Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘I didn’t have you down as a fisherman’s platter kind of guy, sir,’ she said as she locked the car door and walked with Delaney to the pub’s entrance.

‘I was born by the sea, Sally. I was breathing ozone before I was breathing oxygen. It’s in my blood — we Delaneys come from a long line of fishermen.’

‘You didn’t fancy that yourself, then?’

‘Not really, constable. I get seasick in a paddling pond.’

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, steering around a couple of packing crates placed beside the wall. He hadn’t been there in fifteen years and the place didn’t seem to have changed much in that time. It was dirtier, emptier, more down at heel than he remembered, was all. The photos on the wall by the bar were dustier than he remembered, and the mullet-haired men in them might well all have been dead for all he knew. Maybe it was just him. Maybe moving to Belsize Park had changed him. He looked down at the carpet that didn’t look like it had been cleaned in over five years and thought again.

There weren’t many punters in. An Indian couple, somewhere in their fifties, Delaney reckoned, sat by the window. The man had a turban on his head and a thick white beard, the woman was dressed in a sari and looked extremely bored. She looked across at Sally and Delaney and then turned her dead-eyed gaze back to her lap. The bearded man didn’t even look up and continued to read a copy of The Times . Two other men, one black, one Caucasian, were sitting at separate tables, and another solitary white man was perched on a stool at a corner of the bar. They were all nursing pints and all of them were past retirement age, even allowing for the plans to keep working men shackled for longer in life.

There was only one bar in the room. It was opposite the door and ran the length of the room. The serving hatch was open and as they approached the bar Delaney could see a tall man emerging from the steps to the cellar with a large cardboard box in his arms. He was in his thirties, had red hair and freckled arms, and was about three stone overweight.

‘Be with you in a minute,’ he grunted and carried the box over to the door where the others were already stacked.

‘You got a menu?’ Sally asked.

The red-haired man turned round and pointed to a basket with four filled rolls in it. ‘Yeah. Full à la carte. Knock yourself out.’

Delaney looked at the basket. ‘You’ve got your choice of cheese or cheese and onion, Sally. Or cheese,’ he said dryly.

Sally looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘We should have gone to your Aunty Noreen’s,’ she said.

‘What can I get you to drink?’ the barman asked, closing the serving hatch behind him and coming back round the bar.

Delaney scanned the beer engines and asked, without any real hope, ‘You got any Guinness?’

‘No. Just what you see on the taps. And not even that when it runs out.’

‘What’s happening then?’

‘We’re closing down. Middle of next week.’

Delaney nodded. ‘Your interpersonal customer skills a bit too full of metropolitan charm for the area, are they?’

The barman put his arms on the counter. He was carrying weight but there was muscle behind it and he looked like a man used to violence. ‘Are you looking for trouble?’ he said.

Delaney pointed at one of the beer pumps. ‘No, I’m looking for a pint and a half of that piss that passes for beer, and I’ll take two cheese rolls with them.’

‘I don’t think so, sunshine …’

Delaney pulled out his warrant card and smiled. ‘Think again, then.’

The barman scowled. ‘I had you down as journalists.’

‘A lot of people make that mistake, don’t they, Sally? It’s the air of sophistication we exude.’

The barman grunted again — Delaney guessed he didn’t have much call for conversation — and poured their drinks.

‘I suppose all the scum have moved off to their next story anyway,’ he said. ‘Shame, could have done with the business.’

‘Nice to see care in the community at work,’ said Delaney, taking his pint.

‘That’s just it,’ said the red-haired barman as he handed Sally her glass. ‘I don’t care.’

Later — but not much — Delaney picked up Sally’s roll. She had eaten one bite and declared it unfit for human consumption: the bread was pulp and the cheese was plastic. Delaney didn’t care, he was hungry. He demolished it in a couple of bites and washed it down with a swig of beer.

He smiled across at the barman, who was watching them from the bar. The man turned around and went back down to the cellar again.

‘Little ray of sunshine,’ said Sally.

Delaney nodded. ‘He surely is that.’

‘So the person who took the little boy-’

‘Or persons.’

‘Yeah, or persons. How would they know where he was going to be?’

Delaney shrugged. ‘Could just have been opportunistic. You know how predators operate. A boy alone. A matter of moments to bundle him in the car and drive away.’

Sally shook her head. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence — that a boy goes missing from Carlton Row the very morning Peter Garnier is supposed to be leading us to the graves of his missing victims.’

‘Archie Woods isn’t from Carlton Row, though, is he? He was just staying with his grandfather this morning.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what’s your point, Sally?’ Delaney asked as he watched the red-haired barman coming back up the stairs again, carrying an empty cardboard box.

Sally considered for a moment and then shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir. But there is a connection here, there has to be.’

‘I guess so.’

The barman started taking down the photos that were on the wall and putting them in the empty box. Another proper pub gone, Delaney thought bitterly. They should have binned the banks instead. The government was quite happy to save all the fat cats and their fat-cat institutions while letting the honest working man suffer. Banning smoking was bad enough, now they were taking the pubs away altogether. The legacy of Gordon Brown and his puritanical Calvinist attitude, no doubt, X Factor fan or not.

He realised that Sally was talking to him and snapped out of his reverie again. ‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘I was saying, do you remember that missing child, a year or so back? Turned out the mother and her uncle had her all along.’

‘Yes. Of course I remember.’

‘Maybe something similar is going on. Maybe the mother was involved. She’d taken the old fella’s fags. She knew he would have some stashed in the shed …’

‘Waited for him to leave and then followed him?’

‘Maybe. It makes sense. Only her and her father could have known where he’d be with the boy.’

Delaney frowned. ‘I’m pretty sure the old man wasn’t lying about not realising the boy had been taken. He was pretty eaten up with guilt.’

‘I know, and the mother was absolutely distraught.’ Sally shook her head. ‘You’re right, she couldn’t be that good an actress.’

Delaney sighed. ‘You clock up as many miles on the old shoe leather as me, detective constable, and you’ll realise that people are capable of doing the most inhumane things, the cruellest things imaginable, and lying about them straight to your face whilst crying bucketloads of crocodile tears.’

‘I guess.’

‘That woman you mentioned. How many weeks was she on television looking absolutely distraught and pleading for her daughter’s return?’

‘True.’

‘It’s a sick, sad world, Sally. No known cure.’

‘What’s the point, then?’

‘To ease the suffering. Where we can. When we can. It’s all we can do, the likes of us.’

Sally shook her head again. ‘I don’t believe that, sir. And neither do you.’