Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘I need to ask you a few questions,’ Delaney said.

Graham Harper spun round, startled. Delaney worried for a moment that he was going to drop dead of a heart attack because of the way he stared at him. He stood there for a moment or two as if he was really scrutinising him, and then his eyes became mobile, darting left and right as though he’d been suddenly frightened. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m a policeman, remember?’ said Delaney, puzzled at the shift in the old man’s attitude, wondering suddenly if maybe he had dementia issues. ‘We were just down at your allotment.’

The old man looked at him for a moment or two longer and then blinked as if coming out of dream.

‘Yes, of course.’ He opened the cupboard and brought out some tea bags.

‘I’m sorry to have startled you,’ said Delaney.

The man looked back, the skin on his forehead like paper wrinkled into a thousand creases. ‘It’s been a bit of a day.’

And if that wasn’t the understatement of the year, Delaney didn’t know what was. Maybe the guy was senile. He wondered if anyone had checked with his doctor. Maybe he had left the kid with some relative or friend and had clean forgotten about it. He made a mental note to track down Harper’s physician.

‘Yeah,’ he said and pulled up a chair. It had been a bit of a day, all right.

The scream shrieked in the air as though someone was being tortured.

Graham Harper picked the kettle off the gas ring and the whistling mercifully stopped. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, detective?’ he asked.

Delaney shook his head. The English. Here was a man who not a few hours before had had his grandchild abducted under his very own nose and was now worried about the social niceties of making tea for his guest.

‘No, thanks. I just want to go over what happened with you again.’

‘I’ve told everybody a hundred times. I don’t know. I was in my shed. Two minutes later I came out and he had gone. I assumed he was playing up in the woods — I let him dig for bottles there.’

Harper moved to the dresser beside the door into the kitchen and handed Delaney a small blue bottle, about five inches high and with hexagonal sides. ‘It’s Victorian, a poison bottle. They used blue for poison.’

Delaney looked at the object. ‘Is it worth anything?’

The elderly man shrugged and took it back from him. ‘Not really. But Archie liked to dig, see if he could find any more. I was going to get him a metal detector for Christmas …’ He broke off, took the bottle back and turned away, busying himself pouring out his tea.

Delaney waited until he’d finished and then asked, ‘You say he liked to dig?’

‘If the weather was good, yes.’

‘What with?’

Graham Harper seemed puzzled as he sat opposite Delaney, supping his tea noisily through discoloured teeth. ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean?’

‘What did he dig with? There was a spade in your shed but it hadn’t been used recently.’

‘Well, I told him he couldn’t dig today. The ground was too muddy.’

Delaney glanced down at his own shoes. That much was true.

‘So talk me through it. You walked down to the allotment and when you got to your patch or plot or whatever you call it, he came into the shed with you?’

‘Yes, just for a minute, and when I found my cigarettes … he wanted to wait outside.’

Delaney caught the slight hesitation.

‘He wanted to wait outside?’

The old man hesitated again. ‘I told him to wait outside.’

‘While you had a smoke.’

‘The smoke gets on his clothes. She can smell it. His mum, she’s always telling me off.’

‘And what did you hear?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you hear anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like him playing? Singing. Rattling a stick on the fence. Throwing rocks at birds in the trees.’

‘No, I didn’t hear a thing. But my hearing, it’s not so good.’

‘I see you have a hearing aid.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it turned on?’

‘Yes, I had it switched on.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I had the radio on.’

Delaney took out his notebook. ‘You didn’t mention that earlier.’

The elderly man looked away shiftily. ‘I must have forgot. It’s not important, is it? I mean, what does it matter?’ His voice rose, tremulous and upset.

Delaney leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘I don’t know yet what’s important and what isn’t. That’s how these things work. But what I do know is that you have to be entirely honest with me.’

‘I have been.’

Delaney could hear the catch in Harper’s voice, could see his gaze slide away whenever he made eye contact, and he didn’t know if the old man was holding something back or was just feeling guilty.

‘So you didn’t hear any voices, anyone talking to Archie?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t hear a car stopping, or pulling away?’

‘A car? There’s no road there, just a footpath.’ This time Harper did look at Delaney, genuinely puzzled.

‘The road above is only fifty yards or so away.’

‘I shouldn’t have put the radio on — is that what you are saying? I might have heard who took him, he might have called out for help and I didn’t hear.’

Delaney didn’t answer him for a moment. ‘What were you listening to?’

‘Radio 3. If I wanted to listen to idiots talking I’d go down the British Legion.’

Delaney consulted his notes. ‘And this was about half-ten, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was on?’

‘Strauss.’ He coughed suddenly, convulsively. ‘I don’t waltz much any more,’ he added ironically when he had got his breath back.

Delaney made another note. The old man hadn’t hesitated when he’d been asked what he’d been listening to, which made him sound genuine. Unless he had an alibi prepared. But that made no sense — Delaney could see how genuinely upset he was.

Whatever had set Graham Harper’s hands trembling seemed to be affecting his whole body now. ‘So you think Archie called out then?’ he asked, tears in his eyes. ‘You think he called out and I didn’t hear him because of the radio?’

Delaney folded back his notebook, replaced it in his pocket and looked over at the trembling man. ‘Maybe. But maybe there was nothing for you to hear. Maybe he didn’t call out because he knew whoever it was who took him. Knew him and trusted him.’

*

Sally Cartwright flicked the windscreen wipers on as they pulled out of Carlton Row and turned left into Carrington Avenue. The rain had started up again and the sky overhead was the kind of ominous slate-grey that presaged a deal more of it yet to come. Delaney stared ahead through the smeared windscreen and spotted, about a hundred yards ahead of them on the corner of Vicarage Road and Carrington Avenue itself, a small pub called The Crawfish. It had been built sometime in the late nineteenth century, when the pub was still very much the heart of the community, before they banned smoking and put the tax on alcohol through the roof. Now people got their booze from the supermarkets and drank at home, turning most of the community locals into little more than pub-themed restaurants. Delaney tutted to himself at the criminal injustice of it all.

‘Sir?’

Delaney realised he had actually tutted aloud. He looked at his watch and pointed his finger. ‘Pull up outside that boozer, Sally.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’m starving and that pub used to do the best seafood platter south of my Aunty Noreen’s.’

‘Oh yeah, and where does Aunty Noreen live?’

‘Clacton.’

Sally pulled the car to a stop outside the pub. It didn’t look as though people were fighting for parking places.