Murder Club - Mark Pearson [39]
‘Days before the line-up, weeks?’
‘It was less than an hour.’
Murmurs ran around the court once more, and yet again the judge gave a couple of sharp raps with her gavel. ‘And who showed you this photo of Michael Robinson?’ she asked.
‘He did,’ said Stephanie Hewson and pointed at the visitors’ gallery. ‘Detective Inspector Jack Delaney showed me the photo.’
27.
DI JACK DELANEY took a sip of his pint of Guinness and looked at his watch.
He was sitting at the bar in the Viaduct Tavern on the corner of Newgate Street and Giltspur Street, right opposite the Old Bailey. He took another sip and smiled approvingly at the barmaid; it was a Fuller’s pub and they kept their beer well.
‘So what’s new and different then, Lily?’
‘How do you know my name?’
Delaney pointed to her polo shirt with her name printed on it.
‘Keep forgetting about that. Only started yesterday.’
‘Well, you’re doing a magnificent job!’ He flashed her a smile and she smiled back, a tad embarrassed, and went off to serve another customer.
Delaney put his beer glass neatly on a London Pride coaster and looked around the bar. It wasn’t the first time he had been there and as sure as Shinola wouldn’t be the last, he figured. Fighting for the cause of justice was thirsty work after all, and the tall lady on the dome of the building across the road was famous for turning a blind eye. The Viaduct Tavern had been built in 1869, the selfsame year that Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria had opened the Holborn Viaduct opposite, after which it had been named. The world’s first flyover connecting Holborn to Newgate Street over the River Fleet, which likewise gave its name to the famous street of shame nearby. A river that fittingly enough had become a sewer by the eighteenth century and was now the largest of London’s subterranean rivers. Subsumed as London grew. The Viaduct Tavern was a reverse Tardis of a pub, smaller on the inside than the large, curved frontage on the outside would suggest. But it kept its Victorian origins proudly evident. A square-shaped wooden and canopied bar in the centre of the room, with silvered and gilt mirrors on the wall and original art.
Delaney liked it.
A stool was moved beside him and DS Diane Campbell sat on it. She gestured to the barmaid. ‘Large vodka and slimline tonic, please.’
‘Cheers, Lily,’ said Delaney and smiled at her again.
‘Lily?’ said Diane and looked at him.
‘She’s got her name printed on her polo shirt.’
‘Hard for a man like you not to notice a thing like that.’
‘As a trained and experienced detective, you mean?’
‘I was thinking more of as a committed lecher.’
Delaney held up his hands. ‘I’m a reformed man, Diane. There’s only one woman in my life now. Two, if you count my daughter.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Kate is a lovely woman.’
‘So she is.’
‘And she’s been through enough.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Delaney’s eyes darkened, remembering how close he had been to losing her, and sipped his Guinness.
Diane picked up her change from the barmaid and took a sip of her vodka too.
She looked back up at Delaney for a moment or two and then jerked her head backwards in the direction of the Old Bailey. ‘Well, that certainly didn’t go according to plan.’
‘No. Seems someone had rewritten the script.’
‘A clusterfuck in fact, as our ex-colonial cousins across the pond would have it.’
‘I take it Napier is not pleased?’
‘I would go so far as to say Superintendent George Napier would quite like to have your balls removed with a rusty pair of secateurs and fed to his pet dog.’
‘I didn’t know he had a dog?’
‘Small one.’
‘Figures.’
‘So what Stephanie Hewson said in court – you showed her a photograph of Michael Robinson just prior to the line-up?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘I don’t think so.’
Diane took a contemplative sip of her drink. ‘You don’t think so?’
‘It was a while ago, Diane.’
‘I know. We had to wait until the man’s bones healed.’
‘That was nothing to do with me.’
‘You remember that then?’
‘I had nothing personal against the man.’
‘You had everything personal against any man who hurt women,