Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

'I've got to go.'

'Just tell me where-' But the line had gone dead. Delaney closed his phone angrily and looked over to the church doors, where children flanked by happy parents were spilling noisily out. Delaney watched them for a moment or two and then ran to his car.

Wendy came out with Siobhan. Shielding her eyes against the sun and squinting as she looked around for Delaney.

'Jack?'

But Delaney had gone.

In his car he lit up a cigarette and took a few deep drags, then picked up his mobile phone and tapped a number in. 'Sally, it's Delaney. I want you to get Jackie Malone's file out. Trace all her known associates and go back as far as you can. I'm looking for a Carol or a Karen. Probably on the game. And do the same with Stella Trant's file too. And I want it yesterday.'

'Yes, boss, but…'

'Just do it, Sally. There's something I need to take care of.'

He closed the phone and it rang immediately. He looked at the number. Campbell. He switched the phone off and took a few more hits on his cigarette as he turned the key in the ignition, his eyes dark pools of anger.

Alexander Moffett's tongue poked thickly from his mouth. His eyes bulged painfully, small blood vessels in them breaking as he twisted. The veins and muscles of his neck were thick with effort, like cords or snakes writhing under his skin. He grunted with desperation. With madness. His head rocked back and the skin on his neck burned and tore. Struggling just made the noose tighter, however, and his breathing stopped completely with a last horrible gurgle. His legs strained downward but his toes couldn't find the floor. His eyes bulged even more and red tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, his tongue so swollen now as to fill his mouth, blocking it even if he could draw air. He jerked once, maybe twice more, and was still. The eyes rolled back, and the body swayed silently on the rope in a gentle circle like a drunken, grotesque ballerina.

Behind him on a large flat-screen television, Billy Martin was screaming soundlessly as Kevin Norrell picked him up and threw him, hands and feet tied with coat-hanger wire, into the cold night water of the Thames.

A hand reached down, ejected the DVD and turned off the television. His face was reflected in the wide, staring pupils of Alexander Moffett, but as the man left the room, his image went with him.

Parked a few doors up from Moffett's house in Paddington, Delaney crushed a cigarette into his already full ashtray and automatically put another in his mouth. Flaring a match, he watched blue-suited forensic investigators hurry into the house, past flashing lights, and uniforms stretching out yellow and black tape to cordon off the area from curious passers-by. Nothing to see here. Not any more, thought Delaney.

Inside, Chief Inspector Diane Campbell nodded sourly at the uniformed constable who stood to the side of the door opening into Moffett's study. She walked into the room swearing quietly under her breath. It was an opulent room. A man's study from another era. Book-lined walls. A deep-pile carpet underfoot. A large globe of the world from a time when most of it was coloured pink. A sideboard with decanter and crystal glasses. A large mahogany desk with a green leather inset. A humidor stocked with the finest cigars from Cuba. The only modern things were the flat-screen TV and the telephone. It was a man's room. A dead man's room.

Moffett's body had been lowered, the rope cut down from the three-hundred-year old beams that spanned the ceiling. Bonner stood to one side as a police photographer finished taking shots of the deceased. Moffett's face was stained purple with the blood pooling in the loose skin. His eyes were dull and his tongue protruded like an obscene gesture. Campbell brushed a hand angrily in the air as a fly buzzed past, and turned to Bonner.

'Where is Dr Walker?'

'On her way, ma'am.'

She sighed and looked at her watch, then glared back at Bonner. 'And more to the bloody point, where's Jack sodding Delaney?'

Bonner shrugged as Campbell's mobile phone went. She snapped it open. 'Campbell?'

She listened, her lips tightening with anger. 'Bring it in. All of it.' She snapped the phone shut and glared angrily at Delaney as he walked into the room. 'Your phone switched off, was it?'

Delaney shook his head. 'Must have been out of range. I called in; Dave Patterson gave me the shout.'

'Obviously. Or you wouldn't be here, would you?'

Delaney picked up on her tone. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

Campbell nodded to the body on the floor. 'Alexander Moffett. What do you know about him?'

'Just what I was told by Slimline.' Delaney shrugged again. 'Television producer. God slot. Sunday morning, singing children, all that. Now dead.'

'He certainly is that.'

Delaney looked at Moffett's grotesque corpse. 'Was it suicide?'

Campbell looked at him for a long moment. 'Did you know him personally, Jack?'

'I don't think I went to the right school.'

'Just answer the bloody question.'

Delaney's eyes flattened. 'What going on, Diane?'

'You've never met or had dealings with Alexander Moffett?'

'You have a point to make, why don't you just make it?'

Campbell held up a piece of paper. 'His suicide note.'

'And?'

'And in it, Detective Inspector Delaney… in it he tells us why he committed suicide. It says that you were blackmailing him.'

Delaney gritted his teeth angrily. 'I never met the man.'

'Not only that, but you were selling him cocaine and turning a blind eye to the party games he played with young children. The private films he made.'

Delaney nodded, the penny dropping. 'Ah.'

'For money, Delaney. Lots of money.'

'And you believe this?'

'Why would he lie?'

Delaney shrugged. 'And why would he kill himself now?'

'Because he has a young child of his own, Jack. Coming up to her ninth birthday. She lives with her mum, but he has access. And he was scared of what he might do.'

'He told you this?'

Campbell held up the sheet of paper. 'All in the letter.'

'Convenient that it's typewritten.'

'He couldn't live with himself any more so he thought he'd make amends.'

'It's all bullshit, Diane.'

Campbell glared at him. 'Don't call me that.'

'How am I supposed to fit into all this?'

'Jackie Malone. It all comes back to her.'

Delaney looked over at Bonner, but Bonner's face was impassive, unreadable. He looked back at Campbell. 'Go on?'

'Alexander Moffett didn't just make shows for Sunday morning television.'

'I'm listening.'

'He made all sorts of films. Pornography. Like Sin Sisters , for example, starring your old friend Jackie Malone.'

'What's that got to do with me?'

Campbell carried on, ignoring him. 'The thing is, he made other kinds of films too. Films for a specialised market. Kiddie porn and other very nasty stuff.' She held up a DVD case. 'Jackie Malone dying.'

Delaney went very quiet and Campbell gave him a hard, flat look. His phone suddenly rang, shattering the silence. Delaney answered it before Campbell could object.

'Delaney?' He could hear Kate's worried voice on the other end of the phone and kept his face neutral as she spoke.

'It's Kate. Someone's setting you up for the murder of Jackie Malone.'

'It's in hand. Don't say anything to anybody, okay? I'm dealing with it.'

He clicked the phone off.

'Who was that, Jack?'

'If it is any of your business, it was my sister-in-law. Some of your people have been questioning her.'

'Standard procedure. You know how it works.'

'Anybody upsets my daughter and they'll have me to deal with.'

'Let's get back to the kiddie porn, shall we, Jack.'

'It's got nothing to do with me.'