Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

'It's no big deal if you visited her. As long as we know. It can't have been easy for you.'

'Excuse me, ma'am but that's… if you'll pardon the expression, a load of horse shit you're shovelling there.'

'It's not me holding the spade. And it's not me that's got a strong smell of the country about him right now.'

Delaney stopped and looked at her. Like Campbell, he had been a cop far too long not to pick up on the importance of things unspoken.

'What all this about, ma'am?'

'You've got your promotion board next week, Cowboy. And after the last debacle I just want to make sure no skeletons are going to come dancing out of the closet, rattling their chains.' She smiled at him, the corners of her eyes softening. 'Or should I say their whips and chains?'

'It's not funny, ma'am.'

Campbell halted, pulled up by the plain criticism in his tone. 'No, you're bloody right, it isn't.'

Delaney shrugged apologetically. 'I don't know why she called. I'm assuming she was scared, needed my help. I don't know why it was only me that she thought could help her.'

'Never assume, Detective. It makes an ass out of you.'

'I intend to find out the truth. You can depend on that, and you can depend on me.'

She nodded again. 'I had to ask. Someone took that cocaine out of evidence and the finger was pointed at you.'

Delaney swung the door shut behind them as they headed into the car park and across to the chief inspector's car. 'Hadden only takes his finger out of his arse to point it at me, but my record's clean.'

'Like I said. I'm not the one holding a spade. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that you don't have enemies in the force, Jack.'

'That was all a load of shite and you know it. Do I look to you like I use the stuff?'

Campbell looked at him closely. 'We all deal with our demons.'

'Yeah, well, it's strictly Bell's, book and candle with me.'

'Whoever lifted a kilogram of grade A cocaine from our stores probably didn't do it to powder his own nose.'

'Or hers.'

'Or hers,' the chief inspector agreed, and got into her car. Delaney watched as she gunned the engine and pulled swiftly away from the car park, darting into the traffic like a salmon heading back to its spawning ground.

Delaney walked back into the building. He nodded absent-mindedly to PC Dave Patterson, walking past him to the custody booking area and beyond that to the evidence holding store. He quickly tapped the entry code into the security pad and walked into a brightly lit, windowless room. A large counter stood in front of him, behind which were the shelves and wire-caged storage areas for evidence seized during arrests.

The officer on duty was a thirty-two-year-old brunette called Susan Halliday, who had Marilyn Monroe's body and an even brighter smile. Many was the time Delaney would have flirted with her but knew there was no point. Susan had been living with his boss for over four years now, the most open secret at the station. Delaney honestly didn't know why Diane Campbell was always so grumpy in the mornings.

Susan Halliday flashed her brilliant orthodonture at him. 'Sorry, Jack, your usually drugs delivery hasn't arrived this week.'

'That's not funny, Susan.' Delaney's smile belied his answer.

'So what can we do you for, sir?'

'I just want to look at the evidence log for the Jackie Malone crime scene.'

'Sure.'

She went to the records area, pulled out the relevant file and extracted a couple of sheets of paper, which she handed to Delaney.

Delaney ran his eyes down the list of items taken from Jackie's flat. He read the list twice to make sure, but he was quite right. Among the list of DVDs was Head Girl , Crime and Punishment , Spunk Junkies . But Sin Sisters , which he remembered seeing on the night of Jackie Malone's murder, was very much conspicuous by its absence.

'Everything all right, sir?'

Delaney smiled. 'Absolutely perfect.'

But the expression on his face as he walked back into his office told a different story. Bonner hung up the phone as Delaney entered the room.

'What's up with you then, boss? You look like you've got a pain somewhere only a doctor should be looking at.'

Delaney shook his thoughts away with a covering smile. 'Any word on Billy Martin?'

'Absolute zip. But we're scouring every dive, brothel and bar from Wembley Park to Bethnal Green. He'll turn up sooner or later.'

'He usually does.'

'What are they charging Morgan with?'

Delaney shrugged. 'Whatever it is, he isn't going to be out for a good long while.'

'And his sister?'

Delaney shook his head. 'Shouldn't think they'll charge her with anything.' He picked his jacket up from the back of his chair. 'Come on. You're with me. You can drive.'

'What's on?'

'I've got a meet with one of London's genuine scumbags.'

'A grass?'

'My bank manager.'

Delaney used to joke that he liked both kinds of music, country and western. It was an old joke, but that didn't bother him. It was how he'd got his nickname, Cowboy, and the music playing in his car as he pulled to the side of the street would have made Johnny Cash smile in his grave. The latest in a long line of southern belles with a voice of pure sunshine. Some man was going to do her right by doing her wrong and that was just the way she liked it. Oh yeah, baby, that's the way she likes it. So much for women's liberation, thought Delaney, eat your heart out, Tammy Wynette. He flicked the music off and opened his car door, turning to Bonner. 'I won't be long. If I'm not out in ten minutes, come in and shoot the bastard.'

'You know, boss, sometimes I don't think you show the proper respect for the capitalist system we are sworn to protect and serve.'

'Make that five minutes.'

Chief Superintendent Walker sat back in the padded leather chair in his plush office, which was neat and spotless. The paintings on the wall were not prints and the brandy in the decanter sitting on his walnut cabinet was not from a supermarket at just over ten pounds a litre. He smiled as DC Sally Cartwright responded to his summons and entered the room. He looked at her appraisingly. She could be sitting behind the reception desk of a top London advertising agency, or modelling bikinis, or singing banal pop songs; instead she had come to work for the police force. His police force. Maybe she expected her healthy good looks to curry favour, and maybe they did. In the cut and thrust of police work on the factory floor, as it were, they might serve her very well. But Chief Superintendent Walker couldn't care less what she looked like. She was a police officer and that was that. One of his pieces to move about the board. He glared angrily at the file she held in her hand.

'Do you have a boyfriend, Detective Constable Cartwright?'

'Sir?' Her smile fading.

'Somebody on the force? Somebody to chat to on refs. Someone to sneak off with. Have a crafty fag, a quick kiss, a fumble in the corridor.'

She shook her head, puzzled. 'No, sir.'

'What the bloody hell kept you with this then?'

He snatched the file from her hands. She blinked nervously. 'Records, sir.'

Walker waved a dismissive hand. 'Go.' Sally walked slowly back to the door. 'And where the blue bloody hell is Delaney?'

She shrugged apologetically at him and closed the door behind her.

Walker drummed his manicured fingers on the polished mahogany of his desk, his eyes hardening as he read the report that the detective constable had just delivered.

Jasper Harrington was in his early thirties. As polished as the pine desk he sat behind. Which was to say, if you were to take a penknife and scratch beneath the surface, you wouldn't find a great deal of character in either. In truth Harrington looked a lot like Richard Hadden, and if Delaney hadn't disliked him before he met him, he certainly did now.