Mark Pearson - Death Row

Angry lights.

*

Tim Radnor had never been a strong man. Neither mentally, physically nor emotionally.

He was thirty-nine years old now, five foot eight tall, weighed just over ten stone and had thin mousey-coloured hair. He was single, with no partner, and had been in the same job for over fifteen years: kitchen assistant in a large public school. A simple enough job that required simple routines. He had never been ambitious and enjoyed the repetitiveness and security of his job. He was neither well liked nor disliked at his place of work — he minded his own business and people pretty much left to him to it. Once a month he would visit an ageing German prostitute called Olga in Shepherd Market. She had cracked skin like an old handbag and the face of an antique doll painted over her features. The crudely drawn lipstick and thick mascaraed lashes were almost a caricature in their clumsy representation of a sexuality long since faded. Miss Haversam as Miss Whiplash. But Tim liked her that way and had been visiting her for over twenty years. He would pay her one hundred pounds in cash for a specialised service that would leave him feeling demeaned but released from the inner demons that consumed him. Released at least for a while. At other times he used the internet to satisfy those desires that tormented him in his dreams and during every waking day. Desires that he kept under control but could not stop. He didn’t act on them as others did. He never had. Except once. And even then he hadn’t taken part.

He was not to blame.

He had never been to blame.

Tim was a victim. He knew that himself best of all. He knew that what was happening to him now was just as unfair as what had happened to him all those years ago. Just as unfair … and he was just as powerless to stop it happening now as he had been then.

As a child he had been one of the first children in the class to get measles, or mumps, or flu. Or whatever sickness was going. At nine years old on his first trip away from home at Scout camp he had not excelled at, nor taken great joy in, the kind of physical exertions that the other kids had revelled in. On the long rope slide, for example, he had fallen off two-thirds of the way down. It hadn’t been a long fall but he had landed in muddy ground and twisted his ankle slightly. In truth, he’d exaggerated the nature of the injury, as he was wont to do, and limped his way tearfully to the others, their taunts and laughter in no way unusual for one of Tim’s mishaps. He exaggerated his limp as an excuse not to have to go down the rope slide again and to provide a good reason not to go on the hill walk that was planned for later on that afternoon. If he had had his choice in the matter he would never have gone on the weekend in the first place. But his mother had insisted and pleas to his father, as ever, had fallen on deaf ears. In all things his mother had the final word and so Tim had gone to Scout camp like every nine-year-old boy should have been delighted to do. ‘And stop your moaning,’ his mother had said.

So he had stayed at the campsite while the other members of his troop had gone trekking in the woods and up the nearby hill.

A responsible adult had had to stay behind, of course, and keep an eye on him.

Except that the adult that stayed behind hadn’t been responsible. Hadn’t been responsible at all.

All these years later Tim still blamed him. And it wasn’t just the humiliation and degradation he had felt. It had hurt . Hurt more than anything he had ever experienced before. And now it was almost as if he had been training for this moment all his adult life.

And had failed.

Tears pricked in his eyes as he felt the cold metal entering him; he felt his flesh tearing and gasped with the relentless thrust of the weapon. His face was suffused with blood now, his eyes wide with the pain of it, with the fear of what was to come. With the injustice of it all. His hands were tied to the bedstead in front of his kneeling form. His mouth sealed with duct tape so the scream that was boiling in his lungs was contained. The tears running down his cheeks now every bit as useless as they’d been all those years ago.

Tears at the injustice of it all. He had never taken part after all. He had just watched and taken photos.

There was a raspy metallic sound, a loud click, and Tim’s heart hung in stasis. And then there was just a rainbow of colour for him. He didn’t see, or feel, or hear, or make excuses any more.

His neck and lower jaw made a pattern on the wall above his bedstead like a Rorschach ink blot painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

And then there was silence.

*

Light slanting on the mirror, golds, greens, fractured white light dancing on the glasses, on the glass shelves, on the leaded-light window that looked through to the doorway leading into the bar. And sound surrounding him like a warm fog. Like a coat. Heat from the log fire burning under a copper hood. Irish voices raised in song, and it’s no nay never, hands slapping on tables. Money spent on whiskey and beer. Delaney knew how that was. He’d been the wild rover, sure enough. It was all supposed to have changed. Maybe deep down you never can change, not at the heart of you. You had to want it, wasn’t that what they said? He looked at the bruised knuckles on his right hand and rubbed some of the dried blood off with his left. He picked up his glass of whiskey, swirled it for a second or two, watching the liquid within tilting and spiralling, then held it to his lips and shot it down, holding the glass forward. The barman picked up the bottle of Bushmills behind the bar, about a third remaining, and splashed a large portion into the outstretched glass. No need to measure it — Delaney had already paid for the bottle. He took another sip, looked up into the mirror that ran the length of the bar behind the optics and sighed. It was like déjà vu. He turned to the two men who were approaching him.

‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘Another brass been rubbed and you need Jack of the Yard to come and make sense of it all for you?’

‘Not quite,’ said Sergeant Dave ‘Slimline’ Matthews. He turned to Jimmy Skinner expectantly.

Jimmy shook his head. ‘I’m not going to do it.’

The sergeant nodded, understanding. He turned back to Delaney. ‘Detective Inspector Jack Delaney, I am arresting you on suspicion of attempted murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Delaney nodded and turned back to the barman. ‘Get us another couple of shot glasses here, Sean.’ He winked at Jimmy Skinner. ‘Might as well finish the bottle, eh, Jimmy? It’s paid for.’

‘You have to come in, Jack,’ said the sergeant, with an apologetic shrug.

‘You think I can’t take you, Dave?’ said Delaney, his voice slurring badly. ‘Is that what you think?’

Slimline held his hands up. ‘I’m sure you could, cowboy. But we don’t want any trouble here.’

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Delaney as he stood unsteadily to his feet. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Slimmio me lad!’ he said. Then he threw a punch at the sergeant.

Slimline didn’t even move aside. He just watched as Delaney’s punch missed by a mile and the Irishman tottered on his feet unbalanced by it before crashing to the floor, where he lay without moving.

Jimmy Skinner picked the bottle up from the bar and put it into his overcoat pocket. ‘I think he might need a shot of this in his coffee in the morning,’ he said as they bent down to lift up the unconscious Delaney, one to each arm.

‘I think we all might,’ said Dave Matthews as they drag-walked him through the noisy crowd, who paid them no attention at all, up to the door and out into the cold, wet night.