Hard Evidence

The sound of a woman screaming in agony woke her with a start. The screaming rang out again, from a high window in the prison beyond. She was either mad or in labour, Sally reckoned. Maybe both. But weren't pregnant women allowed out to give birth in hospital? She remembered something about a female conservative MP liking to see women in labour handcuffed or some such.

She looked at her watch, wondering where Delaney had got to. Probably arguing with the governor. Delaney reminded her a little of her father; he never liked to be wrong about anything either. And he was her father's age, though she'd never tell him that. Mind you, her father was still an attractive man according to all the women who seemed to flirt with him whenever her mother's back was turned. But there was no way she'd ever think of Delaney in those terms: he was her boss, and besides, he carried more baggage than Paris Hilton on a two-month holiday to the Seychelles. The last thing she needed right now in her career was to have an affair with a senior colleague. She had already decided that. He was very much her senior in both age and rank. Absolutely no way. Don't even go there.

Still, a one-night shag would be fun. Sally laughed out loud and shook the thought quickly out of her head as she watched Delaney striding across the car park and up to the car.

'Something amusing you, Constable?'

'Just the radio.'

Delaney grunted and slid himself into the passenger seat as Sally hurriedly turned the radio off. She felt a blush rise from her neck upwards and quickly changed the subject, nodding to the handful of envelopes that Delaney was clutching.

'What have we got?'

'The Royal Mail. It might be slow but it gets there in the end.'

'Candy Morgan's?'

'Yeah.

'You going to tell me an admirer has been writing to her and he's arranged for her to come and live with him after she's released, and he's very kindly put his address on the letter?'

'If only.'

'What then?'

'Mostly junk. But one letter from a different bank account. One we didn't know about.'

'So if she pays by card at a supermarket, or uses a hole in the wall…'

'Exactly. Get us out of here.'

'Boss.'

Sally started the car and made a quick U-turn, heading back towards King's Cross.

Delaney wound his window right down again and looked out. The streets were lively with people. This was always a busy area but the sun brought them out in their hundreds. What tourists wanted to see in King's Cross was beyond him. Maybe King's Cross was going to be the new Covent Garden. The old Covent Garden was a common stamping ground for hookers and florists; maybe there was a theme developing here.

'What do you reckon, Sally?'

'About what?'

'King's Cross becoming the new Covent Garden?'

As they turned left into one of the side streets, Sally looked out of her window at a rail-thin eastern European woman leaning against a wall, her face a map of misery, the tracks of her addiction marked in the blotches on her skin and the soulless hunger in her eyes. A poster girl for consumerism gone very badly wrong.

'I wouldn't invest my pension in it, guv.'

Delaney watched a homeless man who looked about seventy, but who was probably much younger, open his trousers and urinate against the graffiti-stained walls that ran north of the station.

'Probably not.'

Jenny Morgan rubbed her untied wrists where the nylon cord had chafed them raw. The woman sat not far from her, sawing lumps of bread from an unsliced loaf. The carving knife was ill designed for the task and the woman swore under her breath as she struggled with it. Jenny glanced sideways at the ladder that led down from the attic and considered making a dash for it. But the woman who called herself her aunt turned, looked up and smiled.

'It won't be long, we'll be out of here soon.'

Jenny nodded, swallowing drily.

'You understand why I had to tie you up earlier?'

Jenny's mouth twitched, the smile hanging off her lips like a painted grimace.

'They'll be watching for us. We have to be careful. You understand that?'

Jenny nodded again. The woman turned back to sawing at the loaf of bread.

'Angel' had seemed so different when they had spoken on the internet. Carol Parks had warned her, but Jenny knew better. She always knew better. The young girl wrapped her arms around herself, watching the knife in Candy's hand and the mad look dancing in the woman's eyes. And she was scared. Very, very scared.

Delaney tossed a couple of the letters to one side and handed the one from the bank over to Sally.

'Get on to them and find us any transactions she's made since she left Holloway.'

'Boss.'

Sally walked off and Delaney watched her. She had everything he once had. Youth, ambition, intelligence… hope. Something that had died in him a long time ago.

He left her to it and walked down the stairs to interview room number one. The brothers Morgan had now had time to think things through, and he hoped something might have surfaced through the quagmire of their hillbilly brains. Some memory, a useful detail. Anything that might help them find Jenny before it was too late.

Jake Morgan had his head down, twisting and turning a napkin, his thick, powerful fingers flexing and tearing the paper. Howard Morgan looked up hopefully as Delaney walked into the room.

'Is there any news?'

'We're pursuing some leads.'

'What sort of leads?'

'Nothing certain. We're still trying to pinpoint her location.'

'They're still in London?'

'We don't know.'

Jake Morgan threw the paper napkin on the floor and stood up, his massive form dwarfing Delaney.

'She's not going to hurt her, is she?'

Delaney kept his voice calm, reassuring. 'Not if we've got anything to do with it.'

But Jake was not to be so easily mollified. He shook his head, blinking back the tears that were starting in his childlike eyes. 'She hurts people. She likes doing it.'

Delaney put a hand on his arm, gently. 'Tell me about her, Jake.'

'She just changed after Ma died, didn't she, Howard?'

Howard nodded, anger bubbling below the surface of his troubled eyes.

'And you have no idea where she might be? Where she might have gone? Any friends. Any relatives?'

'There's no one.' Howard's voice was harsh with pain.

There was something, though, Delaney thought; was it regret, was it fear? He looked at him trying to read him. Failing. 'You sure you haven't been in contact with her recently, Howard?'

Howard stood up angrily beside his brother. 'I told you.'

'You told us a lot of things. Not all of them were true, were they?'

'She's not my sister. Not any more.'

'You're still pretty angry with her, Howard, even after all these years?'

'Wouldn't you be?'

'She was fourteen years old at the time. She was just a child.'

Howard Morgan glared angrily back at him. 'She was never a child. She was born evil, that girl. Ma always said that, didn't she, Jake?'

Jake nodded, his skin reddening as he remembered, his eyes sliding back and forth just like his elder brother's. 'Born evil. That's what she said. And if evil is on the flesh then shall it be burned clean.'

'Shut up, Jake!' Howard glared angrily across at his brother, who was shaking his head slightly, lost in his own dark thoughts.

'If the water does not cleanse then the fire shall. And everlasting shall be the pain.'

Delaney watched as Jake Morgan shivered and his eyes seemed to clear. He looked up at Delaney and smiled incongruously. 'Have you found Jenny, then? Is that why we're here?'

'No, we haven't found her, Jake. But we need to. So if you have remembered anything at all, anything she might have said to you…'