Death Row - Mark Pearson [49]
‘Sir?’
‘I’m starving and that pub used to do the best seafood platter south of my Aunty Noreen’s.’
‘Oh yeah, and where does Aunty Noreen live?’
‘Clacton.’
Sally pulled the car to a stop outside the pub. It didn’t look as though people were fighting for parking places.
‘I didn’t have you down as a fisherman’s platter kind of guy, sir,’ she said as she locked the car door and walked with Delaney to the pub’s entrance.
‘I was born by the sea, Sally. I was breathing ozone before I was breathing oxygen. It’s in my blood – we Delaneys come from a long line of fishermen.’
‘You didn’t fancy that yourself, then?’
‘Not really, constable. I get seasick in a paddling pond.’
He pushed the door open and stepped inside, steering around a couple of packing crates placed beside the wall. He hadn’t been there in fifteen years and the place didn’t seem to have changed much in that time. It was dirtier, emptier, more down at heel than he remembered, was all. The photos on the wall by the bar were dustier than he remembered, and the mullet-haired men in them might well all have been dead for all he knew. Maybe it was just him. Maybe moving to Belsize Park had changed him. He looked down at the carpet that didn’t look like it had been cleaned in over five years and thought again.
There weren’t many punters in. An Indian couple, somewhere in their fifties, Delaney reckoned, sat by the window. The man had a turban on his head and a thick white beard, the woman was dressed in a sari and looked extremely bored. She looked across at Sally and Delaney and then turned her dead-eyed gaze back to her lap. The bearded man didn’t even look up and continued to read a copy of The Times. Two other men, one black, one Caucasian, were sitting at separate tables, and another solitary white man was perched on a stool at a corner of the bar. They were all nursing pints and all of them were past retirement age, even allowing for the plans to keep working men shackled for longer in life.
There was only one bar in the room. It was opposite the door and ran the length of the room. The serving hatch was open and as they approached the bar Delaney could see a tall man emerging from the steps to the cellar with a large cardboard box in his arms. He was in his thirties, had red hair and freckled arms, and was about three stone overweight.
‘Be with you in a minute,’ he grunted and carried the box over to the door where the others were already stacked.
‘You got a menu?’ Sally asked.
The red-haired man turned round and pointed to a basket with four filled rolls in it. ‘Yeah. Full à la carte. Knock yourself out.’
Delaney looked at the basket. ‘You’ve got your choice of cheese or cheese and onion, Sally. Or cheese,’ he said dryly.
Sally looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘We should have gone to your Aunty Noreen’s,’ she said.
‘What can I get you to drink?’ the barman asked, closing the serving hatch behind him and coming back round the bar.
Delaney scanned the beer engines and asked, without any real hope, ‘You got any Guinness?’
‘No. Just what you see on the taps. And not even that when it runs out.’
‘What’s happening then?’
‘We’re closing down. Middle of next week.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Your interpersonal customer skills a bit too full of metropolitan charm for the area, are they?’
The barman put his arms on the counter. He was carrying weight but there was muscle behind it and he looked like a man used to violence. ‘Are you looking for trouble?’ he said.
Delaney pointed at one of the beer pumps. ‘No, I’m looking for a pint and a half of that piss that passes for beer, and I’ll take two cheese rolls with them.’
‘I don’t think so, sunshine …’
Delaney pulled out his warrant card and smiled. ‘Think again, then.’
The barman scowled. ‘I had you down as journalists.’
‘A lot of people make that mistake, don’t they, Sally? It’s the air of sophistication we exude.’
The barman grunted again – Delaney guessed he didn’t have much call for conversation – and poured