Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

Outside, people went about their everyday business. Summer in the city and everything looked bright, everything looked cheerful, even the Japanese tourists. At Piccadilly Circus young lovers had their photos taken on the steps beneath Eros, red buses swung round the roundabout and underneath the large neon advertisements, giving snap-happy visitors the perfect photo opportunity. A London as far removed from Delaney and Jackie Malone and Howard Morgan and his daughter as the moon.

And along the Mall, heading towards Westminster, a sleek black car, its occupant another space traveller, but then all worlds collided sooner or later in the metropolis.

Superintendent Walker, fresh from the press conference, held a mobile phone to his ear and looked out at the passing tourists, making little attempt to hide the boredom in his voice.

'I have a meeting with the Home Secretary in half an hour.' He listened impatiently. 'I'm sure you do have your difficulties, my dear, but I have had problems with your people in the past. Problems I don't need right now.' The hardness slipping into his voice now like cold steel unsheathed. 'If he's not up to the job, we can always have him shipped back to Belfast… or wherever the black bog is that he crawled from.'

He clicked the phone off and examined his nails.

Under the surface of the teeming streets, Kate rubbed moisturising cream into her hands and checked her own blood-red nails, clipped short. Delaney crossed to stand in front of her, watching as she massaged one hand with the strong fingers of the other. Hands, Delaney couldn't help but think, that should have been caressing the neck of a cello, or holding a paintbrush, not a scalpel. She looked up and caught his gaze, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her green trousers.

Delaney gestured at the inert body of Jackie Malone.

'Could you tell if intercourse took place at the time, thereabouts, of the murder?'

Kate gestured at Jackie's ravaged body. 'I don't think this was sexually motivated.'

'They wanted her dead.'

'They succeeded.'

'You saying she wasn't raped?'

Kate considered and shook her head. 'I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I can't give you a definite answer on it.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning that intercourse had certainly taken place. Given the nature of her chosen profession, it's hard to tell if it involved her killer, or killers. Whether it was a voluntary or involuntary act.'

'Any indications?'

Kate walked over to the instrument table and picked up another pair of latex gloves, easing her fingers into them as she talked, flexing her hands and looking back at Delaney.

'There was quite severe bruising around both the rectal and vaginal orifices. This would indicate a high level of resistance consistent with rape prior to the murder. And it does fit into the time pattern.'

'You can't be definite?'

'Like I said, her job involved a certain amount of specialised activity.'

Bonner laughed. 'Stick and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains…'

Kate flicked a look at Bonner. 'As you delicately put it, Sergeant, she did work in a…' she paused to find the right word, 'niche market. S and M. Sadomasochism. There is scarring and bruising on her body that pre-dates the fatal assault.'

Kate pointed to areas of bruising still visible on Jackie Malone's body, made more distinct by the cold whiteness of her skin.

Bonner grimaced. 'She was into being beaten up?'

'I don't suppose she was into it, Sergeant, although who knows? But I guess that was how she paid the rent and put food on the table.'

'So the rough sex could have been part of a sexual fantasy enacted by a client prior to her being murdered?'

Kate gave Delaney an appraising look. 'Some men like that sort of thing, Jack. Don't they?'

Delaney smiled back, a smile as cold and thin-lipped as Jackie Malone on the mortuary table. 'Why don't you just stick to looking inside her head?'

Kate broke the look first. She picked up the circular saw again and lowered its screaming blade on to the dead woman's skull. The saw growled as it struggled through bone, the dust flecking Kate's green top and spotting it red with tiny bits of matter.

Delaney turned away. 'I've got an appointment.'

Kate watched him as he walked away and turned to Bonner. 'What is it with him?'

'I don't think he likes your uncle.'

She looked after Delaney thoughtfully for a second and then turned her attentions back to Jackie Malone.

Outside in the cool corridor Delaney leant against the wall to stop the earth sliding from his tilting feet, laying both hands against the cool tiles and sucking air into his lungs like a drowning man rescued.

Gradually the pounding of blood in his ears lessened and the world shifted back on its proper axis. His breathing steadied, and straightening up, he stumbled for the bright sunshine outside. Hot enough to warm a planet but not hot enough to burn the memories clean.

He looked across the road, through the crowds of walkers and the slow flash of cars, to the kind of modern bar he really disliked, all white wood and chrome behind a big plate of clear glass. A goldfish bowl with alcohol. And visible behind the broad sweep of the counter, shiny steel pipes and amber-coloured bottles that delivered oblivion by the half-pint or shot. He looked at the people standing there drinking, laughing, living in a world removed from pain. And wanted to join them. He wanted to throw down his badge on the dusty tarmac like a sheriff in an old western and leave the suffering and the responsibility behind. He considered it for a long moment, tasting the whiskey on his tongue, feeling the cold Guinness anaesthetising not just his throat but also his mind. The sensation almost willing his legs to step out into the road, but a passing woman stumbled suddenly into him. Slurring an apology, she knocked him back from the road, back from the bar, back to a missing girl and a murdered prostitute. He stood thinking about Jackie Malone for a moment, remembering her laugh. A deep, throaty, entirely infectious laugh. The only woman who ever made him forget his dead wife, if only for a brief while. Then he walked across the road for just one cold beer.

One and done.

Delaney nodded at Dave Patterson as he walked back into police headquarters. 'Slimline.'

'Cowboy.'

Patterson looked like he was going to say more, but Delaney quickly tapped in the security code, opened the door and walked up the stairs, not wanting to get caught up in idle chat.

The CID office was deserted. He hurried across to his desk and sat quickly behind it, looking around to see he wasn't being observed. He reached down and opened the lowest drawer; rummaging under the cluttered paperwork and case files, he found the small black book he was looking for. Jackie Malone's diary. He glanced around again, making sure he was still alone and flicked through the pages, looking for any other mention of his name. He tore out the last ten pages, flicked his cigarette lighter and set light to them, watching the flames lick greedily up the pages, devouring the writing on them. He held them for a second or two and then dropped them into his metal waste bin, watching until nothing was left but feathery ash. Then he put the diary into his pocket and threw some more papers into the bin to cover up the ash.

He put the bin back in place and looked up at the clock on the wall. Eight thirty in the evening, and not a single response to Morgan's televised appeal. Not one that checked out, anyway. He despaired for the sad lives of people sick enough to prey on other people's misery by making bogus confessions and giving false sightings. As he looked at the second hand of the clock sweep around the dial, he knew that as every hour passed the chances of finding Jenny Morgan alive diminished. It had already been far too long, and Delaney couldn't help wondering if she was soon to be another candidate for Kate Walker's clinical attention. And that was another mystery. Why a woman like Kate Walker should be doing the job she was. She'd had a privileged education, old money behind her; she could have done anything she wanted to do. What made a woman like her choose to dissect people for a living? He stood up and shrugged into his jacket. People like her came from a different place to the likes of him. He'd never understand them and he wasn't going to waste any time trying to change that. Not valuable drinking time anyway.