Death Row

by Mark Pearson

  Diane shot her a look. ‘The guy rapes and strangles young children. You want to try climbing in his shit-soup of a brain and make sense of what motivates him?’

  Sally shrugged, conceding the point. ‘I guess not.’

  Diane blew out another angry breath of smoke. ‘Who the fuck knows? Maybe he’s developed a conscience.’

  ‘Yeah, and maybe you’ve grown a pair of balls, Diane,’ said Delaney.

  Diane looked back at him coolly. ‘Remember I’m still your boss, cowboy.’

  Delaney considered it for a moment. ‘That’s right … you’ve always had balls.’

  His mobile phone rang, muffled in his jacket pocket. Delaney took it out, looked at the caller ID and walked away to answer it, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  ‘Hi, Mary. How is she?’

  He nodded, listening. ‘Has she remembered anything else …?’ Delaney put his other arm out and leaned against a tree. ‘No, there’s nothing here. I think he’s just playing mind games with us.’

  A loud commotion sounded behind him and he looked across as a couple of uniforms started shouting and running over with their arms outspread. Armed officers formed a protective group around Garnier as Melanie Jones and her cameraman came striding into the clearing, the bright light mounted on top of the video camera causing Peter Garnier to blink and shield his eyes.

  Delaney cursed under his breath. ‘Look, Mary. I’ve got to go. Something’s come up. Tell her that I’ll be round later to see you both.’

  He closed the phone and headed back towards the group, his foot sliding a little in the wet mud and leaves beneath so that he stumbled forward and onto one knee. As he did so a shot rang out, cracking through the air like a shin bone being snapped. Ahead of him Delaney could see the cameraman who had been pointing the camera directly at him stagger backwards as though he’d been punched in the chest and then fall over, his camera crashing to the ground, and the only sound left ringing in the air was that of Melanie Jones screaming.

  Delaney clambered back to his feet as Diane knelt down to put her hand on the fallen man’s neck.

  ‘Is he alive?’ Melanie asked in a horrified whisper, her face now as pale as a dead fish as she cowered on the ground, her hands over her head as though they could protect her.

  Diane Campbell ignored her. ‘He’s still breathing. You, get an ambulance!’ she called over to a uniformed constable who quickly pulled out his radio.

  In the distance the sound of a motorbike firing up and roaring away could be heard as the armed units set off clattering through the trees in pursuit.

  Delaney gripped Melanie Jones by the upper arm and swung her around to face him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, Jones?’

  She smiled sarcastically. ‘Oh, I can’t get enough of you, Jack. You know that.’

  Delaney shook her arm, not gently. ‘I asked you a question!’

  Melanie jerked her chin towards Peter Garnier. ‘What do you think I’m doing? My job!’

  Diane Campbell glared up at her. ‘Arrest the stupid bitch, Jack.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Just get her out of here!’

  Delaney steered Melanie back to the car park just off the Ducks Hill Road as Sally came across to join them.

  Melanie angrily shook Delaney’s hand off. ‘You can’t do this. I have the right to be here.’

  Sally looked at her incredulously. ‘You want him to take another shot at you?’

  Melanie shook her head. ‘Whoever it was out there wasn’t shooting at me, you bloody idiot!’

  Delaney glared at her. ‘You want to watch that mouth of yours, lady!’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or it’s going to get slapped.’

  ‘It’s all right, sir.’

  ‘Strikes me, Delaney, that if you hadn’t stumbled when you did it would have been you face down in the mud.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He was standing right in front of you. I told him to get some shots of the hero who found the only child who lived.’

  ‘I didn’t find her.’

  ‘You got her out of the car. Garnier must hate you for that.’

  ‘I doubt he thinks about me at all.’

  ‘Well, someone clearly does.’

  Delaney subconsciously put a hand to his shoulder where he had been shot some weeks earlier and then shook the thought away. The man who had tried to kill him then had been killed himself. Shot twice and then blown to high heaven and hell with half a pound of Libyan Semtex. ‘You’ve probably made some powerful enemies yourself. I’ve seen some of the crap you broadcast, Miss Jones.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  Melanie tried to laugh it off but her gaze darted around nervously and she flinched involuntarily as Peter Garnier, surrounded by a phalanx of gun-wielding officers, was brought across to the heavily armoured police van that was waiting to take him back to Bayfield Prison.

  Sally jerked her thumb in his direction. ‘That’s who he was after, you ask me. Vigilante justice.’

  Delaney wasn’t so sure. ‘Shame he was such a lousy shot, then. And how did he know Garnier was going to be here?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir – how did she?’ Sally jerked a thumb at Melanie Jones.

  Diane Campbell walked across to them as the armoured door slammed shut, incarcerating the serial child-killer once more. The sound of an ambulance with its sirens wailing could just be heard now, growing louder. Diane fixed a dark, angry stare on the blonde reporter. ‘It’s a good question. How the hell did you know where we would be?’

  ‘It’s no secret that Peter Garnier had agreed to help you find the missing bodies. It’s been all over the news, twenty-four seven.’

  ‘It should have been a secret!’

  ‘But it wasn’t, was it? It was leaked.’

  Diane fought the urge to slap her. ‘So who leaked that, and who told you where we’d be this morning?’

  Melanie Jones shrugged. Insouciant. She could have been deliberating over a cappuccino or a latte in a Hampstead boutique café. ‘He was arrested further down the road near the Ruislip Lido. There’s acres of woodland all around. I took an educated guess.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  Melanie was taken aback by Diane Campbell’s response, but only for a second. ‘I don’t have to talk to you. My sources are confidential.’

  Diane nodded to DI Jimmy Skinner and PC Danny Vine who had joined the group. ‘Bring her down the nick.’

  Skinner smiled. ‘Be a pleasure.’

  Melanie glared across at Diane. ‘You can’t do this.’

  The DSI smiled. ‘Watch me.’

  As Skinner and Wilkinson led her towards a squad car she called back over her shoulder. ‘You’ll be hearing from our lawyers.’

  Delaney threw his boss a quizzical look. ‘Good idea taking her in? She’s right – if she doesn’t want to disclose her source there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

  ‘We have a right to question her.’

  ‘Yeah, we have that right.’

  ‘Meanwhile, while she is helping us with those inquiries we can examine the footage her cameraman shot before he was.’

  Delaney nodded. ‘Good thinking.’

  ‘It’s what I’m good at.’

  Sally gestured, not quite holding her hand up. ‘Maybe check if Garnier had any visitors over the last few days, too?’

  ‘Good idea. See you back at the factory.’

  An ambulance came into the car park at speed and stopped abruptly, spraying gravel behind it. Delaney turned to Sally.

  ‘Come on, constable.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘See if the sniper left any clues.’ He flashed her a sardonic smile. ‘Get out your magnifying glass.’

  They stepped aside as the paramedics rushed past with a stretcher. Delaney and Sally walked back into the woods, past the clearing where Peter Garnier had falsely claimed to have buried the bodies of the dead children and further
into the trees beyond.

  A few steps into the darkened woodland and the numerous primeval ferns seemed to crowd together in a natural screen, the hubbub behind them fading away slightly. Delaney looked back to check his bearing and walked forward, trying to keep in a straight line. Sally followed behind. Mindful of the tumble Delaney had taken earlier, she picked her way carefully through the bracken and over fallen branches that littered the uneven ground.

  ‘How far away did that motorbike sound to you, Sally?’

  The detective constable shrugged. ‘Close. Maybe a few hundred yards.’

  ‘And the shot? What kind of rifle do you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have a clue, sir. Why? Do you?’

  ‘Me? Fuck, no! I grew up in Southern Ireland, Sally. Not Belfast. Sounded like a car backfiring to me.’

  ‘Lucky you slipped when you did.’

  Delaney looked back at her. ‘Don’t go paying any attention to what that bubbleheaded news monkey was saying.’

  ‘She might have had a point.’

  Delaney snorted dismissively. ‘If that woman was any more full of shite she’d be a Portaloo at the fucking Glastonbury Festival, Sally.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a Glastonbury fan, sir.’

  ‘There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Sally.’

  Sally nodded quietly in agreement to herself. Probably best keep it that way, too.

  Delaney walked further into the woods, stopping every now and then to look upwards. After a couple of hundred yards or so he stopped under a group of trees – thick oaks, the boughs gnarled and knotted. He looked upward, shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, and then down at the ground. Sound was all around them. The sound of sirens in the distance and the clatter and shouts of police, uniformed and plain-clothes alike, as they searched for the shooter. But the sound of the motorcycle had faded away long enough ago for Delaney to believe they wouldn’t trace him. The area was a warren of woods and commons and led into the urban sprawls of Ruislip at one end and Northwood at the other. The shooter would be long gone by now. Delaney bent down to pick up a stick and moved some of the undergrowth away at the base of one tree.

  ‘Anything, sir?’

  ‘Nothing useful.’

  He held the stick up, dangling a pair of women’s underwear from it. Then he flipped it down again, discarding them.

  Sally grimaced. ‘And they say romance is dead.’

  ‘It is in Ruislip.’ Delaney looked up at the tree again and then used the stick to move more of the grass and bracken aside. He took out a pen and knelt down to pick something else up.

  Sally leaned down to see what he was doing. ‘What have you got?’

  Delaney held the pen forward. A brass shell casing hung on the end of it. ‘That’s what you call evidence, constable.’

  ‘How did you know where to look?’

  Delaney pointed upwards. ‘There’s a broken branch there – newly broken, too. Not quite sturdy enough to take his weight, obviously.’

  Sally looked up to where he was pointing. A medium-sized branch about four inches in diameter had snapped but not broken clean through: the white inner wood was in marked contrast to the moss-covered outer part of the branch. ‘He broke it while hurrying down, you think?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe he broke it when he took his shot. Maybe that was why he missed.’

  Sally nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah … maybe.’

  Delaney took a small plastic evidence bag from his pocket, slipped the casing into it, sealed it and put it back in his pocket.

  ‘Let’s get back to the office.’

  ‘See what Melanie Jones has to say?’

  ‘No. I’ve heard enough from that woman today. I want to listen to any more shite I’ll stick prime minister’s question time on the radio.’

  ‘What’s the plan, then?’

  ‘The plan, Sally, is to go and talk to Roy Smiley, king of the burgers.’

  ‘You hungry, sir?’

  ‘And that.’

  *

  Roy Smiley was a larger-than-life character in all senses of the word. He ran a burger van called Bab’s Kebabs parked in a side street just around the corner from the White City police station although he never sold kebabs and had never been married to a woman called Barbara. He was, in fact, married to a woman called Janet, had three children, all daughters, and cooked the best bacon-and-egg sandwich north of the river. He had also spent eighteen years in the Royal Fusiliers. So, while fat slices of bacon sizzled on the hotplate behind him, he bowed his head to look at the shell casing that Delaney was holding up in the transparent bag.

  ‘Am I going to get paid for this?’

  ‘I’ll get Sally here to give you a smile and pay you for the bacon butties – how’s that?’

  Roy smiled at Sally. ‘Sounds reasonable. What you have there is a shell casing from a standard-issue military rifle. Bolt action.’

  ‘Current?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s current.’

  ‘Long time since you were in the army, Roy.’

  ‘Long time since you dragged your sorry arse out of the peat bogs of Ballydehob. Doesn’t stop you being a miserable Irish bastard.’

  ‘You pretty certain, then?’

  ‘I keep up to date. Jack. You don’t just hand your Fusiliers badge in like a punched train ticket.’

  ‘So the man up the tree was ex-army?’

  Roy shrugged. ‘Could be. Could be current army. Could be neither. Might have bought the rifle off someone who was. Could be stolen. Want to leave it with me, see what I can find out?’

  Delaney looked up at him incredulously. ‘Yeah, why don’t I do that, Roy? I’m sure when we catch the fucker his lawyer wouldn’t object in the slightest. You ever heard of something called chain of evidence?’

  ‘What is it? A Stephen King novel?’

  Delaney put the evidence bag back in his pocket. ‘Just make sure my egg is runny.’

  Roy grinned and picked up a couple of eggs, the fat hissing and spitting as he cracked them over the hot griddle and flipped the bacon.

  *

  Back at the station Delaney and Sally approached the entrance as the door swung wide and an angry Melanie Jones swept out. She stormed up to a waiting taxi, finding time to throw Delaney a withering look as she passed before jumping in the back seat and slamming the door hard enough to make him wince.

  As they walked into the station Diane Campbell was handing some files over to Dave ‘Slimline’ Mathews, who was behind the desk.

  ‘Someone’s not a happy bunny,’ Delaney said.

  The chief inspector flashed him a quick smile. ‘Then my job is half done.’

  ‘How’s the cameraman?’

  ‘Stable. They’ve got him at the Royal South Hampstead. He’ll live – just have a sore shoulder for a while. Missed all the vital organs. High-velocity bullet. The shock was the most danger to him.’

  Delaney, on reflex, rubbed his own shoulder again. ‘I know how that works. So, Melanie Jones. She give up the source?’

  Diane shook her head. ‘She stonewalled for a bit, giving it the big confidentiality-of-her-sources crap. But finally she caved in and admitted she hadn’t spoken to anyone at all. It was her editor who called with the information of where we’d be.’

  ‘He give us anything more?

  Diane shook her head again. ‘He claims he got an anonymous e-mail. I’ve sent Jimmy Skinner over there to check it out.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Not holding out a lot of hope, though. The internet’s easier to hide in than a tick in a flock of unshorn sheep.’

  Delaney put his hand in his pocket. ‘The sniper left something behind.’

  ‘A calling card?’ Diane asked wryly.

  ‘Maybe,’ Delaney replied as he pulled out the evidence bag and handed it across. ‘Maybe forensics can get something from it.’

  Diane looked at the shell casing through the clear plastic. ‘What is it – pistol, rifle?’

  ‘It’s
a … rifle-shell casing. Bolt action: as you load another cartridge it ejects the one before.’

  ‘Army?’

  ‘It’s standard military issue yes.’

  ‘Current?’

  ‘Yep. There’s thousands like that littered all over Afghanistan.’

  ‘Melanie Jones. She do anything on the Afghan war?’

  ‘What war? That’s a fucked-up police operation, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, spare me the political analysis, Jack. Did she do anything on the war? Wind up some comrade of a fallen soldier? Make some comment a disgruntled and disaffected soldier would take the wrong way?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A tenth of all prisoners in this country are ex-military, you know.’

  Delaney shrugged. ‘I know, but I get my news from Chris Evans or Roy Smiley at the burger van. I certainly wouldn’t pay good money to watch that bubbleheaded slapper.’

  Sally smiled apologetically at Diane Campbell. ‘Do you want me to look into it, boss?’

  ‘Yeah, you do that.’

  ‘You seriously think she was the target?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jack. Who would want to shoot the cameraman?’

  ‘Someone with an axe to grind with the channel?’

  ‘No, I don’t buy it. He’s an anonymous nobody. Melanie Jones is the name, she’s the face.’

  Delaney shook his head, unconvinced. ‘It doesn’t ring true. If someone wanted to take her out they could have done that any time, anywhere. Why now? Why there? Why Peter Garnier?’

  Diane looked at him steadily. ‘Maybe you can find that out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s been a development.’

  ‘A development?’

  ‘He wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Peter Garnier?’

  Diane nodded. ‘In the flesh.’

  Delaney looked at her blankly for a beat. ‘You are fucking kidding me?’

  ‘Do I look like I’m smiling to you?’

  ‘What the hell does he want to talk to me about?’

  Diane shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t say. Said he’d talk to you.’

  ‘And that charade in the woods today? What was that about?’

  ‘Don’t know. But the morning he leads us a merry dance in Mad Bess Woods is the same day someone takes a shot at him and he decides he needs to speak to you. Maybe he wants to unburden his soul.’