by Mark Pearson
Delaney walked down the hallway to the kitchen that lay at the end of it. It was a kitchen that had been designed sometime in the 1950s and hadn’t been updated since. It was clean if not exactly clutter-free. A butler-style sink with a curtain under it stood beneath a double window looking out onto a long back garden.
Graham Harper was filling a metal kettle from the tap. His hands were shaking as though the weight were too much for him to hold. Maybe that was the case, thought Delaney, as Harper put it rattling onto a small gas stove and lit the ring beneath it: the old man looked as though he was made of skin and bone and air.
‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ Delaney said.
Graham Harper spun round, startled. Delaney worried for a moment that he was going to drop dead of a heart attack because of the way he stared at him. He stood there for a moment or two as if he was really scrutinising him, and then his eyes became mobile, darting left and right as though he’d been suddenly frightened. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m a policeman, remember?’ said Delaney, puzzled at the shift in the old man’s attitude, wondering suddenly if maybe he had dementia issues. ‘We were just down at your allotment.’
The old man looked at him for a moment or two longer and then blinked as if coming out of dream.
‘Yes, of course.’ He opened the cupboard and brought out some tea bags.
‘I’m sorry to have startled you,’ said Delaney.
The man looked back, the skin on his forehead like paper wrinkled into a thousand creases. ‘It’s been a bit of a day.’
And if that wasn’t the understatement of the year, Delaney didn’t know what was. Maybe the guy was senile. He wondered if anyone had checked with his doctor. Maybe he had left the kid with some relative or friend and had clean forgotten about it. He made a mental note to track down Harper’s physician.
‘Yeah,’ he said and pulled up a chair. It had been a bit of a day, all right.
The scream shrieked in the air as though someone was being tortured.
Graham Harper picked the kettle off the gas ring and the whistling mercifully stopped. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, detective?’ he asked.
Delaney shook his head. The English. Here was a man who not a few hours before had had his grandchild abducted under his very own nose and was now worried about the social niceties of making tea for his guest.
‘No, thanks. I just want to go over what happened with you again.’
‘I’ve told everybody a hundred times. I don’t know. I was in my shed. Two minutes later I came out and he had gone. I assumed he was playing up in the woods – I let him dig for bottles there.’
Harper moved to the dresser beside the door into the kitchen and handed Delaney a small blue bottle, about five inches high and with hexagonal sides. ‘It’s Victorian, a poison bottle. They used blue for poison.’
Delaney looked at the object. ‘Is it worth anything?’
The elderly man shrugged and took it back from him. ‘Not really. But Archie liked to dig, see if he could find any more. I was going to get him a metal detector for Christmas …’ He broke off, took the bottle back and turned away, busying himself pouring out his tea.
Delaney waited until he’d finished and then asked, ‘You say he liked to dig?’
‘If the weather was good, yes.’
‘What with?’
Graham Harper seemed puzzled as he sat opposite Delaney, supping his tea noisily through discoloured teeth. ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean?’
‘What did he dig with? There was a spade in your shed but it hadn’t been used recently.’
‘Well, I told him he couldn’t dig today. The ground was too muddy.’
Delaney glanced down at his own shoes. That much was true.
‘So talk me through it. You walked down to the allotment and when you got to your patch or plot or whatever you call it, he came into the shed with you?’
‘Yes, just for a minute, and when I found my cigarettes … he wanted to wait outside.’
Delaney caught the slight hesitation.
‘He wanted to wait outside?’
The old man hesitated again. ‘I told him to wait outside.’
‘While you had a smoke.’
‘The smoke gets on his clothes. She can smell it. His mum, she’s always telling me off.’
‘And what did you hear?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like him playing? Singing. Rattling a stick on the fence. Throwing rocks at birds in the trees.’
‘No, I didn’t hear a thing. But my hearing, it’s not so good.’
‘I see you have a hearing aid.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it turned on?’
‘Yes, I had it switched on.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I had the radio on.’
Delaney took out his notebook. ‘You didn’t mention that earlier.’
The elderly man looked away shiftily. ‘I must have forgot. It’s not important, is it? I mean, what does it matter?’ His voice rose, tremulous and upset.
Delaney leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘I don’t know yet what’s important and what isn’t. That’s how these things work. But what I do know is that you have to be entirely honest with me.’
‘I have been.’
Delaney could hear the catch in Harper’s voice, could see his gaze slide away whenever he made eye contact, and he didn’t know if the old man was holding something back or was just feeling guilty.
‘So you didn’t hear any voices, anyone talking to Archie?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t hear a car stopping, or pulling away?’
‘A car? There’s no road there, just a footpath.’ This time Harper did look at Delaney, genuinely puzzled.
‘The road above is only fifty yards or so away.’
‘I shouldn’t have put the radio on – is that what you are saying? I might have heard who took him, he might have called out for help and I didn’t hear.’
Delaney didn’t answer him for a moment. ‘What were you listening to?’
‘Radio 3. If I wanted to listen to idiots talking I’d go down the British Legion.’
Delaney consulted his notes. ‘And this was about half-ten, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was on?’
‘Strauss.’ He coughed suddenly, convulsively. ‘I don’t waltz much any more,’ he added ironically when he had got his breath back.
Delaney made another note. The old man hadn’t hesitated when he’d been asked what he’d been listening to, which made him sound genuine. Unless he had an alibi prepared. But that made no sense – Delaney could see how genuinely upset he was.
Whatever had set Graham Harper’s hands trembling seemed to be affecting his whole body now. ‘So you think Archie called out then?’ he asked, tears in his eyes. ‘You think he called out and I didn’t hear him because of the radio?’
Delaney folded back his notebook, replaced it in his pocket and looked over at the trembling man. ‘Maybe. But maybe there was nothing for you to hear. Maybe he didn’t call out because he knew whoever it was who took him. Knew him and trusted him.’
*
Sally Cartwright flicked the windscreen wipers on as they pulled out of Carlton Row and turned left into Carrington Avenue. The rain had started up again and the sky overhead was the kind of ominous slate-grey that presaged a deal more of it yet to come. Delaney stared ahead through the smeared windscreen and spotted, about a hundred yards ahead of them on the corner of Vicarage Road and Carrington Avenue itself, a small pub called The Crawfish. It had been built sometime in the late nineteenth century, when the pub was still very much the heart of the community, before they banned smoking and put the tax on alcohol through the roof. Now people got their booze from the supermarkets and drank at home, turning most of the community locals into little more than pub-theme
d restaurants. Delaney tutted to himself at the criminal injustice of it all.
‘Sir?’
Delaney realised he had actually tutted aloud. He looked at his watch and pointed his finger. ‘Pull up outside that boozer, Sally.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m starving and that pub used to do the best seafood platter south of my Aunty Noreen’s.’
‘Oh yeah, and where does Aunty Noreen live?’
‘Clacton.’
Sally pulled the car to a stop outside the pub. It didn’t look as though people were fighting for parking places.
‘I didn’t have you down as a fisherman’s platter kind of guy, sir,’ she said as she locked the car door and walked with Delaney to the pub’s entrance.
‘I was born by the sea, Sally. I was breathing ozone before I was breathing oxygen. It’s in my blood – we Delaneys come from a long line of fishermen.’
‘You didn’t fancy that yourself, then?’
‘Not really, constable. I get seasick in a paddling pond.’
He pushed the door open and stepped inside, steering around a couple of packing crates placed beside the wall. He hadn’t been there in fifteen years and the place didn’t seem to have changed much in that time. It was dirtier, emptier, more down at heel than he remembered, was all. The photos on the wall by the bar were dustier than he remembered, and the mullet-haired men in them might well all have been dead for all he knew. Maybe it was just him. Maybe moving to Belsize Park had changed him. He looked down at the carpet that didn’t look like it had been cleaned in over five years and thought again.
There weren’t many punters in. An Indian couple, somewhere in their fifties, Delaney reckoned, sat by the window. The man had a turban on his head and a thick white beard, the woman was dressed in a sari and looked extremely bored. She looked across at Sally and Delaney and then turned her dead-eyed gaze back to her lap. The bearded man didn’t even look up and continued to read a copy of The Times. Two other men, one black, one Caucasian, were sitting at separate tables, and another solitary white man was perched on a stool at a corner of the bar. They were all nursing pints and all of them were past retirement age, even allowing for the plans to keep working men shackled for longer in life.
There was only one bar in the room. It was opposite the door and ran the length of the room. The serving hatch was open and as they approached the bar Delaney could see a tall man emerging from the steps to the cellar with a large cardboard box in his arms. He was in his thirties, had red hair and freckled arms, and was about three stone overweight.
‘Be with you in a minute,’ he grunted and carried the box over to the door where the others were already stacked.
‘You got a menu?’ Sally asked.
The red-haired man turned round and pointed to a basket with four filled rolls in it. ‘Yeah. Full à la carte. Knock yourself out.’
Delaney looked at the basket. ‘You’ve got your choice of cheese or cheese and onion, Sally. Or cheese,’ he said dryly.
Sally looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘We should have gone to your Aunty Noreen’s,’ she said.
‘What can I get you to drink?’ the barman asked, closing the serving hatch behind him and coming back round the bar.
Delaney scanned the beer engines and asked, without any real hope, ‘You got any Guinness?’
‘No. Just what you see on the taps. And not even that when it runs out.’
‘What’s happening then?’
‘We’re closing down. Middle of next week.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Your interpersonal customer skills a bit too full of metropolitan charm for the area, are they?’
The barman put his arms on the counter. He was carrying weight but there was muscle behind it and he looked like a man used to violence. ‘Are you looking for trouble?’ he said.
Delaney pointed at one of the beer pumps. ‘No, I’m looking for a pint and a half of that piss that passes for beer, and I’ll take two cheese rolls with them.’
‘I don’t think so, sunshine …’
Delaney pulled out his warrant card and smiled. ‘Think again, then.’
The barman scowled. ‘I had you down as journalists.’
‘A lot of people make that mistake, don’t they, Sally? It’s the air of sophistication we exude.’
The barman grunted again – Delaney guessed he didn’t have much call for conversation – and poured their drinks.
‘I suppose all the scum have moved off to their next story anyway,’ he said. ‘Shame, could have done with the business.’
‘Nice to see care in the community at work,’ said Delaney, taking his pint.
‘That’s just it,’ said the red-haired barman as he handed Sally her glass. ‘I don’t care.’
Later – but not much – Delaney picked up Sally’s roll. She had eaten one bite and declared it unfit for human consumption: the bread was pulp and the cheese was plastic. Delaney didn’t care, he was hungry. He demolished it in a couple of bites and washed it down with a swig of beer.
He smiled across at the barman, who was watching them from the bar. The man turned around and went back down to the cellar again.
‘Little ray of sunshine,’ said Sally.
Delaney nodded. ‘He surely is that.’
‘So the person who took the little boy—’
‘Or persons.’
‘Yeah, or persons. How would they know where he was going to be?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘Could just have been opportunistic. You know how predators operate. A boy alone. A matter of moments to bundle him in the car and drive away.’
Sally shook her head. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence – that a boy goes missing from Carlton Row the very morning Peter Garnier is supposed to be leading us to the graves of his missing victims.’
‘Archie Woods isn’t from Carlton Row, though, is he? He was just staying with his grandfather this morning.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what’s your point, Sally?’ Delaney asked as he watched the red-haired barman coming back up the stairs again, carrying an empty cardboard box.
Sally considered for a moment and then shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir. But there is a connection here, there has to be.’
‘I guess so.’
The barman started taking down the photos that were on the wall and putting them in the empty box. Another proper pub gone, Delaney thought bitterly. They should have binned the banks instead. The government was quite happy to save all the fat cats and their fat-cat institutions while letting the honest working man suffer. Banning smoking was bad enough, now they were taking the pubs away altogether. The legacy of Gordon Brown and his puritanical Calvinist attitude, no doubt, X Factor fan or not.
He realised that Sally was talking to him and snapped out of his reverie again. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘I was saying, do you remember that missing child, a year or so back? Turned out the mother and her uncle had her all along.’
‘Yes. Of course I remember.’
‘Maybe something similar is going on. Maybe the mother was involved. She’d taken the old fella’s fags. She knew he would have some stashed in the shed …’
‘Waited for him to leave and then followed him?’
‘Maybe. It makes sense. Only her and her father could have known where he’d be with the boy.’
Delaney frowned. ‘I’m pretty sure the old man wasn’t lying about not realising the boy had been taken. He was pretty eaten up with guilt.’
‘I know, and the mother was absolutely distraught.’ Sally shook her head. ‘You’re right, she couldn’t be that good an actress.’
Delaney sighed. ‘You clock up as many miles on the old shoe leather as me, detective constable, and you’ll realise that people are capable of doing the most inhumane things, the cruellest things imaginable, and lying about them straight to your face whilst crying bucketloads of crocodile tears.’
‘I guess.’
‘That woman you mentioned. How many we
eks was she on television looking absolutely distraught and pleading for her daughter’s return?’
‘True.’
‘It’s a sick, sad world, Sally. No known cure.’
‘What’s the point, then?’
‘To ease the suffering. Where we can. When we can. It’s all we can do, the likes of us.’
Sally shook her head again. ‘I don’t believe that, sir. And neither do you.’
‘That a fact?’
Sally nodded. ‘You could take it to the CPS.’
Delaney smiled and took another pull on his pint. ‘You sure I shouldn’t have a word with my cousin about you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I reckon you’d make a better psychologist than a policewoman, Sally.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Sally, quite animated. ‘It’s you who know people, sir. That’s why you are so much better than the likes of the chief superintendent in his fancy office. You know what makes people tick and that’s why you’re such a good copper, such a great detective.’
Delaney looked at her, amused. ‘Sometimes, constable, I’m not sure I could detect my own nose if I had swine fever and half a pound of pepper up it.’
‘Maybe a while back, sir, when, and you’ll forgive me for saying it, you had that nose permanently jammed in a bottle of Irish whiskey. But not any more.’
Delaney laughed out loud. ‘See? You know people too, and you’re not afraid to show it.’
‘Yeah, well, some people are easier to read than others.’
‘So what’s your take on Rosemary Woods, then?’
Sally frowned thoughtfully. ‘What would be in it for her, if she is involved? That’s what I don’t get. She doesn’t strike me as a foolish person.’
‘Motive, Sally. It’s at the heart of everything.’
‘True.’
‘If we know why then we can maybe get a handle on things.’ Delaney finished his pint. ‘I’m pretty sure the boy’s grandad wasn’t lying to me. That’s about all I know. I’m getting a beer – do you want another one?’
Sally shook her head and Delaney took his glass to the bar. ‘Another delicious pint, please, barman,’ he said without a hint of irony in his voice. The barman grunted and tossed the last photo in the box: a group of quiff-haired men dressed in Teddy-boy suits and brothel creepers by the look of it. The 1950s, Delaney thought – that wasn’t just another country, it was another fecking universe.