David spent more than fifteen years as a journalist, including seven years as a crime reporter with the Yorkshire Post - walking the Hull streets that would later become the setting for the Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy novels.
He has written six novels in the bestselling McAvoy series: Dark Winter, Original Skin, Sorrow Bound, Taking Pity, Dead Pretty and Cruel Mercy and the new release, Scorched Earth. His first historical thriller, The Zealot’s Bones, is also out now.
Follow David on Twitter at @davidmarkwriter or visit his website www.davidmarkwriter.co.uk
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Prologue
This cold is a living thing. It hungers. It hunts. It feeds. When Manu first felt its bitter kiss he feared to look upon his bare arms lest they appear denuded of flesh: chewed to stark white bone.
How strange, he had thought. How strange that fire and ice should have the same desires; the same craven lust for meat.
Manu is wrapped around himself; his arms blanketing a body as flimsy as the shelter in which he squats, trying to keep his backside above the muddy floor. His eyes are pennies; two perfect circles that stare at the flapping wing of canvas that serves as the doorway of his feeble shelter.
Manu shares this patch of scrubland on the outskirts of Calais in northern France with thousands of other men. There is no running water. The ground where he sleeps has the appearance and stench of an open sewer. Most mornings he wakes up semi-submerged. There are times when he has almost drowned himself during one of his midnight hallucinations; plunging nose and mouth into the shallow pool of filthy, fetid water.
He blinks. Stops it all. Cleanses himself in the absolute darkness behind his eyelids. The scene before him is so desolate that to look upon it for too long is to allow cold water into the soul. The image threatens to saps him of the murderous fury that has propelled him this far. And yet he considers himself fortunate. His tent is more luxurious than many. His neighbours protect themselves against the ceaseless rain within a nest of sticks, bin-liners and scavenged pieces of wood.
Manu could not say for certain when he arrived here. Weeks certainly. Perhaps months. He has no recollection of his first few days in camp. He knows that the last leg of his journey almost killed him. He has been a passenger on many vehicles during his gruelling passage from his homeland and has long known the dangers of falling from his hiding place to be crushed beneath the great wheels of the wagons on which he stowed away. He has witnessed such gruesome incidents many times. But he had never expected to arrive in Calais as an effigy, a sculpture built of frost. Icy water had splashed up and coated him as he clung to the axle of the last lorry on its journey north. The water had turned to ice upon him; holding him fast, arms outstretched; Christ-like in the freezing dark.
Manu has never known the names of his saviours. He remembers only the sensation of strong hands as they unpeeled him. There was rain upon his face and a burn upon the back of his leg where his skin had touched hot metal. His shivers were feverish, like the malarial convulsions that shook his sister to her miserable death. But kinder, better men gave him warmth. Treasured sweaters and waterproof coats were bundled up to serve as pillow and blanket. He was fed soups that tasted a little like meat. He was given clothes of his own: a sporty jacket of a flimsy, shiny material; American jeans, canvas shoes. A woollen hat that he could pull down to hide the ugly semicircle of risen flesh where his ear used to sit . . .
He did not deserve such kindness. He, who had done such wicked things. But he took it because it was offered and because he had no wish to die.
The chill is a part of him now, in him like memory, like pain. Through his watery eyes, the dark brown skin on the backs of his hands has taken on a purplish hue, like the night sky before a storm.
‘Manu. Bread, my friend?’
Manu looks up at the sound of his companion’s voice. It is almost lost to the song of the wind as it pummels the side of the small red tent in which they sit and shelter from the swirling rain.
‘No, for you, my friend,’ says Manu. ‘Eat well.’
The Eritrean gives a wide smile, showing neat white teeth. He reaches into the carrier bag and retrieves another plastic-wrapped bread roll. It is stale but still sweet. The supermarkets here throw away food in such quantities that no man, woman or child should go hungry. But there are men here who prey upon the weak. They take all the food for themselves and hand it out only to those who can pay or who are willing to provide some small service in return.
‘In England we will have pizza.’ The Eritrean smiles as he takes a bite of hard brioche. ‘Pizza every night.’
Manu gives his friend the smile he seeks. The Eritrean is called Golgol. He is younger than Manu, perhaps not yet thirty, but his journey to this place has scarred deep lines into his face and his black moustache and beard are tinged with grey. There is little meat on his bones though he is still larger than Manu himself. Manu weighs no more than a child. He is all knotted joints and jagged bones.
‘Bad,’ says Golgol, as the rain and the wind double their assault on the flimsy tent.
‘We are lucky,’ says Manu. ‘The Sudanese have mud-slides.’
‘Mud-slides?’ asks Golgol, looking confused.
‘The ground,’ says Manu, patting the tattered floor of the tent. He makes a bird of his hands and demonstrates the earth moving away.
Golgol points a finger at him in understanding. ‘By God’s mercy,’ says Golgol.
They are silent for a while, listening to the rain. Manu is sitting up, hugging his knees with his forearms. Golgol is lying down, using Manu’s shell-suit top as a pillow. Neither man speaks the language of the other but Golgol has a smattering of English and has learned more in Manu’s company. He has learned about England too. Manu has told him good words to use to make people like him. Told him that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are good but that ‘I’d be delighted’ and ‘I would love to’ serve as currency in the English culture. He has told him not to say ‘fucking’ or ‘cunt’ in front of people over fifty. In return, Golgol has taught Manu how to sign his own name in Eritrean and educated him on his people’s long battles for independence from Ethiopia. He has told him of his family and his own long journey and the hellish boat ride across black water that he took with so many terrified countrymen as he fought to reach the sacred shores of Europe.
Even so, they are unlikely friends. Golgol had not expected to find a friend in the dark-eyed, one-eared man from Mozambique. But God had been merciful, despite his sin. Golgol used to live among his countrymen in the Eritrean section of the camp but he and another man tried to force themselves upon a young woman whose tent neighboured his own and when her screams roused the other Eritreans he was badly beaten and banished from the patch of waste ground where so many of his people had made a home. Friendless, Golgol had redoubled his efforts to get aboard one of the thousands of vehicles heading for the port. His dream was England and he had already suffered endless torments on his long journey to this bleak tip of northern France. Golgol had no luck. The truck drivers saw him and on the occasions they did not, he would be found by the heat scanners or the bastard sniffer dogs trained to seek out him and his kind. His bad luck was contagious. He had thought himself alone in the refrigerated compartment of a meat wagon heading for England. When the doors were opened and the men in uniform pulled him, shivering, onto the road, he learned he had been sharing the vehicle with Manu. They were placed in a police vehicle and driven inland and then dumped on the side of the road. It took them several hours to walk back to the campsite that its starving, freezing residents called the Jungle and which served as home to thousands of desperate souls.
Manu and Golgol have been friends since. They have shared stories. They have told one another their dreams.
Manu looks again at the other man. He looks happy. He has a full belly and the hooded sweatshirt he has wrapped around himself is keeping out the worst of the chill.
The rain rattles against the tent once more and the feeble shelter feels as though it will rise from the ground. Golgol closes his eyes and Manu turns to Aishita, who sits beside him, wordless and brooding.
‘It must be done,’ says Manu under his breath in his native Portuguese.
Aishita barely turns his head. He has already made up his mind. There is no other way.
Golgol raises his head and sees his friend in conversation.
‘Are you weak, little mouse?’ asks Aishita, his voice barely audible over the sound of the wind and the rain. ‘I can do this. Let me do this. Let me help my little mouse . . .’
Manu shakes his head violently, like a child refusing to eat. It has been this way for a long time. Aishita is fearless. He is cruel. He does what must be done and feels no remorse for the brutality he wields as a tool. Manu does not enjoy the barbarous acts he has both witnessed and performed. They bring him no pleasure, despite the skill with which he executes them.
‘He is content. He is happy. It is a kindness.’
As ever, Manu recognises the truth of the other man’s words. Golgol is unlucky. He will never make it to England. He will probably die here, of cold, or starvation, or at the hands of some criminal who wishes to relieve him of his clothes or his food or who remembers some terrible act in their nightmares and wakes with a fresh urge to kill.
‘Manu?’ asks Golgol, propping himself on one elbow. ‘Are you okay?’
Manu looks at him with a look of sad resignation upon his face. Truly, it must be done.
The bicycle spoke that Manu has concealed beneath him has been sharpened to a needle-point on a damp stone. The bicycle was abandoned by some tourist who would rather go home without it than repair the buckled wheel. Manu and Aishita snapped the spokes off by the side of the road: neither speaking as they silently agreed upon their course of action.
‘Manu?’
Quick as darkness, Manu grasps the silver spoke in a fist that looks like tarred rope. Golgol has only a moment in which to ask his friend why, and then the spoke is entering his chest between the second and third ribs. Above him, Manu releases a slight hiss as he feels the blade punch through between the bones and slide through Golgol’s heart. Manu is sprawled on top of the Eritrean, close as lovers, and though he tries to turn his head away he catches the smell of sweet, stale bread as the breath leaves Golgol’s body. Manu wants to spit; to vomit out this man’s dying exhalation, but he feels the imposing bulk of Aishita at his side and knows that such superstition should only scare children and fragile men. He is a soldier. A man. A warrior.
‘Quick now. The flame.’
Manu feels himself trembling but does not pause in his actions. He retrieves the shiny shellksuit from beneath Golgol’s head. He opens it out as if laying a table and then wraps the garment around Golgol’s face.
‘This frees us, Manu. Anybody who searches for you – their path ends here. This is where your new existence begins. Become the weapon. Become the man you are.’
Manu nods. He searches Golgol’s pockets and takes the damp handful of euros that represent the little he has managed to beg and steal during his time here. Manu does not need to count the notes. He knows there to be a little over 800 euros in his hand. Added to his own savings, it will be enough.
With deft, efficient hands, Manu empties his pockets. He places his own passport in the dead man’s jeans, together with the receipt for the cigarettes and cola he had bought last night at one of the few shops willing to serve people from the Jungle, and which was covered inside and out with video surveillance.
‘The ear.’
Manu does not let himself display any emotion as he takes the small knife from his sock and cuts a chunk off Golgol’s ear. He cannot help but raise his hand to touch the gristled lump of scar tissue that marks the spot where his own ear was severed. He remembers the pain. The helplessness. The sense of becoming less. He puts both blade and ear into his pocket and does not let himself shudder at the touch of dead flesh.
‘Good work,’ growls Aishita. ‘Light him.’
It has been many years since Aishita taught Manu how to kill. Manu had feared that over the years since he last took a life he would have lost his flair for execution. But as he looks at the lighter in his hands, he realises that his hands are no longer shaking and that the chill has left his bones.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ says Manu, and lights the shiny material. It ignites in moments, the flames spreading around the entirety of the jacket and clinging to the face beneath. Manu slides the spoke from Golgol’s chest and bunches up his shirt to conceal the tiny hole in the material. He pulls on Golgol’s hooded shirt and slips the skewer up his sleeve. He feels heat at his back and his nostrils fill with the acrid smell of cooking skin and melting fabric.
‘Leave him,’ says Aishita and both men pull themselves free of the tent.
The storm has driven most of the Jungle’s inhabitants to seek shelter in one of the sturdier buildings on the site. Others will be begging for food and clothing from the elderly volunteers who man the charity stalls set up to give help to the helpless. Nobody sees Manu and Aishita as they weave between the ragged tents, splashing through muddy puddles and leaving prints in the churned-up grass.
They do not speak again until they have handed over their rolls of damp, muddy cash to the fat man with the painted arms and thick neck and who leaves the engine running as they climb up to the cab and slither inside the seat. In return, he gives them a phone number and two names, scribbled on a piece of cigarette paper. Manu struggles to say the words. He will practise on the journey – silently repeating the names over and over until they are no longer unfamiliar to his lips.
They lie in the dark, vibrating like the vehicle, soaking and shivering on a carpet of magazines and food wrappers: crammed together in a coffin that stinks of piss and diesel.
This moment should not feel like victory.
But as Manu dares to imagine the prize that awaits him in England he cannot help but let his excitement show in his eyes.
Soon he will be in England.
Soon he will be rich.
And soon he will have revenge on the devil that made him become this terrible, terrible man.
(C) David Mark 2018