‘How though?’
‘I don’t know, detective. I wish I did.’
‘Why did he really want to see you? He was talking to you about the same time this kid was abducted. Is he telling us something?’
‘If he is, I’m sure as hell not hearing it.’
‘He lied about taking us to the burial site of his victims.’
‘He claims he couldn’t remember exactly, that the shot at him put an end to the trip. He might well have led us to them.’
‘You think he was telling the truth.’
‘I don’t think he knows what the truth is any more. The man has maggots in his brain.’
‘So he had an accomplice back then. Why now? Why start again now?’
‘His illness – maybe it all ties in with that.’
‘And where do you tie in?’
‘I don’t. I’m simply a man with a badge, just like you, detective.’
Duncton looked at Delaney and shook his head. ‘You’re not like me at all, Delaney. You’re in this somehow.’
Delaney shrugged. ‘You know what I know, which is that a young boy has been abducted. Garnier is in the mix and we are running out of time fast. So what say we put aside your fucking petty politics and concentrate on getting him back alive?’
Duncton would have responded but Sally stuck her head through the open door. ‘You better get out here, sir,’ she said.
Delaney and Duncton hurried outside. Graham Harper was sitting on the steps of his shed, his body humped and racked with sobs.
A uniformed police constable was holding an evidence bag in her hand, showing it to the elderly man.
‘Please look, sir.’
Graham Harper dashed the back of his hand against his eyes and looked up. ‘My God, what have I done?’ he said, trying to sniffle back the tears and failing.
In the evidence bag was a single black and white trainer. Small – a child’s size.
‘Is this your grandson’s trainer, sir?’ asked the constable.
Harper nodded his head, his voice a croaked whisper. ‘Yes. God help me.’
Sally looked over at Delaney. His expression was unreadable. ‘Show us where you found it.’
The constable led them to the end of the allotments where a gap in the trees revealed a path through the tangled undergrowth to the base of a small slope that led up to the road bridge and pavement above. At the top of the slope the wire fence had been pulled loose from a concrete post, creating a gap. A large enough gap for an adult to have hunched down, squeezed through and pulled a young boy with him.
The female constable pointed to the side of the slope that ran down to the flat ground running alongside the railway track. The ground had been dug over by the looks of it: pieces of broken glass and pottery shards lay scattered around.
‘It was down here, sir.’
Delaney looked up at the fence and scrambled up the slope, his feet slipping in the wet mud, but he managed to make it and hold onto a post beside the wall.
‘Careful, sir!’ Sally called out. Delaney pulled out an evidence bag and used it to pick up a small thread that had snagged on the pulled-back wire. He folded the bag over itself and put it in his pocket. He looked at the wire fence where it had been pulled loose from the retaining post: it was rusted but by his reckoning it would still have taken a bit of strength to rip it free. He put back the fencing and slid back down the slope.
‘I think we can safely say he didn’t go to Johnny’s,’ he said, taking the evidence bag out of his pocket and handing it over to Duncton.
‘The ground here, sir …’ said Sally Cartwright, pointing to the slope down to the railway tracks.
‘What about it?’
‘Looks like it’s been freshly dug over.’
‘We’ll have the place sealed.’ Duncton reached into his jacket to pull out his mobile phone. ‘Everybody step back. Let’s keep the scene preserved for SOCO.’
He looked across critically at Delaney, who was toeing the grass to clean his shoe.
Delaney ignored him and looked back instead at Graham Harper, his head held in his hands between his knees as he sat on the small porch of his shed, his back rounded, his posture almost foetal as he rocked back and forward, his ragged breath still audible across the distance as he dry-sobbed and choked back tears.
Guilt.
Jack Delaney knew all about that.
*
Archie Woods kept his back tight against the wall of the cold room. As tight as he could, given that his hands
