Mark Pearson - Hard Evidence

Interview room number one was on the ground floor near the entrance. Usually used for talking to members of the public, taking witness statements and so on. For the serious villains the room at the back of the station near the custody cells was used. Windowless and soulless. Interview room number one at least had a window; even though it just showed the car park beyond, it let sunlight in and that made all the difference. Otherwise it was a bland square room with a mirror on the wall opposite the window, and a rectangular table with two plastic moulded chairs either side, in unapologetically seventies orange. Morgan sat with his back to the window and Delaney pulled out a chair for Sally and sat down beside her, giving Morgan an appraising look. Estate agents reckoned prospective buyers made their minds up about a property within minutes; it took Delaney a lot less than that with people. This guy had bent tattooed all over him. He could see it in the way he sat restless in the chair. His fingers mobile, rubbing his arms or smoothing the fabric of his oil-stained jeans. He was as comfortable in a police station as a pig in a slaughterhouse.

Morgan rubbed his thigh again and looked up at Delaney, the hope hungry in his hangdog eyes. 'Is there any news? Have you found her?'

'We've only just found out that your daughter has been missing overnight, haven't we?' Delaney's tone was far from sympathetic and Sally, taking out her notebook, watched puzzled as he leaned in angrily, getting into Morgan's face.

'And those hours could have been vital!'

Morgan blinked, clearly unnerved by Delaney's proximity.

'What are you saying?'

Delaney slammed his hand down hard on the table, 'I'm saying we need to know exactly what you know and we need to know it now.'

'Guv…'

Delaney flashed a look at Sally. 'Shut it.' He looked back at Morgan. 'You do understand what I'm saying?'

'Of course I do. I want her found.'

'Why did you attack Philip Greville?'

'He brought his car to my garage last week.'

'And?'

'And afterwards some people told me he'd been in the paper. He'd taken some girl and been in the paper for it. And prison…'

'Go on?'

'And then… and then when my Jenny didn't come home…'

'You thought it was him?'

Morgan looked up. 'Wasn't it?'

'See, what I don't understand is, why… If you knew there was a known child offender in your area, and your daughter didn't come home from school, or at any time during the night, why did you leave it to this morning till you did something about it?'

Morgan shook his head. 'I didn't know.'

'You didn't know what?'

'I didn't know she was missing. I was working late on a job. I came in, I assumed she'd put herself to bed. She takes care of herself.'

'She's twelve years old, for Christ's sake.'

Morgan shook his head again, remorsefully, and Sally gave him a reassuring smile as she looked up from her note-taking.

'It's all right, Howard, just tell us what you know. Anything you tell us could be important. When did you last see her?'

Morgan shifted awkwardly in his chair, his eyes not meeting hers. 'I work late sometimes. Since her mother died she's been good at taking care of herself.'

Sally nodded sympathetically. 'When did her mother die?'

'Two years ago.'

Delaney sat back in his chair, crossing his arms. 'How did she die, Mr Morgan?'

'Cancer. They couldn't do anything. Too late, they said. We never did hold with doctors. They said if we'd been earlier, but we weren't. Too late, that's what they said.'

Sally wrote in her notebook. 'So it's just the two of you?'

'That's right. Just the two of us. And Jake.'

Delaney sighed angrily. 'Who's Jake?'

'He's my brother. My older brother. He works with me at the garage. There's no one else.'

'Do you have any other relations? Anyone she might have gone to see?'

Morgan shook his head. 'No, it's just us. We've got each other.'

'Okay, Mr Morgan. Think carefully: did either you or your brother see Philip Greville after you had fixed his car?'

Morgan's brow furrowed, as if trying to squeeze some juice of memory from his troubled mind. His eyes had the look of a hurt and hunted animal as he tried to remember.

'I can't see him.'

Delaney cursed under his breath and fumbled in his pocket again for his bottle of painkillers.

St Mary's Hospital is a sprawling Victorian complex on Praed Street in Paddington. The old and the modern rose-coloured cheek by pierced jowl. Where Princess Diana once came to have her babies, and where the punched and the battered drunks of a Friday and Saturday night clog up the rooms and try the patience of the night staff working A &E as regularly as a Swiss clock.

Bob Wilkinson was standing at the vending machine squashing a thin paper cup between his bony, nicotine-stained fingers, scowling as he drank the bitter fluid contained within and hoping to Christ the thing wasn't swimming with the MRSA bug. He hated hospitals almost as much as he hated people. He looked further up the corridor where Bonner was finishing talking to Greville, who was laid out on a bed; the DS was smiling at him, treating him like he was a normal human being, not kiddie-fiddling pond scum. Bonner was the future of the Met as far as Wilkinson could tell, just like Superintendent Walker. More spin doctor than thief-taker; the kind of shiny-suited, even-teethed bastards who danced around to a political agenda, letting the paedophiles fiddle while Rome burned.

The object of his scrutiny, Bonner, smiled a final time at Greville and walked back up the corridor to join Wilkinson at the vending machine, fishing in his pocket for some change and wrinkling his nose. 'What is it with the smell in this place?'

Wilkinson shrugged. 'Hospitals are all the same, boss. Nothing about them is pleasant.'

Bonner chunked the coins into the machine. 'Including the coffee.'

'Especially the coffee.'

Bonner jerked his head back to the room where Greville lay on top of the bed, still clothed, his nose now taped. 'What do you reckon to twinkletoes?

Bob scowled. 'He'll live. Unfortunately.'

'He had it coming, I guess. Sooner or later on that estate he was going to get a kicking when word got round what he was.'

'You ask me, he deserves a lot more than he got.'

'Just as well our job is just to catch them, then.'

'Maybe.'

Bonner gave him a shrewd look. 'Someone leaked his name to the press.'

Wilkinson laughed. Short, dismissive. 'Don't look at me. I'm coming up to my thirty.'

'You reckon he's involved with this missing girl?'

Wilkinson shook his head regretfully. 'His alibi stands up.'

'An entire orchestra saying he was in rehearsal all day and in concert all evening. I'd say that stands up.'

'He's probably clean on this, but he's involved in something. Take it to the bank. It's not just his wand he's been wagging.'

'That would be a baton.'

'Call it what you like. Slags like him don't change, they never do. You ask me, we should be leaning on him. And leaning on him hard. Not tiptoeing around like a pair of fucking ballerinas so he doesn't press charges.'

'Times have moved on, Constable.'

Wilkinson crumpled his plastic coffee cup and threw it into the bin. 'You might look good in a tutu, boss, but I'm too old for this crap. We should be out looking for that little girl, not covering the suits' blue-nosed arses.'

'I reckon you and Delaney would make a good team.'

'That's because he's a proper cop.'

'What's that mean?'

Wilkinson gave him a flat look. 'Someone who knows that the end always justifies the means, Sergeant Bonner.'

Bonner gave a short laugh. 'Jack Delaney. Last of the midnight cowboys.' He threw his own coffee cup into the bin and jerked his thumb at Bob Wilkinson. 'Come on then, Tonto. Time to see what scum has washed up on the morning tide.'