Death Row - Mark Pearson [26]
People like Charles Walker. Delaney’s old boss and Kate’s uncle, who was awaiting trial on various counts of murder and the sexual exploitation of children.
People like Peter William Garnier.
Delaney cleared his throat and the governor realised he had been staring. He nodded to the two guards who stood beside him, one of whom took out a key and unlocked the door of the interview room.
‘We have him handcuffed as well as shackled by the legs.’
‘He’s a danger to young children, not to me,’ Delaney replied.
‘It’s standard procedure. Body fluids can be a dangerous weapon in a prison nowadays. It keeps him at a distance.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Let’s just get this over with.’
The governor looked at him again. The curiosity was written plain on his face. ‘And you have no idea why he asked to speak to you?’
‘None at all.’
‘And the woods this morning …?’
‘There was nothing there. It was a wild-goose chase.’
Ron Cornwell gestured to the guard, who opened the door for Delaney to enter the room. ‘The guards will be just outside.’
Delaney ignored him, walking straight into the room and closing the door behind him. At the end of a ten-foot wooden table and facing the door sat Peter Garnier. His magnified, watery eyes, which stared at Delaney as he entered, were as emotionless as those of a fish looking out of a bowl.
Delaney pulled out a chair and sat down, looking back at him. Assessing the man. He’d been forty-two years old when he’d been arrested eighteen years ago, and he looked older than his present sixty years. Frailer, his skin papery so that the pale blue of his blood vessels beneath filtered through. The pale blue of death, Delaney thought, and the sooner that happened the better – although the disease could take up to seven years, so maybe not. He revised his opinion. The man deserved a slow and painful death.
‘I saw you watching me this morning, detective.’
Garnier’s voice wasn’t what Delaney had expected. It was quiet but confident, more powerful than his thin legs and wasted frame would have suggested.
‘That a fact?’ Delaney said.
‘Watching me quite closely, Detective Inspector Delaney. I could feel your eyes upon me and when I looked over into them I saw the darkness of your desire. We have something very much in common, don’t we, Jack?’
Delaney felt his hands forming into a fist underneath the table but he kept his eyes level, his voice steady.
‘The only thing we have in common, you little piece of shite, is that we are both going to die and you’re going to do that a long time before I do.’
The corner of Garnier’s mouth quirked in something resembling a smile.
‘You seem very sure of that fact.’
‘Depend on it, Garnier, I’ll be pissing on your grave sooner or later. What do you want from me?’
Garnier twisted his head to look at the solid wall, as if there were a window there. ‘Things can happen when we least expect them,’ he said. Ignoring Delaney’s question as he looked back at him.
‘You know, Garnier, you open your mouth and I get the smell of raw sewage in my nostrils. What am I doing here?’
‘Do you believe in vengeance, inspector? Do you believe that revenge is a dish best served cold? No, I can see it in your eyes. You don’t wait, do you, Delaney? You’re an Irishman driven by passions you can neither control nor live with. You’re an addict, aren’t you, just like me?’
‘You’re a bug. A cockroach. I’m nothing like you. I’m a human being, Garnier.’
Garnier looked at him for a long moment without replying. ‘You believe in a final judgement, don’t you, Inspector Delaney?’
‘What I believe or don’t believe has got nothing to do with you. Either tell me what you want to tell me or I am leaving. Right now.’
‘What’s the time?’
Delaney glanced