Mark Pearson - Death Row

He held the stick up, dangling a pair of women’s underwear from it. Then he flipped it down again, discarding them.

Sally grimaced. ‘And they say romance is dead.’

‘It is in Ruislip.’ Delaney looked up at the tree again and then used the stick to move more of the grass and bracken aside. He took out a pen and knelt down to pick something else up.

Sally leaned down to see what he was doing. ‘What have you got?’

Delaney held the pen forward. A brass shell casing hung on the end of it. ‘That’s what you call evidence, constable.’

‘How did you know where to look?’

Delaney pointed upwards. ‘There’s a broken branch there — newly broken, too. Not quite sturdy enough to take his weight, obviously.’

Sally looked up to where he was pointing. A medium-sized branch about four inches in diameter had snapped but not broken clean through: the white inner wood was in marked contrast to the moss-covered outer part of the branch. ‘He broke it while hurrying down, you think?’

‘Maybe. Maybe he broke it when he took his shot. Maybe that was why he missed.’

Sally nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah … maybe.’

Delaney took a small plastic evidence bag from his pocket, slipped the casing into it, sealed it and put it back in his pocket.

‘Let’s get back to the office.’

‘See what Melanie Jones has to say?’

‘No. I’ve heard enough from that woman today. I want to listen to any more shite I’ll stick prime minister’s question time on the radio.’

‘What’s the plan, then?’

‘The plan, Sally, is to go and talk to Roy Smiley, king of the burgers.’

‘You hungry, sir?’

‘And that.’

*

Roy Smiley was a larger-than-life character in all senses of the word. He ran a burger van called Bab’s Kebabs parked in a side street just around the corner from the White City police station although he never sold kebabs and had never been married to a woman called Barbara. He was, in fact, married to a woman called Janet, had three children, all daughters, and cooked the best bacon-and-egg sandwich north of the river. He had also spent eighteen years in the Royal Fusiliers. So, while fat slices of bacon sizzled on the hotplate behind him, he bowed his head to look at the shell casing that Delaney was holding up in the transparent bag.

‘Am I going to get paid for this?’

‘I’ll get Sally here to give you a smile and pay you for the bacon butties — how’s that?’

Roy smiled at Sally. ‘Sounds reasonable. What you have there is a shell casing from a standard-issue military rifle. Bolt action.’

‘Current?’

‘Yeah, it’s current.’

‘Long time since you were in the army, Roy.’

‘Long time since you dragged your sorry arse out of the peat bogs of Ballydehob. Doesn’t stop you being a miserable Irish bastard.’

‘You pretty certain, then?’

‘I keep up to date. Jack. You don’t just hand your Fusiliers badge in like a punched train ticket.’

‘So the man up the tree was ex-army?’

Roy shrugged. ‘Could be. Could be current army. Could be neither. Might have bought the rifle off someone who was. Could be stolen. Want to leave it with me, see what I can find out?’

Delaney looked up at him incredulously. ‘Yeah, why don’t I do that, Roy? I’m sure when we catch the fucker his lawyer wouldn’t object in the slightest. You ever heard of something called chain of evidence?’

‘What is it? A Stephen King novel?’

Delaney put the evidence bag back in his pocket. ‘Just make sure my egg is runny.’

Roy grinned and picked up a couple of eggs, the fat hissing and spitting as he cracked them over the hot griddle and flipped the bacon.

*

Back at the station Delaney and Sally approached the entrance as the door swung wide and an angry Melanie Jones swept out. She stormed up to a waiting taxi, finding time to throw Delaney a withering look as she passed before jumping in the back seat and slamming the door hard enough to make him wince.

As they walked into the station Diane Campbell was handing some files over to Dave ‘Slimline’ Mathews, who was behind the desk.

‘Someone’s not a happy bunny,’ Delaney said.

The chief inspector flashed him a quick smile. ‘Then my job is half done.’

‘How’s the cameraman?’

‘Stable. They’ve got him at the Royal South Hampstead. He’ll live — just have a sore shoulder for a while. Missed all the vital organs. High-velocity bullet. The shock was the most danger to him.’

Delaney, on reflex, rubbed his own shoulder again. ‘I know how that works. So, Melanie Jones. She give up the source?’

Diane shook her head. ‘She stonewalled for a bit, giving it the big confidentiality-of-her-sources crap. But finally she caved in and admitted she hadn’t spoken to anyone at all. It was her editor who called with the information of where we’d be.’

‘He give us anything more?

Diane shook her head again. ‘He claims he got an anonymous e-mail. I’ve sent Jimmy Skinner over there to check it out.’

‘Right.’

‘Not holding out a lot of hope, though. The internet’s easier to hide in than a tick in a flock of unshorn sheep.’

Delaney put his hand in his pocket. ‘The sniper left something behind.’

‘A calling card?’ Diane asked wryly.

‘Maybe,’ Delaney replied as he pulled out the evidence bag and handed it across. ‘Maybe forensics can get something from it.’

Diane looked at the shell casing through the clear plastic. ‘What is it — pistol, rifle?’

‘It’s a … rifle-shell casing. Bolt action: as you load another cartridge it ejects the one before.’

‘Army?’

‘It’s standard military issue yes.’

‘Current?’

‘Yep. There’s thousands like that littered all over Afghanistan.’

‘Melanie Jones. She do anything on the Afghan war?’

‘What war? That’s a fucked-up police operation, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, spare me the political analysis, Jack. Did she do anything on the war? Wind up some comrade of a fallen soldier? Make some comment a disgruntled and disaffected soldier would take the wrong way?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A tenth of all prisoners in this country are ex-military, you know.’

Delaney shrugged. ‘I know, but I get my news from Chris Evans or Roy Smiley at the burger van. I certainly wouldn’t pay good money to watch that bubbleheaded slapper.’

Sally smiled apologetically at Diane Campbell. ‘Do you want me to look into it, boss?’

‘Yeah, you do that.’

‘You seriously think she was the target?’

‘I don’t know, Jack. Who would want to shoot the cameraman?’

‘Someone with an axe to grind with the channel?’

‘No, I don’t buy it. He’s an anonymous nobody. Melanie Jones is the name, she’s the face.’

Delaney shook his head, unconvinced. ‘It doesn’t ring true. If someone wanted to take her out they could have done that any time, anywhere. Why now? Why there? Why Peter Garnier?’

Diane looked at him steadily. ‘Maybe you can find that out.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s been a development.’

‘A development?’

‘He wants to speak to you.’

‘Peter Garnier?’

Diane nodded. ‘In the flesh.’

Delaney looked at her blankly for a beat. ‘You are fucking kidding me?’

‘Do I look like I’m smiling to you?’

‘What the hell does he want to talk to me about?’

Diane shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t say. Said he’d talk to you.’

‘And that charade in the woods today? What was that about?’

‘Don’t know. But the morning he leads us a merry dance in Mad Bess Woods is the same day someone takes a shot at him and he decides he needs to speak to you. Maybe he wants to unburden his soul.’