Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘What does it all mean, sir?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Delaney replied, picking up a photo from the table — the same photo that had hung on the wall of The Crawfish pub. The photo of Peter Garnier with Graham Hall, Father Michael Fitzpatrick, Tim Radnor, the unknown fisherman and in the background behind the bar a blonde woman whose identity he couldn’t make out.

He turned over the photo and written on the back were the names he had just been running through, and one other. Bill Thompson.

He handed the photo over to Sally, who whistled silently and reached for her mobile.

Delaney put his hand on her arm. ‘What are you doing, Sally?’

‘Phoning it in, sir.’

‘No, you’re not!’ he said in a voice that cut short any argument. He pointed to the montage on the wall behind her. ‘This changes everything.’

Sally looked at him for a moment and then nodded. ‘Sir.’

Delaney hit the speed dial on his own mobile. ‘Dave,’ he said as the call was answered. ‘I need an address in Harrow, I need it quick and it stays between you and me — okay?’ He listened and nodded. ‘I owe you one. The name is Bill Thompson.’

*

Archie Wood’s stomach hurt, and every time he closed his eyes he could see the man’s hungry eyes staring back at him. He huddled into the corner. He didn’t know where the man was. He hadn’t seen him in a long while. But he was scared of him. He remembered getting up one morning six months ago, and finding his pet dog, a Golden Labrador called Honey, lying in front of the cold fire in the front room of his house. Dead. Her eyes had been open, staring coldly. No light in them. They’d been like the man’s eyes.

Archie put his arms around himself and pulled his knees up to his chest. He wished Honey was still alive. She would have protected him. She would never have let him be taken away from his home, from his dad and his mum. Thinking of his mum made his eyes sting. He blinked, trying to hold back the tears. He just wanted his mum to come through the door and rescue him. He snuggled deeper into the corner, making himself as small as possible. He didn’t even have his own clothes. He’d hated the jumper with a picture of a giraffe on it that his mum had given him for one of his birthday presents. But he wished he had it back now. He felt the tears starting again and squeezed his eyes shut hard. Big boys don’t cry. That’s what his dad always said to him. Big boys don’t cry.

Then he heard a key being fitted into a lock and the creaking sound of an old door opening in the hallway outside. He heard the footsteps again and tried to huddle even closer into the corner. He kept his eyes shut and didn’t even try to stop the tears that were flowing from them now.

The mantra in his head sounding again and again, trying to blot out the cold and the fear and the pain.

‘The wheels on the bus go round and round. Round and round. Round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round. And round and round again.’

*

Delaney picked his way through the rubbish-strewn back garden of Bill Thompson’s house in Hill Road, fifty yards from Carlton Row. The grass, what was left of it, was overgrown and shot through with weeds. There were blue plastic crates dotted throughout, rubble, broken bottles, empty beer cans and a distinctive smell that Delaney couldn’t place. It wasn’t pleasant.

‘What is that smell?’ Delaney asked Sally Cartwright as she followed behind him, stepping carefully over the rubble and garbage.

‘I have no idea, sir,’ she said, with a grimace. ‘But it smells like something’s died.’

Delaney nodded. ‘That’s what I was worried about.’

A short while later and Delaney kicked in the back door of the house. This time it opened easily — the wood was quite rotten in the frame. They stepped into a large tile-flagged kitchen. It reminded Delaney of Graham Harper’s, but bigger. Built sometime in the 1950s, probably, and not been much touched since. The smell was stronger inside the house. A salty, fetid, sickly sweet, rotting smell. There were two shop-size chest freezers running along the wall that faced the sink unit, which was long, made of stainless steel and looked industrial.

And in one corner, leaning casually against a cupboard, was a long-handled axe, the blade stained brown with dried blood. Blood that had pooled into a sticky mass on the floor.

Sally Cartwright slipped on a pair of forensic gloves and opened the first freezer. It took a bit of a wrench. Inside were the frozen, broken remains of crab legs and lobster legs and claws and shells.

Delaney looked at it, puzzled.

‘It’s shickle, sir,’ said the young detective constable.

‘Shickle?’

‘The remains of crabs and lobsters once the meat’s been processed or dressed. All the stuff that’s left over.’

‘So why’s he got a freezer full of it?’

‘It’s what they do, sir. They freeze the live crabs and lobsters first before cooking them and they freeze the shickle, like I say, after they have dressed the meat.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the smell.’

Delaney wrinkled his nose. ‘I can see that.’

‘Then the fishermen chuck the frozen stuff back in the sea the next day, before bringing in that day’s catch.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it, constable.’

‘I have an aunt lives on the North Norfolk coast, sir. Used to have our summer holidays there. Not much I don’t know about Cromer crab.’

Delaney nodded to the next freezer and Sally opened it. It came open a lot easier.

Delaney looked inside. He didn’t speak for a moment and then he said, ‘I guess this one is more my area of expertise.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sally Cartwright.

‘And it looks like we got it wrong again.’

*

Jennifer Hickling took the thick envelope that the manager gave her and put it into her pocket.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a banker’s draft? That is a large amount of cash to be carrying around.’

‘This is fine, thanks,’ said Jennifer, her voice almost betraying her true age.

She was so close now. They both were. To getting away. To making the Waterhill just a bad memory, a bad dream. Time to wake up.

She nodded at the bank manager and hurried out of her office, through the bank proper and out onto the high street.

As Jenny came out of the bank she looked up at the sky. It was starting to grow dark. The streaks of red that had smoked through the sky during the day were thicker now, darker, almost purple. She pulled the zipper on her jacket up to her neck and looked at her watch. She still had time. She decided to forget about the bus and get a taxi — she had the money now, after all, and she didn’t want her sister waiting any longer for her than she had to. Jenny pictured her standing at the school gates with the innocent smile that she herself used to once have. Before her mother was put in prison and she had been placed in the loving care of her uncle.

She walked along the pavement, staring into the distance, craning her neck to see the familiar lit yellow sign showing that a taxi was for hire. She thrust her hands deep in her pockets, one cradling the packet of money, the other curled around the handle of the knife.

She didn’t see the dark-haired older woman walking towards her with hate in her eyes or the man in the black suit behind her with a look in his own eyes every bit as full of passion and purpose.

Jennifer never made it to the school gates.

*

Sally looked out of the car window. It was dark now. She knew it was late in the year. But it shouldn’t be so dark this early. So cold. She tapped on the car’s heating controls and turned the temperature up a degree or two. Beside her Delaney was staring intently through the windscreen, a hundred per cent focused, which was just as well because he was driving with the accelerator floored. She held onto the strap as he swerved in and out of the traffic, overtaking on the left and right, oblivious to the blaring horns and flashing headlights. Delaney never drove if he could help it, which was what was unnerving Sally more than the speed they were travelling at. At least they were in her car, which was fully serviced and maintained. She hated to think what it would have been like if he had been driving his own old and less than fully maintained Saab 900.