Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

He had been a fit man but he had gone to fat. His eyelids hooded his mobile eyes and he still bore the scar on his face from where Kate had slashed him with a knife. He had been abusing her and God knew how many other children over the years until I put an end to it. Given my way I would have put an end to him, full stop.

I sat in the chair opposite him. He had one arm manacled and chained to the wall. This wasn’t at my request. I would have liked nothing better than for him to make a jump at me. But I hadn’t come for the petty satisfaction of breaking bones in his puffy, sallow face. I had come for information.

‘I know what you want, Delaney. Even though they refused to tell me anything.’

‘Is that a fact?’

The manacled man smiled smugly, which given his situation was a neat trick to pull off. But he didn’t pull it off with me. ‘See, that was always your problem, inspector. Facts. As if truth was something immutable. Fixed. Right and wrong. Black and white. Well, in the real world there are no such things.’

‘I didn’t come here to discuss pseudo-philosophy with you, Walker.’

‘No, you came here to talk about Kate and what is going on in the sleepy little seaside town of Sheringham. A town that has been rather woken up of late.’

I kept my face impassive. ‘Go on.’

‘But I’ve got nothing to say to you, Delaney. She’s your damaged goods now. Nothing to do with me.’

I was tempted to get up, walk around the table and hurt him badly. But I could see that the thought amused him so I controlled the impulse.

‘Oh, we get the television here, you know. I like to keep up with the news,’ Walker continued. ‘See what is going on in the world. The only pleasure I have left now that you have taken away my freedom.’

‘I would have taken away more than your freedom, Walker. I’d have cut your balls off and fed them to you.’

‘We’re not so different, you and me. We both think the universe should bend to our rules.’

‘That’s where you are wrong. I am not at the centre of my universe. Kate is — and our children.’

He smiled again: a mockery of a smile, anyway. ‘It’s always a shame to see the centre of one’s universe taken away.’

‘Your father was involved with something that happened seventy-three years ago, Walker. What was it?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

‘You said I had come to talk about Kate with you, in connection with the murders. Now the only way you would know there might be a connection would be if you knew what that connection was.’

‘I am guessing that Daddy’s grave has been desecrated.’

‘That hasn’t been on the news.’

‘Call it an educated guess.’

‘Based on what?’

‘Based on the fact that you have come scurrying down from your North Norfolk idyll to talk to me.’

‘You will tell me what you know.’

‘No, I won’t. And you have no bargaining power. You have done all that is in your power to harm me already, Jack. You have no joker to play.’

‘I haven’t got a lot to lose, Walker. I could walk around this table and beat it out of you. The guards outside wouldn’t do a thing.’

‘They very well might and then you’d have everything to lose, Jacky boy. What about Kate? Poor little Kate would be left alone on the storm-battered cliffs. All alone with your young daughter and the wee bairn — doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’ he said.

‘You like your conditions here, do you, Walker?’ I responded. ‘Kept away from the general population. Sharing your happy memories with the other kiddy fiddlers and nonces. How would you like to be moved away from them?’

‘Not within your powers to make that happen, dear boy. I was a high-ranking police officer and, as you say, charged with crimes of a sexual nature against children. It would never happen.’

‘Oh, I am not talking about moving you into the main wings, Alexander, dear boy,’ I said, mimicking his pseudo-aristocratic accent.

‘What, then?’

‘I was thinking Berkshire.’

‘Berkshire?’

‘Yes. I don’t think you belong in prison at all just now. You need help, Walker. That much is clear. The things you have been telling me now. Revenge-enactment fantasies. Surrogate, obviously. But the things you fantasise about doing to some of the other people here. Things with spoons and hard objects. I think you need a hospital until you are ready to be allowed to, shall we say, mingle.’

The smile had fallen from his face. He knew exactly what I was talking about. Broadmoor, the hospital for the criminally insane based in Berkshire.

‘Six years or so under close supervision. Solitary confinement. Very limited access to television — your sole remaining pleasure, you said.’

‘You can’t make that happen, Delaney.’

‘You said yourself that you were a high-ranking police officer. A major embarrassment to the Metropolitan Police. Much better for you to be declared criminally insane and tucked away in a padded room. It won’t take much organising.’

Walker looked at me for a moment or two. I could see the fear in his eyes.

‘I’m not telling you a thing, Delaney. I have no idea who is committing these murders. But if you want to know what’s going on, why don’t you speak to the police up there? They know more than you do. That’s for sure.’

‘What are you saying?’

He smiled again, the hate smouldering in his eyes. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to say. Someone in that force certainly knows more than you. I guess you are going to have to find out!’

I kept on at him for a while longer but he wasn’t going to tell me a thing. He was right: I didn’t have any cards to play.

I’d been lucky on my run down to London. Not so lucky on my way back. The M25 was snarled up, almost in gridlock.

It took me over two hours just to get across it and up to Brent Cross and head north. The worst of it was, I knew no more now than I had before I made the journey. Walker was a nut that wasn’t going to crack. He had something over me and he was going to milk that for all it was worth. I had to let it go for simple reasons, though. I didn’t have time to lose, and I could tell he had made his decision. But I could tell something else. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he didn’t know who the murderer was. He knew something about the death of David Webb seventy-three years ago and he knew that his father had been involved. But he had absolutely no idea who was committing the murders now: I could see that in his eyes and reading people was what I did best. Which meant that any background information he had on the wartime crime wouldn’t tell me who today’s murderer was. That was what I needed to know. And so I had left.

I picked up the phone and called Kate.

‘Hi, Jack.’

‘Everything OK?’

‘Everything is the same as it was an hour ago when you called for the second time.’

‘I need to know you are OK.’

‘We’re safe here, Jack.’

‘Just stay there. I’m a couple of hours away.’

‘We’ll be fine. You just take care of yourself and drive carefully. The last thing that would help is you getting involved in an accident.’

‘That’s not going to happen. Give the girls a kiss for me and tell them I’ll be back soon.’

I clicked off and pushed another speed-dial number.

‘Harry,’ I said as the phone was answered. ‘It’s Delaney. What have you got for me?’

‘Nothing. Our dentist is still missing and the team from Norwich are buzzing around like a bunch of blue-arsed flies. But they have got nothing to go on. If it is connected to the stag party then maybe they’ll have something to work on, but if there is no connection there. . then they are back to square one. Meanwhile, who knows who the nutter is or what the hell he’s up to!’