Mark Pearson - Death Row

Diane Campbell ignored her. ‘He’s still breathing. You, get an ambulance!’ she called over to a uniformed constable who quickly pulled out his radio.

In the distance the sound of a motorbike firing up and roaring away could be heard as the armed units set off clattering through the trees in pursuit.

Delaney gripped Melanie Jones by the upper arm and swung her around to face him.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Jones?’

She smiled sarcastically. ‘Oh, I can’t get enough of you, Jack. You know that.’

Delaney shook her arm, not gently. ‘I asked you a question!’

Melanie jerked her chin towards Peter Garnier. ‘What do you think I’m doing? My job!’

Diane Campbell glared up at her. ‘Arrest the stupid bitch, Jack.’

‘On what charge?’

‘Just get her out of here!’

Delaney steered Melanie back to the car park just off the Ducks Hill Road as Sally came across to join them.

Melanie angrily shook Delaney’s hand off. ‘You can’t do this. I have the right to be here.’

Sally looked at her incredulously. ‘You want him to take another shot at you?’

Melanie shook her head. ‘Whoever it was out there wasn’t shooting at me, you bloody idiot!’

Delaney glared at her. ‘You want to watch that mouth of yours, lady!’

‘Or what?’

‘Or it’s going to get slapped.’

‘It’s all right, sir.’

‘Strikes me, Delaney, that if you hadn’t stumbled when you did it would have been you face down in the mud.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘He was standing right in front of you. I told him to get some shots of the hero who found the only child who lived.’

‘I didn’t find her.’

‘You got her out of the car. Garnier must hate you for that.’

‘I doubt he thinks about me at all.’

‘Well, someone clearly does.’

Delaney subconsciously put a hand to his shoulder where he had been shot some weeks earlier and then shook the thought away. The man who had tried to kill him then had been killed himself. Shot twice and then blown to high heaven and hell with half a pound of Libyan Semtex. ‘You’ve probably made some powerful enemies yourself. I’ve seen some of the crap you broadcast, Miss Jones.’

‘Rubbish.’

Melanie tried to laugh it off but her gaze darted around nervously and she flinched involuntarily as Peter Garnier, surrounded by a phalanx of gun-wielding officers, was brought across to the heavily armoured police van that was waiting to take him back to Bayfield Prison.

Sally jerked her thumb in his direction. ‘That’s who he was after, you ask me. Vigilante justice.’

Delaney wasn’t so sure. ‘Shame he was such a lousy shot, then. And how did he know Garnier was going to be here?’

‘I don’t know, sir — how did she ?’ Sally jerked a thumb at Melanie Jones.

Diane Campbell walked across to them as the armoured door slammed shut, incarcerating the serial child-killer once more. The sound of an ambulance with its sirens wailing could just be heard now, growing louder. Diane fixed a dark, angry stare on the blonde reporter. ‘It’s a good question. How the hell did you know where we would be?’

‘It’s no secret that Peter Garnier had agreed to help you find the missing bodies. It’s been all over the news, twenty-four seven.’

‘It should have been a secret!’

‘But it wasn’t, was it? It was leaked.’

Diane fought the urge to slap her. ‘So who leaked that, and who told you where we’d be this morning?’

Melanie Jones shrugged. Insouciant. She could have been deliberating over a cappuccino or a latte in a Hampstead boutique café. ‘He was arrested further down the road near the Ruislip Lido. There’s acres of woodland all around. I took an educated guess.’

‘Bollocks!’

Melanie was taken aback by Diane Campbell’s response, but only for a second. ‘I don’t have to talk to you. My sources are confidential.’

Diane nodded to DI Jimmy Skinner and PC Danny Vine who had joined the group. ‘Bring her down the nick.’

Skinner smiled. ‘Be a pleasure.’

Melanie glared across at Diane. ‘You can’t do this.’

The DSI smiled. ‘Watch me.’

As Skinner and Wilkinson led her towards a squad car she called back over her shoulder. ‘You’ll be hearing from our lawyers.’

Delaney threw his boss a quizzical look. ‘Good idea taking her in? She’s right — if she doesn’t want to disclose her source there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

‘We have a right to question her.’

‘Yeah, we have that right.’

‘Meanwhile, while she is helping us with those inquiries we can examine the footage her cameraman shot before he was.’

Delaney nodded. ‘Good thinking.’

‘It’s what I’m good at.’

Sally gestured, not quite holding her hand up. ‘Maybe check if Garnier had any visitors over the last few days, too?’

‘Good idea. See you back at the factory.’

An ambulance came into the car park at speed and stopped abruptly, spraying gravel behind it. Delaney turned to Sally.

‘Come on, constable.’

‘Where to?’

‘See if the sniper left any clues.’ He flashed her a sardonic smile. ‘Get out your magnifying glass.’

They stepped aside as the paramedics rushed past with a stretcher. Delaney and Sally walked back into the woods, past the clearing where Peter Garnier had falsely claimed to have buried the bodies of the dead children and further into the trees beyond.

A few steps into the darkened woodland and the numerous primeval ferns seemed to crowd together in a natural screen, the hubbub behind them fading away slightly. Delaney looked back to check his bearing and walked forward, trying to keep in a straight line. Sally followed behind. Mindful of the tumble Delaney had taken earlier, she picked her way carefully through the bracken and over fallen branches that littered the uneven ground.

‘How far away did that motorbike sound to you, Sally?’

The detective constable shrugged. ‘Close. Maybe a few hundred yards.’

‘And the shot? What kind of rifle do you think?’

‘I wouldn’t have a clue, sir. Why? Do you?’

‘Me? Fuck, no! I grew up in Southern Ireland, Sally. Not Belfast. Sounded like a car backfiring to me.’

‘Lucky you slipped when you did.’

Delaney looked back at her. ‘Don’t go paying any attention to what that bubbleheaded news monkey was saying.’

‘She might have had a point.’

Delaney snorted dismissively. ‘If that woman was any more full of shite she’d be a Portaloo at the fucking Glastonbury Festival, Sally.’

‘I didn’t know you were a Glastonbury fan, sir.’

‘There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Sally.’

Sally nodded quietly in agreement to herself. Probably best keep it that way, too.

Delaney walked further into the woods, stopping every now and then to look upwards. After a couple of hundred yards or so he stopped under a group of trees — thick oaks, the boughs gnarled and knotted. He looked upward, shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, and then down at the ground. Sound was all around them. The sound of sirens in the distance and the clatter and shouts of police, uniformed and plain-clothes alike, as they searched for the shooter. But the sound of the motorcycle had faded away long enough ago for Delaney to believe they wouldn’t trace him. The area was a warren of woods and commons and led into the urban sprawls of Ruislip at one end and Northwood at the other. The shooter would be long gone by now. Delaney bent down to pick up a stick and moved some of the undergrowth away at the base of one tree.

‘Anything, sir?’

‘Nothing useful.’