Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘Your day will come, Sambo,’ said Henson, not even attempting to hide the curl to his lip as he said it.

‘Sambo?’ replied the constable, flashing a wide grin. ‘How delightfully retro.’

‘You can put a monkey in a suit and train it to dance for a banana. Doesn’t make him a human. Just a monkey in a suit-’

‘Shut your fucking mouth, Henson!’ said Bennett, cutting him short. ‘Where’s the knife that’s missing from this cabinet?’

Henson shrugged, his jowls wobbling but with a definite sheen of sweat on them now.

‘I bought the case as a piece. There never was a knife in it.’

‘And where’s your son? Where’s Matt?’

The portly man shrugged again. ‘He’s free to come and go as he pleases.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Right, well, do you two want to fuck off now?’ Henson looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got an appointment with a pint of lager, if that’s all the same to you.’

Bennett shook his head. ‘Well, it’s not all the same to me. You’re coming down the nick. We can discuss things a bit more down there.’

‘On what charge?’

Bennett tapped the back of a knuckle on the glass of the display case.

‘You have some illegal weapons here.’

‘That’s genuine memorabilia.’

‘The sword, maybe,’ Bennett said. ‘But, and I quote, Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 dealing with offensive weapons lists among other items, “a band of metal or other hard material worn on one or more fingers, and designed to cause injury”.’ He tapped the display case again. ‘To wit, a knuckleduster.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘You, my fat friend, are nicked!’

Henson looked at Bennett and across at PC Vine. Then he pushed Bennett, knocking him back against the display cabinet, and charged towards the open doorway. The young constable, however, had the presence of mind to leave a foot strategically placed and the sixteen stone of Adam Henson crashed like a felled log in the corridor beyond, his head slapping against the dividing wall with a sound like a walrus landing on ice.

*

Kate Walker held her index finger up and moved it from left to right. ‘Just follow the finger.’

The large man held up a finger of his own and Kate, ignoring it, jotted down some notes. She turned to the uniformed officer standing in the doorway of the police surgeon’s office. ‘Fit to be interviewed.’

Henson shook his head, an ugly bruise clear on the right-hand side of his swollen head. ‘I want a second opinion.’

‘Okay, my second opinion is that you need to start eating more healthily, do some exercise, lose four or five stone.’

‘You think you’re funny?’

‘No, I think I’m bored looking at you. Take him away, constable.’

The uniform stepped into the room, followed by DI Bennett. Henson stood up and glared down at her. ‘Nobody is getting away with this.’ He looked back at the detective inspector. ‘I have been assaulted.’

‘The incident will be thoroughly investigated.’

Henson snorted dismissively. ‘I have been the victim of a racially based assault and I will get justice.’

Kate smiled despite herself.

Henson stood up. ‘You think that’s funny? You think Enoch Powell’s rivers-of-blood speech was science fiction? It was a prediction that has come true, and you know it. People turn on the television and see every day another knifing, another shooting, another gang-related murder. Black gangs. You tell me it’s right for a white man to feel scared to walk the streets of his own town because of them. Scared for his life.’

‘Your boys just redressing the balance, are they?’

‘I told you. Matt had nothing to do with that stabbing.’

‘You’ll forgive us if we don’t just take your word for that. Come on, Henson. There’s some people want to talk to you.’

Bennett nodded to the uniformed officer who led Henson to the door. He stopped and called back to Kate. ‘If I’m wrong … you tell me why there are over seven times more black people in prison, proportionately speaking, than there are white.’

‘I can guess.’

‘Don’t guess, just look at the facts. That Irish scum Jack Delaney puts my eldest boy in prison for defending himself against a vicious attack from a gang of Paki terrorists.’

Kate kept her face impassive.

‘My other boy goes in the frame for something he didn’t do and everyone involved is going to suffer for it. Mark my words.’

Bennett laughed. ‘What are you going to do, Henson? Sit on us?’

The uniform led Henson out of the office.

‘Nice family,’ said Kate.

‘The apple doesn’t seem to have fallen far from the tree, that’s for sure.’

‘You didn’t tell me that Jack had arrested the Henson boys.’

‘I didn’t know. And it’s not exactly relevant, is it?’

Kate shrugged. ‘Any sign of Henson junior?’

‘Not yet. We’ve got what our American cousins call an APB out on him.’

‘He should be fairly easy to spot.’

‘True — not many people go round with their GCSE woodwork grade tattooed on the back of their head.’

Kate noded. ‘What I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘While you were off arresting Big Daddy I did a little bit of research on the internet.’

‘Go on.’

‘B-minus isn’t just a grade, is it?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘What else, then?’

‘A blood type.’

Bennett nodded thoughtfully. ‘True.’

‘As a doctor, I should have thought of it before.’

‘What’s the point of that? Bit like having a tag saying you are a diabetic, that kind of thing?’

‘Well, kind of.’

‘You telling me that doctors take tattoos on the back of the head as a legitimate indicator of blood type, so that in emergencies they can just go ahead without testing and whack in a pint of B-minus as required?’

‘Well, not any more.’

‘Not any more? You’re telling me they used to?’ Bennett was genuinely taken aback.

Kate picked up some pages from her desk and handed them to him. ‘I printed off some material from the internet.’

Bennett took the papers. ‘Why don’t you summarise?’

‘You ever heard the word Lebensborn ?’

‘Nope.’

‘It translates as “fount of life” in Old German. Set up by Heinrich Himmler originally in Germany, as part of their programme to create a master race.’

‘Aryans?’

‘Exactly. Tall, muscular, blue-eyed, fair-haired men and women.’

‘Which is odd when you consider that Hitler was a short, dark-haired, brown-eyed man.’

‘Anyway, it started off as a sort of orphanage setup but when the war was in its full stride it took on a more sinister note.’

‘Like?’

‘They set up a Lebensborn operation in Norway because they wanted to mingle German blood with the pure Aryan bloodstock that they believed came from Scandinavia.’

‘I heard something about that.’

‘Some claim there were brothels — Norwegian women forced to breed with SS officers. There is a lot of controversy on the issue to this day. Anyway, remember that the Henson surname is an anglicised version of the Scandinavian name Hansen.’

‘Yeah, Henson senior seemed to be quite proud of his heritage.’

‘A lot of the children born in that era suffered dreadfully.’

‘At Nazi hands, you mean?’

‘No. After the war. From their own people. The women who consorted with the SS officers were vilified, their heads shaved, drummed out of town. There have been claims of the children born being used in child prostitution. The worthy and the good lining up in the street to abuse and rape them.’

‘But no proof?’