Hard Evidence

'What is it with you and her?'

'Your point?'

'Come off it, Cowboy. You can't stand the woman, or she you for that matter. Why is that? She knock you back on the old Hampstead hayride?'

'I don't like what she stands for.'

'Which is?'

'The Establishment.'

Bonner flashed his warrant card. 'I've got news for you, guv. You're a fully paid-up member too.'

'And you're a fully paid-up prick.'

'I do my best.'

Delaney shrugged as Bonner put his warrant card away. 'You and me, we live in a different world, Eddie, my old son. That's a licence to catch rats, is all. To pick your knees up, stick your elbows out and dance to the tune of the likes of her frigging uncle.'

The penny dropped with Bonner. 'Not a big fan of the superintendent, then?'

'One of these days you'll make a great detective.' Delaney threw his cigarette out of the window and walked back into the front room, watching as the forensics crew dusted a small cabinet that stood beside the sofa. He turned back to Bonner.

'Any word on Jackie's boy… Andy?'

Bonner shook his head. 'He's not been living with her for some months.'

'Is he with his uncle?'

'Yeah, according to the neighbours. He's off travelling.'

'That's something, I suppose.'

The forensics crew moved through to the bedroom, and Delaney walked across and opened the drawer of the small cabinet. He emptied the contents and put them on top. Condoms. A squeezed tube of lubricant. Cards with a phone number and a cartoon picture of a rubber-clad dominatrix. 'No Pain. No Gain.' A packet of rubber bands. A box of brass drawing pins. At the back of the drawer was a small black notebook. Delaney took it out and flicked through. A diary. Jackie Malone's spidery handwriting noting names, numbers. He turned to the latest entry. His own name, DELANEY, spelled out in capitals with his work number below it.

Bonner called across. 'Anything?'

Delaney moved the diary out of sight and looked over at the sergeant. 'You said she was calling for me?'

'A lot of times.'

'And?'

Bonner shrugged. 'Nothing. She only wanted to talk to you. They assumed it was personal.' He paused, licked a hint of his tongue on the top of his lip. 'You know?'

Delaney held his gaze. 'No.'

'So you've no idea what she wanted?'

'How could I? I never spoke to her.'

'Maybe she was worried about something?'

'Looks like she had good reason.' Delaney glanced through the open door, watching as Kate tilted Jackie's head slightly to one side, examining the clogged blood that had seeped thickly from each nostril. She gently laid her head down, picked up a micro-cassette recorder and clicked it to record.

Delaney turned away and walked across to the open window. Ignoring the unspoken criticism as he fired up another cigarette, exhaling lazy smoke into the hot night, the nicotine spiking into his blood and sparking pictures in his mind.

A woman in her early thirties sprawled on the hard floor of a petrol station. Her dark hair matted with blood. Blood trickling from both nostrils. A shotgun blast, shattering the plate-glass window. Delaney started as Bonner spoke.

'Those things can kill you, you know?'

Delaney took a long pull and exhaled. 'Good.' He flicked the fag end through the window, watching it spiral down and bounce on the pavement below in a tiny shower of sparks. He turned back to Bonner. 'Get on the phone. I want Billy Martin found and brought in.'

'Who's he? Her pimp?'

'Yes, he's her pimp. Or was her pimp, sometimes. Billy Martin… he's her brother.'

'The boy's uncle you were talking about?'

'Not the one he's with, no. That's Russell Martin. He's just a drug-dealer.'

'Nice family.'

Delaney gave him a sharp look. 'You don't know anything about her, Bonner.'

'You do, though?'

'I'm going to find out. I can promise you that.'

Kate Walker came through from the bedroom and Delaney turned to her. 'Anything?'

'Early days, I need to do the post.'

Delaney picked up on her hesitant manner. 'Something, though?'

'I'd say she died somewhere between twelve o'clock this afternoon and say four o'clock.'

Bonner laughed drily. 'She could have had twenty punters in that time. Can't you be a bit more specific?'

Kate turned cold eyes on him. 'Not unless you see a grandfather clock stopped somewhere round here giving us a big clue.'

Delaney glared at her. 'Why don't you save the attitude and just tell us what we want to know when we want to know it for a change?'

'Like?'

'Like how she died.'

'I won't know for sure till the post. But I'd say asphyxiation.'

'How?'

'She was gagged. The sex toy. Her nostrils were clotted with blood. She couldn't breathe. She would have been in great pain.'

Delaney looked over at the window.

'She was tied up. She was badly beaten and she was scared. Terrified for her life, most likely.'

Delaney looked back at her.

'And she vomited. She couldn't clear her mouth and choked to death on it.'

'She drowned in her own vomit. You're saying that's what killed her?'

'I'm saying that's what I think she died from.'

Delaney nodded, conceding. 'And the cuts, the mutilation? Was that before or after she died?'

'My opinion?'

'Your opinion.'

'She was dead before she was cut or stabbed. If her heart was still pumping when she was cut, that room back there would have looked like a charnel house.'

'It looked pretty unpleasant.'

'Trust me, if she was alive when she was cut, her blood would have literally sprayed the walls.'

Delaney nodded, relieved in some way. 'That's something, I guess.'

'It's not much, but yes, it is something.'

Bonner shook his head. 'What's the point, then? What kind of sick guy-'

Kate cut him off. 'I don't think it was just one guy.'

Delaney looked at her. 'Go on?'

'I think there were at least two of them.'

'I think you're right.'

'You know what, Delaney? That's made my day.'

Bonner looked at them both. 'Am I missing something here?'

Kate looked at Bonner, unimpressed. 'She was tied up with coat-hanger wire, Sergeant. I can't see one man being strong enough to do that on his own. The wire is too stiff. He'd have needed help to hold her down.'

'But if she was into bondage? That kind of kinky play.'

'These guys weren't playing at anything. She's dead. That's how serious they were.'

'But if she was already dead when they tied her up? Like when they cut her.'

'No. The ligatures on her wrists and ankles indicate that she was still alive. The blood was still pumping.'

Delaney looked at her, his own blood pumping in his ears now.

'You think they meant to kill her?'

'Who knows? I guess that's your job to find out.'

Bonner shook his head. 'So we've got a pair of fucking sex freaks out there?'

Delaney nodded towards Kate, a sardonic smile twitching the corner of his mouth. 'Watch your language, Bonner, there's a lady present. But I don't think so anyway. Not in the normal sense.'

'What's normal to you, Inspector?'

Delaney looked into her cool green eyes. 'Sexual sadists. Killers with this kind of twist. They don't usually mutilate the face. You ever seen that before?'

Kate's eyes gave nothing away. 'People are capable of absolutely anything. You should have learned that by now, Detective Inspector, if nothing else.'

5.

If an Englishman's home was his castle, what was an Irishman's? Delaney's was no castle, that was for sure. A scruffy studio flat in Tufnell Park. A small kitchen and sitting room with a bedroom to one side. The place hadn't been decorated for twenty years. A brown sofa, a G-Plan sideboard, a dusty carpet of faded red and green swirls. In the corner a TV and DVD player. A shelf with a few old, well-thumbed paperbacks. He closed the door behind him, contemplating the difference between where he lived and where Jackie Malone had died. Not a great deal. Jackie Malone had a different house somewhere, of course; she had a whole other life. She came home from her two-room working flat to a life. At least she used to. Delaney looked around at what he came home to and almost envied her her cold shelf in the morgue. A flashing light on his answering machine caught his attention. He looked at it for a moment or two and crossed to the sideboard.