Death Row

*

Jennifer Hickling was standing behind the eighteen-year-old youth in the alleyway just off Camden High Street where a man had been stabbed just days before. She could feel the knife that had stabbed him, a reassuring weight in her left-hand jacket pocket. Her right hand was wrapped around a weapon of a different nature, pumping it hard up and down. The youth was making groaning sounds, asking her to be a bit more gentle, but that just made Jennifer grip and pump harder as she leaned in to whisper insults into the youth’s hot ear. She knew from experience what made men excited. The boy had wanted full sex with her and she had refused. Telling him it was a hand job or a blow job and that was it. She was a virgin, she had said, and he had laughed.

But it was true. She was a virgin. Anal sex didn’t count. She knew that. Especially when it wasn’t her choice.

The thought made her yank even harder and she realised that the boy was crying out in pain now. He had spilled his seed moments before, staining the cobbled ground that was still marked with the young Iranian’s blood.

Not many more to go now, Jennifer thought as the red-faced youth zipped himself up and hurried away, unable to look her in the face. Which suited her just fine. The next one who looked her in the face … she was going to use the knife!

*

Delaney felt the guilt. He should be out there looking for the missing boy, not spending time with Stella Trent and trying now to create a cosy picture of Sunday-evening domesticity. A chicken in the oven, wine chilling in the fridge, candles on the table.

The trouble was that he had nothing to go on. With most crimes there was a clear motive. You followed the money, or you followed the sexual jealousy. You looked in the family. But Archie Wood’s family was in the clear. His mother was at a wedding, the father’s story had been checked out with border control and the French police and it all held true: he hadn’t even been in the country when the boy had been abducted. He picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured himself another slug. He took the glass with him to the window and looked out at the dark night. He felt the impotent rage building inside him as he pictured the boy alone out there somewhere, scared, cold, maybe hurt, maybe already dead. He took a swallow of his whiskey and tried to push the thought to the back of his mind. It was just the frustration of it all that he was finding hard to handle. He had made a promise that he should never have made, a rod for his own back that he couldn’t stop flogging himself with. He just wanted to get out there and do something. Anything.

He just didn’t know what.

He took a slower sip of whiskey as the last of the second movement of the Gorecki symphony finished. He would have turned the music off but Kate walked into the room just then, fresh from the shower and dressed in a fluffy white bathrobe, and her smile chased away his guilt momentarily.

‘Are you going to pour me one of those?’ she said.

‘You drinking whiskey now, Kate?’

‘A tiny sip is all. I’m pregnant, remember.’

Delaney poured a measure into a glass and as he reached for some ice Kate took the bottle from him and read the label, raising a questioning eyebrow. ‘Armorik, Whisky Breton?’

Delaney shrugged. ‘It’s a single malt.’

‘It’s French!’

Delaney laughed and handed her the glass, clinking his own against hers as she took it from him. ‘I’m Irish – we don’t have to hate the French.’

Kate took a sip. The drink had surprisingly smoky notes but was mellow. She nodded approvingly. ‘It’s nice.’ She gave him back the glass.

Delaney bent forward and kissed her on the lips. ‘So are you.’

‘Nice, you say?’ She ran her hand lightly up his inner thigh. ‘There’s still time to get on the naughty list before Christmas.’

A timer sounded in the kitchen, its shrill bleeping somewhat ruining the moment.

‘Not before dinner, though,’ said Delaney, smiling and kissing her again.

‘Maybe pudding, then.’

Delaney pulled Kate into a hug and kissed the top of her head. Her hair was still slightly damp and perfumed. ‘When we have that baby we’re never going to let it out of our sight.’

Kate looked up at him. ‘We’ll be having the baby, will we?’

‘Well … I’ll be having the large cigar and pacing up and down outside – that’s the hard part, you know.’

Kate laughed. ‘That a fact?’

‘I mean it, though, Kate. That kid is going to be the best-loved child in the world.’

Kate looked up at him quizzically. ‘What’s brought all this on?’

‘Nothing. I just think when he or she is born we should sell up and move to Ireland. To Cork.’

‘You are joking?’

Jack shook his head. ‘This city destroys people, Kate. It kills them.’

‘You can’t keep people safe for ever, Jack. Not even you.’

‘We have to do what we can, though. And we can do that.’

Kate put out her hand and held it against his cheek. ‘You and me. We’re good enough for any of them.’