Hard Evidence

by Mark Pearson

  '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 w
ay 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.

  'Tie it tighter, Andy.'

  Andy tightened the rope that held the gag in place and pulled Wendy's mouth into a rictus grin. Like Billy Martin and Jackie Malone, Wendy's hands and feet had been tied with coat-hanger wire, wound round and twisted hard so that it bit cruelly into her tender flesh.

  Walker patted Andy fondly on the head and smiled like a teacher watching a favourite pupil apply a lesson well learned. Andy tied off the knot on the rope, careless of any discomfort he was causing Wendy.

  Walker looked around angrily as the shrill ringing of the phone echoed loudly in the hallway. He looked down at the large Sabatier chef's knife he held in his hand. Twelve inches of broad steel with a solid wooden handle.

  'Time to put her away, Andy.'

  The smile on Andy's face sent a chill through Wendy as her eyes, stark with fear, watched the steel blade rise. Roger had bought a set of them for her birthday one year. Something she had never forgiven him for. There were lots of things to forgive him for, she realised, lots of things over the years: too many golf trips with the boys, too many late business meetings, too many thoughtless comments, too many times she just wasn't noticed, or appreciated, or loved enough. Too many times she didn't feel special in his eyes. She never made her husband's eyes light up the way Delaney's did when he saw her sister, she knew that, but she loved her husband in her way, and in the terror of her situation she realised that even if she wanted to forgive him all those things, there wasn't any time left.

  The phone rang again. Echoing off the quarry-stoned floor of the kitchen like an alarm.

  Walker slashed down with the knife. Cold. Clinical.

  *

  Delaney clicked the red button on his mobile and selected another number.

  'Sally, it's Delaney. Is Walker in the building?'

  'He left a while ago.'

  'You know where he was going?'

  'He left a message for you, sir, if you phoned in.'

  'What message?'

  'He said that before you do anything rash, you should think of your daughter. I guess he's concerned about you.'

  'Guess again. I think he's going to hurt Siobhan, Sally. Walker's been involved in this all along. He killed Eddie Bonner, or had him killed.'

  'What do you want me to do?'

  'I'm going to my sister-in-law's house. You know where it is?'

  'You want me to get a team down there?'

  'No,' he said sharply. 'I don't want anything rattling him. Don't do anything till I tell you to, okay?'

  'Of course, sir.'

  'I thought I told you not to call me sir.' Delaney snapped the phone shut and looked at Kate. 'Drive faster.'

  Kate floored the accelerator and charged up the bus lane, bumping cars aside, regardless of the damage to her paintwork and the outrage of the other drivers. Delaney gazed ahead, his eyes fixed, staring into a future he would not countenance.

  *

  The young girl waved goodbye to her friend, who returned the wave through the rear window of the departing car. As she stood watching and waiting for the car to disappear from view, she pulled her New York Yankees baseball cap lower on her head and sang 'Clementine' quietly to herself. The cap was a present from her dad and the song was one of his favourites. He was always singing it, at least, so she presumed it was one of his favourites. And if the kids at school thought she was odd because she didn't wear a designer hat or sing the latest teeny pop idol song, she didn't care. All she cared about was making her dad happy again. Happy like he used to be when she was much younger. The memories of those times were blurred now, but she could remember his warm laughter as he hugged her mother. She could remember the smiles and the music, and now and again she saw flashes of it in his eyes when he laughed at one of her jokes or clapped when she sang him one of his favourite songs. She just wished she could put those moments on pause, like on the DVD player, and keep him happy like that for always.

  The car turned the corner out of view and the young girl continued singing as she walked up the gravel path to her house, her head down, watching her feet as they scuffed through the raked stones.

  The lock rattled, and Siobhan looked up, surprised to see the door open and a man standing in the hallway, smiling down at her, a wild-haired boy beside him.

  'Hello?'

  'Hello, Siobhan.'

  'You're very pretty,' said the dark-haired youth, his smile revealing crooked teeth, a slash of ugly imperfection in the face of a gypsy choirboy.

  Kate gunned the engine, spinning round the roundabout, cutting off someone on the inside and nearly losing control, but she was good, she righted her steering, accelerating again as she willed the traffic to part in front of her.

  'Why do they do it, Jack?'

  'Who?'

  'People like my uncle.'

  'Human nature.'

  'It's evil. It's not human.'

  Delaney's eyes glittered darkly. 'We're all capable of evil.'

  Kate glanced at him and shook her head. 'You don't believe that.'

  'People like your uncle get hold of children like Andy and do what they do to them because people like us let them.'

  Kate looked angrily across at him. 'Don't say that!'

  'Children are left on the street like garbage and we complain when the wrong people sweep them up. We trust people in authority and we turn a blind eye when that trust is abused in the worst kind of way. Teachers, policemen, social workers, priests . . .'

  He trailed off. Kate flicked a glance across at him. 'You sound like you're talking from experience.'

  Delaney didn't answer for a moment. 'I live with it every day, Kate. It's my job. Cleaning up the vermin that comes crawling out of the gutters when we treat people like garbage. Vermin like Billy Martin and your uncle.'

  Siobhan stood in the doorway, reluctant to enter. Walker smiled at her, stroking the pad of his thumb along the scar on his cheek. 'It's all right, Siobhan, my name's Superintendent Walker, I'm your daddy's boss.' He pulled out his ID. 'This is my warrant card. You've probably seen your daddy's, haven't you, just like this?'

  Siobhan nodded and looked at the card, then back at Walker.

  'Is he in trouble, then?'

  Walker laughed, a big fruity laugh. 'No, he's not in any trouble. Why don't you come in? This is Andy. He's a special friend of your dad's too.'

  Siobhan smiled, reassured. 'Hello, Andy.'

  'Hello.'

  Siobhan walked into the hallway, slinging her satchel over a coat hook, and looked round, a little puzzled. 'Where's Aunty Wendy?'

  Andy grinned. 'She's gone to the shops to get some lemonade.'

  Walker smiled again. 'She won't be too long. Why don't you show me your room whilst we wait? I bet you've got some lovely toys.'

  Siobhan shrugged. 'They're all right.'

  In the cupboard under the stairs, Wendy whimpered, tried to cry out, telling Siobhan to run, but the gag in her mouth and the rope holding it in place meant she could do no more than make a small mewing sound. She kicked her legs in frustration, but it just dug the wire deeper into her flesh and pulled the rope tighter around her neck. There was no air in the cupboard and the heat was unbearable. She struggled to get some oxygen into her lungs and failed. Her eyes widened for a moment as she heard the footsteps on the staircase above her head, and then they lost focus and closed. Soon she didn't feel the pain in her side where the knife had punched and penetrated her tender flesh; she didn't feel the cruel constriction of her
tortured throat. She didn't feel anything at all.

  Kate pulled the car to a screeching halt outside Wendy's house. Delaney threw his door open and jumped out, followed by Kate, who shouted after him, 'Don't even think about telling me to wait out here.'

  Delaney nodded and headed for the door, taking a key out of his pocket as he ran.

  Upstairs in Siobhan's bedroom, Walker smiled as he heard the key turn in the lock. He looked at Andy and put a finger to his lips. 'Sit on the bed, Andy.' Andy sat next to Siobhan, and Walker smiled at the young girl. 'Shush. That's your dad now. Let's give him a nice surprise, shall we?'

  Siobhan nodded and whispered, 'Daddy loves surprises.'

  'He's going to love this one.'

  Downstairs, Delaney picked up the slashed telephone cord and looked at the blood-stained Sabatier blade on the counter beside it. His daughter's scream rang out from upstairs and it felt like someone had plunged the knife into his heart. He snatched it and ran for the stairs; Kate caught his arm and whispered hoarsely, 'Be careful.'

  Delaney shook her hand off and took the steps two at a time. Bursting into his daughter's room, he pulled up short as he saw that Walker had Siobhan held in front of him with a knife at her throat.

  'Come on in, Detective Inspector.'

  Delaney kept his face neutral. He looked down at his daughter and spoke softly. 'It's all right, pumpkin. Everything's going to be okay.'

  'Put the knife down, Inspector.'

  Delaney hesitated for a beat and then let the carving knife fall to the floor.

  'Pick it up, Andy.'

  Andy stood up from the bed and picked up the knife.

  Delaney watched him as he moved back. 'You in on this, then, Andy?'

  Andy shrugged. 'Not to start with.'

  Walker nodded, his voice warm, amused. 'He disappeared for a little while, but I think he's rather glad I found him again. Andy enjoyed the filming work I gave him, didn't you, son?'

  'Yeah.'

  Delaney noticed the flat look in the young boy's eyes, and felt a chill in his soul.