Mark Pearson - Death Row

Bennett jogged up to Kate, ignoring a loud horn being hooted for his benefit. ‘What was that all about?’ he asked.

‘You got me.’ She frowned and looked back to where the girl had gone, out of sight now.

‘Something?’ Bennett asked her.

Kate frowned slightly and then shook her head. Whatever it was she’d remember it sooner or later. She looked down at the pavement, where a purse had been dropped. She picked it up and opened it. Inside, together with some condoms, were a couple of credit cards and a small plastic bag with some white powder in it. She held up the purse to Bennett and he lifted out the smaller bag inside, holding it at one corner between gloved fingers.

‘Something to do with this, maybe?’

‘Could be.’

‘I’ll process it back at the factory. And well done, by the way.’

‘What for?’

‘For the way you tackled that woman. Jonah Lumu has got nothing on you.’

‘Just don’t mention it to Jack.’

Bennett flicked her a mock salute.

Across the road, and unobserved by either of them, a grey-haired man in a leather bomber jacket, sitting in the back of a Lexus with dark-tinted windows held up an iPhone and pointed it at Kate and Bennett.

He wasn’t making a call.

Overhead, a low rumbling roll of thunder sounded in the distance, and the rain that had been threatening to pour out of the swollen sky at any minute began to fall in earnest.

*

Delaney got out of the passenger side of Sally’s car, zipped up his leather jacket and put a police baseball cap on his head before throwing another one across to his sergeant.

‘Where did you get these, sir?’

‘I nicked them. Don’t tell Napier, he’d probably fire me for it.’

Sally chuckled as they walked away from the parked car towards the footpath some fifty or so yards ahead. A couple of police cars were blocking the entrance to the allotment, their blue lights flashing. A pair of soaked-looking uniforms were guarding the entrance.

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Sally. ‘Not with all this going on. I think he can smell promotion and you’ll be at the heart of it.’

Delaney shook his head angrily. ‘I’m not at the heart of anything, Sally. Trust me, whatever is going on here is nothing to do with me. I didn’t even find that girl all those years ago — a bleeding traffic warden did!’

‘Yeah, but it was your picture in the papers, sir.’

‘Don’t remind me, constable.’

‘And you are going to find the missing boy. I know you are.’

‘Right.’

‘You promised Gloria you would.’

Delaney nodded at the two uniforms as they started along the footpath leading down to the bridge but he didn’t reply to Sally Cartwright. Across the track a wall of trees shielded the view of the allotment but bright lights were shining through and Delaney could make out the white-suited shapes of scene-of-crime officers as they went about processing the site.

At the other end of the bridge they clattered down the iron stairs and turned left where the allotments started. The ground underfoot was wet and slippery now, the heavy rain turning the once hard-packed earth boglike. They walked a few yards further on to where SOCO were erecting, as quickly as they could, a protective marquee around a large green-coloured tent that had already been set up in the middle of Graham Harper’s allotment.

DI Duncton ducked out of the tent as Delaney and Sally approached, his tall sergeant appearing behind him. Duncton’s face had the pale cast of a man who had seen things he’d rather not have looked at, and his breathing was a little ragged.

‘You still reckon it’s not devil worshippers?’ he asked Delaney as the Irishman crouched down and looked in the tent himself.

The naked body of a woman had been spread out in cruciform fashion. Large nails had been hammered through her hands and feet to fix her to the ground. She was on her back. Her breasts were flaccid, her pubic hair grey — and she was missing her head.

‘Maureen Gallagher,’ said Delaney as he stood up again outside the tent.

‘We certainly hope so,’ replied Sergeant Emma Halliday, smiling grimly. ‘Otherwise we have a head with a missing body somewhere and a body with a missing head somewhere else.’

‘Who put the tent up?’ asked Sally.

Duncton moved aside as the SOCO photographer and videographer turned on some bright lights and moved in to record the scene. ‘It was already here. We assume it was the killer. That’s why the body wasn’t discovered until now. The old man found her.’ Duncton nodded across to Graham Harper, who was standing on the stoop of his shed with a blanket around his shoulders, watching horrified as his onetime haven of solitude was overrun with men in uniforms and white plastic jumpsuits yet again.

*

Kate smiled and looked up at the clock. It was three o’clock in the afternoon now and already it was very dark outside. The black rain clouds overhead didn’t show any sign of letting up, neither did the rain which was hammering loudly against the large plate-glass windows of the pub as though they were in a tropical monsoon somewhere far more exotic than Camden Town. ‘You’re absolutely sure it’s him?’ she said to the handsome bar manager who was looking at the photo of Jamil that Kate had just given him.

‘Absolutely positive,’ he replied. ‘Hang on, I’ll get his jacket for you.’ His accent was central-casting Australian and Kate couldn’t help wondering how many of them were working in London pubs. He was cute, though, Kate admitted to herself, in his thirties with a surfer-boy physique, blond hair and a perfect tan. He reminded her of the young Robert Redford. If he had offered her his number she might well have had to think about it.

She smiled to herself again and held a hand to her stomach. No, she wouldn’t. She’d take the rough Irishman and his gruff ways over a pretty-boy charmer any day.

She pulled out her mobile and a scrap of paper with some numbers on it and tapped them into her phone. ‘Tony, it’s Kate. We’ve got a hit. I’m in The Outback pub. Okay, see you in a bit.’

By the time DI Bennett made it across the road, the bar manager had given Kate Jamil’s coat. A dark woollen pea-jacket, good-quality wool at that. She rummaged through the pockets and took out a wallet as the detective headed up to the bar. She opened it.

‘What have we got?

Kate handed it to him. Bennett opened it and took out a couple of credit cards with Jamil’s name on them. He opened the back section and removed a condom, five twenty-pound notes and a handwritten note. The letters were block capitals.

‘What does it say?’ asked Kate.

‘It says “Ten-thirty at The Outback”.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all. Ten-thirty at The Outback.’

‘Which is here.’

‘Which is indeed here.’

Kate turned to the bar manager. ‘What’s your name again?’

‘It’s Michael.’

‘Did you see Jamil Azeez with anybody that evening?’

‘Sorry, no. It was rammed here on Friday night. Always is.’

‘But you recognise him?’ asked Bennett.

‘Oh yeah, like I told your colleague here. I served him but he was on his own at the bar.’

‘Can you remember what you served him?’

‘A Coke and a pint of lager.’

‘You seemed to remember that pretty quickly.’

‘He came up three or four times, always the same order.’

‘Anyone else order that?’

‘Not that I recall.’ Michael shrugged. ‘But like I say, mate, it’s pretty rammed on a Friday.’

Bennett pointed to the CCTV camera mounted above the bar. ‘You got footage from the night?’

‘Yeah, but it only covers the till. We get a few jokers trying the short-change scam. Keeping the till on tape soon sorts them out.’