Hard Evidence

'Your attitude isn't helping your cause.'

'What are you going to do? Charge me with saving the girl's life?'

Hadden closed his notebook and stared at Delaney for a long, condescending moment. 'We'll let you know what we are going to charge you with when we decide.'

'Whatever tickles your pickle, Richard.'

Delaney stood up and walked out of Hadden's office as fast as he could, before he could say or do anything he might regret.

As Delaney walked back into his own office, he was surprised to see Kate Walker sitting at his desk, and a little annoyed.

'Can I help you with anything?'

Kate picked up on the shortness of his tone and stood up. 'You could start by losing a bit of the attitude. I've come with some information I thought you might find useful.'

Delaney nodded a little guiltily. 'Sorry. Bit of a bad morning.'

'I heard you were in with DI Hadden.'

'That's right.'

'I always thought the man was an insufferable prig myself.'

Delaney smiled. 'Close enough. What have you got for me?'

Kate pointed at the murder scene photographs that she had left on Jack's desk. 'Jackie Malone. The way her body was mutilated. The positioning of her body.'

'What about it?'

'I've seen it before, Jack.'

'Where?'

Kate handed him a DVD. The House of Knives. 'It's a classic sixties French film. A black-and-white art-house slash and gore. There is a woman mutilated and murdered in it in exactly the same way as Jackie Malone.'

'You think it's a copycat killing?'

Kate looked at him. 'No. As you know, Jackie Malone's injuries were post-mortem.'

'So…?'

'So I think what you have here, Jack, is a seriously sick film buff.'

Diane Campbell was at her window lighting up a cigarette when Delaney knocked and entered her office. She glared at him. 'What the fuck happened out there yesterday, Jack?'

'Yeah, good morning to you too, boss.'

'Save it, Delaney. I'm not in the mood.'

'We got the girl back, didn't we?'

'You should have waited.'

'If I'd waited he could have got away.'

'You don't know that.'

'You're right, I don't know that. In fact, he probably wouldn't, in which case he was quite prepared to kill his own daughter, set light to the boat and blow them both halfway across Essex.'

'We have people trained in hostage negotiation for a reason, Jack.'

'Yeah, because we're too damn scared just to take them down first chance we get. And don't tell me that what happened at Stockwell station has got nothing to do with that.'

Campbell glared out of the window. Finding no answers in the car park below, she looked back at Delaney and sighed. 'And what's happening with Jackie Malone?'

Delaney shrugged and gestured noncommittally. 'We think we're looking for at least two of them. Nothing concrete as yet.'

Campbell took a long last pull to finish her cigarette and flicked it out of the window. 'Your connection with her? Anything you want to get off your chest?'

Delaney helped himself to a cigarette from Campbell's packet on her desk and joined her by the window. 'Like what?'

'Come off it, Cowboy. She calls here looking for you. Repeatedly. Next thing she's lying in our deep freeze with more holes in her than a Swiss cheese on fondue night.'

'I didn't see her.'

'Why was she trying to get hold of you?'

Delaney blew a stream of smoke out of the window. 'Seems like she was worried about something.'

Campbell snorted drily. 'Seems like she had good cause.'

'That's what Dr Walker said.'

'Kate Walker meets a lot of people who clearly had good cause to be worried.'

'I know.'

'So why did Jackie phone you? If it was a police matter, why not speak to Eddie, or anyone else on the shift?'

Delaney shrugged.

'There's nothing in your relationship with this woman I should know about?'

'If there was, I would be telling you.'

She looked at him for a moment or two and then shrugged. 'I've got a meeting. Why don't you walk me to my car?'

Delaney nodded and fell into step beside her as they walked out of her office and then headed downstairs toward the front office and the car park.

'What exactly was your relationship with her then?'

Delaney scowled. Not at the question, but at the memories it brought. 'For Christ's sake, Diane, I've told you, there was no relationship.'

'It's no big deal if you visited her. As long as we know. It can't have been easy for you.'

'Excuse me, ma'am but that's… if you'll pardon the expression, a load of horse shit you're shovelling there.'

'It's not me holding the spade. And it's not me that's got a strong smell of the country about him right now.'

Delaney stopped and looked at her. Like Campbell, he had been a cop far too long not to pick up on the importance of things unspoken.

'What all this about, ma'am?'

'You've got your promotion board next week, Cowboy. And after the last debacle I just want to make sure no skeletons are going to come dancing out of the closet, rattling their chains.' She smiled at him, the corners of her eyes softening. 'Or should I say their whips and chains?'

'It's not funny, ma'am.'

Campbell halted, pulled up by the plain criticism in his tone. 'No, you're bloody right, it isn't.'

Delaney shrugged apologetically. 'I don't know why she called. I'm assuming she was scared, needed my help. I don't know why it was only me that she thought could help her.'

'Never assume, Detective. It makes an ass out of you.'

'I intend to find out the truth. You can depend on that, and you can depend on me.'

She nodded again. 'I had to ask. Someone took that cocaine out of evidence and the finger was pointed at you.'

Delaney swung the door shut behind them as they headed into the car park and across to the chief inspector's car. 'Hadden only takes his finger out of his arse to point it at me, but my record's clean.'

'Like I said. I'm not the one holding a spade. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that you don't have enemies in the force, Jack.'

'That was all a load of shite and you know it. Do I look to you like I use the stuff?'

Campbell looked at him closely. 'We all deal with our demons.'

'Yeah, well, it's strictly Bell's, book and candle with me.'

'Whoever lifted a kilogram of grade A cocaine from our stores probably didn't do it to powder his own nose.'

'Or hers.'

'Or hers,' the chief inspector agreed, and got into her car. Delaney watched as she gunned the engine and pulled swiftly away from the car park, darting into the traffic like a salmon heading back to its spawning ground.

Delaney walked back into the building. He nodded absent-mindedly to PC Dave Patterson, walking past him to the custody booking area and beyond that to the evidence holding store. He quickly tapped the entry code into the security pad and walked into a brightly lit, windowless room. A large counter stood in front of him, behind which were the shelves and wire-caged storage areas for evidence seized during arrests.

The officer on duty was a thirty-two-year-old brunette called Susan Halliday, who had Marilyn Monroe's body and an even brighter smile. Many was the time Delaney would have flirted with her but knew there was no point. Susan had been living with his boss for over four years now, the most open secret at the station. Delaney honestly didn't know why Diane Campbell was always so grumpy in the mornings.

Susan Halliday flashed her brilliant orthodonture at him. 'Sorry, Jack, your usually drugs delivery hasn't arrived this week.'

'That's not funny, Susan.' Delaney's smile belied his answer.

'So what can we do you for, sir?'

'I just want to look at the evidence log for the Jackie Malone crime scene.'

'Sure.'

She went to the records area, pulled out the relevant file and extracted a couple of sheets of paper, which she handed to Delaney.

Delaney ran his eyes down the list of items taken from Jackie's flat. He read the list twice to make sure, but he was quite right. Among the list of DVDs was Head Girl, Crime and Punishment, Spunk Junkies. But Sin Sisters, which he remembered seeing on the night of Jackie Malone's murder, was very much conspicuous by its absence.