Mark Pearson - Death Row

‘Doctors. What do they know?’

‘They know what an X-ray is. And they know how to read them. What are you trying to do, kill yourself?’

‘Well, it would make you happy, wouldn’t it?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad!’

‘And your husband. Maybe he wouldn’t have to be away from home so much. Sell the house and he could cut back on all those trips to the Continent. Maybe sell the truck and open a little café. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘What I want has got nothing to do with it.’

‘See me in my grave and you’d be frying eggs and flipping bacon before the sod’s even settled.’ Graham let out another hacking cough.

Rosemary shook her head as she crossed to the wall and turned the dial on the thermostat up. ‘Daft old sod, more like.’ She turned to her son. ‘Sit quietly on the couch and Grandpa will let you watch your cartoons in a minute.’

The boy hopped up on the sofa, crossing his arms resentfully. ‘I could have just gone to Johnny’s.’

‘Stop looking like that,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘I told you it’s too early. I’ll be back by eleven and you can see him then.’ She picked up the ashtray from the side table and emptied it into the fireplace that had been set but not lit. ‘And what would happen if you fell asleep and dropped a cigarette?’ she snapped at her father. ‘Do you want the whole house to go up in flames with you in it?’

Graham shared a sympathetic look with his grandson. ‘We’re all going to hell. It’s just a question of when.’

Rosemary buttoned up her coat. ‘Why don’t you take him down to the allotment if the weather improves? But make him wear his jumper — it’s cold out!’

‘Maybe.’

‘Though why you have still got it is beyond me. You don’t grow anything on it any more.’

‘I keep it neat, don’t I?’

‘Well, if it gets you out in the fresh air it can’t hurt, I suppose.’

‘It’s what the doctors said.’

‘If it’s not cold or raining is what they said! And just so long as you don’t just sit in that filthy shed smoking your lungs to ruination.’ Rosemary picked up his packet of cigarettes and put them in her pocket. ‘Why don’t I take these with me, just to be sure?’

She turned to the TV as the news came back on. A picture of Peter Garnier filled the screen and Rosemary shuddered. ‘Can’t you turn that over? Just the thought of it makes my blood run cold.’ She looked over at her son and back at her dad. ‘Put the cartoons on for him.’

Graham Harper fumbled the remote control into his hand and changed the channel.

‘That’s better. I’ll be back for eleven — be good for your granddad, Archie.’

Archie nodded but didn’t turn back, his attention now fixed on the television screen, where futuristic vehicles were transforming themselves into different shapes.

Rosemary sketched a wave in the air and left.

Graham watched her go, sighing resignedly, and looked across at his grandson, his eyes a little wet now. He coughed again, hacking so hard that it hurt his ribs as though they were fractured. He held his hand to his lips and coughed again. Then he looked at his palm, expecting to see blood. He wiped the back of his twisted crablike hand across his damp eyes and fumbled into his other pocket to bring out another pack of smokes.

‘Shit!’ he said as he took out the last remaining cigarette and crumpled the packet. Then he put the cigarette between his lips and scowled at the TV. ‘Shit it all.’

*

About seventeen miles west of where Melanie Jones and her cameraman were firing up the engine of their car was a stretch of woodland called Mad Bess Woods that lay between the towns of Ruislip and Northwood. Covering some 188 acres it had been compulsorily purchased by the local council from a highly disgruntled Sir Howard Stranson Button in 1936. It had been part of the new Green Belt initiative to contain the creeping urbanisation from London and so protect the countryside. And it worked, to some extent. But while the Green Belt might well have held back housing development it was no protection against the wicked desires of men or the foul acts they committed in pursuit of satisfying them. Some said that the Mad Bess of the wood’s name was the ghost of a headless horse-woman, some said she was a lunatic wife of a gamekeeper. The truth was that no one knew for certain. But Jack Delaney knew one thing very much for certain. There was a presence of pure evil in the air that morning, permeating the clearing in the heart of the woods like a sulphurous mist. He remembered that John Brill, a fifteen-year-old boy, had been murdered in 1837 just twenty yards from where Delaney now stood. Murdered for collaborating with the police, ironically enough, and the investigation into his killing had been the first time that Scotland Yard had ever sent an officer to assist a murder enquiry. Delaney thrust cold hands deep into his jacket pockets and shivered slightly. He knew that the palpable sense of evil in the air had nothing to do with the unquiet dead … but everything to do with a living man.

Peter Garnier.

*

Delaney pulled out his packet of Marlboros and snapped one into his mouth. He took it out, deliberated for a second, then put it back in his mouth and fumbled in his pockets for a box of matches. Sally watched amused as he lit the cigarette, seeing his frowning expression soften somewhat as he drew the smoke deep into his lungs.

‘I thought you were giving up, sir?’

Delaney grunted. ‘Thinking of giving up. I’m not a man to rush into things, Sally.’

Sally lifted an eyebrow. ‘That’s right, sir. You look up the word “cautious” in the dictionary and sure enough there’s Detective Inspector Jack Delaney’s photo right there underneath it.’

Delaney nodded. ‘And you look up the words “degenerate scum” and that dead man walking is right there too.’ He gestured with his cigarette. ‘Just the sight of him makes my skin crawl.’

Sally looked across to a clearing where a small army of police — uniformed, detectives, armed officers — stood by watching as Diane Campbell led a slight manacled man, with grey hair and thin stooped shoulders, across the wet ground. He was dressed in prison uniform and had wire-framed spectacles that made his pale blue eyes look larger than they were, like fish eyes. He glanced across at Delaney as if he had heard what he’d said, looking at him for a long unblinking moment. A shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds made his spectacles shine and then with a quick reptilian flick of his head he looked down at the ground again. Scanning it. Remembering. Stirring the leaves with the toe of his shoe as though stirring his memories. His thin lips curving into something resembling a smile as his foot moved back and forth and the leaves rustled.

Peter Garnier.

*

In the summer of 1995 Delaney was just a few years out of Hendon, a foot soldier in uniform working at the Wealdstone police station near Harrow on the Hill. Practically every other lamp-post that he passed as he walked had on it a picture of the two children who had gone missing.

Samuel Ramirez was just ten days away from his tenth birthday. He lived next door to a corner shop in Carlton Row, a little side street a mile or so away from the main shopping centre of Harrow. It was within walking distance of a large bingo hall that had once been a cinema that his mother went to every Friday night. And every Friday night, she brought him back fish and chips from the shop next door to it.

But at six-forty-five on this particular Friday night in mid-August his mother Laura Ramirez, a young widow and a nurse of English/Spanish descent, had sent him out to buy a fresh box of eggs, since she was making him pancakes for his tea. His favourite sort, with maple syrup, lemon juice and ice cream. He had passed his cycling proficiency test that day and his proud mother declared that he deserved a special treat because of it. Samuel Ramirez was wearing white shorts, a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, a lime-green cardigan and a Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist. It was a thing he treasured because it was the last present that his father had given him before dying six months earlier from a brain embolism. He’d sit and watch the gloved hands telling him the time and he liked to think it was Mickey waving directly at him. Sometimes he’d even wave back.