‘Don’t get me started on this country!’ said Delaney.
*
Kate yawned as the car moved slowly through the busy traffic, heading back to White City. The sleepless night finally catching up with her. ‘There’s one thing I still don’t get,’ she said.
Delaney looked across at her from the front passenger seat. ‘What’s that, darlin’?’
‘Tony Hamilton was pretty certain that it wasn’t one of those Russian gangsters trying to take you out in Mad Bess Woods?’
‘He was.’
‘So who was the shooter? Who were they after?’
‘Peter Garnier. Like I always said. The shooter slipped as he took the shot. Didn’t get a chance to take another.’
‘We know it wasn’t Alice Peters so who was it trying to kill him, then?’
‘I think it was Garnier himself.’
‘What are you on about, sir?’ asked Sally from the back seat, looking at Delaney as if he were mad.
Delaney reached into his pocket and pulled out the catering glove that he had taken off Roy from the burger van.
‘I think he got Fitzpatrick to send word about where he would be – and when – to Tim Radnor. That’s why he was in the woods that morning: he knew all along that the bodies weren’t there. Because he knew it wasn’t him that had killed one of the children and that the other was still alive.’
‘Tim Radnor was the young one, the catering assistant?’ asked Kate.
‘Yeah. But Harrow School also trains army cadets. They have access to current fully working field-issue combat rifles. They have a rifle club and Radnor was a member.’ He tapped the glove again. ‘We found a minute piece of plastic on the cartridge casing that had the edge of one of these little dimples – see? Can’t prove it now but I’d bet my life that was what happened.’
‘Why, sir?’
‘What’s it all ever about with people like Garnier, Sally. You said it yourself. Power. The power over life and death. Particularly your own. Garnier didn’t much like what was in store for him in his own future. He’d kill himself if he could.’ He smiled coldly. ‘But I’ve had a word with the right people.’
WEDNESDAY
Peter Garnier rolled furiously on his bed. He was in a straitjacket. And the walls and the floor of his room were padded. He looked up and shouted as the window in the door of his special cell was opened, as it was every twenty minutes, and a guard looked in on him. The window closed again and tears ran from Garnier’s eyes. Soon they wouldn’t even need to put him in a straitjacket … and it could take years for him to die.
*
The annexe or The Pig and Whistle pub, a truncheon’s twirl or two from the White City police station, was always popular with uniform and plain clothes alike. That Wednesday night was no exception. It was packed wall to wall with upbeat coppers. The talent nights were always a big draw but the recent closing of the so-called Death Row murders and the safe return of Archie Woods gave them even more excuse for celebration.
Danny Vine held his hand up to quell the noise – shouted comments, catcalls, even some laughter. ‘So I said to him,’ he said, ‘how was I supposed to know she had a wooden leg?’
An audible groan swept around the pub like a Mexican wave.
‘Get off!’ someone in the large and merry crowd shouted.
Danny stood closer to the microphone that was on a small stage set up at one end of the pub
‘As the bard put it,’ he said into the microphone, ‘if my jokes have amused, please raise your glass, and if they haven’t … then kiss my arse!’ He swept a theatrical wave and got the biggest cheer of his set. He jumped down to be handed a pint by one of his colleagues out of uniform and was slapped on the back, none too gently, by a few more.
From the other end of the bar Kate could see Sally Cartwright watching him, amused. ‘What about you and him, then?’ she asked her.
‘What about us?’
Kate waggled her hand horizontally. ‘Are you?’
Sally laughed. ‘Are we what, exactly?’
Kate laughed herself. ‘What is the term you young people use nowadays? Walking out, an item …’ She paused for effect. ‘Are you bonking him?’
Sally shook her head. ‘No, I am not!’
‘Shame. He’s a very attractive young man. Fit too, by the looks of it.’
‘No doubt … but I have had my share of work-based romance, thank you very much. And I have decided to pass.’
‘Michael Hills was a very different person to Danny.’
‘What … a psychotic delusional pervert and a murderer, you mean?’
Kate nodded, smiling. ‘Yeah, that.’
‘No, I’m going to keep my life simple for a while, Doctor Walker. Concentrate on the job.’
