Death Row - Mark Pearson [77]
‘Could be.’
‘I’ll process it back at the factory. And well done, by the way.’
‘What for?’
‘For the way you tackled that woman. Jonah Lumu has got nothing on you.’
‘Just don’t mention it to Jack.’
Bennett flicked her a mock salute.
Across the road, and unobserved by either of them, a grey-haired man in a leather bomber jacket, sitting in the back of a Lexus with dark-tinted windows held up an iPhone and pointed it at Kate and Bennett.
He wasn’t making a call.
Overhead, a low rumbling roll of thunder sounded in the distance, and the rain that had been threatening to pour out of the swollen sky at any minute began to fall in earnest.
*
Delaney got out of the passenger side of Sally’s car, zipped up his leather jacket and put a police baseball cap on his head before throwing another one across to his sergeant.
‘Where did you get these, sir?’
‘I nicked them. Don’t tell Napier, he’d probably fire me for it.’
Sally chuckled as they walked away from the parked car towards the footpath some fifty or so yards ahead. A couple of police cars were blocking the entrance to the allotment, their blue lights flashing. A pair of soaked-looking uniforms were guarding the entrance.
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Sally. ‘Not with all this going on. I think he can smell promotion and you’ll be at the heart of it.’
Delaney shook his head angrily. ‘I’m not at the heart of anything, Sally. Trust me, whatever is going on here is nothing to do with me. I didn’t even find that girl all those years ago – a bleeding traffic warden did!’
‘Yeah, but it was your picture in the papers, sir.’
‘Don’t remind me, constable.’
‘And you are going to find the missing boy. I know you are.’
‘Right.’
‘You promised Gloria you would.’
Delaney nodded at the two uniforms as they started along the footpath leading down to the bridge but he didn’t reply to Sally Cartwright. Across the track a wall of trees shielded the view of the allotment but bright lights were shining through and Delaney could make out the white-suited shapes of scene-of-crime officers as they went about processing the site.
At the other end of the bridge they clattered down the iron stairs and turned left where the allotments started. The ground underfoot was wet and slippery now, the heavy rain turning the once hard-packed earth boglike. They walked a few yards further on to where SOCO were erecting, as quickly as they could, a protective marquee around a large green-coloured tent that had already been set up in the middle of Graham Harper’s allotment.
DI Duncton ducked out of the tent as Delaney and Sally approached, his tall sergeant appearing behind him. Duncton’s face had the pale cast of a man who had seen things he’d rather not have looked at, and his breathing was a little ragged.
‘You still reckon it’s not devil worshippers?’ he asked Delaney as the Irishman crouched down and looked in the tent himself.
The naked body of a woman had been spread out in cruciform fashion. Large nails had been hammered through her hands and feet to fix her to the ground. She was on her back. Her breasts were flaccid, her pubic hair grey – and she was missing her head.
‘Maureen Gallagher,’ said Delaney as he stood up again outside the tent.
‘We certainly hope so,’ replied Sergeant Emma Halliday, smiling grimly. ‘Otherwise we have a head with a missing body somewhere and a body with a missing head somewhere else.’
‘Who put the tent up?’ asked Sally.
Duncton moved aside as the SOCO photographer and videographer turned on some bright lights and moved in to record the scene. ‘It was already here. We assume it was the killer. That’s why the body wasn’t discovered until now. The old man found her.’ Duncton nodded across to Graham Harper, who was standing on the stoop of his shed with a blanket around his shoulders, watching horrified as his onetime haven of solitude was overrun with men in uniforms and white plastic jumpsuits yet again.
*
Kate smiled and looked up at the clock. It was three o’clock in the afternoon now and already it was very dark outside. The black