Hard Evidence

'Where did you learn to play golf?'

Kate knelt down and put her fingers to Norrell's neck. 'He's still alive.'

'Not going to be able to answer a lot of questions, though, is he?'

'Was that what you were doing, interrogating him?'

'Yeah.'

'Interesting technique.'

'I could have got him to talk.'

Kate smiled tolerantly. 'You'd rather I'd let you finish the fight?'

Delaney winced again as he got to his feet. 'I guess not. Thanks.'

Kate put the club back into the golf bag propped against the wall. 'What are we going to do with him?'

'Put him in the car.'

'What with? A fork-lift truck?'

Delaney looked at the prostrate figure. 'Good point.' He walked across and searched through Norrell's jacket thrown over the back of a chair. Nothing. He looked in the desk's single drawer, taking out a stubby revolver, smelling the barrell before placing it on the desk, then searched through the papers in the drawers.

Kate knelt down to check Norrell's pulse again. 'He might be badly hurt, Jack.'

'Be a bonus.'

'I'm serious. He needs to get to a hospital.'

Delaney slammed the drawers shut. 'And I need to know who he's working for.' He wasn't sure what it was he was hoping to find, but whatever it was, he hadn't found it. He wasn't surprised, just annoyed.

Kate looked at Norrell, a trail of drool pooling on his lower lip. 'How do you know him?'

'I busted him on a drugs-dealing charge a short while back.'

'And?'

'Cocaine, good quality. We took him down with about a key of the stuff.'

'So why isn't he safely locked up?'

'Because the evidence went missing. That's what Bonner was talking about. He took it. The CPS wouldn't proceed and rhinoceros boy here walked free.'

Delaney's mobile rang and he looked at the caller's number before answering it.

'What have you got?' He listened intently to the reply. 'You've found her?' He looked across at Kate and smiled. 'You're a star, Sally. I owe you big time.' He shut his phone up and checked that the telephone he had smashed into Norrell's teeth was still working. It was. Score one for petroleum by-products. He handed it to Kate. 'Call an ambulance.'

'Then what?

'Then we're out of here.'

'Out where?'

'To see a tom.'

'Tom who?'

Delaney smiled as Kate dialled 999. 'A tom is a brass, Kate. A prostitute.'

'Any particular reason?'

'Because she just might know what's the hell's going on.'

The traffic not so much crawled as stumbled and wheezed round Cambridge Circus. Like sick, broken and arthritic creatures, automotive elephants following a trail of pitch and tar to a secret graveyard. The temperature was now over thirty-eight degrees, breaking all records for the time of year. The tarmac on the road was melting and the vehicles' tyres stuck slightly to it as they inched nose to tail from Shaftesbury Avenue down to Covent Garden.

Delaney led Kate past the theatre that stood on the circus, past one of the pubs that Jeffrey Bernard frequently got unwell in and up to a doorway next to another small minicab office. There were a couple of tacky coloured signs offering a variety of exotic services. What was it about cab offices and prostitutes? Delaney wondered. A fat tourist stopped to watch as Kate looked at the notices, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead as he gazed at her like a starving man might look at a joint of beef.

'What's Greek?' she asked Delaney.

Delaney glared at the fat man, who was reddening even more in the face, his mouth hanging open as he watched Kate. Delaney took Kate's arm and steered her through the doorway. 'Let's just say it's not a lunch option.'

The hall was narrow and stifling; the heat trapped inside radiated off the walls like an oven. There were no carpets on the floor, although the two-toned wood showed where carpet had once been, and it looked like the wallpaper hadn't been changed since the mid-seventies. A half-eaten McDonald's meal was thrown in one corner, and the air was rich with the scent of cheap perfume and even cheaper air freshener.

Kate picked her way delicately as she followed Delaney up the narrow staircase to the second floor. Delaney pushed the button next to a colour-ful yellow card that had the name Aisleyne written on it, with the legend 'Blonde and Busty' below.

Muffled footsteps were heard behind the door, and then a voice.

'I'm busy. Come back in twenty minutes.'

The footsteps receded again and Delaney leaned on the buzzer, letting it ring. The footsteps came back, as did the voice, angrier this time.

'I said I was busy.'

The door opened to reveal a woman in her early thirties, surgically enhanced to prove one part of her advertising slogan, with a straw-coloured wig on her head to prove the other.

'Hello, Karen.'

Karen sighed, recognising Delaney. 'Fuck.'

She tried to close the door, but Delaney slammed his foot in the gap, shouldered the door open and pushed her back inside with the palm of his hand. Kate followed them in and shut the door behind her.

Delaney glared at Karen. 'We can do this the easy way, but one way or the other you are going to talk to me.'

Karen sighed. 'All right, Delaney. You win. Not here; come through to the kitchen.'

They turned down the corridor, passing a bedroom door on the right, and into a kitchen area where a small television was showing some daytime reality show. A door led off it. The room was sparsely decorated with faded, torn wallpaper and some small, functional units; a hot plate for a kettle, a fridge for some cans of beer. Not a kitchen for a chef, but perfect for a forty-pound-a-blow-job tart, thought Delaney.

A long-haired man in his forties with two days' worth of stubble and a Motorhead T-shirt sat at the table rolling a joint. His face had the kind of pale sickliness found in grubs that live under rocks; it was wrinkled and spotted with blackheads. He looked up, outraged, as Delaney turned off the television.

'The fuck you think you're doing? I'm watching that.'

Delaney glared at him. 'Take a break.'

'You what?'

Karen nodded towards the door. 'Do what he says, Daniel.'

'I'm not having some Irish prick tell me what to do.'

'It's me that's telling you. Go on, give us ten minutes.'

The man stood up and glared belligerently at Delaney. 'You got ten minutes.' Delaney held his stare until Daniel turned away and headed out of the kitchen. 'He give you any grief over this and you tell me. Okay, Karen?'

'He won't do anything.'

'Either way.'

Karen turned back to Delaney as the man left. 'What are you doing here, Inspector?'

'You know why I'm here.'

'No I don't.' She looked over at Kate as if seeing her for the first time. 'And who's the bint?'

'Be nice, Karen.'

Karen was about to respond when a small man in spectacles, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a neatly knotted tie, came into the kitchen.

'What's going on?'

Karen nodded at him angrily. 'Get back in the room, I'll be through shortly.'

The small man shook his head angrily. 'That's not good enough. I've paid my money.'

Delaney stepped towards him. 'Why don't you take a hint and leave?'

The man shook his head. 'I paid my money. I want my service.'

Delaney pulled out his warrant card. 'Maybe you'd like to be serviced down at White City.'

The man bristled, his red eyes tightening behind the steel frame of his spectacles.

'You can't do that. The nature of my business transaction with Aisleyne here is perfectly legal and you know it. I'm going to take your name and report you.' He looked across at Kate and smiled. 'Unless of course this other one is available.'