Mark Pearson - Death Row

Mrs Blaylock threw her son a dismissive look. ‘Yeah, well, it was before his time, wasn’t it? When the pub was a successful ongoing business.’

‘I didn’t ban smoking, Mum. I didn’t bring on the recession.’

‘No, you didn’t do anything, did you? Just like your uncle!’ she snapped back at him.

Delaney gestured towards the picture. ‘Mrs Blaylock?’ he prompted.

Sergeant Halliday’s phone trilled. She glanced quickly at the caller ID and switched the phone off.

‘They called themselves The Rockabillies.’

Delaney reacted. ‘A musical group?’

Mrs Blaylock snorted and shook her head. ‘No. They were a pub-quiz team, that’s all. They dressed up like that for the final. They thought it was funny.’

‘Why The Rockabillies?’ asked Sally.

‘Garnier’s second name was Bill — well, William, anyway. And the guy standing next to my brother was called Bill too. He was always singing some rock-and-roll tune or other. So that’s what they called themselves.’

‘Bill who?’ said Delaney.

‘I’m sorry. I can’t remember his surname. He was a fisherman. Down on the coast. He inherited a house somewhere in the area. He supplied us for a little while. My husband dealt with him.’

‘And who are the others?’

Mrs Blaylock held up the photo: five men all wearing Elvis-style quiffs, some of them wigs. One of the men, wearing a black suit, had his back to the camera. Mrs Blaylock pointed to the fourth man in the group, a young man somewhere in his twenties, considerably younger than the others. ‘I know him because he used to work for me as a commis chef. Just sorting out the vegetables, that kind of thing. He was never going to be a cook.’

‘What’s his name?’ Delaney pulled out his notebook.

‘Tim Radnor,’ the woman replied. ‘He left when my husband died.’

‘Where did he go? Do you know?’

‘He went to work at Harrow School. Up on the hill, you know?’

Delaney nodded. ‘Yeah, we know it. And who is the man with his back to the camera?’

Mrs Blaylock looked down at the picture and shook her head. ‘I don’t know, I’m sorry. ‘

‘You absolutely sure?’

‘Yes. Sorry.’ She handed the photo back to Delaney. ‘What does it all mean?’

‘We don’t know, Mrs Blaylock.’

‘But you think it might be one of those men who have taken my brother’s grandson?’

‘Maybe,’ said Sergeant Halliday.

‘Well, it can’t be Peter Garnier or my brother.’

‘You sure you can’t remember the fisherman’s name?’

‘Sorry, no. It’s so long ago now. I just knew him as Bill, I never really spoke to him. I was never front of house much — that was Gerald’s area.’

‘Gerald?’ asked Delaney.

‘My dad,’ said Terry Blaylock.

Mrs Blaylock threw him another critical look. ‘A proper publican!’

Delaney looked over at the tall sergeant. ‘Fancy a trip out to Harrow School, Inspector ?’ he said.

She was about to say, ‘Sir,’ but caught herself and grinned instead. ‘Can I borrow your DC?’ she asked.

Delaney nodded. ‘I want her back, mind.’

*

An hour later and Delaney was standing with Kate at the burger stand around the corner from the station. Kate pulled the zipper of her jacket up to her neck and threw Delaney what he thought of as an old-fashioned look.

‘Couldn’t we have gone to a proper restaurant for a change? A pub at least? Somewhere inside. You know, a place with four walls … and heat.’

‘I needed to think, Kate.’ Delaney shrugged apologetically. ‘And sometimes only Roy’s bacon sarnies can help.’

‘Right,’ said Kate, resigned.

Roy flipped some rashers of bacon on the griddle. Then he put on a pair of catering gloves and started buttering some bread. Delaney smiled to himself: he was pretty sure he had never seen the man wearing catering gloves before and he was also pretty sure that the reason Roy was wearing them now was all to do with Kate Walker. Roy was one of the most irritating men he knew at times, with absolutely no respect for authority, but he seemed to scamper around Kate like a puppy dog wagging its tail.

Delaney winked at her. ‘If you play nicely, I’ll get Roy to fry you an egg to go with your sandwich.’

‘And you can do one of those for me too while you’re at it,’ said Sergeant Halliday as she walked up with Sally Cartwright to join them.

Roy lifted his eyebrows as his gaze rose from Emma’s flat-soled shoes to the top of her head, all six foot two of her. He pursed his lips as if to whistle but Delaney gave him a shake of his head.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said.

‘Another bacon sarnie it is, then.’

‘Good call,’ said the sergeant, smiling.

‘Any sign of Bennett yet?’ Kate asked Sally.

‘No. And he’s not answering his calls.’

Delaney turned to Sally Cartwright. ‘How did it go at the school?’

Sally shook her head. ‘Not good, sir. Apparently.’

‘What happened?’

‘Somebody got there before us. A long time before us,’ Emma Halliday said.

‘He’s dead?’

Sally grimaced. ‘You could say that.’

‘Someone tied him kneeling to his bed, stuck a single-barrelled shotgun up his arse and pulled the trigger,’ Emma Halliday said bluntly.

Delaney frowned. ‘And nobody noticed? Nobody heard anything?’

The tall sergeant shook her head. ‘His body acted like a silencer, I guess.’

Roy handed a sandwich to Delaney, who took a big bite of it. He realised that Kate was staring unbelievingly at him. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘I can’t believe you’re eating that,’ she said.

‘I told you. I need to think.’

He looked over at Roy as the burger man flipped the bacon again and cracked an egg on the griddle plate. Delaney turned to Sally again. ‘You know those pictures of the staircases going up and down? You look at them one way and they are going up, you look again and it seems they are going down, or outside and inside. And you follow a straight path but at the end they’ve dropped several levels. Like optical illusions. Can’t remember the artist.’

‘M.C. Escher, sir. Dutch,’ Sally said.

Delaney waved his hand dismissively. ‘Whatever. The point is, we’ve been looking at this all the wrong way, whether the stairs are going up and down.’

‘And what should we have been doing?’ asked the sergeant.

A motorbike turned the corner at the top of the street and headed towards the van. ‘We should have been taking the fricking elevator,’ Delaney said and turned back to the counter. ‘Roy, give us one of those catering gloves, will you?’

‘What for?’

‘Just give us the fecking glove.’

Roy handed him one of the plastic gloves. Delaney took it and looked across, puzzled, at the motorbike that had stopped on the other side of the road, leaving its engine running. He realised that the rider, who was wearing a dark outfit and a black helmet with a black visor, was swinging something in his hands and pointing it at Kate, who was standing in front of Delaney. Something long and metallic. Delaney processed the information in a split second, shouting for everyone to get down as he grabbed Kate, swinging her round and pulling her to the ground at the side of the van.

The shotgun blast ripped the air apart, the pellets blasting into the trees and the cars and the fencing opposite the van. Delaney scrambled round the side of the van but the motorcyclist was already gunning his engine and racing away back in the direction he had come. There was no number plate on the back of the bike.

Kate stood up, breathing heavily. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ she said, her face as pale as Delaney had ever seen it.