Hard Evidence Read online

  'And did you care for Angela Carter?'

  Collier sat back in his chair, the red flush that had risen to his neck and cheeks draining as he shook his head.

  'I don't believe this.'

  Bonner smiled. 'You recognise the name, then?'

  'You know damn well I do.'

  'Then you can understand our concerns.'

  'Is this what it's going to be like from now on? For the rest of my life? Any child goes AWOL, because she's missed a bus or gone off with her friends or any reason at all . . . and you lot are going to be after me?'

  Bonner leaned in hard. 'Jenny Morgan's been missing for three days.'

  'I know that! It's this Angel you should be looking at. You read the e-mails.'

  Bonner looked at him for a moment and then said softly, 'You didn't say you'd read them.'

  Collier coloured and shook his head. 'No. I'm not playing this game.' He rubbed the palm of his hand. 'Out damned spot, is that it? Why can't you people understand? I haven't done anything. I didn't do anything then, and I haven't done anything now.'

  Bonner leaned forward and shouted into his face: 'Shut up!'

  Collier sat back, shocked into silence, nervousness creeping across his face like a sudden palsy.

  'See, the thing is, we don't care whether you think you are innocent or not. All we care about is the fact that a twelve-year-old girl has been missing from home for three days. That's our priority. And if you know anything more about her disappearance then you sure as hell better tell me now.'

  Collier seemed to crumple in his chair. He shook his head, his voice tremulous. 'I've told you everything I know. I swear to you. I don't know where she is.'

  Bonner wanted to stand him up and punch him hard in the face. Getting information from a suspect was a lot easier in the old days, he thought. Before his time, of course. That kind of interrogation had to take place outside of a police station nowadays. He looked at Collier and decided he'd ask him some questions later. In an informal setting. He smiled coldly at him, and was pleased to see that Collier looked very far from reassured by it.

  Delaney leaned forward, and stopped the footage. 'Five o'clock. If she was going to be there she'd have shown up by now.' He crumpled his paper cup and threw it in the bin. 'Give us the side entrance.'

  Sally moved the mouse and clicked on the next icon in the list that Delaney had drawn up.

  The grainy black-and-white image leapt to life on the monitor screen. People walking slowly in and out of the side entrance. At three ten a thin man approached the entrance but rather than going in stood to one side and looked deliberately at his watch.

  Sally leaned forward excitedly. 'This could be him.' Delaney nodded, his eyes impassive as he watched. If he felt a small spark of optimism he didn't show it in his expression.

  The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette; he snapped open a Zippo lighter and sparked it alight, drawing on his cigarette like a man heading for the gallows and wanting to savour every moment of pleasure left.

  'Could be he just wants a smoke before going down to the tube; figures he's got time before his train.'

  Delaney fast-forwarded the image until the man had sucked the cigarette clean and thrown it on the pavement. He turned and walked into the station, disappearing from view.

  'False alarm.'

  'Looks that way.'

  There were a few things more boring than watching CCTV footage, but offhand Delaney couldn't think of any. At three forty-three on the screen, however, a young girl walked into shot and Delaney felt a jolt of adrenalin kick into his jaundiced veins. It was Jenny Morgan, and she was glancing around, as if she was waiting for someone.

  Sally held her breath. 'Looks like Collier's come good for us.'

  Delaney leaned forward, watching the screen. 'Maybe.'

  Jenny walked into the station and out of view and Delaney pointed to the tapes, 'Get the inside footage,' but as Sally reached over to find it, Delaney held his hand up. 'Don't worry she's back.'

  Jenny came out of the station and stood where the smoker had stood earlier, looking at her watch and swivelling her head to look up and down the street.

  'She's definitely waiting for someone, boss.'

  Jenny suddenly smiled and waved as someone in a long overcoat and a hat approached her. Her face lit up in a big smile as the figure gave her a quick hug, back to the camera.

  They stood still for a few moments. Sally drummed her finger on the tabletop impatiently.

  'Turn round. Come on, you bastard, show us your face.'

  As if on command, the person turned around, the camera capturing both of them perfectly. Delaney arched an eyebrow, surprised.

  Sally blinked. 'I wasn't expecting that.'

  'No.'

  Delaney leaned forward and paused the film footage.

  'Let's get back to the station. We'll get the picture blown up, put it on leaflets, get it on the television.'

  'This changes everything, doesn't it?'

  Delaney looked at her for a moment. 'Yeah, it does.'

  12.

  Kate Walker sat at her desk typing up the notes from the autopsy on Jackie Malone. Her delicate fingers flashed over the keyboard with staccato precision and a professional rhythm. She finished the last paragraph, summing up, and saved the document. Her main conclusion was that the world was a sick and dangerous place and Jackie Malone had done little to put herself out of harm's way. But then sometimes women didn't have a choice. Something she herself knew all too well.

  She took a long drink from a cold glass of water and pulled across some papers she had printed off from the internet earlier. She was due to give a speech soon to a group of undergraduates at her old university and teaching hospital. Jane Harrington, a lecturer from her days as a medical student with whom she had become friendly, was now head of her faculty and was constantly trying to persuade Kate to join her staff, both to teach and as a practising doctor at the university health centre. Kate had always refused the overtures, but was persuaded every now and then to give a talk or a seminar, one of many alumni strong-armed in to talk to the students about the real world outside the metaphorical cloisters of the college. The real world of work mainly, and in Kate's case the real world of danger to women. She wanted to put her work into context. She dealt with the outcome, the final chapter of the story, but there was always a genesis, a cause, and they usually followed a pattern. Violence didn't exist in a vacuum, particularly violence against women and children. She wanted as much as anything to be reassured that the work she was doing was having some effect. That by helping to catch the murderers, the rapists, the child abductors and abusers, the statistics would be going down. That the Metropolitan and national police services were winning the battle, turning the tide, killing the virus source by source, stopping the spread and starving the madness of oxygen. But as her eyes flicked down the lines of statistics she had printed off, she felt worse than Sisyphus pushing his stone. At least one out of every three women had been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused. One in four would be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime. On average, two women per week were killed by a male partner or former partner. One hundred and sixty-seven were raped every day and at best only one in five attacks was reported to the police.

  Kate collected her papers. People wondered why she did the job she did, and there was the answer. She wondered how many of her audience would understand. They didn't live in her world and if they were lucky none of them ever would. But you couldn't beat statistics, and she knew that many of the young women listening to her speech would, if they hadn't been already, sometime in the future be beaten, abused, terrified, hurt, raped or murdered and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she could ever do about it. Because when Kate was called in to help, it was already far, far too late for them.

  Kate put the papers aside and rubbed a hand across her forehead. Her hand came away damp. As she looked at her finger, she picked at a minuscule fibre that st
uck to the pad of her thumb, the sort of fibre that a forensic pathologist would be delighted to discover on a dead body. She brushed it off and then rubbed her hand harder, her nails almost breaking the skin.

  She picked up an overnight bag that she kept in her office and walked out and down to a shower that was made available for her exclusive use.

  She always showered between each autopsy. A habit picked up in her days working as a police surgeon before she specialised. Often she would give a physical examination to a rape victim and then do the same to the accused rapist. A shower between examinations was mandatory to prevent cross-contamination of evidence, but Kate was glad of the excuse.

  She stood in the small cubicle and closed the curtains around her. She cranked the handle until it was almost too hot to bear and made herself stand under the jets of near-scalding water.

  13.

  Superintendent Charles Walker smoothed his hair back with a manicured hand and smiled at Melanie Jones, the pretty young reporter from Sky Television News. There were other press gathered around, but he focused his attention mainly on her as he read out the prepared statement.

  'The search for Jenny Morgan continues round the clock. At this time we are following several leads but urge any members of the public with information to come forward.'

  Diane Campbell looked down from her window at the press who gathered around the front of the building like a pack of baying wolves at a kill. And at the epicentre of it all, Superintendent Charles Walker remained the face of calm authority, of concern and reassurance.

  'Prick,' she muttered under her breath, and put a cigarette in her mouth, lighting it up. She didn't get any argument from Delaney, who was standing beside her also watching the circus unfold below. Twenty-four-hour news meant that someone's private tragedy could be played out round the clock for the entertainment of millions. He knew the coverage meant more chance of information coming forward, more chance of them finding Jenny before it was too late, but the slickness of it, the show-business of it all, disgusted him.

  Chief Inspector Campbell looked at the photo that Delaney had just handed to her, the photo he had blown up from the CCTV footage taken from Baker Street station, and drew deep on her cigarette, blowing out a long, sinuous kiss of smoke which was taken away by the light breeze.

  'Bonner tells me those things can kill you, Diane.'

  She turned her eyes in a lazy smile back on Delaney. 'We're all going to die, Jack.'

  'When?' He pulled a cigarette from his own pack and stuck it into his mouth. 'Smoking in a public building. We could get fired for this.'

  'You could, Jack. I'm not dispensable.'

  'Dispensable? I guess that's the best thing you can say about me.'

  'Oh, I don't know. You've got a nice arse.'

  Delaney laughed despite himself. 'See, now if I said that to you, I probably would get fired.'

  'You know what the difference is, Jack?'

  'No.'

  'The difference is, if you had said it, it would have been true.'

  Delaney nodded and drew deep on his cigarette. 'Facts. You can't argue with them.'

  Diane held the photo up. A woman in her thirties. Blonde hair, dark, haunted eyes.

  'Do we know who she is?'

  Delaney shook his head. 'Not yet.'

  'We should get this down to the media. Out on the news, on the web. Someone will know her.'

  'Not just yet. Let's find out what we can first. We don't want to spook her.'

  'So the girl's teacher, Collier, he's in the clear on this?'

  'Not necessarily. You know how often women are involved in child abductions, recruiting runaways from railways stations and the like.'

  'He's hardly likely to lead us to her if he's involved.'

  'People do stupid things, boss. It's what pays our wages.'

  'We'd have got round to looking at station footage sooner or later. Maybe he's being clever.'

  'Maybe.'

  'Keep me posted.'

  'Boss.'

  Delaney flicked his cigarette out of the window and left.

  Sally Cartwright waited by her car, watching as Delaney strode quickly over to her. He opened the door and handed her another copy of the blown-up photo of the mystery woman.

  Melanie Jones came hurrying over. 'Detective Inspector. Can I have a word?'

  Delaney opened the passenger door. 'Get in the car, Sally, I'm driving.'

  Melanie picked up on the urgency in his voice. 'Have there been any developments, Inspector?'

  'Your friend with the scar on his face and a five-hundred-pound suit should keep you posted.' Delaney got in the car, turning the photo face down on the dashboard, and slammed the door on the reporter.

  He pulled the car away, leaving Melanie Jones frustrated in his wake. 'Where are we going, guv?'

  'To have another chat with Jenny's friend.'

  'You think she knows who the woman is?'

  'Yeah. I think she does.'

  'At least if Jenny's with a woman she's probably safe.'

  'Doesn't work that way, Sally.'

  Sally looked across at him as he pulled out into the traffic, cranking his window right down to let some air in. 'You think she's in danger?'

  'Who knows? If we panic the woman who's taken her, she might be.'

  'She's not going to physically hurt her, is she?'

  'That's probably not why she took her. That's very rare for a woman. Especially a woman on her own.'

  'Which of course she may not be.'

  'She probably isn't. She groomed her on the internet, made her feel safe.'

  'Meaning she's got a partner.'

  Delaney shrugged. 'We don't know. But the sooner we find out, the better.'

  The loop of the thick iron chain screeched a little as it rubbed against the hook it was hung from. It was an old, heavy chain, pitted with rust, and the noise it made as it scraped metal on metal would have put the Devil's teeth on edge.

  Below it, kicking her legs sullenly, sat Carol Parks, swinging herself backwards and forwards.

  Delaney and Sally Cartwright were back in Primrose Avenue, standing at the bottom of the garden watching as the young girl sat on her old swing and squinted sullenly up at them.

  Delaney rested his hand on the chain, stopping the movement and the noise, and smiled at Carol. He would have liked to kick her backside off the thing but didn't think the tactic would be helpful, so he smiled instead, bringing the full brilliance of his Irish eyes to bear.

  'I used to have a swing when I was a kid.'

  Carol shrugged, not at all impressed. 'Really?'

  'Yeah. Back in Ballydehob. Do you know where that is?'

  'Essex?'

  'Close enough.' Delaney smiled at her again. 'One time I swung so high and so hard I went right over the top, flew out of the seat and smashed my head on the ground.'

  He had her attention now, the frown easing off her lips slightly. 'Honest?'

  'Oh yeah. Right on the noggin. Knocked all the brains out of me. I reckon that's why I ended up joining the police.'

  A slight smile.

  'Did you swing here with Jenny?'

  'Sometimes. We're not little kids, you know.'

  'Of course not. I suppose it's all boys and bands, eh?'

  'No.'

  Delaney nodded. 'Not bands?'

  'Not boys.'

  Delaney smiled again, trying to work his charm; failing.

  'Come on, I bet you and Jenny had a queue of boys pestering you at school. Couple of pretty girls like you.'

  'Jenny isn't interested in boys.'

  Delaney looked at her for a moment. 'You don't seem to be too worried about her.'

  She shrugged again: whatever.

  'Only we've got half the Metropolitan Police out looking for her. Her father is in pieces. But you don't seem to be too troubled at all. And she's your best friend.'

  'She'll be all right.'

  Carol kicked her feet again, setting the swing in creaking motio
n once more.

  Sally stepped forward and put her hand on the girl's shoulder to stop her. 'You know something, don't you?'

  'I don't know anything.'

  Delaney shook his head. 'See, I reckon that bump on the head gave me psychic powers as well, and I don't think you're telling us everything.'

  Carol looked away. Delaney looked at the girl's mother, who nodded and knelt down in front of her daughter.

  'Tell them, Carol; if you know anything you have to tell them.'

  Sally smiled again, reassuring. 'You're not going to be in any trouble. But if you know anything, you have to tell us. We need to know she's all right.'

  'She is.'

  'How do you know?'

  'I promised I wouldn't tell. She made me promise.'

  Delaney stooped down to bring his face level with Carol's, his voice soft and soothing. 'I know you made a promise, but things have gone too far now, haven't they?'

  Carol looked at him for a moment, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

  'She's gone to be with her aunt.'

  Delaney looked across surprised to Sally, then back at Carol.

  'She doesn't have an aunt.'

  'Yes she does.'

  Sally crouched beside her. 'She doesn't. If she had we would have spoken to her. Maybe she just called herself an aunt, like family friends sometimes do?'

  Carol shook her head. 'No. She's her real aunt. She told me. She didn't think she had a real auntie either, until she met her.'

  'Met her where, Carol?'

  'On the internet. At school.'

  'Do you know what her name is? Did she tell you that?'

  Carol nodded.

  'What is it? You have to tell us.'

  And she did.

  14.

  'Do you know what I hate about people?' Delaney asked Sally as he shifted into a lower gear and blasted his horn as he overtook an elderly woman who in his opinion shouldn't be allowed to be in charge of a bicycle, let alone a Mercedes with God knows how many horsepower under the bonnet. Sally wasn't happy with the way he was treating her car, but he was the boss so she kept her own counsel.

  'No, sir?'

  'Everything.' Delaney stepped on the accelerator. 'Because people lie, Sally. They do bad things to each other and they look you in the face and they lie about it.'