‘You got a menu?’ Sally asked.
The red-haired man turned round and pointed to a basket with four filled rolls in it. ‘Yeah. Full a la carte. Knock yourself out.’
Delaney looked at the basket. ‘You’ve got your choice of cheese or cheese and onion, Sally. Or cheese,’ he said dryly.
Sally looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘We should have gone to your Aunty Noreen’s,’ she said.
‘What can I get you to drink?’ the barman asked, closing the serving hatch behind him and coming back round the bar.
Delaney scanned the beer engines and asked, without any real hope, ‘You got any Guinness?’
‘No. Just what you see on the taps. And not even that when it runs out.’
‘What’s happening then?’
‘We’re closing down. Middle of next week.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Your interpersonal customer skills a bit too full of metropolitan charm for the area, are they?’
The barman put his arms on the counter. He was carrying weight but there was muscle behind it and he looked like a man used to violence. ‘Are you looking for trouble?’ he said.
Delaney pointed at one of the beer pumps. ‘No, I’m looking for a pint and a half of that piss that passes for beer, and I’ll take two cheese rolls with them.’
‘I don’t think so, sunshine …’
Delaney pulled out his warrant card and smiled. ‘Think again, then.’
The barman scowled. ‘I had you down as journalists.’
‘A lot of people make that mistake, don’t they, Sally? It’s the air of sophistication we exude.’
The barman grunted again – Delaney guessed he didn’t have much call for conversation – and poured their drinks.
‘I suppose all the scum have moved off to their next story anyway,’ he said. ‘Shame, could have done with the business.’
‘Nice to see care in the community at work,’ said Delaney, taking his pint.
‘That’s just it,’ said the red-haired barman as he handed Sally her glass. ‘I don’t care.’
Later – but not much – Delaney picked up Sally’s roll. She had eaten one bite and declared it unfit for human consumption: the bread was pulp and the cheese was plastic. Delaney didn’t care, he was hungry. He demolished it in a couple of bites and washed it down with a swig of beer.
He smiled across at the barman, who was watching them from the bar. The man turned around and went back down to the cellar again.
‘Little ray of sunshine,’ said Sally.
Delaney nodded. ‘He surely is that.’
‘So the person who took the little boy—’
‘Or persons.’
‘Yeah, or persons. How would they know where he was going to be?’
Delaney shrugged. ‘Could just have been opportunistic. You know how predators operate. A boy alone. A matter of moments to bundle him in the car and drive away.’
Sally shook her head. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence – that a boy goes missing from Carlton Row the very morning Peter Garnier is supposed to be leading us to the graves of his missing victims.’
‘Archie Woods isn’t from Carlton Row, though, is he? He was just staying with his grandfather this morning.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what’s your point, Sally?’ Delaney asked as he watched the red-haired barman coming back up the stairs again, carrying an empty cardboard box.
Sally considered for a moment and then shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir. But there is a connection here, there has to be.’
‘I guess so.’
The barman started taking down the photos that were on the wall and putting them in the empty box. Another proper pub gone, Delaney thought bitterly. They should have binned the banks instead. The government was quite happy to save all the fat cats and their fat-cat institutions while letting the honest working man suffer. Banning smoking was bad enough, now they were taking the pubs away altogether. The legacy of Gordon Brown and his puritanical Calvinist attitude, no doubt,
He realised that Sally was talking to him and snapped out of his reverie again. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘I was saying, do you remember that missing child, a year or so back? Turned out the mother and her uncle had her all along.’
‘Yes. Of course I remember.’
‘Maybe something similar is going on. Maybe the mother was involved. She’d taken the old fella’s fags. She
