Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

It had tradition and heritage, everything Bonner hated in a pub, Delaney surmised, judging by the look on his face as he joined him at the bar. Bonner took his change from a twenty-something barman who had the same enthusiasm for his work as a duck has for orange sauce, then handed Delaney his pint, his frown deepening as the sound of a Dixie Chick, regretting losing her virginity to someone named Earl, started playing in the background.

Delaney took a swallow of his ale. 'Jesus, Eddie, what is this shit?'

'They call it Old Peculier for a reason, boss. It's supposed to taste like that. I thought you'd like it.' He smiled, taking a pull on his own cold pint of lager.

Delaney put his glass back on the counter, wiping his lips as Kate Walker came in through the front door and walked over to them. She smiled tentatively at Delaney. 'Hot out there.'

'It is.'

'Thought I'd join you for a drink, if it's not a problem?'

Bonner moved a bar stool across for her. 'Of course it isn't.'

Kate flashed a quick smile at the young barman, who had suddenly become more interested in his job. 'Vodka and tonic, please.'

The barman nodded enthusiastically and took down a glass. Kate looked across at Delaney and arched an eyebrow. 'Anything for you, Inspector?'

Delaney gestured at his glass of ale. 'I'll trade this for a whisky, please.'

Kate looked over at Bonner. 'Sergeant?'

'I'm fine with this, thanks.'

The barman lifted a hefty whisky glass to the optic, but Kate stopped him before he could pour. 'The good stuff, and make it a double.'

He nodded and poured out a large shot of Glenmorangie and put the glass on the bar.

Kate gestured. 'Scottish whisky all right with you?'

Delaney picked up the glass. 'We live in troubled times, Dr Walker. So needs must when the Devil drives.'

'It's Kate. Please.'

Delaney swirled the whisky around the glass, the sun lighting it to a sparkling tawny gold. He held it up to Kate. ' Slainte .'

'What does that mean exactly?'

Delaney considered for a moment. 'That I'm probably living in the wrong country.'

Kate clinked her glass against his and drained her vodka and tonic in one. 'I have to go.'

Delaney looked surprised. 'You just got here.'

'Just for a quick one, it's so damn hot out there. And besides, I'm driving. Got a date with Billy Martin waiting for me back in the office.'

'Be careful. He's got a reputation,' said Bonner.

Kate looked pointedly at Delaney. 'Haven't they all?'

Delaney almost smiled. 'Drive carefully.' He watched her as she walked to the door. There was definitely an animal litheness in her movement, a sensuality that wasn't lost on him or on the young barman, who was watching her leave with open admiration. Delaney glared at him and he turned back quickly to polishing beer glasses. Delaney took another sip of his whisky and had to concede to himself that he liked it. A day for surprises all round.

Bonner leaned forward, interrupting his thoughts. 'So, Billy Martin, what do you reckon, boss?'

Delaney shrugged. 'He's not going to win any more beauty contests.'

'He was a piece of work. No doubt about that. Seems he upset the wrong people this time.'

'I want you to go back to Jackie Malone's flat. Canvass her neighbours again. See if he had been there on the day she was killed.'

'You reckon she was murdered because of him?'

'Some people just get in the way, don't they? They're in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

Delaney watched through the pub window as Kate climbed into her open-topped BMW. The music changed, the Cowboy Junkies singing 'Blue Moon', and he was back in another place, another time.

Sinead turned the dial on the radio, twiddling it with mock annoyance.

'How many times have I told you not to fiddle with the radio?'

Delaney's wife laughed; it was a musical laugh, full of sunlight and joy. 'Just because you like that rubbish doesn't mean the rest of the world should suffer.'

'I should wash your mouth out with carbolic soap, young lady.'

Delaney spun the wheel, turning in to the forecourt of the petrol station. The adverts finished and the Cowboy Junkies started to play. 'Blue Moon'. One of Delaney's favourites. 'Now you can't tell me that isn't proper music.'

His wife laughed again. 'I can't tell you anything, Jack. I've learned that much by now.'

Delaney got out of the car, popped open the petrol tank and was reaching for the fuel nozzle when the plate-glass window of the shop exploded. Delaney instinctively raised his arm to protect his eyes from the storm of flying glass. His wife's scream carried over the sound of the shotgun blast and two men came out of the shop. Thick-set men dressed in black with balaclavas covering their heads, shotguns held at waist level, sweeping the forecourt in front of them.

They shouted at Delaney, their shotguns trained on him, but he couldn't hear them, and he watched frozen for a moment until his wife screamed at him and her words finally registered.

'For Christ's sake, Jack, get in the car.'

And he did so, watching as a transit van drove across the forecourt with its back doors open. One of the men jumped in and the other ran to catch up. Delaney turned the key in the ignition and gunned the engine, not listening as his wife shouted at him, putting the car in gear and screeching after them, swerving to avoid an incoming car.

The second man jumped into the van, half falling back with the motion and landing with a bone-jarring crash on his knees, but a hand to the inside wall of the van steadied him and he brought his shotgun round to bear on the pursuing car. Sinead screamed again, and the sound ripped into Delaney's consciousness like a dousing of ice-cold water as he realised what he was doing. But it was too late. The shotgun blasted, and Delaney's windscreen exploded, the car spinning out of control as the screaming blended with the screeching of brakes and the crumpling of metal… and a curtain of blood and black descended over Delaney's eyes, over his life.

Delaney jolted awake from sleep, back in his flat, and it was night-time. Four years had passed, and there was not one single night since when he had not woken from the same nightmare. Only this time it was different. This time when he turned at the sound of his wife's musical laugh, it wasn't her eyes that he saw sparkling back at him, but Kate Walker's. Kate Walker's slender alabaster throat, her ebony hair, the blood red of her lips and the green brilliance of her eyes. Her lips parted and her hot, moist breath brushed over him like a velvet kiss.

He ran a hand across his forehead and it was wet with sweat, his sheets rumpled. He wasn't sure what it was he was feeling, but it was only partly guilt.

He reached over to the bottle that stood on his bedside cabinet, poured himself a measure of whiskey and swallowed fast. If it was a fever he had, then the medicine he was taking wouldn't provide a cure, but he took another swallow and hoped that the burn of the alcohol would do its job and keep the dreams from him at least. But it never had yet, and in truth he wasn't sure that he wanted them kept away any more.

Bonner had spent the morning speaking to Jackie Malone's neighbours, even though he knew it was a waste of his time. He had better things to be doing on a Saturday, and true to his prognosis he had nothing new to report. It was the land of the three wise monkeys. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything and nobody was saying nothing to nobody. Bonner had left the next-door neighbour on the right-hand side until last. The top flat. The same set-up.

He sat uncomfortably on the wooden kitchen chair, squirming a little, trying to get his buttocks comfortable as the hard ridge in the centre of the chair bit between them. He watched as Melissa poured him a cup of tea. Her real name was Karen Stuple but she felt the name Melissa sounded sexier. Bonner didn't think she looked like a Melissa, or a Karen come to that; to him she was more of an Ingrid or a Tonya. She was from Germanic stock and it showed, with long, powerful legs and a decidedly Teutonic chest. She was the kind of woman the poet Betjeman would have enjoyed watching play tennis or riding about town on her bicycle. Bonner looked at her legs, balanced on four-inch spiked heels and encased in black stockings and suspenders, then upwards from her creamy muscled thighs to her generous upper body, moulded by a lacy basque into something almost cartoonish. Jessica Rabbit meets Betty Boop. The loose green cardigan on top did little to detract from her sexiness, Bonner thought, nor the thick red lipstick or the sunshine-yellow hair. Bonner liked his women to look like women, and with Melissa there was very little doubt. If her hair colour came from a bottle and her chest from a plastic surgeon's shopping list, he didn't mind at all. It just showed she cared more about her appearance than other women, and that was a trait that Bonner thoroughly approved of.