Delaney nodded. ‘Tell him I’ll be at Carlton Row. Come on, Sally, get your chauffeur’s cap.’
As Sally hurried off to get her jacket, Delaney turned to Kate, who was standing nearby talking to Bob Wilkinson. ‘Sorry about lunch.’
‘You’re good for a rain check.’
‘Believe it.’
‘And Jack …’ She hesitated.
‘Go on.’
Kate stepped in closer and spoke quietly. ‘Your cousin Mary. She’s tied up in this somehow, isn’t she?’
Delaney looked around the room, then leaned in and put his hand on Kate’s upper arm. ‘I’ll explain later.’ He gave her arm a squeeze and headed out, followed by Sally Cartwright.
DI Tony Bennett watched him leave, deep in thought. Kate caught the look on his face and he smiled broadly. ‘Seems like I picked an interesting day to move to White City,’ he said to her.
‘Well, you know what they say.’
Bennett bent an enquiring eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘If you’re tired of White City, you’re tired of life.’
‘Who says that?’
‘Nobody who lives here,’ said Bob Wilkinson.
*
A light but steady rain had started to fall and Sally switched the windscreen wipers on, the rubbers scratching loudly at first before settling into a gentle swishing rhythm that was almost hypnotic.
Delaney looked out of the passenger window as they slowly progressed west, snarled in heavy traffic that was the norm now on Western Avenue.
‘You ever think about how many hours you’ve wasted on this particular stretch of road, Sally?’
‘Not particularly, sir.’
‘You’re young yet. If I was to sit and add up all the hours I’ve wasted sat in traffic on this miserable stretch of tarmac I’d probably cry.’
‘I like to keep my mind active, sir. Use the time to think.’
‘And what conclusions has that active brain of yours come to?’
Sally turned to him and smiled. ‘Take Peter Garnier, for example.’
‘What about him?’
‘The fact that he lied about taking us to find the bodies. The fact that he wanted to speak to you.’
‘Go on.’
‘He’s interfacing with us, sir. He hasn’t done that for fifteen years.’
‘So?’
‘So he’s on the radar. We only catch them if they’re on the radar, don’t we? If they’re in the system somewhere, somehow. There are hundreds of them out there that we don’t know about. Thousands. Some we never catch. Hundreds of crimes we don’t know about. Rapes. Assaults. Murders we’ll never know about.’
‘And this is good? Why?’
‘Well, it’s not good, is it, sir? That’s my point, that’s what you should take from what you told us Garnier said to you.’
‘Sally, you want to cut to the chase here?’
‘We don’t catch a lot of sociopaths because they have no conscience, no desire to be caught. But some do. People like Ted Bundy, they want to be caught, they even want to be killed and they want to control that as well. They play games with the police because in the end they want us to catch them. In America maybe they want to be caught so they can be killed. In those states where they have the death penalty, anyway.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, nothing’s ever black and white, is it, except in a police uniform. Sometimes people want to be caught because they want to be stopped.’
‘Peter Garnier was caught a long time ago.’
‘But if he had an accomplice like you said, maybe he’s going to lead us to him. He’s talking to us, sir. Well, he’s talking to
Delaney threw her an appraising glance. ‘You’ve learned a lot from me over these last few months, haven’t you?’
‘I already knew how to drink, sir.’
Delaney grunted. ‘Including a proper respect for authority.’
‘It’s a line, sir. From
