Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

The spider stiffened slightly and then suddenly shot with lightning speed back into the shadows. Jenny let out a small sigh of relief, her young heart pumping blood so fast that she could feel it in her chest and her ears.

Then a sound came and she stiffened again. The sound of footsteps on the ladder that led into the loft. As she looked across, the woman who claimed to be her aunt was coming towards her. In the darkness she couldn't see the expression on her face or the look in her eyes, but what she could see was the spill of sunlight flashing off steel as the woman raised the carving knife that she held in her right hand.

And Jenny screamed.

Delaney leaned his elbow out of the window as they waited in a long line of traffic queuing up to Archway. Sally glanced across at him. 'You think there should be a difference between sentencing men and women, then? That women should be treated differently?'

'We don't make the law, Sally.'

'Most female prisoners are in for crimes that don't really pose a risk to society. Theft, handling stolen goods, petty crimes to help feed their family. The children of those women are often then put into care. And that's just seeding crime for the future. We're breeding criminals and the prison system is a large part of it.'

'What about Candy Morgan, do you think she should have been released?'

Sally sighed. 'She obviously has mental health problems.'

She spun the wheel, pulling the car back into the prison car park, and showed her warrant card to the security guard who manned the gate, Delaney did likewise and they were waved through to drive on and find a space.

He stared ahead as he took off his seatbelt. 'Elaine Simmons may sit in her ivory tower and make decisions based on political correctness because she doesn't have to deal with the consequences. You and I do. And if she is wrong about Candy Morgan, then it is little Jenny who will pay the price.'

Sally undid her belt and Delaney turned to her. 'No point us both going in. You wait here. I won't be long.'

He got out of the car and shut his door. Sally wound her window down, grateful for a slight breeze that shifted the hot and heavy air a little.

She sat back in her seat and put the radio on. Radio Four. Some sitcom about a care worker and her variably eccentric colleagues dealing with life in modern London. She chuckled a little but the programme was finishing and the next item was the news, which she had heard already that day about ten times. She turned the radio right down and leaned her head back, closing her eyes, enjoying the warmth of the day and falling into a light doze.

The sound of a woman screaming in agony woke her with a start. The screaming rang out again, from a high window in the prison beyond. She was either mad or in labour, Sally reckoned. Maybe both. But weren't pregnant women allowed out to give birth in hospital? She remembered something about a female conservative MP liking to see women in labour handcuffed or some such.

She looked at her watch, wondering where Delaney had got to. Probably arguing with the governor. Delaney reminded her a little of her father; he never liked to be wrong about anything either. And he was her father's age, though she'd never tell him that. Mind you, her father was still an attractive man according to all the women who seemed to flirt with him whenever her mother's back was turned. But there was no way she'd ever think of Delaney in those terms: he was her boss, and besides, he carried more baggage than Paris Hilton on a two-month holiday to the Seychelles. The last thing she needed right now in her career was to have an affair with a senior colleague. She had already decided that. He was very much her senior in both age and rank. Absolutely no way. Don't even go there.

Still, a one-night shag would be fun. Sally laughed out loud and shook the thought quickly out of her head as she watched Delaney striding across the car park and up to the car.

'Something amusing you, Constable?'

'Just the radio.'

Delaney grunted and slid himself into the passenger seat as Sally hurriedly turned the radio off. She felt a blush rise from her neck upwards and quickly changed the subject, nodding to the handful of envelopes that Delaney was clutching.

'What have we got?'

'The Royal Mail. It might be slow but it gets there in the end.'

'Candy Morgan's?'

'Yeah.

'You going to tell me an admirer has been writing to her and he's arranged for her to come and live with him after she's released, and he's very kindly put his address on the letter?'

'If only.'

'What then?'

'Mostly junk. But one letter from a different bank account. One we didn't know about.'

'So if she pays by card at a supermarket, or uses a hole in the wall…'

'Exactly. Get us out of here.'

'Boss.'

Sally started the car and made a quick U-turn, heading back towards King's Cross.

Delaney wound his window right down again and looked out. The streets were lively with people. This was always a busy area but the sun brought them out in their hundreds. What tourists wanted to see in King's Cross was beyond him. Maybe King's Cross was going to be the new Covent Garden. The old Covent Garden was a common stamping ground for hookers and florists; maybe there was a theme developing here.

'What do you reckon, Sally?'

'About what?'

'King's Cross becoming the new Covent Garden?'

As they turned left into one of the side streets, Sally looked out of her window at a rail-thin eastern European woman leaning against a wall, her face a map of misery, the tracks of her addiction marked in the blotches on her skin and the soulless hunger in her eyes. A poster girl for consumerism gone very badly wrong.

'I wouldn't invest my pension in it, guv.'

Delaney watched a homeless man who looked about seventy, but who was probably much younger, open his trousers and urinate against the graffiti-stained walls that ran north of the station.

'Probably not.'

Jenny Morgan rubbed her untied wrists where the nylon cord had chafed them raw. The woman sat not far from her, sawing lumps of bread from an unsliced loaf. The carving knife was ill designed for the task and the woman swore under her breath as she struggled with it. Jenny glanced sideways at the ladder that led down from the attic and considered making a dash for it. But the woman who called herself her aunt turned, looked up and smiled.

'It won't be long, we'll be out of here soon.'

Jenny nodded, swallowing drily.

'You understand why I had to tie you up earlier?'

Jenny's mouth twitched, the smile hanging off her lips like a painted grimace.

'They'll be watching for us. We have to be careful. You understand that?'

Jenny nodded again. The woman turned back to sawing at the loaf of bread.

'Angel' had seemed so different when they had spoken on the internet. Carol Parks had warned her, but Jenny knew better. She always knew better. The young girl wrapped her arms around herself, watching the knife in Candy's hand and the mad look dancing in the woman's eyes. And she was scared. Very, very scared.

Delaney tossed a couple of the letters to one side and handed the one from the bank over to Sally.

'Get on to them and find us any transactions she's made since she left Holloway.'

'Boss.'

Sally walked off and Delaney watched her. She had everything he once had. Youth, ambition, intelligence… hope. Something that had died in him a long time ago.

He left her to it and walked down the stairs to interview room number one. The brothers Morgan had now had time to think things through, and he hoped something might have surfaced through the quagmire of their hillbilly brains. Some memory, a useful detail. Anything that might help them find Jenny before it was too late.