Death Row Read online

  ‘The emerald isle?’ said Siobhan, smiling delightedly once more.

  ‘Ireland!’ said Delaney, with an emphatic nod. ‘And the wind danced downwards, swirling slower and slower, and laid the rose to rest in the rich and fertile soil below, the sea ahead of her and the rolling hills behind, in a spot that was later to be called Cork in a nook by the sea.’

  ‘Ballydehob?’

  ‘No, darling. In a place that was to be called Cunnamore.’

  ‘Where Mummy came from?’

  ‘She did indeed, sweetheart.’

  ‘And roses were her favourite flower.’

  ‘So they were.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s a good story.’

  Delaney kissed his daughter on the forehead and set her on her feet. ‘Time to get you home for bed. And I have to get to bed myself, pipkin – got an early start in the morning.’

  He picked up her coat, which was hanging on the back of one of the mismatched penny chairs he had bought at auction, and helped her shrug into it.

  Wendy looked at him, suddenly very serious. ‘Tomorrow morning, Jack, are you involved in the—’

  Delaney shot her a warning look to interrupt her. ‘Nothing she needs to know about.’

  ‘What don’t I need to know about?’ Siobhan asked.

  Delaney grinned as he buttoned up her coat. ‘The price of snowshoes in the Sahara.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just work stuff, darling. Boring old work. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘When can I stay over again, then?’

  ‘Like I say, soon. I promise.’

  ‘You shouldn’t promise things unless you mean it.’

  ‘I know.’

  She pointed a finger at him sternly. ‘It’s a sin!’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die, should I ever tell a lie.’ He made a crossing gesture over his heart.

  Siobhan grinned. ‘You’ll keep your promise, then.’

  ‘I always do, sweetheart.’

  ‘Come on then, mischief, let’s get you home and let your daddy get some sleep,’ said Wendy as she led Siobhan to the kitchen door leading to the garage and the street off from it. Delaney noticed her wincing a little as she walked, holding her left hand to her side. It wasn’t so long since Wendy had been attacked by Kate Walker’s degenerate uncle. Attacked in her own house, stabbed and locked in an under-stairs cupboard and left to die. Attacked because she was looking after Delaney’s daughter and Jack had got in the evil bastard’s way.

  Delaney put his hand on Wendy’s arm as she opened the door. ‘Are you really doing okay, Wendy?’

  She smiled, and his heart fluttered again as he could see his dead wife’s lovely smile echoed in it. ‘I’m mending, Jack. It’s what we have to do, isn’t it?’

  Delaney nodded, leaned in to kiss her on the cheek and hugged her – carefully though, as if she were made of tissue paper. ‘Come and see us soon.’

  Delaney closed the door and walked up the steps back into the kitchen. He looked at his watch and then went into the lounge. A fire was roaring in the clearview log-burner that Kate had insisted he buy, the dancing flames clearly visible through the glass screen, but the house still felt colder somehow, much colder now that his daughter and Wendy had left.

  He pulled out his mobile phone, flipped it in his hand a few times and then sighed and punched in some numbers. After a few rings the familiar smoky voice answered.

  ‘Speak to me.’

  ‘Hi. It’s Jack.’

  ‘Hey, cowboy, what can I do for you?’

  Delaney looked at his watch again. ‘Thought it might be time for another go.’

  ‘You going to pay me this time?’

  Delaney smiled. ‘I’m certain sure we can come to some sort of arrangement.’

  ‘When do you want it?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘You better get your riding boots on and saddle up, then, cowboy.’

  ‘Oh, and one last thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Delaney’s voice was suddenly all business. ‘You don’t tell anybody about our little arrangement.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I mean it, Stella, nobody! None of your friends, none of your colleagues.’

  ‘You got it, Jack.’

  ‘Good. I’ll see you in twenty.’

  He closed the phone and looked at the fire, the reflection of the flames dancing in his eyes like tiny elementals.

  *

  Roger Yates was a man accustomed to getting his own way. Since childhood he had lived a privileged life and whereas others might have felt some guilt in being born with a silver spoon in their mouths, the idea never even once crossed his mind, certainly not at boarding school and not even at university when he’d been forced to rub shoulders with people from all manner of backgrounds. He wasn’t a snob, though – he didn’t look down on poorer people, just didn’t allow their worries to trouble him. In fact, he had shagged quite a lot of working-class women at university. He had found their vulgarity of expression in times of intimacy extremely arousing, had encouraged it, in fact, directing their outbursts like Mike Leigh would direct an improvisation in one of his working-class films that his wife seemed to enjoy so much, although he saw little point in them himself. If you wanted to look at drab lives, pop down the laundromat or listen to the inane conversation between people on a London bus. So Roger Yates didn’t bother with the poor people. There are those who have and those who have not. That is a simple fact of life.

  Or it was.

  Roger was pacing in the long hall, gripping his mobile phone hard in his right hand as he held it to his ear. Whisky sloshing in a glass held in his left. A flush was rising in his face and he loosened his collar. ‘Everything is in hand, trust me on that,’ he said, as stridently as he could manage. ‘And I’ll take care of him as well, believe me. He won’t be a problem for much longer.’ He loosened his collar a little more, then took a swallow from his glass. ‘Like I said, there really is no cause for concern.’

  He started as the door opened and Siobhan burst into the hallway, singing.

  ‘One two three, my granny caught a flea, she roasted it and toasted it and had it for her tea.’

  ‘Can you keep the bloody noise down!’ Yates shouted to Wendy as she followed her niece into the house.

  ‘Yeah, all right, Alex Ferguson, wind your neck in,’ Wendy snapped back, far from impressed.

  ‘I’m on the telephone here – it’s business!’

  ‘Go on upstairs; I’ll be up in a minute,’ Wendy said to Siobhan, who pulled a guilty little grin and scampered up the stairs, singing again quietly when she reached the last step. Wendy took off her coat and hung it on the coat-stand that stood by the large Victorian door of their hallway. She looked across, concerned, at her husband as he finished his call.

  ‘Like I say, it’s all in hand, you have my word on it.’ He nodded. ‘Okay, goodbye.’ And he hung up.

  ‘What’s up, Roger? This isn’t like you.’

  Roger spun round and glared at her, holding his glass of Scotch forward.

  ‘You want to know what’s wrong? You’re what’s wrong, Wendy! You and that niece of yours upstairs, and particularly that black bog Irish brother-in-law of yours! That’s what’s wrong!’

  ‘Roger, what are you talking about?’ Wendy asked, perplexed and not a little worried for him.

  Yates gestured with his free hand, sweeping it around. ‘All this, Wendy. That’s what I’m talking about. Paying for all this. I’m talking about my work.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with—’

  ‘Nothing. All right? Nothing. Forget I ever said anything.’ He took another gulp of his whisky and choked a little.

  ‘Roger.’

  ‘No.’ Yates waved a finger at her. ‘I’m going to read my book.’

  He walked into the downstairs study to the right and slammed the door behind him.

  Wendy stood looking at the door, bemused, for a moment or t
wo and then sighed. ‘Hi, honey,’ she said. ‘I’m home.’

  *

  ‘Puta!’

  Kate Walker held out her hand and smiled disarmingly; the man was speaking in Spanish but she knew the language very well herself. Her fingers were splayed and stiff, warning the wiry and red-faced Mexican standing in front of her to keep his distance. He was smaller than her, five foot six, somewhere in his early thirties, she figured, and he was already at simmering point, ready to boil over again. Kate did her best to keep her voice level, trying to pacify him.

  ‘Just stay calm, and keep your distance – let’s not make matters any worse for you.’ She replied to him in his own language.

  Not that he had much room to manoeuvre. The small bedsit with kitchen off was probably no more than ten metres square in total. It housed a bed, a sofa, an old television and a battered wardrobe with peeling blue vinyl panels on the door.

  ‘Yeah, calm it down, Chico.’ Bob Wilkinson stepped up beside Kate, not really helping the situation.

  ‘And fuck you too, you son of a bitch.’

  ‘What did he say to me?’ the sergeant asked Kate.

  Kate crossed to the woman sitting on the threadbare sofa. She had her head in her hands and was bent forward at the waist. Long luxurious dark curls spilling around her hands to the floor, she was taking in gulping breaths of air and sobbing. Kate guessed her to be somewhere in her mid-twenties, with beautifully unblemished ivory skin and a delicate, elegant bone structure. For some reason she couldn’t quite place, the woman reminded Kate of some delicate exotic bird. She looked back up at Bob. ‘He’s commenting on modern policing techniques,’ she said.

  ‘He can comment on my boot up his arse he doesn’t watch himself.’

  The Mexican snarled challengingly at Bob. He didn’t speak English but he could recognise the tone in his words. ‘You old man,’ he spat in guttural Spanish. ‘Save your brave words for your bitch of a whore, you pussy!’

  Kate put a reassuring hand on the woman’s knee. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. We don’t need you here. Please to go.’ The woman half spoke, half sobbed the words, her tiny hands still covering her face.

  Kate spoke soothingly. ‘We received complaints. Fighting. Shouting. A woman screaming. Your neigh-bours called us. They were scared for you. We want to help.’

  ‘Please, you go now.’

  Kate gently lifted the woman’s hands away. The woman was younger than she’d first guessed, beauty still there somewhere in the frightened, despairing eyes and despite the ugly bruise that marred the right side of her face with puffy swollen tissue. Kate looked at her for a moment, the anger inside her simmering. ‘Did he do this to you?’

  ‘No. I tripped up. I hit my head on the door.’

  Kate looked across at the door to the small room. There was no handle, just a simple Yale lock. Put your key in and push. She already knew the woman was lying but that confirmed it for her – you couldn’t get the kind of injury she had sustained from a flat door. The skull was designed that way to protect the eyes. She took the woman’s hand. ‘We can help you, Maria. We can protect you.’

  The woman’s eyes flicked nervously to her boyfriend and she shook her head. ‘I hit the door, is all. These neighbours, they should mind their own businesses.’

  ‘You heard her, puta! Time for you to leave.’

  Kate sighed and stood up. It wasn’t the first time she had reached this kind of impasse in a domestic-abuse situation. She was getting pretty sick and tired of not being able to help people because they weren’t able to help themselves. A vicious circle of fear, abuse and misery that all to often ended in tragedy, people only coming to their senses when all reason had been knocked out of them, and by then it was too late. She took a business card from her pocket and gave it to the woman. ‘Come and see me in the surgery tomorrow. I’ll treat you for that eye.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ The woman held the card out but Kate shook her head.

  ‘You keep it. Call me any time you need anything. Any time.’

  ‘You heard her – she don’t need your fucking card. What are you, some pussy-eating lesbian ain’t got no man to do her right? Maybe you should come back one night, just you and me. I’ll sort you out.’

  Kate turned round and looked at the Mexican stepping closer, watching his nostrils flare, watching the jaunty jut of his chin, the cockerel breath swelling his thin chest. She knew exactly what he was capable of, exactly what would happen when she left, and she pretty much decided there and then that this was one time she wouldn’t walk away. She looked at the man and spat on the floor. ‘What are you, some homo with balls the size of peanuts? You think you’re a man hitting a woman, I think you’re a faggot pansy who can’t get it up and takes it out on her because you know what you really are and despise yourself for it.’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘I called you a cock-sucking faggot.’

  And the Mexican lunged forward, his fist flying towards Kate’s face. Time slowed for her. She watched the punch coming and flicked his arm away at the wrist with an open left palm. As it passed she drove her right fist hard into his sternum. Years spent keeping fit with karate paying off in spades. The man grunted and fell to his knees, his face beetroot-red now as he struggled to draw breath, his eyes flicking with shock and panic. Kate had to fight really hard to suppress the urge to kick his head and really hurt him. She took a deep breath and calmed herself. She turned and nodded at Bob Wilkinson. ‘He just attacked an officer of the law. That’s an offence, isn’t it?’

  Bob grinned back. ‘It is in my book. What did you say to him?’

  ‘I was just asking him what he recommended on the menu in the restaurant he works at. Thinking about picking up some takeaway. I might have pronounced a word wrong. It’s been a long time since I vacationed in Spain.’ Kate smiled innocently.

  Bob nodded dryly. ‘These Latin types, they sure do fly off the handle sometimes.’

  ‘It seems so. It’s the climate, no doubt. Maybe the chillies?’

  Bob Wilkinson pulled out his radio ‘I’ll call for backup.’

  As the sergeant moved to the door and put the call through, Kate turned back to the woman, who was still holding her card, clutched hard in her small fist – crumpling it, but not wanting to let it go. ‘Come in and see me tomorrow. He’s not going to be doing anything for a while.’

  The man on the floor was making a whistling sound now as he finally managed to coax some air painfully in and out of his lungs. His hand was clutched to his stomach as he rocked back and forth on his knees, like one of the faithful called to prayer, and a low mewing groan could be heard under his rasping breath. Bob walked back to him as the man struggled to his feet, putting one hand on the table and wiping tears from his eyes with the other. Bob winked at him as he unclipped handcuffs from his belt. ‘They’re going to take you for a little ride in the nice police van. And then, when we’ve got you nice and cosy in a little room of your own, we’ll see if your papers are all proper and correct. You wouldn’t believe it but some people try and sneak into this country without proper permission.’

  *

  Twenty minutes later, downstairs and outside on the pavement of Camden High Street, the sound of a police siren dwindled into the distance. It was twelve o’clock but the night was bright and raucous with noise. Laughter, raised voices and music spilling from the pubs that were starting to close and the late-night clubs and pubs that were beginning to fill up. Takeaway fast-food joints were doing a roaring trade as burgers, kebabs, greasy fried chicken, chips and pizza slices were ordered to assuage lager- and alcopop-fuelled hunger. Doctor Kate Walker was no stranger to the sight of feeding time when the pubs closed, except that in Hampstead, where she lived, you could also get crêpes with your choice of filling, sweet or savoury, or toasted panini or ciabatta rolls with all kinds of exotic fillings. And the people queuing to eat them had probably had a glass of bubbly too many rather than too much vodka and Red
Bull. Jack Delaney might be among them, she thought, with a small smile to herself; they weren’t all Hooray Henrys in Hampstead, after all. Jack Delaney with a glass or two of whiskey in him, hugging her warmly to him as they waited in line for a takeaway pizza from Pizza Express. Arguing whether they should go up to the hill to her house or down the hill to his new place in Belsize Park. The area was certainly a lot better with him in it. Her life was a lot better with him in it.

  Breathing in the rich smells wafting out of a kebab shop as they passed it Kate realised she was pretty hungry herself. It had been a long shift – she’d grabbed a quick sandwich before coming on duty at six but that seemed like a lifetime ago now and she was thinking she might just pick up a crêpe Suzette herself to enjoy with a well-earned and well-chilled glass of Viognier when she got home. Loaded with calories, she knew, but hey, she had just had a workout and, after the day she had had, she reckoned she deserved a treat or two. She smiled to herself as they passed Big Enchilada, the Mexican restaurant Rodrigues Sanchez worked in, where a chicken-and-ribs joint had once been. She glanced at the menu – tacos and burritos and her favourite, chicken quesadillas, marinated and grilled chicken meat folded in toasted tortillas with three kinds of melted cheese and fiery jalapeño sauce. Kate felt her mouth salivating and her arteries hardening at the same time and considered for a moment buying some takeout to bring home to share with Jack. And then she remembered the haunted battered face of the woman who worked long hours waitressing here to pay the rent on the squalid bedsit that they had just left. Remembered the pain written into her fragile flesh and the hurt branded in her eyes and Kate’s appetite disappeared. Besides, Jack had an early start tomorrow and would probably be sound asleep in bed. And as for her glass of Viognier? She was pregnant so that was going to have to wait a long while; it would be quite a good few months before she could look forward to that luxury again.

  Kate pulled her coat tighter around herself, shivering with the cold as they continued walking past the restaurant towards Regents Park Tube station. She enjoyed her shifts as a police surgeon but on nights like this she wondered sometimes if she had done the right thing – giving up her job as a forensic pathologist. But she chased the thought away: she’d had many cold, late nights in that career too and general practice and teaching at the university gave her variety, gave her new challenges and, more importantly, it put her into contact with people. Living people. She’d been among the dead for too long in too many ways and for the first time in a very long while she felt a proper part of the real world again. She felt she belonged again. Beside her Bob Wilkinson was talking, but she wasn’t really listening. She was still thinking about Jack Delaney. Earlier he had taken a call from one of his Irish cousins and it had clearly affected him. She had pressed him for details but he had fobbed her off. She knew him well enough by now to know when he was concealing something, and she knew him well enough to realise that he was as stubborn as a rock when he wanted to be. He’d tell Kate what was going on when he was ready to, she guessed. Bob Wilkinson stopped and she realised he was waiting for her to say something.