Hard Evidence Page 5

  The object of his scrutiny, Bonner, smiled a final time at Greville and walked back up the corridor to join Wilkinson at the vending machine, fishing in his pocket for some change and wrinkling his nose. 'What is it with the smell in this place?'

  Wilkinson shrugged. 'Hospitals are all the same, boss. Nothing about them is pleasant.'

  Bonner chunked the coins into the machine. 'Including the coffee.'

  'Especially the coffee.'

  Bonner jerked his head back to the room where Greville lay on top of the bed, still clothed, his nose now taped. 'What do you reckon to twinkletoes?

  Bob scowled. 'He'll live. Unfortunately.'

  'He had it coming, I guess. Sooner or later on that estate he was going to get a kicking when word got round what he was.'

  'You ask me, he deserves a lot more than he got.'

  'Just as well our job is just to catch them, then.'

  'Maybe.'

  Bonner gave him a shrewd look. 'Someone leaked his name to the press.'

  Wilkinson laughed. Short, dismissive. 'Don't look at me. I'm coming up to my thirty.'

  'You reckon he's involved with this missing girl?'

  Wilkinson shook his head regretfully. 'His alibi stands up.'

  'An entire orchestra saying he was in rehearsal all day and in concert all evening. I'd say that stands up.'

  'He's probably clean on this, but he's involved in something. Take it to the bank. It's not just his wand he's been wagging.'

  'That would be a baton.'

  'Call it what you like. Slags like him don't change, they never do. You ask me, we should be leaning on him. And leaning on him hard. Not tiptoeing around like a pair of fucking ballerinas so he doesn't press charges.'

  'Times have moved on, Constable.'

  Wilkinson crumpled his plastic coffee cup and threw it into the bin. 'You might look good in a tutu, boss, but I'm too old for this crap. We should be out looking for that little girl, not covering the suits' blue-nosed arses.'

  'I reckon you and Delaney would make a good team.'

  'That's because he's a proper cop.'

  'What's that mean?'

  Wilkinson gave him a flat look. 'Someone who knows that the end always justifies the means, Sergeant Bonner.'

  Bonner gave a short laugh. 'Jack Delaney. Last of the midnight cowboys.' He threw his own coffee cup into the bin and jerked his thumb at Bob Wilkinson. 'Come on then, Tonto. Time to see what scum has washed up on the morning tide.'

  Morgan's Garage was about half a mile from the Waterhill estate in a run-down stretch of mainly commercial real estate, a no-man's-land of lockups and storage facilities within a brick's throw of the Harrow Road. Wire fences protected weed-polluted tarmac and graffiti-sprayed warehouses. At the end of the street stood a few houses that had been built in the fifties in the hope of an urban renewal for the area that never came. Morgan's workshop was an extended garage that his father had fitted out sometime in the early sixties and that hadn't been touched since. Red bricks and a concrete floor. A bare bulb overhead, a 1972 Ford Escort stripped back beneath it, yellow, rusting and in need of serious loving attention.

  Inside the garage Delaney moved a grease-covered spanner to one side of the cluttered worktop as Morgan picked up a photo frame and carefully replaced the original of the photo that was now pinned to the briefing room wall back at White City police station. Jenny still looked out at the camera, her eyes giving nothing away. Sally took the frame from his callused, stained and shaking hands.

  'This is definitely the most recent photo you have of her?'

  'She don't like having her picture taken.'

  Delaney held his gaze. 'Why's that?'

  Morgan shrugged and looked off to the side. 'She just don't.'

  Sally smiled sympathetically. 'What about boyfriends?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Does she have a boyfriend?'

  Morgan shook his head angrily. 'Of course she doesn't.'

  Sally continued gently. 'It's possible. Someone from school, perhaps?'

  'I would know!'

  'She's a very pretty girl.'

  'She's my girl. I would know!'

  Delaney considered the fury that shone in the man's eyes with an almost religious fervour. He listened to the body language and met Morgan's defiant gaze with a look that held as much anger, and more, in check.

  'You didn't know she was missing for nineteen hours, though, did you?'

  Sally flinched, startled at the aggression in his voice, as Delaney stepped forward, getting into Morgan's space.

  'What else don't you know?'

  Morgan rubbed his left arm, up and down, as he stepped back a pace. 'I didn't know she was gone. I look after her.'

  Delaney snorted. 'You do a great job. Does she have a computer?'

  Morgan didn't answer, and Sally prompted him gently. 'Does she have her own computer, for schoolwork?'

  'In her bedroom. She has one in her bedroom. I don't know how to use it.'

  For the first time, maybe, Delaney felt a twinge of sympathy for the man.

  Sally continued to smile encouragingly at Morgan, good cop to Delaney's bad. 'Do you mind if we take the computer, Mr Morgan?'

  'Why would you do that? She needs that. She told me she needs it for her homework. All the kids have got them.'

  'I know.'

  'When she comes home, she'll want to know where it is. She'll be home soon, won't she?'

  'We hope so.' Sally had a soothing voice, like soft honey. Delaney found himself thinking that she'd probably make a good mother some day; Howard Morgan was just like a child in a lot of ways.

  'Sometimes people use their computers like diaries, Mr Morgan,' she said. 'They write things in them.'

  'I don't know. She never showed me.'

  'It might help us find her.'

  'Take it then. I just want her home. She should be home.'

  Delaney considered Morgan for a moment or two but could see nothing in his eyes that he hadn't already seen in his own. The thought didn't reassure him.

  There are all sorts of places where the dispossessed and the helpless of London gather. Abandoned warehouses, filthy underpasses, old churchyards tucked away in shameful Victorian decay right in the heart of the city, although the city, of course, has no heart. Bob Wilkinson knew that for a fact. This was a city that killed people. Literally. You could kill a person with a building as easily as you could with an axe – he didn't know who said that, but he agreed with the sentiment. Bob would have liked to take an axe to some of the people he had to deal with in his job on a daily basis. He watched as Bonner sniffed disdainfully and looked down at the inert body of a young girl. They were in an underpass, a late-night drop-in for the substance- and alcohol-abusers who had nowhere else to go. In the winter it would probably kill them, but in the summer it kept them out of the rain and out of the noses of late-night theatregoers on Shaftesbury Avenue. Didn't keep them out of Bonner's nose, though, and it was a smell he clearly didn't much care for.

  He toed the young girl roughly with his shoe, looking at the picture of Jenny Morgan that he held in his hand.

  'Easy, Sergeant.' Bob's disapproval was clear in his voice, but Bonner ignored him and kicked the sleeping girl again.

  'Wakey, wakey.'

  The young girl turned her head and blinked angrily up at Bonner.

  'Why don't you fuck off?'

  It wasn't Jenny. Bonner nodded at her and put the photo back in his pocket.

  'All right, princess. Back to your beauty sleep.'

  Bonner and Wilkinson walked on through the subway that led from the hospital to where their car was parked. The girl called after them.

  'Hang on, copper, you got any change?'

  'Yeah,' Bonner called back and carried on walking.

  Bob looked at him and shook his head. 'You're a piece of work, you know that.'

  'That's a piece of work, Sergeant, to you.' Bonner grinned.

  'And you can kiss my arse,' Wilkinso
n muttered, not quietly.

  Bonner pretended he hadn't heard it. 'We haven't got time to fuck about, Bob. That little girl needs to be found; it's about getting the job done quickly.'

  'I bet your girlfriend loves that approach.'

  'My women love everything about me.'

  'Course they do, sir.'

  Bonner strode quickly up the subway stairs as Wilkinson followed behind, thanking Christ on a bicycle that he was getting out of the job soon.

  Delaney looked around Jenny Morgan's room. It was sparse, neat. No posters of boy bands on the wall. No pink furry ponies or glittering costume jewellery. No Keep Out signs. No notebooks with doodles on the cover and I heart this or I heart that. No photos of horses, or best mates hugging each other in photo booths designed for passport pictures. No jewellery boxes or musical boxes or clothes strewn on the floor. No books lined up carefully or artlessly on shelves, no CD player or DVD player. Just a bed, a couple of cupboards and a rug arranged neatly on the floor. It could have been a hostel room, or a nun's room. Nothing to show it was the bedroom of a twelve-year-old girl. On a desk that stood in front of a small window overlooking her father's yard was a small laptop computer.

  Delaney opened the cupboards and looked through the drawers. Clothes, old birthday cards. Project folders from school. But no letters, no diaries, no real clue to the missing girl's personality. Maybe she didn't have one. Maybe she was as blank a canvas as her bedroom seemed to be.

  He turned on the computer. As he expected, her desktop was clear. No documents or pictures left carelessly, everything ordered into its proper folder, its proper file. He heard voices from downstairs, switched the computer off and picked it up, looking around the room to see if he had missed anything.

  He hadn't.

  Downstairs, Sally was talking to Jake Morgan, Howard Morgan's older brother. He was in his late forties, as heavily built and dark-browed as his sibling but a few inches taller, and the oil stains on his face looked as ingrained as a tattoo. He was wearing a filthy T-shirt under a pair of dungarees, his massive arms hung loosely by his sides, and as Delaney looked at the slack expression on his face, the tune of duelling banjos ran unavoidably through his mind.

  Jake frowned as he looked at what Delaney was holding. 'What you got there? That's Jenny's.' His voice was slow, as if framing the simple words was an effort for him, but Delaney could hear the menace in it.

  'We need to find Jenny, Jake. You know that's why we're here.' Sally smiled pleasantly at the large man. 'This is Detective Inspector Delaney. We need to take her computer to see if it can help us find her.'

  Jake turned nervously to his brother. 'We didn't steal it, did we, Howard?'

  Morgan looked guiltily at Delaney. 'We didn't steal it.'

  'We're not bothered where the computer came from originally, just what Jenny might have written in there.'

  'Someone gave it us for a job.'

  'It's okay, Howard.' Sally smiled again and Delaney found himself thinking she should get a job as a model: the smiling face of the Metropolitan Police. Something he'd certainly never qualify for.

  'I need you and your brother to go over everything you remember, Jake,' he said. 'Everything about yesterday, about the last time you saw Jenny.'

  Jake nodded, his agitation showing in the way he clenched his fists. The cloth of the T-shirt straining at the biceps and making the tattoos on his forearms bulge. Forearms like industrial diggers, Delaney thought. A man could do a lot of damage with arms like that.

  'I live up the road.' Jake's voice was as slow as tar.

  'And?'

  'I live up the road. So I didn't see her. Not yesterday.'

  Delaney looked over at Howard. 'Someone must have seen her.'

  Morgan shifted uncomfortably. Delaney looked at him steadily. 'We're going to hold a press conference later. Television. I want you to be there.'

  Morgan shook his head, distressed. 'I can't do that.'

  'If she has run away, then an appeal from you might just bring her home.'

  'She didn't run away.' Morgan shook his head again, as if the action would make it so. 'She loves her dad.'

  Sally stepped in before Delaney could respond. 'It would be a big help. And don't worry, we would prepare a statement for you. All you'd have to do is read it.'

  'No! I can't do it.'

  Delaney looked at Morgan's darting eyes and his trembling fingers. A chill settling in his heart.

  'What do you want to tell us, Howard?'

  Jake stepped forward. 'We can't read, see? Just boxes. For parts and that. Jenny did our reading and writing for us. Since . . .'

  Morgan grunted. 'Since my wife died, Inspector.'

  Delaney nodded. 'Okay.'

  Morgan looked to the side again, the hurt clear in his eyes. 'She never kissed me.'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'Jenny. She never kissed me.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'She never kissed me goodbye before going to school. She always kissed me goodbye. What if she never comes back?'

  But Delaney didn't reply. Some questions you just couldn't answer.

  The Pig and Whistle was the aptly named pub a short staggering distance from White City police station. It had been used by the boys and girls in blue for over a hundred years, and Sally Cartwright, a sparkle in her eyes, was basking in the noisy hubbub and savouring her first day out of uniform. Opposite her sat Bob Wilkinson, the sparkle, had there ever been one, long since gone from his eyes.

  'The way I see it, Sally, there's only one thing you need to know as a detective, and that is . . . once a slag, always a slag.' Everyone was a slag to Bob. Young, poor, rich, old . . . if they were a criminal, or a suspected criminal, they were a slag. It kept matters simple.

  'And the way to deal with slags . . .'

  But DC Cartwright didn't get to benefit from her older colleague's wisdom, as Delaney approached carrying a couple of drinks.

  'Come on, Bob. She's off the clock. The slags'll keep till tomorrow, eh?' He handed Sally her drink. 'Here's to you. First day on the job.'

  Sally nodded reflectively. 'Not the best of days, boss.'

  'The way it goes sometimes.'

  'Don't like to think that girl's still out there somewhere, on her own.'

  Bonner, with DI Skinner and Dave 'Slimline' Patterson, joined them, handing round drinks and crisps and packets of nuts.

  Bonner smiled at Sally. 'We'll find her.'

  Delaney raised his glass. 'Here's to DC Sally Cartwright. The future of the Met, God help us.'

  The drinks were drained and another round ordered, and another.

  Many hours later Delaney stumbled into his flat, lay back exhausted on his bed and fired up a cigarette. Like Sally, he was disappointed they hadn't found Jenny Morgan, but it was Jackie Malone's ravaged body that haunted him, and he hoped her cold, naked corpse wouldn't join him in his dreams again, her mouth wet with blood on his lips, his hands finding openings that nature had never intended.

  As Delaney laid his head back on his pillow, and drifted into troubled sleep, across town in a back alley of Soho a young girl lay huddled in the doorway to an accountancy office. The moon in the cloudless sky gave her skin a ghostly-pale look. Two officers on night patrol looked down at her motionless body; one hooked off his police radio and made the call.

  Another child dead on the streets of London.

  8.

  Kate Walker turned the thermostat on the shower as high as she dared and waited a moment before stepping under the scalding water. She closed her eyes as the jets pummelled her tired muscles. She'd been up since six o'clock, not just because of the bright sunlight spilling in through her bedroom window, but because, as she always did, she'd spent a restless night. Night horrors, they called it, and the term always made her laugh. After the horrors she saw on a day-to-day basis, dreams shouldn't have had any hold over her. But they did. They always had. Since she was a little girl she would wake early, and when she drifted back into sleep the d
reams would start. Dreams that would leave her muscles locked and a penetrating sadness that took a while to shake off. The hot water helped. She rubbed the exfoliating scrub over her body as if to wash away the lingering emotions of her nightmares, watching the soapy water puddle around her feet and swirl soundlessly down the drain. After a few minutes she put the sponge aside and just stood under the water. Letting it pool through her hair and spatter against her glowing skin. She stood there for at least five minutes, breathing deeply, her eyes closed, her heartbeat slowing to a normal pace.

  Delaney woke with a painful start, the ringing phone clattering into his consciousness like a dental drill set on kill. He picked it up, grunted a few words and hung up. He looked at the clock on his bedside table and cursed under his breath, then stood up unsteadily and stumbled through to the bathroom, wincing at the blinding sun as it spiked in at him through the Venetian blinds.

  He dragged an electric razor across the resisting planes and angles of his face and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes still looked as if they had seen too many things they no longer wished to see and the cold water he splashed into them couldn't wash the hardness away. The muscles of his cheeks sagged and the puffiness around his eyes spoke as much of alcohol as sleeplessness. He splashed more water into his bloodshot eyes and rubbed a towel roughly across to dry his face. Then he pulled on his jacket and yawned. Another day.

  Outside, the sun cooked the fractured pavements of the city. Everywhere signs of life stirred. People thronged and bustled, humanity busy with purpose. Thrusting like beetles into the underground stations that swallowed them whole to vomit them out again throughout the metropolis. The oxygen particles in the blood of the metropolis, making it pump, making it breathe.

  But death in London was also as regular as a heartbeat. Death from old age, from cancer, from heart attacks when playing squash or having energetic sex, from pneumonia and exposure, from automotive accident, from desperation and loneliness, and from murder. On a daily basis the bodies mounted up and were brought to Kate Walker and her colleagues for examination, for analysis.

  This Wednesday morning, while the sun shone bright, she had five cold bodies on the slate, including Jackie Malone, and one young child jumping to the head of the queue. Another statistic on the slab. Another job to do.