Mark Pearson - Death Row

Ten minutes later and PC Jack Delaney, who had been on patrol with his sergeant Rosemary Dawlish, arrived. They prised open the boot with a metal bar, which they had confiscated fifteen minutes earlier from a bald-headed tattooed man who had been using it to smash up his lover’s car. The woman had been unfaithful to him with a number of people from his football team while he’d been in prison. The man was even then scowling at them through the barred windows of their patrol car, clearly eager to return to secure accommodation.

Inside the boot there was no puppy, but an olive-skinned seven-year-old girl with brown hair and almond-shaped hazel eyes was huddled against the back, looking up at the young constable. Her tired eyes were wide with fear and her tiny hands were clutching a large teddy bear as though it were a powerful talisman that could protect her from all the evils of the world.

Delaney smiled at her reassuringly and stepped aside to let his female sergeant bring her out. But when the woman reached in with arms outstretched the little girl screamed, almost soundlessly, and backed deeper into the boot. She looked at Delaney, almost pleading for his help. The sergeant shrugged and stepped back.

‘Why don’t you give it a try, constable?’ she said.

Delaney stepped up, smiling reassuringly again. The girl scampered forward and climbed into his arms, hugging him around his neck. As Delaney stood up and brought her out a bright light flashed in front of them. The homeowner, still in his dressing gown, fired off another shot before a glare from Delaney made him lower his camera. The first picture, however, was on the front page of almost every paper the following day and the man in the dressing gown, whose breakfast had been so rudely interrupted, made more from the sales of it than he had all year.

The picture of Delaney holding ‘the girl in the boot’, as she became known, was wired around the world and earned him no small amount of ribbing from his colleagues. But Delaney didn’t care: that moment, holding the small, vulnerable, terrified girl, now safe in his arms, was exactly why he had joined the police force in the first place.

Later that day, the real horror of what might have been struck home to him as he stood guard watching as a SOCO team led by CID went through Garnier’s house. In the basement they found three boxes of photographs. All children. They found videos and Super-8 films. Home-made. In a locked cupboard they found several items of clothing. Children’s clothing. And they found a cardigan that had once belonged to Samuel Ramirez, the cardigan he had been wearing two years previously on the day he was abducted from Carlton Row.

Later they would find the bodies of six children aged between six and ten buried in the ground underneath his garden shed. None of them would prove to be either Samuel Ramirez or Alice Peters.

When Garnier awoke in prison the next day after being assaulted on the common he was arrested and moved to a secure unit. He would never enjoy life as a free man again.

The same day that Peter Garnier was arrested Police Constable Jack Delaney put in his application to join CID.

In the thirteen years since his arrest Peter Garnier had refused ever to disclose where the missing children were or where the girl in the boot had come from.

Five months ago he had converted to Catholicism.

Three months ago he had been diagnosed with progressive supernuclear palsy. A disease which over time could rob a person of the ability to walk, talk, feed themselves or communicate with the world around them. And yet their brain would remain alert.

Fourteen days ago he had agreed to tell the police where the children’s bodies were buried.

*

Delaney scratched another match to light a cigarette and watched as a team of forensic anthropologists excavated the ground that Garnier, after twenty minutes of deliberation, had indicated to be the place where the bodies of the murdered children were buried. Garnier himself was sitting on a fallen tree trunk some twenty yards away. His fishlike eyes watching dispassionately, glancing across occasionally at Delaney and Sally Cartwright. But no emotion showed on his face.

‘Does he know who you are?’

Delaney shrugged. ‘I doubt it.’

‘What happened to the girl you found alive?’

Delaney took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘We never found her mother or father. No relatives at all ever came forward and that degenerate slime refused to say where he had taken her from.’

‘Poor thing.’

‘She didn’t speak for six months and when she did it was in halting English.’

‘Where was she from?’

‘Eastern Europe somewhere. Originally, anyway.’

‘And where is she now?’

Delaney smiled at her. ‘Safe.’

Sally raised an eyebrow. ‘Wherever that may be nowadays.’

Delaney ground the half-smoked cigarette under his heel. ‘True.’

Diane Campbell came storming up, her eyes glittering with anger. ‘Give us one of those, Jack!’

Delaney fished out his cigarette packet again and handed her one. Then he stuck another in his mouth, smiling wryly. ‘I guess I picked the wrong day to give up smoking.’

Diane flicked her Zippo lighter under his cigarette. ‘Jack, you picked the wrong fucking life!’

Delaney nodded towards Garnier. ‘Anything?’

Diane Campbell shook her head derisively. ‘He’s just pulling on our chain. The sick bastard. He’s jerking us around — depend on it.’

‘Why now, though?’ Sally asked. ‘After all this time.’

Diane shot her a look. ‘The guy rapes and strangles young children. You want to try climbing in his shit-soup of a brain and make sense of what motivates him?’

Sally shrugged, conceding the point. ‘I guess not.’

Diane blew out another angry breath of smoke. ‘Who the fuck knows? Maybe he’s developed a conscience.’

‘Yeah, and maybe you’ve grown a pair of balls, Diane,’ said Delaney.

Diane looked back at him coolly. ‘Remember I’m still your boss, cowboy.’

Delaney considered it for a moment. ‘That’s right … you’ve always had balls.’

His mobile phone rang, muffled in his jacket pocket. Delaney took it out, looked at the caller ID and walked away to answer it, his voice barely more than a whisper.

‘Hi, Mary. How is she?’

He nodded, listening. ‘Has she remembered anything else …?’ Delaney put his other arm out and leaned against a tree. ‘No, there’s nothing here. I think he’s just playing mind games with us.’

A loud commotion sounded behind him and he looked across as a couple of uniforms started shouting and running over with their arms outspread. Armed officers formed a protective group around Garnier as Melanie Jones and her cameraman came striding into the clearing, the bright light mounted on top of the video camera causing Peter Garnier to blink and shield his eyes.

Delaney cursed under his breath. ‘Look, Mary. I’ve got to go. Something’s come up. Tell her that I’ll be round later to see you both.’

He closed the phone and headed back towards the group, his foot sliding a little in the wet mud and leaves beneath so that he stumbled forward and onto one knee. As he did so a shot rang out, cracking through the air like a shin bone being snapped. Ahead of him Delaney could see the cameraman who had been pointing the camera directly at him stagger backwards as though he’d been punched in the chest and then fall over, his camera crashing to the ground, and the only sound left ringing in the air was that of Melanie Jones screaming.

Delaney clambered back to his feet as Diane knelt down to put her hand on the fallen man’s neck.

‘Is he alive?’ Melanie asked in a horrified whisper, her face now as pale as a dead fish as she cowered on the ground, her hands over her head as though they could protect her.