Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

'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.'

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 stuck 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.

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.'