Death Row

and he didn’t know if the old man was holding something back or was just feeling guilty.

‘So you didn’t hear any voices, anyone talking to Archie?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t hear a car stopping, or pulling away?’

‘A car? There’s no road there, just a footpath.’ This time Harper did look at Delaney, genuinely puzzled.

‘The road above is only fifty yards or so away.’

‘I shouldn’t have put the radio on – is that what you are saying? I might have heard who took him, he might have called out for help and I didn’t hear.’

Delaney didn’t answer him for a moment. ‘What were you listening to?’

‘Radio 3. If I wanted to listen to idiots talking I’d go down the British Legion.’

Delaney consulted his notes. ‘And this was about half-ten, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was on?’

‘Strauss.’ He coughed suddenly, convulsively. ‘I don’t waltz much any more,’ he added ironically when he had got his breath back.

Delaney made another note. The old man hadn’t hesitated when he’d been asked what he’d been listening to, which made him sound genuine. Unless he had an alibi prepared. But that made no sense – Delaney could see how genuinely upset he was.

Whatever had set Graham Harper’s hands trembling seemed to be affecting his whole body now. ‘So you think Archie called out then?’ he asked, tears in his eyes. ‘You think he called out and I didn’t hear him because of the radio?’

Delaney folded back his notebook, replaced it in his pocket and looked over at the trembling man. ‘Maybe. But maybe there was nothing for you to hear. Maybe he didn’t call out because he knew whoever it was who took him. Knew him and trusted him.’

*

Sally Cartwright flicked the windscreen wipers on as they pulled out of Carlton Row and turned left into Carrington Avenue. The rain had started up again and the sky overhead was the kind of ominous slate-grey that presaged a deal more of it yet to come. Delaney stared ahead through the smeared windscreen and spotted, about a hundred yards ahead of them on the corner of Vicarage Road and Carrington Avenue itself, a small pub called The Crawfish. It had been built sometime in the late nineteenth century, when the pub was still very much the heart of the community, before they banned smoking and put the tax on alcohol through the roof. Now people got their booze from the supermarkets and drank at home, turning most of the community locals into little more than pub- themed restaurants. Delaney tutted to himself at the criminal injustice of it all.

‘Sir?’

Delaney realised he had actually tutted aloud. He looked at his watch and pointed his finger. ‘Pull up outside that boozer, Sally.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’m starving and that pub used to do the best seafood platter south of my Aunty Noreen’s.’

‘Oh yeah, and where does Aunty Noreen live?’

‘Clacton.’

Sally pulled the car to a stop outside the pub. It didn’t look as though people were fighting for parking places.

‘I didn’t have you down as a fisherman’s platter kind of guy, sir,’ she said as she locked the car door and walked with Delaney to the pub’s entrance.

‘I was born by the sea, Sally. I was breathing ozone before I was breathing oxygen. It’s in my blood – we Delaneys come from a long line of fishermen.’

‘You didn’t fancy that yourself, then?’

‘Not really, constable. I get seasick in a paddling pond.’

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, steering around a couple of packing crates placed beside the wall. He hadn’t been there in fifteen years and the place didn’t seem to have changed much in that time. It was dirtier, emptier, more down at heel than he remembered, was all. The photos on the wall by the bar were dustier than he remembered, and the mullet-haired men in them might well all have been dead for all he knew. Maybe it was just him. Maybe moving to Belsize Park had changed him. He looked down at the carpet that didn’t look like it had been cleaned in over five years and thought again.

There weren’t many punters in. An Indian couple, somewhere in their fifties, Delaney reckoned, sat by the window. The man had a turban on his head and a thick white beard, the woman was dressed in a sari and looked extremely bored. She looked across at Sally and Delaney and then turned her dead-eyed gaze back to her lap. The bearded man didn’t even look up and continued to read a copy of The Times. Two other men, one black, one Caucasian, were sitting at separate tables, and another solitary white man was perched on a stool at a corner of the bar. They were all nursing pints and all of them were past retirement age, even allowing for the plans to keep working men shackled for longer in life.

There was only one bar in the room. It was opposite the door and ran the length of the room. The serving hatch was open and as they approached the bar Delaney could see a tall man emerging from the steps to the cellar with a large cardboard box in his arms. He was in his thirties, had red hair and freckled arms, and was about three stone overweight.

‘Be with you in a minute,’ he grunted and carried the box over to the door where the others were already stacked.