by Mark Pearson
Delaney looked at him and shook his head, a slow smile forming, and pointed at his leg. ‘So you really did that playing rugby?’
‘Nah. I fell off a pushbike.’
And Delaney laughed.
TUESDAY
Diane Campbell stood next to Delaney’s desk by the open window. Outside dawn was breaking. The sky was clear again with only the faintest of red streaks far away in the distance. She blew out a stream of smoke into the cold air, her breath frosting with it, half-listening as Kate Walker talked and watching as a small dark-haired woman barked some orders she couldn’t hear at Bennett or Hamilton or whatever his name was supposed to be, and hurried in towards the HQ entrance. Hamilton followed behind carrying a cardboard tray and a guilty grin on his face like an admonished schoolboy. Diane smiled dryly herself, it looked like Hamilton’s boss had just as much trouble with him as she did with Jack Delaney. She realised she had missed what Kate was saying. ‘Sorry, what was that?’ she asked.
‘Multiple-personality disorder or MPD is not as rare as some people think,’ said Kate.
‘And it’s usually women?’ asked Delaney.
Kate nodded. ‘About eight times more frequent in women than in men. Although the figures may be skewed as men with MPD tend to be violent and may never be diagnosed because they are put into prison rather than hospital.’
‘And it’s linked into the abuse?’
‘Absolutely. Alice Peters is a textbook case. Gloria was able to block out the memory of what had happened to her. But Alice clearly couldn’t – it was happening on a daily basis. The level of abuse she suffered, and over such a period of time, shattered her. Literally shattered her personality, creating what are called alters to deal with the different emotions. These alters can take on different genders, ages, even nationalities and can speak in foreign languages.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yeah. Not only that: their body characteristics can change, different alters can have different heart rates, skin temperatures, different allergies, even asthma, and most pertinently they can have different pain thresholds.’
‘Was that why the taser didn’t take her down, then? Like someone on PCP?’
‘It’s possible.’ Kate nodded. ‘Sometimes the alters aren’t even human. They can be animals or creatures from myth and legend. It’s to do with disassociation. The emotions like fear or anger or sadness become personalities in their own right. What you saw as George was Alice’s anger formed into a completely different personality. A very real person, nonetheless. A very dangerous person. When Garnier appeared on television saying that he was going to lead police to the bodies Thompson had a stroke, judging from what Alice has told us.’
‘And that gave George a chance to escape?’
‘Yes, and the other personalities. But George is the strong one. The one who took revenge for Alice.’
‘And how many of them are in her, then?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Could be up to a hundred, could be as few as the three you met. Again, women have on average more personalities with the condition than men. The average for women is fifteen but, like I say, given the nature of the abuse and its duration, the drugging, the torture, the degradation …’ She shook her head sadly. ‘God only knows what she went through. But I can understand why she, or George, did what they did.’ Kate took a sip of water. It had been a long night but she didn’t feel at all tired. ‘Ellie Peters sold her own daughter to Peter Garnier. According to Alice she had told her that she was going to be adopted by somebody who didn’t have a baby of their own. Someone who could look after her better.’
‘Right.’ Delaney shook his head, disgusted.
‘But I think Ellie Peters always knew what had really happened to her daughter. That’s why when she finally sobered up – she couldn’t live with the guilt.’
‘The scarring on her back?’
‘Self-inflicted.’
‘Opus Dei?’ asked Diane.
Kate shrugged. ‘Something like it. I think she was glad to die in the end.’
‘Certainly deserved to,’ said Jack.
‘The thing of it is,’ said Kate, ‘we make people like Garnier and Thompson into grotesques, into some kind of rare monster. But the truth is that the kind of thing that happened to Alice is happening to kids every day in this country. The Russian outfit that Bennett was involved in closing down, they traffic in people, not just grown women but young boys and girls. Babies even. Babies, born of prostitutes forced into the sex trade as slaves. Their children taken away and used as commodities. It’s happening every day in every city all around the world. And what do we do about it?’
‘We do what we can,’ said Delaney.
‘Well, it’s not enough!’
Detective Inspector Tony Hamilton chose that moment to walk into the CID room carrying the cardboard tray which Diane could now see had coffees on it, and a paper bag under his arm.
‘I bring caffeine and doughnuts,’ he said, grinning.
‘I didn’t think we’d see you here again,’ said Kate, smiling back at him.
‘Unfinished business,’ he said, looking around. ‘Where’s that pretty young detective constable?’
‘Not in yet,’ said Diane Campbell pointedly. ‘Anything I can help you with?’
Hamilton held the tray forward for her to take a cup of coffee. ‘Not unless you plan on changing your sexual orientation, ma’am,’ he said with a wink, and put the tray and doughnuts down on Delaney’s desk. Then he pulled out a couple of 4x6 photos from his jacket pocket. ‘And it’s Kate and Jack I came to see.’ He laid the photos down.
‘I know her,’ said Kate, pointing to a picture of Jennifer that was lying next to a close-up photo of a knife wound. ‘She’s the girl who was attacked in Camden High Street, remember?’
‘I do,’ said Bennett. ‘Her real name is Jennifer Hickling but she was going under false ID. She managed to fall foul of the wrong people working prostitution in the area. My colleagues brought her to me.’
Kate picked up the photo of the knife wound. ‘They killed her?’
*
Hamilton shook his head. ‘Not at all. That’s a photo of Jamil Azeez’s wound. It matches a knife we found on her when she was arrested alongside the woman who was warning her off her patch.’
‘She stabbed Jamil?’
Hamilton shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’ve just got this information. She’s being held downstairs.’ He looked at Diane. ‘She needs to be interviewed, but I don’t work here any more.’
‘The woman you came with …’ said Diane. Hamilton grinned. ‘The black-widow spider.
Beautiful but deadly.’
‘Your boss?’
‘Yeah.’ Hamilton looked at his watch. ‘And I’m due for a debriefing with her and your governor three minutes ago. I better get out of here or she’ll have my head.’
Diane flicked her long-finished cigarette out of the window. ‘You up for it, Jack?’
Delaney took a sip of his coffee and winked at her. ‘I was born up for it, boss.’
Dear God, thought Diane Campbell, and she wasn’t the first person to do so. There’s two of them.
*
A uniformed guard brought Jennifer Hickling into Kate’s police surgeon’s office. Delaney was stood by the window.
‘Take a seat, Jennifer,’ said Kate sympathetically. The girl was looking her fifteen years now. Her make-up had been scrubbed off and beneath the hard goth exterior that she had worn on the streets was the face of a young, frightened and unhappy girl.
‘It’s about the knife, isn’t it?’ Jenny said.
‘You don’t have to say anything, Jennifer,’ said Delaney. ‘This isn’t a proper interview. You haven’t been charged. The doctor here is just going to check that you will be okay to be interviewed properly when we can get you a solicitor and a responsible adult there for you.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Jennifer. ‘It wasn’t my knife. He dropped it when he ran away. The other ma
n.’ She blinked back some tears. ‘I thought he was dead.’
‘No, he’s not dead, Jennifer,’ said Kate softly.
‘What other man?’ asked Delaney.
‘I don’t know. I heard the man cry out and the other man ran away, dropping the knife.’
‘What did he look like?’ asked Delaney, having a shrewd idea of exactly what he looked like.
‘He was like the first one. An Arab man,’ she said, proving Delaney completely wrong.
‘What’s going to happen to me now?’ asked Jennifer. ‘I can’t stay here. I have to get home. My sister isn’t safe.’
‘You had a large amount of money on you when you were arrested, Jennifer,’ said Delaney.
Jennifer shrank back in the chair. ‘It’s mine. I earned it. It’s so we could get away.’
‘It’s okay, Jennifer, you don’t have to say anything. Not now,’ said Kate.
‘But I have to. He might hurt her!’ she said
‘Who?’ asked Delaney.
‘My aunt’s boyfriend.’
*
Dawn had broken an hour earlier on the Waterhill estate but there were very few signs of life stirring.
Angela Hickling, yawning and with tousled hair, opened the front door, puzzled to see Jack Delaney and Kate Walker standing on the doorstep.
‘Who are you?’ she asked
‘We’re the police,’ said Delaney.
The colour drained from the young girl’s face.
‘It’s okay, Angela,’ said Kate. ‘Jennifer is perfectly safe – she is waiting for you in the car, see?’
Jennifer was sitting with Sally Cartwright in the back of Kate’s car. She waved across to her sister.
‘What do you want, then?’
‘We came to get you.’
‘And I came to have a word with your aunt’s boyfriend. I understand you aunt doesn’t live here any more?’ said Delaney, with a reassuring smile that belied his true emotions as the girl shook her head. ‘He hasn’t hurt you, has he?’
‘No.’
‘Come on, then. Let’s go and see Jennifer.’ Kate took the young girl’s hand and led her away as a man stumbled down the stairs and into the hall.
Delaney stepped into the house, pulling the door half shut behind him.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ said the man, blinking at him.
‘You don’t know?’ asked Delaney.
‘No, I fucking don’t.’
‘Good,’ said Delaney and punched him hard on the bridge of the nose, dropping him like a stun-gunned pig.
Delaney looked down at the motionless man for a satisfied moment. ‘We’ll be back to pick you up later,’ he said.
Delaney closed the door behind him and looked across to see Jennifer Hickling, out of the car now, hugging her little sister. Hugging her as if her life depended on it.
Maybe it did.
He pulled out his phone and punched in some numbers, his breath frosting in the cold air as he waited for it to be answered.
‘Mary,’ he said, ‘it’s Jack. I need your help.’
*
An hour later and Delaney and Kate stood in Dean Anderson’s office, watching through the windows as uniformed police led a handcuffed Malik Hussein across the quad to waiting police cars. Sally Cartwright peeled off from the group, heading towards the office.
‘The Outback is very popular with the gay community,’ Delaney was telling the Dean. ‘I suppose there was a clue in the name.’
‘That copy of The Catcher in the Rye in Jamil’s room. The dedication in the front …?’ Kate asked.
Sheila Anderson smiled sadly. ‘I originally gave it to my son in his first year at university,’ she said. ‘He died last year in Afghanistan. 33 Engineer Regiment. The Royal Engineers.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said Delaney.
‘Thank you, inspector. So much wasted youth.’ She took a breath and smiled. ‘I had lent the book to Matt Henson. It is a book that speaks to the young and Matt had difficulty with reading. I was helping him with that.’
‘And so was Jamil?’
‘It looks that way, yes.’
‘Matt has great potential. The potential to be different.’
‘Different from his brother and father, you mean?’ asked Kate.
‘Yes. And different from what was written down for him. It’s what education is all about.’
‘At least, it used to be,’ said Kate.
‘True,’ conceded the Dean. ‘Money seems to be the driving force for a lot of institutions nowadays. But not all. Not all.’
Sally knocked on the door as a courtesy. ‘He didn’t even deny it,’ she said as she came in. ‘Seemed proud of himself, in fact, said he was disappointed that Jamil was going to live but there was a death sentence waiting for him when he gets home anyway.’
‘They execute homosexuals in Iran, Sally,’ said Delaney.
‘I know, sir,’ the detective constable replied, with a quirked eyebrow. ‘I do read the news!’ She looked pointedly at the paper on the Dean’s desk. It was a copy of the Guardian but it could have been a copy of any of them – they all carried the shot of Delaney coming out of the boat shed on the previous evening, carrying Archie Woods in his arms.
‘He won’t be going home,’ said the Dean. ‘He’ll be staying in England. What will happen to Matt Henson?’
‘He’s already been released.’
‘Released to what, though? His father will disown him.’
‘Strikes me,’ said Kate, ‘that his is one family he would be better off without.’
‘Says something about a country in which a man would rather go to prison for attempted murder than admit his sexuality to his family,’ said the Dean.
‘Don’t get me started on this country!’ said Delaney.
*
Kate yawned as the car moved slowly through the busy traffic, heading back to White City. The sleepless night finally catching up with her. ‘There’s one thing I still don’t get,’ she said.
Delaney looked across at her from the front passenger seat. ‘What’s that, darlin’?’
‘Tony Hamilton was pretty certain that it wasn’t one of those Russian gangsters trying to take you out in Mad Bess Woods?’
‘He was.’
‘So who was the shooter? Who were they after?’
‘Peter Garnier. Like I always said. The shooter slipped as he took the shot. Didn’t get a chance to take another.’
‘We know it wasn’t Alice Peters so who was it trying to kill him, then?’
‘I think it was Garnier himself.’
‘What are you on about, sir?’ asked Sally from the back seat, looking at Delaney as if he were mad.
Delaney reached into his pocket and pulled out the catering glove that he had taken off Roy from the burger van.
‘I think he got Fitzpatrick to send word about where he would be – and when – to Tim Radnor. That’s why he was in the woods that morning: he knew all along that the bodies weren’t there. Because he knew it wasn’t him that had killed one of the children and that the other was still alive.’
‘Tim Radnor was the young one, the catering assistant?’ asked Kate.
‘Yeah. But Harrow School also trains army cadets. They have access to current fully working field-issue combat rifles. They have a rifle club and Radnor was a member.’ He tapped the glove again. ‘We found a minute piece of plastic on the cartridge casing that had the edge of one of these little dimples – see? Can’t prove it now but I’d bet my life that was what happened.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘What’s it all ever about with people like Garnier, Sally. You said it yourself. Power. The power over life and death. Particularly your own. Garnier didn’t much like what was in store for him in his own future. He’d kill himself if he could.’ He smiled coldly. ‘But I’ve had a word with the right people.’
WEDNESDAY
Peter Garnier rolled furiously on his bed. He was in a straitjacket. And the walls and
the floor of his room were padded. He looked up and shouted as the window in the door of his special cell was opened, as it was every twenty minutes, and a guard looked in on him. The window closed again and tears ran from Garnier’s eyes. Soon they wouldn’t even need to put him in a straitjacket … and it could take years for him to die.
*
The annexe or The Pig and Whistle pub, a truncheon’s twirl or two from the White City police station, was always popular with uniform and plain clothes alike. That Wednesday night was no exception. It was packed wall to wall with upbeat coppers. The talent nights were always a big draw but the recent closing of the so-called Death Row murders and the safe return of Archie Woods gave them even more excuse for celebration.
Danny Vine held his hand up to quell the noise – shouted comments, catcalls, even some laughter. ‘So I said to him,’ he said, ‘how was I supposed to know she had a wooden leg?’
An audible groan swept around the pub like a Mexican wave.
‘Get off!’ someone in the large and merry crowd shouted.
Danny stood closer to the microphone that was on a small stage set up at one end of the pub
‘As the bard put it,’ he said into the microphone, ‘if my jokes have amused, please raise your glass, and if they haven’t … then kiss my arse!’ He swept a theatrical wave and got the biggest cheer of his set. He jumped down to be handed a pint by one of his colleagues out of uniform and was slapped on the back, none too gently, by a few more.
From the other end of the bar Kate could see Sally Cartwright watching him, amused. ‘What about you and him, then?’ she asked her.
‘What about us?’
Kate waggled her hand horizontally. ‘Are you?’
Sally laughed. ‘Are we what, exactly?’
Kate laughed herself. ‘What is the term you young people use nowadays? Walking out, an item …’ She paused for effect. ‘Are you bonking him?’
Sally shook her head. ‘No, I am not!’
‘Shame. He’s a very attractive young man. Fit too, by the looks of it.’
‘No doubt … but I have had my share of work-based romance, thank you very much. And I have decided to pass.’