Hard Evidence Read online

  'Upstairs, guv.'

  'I know where she lives.'

  'Bit of a nasty one.'

  'They're all nasty, Constable. People are nasty.'

  Delaney looked down at the geometrically patterned mosaic on the floor. Reds and yellows. Late Victorian, the only original feature left of what would have been a beautiful townhouse. We get what we are given, he thought, and then we screw it all to hell. He walked up the stairs, stairs he'd been up a lot of times before, stairs that had seen thousands of people come and go over the years, and the odds were that more than one of those people were murderers. The last person, or persons, to see Jackie Malone alive definitely was. That was a stone-cold fact.

  He paused at the landing and wondered what the one-bedroomed flat had originally been. A nursery, perhaps? A master bedroom? Had children through the years played and laughed and fallen asleep here to bedtime stories and nursery rhymes played on musical boxes? Had they looked out of the high Victorian window longing for Peter Pan to fly in and whisk them off to Never-Never-Land.

  Whatever it had been, it was a murder scene now, and Jack Delaney wasn't about to start clapping his hands. Truth was, he never believed in fairies, but he knew evil existed, and he could feel its presence hanging in the air like the cold, damp touch of a corpse.

  The burly constable stood aside deferentially and let Delaney pass into the room, where his practised eye immediately started looking for what was familiar, what was out of place.

  It was small. A sofa, a sink with a hot plate beside it. An electric kettle, once white, now yellowing with grease and use. A TV and DVD player on a brown cabinet. Some DVDs on the shelf beneath them. He flicked through the titles: Head Girl, Sin Sisters, Crime and Punishment, Spunk Junkies. They hadn't come from Blockbuster. Some cupboards. On the floor a faded imitation Persian rug sitting on top of a light oatmeal carpet. A telephone and an appointments book. A basket with a couple of apples and a thick rubber band in it, some magazines. It was clean, tidy. Nothing out of order. Nothing out of place.

  Except the smell.

  Delaney looked across at the other door and knew what lay beyond. Had he not been told, he'd have known. The smell was unmistakable to him. Death.

  Death was particulate and it reached out to him, assaulting his nostrils, invading his lungs. Her life might have fled quickly, but her body was giving up its essence slowly, and as Delaney stood in her living room and inhaled Jackie Malone into his soul, he felt a calm come over him. Displacement activity, they called it. He couldn't bring the dead back to life, but he could do what he could; he could find those responsible and make them suffer.

  'Guv.' Snapping him out of his reverie.

  Delaney nodded at the large uniformed officer who stood by the door and went through to the bedroom. Jackie Malone's office, her factory floor, her operating theatre.

  He quickly looked around. A medieval torture chamber in black and red, with satin sheets and a champagne cooler. The pain and the pleasure. The agony and the ecstasy. Scene of Crime Officers, SOCO, or whatever they were called nowadays – Delaney could never keep up with the ever-changing acronyms of the Met – white-plastic-suited like very poor astronauts, were dusting and photographing. One of them gave him a pair of light blue latex gloves. He snapped them on with a grimace. Jackie Malone kept a box of the same on a cabinet by the door for examinations of a thoroughly different nature. The officer moved aside and Delaney looked down, seeing the corpse for the first time, face up, arms cruelly tied, lying on the floor like a broken and discarded doll.

  Corpse: such a cold word for such a warmblooded woman. Except her blood wasn't warm any more. It was cold and still, scored in brown lines on her ivory face and puddled about her mutilated body.

  Delaney took a swallow as the acrid taste of whiskey rose in his throat. As he remembered her.

  Irish, of course. With those thick black curly locks and bright blue eyes, she had to be. A distant descendant of a lucky sailor who was washed up from the wreck of the Armada on to the rain-soaked fields of southern Ireland. Stumbling into Cork or Waterford, and there, from the eye of the storm and the lash of the rainfilled wind, finding comfort in the welcoming arms of an Irish girl. Love was, after all, a universal language. Just like lust, the commodity that Jackie Malone dealt in. Or loneliness. She always did know how to make Delaney laugh, mind, make him forget himself. He looked at her eyes now. Lifeless, flat, and he remembered them twinkling, remembered them flashing angrily, full of life, just like herself. Thirty-two years old. Several hours dead.

  He looked across her ravaged body.

  Naked. Hands and feet tied with coat-hanger wire. Her body covered with knife cuts. With stabbing punctures. Her sweet face slashed from forehead to chin. A smile by Bosch carved into her throat. The wound gaping, black-edged and raw. Delaney swallowed again and looked across as Bonner came into the room.

  'You okay, guv?'

  'Yeah,' Delaney lied. He was good at lying. He looked away to Sally Cartwright, the young constable, who had followed him into the building. Her face was almost as pale as the body on the floor. She had a notebook open and was concentrating on that. Looking away from the horror of it all.

  'You've spoken to the neighbours?'

  'Sir.'

  'And?'

  'Nothing. Across the way is empty and downstairs is an old couple. They keep themselves to themselves.'

  'And they say there's no such thing as society.'

  'Margaret Thatcher did, sir, but then her dad was a grocer. The old folks downstairs know she was a tom. They got used to people walking up and down all hours of the day. They turned a blind eye.'

  'And a deaf ear.'

  'Have their hearing aids turned off unless they're watching EastEnders, apparently.'

  Delaney grunted. They had that the wrong way round. He pointed a finger at the young PC. 'I want a full statement nonetheless. People see things. They might not want to get involved, but they see things.' He looked down at Jackie Malone. 'Even when they don't want to. Even if they don't know they have, people see things.'

  'Guv.'

  Delaney stood aside as the crime-scene photographer moved in to take shots of the body. Across the bed a forensic officer dusted a large rubber phallus. Bonner nodded at Delaney.

  'You think that's the murder weapon?'

  Delaney turned expressionless eyes on him and Bonner grinned, unabashed.

  'What is it they say? When you've eliminated the impossible, what's left, however improbable, is the whatever. That thing looks damn improbable to me, and I grew up on a farm.'

  Delaney turned to Sally Cartwright.

  'Why hasn't she been covered up?'

  'We're waiting for the pathologist, sir.'

  'Where the bloody hell is he?'

  'She, sir. Dr Walker's attending.'

  Delaney grimaced. 'What's the hold-up, then? She waiting for the second act of Rigoletto to finish?'

  'I didn't know you were a fan of opera, Detective.'

  Delaney turned round as Kate Walker approached. A tall, slim woman in her early thirties, dressed more for fine dining than forensics. Jet-black hair and a feral tint of green in her eyes. Unamused eyes.

  'Oh yeah. Opera and colonoscopies. Top of my list.'

  Bonner smirked. 'Ah yes, "The Ring Cycle".'

  'Shut it, Bonner.' He turned back to Kate Walker. 'Sorry to spoil your supper party, but there's a woman here needs our help.'

  Kate flicked a cursory glance at the dead body of Jackie Malone. 'I'd say she was beyond that.'

  Delaney held her angry gaze, meeting her fire with his own. 'I think we can assume that this wasn't a suicide. I want to know what happened.'

  Kate smiled disarmingly. 'I can tell you when she died. I can tell you how she died and I can tell you what she had for dinner. You know why?'

  'Why?'

  'Because that's my fucking job. Now why don't you give me a break with the attitude and let me do it?'

  Delaney dug in his pocket, fi
shing out a packet of cigarettes, and flicked one into his mouth.

  'You got a great sense of respect for the dead, lady.'

  'What is it with you, Delaney? You don't like a woman doing a man's job? Or you just don't like women?'

  Delaney held her gaze for a moment and took the cigarette out of his mouth.

  'I just don't like you, Dr Walker.'

  Bonner flashed Kate a sympathetic smile, but it slid off her as smoothly as rainwater off a Chelsea girl's gumboot. She looked down at the body on the floor, her eyebrow lifting slightly. Delaney picked up on it. 'Something?'

  Kate shrugged. 'Something not quite right.'

  'That an expert opinion, is it?'

  Kate ignored him and bent down to examine the body, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. 'Let's see if the vitreous fluid can give us a rough time of death.' She pulled out a syringe, attached a largegauge needle and carefully stabbed it into Jackie Malone's lifeless right eye.

  Delaney had already turned away. Outside in the corridor he opened the sash window at the end of the hall, swearing as it stuck and grunting as he forced it further open. He palmed the cigarette back into his mouth, flaring a match and drawing a long, abrasive cloud into his lungs. He tensed his lips and let it flow back out in a longdrawnout sigh. Bonner shook his head as he approached.

  'What is it with you and her?'

  'Your point?'

  'Come off it, Cowboy. You can't stand the woman, or she you for that matter. Why is that? She knock you back on the old Hampstead hayride?'

  'I don't like what she stands for.'

  'Which is?'

  'The Establishment.'

  Bonner flashed his warrant card. 'I've got news for you, guv. You're a fully paid-up member too.'

  'And you're a fully paid-up prick.'

  'I do my best.'

  Delaney shrugged as Bonner put his warrant card away. 'You and me, we live in a different world, Eddie, my old son. That's a licence to catch rats, is all. To pick your knees up, stick your elbows out and dance to the tune of the likes of her frigging uncle.'

  The penny dropped with Bonner. 'Not a big fan of the superintendent, then?'

  'One of these days you'll make a great detective.' Delaney threw his cigarette out of the window and walked back into the front room, watching as the forensics crew dusted a small cabinet that stood beside the sofa. He turned back to Bonner.

  'Any word on Jackie's boy . . . Andy?'

  Bonner shook his head. 'He's not been living with her for some months.'

  'Is he with his uncle?'

  'Yeah, according to the neighbours. He's off travelling.'

  'That's something, I suppose.'

  The forensics crew moved through to the bedroom, and Delaney walked across and opened the drawer of the small cabinet. He emptied the contents and put them on top. Condoms. A squeezed tube of lubricant. Cards with a phone number and a cartoon picture of a rubber-clad dominatrix. 'No Pain. No Gain.' A packet of rubber bands. A box of brass drawing pins. At the back of the drawer was a small black notebook. Delaney took it out and flicked through. A diary. Jackie Malone's spidery handwriting noting names, numbers. He turned to the latest entry. His own name, DELANEY, spelled out in capitals with his work number below it.

  Bonner called across. 'Anything?'

  Delaney moved the diary out of sight and looked over at the sergeant. 'You said she was calling for me?'

  'A lot of times.'

  'And?'

  Bonner shrugged. 'Nothing. She only wanted to talk to you. They assumed it was personal.' He paused, licked a hint of his tongue on the top of his lip. 'You know?'

  Delaney held his gaze. 'No.'

  'So you've no idea what she wanted?'

  'How could I? I never spoke to her.'

  'Maybe she was worried about something?'

  'Looks like she had good reason.' Delaney glanced through the open door, watching as Kate tilted Jackie's head slightly to one side, examining the clogged blood that had seeped thickly from each nostril. She gently laid her head down, picked up a micro-cassette recorder and clicked it to record.

  Delaney turned away and walked across to the open window. Ignoring the unspoken criticism as he fired up another cigarette, exhaling lazy smoke into the hot night, the nicotine spiking into his blood and sparking pictures in his mind.

  A woman in her early thirties sprawled on the hard floor of a petrol station. Her dark hair matted with blood. Blood trickling from both nostrils. A shotgun blast, shattering the plate-glass window. Delaney started as Bonner spoke.

  'Those things can kill you, you know?'

  Delaney took a long pull and exhaled. 'Good.' He flicked the fag end through the window, watching it spiral down and bounce on the pavement below in a tiny shower of sparks. He turned back to Bonner. 'Get on the phone. I want Billy Martin found and brought in.'

  'Who's he? Her pimp?'

  'Yes, he's her pimp. Or was her pimp, sometimes. Billy Martin . . . he's her brother.'

  'The boy's uncle you were talking about?'

  'Not the one he's with, no. That's Russell Martin. He's just a drug-dealer.'

  'Nice family.'

  Delaney gave him a sharp look. 'You don't know anything about her, Bonner.'

  'You do, though?'

  'I'm going to find out. I can promise you that.'

  Kate Walker came through from the bedroom and Delaney turned to her. 'Anything?'

  'Early days, I need to do the post.'

  Delaney picked up on her hesitant manner. 'Something, though?'

  'I'd say she died somewhere between twelve o'clock this afternoon and say four o'clock.'

  Bonner laughed drily. 'She could have had twenty punters in that time. Can't you be a bit more specific?'

  Kate turned cold eyes on him. 'Not unless you see a grandfather clock stopped somewhere round here giving us a big clue.'

  Delaney glared at her. 'Why don't you save the attitude and just tell us what we want to know when we want to know it for a change?'

  'Like?'

  'Like how she died.'

  'I won't know for sure till the post. But I'd say asphyxiation.'

  'How?'

  'She was gagged. The sex toy. Her nostrils were clotted with blood. She couldn't breathe. She would have been in great pain.'

  Delaney looked over at the window.

  'She was tied up. She was badly beaten and she was scared. Terrified for her life, most likely.'

  Delaney looked back at her.

  'And she vomited. She couldn't clear her mouth and choked to death on it.'

  'She drowned in her own vomit. You're saying that's what killed her?'

  'I'm saying that's what I think she died from.'

  Delaney nodded, conceding. 'And the cuts, the mutilation? Was that before or after she died?'

  'My opinion?'

  'Your opinion.'

  'She was dead before she was cut or stabbed. If her heart was still pumping when she was cut, that room back there would have looked like a charnel house.'

  'It looked pretty unpleasant.'

  'Trust me, if she was alive when she was cut, her blood would have literally sprayed the walls.'

  Delaney nodded, relieved in some way. 'That's something, I guess.'

  'It's not much, but yes, it is something.'

  Bonner shook his head. 'What's the point, then? What kind of sick guy—'

  Kate cut him off. 'I don't think it was just one guy.'

  Delaney looked at her. 'Go on?'

  'I think there were at least two of them.'

  'I think you're right.'

  'You know what, Delaney? That's made my day.'

  Bonner looked at them both. 'Am I missing something here?'

  Kate looked at Bonner, unimpressed. 'She was tied up with coat-hanger wire, Sergeant. I can't see one man being strong enough to do that on his own. The wire is too stiff. He'd have needed help to hold her down.'

  'But if she was into bondage? That kind of kinky play.'

/>   'These guys weren't playing at anything. She's dead. That's how serious they were.'

  'But if she was already dead when they tied her up? Like when they cut her.'

  'No. The ligatures on her wrists and ankles indicate that she was still alive. The blood was still pumping.'

  Delaney looked at her, his own blood pumping in his ears now.

  'You think they meant to kill her?'

  'Who knows? I guess that's your job to find out.'

  Bonner shook his head. 'So we've got a pair of fucking sex freaks out there?'

  Delaney nodded towards Kate, a sardonic smile twitching the corner of his mouth. 'Watch your language, Bonner, there's a lady present. But I don't think so anyway. Not in the normal sense.'

  'What's normal to you, Inspector?'

  Delaney looked into her cool green eyes. 'Sexual sadists. Killers with this kind of twist. They don't usually mutilate the face. You ever seen that before?'

  Kate's eyes gave nothing away. 'People are capable of absolutely anything. You should have learned that by now, Detective Inspector, if nothing else.'

  5.

  If an Englishman's home was his castle, what was an Irishman's? Delaney's was no castle, that was for sure. A scruffy studio flat in Tufnell Park. A small kitchen and sitting room with a bedroom to one side. The place hadn't been decorated for twenty years. A brown sofa, a G-Plan sideboard, a dusty carpet of faded red and green swirls. In the corner a TV and DVD player. A shelf with a few old, well-thumbed paperbacks. He closed the door behind him, contemplating the difference between where he lived and where Jackie Malone had died. Not a great deal. Jackie Malone had a different house somewhere, of course; she had a whole other life. She came home from her two-room working flat to a life. At least she used to. Delaney looked around at what he came home to and almost envied her her cold shelf in the morgue. A flashing light on his answering machine caught his attention. He looked at it for a moment or two and crossed to the sideboard.

  He flipped over a glass, picked up a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a shot. Desperate measures. Desperate times. He toasted himself mentally and slid the burning shot down his throat. Then took another.

  Some people drink to forget. Some people drink to be funnier, to be more confident, to socialise. Delaney drank to kill the fluttering butterflies of thought that exploded into his brain every morning when he woke up. Every day for the last four years. Since he cradled his wife's head in his useless arms and watched the light die in her eyes. The light die in his whole world.