‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head as though it were an impossible question to answer. ‘It might have.’
‘I thought you’d been through enough.’
Delaney looked at her. ‘We shouldn’t have secrets between us, Kate.’
‘It wasn’t my secret, was it, though? It was your wife’s.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sorry, truly I am. I didn’t know what was for the best. But what about you? I sometimes get the feeling there’s things you are not telling me.’
Delaney looked away and sighed. Then he shook his head and immediately regretted it. ‘No. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’ He rubbed his bruised hand. ‘I went to punch his face, just once … but I didn’t. I smashed his picture instead of his face, you know. Not so long ago and I would have hurt him, Kate, really hurt him. But I didn’t … and that’s down to you.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Yeah, it is,’ he said emphatically. ‘And you and I both know it.’
Kate took his hand and cleaned the crusted blood gently with a wet tissue, then kissed his bruised knuckles tenderly. ‘So who did beat Roger up?’
‘I don’t know, Kate.’ He shrugged. ‘With all that’s going on right now, there’s not a lot I do know.’ Delaney looked up at her, a determined look in his eye. ‘But I reckon it’s way past time we started finding out.’
*
‘Please, if anybody knows anything about where our boy is. Please, I am begging for you to come forward.’
Archie Woods’s mother’s eyes filled with tears. Alongside her, behind the narrow news conference table, her husband shifted uncomfortably. His hand was gripping his wife’s hand tightly, but his eyes were cast down, his face unreadable.
‘Do you want to turn that down, please?’ Bennett asked the serving guy behind the counter, who responded with a casual nod before muting the sound on the small television mounted on the wall behind the curved Formica counter.
Bennett was sitting on a tall red-vinyl-topped stool, drinking a large espresso in a small Italian cafe right in the heart of Soho. The coffee was strong enough to kick-start a dead elephant but Bennett didn’t even grimace as he took another sip. The cafe itself was pretty much as it had been in the 1950s when it first opened. Soho was in a constant state of flux. As fashions and social mores changed so did the architecture of the place, both literally and figuratively. But some places weren’t affected: they didn’t seem to age and custom didn’t stale their infinite capacity for inertia year after year. The coffee bar that Bennett was sitting in, The French House not far around the corner on Dean Street, The Coach and Horses. Bennett approved of that. He didn’t like change.
He finished his coffee and looked up and smiled as the person he was waiting to meet walked into the small cafe.
My God, she was beautiful, he thought. Young, deadly and beautiful. Just like a black-widow spider.
*
The governor of Bayfield prison stood up as Delaney and Detective Inspector Duncton walked into his office.
‘Can I get you some tea, coffee?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Have there been any specific developments apart from what we have seen on the news?’
‘You know as much as we do, governor.’
‘The good news is that Garnier has agreed to see you.’
‘Big of him!’ said Duncton.
The governor shook his head apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, detective – he’s only agreed to talk to Inspector Delaney.’
‘That’s outrageous.’
The governor held his hands out. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’
‘You are aware that yesterday we found the body of a child he murdered fifteen years ago and kept on ice as a souvenir?’
‘I do know, yes. But the point is, inspector, that he has already confessed to those murders, been tried and sentenced. Finding the body now makes no difference. We can’t charge him again, can we?’
‘He had an accomplice,’ said Duncton. ‘Somebody who knew where the body was. We know that now and
‘Not yet,’ said Delaney pointedly.
‘He’s playing us for fools.’
‘Why don’t you sit down, Robert? Have a cup of tea. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.’
Duncton was certainly turning an unhealthy shade of red. He sat down and loosened his collar. ‘I’ll be waiting here,’ he snapped at Delaney.
Delaney nodded and turned to the governor. ‘You’ve been through the records and are absolutely sure that the only visitor he has ever had was Maureen Gallagher?’
‘Absolutely positive.’
