by Mark Pearson
People like Peter William Garnier.
Delaney cleared his throat and the governor realised he had been staring. He nodded to the two guards who stood beside him, one of whom took out a key and unlocked the door of the interview room.
‘We have him handcuffed as well as shackled by the legs.’
‘He’s a danger to young children, not to me,’ Delaney replied.
‘It’s standard procedure. Body fluids can be a dangerous weapon in a prison nowadays. It keeps him at a distance.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Let’s just get this over with.’
The governor looked at him again. The curiosity was written plain on his face. ‘And you have no idea why he asked to speak to you?’
‘None at all.’
‘And the woods this morning …?’
‘There was nothing there. It was a wild-goose chase.’
Ron Cornwell gestured to the guard, who opened the door for Delaney to enter the room. ‘The guards will be just outside.’
Delaney ignored him, walking straight into the room and closing the door behind him. At the end of a ten-foot wooden table and facing the door sat Peter Garnier. His magnified, watery eyes, which stared at Delaney as he entered, were as emotionless as those of a fish looking out of a bowl.
Delaney pulled out a chair and sat down, looking back at him. Assessing the man. He’d been forty-two years old when he’d been arrested eighteen years ago, and he looked older than his present sixty years. Frailer, his skin papery so that the pale blue of his blood vessels beneath filtered through. The pale blue of death, Delaney thought, and the sooner that happened the better – although the disease could take up to seven years, so maybe not. He revised his opinion. The man deserved a slow and painful death.
‘I saw you watching me this morning, detective.’
Garnier’s voice wasn’t what Delaney had expected. It was quiet but confident, more powerful than his thin legs and wasted frame would have suggested.
‘That a fact?’ Delaney said.
‘Watching me quite closely, Detective Inspector Delaney. I could feel your eyes upon me and when I looked over into them I saw the darkness of your desire. We have something very much in common, don’t we, Jack?’
Delaney felt his hands forming into a fist underneath the table but he kept his eyes level, his voice steady.
‘The only thing we have in common, you little piece of shite, is that we are both going to die and you’re going to do that a long time before I do.’
The corner of Garnier’s mouth quirked in something resembling a smile.
‘You seem very sure of that fact.’
‘Depend on it, Garnier, I’ll be pissing on your grave sooner or later. What do you want from me?’
Garnier twisted his head to look at the solid wall, as if there were a window there. ‘Things can happen when we least expect them,’ he said. Ignoring Delaney’s question as he looked back at him.
‘You know, Garnier, you open your mouth and I get the smell of raw sewage in my nostrils. What am I doing here?’
‘Do you believe in vengeance, inspector? Do you believe that revenge is a dish best served cold? No, I can see it in your eyes. You don’t wait, do you, Delaney? You’re an Irishman driven by passions you can neither control nor live with. You’re an addict, aren’t you, just like me?’
‘You’re a bug. A cockroach. I’m nothing like you. I’m a human being, Garnier.’
Garnier looked at him for a long moment without replying. ‘You believe in a final judgement, don’t you, Inspector Delaney?’
‘What I believe or don’t believe has got nothing to do with you. Either tell me what you want to tell me or I am leaving. Right now.’
‘What’s the time?’
Delaney glanced at his watch. ‘It’s ten o’clock and I’m out of here.’ He watched Garnier, waiting. Sometimes it was all about waiting. Delaney didn’t know why he was there but Garnier was after something. He could see it in the glittering of his eyes, in the moistness of his breath, in the hot flush that was suffusing his pale flesh like a rash.
Garnier quirked the corner of his mouth again. ‘The girl you rescued.’ He gestured as if searching his memory. ‘What’s her name now?’
He asked the question in an innocent enough way, but his eyes had focused and Delaney was sure that this was the question he had been brought here to answer.
‘Your fifteen minutes of fame, wasn’t it? The girl rescued from a monster by a handsome young policeman. The girl in the boot. Whatever became of her, I wonder?’
Garnier tilted his head slightly, like a bird, looking at Delaney. Watching his reactions.
Delaney held his gaze, the muscles in his neck tightening visibly. When he spoke his voice was heavy, laden with threat.
‘You attempt to put yourself in my life and you will regret it, Garnier.’
‘You put your own self in my life, inspector, the day you took that young girl.’ He coughed into his hand, his whole body suddenly racked with spasms. Then his body shuddered and grew calm again. ‘She was the last,’ he said and looked up again at Delaney, the corner of his mouth twitching once more like a grub exposed to sunlight. ‘And I know what you did with her.’
‘You know nothing about me.’
Garnier smiled almost fondly. ‘See, you and me, Jack. We’re alike in so many ways. I’m a Catholic too now – did you know that.’
‘No. I must have missed the memo on that one,’ said Delaney sarcastically. ‘While I was busy having a life.’
‘Busy indeed, Jack. Busy indeed.’
‘You call me Jack one more time and I will break every fucking tooth in your mouth.’
Garnier looked up at the security camera mounted on the ceiling.
‘It’s switched off.’
Garnier shook his head. ‘I doubt that, but no matter. It’s the violence in you that I admire, inspector. All that rage, all that fury lashing out at the world. It’s a coping mechanism. It saves you from those thoughts you have. Those desires.’
‘You’ve become a psychoanalyst as well as a Catholic, have you? Did you learn anything in your studies about a man who rapes children and then strangles them as he climaxes?’
‘Indeed I did. Our God is a violent god, inspector. A slaughterer of innocents. There’s more blood in the Old Testament than love. You know that to be a fact. Sex and blood. It’s always been there. You understand this.’
Delaney looked at him, not responding. Waiting.
‘See, both you and I know, detective, that the world is made of chaos, not order.’
‘That so?’
Garnier nodded excitedly, warming to his theme, oblivious to Delaney’s sarcasm. ‘And there is an imperative in the human psyche either to embrace that chaos or to try and tame it. The first is irrelevant and the second is a fool’s errand. God knows that. The God of the Old Testament. Our existences are scattered fragments of meaning. You try to fit the shapes together, resolve the randomness of things, like a jigsaw puzzle building bit by bit to make a perfect picture. You have to get each piece in order to make sense of the world, don’t you?’
Delaney shifted uncomfortably. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’
‘Yes, you do. It’s like that perfect portrait of Christ and his disciples on the jigsaw your mother bought for you when you were seven years old and had just had your first holy communion.’
Delaney snorted. ‘You know nothing about me.’
‘I know you have to make the pieces fit. It’s everything about you because you broke it in the first place.’
‘And you?’
‘Me? If I wanted to make a piece fit I’d cut the head of it till it did. It’s my picture that is important. No one else’s. God knows this.’
Delaney stood up and walked to the door. ‘Like I said, talking to you, Garnier, is like swimming in a cesspool. We’re done here.’
As Delaney put his hand on the door handle Garnier called after him.
‘Look
after your girls, Jack. They’re a precious gift … But you know that, don’t you?’
Delaney could hear the catch in the man’s voice. He looked back at him, could see Garnier’s wet-eyed stare fixed on him now, one hundred per cent focused.
He shook his head. ‘You’re not worth the spit.’
And Garnier sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’
Delaney went through the door and closed it behind him. The guard threw him a questioning look, checking if everything was okay, as he turned the key in the door. Delaney nodded but as the guard locked the door Delaney felt a shivering unease run through his nervous system, like the ghost of a malarial sickness long ago cured. He took a couple of deep breaths and ran his hand across his forehead, damp now with perspiration. He put a hand against the wall and took in some breaths.
The other guard looked him. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yeah. Just need a cigarette. Some fresh air.’
‘I know what you mean. I had my way, Peter Garnier would have been flushed a long time since.’
The first guard tested that the door was secure and turned to Delaney. ‘He tell you where the bodies were buried?’
‘No.’
‘What did he want, then?’
‘To give me his views on God, the universe and family life.’
‘Funny how they all find God when it comes near their turn to meet him.’
‘He could have years ahead of him but his kind have always found God long before that sort of need.’
The guard looked at him quizzically.
‘Not any kind of God you and I would recognise. The kind that lives in their heads and puts rat poison in their veins.’
Delaney looked at his own arm, his own veins proud on his hand and forearm, a slight tremor still visible. He fished in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes and gestured to the guard.
‘Take me outside. I think I’m going to throw up.’
*
Kate Walker was standing by the water-cooler in the corridor just down from the CID briefing rooms, taking a long swig from a clear plastic cup, draining it. She was about to throw it in the bin when a medium-height man in his thirties, with short brown hair and amused brown eyes, approached her. He favoured his right leg, the hint of a limp in his left. An accent she couldn’t quite place.
‘Any chance of you pouring me one of those, darling?’
Kate looked up at him, feeling her face tighten as her eyebrows raised. ‘Come again?’ she said, her voice like a taut wire.
‘Thirsty work, being a detective.’ He winked.
Kate shook her head, shrugged and pulled out a cup for him, filling it with cold water. ‘Let me guess. You work in the political-correctness division?’
‘CID, for my sins.’
Kate still couldn’t quite place his accent. A hint of northern in there somewhere. ‘Transferred down from Doncaster, I take it?’
‘My fame precedes me, Doctor Walker.’
Kate blinked again, not managing to hide her surprise.
‘I was told to look out for a strikingly attractive dark-haired woman with come-to-bed eyes and a ready temper.’
‘Is that a fact?’
The detective laughed. ‘Well, no, not really. Bob Wilkinson told me you’d just gone to get a drink of water. Master detective that I am, I worked the rest out.’
Kate laughed despite herself. ‘So you’d be the famous Tony Bennett.’ She pointed at his leg. ‘Invalided out of the horse division, were you?’
‘I took a tumble, all right. But not from a horse.’ Kate tilted her head and sighed. ‘Go on, then?’ She couldn’t bet on it but she thought he coloured slightly.
‘I fell off my pushbike, if you must know.’
Kate laughed and the DI held his hand out.
‘I’ll be all right in a day or two. And I might not be the famous Tony Bennett. But I am one. I blame my dad.’
‘Your dad?’
‘For not telling my mum it was a ridiculous idea. She’s a huge fan.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Could have been worse – she could have been a Gordon Sumner fan.’
Kate poured herself another cup of water and took a sip. ‘Have you identified the stabbing victim yet?’
‘No.’
‘Seems odd that no one has come forward. How old would you say he was?’
Bennett shrugged. ‘Eighteen or nineteen.’
‘A single stab wound to the chest. A mugging, do you think?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Why?’
‘The location, so close to the main street. That time of night in Camden Town the place would have been jumping.’
‘True. But there was no wallet on him.’
‘You saw someone running away.’
‘That’s right. Constable Wilkinson set off in pursuit but couldn’t catch him. I stayed with the victim.’
‘Just as well, by the sounds of it.’
‘I hope so.’ Kate shrugged too. ‘Still touch and go.’
‘But you didn’t get a good look at the assailant?’
‘Just his back as he was running away – he had a hood on, dark clothes …’ Kate held her hands up apologetically.
‘What about on his feet?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Ethnicity?’
‘Like I say, he was wearing a hooded top.’
‘Height?’
‘Hard to tell from the distance. Not tall. Medium height, I’d say.’
Bennett nodded and threw his cup into the bin. ‘When we know who the vic is, might give us somewhere to start.’
‘Usually helps.’
The detective gave her an appraising look. ‘How about I shout you lunch later, as we’re going to be working together?’
‘No can do, I’m afraid.’
‘Back to the day job, then. What is it, medical centre at the university?’
Kate nodded. ‘That and the odd lecture. But not until next Wednesday. The students have half-terms nowadays, reading weeks.’
‘Not in my day.’
‘Nor mine. Sad to say. Still,’ she smiled, ‘at least the policemen aren’t looking younger.’
‘Ouch. So … lunch?’ Bennett obviously didn’t give up easily.
‘Prior arrangement – sorry.’ Kate smiled again, over Bennett’s shoulder this time, as Jack Delaney came walking down the corridor towards them.
‘Morning, Jack. This is Tony Bennett, the new DI.’
Delaney nodded and held his hand out. ‘Pleasure to meet you,’ he said, his voice clipped, all business.
‘Likewise.’
They shook, the briefest of handshakes. Kate looked at Delaney, sensing his troubled mood. ‘Everything all right, Jack?’
‘Fine as. Why?’
‘You look like someone’s just walked over your grave.’
Delaney smiled humourlessly. ‘Dancing on it, more likely. I’ve just been to visit Peter Garnier.’
Bennett whistled through his teeth. ‘I heard about what happened this morning. Someone took a shot at him.’
‘That’s right. Shame they missed.’
‘How’d anyone know he’d be there?’
‘Good question. Someone leaked it to the press, too.’
‘Someone on the force?’ asked Kate.
‘Exactly.’
‘Why?’
Delaney poured himself a cup of water. ‘Garnier was just telling me people do things for all sorts of reasons. That the universe itself makes no sense and is designed that way. Working here …?’ He shook his head and took a gulp of water. ‘I don’t know, maybe he’s right. There’s no sense to half the fucking things people do to one another, after all. And we’re just here to pick up the pieces, not make sense of any of it.’
Kate look across at him, concerned. ‘What’s going on, Jack? Why did that man want to see you?’
‘I honestly don’t know, Kate.’ Delaney shrugged and look
ed puzzled as Sally Cartwright came running up the corridor.
‘Sir. You’d better come quick,’ she said in a breathless rush, clearly very agitated.
‘What is it?’
‘A child’s gone missing.’
‘And …?’
‘An eight-year-old boy, sir.’
‘When?’
‘About an hour ago.’
‘An hour. Surely that’s too early to start panicking about—’ DI Bennett started to say before Sally held up her hand, cutting him off.
‘He was taken from Carlton Row, sir. Harrow on the Hill. The same street where Peter Garnier abducted those children all those years ago.’
‘I know where it is, Sally.’
‘From a house just across from where their houses were.’
Kate looked across at Delaney. His gaze was impassive. His dark eyes a mystery to her once more.
Delaney looked at his watch and the action stuck a spike in his heart. ‘The son of a bitch.’
‘What is it, Jack? What the hell is going on?’
‘I have no idea.’ He took his sergeant by the arm. ‘Come on, Sally.’
They strode off down the corridor.
‘Jack!’ Kate called after him but to no effect.
‘You got any idea what that was all about?’ DI Bennett asked her.
‘Not the first thing.’
‘Looks like your lunch might have been cancelled.’ He raised a questioning eyebrow hopefully.
‘Yeah. Nice try.’
She turned and hurried after Delaney.
Bennett stood there a moment or two, watching after them thoughtfully. Then he crushed the plastic beaker tightly in his fist and threw it into the bin.
*
Any copper knows that the first forty-eight hours of an investigation into a murder are critical. And the same applies to an abduction. Perhaps more so, as the longer the investigation continues the higher the probability that the child will not be returned home unhurt. Sexual predators who prey on children act on impulses that they cannot control. Some don’t wish to control them, but when the moment has passed, when their actions have brought them relief from their uncontrollable urges, they are left with the child. And the child is evidence. Evidence that can bring the howling pack right to their very door. For some it is not about the killing. It’s just evidence disposal. For other people the killing is very much a part of it. People like Peter Garnier.