Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘That a fact?’

Sally nodded. ‘You could take it to the CPS.’

Delaney smiled and took another pull on his pint. ‘You sure I shouldn’t have a word with my cousin about you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I reckon you’d make a better psychologist than a policewoman, Sally.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Sally, quite animated. ‘It’s you who know people, sir. That’s why you are so much better than the likes of the chief superintendent in his fancy office. You know what makes people tick and that’s why you’re such a good copper, such a great detective.’

Delaney looked at her, amused. ‘Sometimes, constable, I’m not sure I could detect my own nose if I had swine fever and half a pound of pepper up it.’

‘Maybe a while back, sir, when, and you’ll forgive me for saying it, you had that nose permanently jammed in a bottle of Irish whiskey. But not any more.’

Delaney laughed out loud. ‘See? You know people too, and you’re not afraid to show it.’

‘Yeah, well, some people are easier to read than others.’

‘So what’s your take on Rosemary Woods, then?’

Sally frowned thoughtfully. ‘What would be in it for her, if she is involved? That’s what I don’t get. She doesn’t strike me as a foolish person.’

‘Motive, Sally. It’s at the heart of everything.’

‘True.’

‘If we know why then we can maybe get a handle on things.’ Delaney finished his pint. ‘I’m pretty sure the boy’s grandad wasn’t lying to me. That’s about all I know. I’m getting a beer — do you want another one?’

Sally shook her head and Delaney took his glass to the bar. ‘Another delicious pint, please, barman,’ he said without a hint of irony in his voice. The barman grunted and tossed the last photo in the box: a group of quiff-haired men dressed in Teddy-boy suits and brothel creepers by the look of it. The 1950s, Delaney thought — that wasn’t just another country, it was another fecking universe.

*

Jennifer Hickling struggled to breathe but the hand clamped around her mouth was tightening. The woman pushed her back against the wall and leaned in, her voice throbbing with menace.

‘You’re not welcome here, bitch.’

Jennifer struggled but to no avail. ‘Let me go.’

The woman released her and Jenny ran up the road, darting left into Camden High Street.

She took a moment or two to catch her breath but had no intention of going anywhere else. She had a few regulars who were due a little later. Good money for very little work. Just a few hand jobs and one who liked her on her knees down the alleyway she used. But at least he didn’t insist on using a condom — she hated the taste of latex — and was clean and she made damn sure he never finished in her mouth. She knew what she was. She didn’t like it and she intended to change it. Jenny knew what she was, what she’d been made into … but she had her standards.

She looked at her watch and decided to let the foreign bitch have the street for a while while she had a coffee. Wait till the old whore picked up another punter. Any luck it would be a mad bastard who strangled her.

But Jennifer Hickling didn’t believe in luck any more. At least, not the good kind.

*

Delaney leaned on the doorbell again and looked at his watch. He guessed Gloria could be anywhere, and in a city the size of London he had as much chance of finding her without a mobile phone as he had of finding a winning lottery ticket. He hastily scrawled a phone number on a piece of paper with the words There’s a hundred pounds’ credit on it below it. He pushed the mobile phone he had just bought her through her letter box and the note after it. He ran back down the stairs to Sally, who was waiting in the car, turning up his collar against the rain and totally oblivious to the pair of eyes that were watching him from across the street. Angry eyes.

*

Several hours later and Jack Delaney put his hand on the cold glass of the window and looked out of the CID office at the car park beyond. It was dark outside now. The neon lighting overhead in the office was flickering and doing little to alleviate the headache that had been building since early that morning. He opened his desk drawer and brought out a jumbo-sized bottle of Advil that he had brought back from a trip to America. He put a couple of the tablets in his mouth and swallowed them dry. Rattling the few remaining pills in the tub and putting it back in the drawer. The car park was about half full. Some people coming in on shift. Some others leaving. All spare hands had been called to the pump but so far the hunt for the missing boy had proved fruitless. The boy’s father had finally phoned home — his mobile phone battery had run out — and was even now driving back to England. He’d make it by morning and Delaney prayed to God that someone would have some good news for him by then. Not that He ever listened to him. Or if He did He showed no signs of it.

Delaney looked across at the muted television hanging on the wall across the office. Sky News had been rolling the story all day long, alternating between pictures of Melanie Jones, her injured cameraman, Peter Garnier, and the missing boy and his desperately grieving mother. Making a link between them all but with no explanation to offer. Delaney didn’t entirely blame them. He too was sure there was a link between them all, he just couldn’t for the life of him see what it was. The degenerate slug Garnier had got that right at least, Delaney thought: his job was indeed to see how things fitted together. Find the pattern and you can work out what happens next. Find the links and he might work out who had taken the boy, and, more importantly, work out where he had been taken. Work it out in time.

Delaney picked up a half-finished cup of coffee and took a swallow of the cold liquid. What he really needed was a drink. He looked at the flashing cursor on his computer screen and switched the machine to standby. He wasn’t going to find any clues looking at his computer, he was pretty damn sure of that. He picked his jacket off the back of his chair, shrugged into it, and walked across the office to another desk, where Tony Bennett was sitting at a computer looking at CCTV footage from various cameras in Camden Town.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

Bennett looked up at him, rubbing sore eyes. ‘You know how it is. We coppers used to wear out shoe leather, now it’s repetitive-strain injuries and gallons of eyewash.’

Delaney grunted. ‘I know how that works.’

Bennett gestured at the computer monitor. ‘Britain is the most surveilled country in the world. More CCTV cameras per capita than any other country on the planet — for all the bleeding good it does.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Delaney, watching the screen as a drunken twenty-something-year-old woman staggered along the pavement, wobbling on high platform heels and finishing a can of cider which she tossed into the gutter. ‘There’s been a real crackdown on litterbugs.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘You want to call it a day? Come down to the annexe, get acquainted with the most important people you need to know.’

Bennett looked up again, puzzled. ‘Annexe? Which people?’

‘Bar staff, Tony. Our local, The Pig and Whistle — it’s just around the corner.’

‘The Pig and Whistle. You are kidding me?’

Delaney put a cigarette in his mouth without lighting it. ‘I don’t kid. Not when it comes to serious matters like your local boozer. I take it you do drink?’

Bennett stood up to swing his own jacket off the back of his chair. ‘You take it right.’

As he slipped into his jacket, behind him on the monitor Jamil Azeez walked into shot, stopping beside a lamp-post and pulling out a packet of cigarettes. A young woman with dark hair and quasi-goth clothing approached to talk to him. He gave her a cigarette and lit it for her, she walked off and Jamil put a cigarette in his own mouth and lit it.