Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘Hang on, Jack.’ He lowered the phone slightly and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Could you be a love, Sally, and get us a glass of water? I’m not being a sexist pig, honest. I’ll owe you one. This call is important.’

Sally rolled her eyes a little and nodded at him. ‘Too right you’ll owe me one!’

She walked back out of the office. Bennett looked down at the computer screen. ‘Come on,’ he muttered under his breath, looking at the file transfer indicator as it crept forward slowly. In a few seconds more it was done. He had the hard drive back in his bag and had closed down Delaney’s laptop just as Sally walked in with the water.

He snatched up a pen and wrote a telephone number on a piece of paper. ‘Okay. Thanks for that, catch you later.’ He clicked off his phone and smiled at Sally as he took the cup of water from her. ‘Dying of thirst here.’

‘Talking of which, a few of us are going across to The Pig and Whistle, It’s been a hell of a day here.’

‘I heard.’

‘So if you fancy joining us?’

‘I would, but I have a bit of a lead on a case I need to follow up.’

‘Was that Detective Delaney on the phone?’

‘What?’

‘Your call just then. I heard you say Jack.’

Bennett covered, taking a sip of water. ‘No. Someone from back home.’

Sally nodded. ‘Well, if you change your mind. We’ll be down there for a little while.’

‘Appreciate it.’

Sally shrugged into her coat. ‘Can’t see there being a lot of time off just now.’

‘The media certainly aren’t going to let it lie.’

‘No.’

‘And there’s no leads to where the boy is?’

‘Whoever has taken him has been leaving us some clues, obviously. Taunting us. We just have no idea what they mean.’

‘And Inspector Delaney?’

‘Yeah?’

‘He on top of things?’

Sally finished buttoning up her coat and threw Bennett a suspicious look. ‘Why wouldn’t he be?’

Bennett shrugged and flashed her a guileless smile. ‘It’s just that it can’t be easy with him tied up in it all somehow. What with finding that small girl that Garnier had abducted all those years ago. What was her name again …?’

‘I don’t know, inspector. Way before my time.’ Sally sketched a wave as she headed to the door. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘See you.’

Bennett’s smile vanished as she left the room. He picked up the cup of water, drained it and lobbed the empty beaker into Delaney’s bin.

‘Oh, we’ll see all right,’ he said and smiled again. ‘We’ll definitely see.’

*

Dave ‘Slimline’ Matthews looked up from the crossword he was doing as DI Bennett walked towards the exit. ‘Hold up, inspector. I didn’t know you were in the building,’ he called out.

Bennett turned back, puzzled. ‘What is it, sergeant?’

‘I just tried calling you.’

Bennett held up his mobile phone. ‘Sorry, the battery’s dead.’

‘It’s your collar today …’

‘What about him?’

‘We had to bounce him. No charges.’

‘Go on.’

‘Turns out the weapons are all genuine Nazi memorabilia, including the knuckledusters. Antiques. So he’s allowed to have them, sell them, whatever.’ Matthews shook his head, bemused. ‘At least, in this country he is. Germany, France — we’d have him bang to rights.’

‘What about the son, Matt Henson?’

‘He’s just been brought in.’

‘Really?’

‘Caused a bit of trouble at The Outback pub earlier, tried to make a run for it and the manager made what we might like to call a citizen’s arrest.’

‘Meaning?

‘Meaning he jumped him and held him down until some uniforms could get there.’

‘Very civic-minded. Where is he now?’

‘We’ve got him in holding.’

‘Fit to be interviewed?’

‘Yeah, bruised ego. Nothing much else.’

‘Good.’

‘How’s the victim?’

Bennett nodded. ‘Spoke to the hospital a short while back. He’s stable, conscious. Still doesn’t remember a thing about who attacked him, apparently.’

The sergeant looked thoughtful. ‘Genuine amnesia, you think?’

‘What else?’

The sergeant shrugged. ‘I’m just plod, you’re the man in a natty suit. But maybe he’s scared.’

‘Scared of what?’

‘That if he says anything, Henson will come back and finish the job. Him or another one of his neo-Nazi thug associates.’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first racially motivated murder in this fair city of ours, would it?’

‘Not by a long chalk. Why don’t you rustle up a uniform for the interview and settle him down in interview room one, if it’s available?’

‘It certainly is.’

‘Thanks, Dave.’

*

Delaney flicked through the CDs lined up in an old three-tiered pine shelf that stood above a mahogany bookcase in his lounge. The bookcase was half empty. It held some cookbooks — the ubiquitous Delia Smith’s Summer Cookbook , Nigella Lawson’s Feast — and the rest was mainly fiction, some crime, some classics. He picked up the best of Dolly Parton and put it back again, finally selecting Górecki’s Symphony Number Three Opus 36 also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs . He walked over to his CD player and slipped the disc in, using the button to skip to the second movement. Some songs were too sorrowful. They seemed somehow relevant, though, all dealing with motherhood and the separation from a child through war. As the hauntingly beautiful second movement started Delaney poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into a tumbler and added a couple of ice cubes from a crystal bucket with a silver-plated lid and matching tongs that Kate had bought him. He took a sip and let the warmth of the spirit work its way through his body. He felt some of the tension of the day lift as the soprano hit impossibly pure notes. Motherhood and loss. The separation from a child — he couldn’t help thinking of Archie Hall and his devastated mother. He couldn’t help thinking of the promise he had made to Gloria. That he would find the boy and save him. But he couldn’t see any sense in what was happening. There was a pattern forming. There always was. But Delaney couldn’t see it. Everything seemed so random. So disparate. Peter Garnier, the only man who might know what was going on, certainly wasn’t saying anything. Apart from the killer, of course: he knew what he was doing.

*

Bennett was sitting opposite Matt Henson with a uniformed female officer beside him and the recording device already running. Bennett had noted who was present and announced that he was commencing an interview with Matt Henson.

The man in question had his arms crossed and a neutral expression on his face. This wasn’t the first police station interview room he had ever been in. Not by a long chalk.

‘I’ll ask you again. Where were you last Friday night just before midnight?’

The young man grinned arrogantly. ‘And I’ll answer you again: no comment.’

Bennett slid a photograph of Jamil Azeez across the table. ‘Do you know this man?’

Henson hardly flicked his eyes downward and kept his arms crossed.

‘Never seen him before in my life.’

‘Really?

‘What I said.’

Bennett slid the still photo from the CCTV footage of Henson arguing with Jamil Azeez on Camden High Street across to him.

‘How come you’re seen here getting in his face on Friday night, then?’

Henson didn’t even look at the photo. ‘It’s not me.’

Bennett nodded. ‘You have been doing some community work, I’m led to believe?’

Henson glared back at him. ‘So?’

‘So you’ve been doing it at the university where the young man here is a student. Just a coincidence, is it?’