’m sorry. So sorry …
The words never leave his mouth. His desperate pleas spill bloodily into the sodden earth. Hears a faint whisper, an insinuation of words muttered wetly at his ear.
‘Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.’
He cannot reply. Cannot turn the phrase into words he comprehends. Cannot cry out as he feels the hands upon him. He does not make a sound until he has been flipped, deftly, upon his back and the ropes are being fastened around his wrists. He experiences a hazy, far-off moment of separation; of disconnection. Makes out the gristly crunch and snap as bone and sinew and tendon disarticulate and come sloppily apart around the jaws of the trap.
And then he is being dragged upon his back, moving through the wet earth and the tangled roots and the smashed branches; stones in his flesh, earth in his ears and nose; dragged like a felled stag bound for the fire.
Before the dawn, he will remember this moment with something like fondness.
For there is so much worse to come.
PART ONE
ONE
Hessle Foreshore, East Yorkshire
Tuesday, April 8th
6.04 a.m.
He’s halfway down the stairs before his brain wakes up. Muscle memory and instinct have conspired to get him out of the warm softness of the marital bed. He was still asleep when he pulled on T-shirt and shorts and placed a delicate kiss on his wife’s damp, sleep-scented cheek.
He stops on the squeaky stair and permits himself an extravagant yawn, stretching his arms as high as he can. At six foot six, he rarely gets such an opportunity. The little, white-painted cottage on the waterfront is cosy and snug, but the ceilings are low and each doorframe has been introduced to his forehead enough times to warrant a CT scan. He’s not a clumsy man – just big. He’s got the build of a heavyweight boxer: eighteen stone of muscle and scars. His huge, cracked hands dangle from dauntingly solid arms. There are white lines scored into his face, half lost in the tangle of his beard. He has the look of a berserker not yet roused from sleep. And yet Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy would blush to be thought of as a hard man. He’s painfully shy. A softie, according to those who love him. A family man. A doting husband and father. A big lumbering bear of a man, with a greying red beard and a shock of unmanageable auburn hair.
He listens again for the sound that roused him. Hears the tink of a teaspoon against the lip of a china cup. Hears the soft rumble of the washing machine. He’d nearly mistaken it for the storm. The winds were crazy last night, blowing in off the river as if seeking shelter from the blackness above the sea. The rain had pummelled the glass with such ferocity that he had put down his book and crossed to the window, staring out through his own reflection at the tempest taking place above and beyond. It’s blown itself out now but he has little doubt this will be a difficult day for the area. Trees will have blown down; chimney stacks will have tumbled; power lines will be dangling in wet gutters. Roads will be blocked; commuters will get stuck in static traffic. Tempers will flare. There will be violence. There will be crime.
He opens the door to the kitchen and his face folds into a warm smile. His teenage son, Fin, is sitting at the kitchen table, blowing on a mug of hot chocolate. His red hair is still damp from the shower and sticks up in places. His broad, freckled face is pale and there are dark smudges beneath his eyes. He is his father in miniature – right down to the unfathomable sadness that seems to radiate from his brown eyes. He’s wearing a dressing gown and the set of his shoulders speaks of a troubled sleep, and painful bones.
‘Did I wake you?’ asks Fin, quietly. ‘I tried to be quiet. Is Mum …?’
McAvoy squeezes his son’s shoulder. Feels the tension in the muscles. Bends down to give him a kiss on his crown and stops himself, unsure what today’s rules are. Fin is thirteen, and though he remains in many ways the sweet and thoughtful boy of his childhood, he’s very nearly man-sized and sometimes flinches at displays of affection.
‘I was awake anyway,’ says McAvoy, in his soft Scottish brogue. ‘And your mother can sleep through an earthquake.’
Fin nods, satisfied. ‘There’s more hot chocolate in the pan,’ he says, pointing at the cooker. ‘I was going to give it to Lilah, but first come, first served.’
McAvoy smiles at his boy. Lilah, seven, won’t wake for at least another hour and even then it will be amid serious protest. She doesn’t mind school, but has serious misgivings about the curriculum and has a tendency to get annoyed when her teachers don’t treat her objections seriously. She has the personality of a single mum in their mid-forties: somebody who has seen it all and punched some of it. Her teachers are slightly afraid of her. McAvoy has yet to win an argument with Lilah. He feels slightly nervous about the potential consequences of his actions as he pours the sludgy hot chocolate into his big mug and sits down at the table next to his boy.
