Death Row - Mark Pearson [13]
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