could see but what was obscure to him.
He looked at the photo of Maureen Gallagher’s headless body on the cold ground of Graham Harper’s allotment, and a thought came to him.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.
Delaney became aware that people were looking at him. His boss, her face impassive, and beside her the Chief Super goggling at him in disbelief.
‘Something to add, detective inspector?’ he barked angrily.
‘We need to get back to the allotment and dig, sir.’ Delaney pointed at the photograph of the headless Maureen Gallagher, her arms and legs outspread in cruciform pose.
‘I think X marks the spot.’
*
Gloria looked down at her hands, which were entwined together and clasped in her lap. She shivered with the cold and put her hand behind her on the sofa to test the radiator. It was on but she didn’t feel any warmer. She pulled her bath gown tight around herself and looked back at the television, humming a melody to herself in a low voice. The Sky News crew were back at the allotments in Harrow and the pretty blonde reporter was looking earnestly into the lens of the camera, pointing at her. She could see the woman’s lips moving but she couldn’t hear what she was saying as she had the sound turned off. A song was playing in her own head, but the melody kept dancing away like a butterfly, like a sea mist slipping through spread fingers, like a dream that didn’t want to be caught however hard she tipped her head and tried to catch it.
The shot on the television turned to a series of pictures: Peter Garnier, the murdered children, the church where the head of a woman had been discovered, her own photo as a little girl held in the arms of Jack Delaney. Gloria picked up the Sky+ remote control and froze the picture, staring at herself and the Irishman when he was much younger than he was today, in so many ways, handsome in his uniform, his smile fit to break a thousand hearts.
But Gloria wasn’t smiling and her eyes were unblinking at she stared at the television screen. The music in her head was swelling ever louder, like surf at high tide in the depths of winter.
*
Sally Cartwright and Jack Delaney were at the back of the large police marquee that had been erected to cover the whole of the allotment where Maureen Gallagher’s mutilated body had been discovered. Several floodlights had been mounted on poles, filling the space inside with a cold bright light. A small trench had been dug in the centre of the allotment and two suitably suited scene-of-crime officers were excavating the ground. They gestured for the photographer and videographer to come forward as they scraped the last few lumps of mud off a green tarpaulin that had been exposed in the base of the shallow trench. With the photographers in position one of the SOCO, took the corner of the tarpaulin and pulled it back.
The first thing Delaney noticed was the feet. One was wearing a sock only and the other had on a small black and white trainer, a match to the one discovered earlier in the scrubland at the end of the allotments, which was now sitting in an evidence bag at the police station at Paddington Green. Delaney barely noticed the high-pitched scream of a woman as the tarpaulin was pulled fully open, or the slump as she fainted into the strong arms of her husband, who was standing beside her, his eyes filling with tears. Delaney was too focused, registering the jeans and the jumper with a picture of a large cartoon giraffe on the front of it. He didn’t need to look to know that beneath it there would be a new Chelsea-strip shirt with the word SAMSUNG emblazoned across the front. He looked at the curly hair on the top of the boy’s head, so brown that it was almost black, he looked at the closed eyes that would never sparkle with impish pleasure again. He looked at the smooth skin of the boy’s face, obscenely pale, and he heard his own words in his head, the promises he had made to another abducted child. One he had been in time to save. He felt the muscles in his heart harden and the hands that were thrust deep into his jacket pockets become fists, the pain of his nails, digging into his own flesh, against the tears that threatened to start in his eyes.
Graham Harper ran past him, tears rolling down his face, as Delaney pulled his cigarette packet out and walked out of the marquee into a late afternoon that was already as dark as the black hole he felt forming in his soul.
*
Standing on the iron bridge above the railway track, Delaney put a cigarette in his mouth. Scratching a match alight he lit his cigarette and held the flame close. But he felt no heat from it. He looked out at the black expanse of the railway track as it headed west into the distance and shivered, remembering.
*
