Death Row

by Mark Pearson

  Jack Delaney knew that better than most. There was a babble of concerned chatter around him in the briefing room that morning, but he wasn’t listening to it. Tuning it out like so much white noise. He knew all about sexual predators and the morning’s events had sent him back to places that he had never wished to revisit. His own daughter, Siobhan, had been taken by the worst kind of sexual predator. Kate Walker’s uncle, a man who not only treated children as objects for his foul lusts, he treated them as a commodity, making films and distributing them to the worst sort of deviants like himself, who somehow seemed to recognise each other and form networks. Like the nursery-school club that formed on Facebook and distributed images between themselves up and down the country. Delaney couldn’t even begin to imagine how these people did it, how they recognised their own types and made contact with each other. And, like them, Kate’s uncle had taken the rape of children and made it a commodity. But he had also, like Garnier, taken it further and made murder part of the sick mix. Had it not been for Kate’s intervention, putting her own life at risk, Delaney shuddered to think what would have become of his own precious daughter. He certainly hadn’t been able to protect her. His vision was clouded with guilt, with self-loathing, with a self-pity that made him a shambles of a father, a shambles of a man. He looked up from the printed report he was reading as Kate came into the room and felt a small flashback of fear as he read the concern in her eyes. The human form was such a delicate thing, such a fragile vessel. His gaze dropped to her stomach; her jacket was buttoned and he knew she wasn’t showing yet, but he still felt he could see the signs. Such a soft, vulnerable, defenceless form for such precious cargo. He met her gaze again and knew that his heart would break if anything ever happened to her and to the child she was carrying. His hand clenched inadvertently, crumpling the paper he was holding.

  ‘Is it bad?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Kate.’

  The hubbub died as someone turned the volume up on the television in the corner of the room and Melanie Jones’s face filled the screen.

  ‘Breaking news just in. In another bizarre twist in the Peter Garnier story, police sources have confirmed that a young child has gone missing from a house only a few doors away from where two children were abducted by Garnier in 1995. DNA traces linked Garnier to their abduction and murder and although he has confessed to it he has never revealed where their bodies are buried. A further six children’s bodies were discovered buried under his garden shed in 1997 but the mystery of where the remaining bodies are has never been resolved. Dramatically, two weeks ago Peter Garnier broke his vow of silence and promised to lead the police to the two children’s burial ground. This morning, in a covert operation that myself and Sky News had access to …’

  Delaney snorted, shaking his head with disgust.

  ‘… Peter Garnier led a group of detectives to Mad Bess Woods, a wooded conservation area outside Ruislip. No bodies were discovered but, as Sky News revealed to you exclusively earlier, someone fired a shot at Garnier, injuring our cameraman in the process. It can be no coincidence that only a few hours later a child of around the same age as Garnier’s previous victims was abducted from Carlton Row. Police sources have also revealed that an ongoing police investigation into the leaks …’

  Diane Campbell strolled into the briefing room, her loud voice cutting across the reporter’s. ‘Someone shut that woman up.’

  A remote was pointed at the television and muted the sound.

  ‘Okay, everyone. Listen up.’

  Any muttering and whispered speculation subsided as the DCI walked up to the front of the gathering and swept her gaze around the assembled staff, uniforms and detectives alike.

  ‘Paddington Green are taking the lead on this, for obvious reasons. We are not treating today’s events as pure coincidence. Somebody tried to take out Peter Garnier, and someone else, or the same man, has decided to copycat him.’

  ‘We don’t know that yet, boss,’ Delaney spoke out.

  ‘If you’ve got something to share, detective, don’t wait for the speaking stick.’

  Delaney shrugged. ‘It’s been an hour or so. The kid could yet turn up. The grandfather says he nodded off in his shed for just a minute.’

  ‘Yeah. Just like Ellie Peters did in 1995.’

  ‘The difference is that Ellie Peters was an alcoholic junkie who couldn’t have told you the time of day if you shoved a cuckoo clock up her arse and set the chimes for twelve.’

  Laughter rippled around the room and Diane glared at her detective. ‘Save the jokes for when we get the little boy back, safe and sound. All right?’

  ‘I was just saying maybe we should wait till we start joining dots and get a picture that is completely different from what we think we should be looking at.’

  ‘Here’s the dots, cowboy. 1995, two kids are abducted from Carlton Row. 1997, Peter Garnier, a serial predator, a child rapist and murderer is arrested by chance. Clothing and DNA connect him to the missing children. 2010, he takes us to where he claims to have buried the bodies and someone takes a shot at him. A couple of hours later a kid in the age range he prefers is taken from the same street. What does that tell you?’

  ‘That maybe he had a partner in crime all those years ago.’

  Diane looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Did he tell you anything in your interview with him this morning that we don’t know about?’

  ‘He told me that God killed children and that the world is designed as a place of chaos, and that by trying to impose order upon it we are going against God’s divine will and therefore the misery and pain and loss we suffer we have called down upon our own heads as a direct consequence of it.’

  Diane looked at him for a moment. ‘Have you been drinking this morning, Jack?’

  Delaney’s voice thickened, the soft Irish burr of his childhood accent becoming more noticeable. ‘I swear when I left that man’s presence I felt like taking a bath in surgical spirit and downing a bottle of Bushmills without benefit of glass, ice or soda, boss. But the answer to your question is no, I have not had a drink this morning.’

  ‘Then do you mind translating what you just said into English?’

  Delaney shrugged impassively. ‘It’s what he told me. I am a simple detective, Diane. Not a charmer of snakes or a reader of the offal he has cast in his own brain to see into the future.’

  ‘You’re anything but simple, Jack. What do you think he meant?’

  ‘Exactly what he said. He is a sociopath. The worst kind of degenerate sociopath. He was telling us that he operates without a moral compass.’

  ‘We already knew that.’

  ‘He was telling us he can do anything he likes and we are powerless to stop him. And he can do it because he has a true understanding of the real nature of the universe, and the Divinity that created it is on his side.’

  Diane shook her head, disgusted. ‘God help us, another politician.’

  Delaney nodded. ‘You make a good point, ma’am.’

  Diane Campbell turned back to the room. ‘Like I said, Paddington Green are taking the lead on this – serious crime unit because of the possible links to Garnier. We’ll be assisting with CID backup and uniform, likewise uniform from Harrow, Pinner, Wealdstone and the Met generally. It may well go national. The main thing is that we find this missing boy and we find him quickly.’

  Chairs were scraped back as people stood and the hubbub started again as they took this as a sign of dismissal.

  Diane held her hand up and spoke loudly. ‘One other thing before you go. Someone on the force has been leaking information to the press. That person will be identified … and if I find out it’s someone from our watch then I will personally have them strung up and left to dangle. And Jack, Paddington want to speak to you asap. Detective Inspector Robert Duncton. I believe you know him.’

  Delaney nodded. ‘Tell him I’ll be at Carlton Row. Come on, Sally, get your chauffeur’s cap.’

  As Sally hurried off to get her
jacket, Delaney turned to Kate, who was standing nearby talking to Bob Wilkinson. ‘Sorry about lunch.’

  ‘You’re good for a rain check.’

  ‘Believe it.’

  ‘And Jack …’ She hesitated.

  ‘Go on.’

  Kate stepped in closer and spoke quietly. ‘Your cousin Mary. She’s tied up in this somehow, isn’t she?’

  Delaney looked around the room, then leaned in and put his hand on Kate’s upper arm. ‘I’ll explain later.’ He gave her arm a squeeze and headed out, followed by Sally Cartwright.

  DI Tony Bennett watched him leave, deep in thought. Kate caught the look on his face and he smiled broadly. ‘Seems like I picked an interesting day to move to White City,’ he said to her.

  ‘Well, you know what they say.’

  Bennett bent an enquiring eyebrow. ‘What?’

  ‘If you’re tired of White City, you’re tired of life.’

  ‘Who says that?’

  ‘Nobody who lives here,’ said Bob Wilkinson.

  *

  A light but steady rain had started to fall and Sally switched the windscreen wipers on, the rubbers scratching loudly at first before settling into a gentle swishing rhythm that was almost hypnotic.

  Delaney looked out of the passenger window as they slowly progressed west, snarled in heavy traffic that was the norm now on Western Avenue.

  ‘You ever think about how many hours you’ve wasted on this particular stretch of road, Sally?’

  ‘Not particularly, sir.’

  ‘You’re young yet. If I was to sit and add up all the hours I’ve wasted sat in traffic on this miserable stretch of tarmac I’d probably cry.’

  ‘I like to keep my mind active, sir. Use the time to think.’

  ‘And what conclusions has that active brain of yours come to?’

  Sally turned to him and smiled. ‘Take Peter Garnier, for example.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘The fact that he lied about taking us to find the bodies. The fact that he wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s interfacing with us, sir. He hasn’t done that for fifteen years.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he’s on the radar. We only catch them if they’re on the radar, don’t we? If they’re in the system somewhere, somehow. There are hundreds of them out there that we don’t know about. Thousands. Some we never catch. Hundreds of crimes we don’t know about. Rapes. Assaults. Murders we’ll never know about.’

  ‘And this is good? Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s not good, is it, sir? That’s my point, that’s what you should take from what you told us Garnier said to you.’

  ‘Sally, you want to cut to the chase here?’

  ‘We don’t catch a lot of sociopaths because they have no conscience, no desire to be caught. But some do. People like Ted Bundy, they want to be caught, they even want to be killed and they want to control that as well. They play games with the police because in the end they want us to catch them. In America maybe they want to be caught so they can be killed. In those states where they have the death penalty, anyway.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, nothing’s ever black and white, is it, except in a police uniform. Sometimes people want to be caught because they want to be stopped.’

  ‘Peter Garnier was caught a long time ago.’

  ‘But if he had an accomplice like you said, maybe he’s going to lead us to him. He’s talking to us, sir. Well, he’s talking to you, anyway. It’s a thin thread, sir, but it’s something to hold onto. Something to develop.’

  Delaney threw her an appraising glance. ‘You’ve learned a lot from me over these last few months, haven’t you?’

  ‘I already knew how to drink, sir.’

  Delaney grunted. ‘Including a proper respect for authority.’

  ‘It’s a line, sir. From The Sting – I like that film.

  ‘Well, then just keep thinking, Sally. It’s what you’re good at.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘And pull off at the next left.’

  ‘That’s not the way to Harrow.’

  ‘I know that, Cassidy. It’s not the way to Amarillo, either. We’re going to Pitshanger to see someone first.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of my cousins.’ Delaney paused for a moment. ‘One of my cousins on the respectable side.’

  *

  Kate was sitting in the police surgeon’s office, which was a small room downstairs just off the custody and booking area. She looked up when there was a knock on her door and DI Bennett stuck his head round.

  ‘Got a minute?’

  Kate gestured with her hand. ‘Sure. Come in. Just catching up with the paperwork.’

  ‘Don’t get me started on paperwork. Cut down the number of forms we have to fill in and we’d raise our solve rate exponentially, you ask me.’

  ‘Who was it who said bureaucracy is the bedrock of incompetence?’

  Bennett shrugged. ‘I don’t know but if he was in the Met I imagine he’d have been fired.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m on my way over to part of your university. Thought you might like to tag along.’

  ‘I told you I’m not working there this week.’

  Bennett smiled. ‘I know you did.’

  Kate looked at him. ‘You’re not hitting on me, are you, Inspector Bennett? I thought we cleared all that up.’

  Bennett laughed. ‘No. No. I don’t swing my truncheon on another man’s beat.’

  Kate looked at him coolly. ‘Swing your truncheon on another man’s beat?’

  ‘I was speaking metaphorically.’

  ‘Let me guess … Germaine Greer is your godmother.’

  Bennett shrugged. ‘When I am with attractive women, I just use humour as a defence mechanism. What can I say?’

  ‘You can say what you’re doing here. I am busy. It’s paperwork but I’m busy.’

  ‘Someone has come forward. From the university. We might have a name for your stabbing victim.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A fellow student across the corridor from some fellow in their hall of residence called the police because he was concerned. This guy hasn’t been home since last night, he missed his lectures this morning and he matches the description.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Jamil Azeez. Second-year student. Studying law. An Iranian.’

  Kate looked at the paperwork on her desk and stood up, pulling her coat, a tailored black cotton jacket that matched her skirt, off the back of the chair. ‘The paperwork can wait.’

  ‘Bennett nodded ‘Good call. I’ll drive.’

  Kate threw him a cool look, snatched up her car keys off her desk and rattled them at him pointedly. ‘We’ll both drive.’

  ‘Shame. I thought we could have got to know each other better on the way there, and you could tell me all about Inspector Delaney. He seems a fascinating character from all I hear.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe half of what you’ve heard. He’s a lot worse than that.’

  Bennett pointed at her jacket. ‘You’ll need something warmer than that on. It’s cold out there.’

  Kate grabbed her black parka with its faux-fur trim and sailed out of the office, leaving DI Bennett to follow in her wake.

  *

  Pitshanger Village is a small area some miles west of Central London, just outside Ealing and off the Western Avenue. Hidden in the scar of housing that runs from well east of the city to the borders of the Green Belt in the west, it is a little-known but exclusive area. Like a miniature version of Greenwich Village in New York it is home to artists and writers, to musicians, cameramen, actors, lawyers, businessmen and businesswomen. It has boutique bakeries, independent bookshops, organic pizza-parlours. A bit like Hampstead Village, Delaney thought as they turned along Pitshanger Lane, but not that much, not by a long chalk. Well heeled by Prada, though. Christ, he thought to himself, I’m turning into one of them. Mayb
e moving to Belsize Park hadn’t been such a good idea, after all: he’d be wearing Hunter wellies next and buying the FT and discussing the Nasdaq with Nigel in the Holly Bush over croissants and coffee on a Sunday morning. He shuddered.

  ‘Something up, sir?’

  ‘It’s cold, Sally. That’s all. Sure, I’d never have left the sun-kissed shores of Cork if I’d have known the weather was going to be this bleeding miserable year in and year out.’

  ‘We had a cracking summer, sir.’

  ‘Seems like a lifetime ago now.’

  Sally looked through the softly thwumping windscreen wipers at the rain-drenched urban landscape of West London beyond and couldn’t help but agree. London in the summer was a different place. No doubt about that.

  A short while later, Sally pulled the car to a stop on the street across from the library, next door to the bookshop that was painted Tardis blue and was busy with customers, seemingly defiant in the face of the recession and the competition from Amazon and the supermarkets. Maybe people in Pitshanger could afford to pay the full price for books, or maybe they just didn’t want to be seen shopping in Asda or Tesco. ‘Do you want me to wait in the car?’ she said.

  Delaney shook his head. ‘Not at all, Sally. Come with me. We might need some thinking done after all. And you’re the girl for that.’

  ‘Woman, sir.’

  ‘Jeez, you’re all so keen to grow up. I don’t know what’s wrong with the youth of today, I surely to God don’t.’

  ‘I sometimes think you were born a grumpy old man, sir.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Delaney. ‘A proper miserable personality is like a good beer belly – it takes many years and serious application to achieve it.’

  Sally glanced across as Delaney levered his tall athletic frame out of the car, at his flat stomach and powerful shoulders. ‘Well, at least you’ve got time for the beer belly, sir.’

  Delaney closed the car’s passenger door and pulled the collar of his jacket up against the cold rain that was slanting across the street. Then he led Sally across the road, past the bookshop and through a double doorway to a staircase leading up into a group of flats called Kenmure Mansions that ran above the shops that lined the street. They both shook the moisture from their hair as they climbed upward. Delaney’s shoes clattered loudly on the bare concrete steps and Sally’s curiosity was piqued. She knew better than to ask him what they were doing here – she’d find out soon enough, she was sure of that. Must be pretty important for him to delay getting to Harrow, she knew that much. Or then again, maybe she didn’t, she realised. Who knew with Jack Delaney, after all? The man was about as predictable as the weather in barbecue season.