Death Row - Mark Pearson [30]
Bennett stood there a moment or two, watching after them thoughtfully. Then he crushed the plastic beaker tightly in his fist and threw it into the bin.
*
Any copper knows that the first forty-eight hours of an investigation into a murder are critical. And the same applies to an abduction. Perhaps more so, as the longer the investigation continues the higher the probability that the child will not be returned home unhurt. Sexual predators who prey on children act on impulses that they cannot control. Some don’t wish to control them, but when the moment has passed, when their actions have brought them relief from their uncontrollable urges, they are left with the child. And the child is evidence. Evidence that can bring the howling pack right to their very door. For some it is not about the killing. It’s just evidence disposal. For other people the killing is very much a part of it. People like Peter Garnier.
Jack Delaney knew that better than most. There was a babble of concerned chatter around him in the briefing room that morning, but he wasn’t listening to it. Tuning it out like so much white noise. He knew all about sexual predators and the morning’s events had sent him back to places that he had never wished to revisit. His own daughter, Siobhan, had been taken by the worst kind of sexual predator. Kate Walker’s uncle, a man who not only treated children as objects for his foul lusts, he treated them as a commodity, making films and distributing them to the worst sort of deviants like himself, who somehow seemed to recognise each other and form networks. Like the nursery-school club that formed on Facebook and distributed images between themselves up and down the country. Delaney couldn’t even begin to imagine how these people did it, how they recognised their own types and made contact with each other. And, like them, Kate’s uncle had taken the rape of children and made it a commodity. But he had also, like Garnier, taken it further and made murder part of the sick mix. Had it not been for Kate’s intervention, putting her own life at risk, Delaney shuddered to think what would have become of his own precious daughter. He certainly hadn’t been able to protect her. His vision was clouded with guilt, with self-loathing, with a self-pity that made him a shambles of a father, a shambles of a man. He looked up from the printed report he was reading as Kate came into the room and felt a small flashback of fear as he read the concern in her eyes. The human form was such a delicate thing, such a fragile vessel. His gaze dropped to her stomach; her jacket was buttoned and he knew she wasn’t showing yet, but he still felt he could see the signs. Such a soft, vulnerable, defenceless form for such precious cargo. He met her gaze again and knew that his heart would break if anything ever happened to her and to the child she was carrying. His hand clenched inadvertently, crumpling the paper he was holding.
‘Is it bad?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, Kate.’
The hubbub died as someone turned the volume up on the television in the corner of the room and Melanie Jones’s face filled the screen.
‘Breaking news just in. In another bizarre twist in the Peter Garnier story, police sources have confirmed that a young child has gone missing from a house only a few doors away from where two children were abducted by Garnier in 1995. DNA traces linked Garnier to their abduction and murder and although he has confessed to it he has never revealed where their bodies are buried. A further six children’s bodies were discovered buried under his garden shed in 1997 but the mystery of where the remaining bodies are has never been resolved. Dramatically, two weeks ago Peter Garnier broke his vow of silence and promised to lead the police to the two children’s burial ground. This morning, in a covert operation that myself and Sky News had access to …’
Delaney snorted, shaking his head with disgust.
‘… Peter Garnier led a group of detectives to Mad Bess Woods, a wooded conservation area outside Ruislip. No bodies