Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

'Would you like a tea, Andy?'

'You got any lager?'

'Behave yourself,' said Delaney sharply.

'Or what?'

Delaney gave him a flat look. Andy stared back at him for a moment or two and then looked away.

'Whatever.'

Wendy smiled again, feeling the corners of her mouth as she forced the muscles to work.

'I've got a Coke.'

Andy nodded sullenly. Wendy got a can of Coke from the fridge and handed it to Andy, who took it and sat at the kitchen table.

Delaney took his sister-in-law by the arm and led her into the hallway.

'Thanks for this, Wendy.'

Wendy nodded. 'It's okay.'

'We'll be back for him in a couple of hours.'

'What's it all about, Jack?'

'I want you to look after something for me.' He pulled a letter from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her.

Wendy looked at it, scanning the words quickly. 'What's this? Thirty thousand pounds?'

'It's with my solicitors. It's part of a deposit for a flat. I listened to what you said the other day, and you were right. I need to have somewhere that Siobhan can stay.'

'You could have kept it in the bank. You don't need cash.'

'It's off the record. Keeps the amount under the next level of stamp duty.'

'Isn't that illegal?'

Delaney looked at her without answering.

She nodded. 'Right.'

'Just keep it safe, should anything happen.'

'Don't say that, Jack.'

Delaney kissed her on the cheek. 'It's going to be all right, Wendy.'

Kate started the car and looked across at Delaney. 'You sure we're doing the right thing?'

'We need to go to his house, Kate. We need proof. Something that will stand up in court. The word of that kid isn't enough. He's a thirteen-year-old child but he's already a career criminal, and a jury will see that. We need something tangible to tie your uncle in. We need hard evidence.'

Kate pulled out into the road, flipping the visor down. Even at eight o'clock the sun was bright and dazzling as it dropped lower in the sky.

As their car turned left at the end of the road, out of sight, the man in the Volvo that had followed them from the cemetery earlier took off his sunglasses. The scar on his cheek throbbed a little in the heat, the white flesh becoming more and more prominent as his face grew more and more tanned. It was like scar tissue from a burn, and Superintendent Walker ran a finger subconsciously along it, stroking almost tenderly as he looked across at Wendy's house and smiled.

Kate leant on her horn as a slow-moving Range Rover blocked her path ahead. 'Bloody Chelsea tractors. They should have been banned by now.'

'I'd have thought they were just your thing.'

'You'd have thought wrong.'

'Not for the first time.'

'And you a detective, too. You should know you don't judge a book by its cover.'

Delaney turned amused eyes on her. 'No. You've got to get between the sheets.'

Kate laughed, and then her smile faded. 'We're just going to break into his house?'

'Unless you've got any better ideas?'

'We should go in. Put it in the proper hands.'

'I go anywhere near a police station and I'll be in a cell faster than you know it. And by the time anyone listens to you, if they ever do, your uncle will have covered all his tracks. You can be sure of that. There's no one left to testify against him except the boy.'

'And Kevin Norrell.'

'If he makes it.'

Kate looked out of the window guiltily. It would be ironic if she had killed the one man who could have put her uncle away for good.

'Why you, Jack?'

'Why me what?'

'Why you? Why send you the tape? Why was Jackie Malone looking for you? Why are you in the middle of all this?'

'A couple of years ago, little Andy was involved in drug-dealing. Ten years old and working as a delivery man. Deals on wheels. Not uncommon nowadays.'

'What kind of world are we living in?'

Delaney shrugged. 'London.'

Kate shifted gear, crunching the gearbox angrily.

'I was involved in his arrest. He was a kid, so there wasn't much we could do to him. They hadn't yet brought the age of criminal responsibility down to ten, but given his mother's record, he would have been taken into custody.'

'What did you do?'

'I did a deal. He gave me the name of a major player and I covered up his involvement. He wasn't charged.'

'I see.'

'But even though he was a kid, he still put some major names in the frame. I promised Jackie I'd look out for him. She put him on the road with her older brother, a traveller, for a few years. Figured if they couldn't find him they couldn't hurt him.'

Kate looked at him for a moment as they paused at a red traffic light.

'She was your friend?'

Delaney nodded angrily. 'Yeah. She was my friend.'

'And then Andy came back to London?'

'Yeah.'

'Is it safe to leave him with Wendy and Siobhan?'

'She'll take care of him.'

Kate looked at him pointedly. 'I wasn't talking about Andy being safe.'

Delaney shook his head. 'He may be all kinds of stupid, Kate. But he's not that stupid.' He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and took one out. The last one. He looked over at Kate and held it up. 'Do you mind?'

'Did your wife like you smoking?'

Delaney was taken aback. If anybody else had asked that question, he would have snapped back at them that it was none of their goddam business. He didn't talk to anybody about his wife, apart from his daughter and his sister-in-law. Strangely, though, he didn't feel like making a smart defensive remark. He felt like talking to her about it. And he wasn't sure what that meant at all, apart from the fact that Kate reminded him of Sinead. Not just the looks, although the long dark hair was hers, and the intelligence in the eyes. It was more the comfort he felt with Kate now; he could be himself, and what was more surprising to him was that he did want to be himself again.

He smiled. 'She asked me to give up shortly after we became engaged.'

'And did you?'

'She never saw me smoke a cigarette after.'

Kate laughed and said again, 'And did you?'

'No. I never did.' He looked thoughtfully out of the window. 'Right up until the day she died.'

Kate flicked a sympathetic glance sideways at him.

'I don't mind.'

Delaney nodded and opened the passenger window. As it slid electronically down, the heat burst in. Delaney flicked the unlit cigarette out of the window and pushed the button to close it.

'Do you mind Siobhan staying with your sister-in-law?'

'It was the best thing for her at the time.'

'And now?'

'Maybe it still is. I've been looking to buy a place of my own again.'

'You're renting?'

'I sold the house. Pretty much everything in it. At the time it seemed like a good thing to do.'

'You don't feel that way now?'

'You can't just sell your memories.'

Kate nodded, lost in her own thoughts. 'Maybe you shouldn't try.'

Delaney nodded. 'It was Siobhan's house too.'

Kate suddenly looked back at the road. 'Shit!' She flicked her indicator and pulled the car to a squealing stop at the side of the road.

'What are you doing?'

'Why weren't there any police, Jack?'

'What do you mean?'

'At Wendy's. There should have been police. Looking for you. Watching the house. We didn't see any.'

'We wouldn't.'

'They would have left someone somewhere, wouldn't they? Keeping surveillance.'

Delaney nodded darkly. 'Unless they'd been called off.'

He pulled out his mobile phone. 'Turn it round, Kate.'

But Kate was already way ahead of him as Delaney made the call.

Wendy's eyes were wide with terror. She tried to cry out, but the best she could manage was a low whimper. She twisted her neck painfully, her face scraping on the polished oak of her hallway floor, the familiar smell of Mr Sheen clogging her nostrils. She coughed, choking as the gag in her mouth tightened, and tried to breathe deeply through her nose, willing herself not to panic, trying to calm the voice that screamed in her head. Walker looked down at her dispassionately and nodded to the boy with the thin rope in his hands.