Death Row

by Mark Pearson

  ‘Somebody else in there, someone who does have visitors, you think? Somebody from the outside who’s carrying messages to one of the two men in the photo?’ asked Delaney.

  ‘He’s talking to someone, sir.’

  Delaney looked at her for a long moment, the synapses in his brain firing as he turned her words over and over. Then he smiled. ‘Of course he’s talking to someone. And he told me who it is the very first time I visited him.’

  ‘I don’t understand, sir. Who?’

  Delaney pulled out the photo of the five men and handed it to her. ‘Like we thought, it’s one of these two men, and I know which one.’

  Sally looked at the photo and would have asked Delaney a further question but he held up a finger to silence her. Then he took out his phone and notebook and flipped through it until he came to a number and punched it in. After a few seconds the phone was answered.

  ‘Father Carson Brown? It’s Detective Inspector Jack Delaney. Are you in your office? Good. Could you look up for me the name of the priest in charge of your church in the summer of 1995?’ Delaney waited for a while as the priest did as he was asked and then wrote down the name that Carson Brown gave him. ‘Thank you, Father,’ said Delaney and clicked off the phone. Sally started to speak again but once more Delaney held up a finger as he punched in another phone number. He pointed at the photo as he waited for his call to be answered. ‘The man in black, Sally,’ he said. ‘Who wears black suits?’

  Sally got it immediately. ‘He’s a priest!’

  ‘Garnier said he converted to Catholicism six months ago. I knew he was lying but I couldn’t see why.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘The confessional, Sally. His old associate started visiting the prison and so he got to have a private conversation with him every Sunday. That’s who he’s been talking to.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Someone at the other end of Delaney’s phone call finally answered. ‘Governor, it’s Jack Delaney. I’ve got two questions for you. The priest who visits to conduct the Catholic Mass on a Sunday … is his name Father Michael Fitzpatrick?’ He nodded, pleased. ‘Second question, then: what’s his address?’

  As Delaney waited for the governor to look it up he flashed a triumphant grin at Sally. ‘We’ve got the bastard!’

  Sally blew out a sigh. ‘Let’s just hope we’re in time, then.’

  *

  Delaney and Sally Cartwright rushed up the pavement. A team of uniformed and flak-jacketed police with combat helmets were approaching the front door of a detached suburban house in Ealing. Half the team crept around the side of the house while the others approached the door. Sergeant Emma Halliday and Detective Inspector Duncton stood behind them at the front gate of the garden.

  ‘Go, go, go!’ Duncton shouted – like someone off a cheap television drama, Delaney couldn’t help thinking. The lead uniform swung the heavy tubular device into the door and smashed it open. Two of the armed units behind him moved into the house with their semi-automatic weapons raised.

  ‘Armed police!’ they shouted, moving into covering positions as their colleagues cautiously entered the house behind them.

  ‘Just stay back, Delaney! This is my collar!’ shouted Duncton as Delaney and Sally reached the house.

  ‘Yeah, don’t mention it, Duncton. We were just glad to be of assistance, weren’t we, Sally?’

  ‘Don’t give me that. If you had kept the lines of communication open as you were supposed to do, then maybe we would all have got here a bit sooner.’

  ‘To be fair to Inspector Delaney—’ Emma Halliday started to say but Duncton cut her off.

  ‘And you can shut it, sergeant. Given your involvement in all this you’ll be lucky not to be back walking the beat come end of play.’

  ‘With all due respect, sir: why don’t you go fuck yourself? You silly little man,’ she said with a sweet smile.

  Duncton’s face was turning his usual shade of red but before he could respond one of the armed officers came out of the front door.

  ‘It’s secure, sir.’

  ‘You’ll keep!’ said Duncton to his sergeant and headed into the house.

  The others followed behind him. But there was no hurry: even as Delaney approached the door he could tell that no one was there.

  ‘He cleared out some time ago, by the looks of it,’ said the armed officer. ‘There’s mail and papers on the hall floor from the last few days and his wardrobe and drawers have been emptied.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Duncton. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

  Delaney would have laughed at the disappointment written on the angry man’s face, but in fact he felt the polar opposite of amusement. They might know who they were dealing with now, but they had no idea where he was and were no further forward in finding the missing boy.

  Truth to tell, Jack Delaney felt sick as he stood in the hallway looking around at the deserted house. Sick to his stomach.

  *

  Kate held a hand to her stomach and winced a little, breathing heavily. Bob Wilkinson stuck his head around the door and walked in, carrying a cup of tea.

  ‘Thanks, Bob,’ Kate said. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’

  Wilkinson shook his head. ‘I heard that was Jack Delaney.’

  ‘Still no sign of DI Bennett, I gather?’

  ‘No. Seems like he’s fallen off the side of the planet. If he was ever on it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I phoned Doncaster nick. Nobody there has ever head of him.’

  *

  ‘Okay. Calm down, Mary,’ said Jack Delaney into his mobile phone as he stood outside Sally’s car, parked up the street from Father Fitzpatrick’s abandoned house. ‘We’re in Ealing now. So we’re not too far away. I’ll check back at her house.’

  He closed the phone and got into the car. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘Something wrong, sir?’ Sally asked as she started the engine and pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘Gloria had an appointment with Mary today. She never showed up.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘And I don’t know. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. So put your foot on the floor.’

  Delaney leaned forward to flick the siren switch on as they hammered past a bemused-looking Duncton who was coming out of the missing priest’s house.

  *

  Delaney walked across the room and opened the curtains. Bright daylight spilled into the room. Lighting up the display of photos and maps and newspaper cuttings that covered the facing wall. Sally was stood examining the cuttings. The photo of Delaney in uniform holding the young Gloria in his arms had been circled many times in green ink. She looked at the rest of the material, baffled.

  ‘What does it all mean, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Delaney replied, picking up a photo from the table – the same photo that had hung on the wall of The Crawfish pub. The photo of Peter Garnier with Graham Hall, Father Michael Fitzpatrick, Tim Radnor, the unknown fisherman and in the background behind the bar a blonde woman whose identity he couldn’t make out.

  He turned over the photo and written on the back were the names he had just been running through, and one other. Bill Thompson.

  He handed the photo over to Sally, who whistled silently and reached for her mobile.

  Delaney put his hand on her arm. ‘What are you doing, Sally?’

  ‘Phoning it in, sir.’

  ‘No, you’re not!’ he said in a voice that cut short any argument. He pointed to the montage on the wall behind her. ‘This changes everything.’

  Sally looked at him for a moment and then nodded. ‘Sir.’

  Delaney hit the speed dial on his own mobile. ‘Dave,’ he said as the call was answered. ‘I need an address in Harrow, I need it quick and it stays between you and me – okay?’ He listened and nodded. ‘I owe you one. The name is Bill Thompson.’

  *

  Archie Wood’s stomach hurt, and every time he closed his eyes he could see the
man’s hungry eyes staring back at him. He huddled into the corner. He didn’t know where the man was. He hadn’t seen him in a long while. But he was scared of him. He remembered getting up one morning six months ago, and finding his pet dog, a Golden Labrador called Honey, lying in front of the cold fire in the front room of his house. Dead. Her eyes had been open, staring coldly. No light in them. They’d been like the man’s eyes.

  Archie put his arms around himself and pulled his knees up to his chest. He wished Honey was still alive. She would have protected him. She would never have let him be taken away from his home, from his dad and his mum. Thinking of his mum made his eyes sting. He blinked, trying to hold back the tears. He just wanted his mum to come through the door and rescue him. He snuggled deeper into the corner, making himself as small as possible. He didn’t even have his own clothes. He’d hated the jumper with a picture of a giraffe on it that his mum had given him for one of his birthday presents. But he wished he had it back now. He felt the tears starting again and squeezed his eyes shut hard. Big boys don’t cry. That’s what his dad always said to him. Big boys don’t cry.

  Then he heard a key being fitted into a lock and the creaking sound of an old door opening in the hallway outside. He heard the footsteps again and tried to huddle even closer into the corner. He kept his eyes shut and didn’t even try to stop the tears that were flowing from them now.

  The mantra in his head sounding again and again, trying to blot out the cold and the fear and the pain.

  ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round. Round and round. Round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round. And round and round again.’

  *

  Delaney picked his way through the rubbish-strewn back garden of Bill Thompson’s house in Hill Road, fifty yards from Carlton Row. The grass, what was left of it, was overgrown and shot through with weeds. There were blue plastic crates dotted throughout, rubble, broken bottles, empty beer cans and a distinctive smell that Delaney couldn’t place. It wasn’t pleasant.

  ‘What is that smell?’ Delaney asked Sally Cartwright as she followed behind him, stepping carefully over the rubble and garbage.

  ‘I have no idea, sir,’ she said, with a grimace. ‘But it smells like something’s died.’

  Delaney nodded. ‘That’s what I was worried about.’

  A short while later and Delaney kicked in the back door of the house. This time it opened easily – the wood was quite rotten in the frame. They stepped into a large tile-flagged kitchen. It reminded Delaney of Graham Harper’s, but bigger. Built sometime in the 1950s, probably, and not been much touched since. The smell was stronger inside the house. A salty, fetid, sickly sweet, rotting smell. There were two shop-size chest freezers running along the wall that faced the sink unit, which was long, made of stainless steel and looked industrial.

  And in one corner, leaning casually against a cupboard, was a long-handled axe, the blade stained brown with dried blood. Blood that had pooled into a sticky mass on the floor.

  Sally Cartwright slipped on a pair of forensic gloves and opened the first freezer. It took a bit of a wrench. Inside were the frozen, broken remains of crab legs and lobster legs and claws and shells.

  Delaney looked at it, puzzled.

  ‘It’s shickle, sir,’ said the young detective constable.

  ‘Shickle?’

  ‘The remains of crabs and lobsters once the meat’s been processed or dressed. All the stuff that’s left over.’

  ‘So why’s he got a freezer full of it?’

  ‘It’s what they do, sir. They freeze the live crabs and lobsters first before cooking them and they freeze the shickle, like I say, after they have dressed the meat.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the smell.’

  Delaney wrinkled his nose. ‘I can see that.’

  ‘Then the fishermen chuck the frozen stuff back in the sea the next day, before bringing in that day’s catch.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it, constable.’

  ‘I have an aunt lives on the North Norfolk coast, sir. Used to have our summer holidays there. Not much I don’t know about Cromer crab.’

  Delaney nodded to the next freezer and Sally opened it. It came open a lot easier.

  Delaney looked inside. He didn’t speak for a moment and then he said, ‘I guess this one is more my area of expertise.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sally Cartwright.

  ‘And it looks like we got it wrong again.’

  *

  Jennifer Hickling took the thick envelope that the manager gave her and put it into her pocket.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a banker’s draft? That is a large amount of cash to be carrying around.’

  ‘This is fine, thanks,’ said Jennifer, her voice almost betraying her true age.

  She was so close now. They both were. To getting away. To making the Waterhill just a bad memory, a bad dream. Time to wake up.

  She nodded at the bank manager and hurried out of her office, through the bank proper and out onto the high street.

  As Jenny came out of the bank she looked up at the sky. It was starting to grow dark. The streaks of red that had smoked through the sky during the day were thicker now, darker, almost purple. She pulled the zipper on her jacket up to her neck and looked at her watch. She still had time. She decided to forget about the bus and get a taxi – she had the money now, after all, and she didn’t want her sister waiting any longer for her than she had to. Jenny pictured her standing at the school gates with the innocent smile that she herself used to once have. Before her mother was put in prison and she had been placed in the loving care of her uncle.

  She walked along the pavement, staring into the distance, craning her neck to see the familiar lit yellow sign showing that a taxi was for hire. She thrust her hands deep in her pockets, one cradling the packet of money, the other curled around the handle of the knife.

  She didn’t see the dark-haired older woman walking towards her with hate in her eyes or the man in the black suit behind her with a look in his own eyes every bit as full of passion and purpose.

  Jennifer never made it to the school gates.

  *

  Sally looked out of the car window. It was dark now. She knew it was late in the year. But it shouldn’t be so dark this early. So cold. She tapped on the car’s heating controls and turned the temperature up a degree or two. Beside her Delaney was staring intently through the windscreen, a hundred per cent focused, which was just as well because he was driving with the accelerator floored. She held onto the strap as he swerved in and out of the traffic, overtaking on the left and right, oblivious to the blaring horns and flashing headlights. Delaney never drove if he could help it, which was what was unnerving Sally more than the speed they were travelling at. At least they were in her car, which was fully serviced and maintained. She hated to think what it would have been like if he had been driving his own old and less than fully maintained Saab 900.

  She looked out of the window and remembered her childhood trips to the coast. They had travelled in the pitch dark sometimes. That was because her dad had always wanted to leave at the crack of dawn – sometime before it, in fact. Her mother refused to go on the motorway and so they had had to take the longer route and he always wanted to get going early when there ware no cars on the roads. There was plenty of traffic today, though. Plenty of it. And Delaney was zigzagging through it like a metham-phetamine-fuelled maniac in a demolition derby.

  Sally shivered again and reflected on how fast things were moving now. Both literally and metaphorically. She just hoped that they weren’t too late. They finally had their man: she just hoped that Delaney would get them there in time – and in one piece – to save the missing boy, who had been away from his home for four days now. The statistics weren’t good.

  She looked down at the invoice that Mrs Blaylock had given her. Dated from the summer of 1995 when this had all begun. But then she realised it had all begun earlier, like eve
rything does. The perpetual cycle of paedophilia and abuse seeding itself through generation after generation after generation. Like cancer, Delaney had said, and he was right. She crumpled the paper in her hand again as Delaney swerved violently again to avoid an oncoming minibus.

  A short while previously Mrs Blaylock had been puzzled to see Detective Inspector Jack Delaney and DC Sally Cartwright standing on her front doorstep once more.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she had asked.

  ‘When we here earlier you said something to your son, Mrs Blaylock.’

  ‘Yes …?’

  ‘About your husband being a proper publican.’

  ‘He was. Not like that layabout waste of space who’s run the place into rack and ruin. That pub was supposed to be my pension.’

  ‘So he no doubt kept proper records?’

  ‘Of course he did. He never fell foul of the law. Any of them.’

  It was a shame the same couldn’t be said about her brother, Sally couldn’t help thinking as the woman led them into the house. Sally willed her hand off the side passenger strap and stared ahead, not wanting to give her boss the faintest idea of how absolutely terrified she was. Thick blobs of moisture fell onto the windscreen. Not quite hail, not quite snow, not quite rain. Fat splashes of sleet, she supposed, and felt the knot tighten in her stomach once more as Delaney blinked, leaning forward and trying to see before flicking on the windscreen wipers and not slowing the car down at all.

  Sally shivered a little again, and not just from the cold. She was dreading what they would find at Bill Thompson’s house down on the Thames estuary, and remembering what they had seen in his place near Carlton Row.

  The small child’s bedroom which looked like it hadn’t been touched since the mid-1950s. A wardrobe with a young boy’s clothes in it. Pictures from annuals pasted on the wall. A bedraggled teddy bear sitting on a small wooden chair. The whole room covered with dust.

  And the other bedroom. Strewn with an older man’s clothes. A chest of drawers full of pictures of children. Obscene pictures that had brought tears to Sally’s young eyes, eyes that had already seen far too much suffering visited on children in her few years with the police. Pictures that had brought tears to Delaney’s eyes, too. Tears that he wasn’t ashamed to show.