Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

'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.

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 dreams 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.