Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘You are not going to believe this, sir,’ she said, her face as white as a snowdrift.

*

The Waterhill estate was a mile away from the Whitefriars Hall of West London University, but it might as well have been on a different planet. An ugly conglomeration of high-rise buildings centred amidst a sprawl of roads and tarmac car parks. A place where the elderly didn’t go out after dark and the sight of a burnt-out car was as commonplace as the sight of a Chelsea tractor in Fulham. It was an equal-opportunity estate, though: you were just as likely to be sold drugs, raped, mugged or murdered by a black gang as by a white. There were clear areas of demarcation and, on the drive in, Bennett had flagged several young kids strategically placed to send the signal that the filth had come to visit. Eight years old and they could already tell Old Bill just by the look of them. It was a ghetto, no other word for it, thought Bennett. Like many, many others in a city polluted by its own decay. Being born in a place like the Waterhill was like having your fate marked out for you by a vengeful god, punished for the sins of your forebears. Only it wasn’t God who brought misery and degradation to them and Bennett knew only too well who was responsible.

He looked at the face before him and knew all he had to know about hate, fear, frustrated rage, and the wickedness that lives in some people like breath … like bacteria.

Adam Henson was in his fifties, five foot six tall and as round as he was high, his body mass effectively blocking the doorway to his flat on the ground floor of Carnegie House, one of the six high-rise buildings that formed the nucleus of the estate. He was wearing shiny black slacks, a white shirt, a severe crew-cut and an expression on his face that would curdle milk. Bennett judged by the smell of him that he probably hadn’t washed for several days.

The man crossed his arms and deepened the frown that was creasing his forehead in fat folds of skin. ‘I’ve told you, he’s not in.’

‘You won’t mind us coming in and checking, then,’ said DI Bennett, keeping his voice smooth and affable.

‘Yeah, I do mind,’ said the overweight man, the florid flush rising from his thick neck to his white face like a heart-attack warning, like the spread of red jam on rice pudding. ‘You ain’t got a warrant, you ain’t coming in. Especially him.’ He flicked his head dismissively towards PC Danny Vine.

‘Why? Because I’m black?’ asked the constable, an edge in his voice.

‘An Englishman’s home is his castle — ain’t that a fact, detective?’

Bennett stuck a hard finger against the shorter man’s chest and pushed him back into his flat, following him in. ‘Not on the Waterhill estate it isn’t,’ he said.

‘You got no right.’

‘I got every right. Your son is at liberty on parole, he breaks the conditions of that parole and that makes him a wanted felon. So shut it and get out of our way.’

‘He hasn’t broken any conditions. He does his community service and shows up every week to his parole officer.’

‘He’s done something a little more serious than skipping a litter-picking trip,’ said Danny Vine.

‘Like what?’

‘Like sticking four inches of steel into a young student’s chest. That’s something we rather frown on,’ snapped Bennett.

Henson shook his head. ‘Oh, I get it. Another fix-up, is it? Not enough you put one of my sons down, you’re going to pin something on the other. Never mind he’s innocent.’

‘Where was he Friday night about midnight?’

‘He was here with me.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Absolutely positive. I just said it, didn’t I?’

Bennett pulled out the photo and shoved it under the man’s nose. ‘So how come he happens to be on CCTV footage from Camden High Street at the exact same time?’

Adam Henson flapped the paper away.

‘That’s not my son.’

‘What, a doppelgänger, is it?’

‘You what?’

‘Someone else walking around who looks just like him and also happens to have B-minus tattooed on the back of his neck?’ Bennett held the photo up again.

‘Let me guess, this geezer who was stabbed, he wasn’t white, was he?’ Henson threw Danny a withering look.

‘He was an Iranian citizen,’ said Danny evenly.

‘Right.’

‘With dual nationality. He was born here.’

‘And now he’s died here.’

‘Not yet,’ said Bennett pushing the man aside.

It was a three-bedroom flat with a kitchen and bathroom. The first room on the left was a lounge: a three-piece suite that had seen better days, a coffee table strewn with copies of the Sun , a marked-up copy of the Racing Post , assorted lager cans, against the opposite wall a three-bar electric fire, all bars blazing, and beside it on a chrome stand a forty-two-inch state-of-the-art plasma-screen television. The sound off and the new Countdown assistant pertly placing vowels and consonants on the board.

Henson nodded at the picture. ‘You got to keep your brain ticking, don’t you?’

‘Right. And you on benefits as well, Mister Henson,’ said PC Vine pointedly.

‘It was a gift.’

‘Sure it was.’ Bennett opened the door and passed on to the next room, slightly larger and with two single beds in it. It was neatly arranged, no clothes strewn on the floor. No Matt Henson, either. The bathroom and smaller bedroom also proved to be empty, the smell in the second bedroom pretty much making it clear to Bennett that it was used by Henson senior. He backed out of the room and gestured to Danny Vine. ‘Check under the beds.’

The kitchen ahead was empty and windowless and Bennett turned the handle on the door of the last remaining room on the left. It was locked.

‘You can’t go in there. You’ve got no right.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Bennett, smiling affably. ‘I brought a skeleton key.’

He raised his foot and kicked the door at the level of the lock. There was a loud crack and the door flew open. ‘Fits all locks,’ he said and headed into the darkened room.

‘You’re going to pay for that.’

‘Don’t bet on it.’

Adam Henson looked back at Danny Vine as he came out of Henson’s bedroom. ‘Just keep your hands off his stuff,’ he said to the young constable, clearly conflicted about which way to go. Finally he followed Bennett into the darkened room. ‘It’s not illegal,’ he muttered as the detective inspector flicked on the light switch.

Black drapes hung over the front window. The walls were painted black and there was a red carpet underfoot. On the wall opposite DI Bennett was a flag: a red rectangle with a white circle in the middle of it and in the centre of the circle a black swastika. On the adjoining wall were pictures of Hitler and other high-ranking members of the Nazi party. Bennett shook his head at the clichéd stupidity of it all and then stopped and laughed out loud, despite himself. Among the black-and-white photos of Hitler and his generals was also a signed and framed picture of a well-known and glamorous personality.

Bennett looked at the photo more closely, slightly puzzled.

‘That’s Mariella Frostrup,’ said Henson proudly. ‘I reckon we’re related.’

Bennett looked at the squat, bloated man, thinking that they were probably related in the same way that a toad is related to a human being. Actually, the more he thought about it, Henson had more in common with a toad than he did with a human being.

‘And how do you reckon that?’ he asked.

‘Henson is a Scandinavian name, isn’t it?’ Henson said.

Bennett shook his head, bemused. ‘Yeah — must be true, then.’

There were a number of display cases in the room and the detective inspector crossed the red carpet to look at them. Some with paperwork, others with more photos, one had a hat with a card reading Early 1932 Schutzstaffel/SS Cap with Death’s Head and Eagle . In the long display case under the flag was a long dress sword, sitting slightly out of its groove, a pair of brass knuckledusters and a knife-shaped depression in the red velvet lining of the case. Danny Vine came into the room. Bennett threw him a questioning look but he shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said, as he looked around the room. ‘Not only does the fat frig look like Goebbels, he thinks he bloody is him.’