Death Row - Mark Pearson [88]
‘Spare some tin for a cup of tea?’ Arnold Fraser said.
The young woman rustled in her pocket and pulled out some notes.
‘I haven’t got any change,’ she said apologetically.
‘That’s all right, love,’ the ex-soldier said. Then he coughed, his whole body shaking because he couldn’t control the convulsion. He felt a note being pressed into his hand.
‘Get yourself a six-pack.’
Arnold’s coughing subsided and he looked up to say thank you. But Jennifer Hickling didn’t hear him – she had already hurried away, her fingers curling comfortably again around the handle of the knife that she had stashed in her jacket pocket. She didn’t notice that the man’s hacking coughing had started up again and was fading away in the distance as she strode up the road. Jennifer Hickling had business to attend to.
*
Roger Yates sat on the bottom of the staircase in his hall. His head propped in his hands. Lost in dark thoughts.
He jumped as a pounding came on the door, his heart leaping in his chest like a speared salmon on a gaff. He looked up, his eyes wide. The pounding came again and, resigned, he stood up and crossed the hallway to open the door. His expression relaxed a little. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.
Delaney put one hand on Yates’s chest and pushed him backwards into the hall, so hard that he almost fell over.
Delaney watched him stumble, picturing him sprawling to smash his head on the cold tiled marble floor. But Yates regained his balance, if not his composure. He was an attractive man, a successful businessman. Delaney knew that Yates was used to getting his way in a corporate world that was not famous for subtle niceties. But he also knew that Yates had no misunderstandings about the kind of violence that Delaney was capable of and that was why he was a little puzzled not to see more fear in the man’s eyes. Delaney knew one thing for certain: all bullies were cowards. And the men who beat up women were the worst kind of cowards of all. Yates stood up, an arrogant cockiness to him once more as he walked back towards Delaney.
‘I’m sure if we can just talk about this—’
But Delaney interrupted him again. This time by grabbing him round the throat with his left hand and propelling him backwards to smash him up against the wall at the foot of his stairs. A portrait of himself hung beside him, smiling and holding up a gold trophy. His smile was in stark contrast to the genuinely scared face he now presented to the world.
‘I don’t know what she has told you but—’
‘Just shut it, Yates!’ Delaney cut him short. He could feel the blood roaring in his veins now, felt the heat of it suffusing his whole body. It was like a drug, pure adrenalin pumping round his system so that the world around him dissolved to a single point of focus.
‘I know you fucked her, Jack.’
‘What?’ Delaney was taken aback.
‘Wendy. You fucked her and I knew about it.’
Delaney loosened his hand and Yates leaned back against the wall, his breathing ragged, his eyes wild. ‘And that gives you the right to hit her, does it?’
‘I slapped her once. It was an accident.’
‘Accident, right!’
‘You back on your white horse, Jack? Is that it? Riding to the rescue of the innocent maiden, carrying her back to your castle?