Hard Evidence Page 10

  'Thank you.'

  Sally flipped the page on her notebook. 'Can you tell us who she shared cells with whilst she was here?'

  'Of course.' He picked up the phone and pushed a button. 'Louise, could you dig up Candy Morgan's file again for me? Thanks.'

  'We appreciate the help.'

  Alan Bannister looked at Delaney thoughtfully. 'I know it sometimes doesn't look that way, but I hope we're both on the same side.'

  'I hope so too.'

  A short while later the governor's PA had returned with the name of Candy Morgan's cellmates written on a piece of paper. Delaney read quickly through the list, stood up and thanked the governor, gesturing to Sally that it was time to leave.

  Outside, as they walked back to the car, Sally had to lengthen her stride to keep up with Delaney's fast pace.

  'Not much to go on.' He held up the piece of paper. 'I know Stella Trant. Her last cellmate.'

  'How come?'

  'She was a sex worker. Probably still is.' He pushed the button on Sally's key ring to open the locks.

  'Why don't I drive, sir?'

  Delaney didn't answer for a moment as he looked further down the list, then he turned to Sally, tossing her the keys. 'I won't be long.' He walked back towards the entrance.

  'Sir?'

  'Just wait in the car. There's something I forgot to ask the governor.'

  Alan Bannister looked a little surprised to see his assistant Louise showing Delaney back into his office.

  'Inspector. Something else I can help you with?'

  Delaney picked up on the hint of irritation in the man's voice, but ignored it and leant back against the door frame. 'It's about Jackie Malone. She was an inmate here a couple of years ago. I see she shared a cell with Candy Morgan.'

  Bannister considered for a moment, looking off to the side.

  'I remember her. What about her?'

  'She was murdered a few days ago.'

  'I'm sorry to hear that.'

  'A particularly brutal murder.'

  'Do you know who did it?'

  'Not yet.'

  'And this has something to do with Candy Morgan?'

  'Maybe nothing.'

  'But . . .?'

  'But Jackie's son is missing too. Well, not missing exactly, but we can't locate him.'

  'You think there's a connection?'

  'I don't know. I just wondered if you knew how close they were? Candy and Jackie.'

  'I can't help you on that. Sorry, but it was a long while ago they shared a cell.'

  'If anything occurs, you'll call me?'

  'Of course.'

  Delaney stood up and walked to the door.

  'Inspector?'

  Delaney stopped and looked back at him.

  'May I ask why you didn't mention this earlier when you were here with your constable?'

  Delaney didn't have a problem with lying. 'I hadn't remembered the connection.'

  15.

  Delaney looked out of the passenger window as the car passed St Pancras station on his right and turned left past an Irish pub that stood on the corner. A pub he'd spent many a Saturday afternoon in watching rugby and drinking poteen from the hip flask of a septuagenarian regular. Just the thing on a cold winter's day, but too much even for Delaney in the blaze of the summer heat. Sally made a couple more turns and parked outside a row of mid-Victorian terraced houses. Delaney opened his door and got out, his knees still a little stiff, one of these days he was going to get down to the police gym and start exercising again. He walked up to a yellow door that desperately needed a new coat of paint and leant on the doorbell. After a short wait and no response he leant on the doorbell again.

  'All right, all right give us a bleeding chance.' The voice was muffled but the Irish accent was clear. The door cracked open and a woman peered out, her hair flashing amber gold in the bright sunlight and her frown deepening as she took in Delaney and Sally Cartwright, recognising them immediately for what they were.

  'Shit.'

  Delaney held up his warrant card to her. 'Yeah, it's the filth, Stella. We'd like a word.'

  Stella turned back resigned into the flat, slouching down on the threadbare sofa with barely disguised boredom. Delaney and Sally followed her in. Sally stood by the door and Delaney sat in the faded yellow armchair opposite the sofa. Stella Trant was a flame-haired woman in her late twenties. Medium height and pencil thin, she wore blue jeans that clung to her body like the skin of a snake with a pale shirt and a green striped tank top. It was pushing thirty-five degrees outside but she wasn't even breaking a sweat. She reached down to pick a can of Special Brew off the floor and took a swig. She had startlingly green eyes and a smoky southern Irish lilt in her voice. 'I'd offer you one, but I know you're on duty.'

  'Right.' Delaney looked about the shabby flat and smiled, sliding a bit of charm into it. 'I guess anywhere is better than your last accommodation.'

  Stella laughed, a dry, rasping sound, as she flicked a roll-up between her finger and thumb. 'I wouldn't bet on it.'

  'No.'

  'This is about Candy, right? I had a call.'

  Delaney was annoyed at that; he'd speak to the governor later, but let it pass for the moment. 'You were cellmates for how long?'

  'The last six months.'

  'And you got out when?'

  'Two weeks ago.'

  'Planning to go back?'

  Stella fixed him with a flat look. 'What do you think?'

  'You're aware of the conditions of your parole?'

  'Yeah. And I'm doing nothing to jeopardise it.'

  'That's good.'

  'What's this all about?'

  'Candy has disappeared. She's moved from where she's supposed to be.'

  'She'll show up.'

  'She's taken a twelve-year-old girl with her.'

  Stella looked up, surprised.

  'Have you spoken to her since she got out, Stella?'

  'I haven't heard from her and I don't expect to.'

  'You were quite close on the inside?'

  'Yeah, well the inside is the other side of the world and another century ago, if you know what I mean.'

  'You mean things are different now?'

  'You'll make commissioner yet, Sherlock.'

  'Yeah, I'll be made commissioner and you'll be made a Dame of the British Empire.'

  'Nah. We Irish . . . we're citizens of the world, isn't that right?'

  Sally smiled tolerantly from the door. 'Tell us about your relationship with Candy?'

  Stella reacted. 'Relationship? You implying something by that?'

  'Just asking questions. That's what we do.'

  'Yeah, you ask questions and answer them yourselves. And innocent people end up in prison.'

  Delaney flashed some teeth at her. 'You innocent then, Stella?'

  Stella smiled slowly. 'I've had my moments.'

  Sally sighed. 'Just tell us about your relationship with Candy Morgan.'

  'I didn't swing that way. Besides, I wasn't her type.'

  'Are you saying she's a lesbian?'

  'I'm not saying anything. She was in there for eight years. She slept with women.' She shrugged. 'If that makes her a dyke and not a lonely, scared woman looking out for some comfort, then yeah . . . I guess you could call her that.'

  'She was scared?'

  'Not in that sense. Candy could take care of herself.'

  'That much we gather.'

  Stella looked at him. 'You can believe it too.'

  'So what was she scared of?'

  Stella shrugged. 'Maybe of the things she might do.'

  Delaney smiled. 'Bit of a philosopher on the side, are you, Stella?'

  'I'm all kinds of things on the side.'

  'See, from what we hear about Candy Morgan, there's not a lot that would have scared her.'

  'I'd say you heard right again.'

  'And you definitely haven't spoken to her since she got out?'

  Stella shook her head and looked to the side.
r />   'I told you.'

  Sally walked around to face her. 'It's all right if you're scared, though, Stella. We know what she's capable of.'

  'I doubt that you do.'

  'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'Who ever really knows what other people are capable of, given the right circumstances?'

  Delaney smiled coldly. 'We do, Stella. We get to clean up afterwards.'

  'My heart bleeds.'

  'Only this time there's a little girl involved. So we don't want to be doing any cleaning up. You see what I'm saying to you here?'

  'You think she might hurt the girl?'

  'What do you think?'

  Stella shook her head angrily. 'I don't know. I told you I don't know, all right?'

  'No, Stella, it's not all right!'

  Sally uncrossed her arms. 'We can protect you, Stella.'

  Stella snorted with laughter. 'What? You two? You're going to be my bodyguards?'

  'The police. The police can protect you if you help us.'

  Stella suddenly gave Delaney a hard, flat look as the penny of memory dropped. 'Like you protected Jackie Malone.'

  Delaney stood up angrily and crossed to her, grabbing her wrist. 'What's this got to do with her?'

  Stella flinched backwards, out of his grasp, taken aback by the anger in his voice. She rubbed her wrist, passively dismissive. 'It's got nothing to do with her as far as I know.'

  'So why mention her?'

  'Because she's dead, Inspector Delaney. She was supposed to be your friend. And now she's dead.'

  The anger in Delaney's eyes was replaced momentarily with something else, something guarded. 'What did she tell you about me?'

  'Come off it, Inspector. You think we don't talk to each other? You think I don't know what was going on?'

  'I looked out for her, that's all.'

  Stella let his statement hang for a moment, then smiled at him. 'And you did a real good job.'

  Sally looked over at Delaney, puzzled. 'Guv?'

  Delaney shook his head. 'It's got nothing to do with this.'

  Stella nodded. 'Like I say, the police's assurances of protection don't exactly count for a great deal. You've worked the streets as long as I have, you learn that pretty fast.'

  'If you know something about where Candy Morgan is, Stella, you damn well better tell me what it is.'

  Stella met his gaze, almost sympathetic. 'I know she was planning to get back at her family.'

  'Get back how?'

  'I don't know. She didn't tell me everything. It was something she was going to do. That's all she said. She was going to get back at them big time. Hurt them in the worst way possible.'

  Delaney looked hard into her eyes; she didn't flinch or look away. 'She gets in touch with you, you call me, okay?'

  Stella gave the slightest of nods, and Delaney gestured to Sally to join him. He looked back at Stella as they walked to the door. 'You'd do well to remember it's not just losing your parole that you've got to be scared of.'

  16.

  Delaney pulled his seatbelt with an angry tug around his shoulder and snapped it into place.

  'Guv. About what she was saying?'

  'Just leave it, Sally.'

  'I was just going to say, if Jackie Malone was a friend of yours then I'm sorry. And if I can help . . .'

  Delaney looked at her and sighed, shaking his head.

  'I just want you to know I've got your back.'

  'I appreciate it.' Delaney flipped the radio on. A group of teenage boys were singing close harmony in a language Delaney didn't understand even though it was English. He pushed the tuning button and Johnny Cash came on the air; he was going to walk the line apparently. Something Delaney had stopped doing a long time ago.

  Kate sat back down at her desk. Collecting together the glossy photos of Jackie Malone pre-and post-post-mortem. In two dimensions the wounds looked worse somehow. Kate knew that they were inflicted after she had died, but laid out like that on her desk they seemed too graphic, too manufactured. Somebody turning mutilation into an art form, making a statement out of the slashes and cuts in Jackie Malone's naked body like the symbols of a grotesque new language. What was it they were trying to say? she wondered.

  Her job was to deconstruct the manner of death, not the meaning of it, and yet as she looked at the black-and-white photos she found herself thinking that she could identify the killer's signature if only she could understand the language he was speaking. She could almost hear Delaney's mocking voice in her head. Could she do her bloody job or not?

  She shivered, despite the heat, and scooped the photos up, sliding them into a large white envelope and put them into her desk drawer, slamming it shut. Damn the man. Damn him straight to Irish hell!

  She ran the back of her hand across her forehead, swallowing; her throat had gone suddenly dry. She looked at her watch and decided to break for lunch. Something she rarely did, usually just grabbing a sandwich at her desk. But she needed some air. She needed to get out.

  She left the building, stopping to draw in a lungful of the hot, dry air, and then walked away, leaving the morgue behind. She felt a slight prickling in her back and looked over her shoulder; no one was there, but as she continued to walk she couldn't quite throw away the feeling of disquiet. She shook the thoughts away again. Whoever had done what they did to Jackie Malone hadn't done it to leave Kate Walker a personal message, and thinking that they had was plainly ridiculous. So why did the skin on her back still crawl?

  Delaney looked at his watch, running his sleeve over his sweating forehead. It had been a long day but it was still only two o'clock. The sun riding high in the sky burned hotter than ever. Bonner carried two large Styrofoam cups of coffee up to Delaney as he leaned back against his car talking on his mobile phone.

  Sally Cartwright was still waiting at the serving hatch of Bab's Kebabs, a burger van that to her knowledge had never sold kebabs, and that was permanently stationed conveniently close to the White City nick, in a little industrial park. Roy, the man who owned and ran the van, was a big fan of science fiction, apparently, but if there was a connection Sally wasn't a good enough detective to find it. Roy was unimpressed as he dangled the herbal tea bag that Sally had provided into a cup of hot water.

  'You drink this shit and you're never going to make detective inspector. Black coffee and doughnuts, that's what you should be having.'

  'And you watch too much American television.'

  Roy scowled. 'What television should I be watching? British?'

  Sally considered. He had a point.

  'Best shows in recent years. Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, A Town Called Eureka. All American.'

  'Right,' said Sally, not really listening; she hadn't seen any of them.

  'And look at the garbage we put out. Cape Wrath? Do me a favour.' Roy flipped the bacon sizzling on his grill, warming to his theme. 'And don't get me started on Doctor Who.' He glared back at her with the impassioned eyes of a zealot. 'Should have stopped with Tom Baker.'

  'Not my thing.'

  'Yeah, well.' Roy flicked the herbal tea bag into the bin. 'What would you know anyway? You're only just out of school uniform yourself. But if Doctor Who was supposed to be a grinning idiot then he would have been written that way from the start. He's not a bloody Blue Peter presenter, is he?'

  'I think he's quite sexy.'

  'Sexy! He's Scottish!'

  Sally didn't have an answer for that so stayed silent as she watched Roy spear the bacon from the griddle and lay it across some thick slices of white bread.

  'I suppose next you'll be telling me you want red sauce with these.'

  Sally jerked her thumb backwards at Delaney and Bonner. 'They're for them. I don't eat bacon sandwiches.'

  'Maybe you should.'

  'Why?'

  'What is it they say? You are what you eat. And this is pig, isn't it?'

  'Good one, Roy. Tell it to Delaney.'

  Roy shrugged. 'Nah. He's a miserable fucke
r. Am I right?'

  Sally laughed, despite herself. 'You're not wrong.'

  'Never am, me.'

  Sally collected the sandwiches and walked away before he could get started on Red Dwarf.

  Across at the car, Delaney was finishing his call. 'He can't have just vanished off the face of the planet. Look harder.'

  He folded his phone as Bonner handed him one of the coffees. 'Billy Martin?'

  'Nobody's seen him. Nobody's heard anything about him. For days now.'

  Bonner shrugged. 'He'll turn up, boss. He's a regular turd. Flush the cistern round the sewer a few times and he's bound to come floating up sooner or later, smelling of shit and talking the same.'

  'Later might be too late.' Delaney saw Sally approaching and changed the subject. 'What have you got for me on Candy Morgan?'

  Bonner looked puzzled. 'Nothing. You told me to—'

  Delaney held up his hand to cut him off as Sally joined them, holding out the sandwiches.

  'Didn't know if you wanted sauce but he put it on anyway.'

  Delaney took a sandwich and nodded at Bonner. 'You hear anything, call me first.' He turned back to Sally as he opened the passenger side of the car. 'You can drive.'

  'Where are we going?'

  'Candy Morgan's counsellor. She poked around in her head for long enough, apparently; let's see if she found anything useful in there.'

  'Guv.'

  Sally got into the car as Delaney took a bite of his sandwich and chewed happily. In his opinion Roy, the science-fiction-obsessed burger boy, was an irritating feck. But he could cook a bacon sandwich.

  He swallowed the mouthful, but as he thought about where Billy Martin might be, his hunger was suddenly gone. He thought about Jackie Malone lying on the morgue table, and then guiltily he thought about Kate Walker too. Thought about her long, shapely legs. Thought about her dark, luxuriant hair, the way she tossed it angrily back, the flash of her eyes and the soft curve of her bloodred lips. And despite himself he smiled.

  Kate felt rather than saw the movement. She spun around, her arm flying up, palm forward, instinctively defensive. The blow glanced off her forearm, sliding painfully across her elbow. She gasped but didn't let the pain stop her from completing her spin, taking her out of harm's way. She centred herself and lashed out with her right foot, the kick reaching high to slam into her assailant's head.