Sally looked at her incredulously. ‘You want him to take another shot at you?’
Melanie shook her head. ‘Whoever it was out there wasn’t shooting at me, you bloody idiot!’
Delaney glared at her. ‘You want to watch that mouth of yours, lady!’
‘Or what?’
‘Or it’s going to get slapped.’
‘It’s all right, sir.’
‘Strikes me, Delaney, that if you hadn’t stumbled when you did it would have been you face down in the mud.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He was standing right in front of you. I told him to get some shots of the hero who found the only child who lived.’
‘I didn’t find her.’
‘You got her out of the car. Garnier must hate you for that.’
‘I doubt he thinks about me at all.’
‘Well, someone clearly does.’
Delaney subconsciously put a hand to his shoulder where he had been shot some weeks earlier and then shook the thought away. The man who had tried to kill him then had been killed himself. Shot twice and then blown to high heaven and hell with half a pound of Libyan Semtex. ‘You’ve probably made some powerful enemies yourself. I’ve seen some of the crap you broadcast, Miss Jones.’
‘Rubbish.’
Melanie tried to laugh it off but her gaze darted around nervously and she flinched involuntarily as Peter Garnier, surrounded by a phalanx of gun-wielding officers, was brought across to the heavily armoured police van that was waiting to take him back to Bayfield Prison.
Sally jerked her thumb in his direction. ‘That’s who he was after, you ask me. Vigilante justice.’
Delaney wasn’t so sure. ‘Shame he was such a lousy shot, then. And how did he know Garnier was going to be here?’
‘I don’t know, sir – how did
Diane Campbell walked across to them as the armoured door slammed shut, incarcerating the serial child-killer once more. The sound of an ambulance with its sirens wailing could just be heard now, growing louder. Diane fixed a dark, angry stare on the blonde reporter. ‘It’s a good question. How the hell did you know where we would be?’
‘It’s no secret that Peter Garnier had agreed to help you find the missing bodies. It’s been all over the news, twenty-four seven.’
‘It should have been a secret!’
‘But it wasn’t, was it? It was leaked.’
Diane fought the urge to slap her. ‘So who leaked that, and who told you where we’d be this morning?’
Melanie Jones shrugged. Insouciant. She could have been deliberating over a cappuccino or a latte in a Hampstead boutique cafe. ‘He was arrested further down the road near the Ruislip Lido. There’s acres of woodland all around. I took an educated guess.’
‘Bollocks!’
Melanie was taken aback by Diane Campbell’s response, but only for a second. ‘I don’t have to talk to you. My sources are confidential.’
Diane nodded to DI Jimmy Skinner and PC Danny Vine who had joined the group. ‘Bring her down the nick.’
Skinner smiled. ‘Be a pleasure.’
Melanie glared across at Diane. ‘You can’t do this.’
The DSI smiled. ‘Watch me.’
As Skinner and Wilkinson led her towards a squad car she called back over her shoulder. ‘You’ll be hearing from our lawyers.’
Delaney threw his boss a quizzical look. ‘Good idea taking her in? She’s right – if she doesn’t want to disclose her source there’s not a lot we can do about it.’
‘We have a right to question her.’
‘Yeah, we have that right.’
‘Meanwhile, while she is helping us with those inquiries we can examine the footage her cameraman shot before he was.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Good thinking.’
‘It’s what I’m good at.’
Sally gestured, not quite holding her hand up. ‘Maybe check if Garnier had any visitors over the last few days, too?’
