Mark Pearson - Death Row

Garnier smiled almost fondly. ‘See, you and me, Jack. We’re alike in so many ways. I’m a Catholic too now — did you know that.’

‘No. I must have missed the memo on that one,’ said Delaney sarcastically. ‘While I was busy having a life.’

‘Busy indeed, Jack. Busy indeed.’

‘You call me Jack one more time and I will break every fucking tooth in your mouth.’

Garnier looked up at the security camera mounted on the ceiling.

‘It’s switched off.’

Garnier shook his head. ‘I doubt that, but no matter. It’s the violence in you that I admire, inspector. All that rage, all that fury lashing out at the world. It’s a coping mechanism. It saves you from those thoughts you have. Those desires.’

‘You’ve become a psychoanalyst as well as a Catholic, have you? Did you learn anything in your studies about a man who rapes children and then strangles them as he climaxes?’

‘Indeed I did. Our God is a violent god, inspector. A slaughterer of innocents. There’s more blood in the Old Testament than love. You know that to be a fact. Sex and blood. It’s always been there. You understand this.’

Delaney looked at him, not responding. Waiting.

‘See, both you and I know, detective, that the world is made of chaos, not order.’

‘That so?’

Garnier nodded excitedly, warming to his theme, oblivious to Delaney’s sarcasm. ‘And there is an imperative in the human psyche either to embrace that chaos or to try and tame it. The first is irrelevant and the second is a fool’s errand. God knows that. The God of the Old Testament. Our existences are scattered fragments of meaning. You try to fit the shapes together, resolve the randomness of things, like a jigsaw puzzle building bit by bit to make a perfect picture. You have to get each piece in order to make sense of the world, don’t you?’

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

‘Yes, you do. It’s like that perfect portrait of Christ and his disciples on the jigsaw your mother bought for you when you were seven years old and had just had your first holy communion.’

Delaney snorted. ‘You know nothing about me.’

‘I know you have to make the pieces fit. It’s everything about you because you broke it in the first place.’

‘And you?’

‘Me? If I wanted to make a piece fit I’d cut the head of it till it did. It’s my picture that is important. No one else’s. God knows this.’

Delaney stood up and walked to the door. ‘Like I said, talking to you, Garnier, is like swimming in a cesspool. We’re done here.’

As Delaney put his hand on the door handle Garnier called after him.

‘Look after your girls, Jack. They’re a precious gift … But you know that, don’t you?’

Delaney could hear the catch in the man’s voice. He looked back at him, could see Garnier’s wet-eyed stare fixed on him now, one hundred per cent focused.

He shook his head. ‘You’re not worth the spit.’

And Garnier sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’

Delaney went through the door and closed it behind him. The guard threw him a questioning look, checking if everything was okay, as he turned the key in the door. Delaney nodded but as the guard locked the door Delaney felt a shivering unease run through his nervous system, like the ghost of a malarial sickness long ago cured. He took a couple of deep breaths and ran his hand across his forehead, damp now with perspiration. He put a hand against the wall and took in some breaths.

The other guard looked him. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Yeah. Just need a cigarette. Some fresh air.’

‘I know what you mean. I had my way, Peter Garnier would have been flushed a long time since.’

The first guard tested that the door was secure and turned to Delaney. ‘He tell you where the bodies were buried?’

‘No.’

‘What did he want, then?’

‘To give me his views on God, the universe and family life.’

‘Funny how they all find God when it comes near their turn to meet him.’

‘He could have years ahead of him but his kind have always found God long before that sort of need.’

The guard looked at him quizzically.

‘Not any kind of God you and I would recognise. The kind that lives in their heads and puts rat poison in their veins.’

Delaney looked at his own arm, his own veins proud on his hand and forearm, a slight tremor still visible. He fished in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes and gestured to the guard.

‘Take me outside. I think I’m going to throw up.’

*

Kate Walker was standing by the water-cooler in the corridor just down from the CID briefing rooms, taking a long swig from a clear plastic cup, draining it. She was about to throw it in the bin when a medium-height man in his thirties, with short brown hair and amused brown eyes, approached her. He favoured his right leg, the hint of a limp in his left. An accent she couldn’t quite place.

‘Any chance of you pouring me one of those, darling?’

Kate looked up at him, feeling her face tighten as her eyebrows raised. ‘Come again?’ she said, her voice like a taut wire.

‘Thirsty work, being a detective.’ He winked.

Kate shook her head, shrugged and pulled out a cup for him, filling it with cold water. ‘Let me guess. You work in the political-correctness division?’

‘CID, for my sins.’

Kate still couldn’t quite place his accent. A hint of northern in there somewhere. ‘Transferred down from Doncaster, I take it?’

‘My fame precedes me, Doctor Walker.’

Kate blinked again, not managing to hide her surprise.

‘I was told to look out for a strikingly attractive dark-haired woman with come-to-bed eyes and a ready temper.’

‘Is that a fact?’

The detective laughed. ‘Well, no, not really. Bob Wilkinson told me you’d just gone to get a drink of water. Master detective that I am, I worked the rest out.’

Kate laughed despite herself. ‘So you’d be the famous Tony Bennett.’ She pointed at his leg. ‘Invalided out of the horse division, were you?’

‘I took a tumble, all right. But not from a horse.’ Kate tilted her head and sighed. ‘Go on, then?’ She couldn’t bet on it but she thought he coloured slightly.

‘I fell off my pushbike, if you must know.’

Kate laughed and the DI held his hand out.

‘I’ll be all right in a day or two. And I might not be the famous Tony Bennett. But I am one. I blame my dad.’

‘Your dad?’

‘For not telling my mum it was a ridiculous idea. She’s a huge fan.’

‘Clearly.’

‘Could have been worse — she could have been a Gordon Sumner fan.’

Kate poured herself another cup of water and took a sip. ‘Have you identified the stabbing victim yet?’

‘No.’

‘Seems odd that no one has come forward. How old would you say he was?’

Bennett shrugged. ‘Eighteen or nineteen.’

‘A single stab wound to the chest. A mugging, do you think?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Why?’

‘The location, so close to the main street. That time of night in Camden Town the place would have been jumping.’

‘True. But there was no wallet on him.’

‘You saw someone running away.’

‘That’s right. Constable Wilkinson set off in pursuit but couldn’t catch him. I stayed with the victim.’

‘Just as well, by the sounds of it.’

‘I hope so.’ Kate shrugged too. ‘Still touch and go.’

‘But you didn’t get a good look at the assailant?’

‘Just his back as he was running away — he had a hood on, dark clothes …’ Kate held her hands up apologetically.