Mark Pearson - Death Row

Delaney shrugged. ‘You know what I know, which is that a young boy has been abducted. Garnier is in the mix and we are running out of time fast. So what say we put aside your fucking petty politics and concentrate on getting him back alive?’

Duncton would have responded but Sally stuck her head through the open door. ‘You better get out here, sir,’ she said.

Delaney and Duncton hurried outside. Graham Harper was sitting on the steps of his shed, his body humped and racked with sobs.

A uniformed police constable was holding an evidence bag in her hand, showing it to the elderly man.

‘Please look, sir.’

Graham Harper dashed the back of his hand against his eyes and looked up. ‘My God, what have I done?’ he said, trying to sniffle back the tears and failing.

In the evidence bag was a single black and white trainer. Small — a child’s size.

‘Is this your grandson’s trainer, sir?’ asked the constable.

Harper nodded his head, his voice a croaked whisper. ‘Yes. God help me.’

Sally looked over at Delaney. His expression was unreadable. ‘Show us where you found it.’

The constable led them to the end of the allotments where a gap in the trees revealed a path through the tangled undergrowth to the base of a small slope that led up to the road bridge and pavement above. At the top of the slope the wire fence had been pulled loose from a concrete post, creating a gap. A large enough gap for an adult to have hunched down, squeezed through and pulled a young boy with him.

The female constable pointed to the side of the slope that ran down to the flat ground running alongside the railway track. The ground had been dug over by the looks of it: pieces of broken glass and pottery shards lay scattered around.

‘It was down here, sir.’

Delaney looked up at the fence and scrambled up the slope, his feet slipping in the wet mud, but he managed to make it and hold onto a post beside the wall.

‘Careful, sir!’ Sally called out. Delaney pulled out an evidence bag and used it to pick up a small thread that had snagged on the pulled-back wire. He folded the bag over itself and put it in his pocket. He looked at the wire fence where it had been pulled loose from the retaining post: it was rusted but by his reckoning it would still have taken a bit of strength to rip it free. He put back the fencing and slid back down the slope.

‘I think we can safely say he didn’t go to Johnny’s,’ he said, taking the evidence bag out of his pocket and handing it over to Duncton.

‘The ground here, sir …’ said Sally Cartwright, pointing to the slope down to the railway tracks.

‘What about it?’

‘Looks like it’s been freshly dug over.’

‘We’ll have the place sealed.’ Duncton reached into his jacket to pull out his mobile phone. ‘Everybody step back. Let’s keep the scene preserved for SOCO.’

He looked across critically at Delaney, who was toeing the grass to clean his shoe.

Delaney ignored him and looked back instead at Graham Harper, his head held in his hands between his knees as he sat on the small porch of his shed, his back rounded, his posture almost foetal as he rocked back and forward, his ragged breath still audible across the distance as he dry-sobbed and choked back tears.

Guilt.

Jack Delaney knew all about that.

*

Archie Woods kept his back tight against the wall of the cold room. As tight as he could, given that his hands were tied behind his back. Not cruelly constricting, not so that the rope cut into his flesh, but taut enough so that he could not free himself. The other end of the rope had been tied to an old-fashioned metal radiator beside him. There was no heat coming from the radiator but he had his warm coat on and his jumper with the picture of a giraffe on it underneath and although he was cold he wasn’t shivering because of that.

He was shivering with fear.

The man sitting in the chair across the room and watching him had flat black lifeless eyes. A small amount of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth and he slowly raised a hand to wipe it away, the thick veins standing proud from the liver-spotted skin like worms.

The boy would have screamed had he been able to, but a silk scarf had been tied around his head and mouth, forcing his lips and teeth apart and rendering him mute.

He looked down at his feet, one of them still clad in a black and white trainer, the other in a sock that had once been bright red but was now damp with rainwater and spattered with mud. He made a small whimpering sound and closed his eyes as if to dream what was happening away.

The man watched him for a moment longer and then the corners of his mouth moved upwards slightly. It might have been a smile.

The small boy kept his eyes shut, humming in his head to drown out the sound of approaching footsteps.

‘ The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round. All day long. ’

*

Delaney stood by the doorway, watching as DI Duncton held up the plastic evidence bag with the single trainer in it. Rosemary Woods already had very pale skin but what colour she had leached from her face as she looked at the bag, her green eyes widening with the horror of what it signified.

‘Is it his, Mrs Woods?’ asked Detective Inspector Duncton.

The woman swallowed and nodded, barely able to speak.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh my God.’

She teetered on her heels and Sally Cartwright quickly crossed to take the tall woman’s arm.

‘Oh my God,’ she said again, stumbling backwards to sit back on the sofa.

Her father came in and stood beside Delaney, turning the flat cap in his hands like a guilty schoolboy, his eyes downcast.

His daughter looked up at him, spots of colour returning to her cheeks now. ‘What the hell have you done, Dad?’

Graham Harper looked at her for a moment or two, his eyes wet with grief. He mumbled something inaudible and left the room.

Rosemary Woods looked over at Delaney. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

Delaney shook his head. ‘It’s still very early yet. We’re only talking a matter of hours.’

‘He was on the television this morning.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Delaney asked, puzzled.

‘Peter Garnier.’ She pointed to the television set in the corner. ‘He was on there this morning. I made him change channels. Archie wanted the cartoons and I couldn’t bear to look at that man’s face.’

Delaney nodded sympathetically.

‘He’s taken my son, hasn’t he? That man has got my son.’

‘Peter Garnier is locked up safe and secure in prison,’ said Detective Inspector Duncton.

The woman ignored him. Her stare was fixed on Delaney. ‘Why is he doing this? Why now? Why my boy?’

Delaney shook his head. ‘We don’t know what has happened yet, Mrs Woods. I know you are concerned and you have every right to be feeling the way you do right now. But we have every available person out there looking for your boy. And we will find him. I can promise you that.’

Duncton glared reprovingly at him as Delaney walked out the room, but it had as much effect as throwing a ping-pong ball would have had stopping a determined rhinoceros.

Delaney walked down the hallway to the kitchen that lay at the end of it. It was a kitchen that had been designed sometime in the 1950s and hadn’t been updated since. It was clean if not exactly clutter-free. A butler-style sink with a curtain under it stood beneath a double window looking out onto a long back garden.

Graham Harper was filling a metal kettle from the tap. His hands were shaking as though the weight were too much for him to hold. Maybe that was the case, thought Delaney, as Harper put it rattling onto a small gas stove and lit the ring beneath it: the old man looked as though he was made of skin and bone and air.