Hard Evidence

Bonner laughed drily. 'As for good weather, you said there was a shit storm coming and you were right. And it's all coming your way, Cowboy.' He shook his head and readjusted the mirror.

Kate walked into the study, her heart hammering in her chest. She fought hard to stay calm. Delaney needed her to stay focused, she reckoned. And strangely, the knowledge made her heart beat a little faster.

Campbell gave her a curt acknowledgement as she entered and gestured atMoffett's body. 'I need to know if it was suicide or if he was helped.'

Kate knelt down by the body of Alexander Moffett, opening her police surgeon's bag and letting the familiar routine steady her nerves. She felt as if every eye in the room was trained on her. She looked at the ligature marks around the dead man's neck. Rope burns that, had he survived, would have marked him for the rest of his life. But he hadn't survived. The man's death was clearly tied up with Jackie Malone, but she didn't know how. She looked up at Diane Campbell.

'What exactly do you think happened here?'

'We don't know, Dr Walker. He was found by his housekeeper.'

'A suicide note?'

'A typed one, left on his computer.'

'What did he say in it?'

'Said he couldn't live with himself. Couldn't live with the guilt.'

Kate looked back down at the swollen face, twisted in agony. 'He chose a particularly unpleasant way to go.'

Campbell nodded. 'I have a hypothetical for you.'

'Go on.'

'Somebody orders a man – at gunpoint say, or some other threat – to stand on a low stool. The rope has been fixed, the noose tied. He tells the man to put the rope around his own neck. He has a gun on him, so who knows, he probably would do it. Then the stool is kicked away and the man is strangled.'

'What's the question?'

'Is there any way of telling that? Any way of telling it was murder and not suicide.'

Kate shook her head. 'Under those circumstances, probably not. If there was a struggle, we could get some indicators – skin under his fingernails, that kind of thing. Otherwise it's very hard to prove.'

'What about fingerprints off the rope?'

Kate shook her head again. 'No chance. We'll test for fibres, but the surface is too rough for prints.'

Kate tilted the man's head and looked at the bruising around his neck.

'I can tell you one thing.'

'What?'

'This wasn't a quick death. He would have taken a while to die. He'd have to really hate himself to do it.'

'Unless he had help.'

Kate looked down at Moffett again.

'Yeah. Unless he had help.'

In the back of Bonner's car, Delaney looked down at the cuffs on his hands and flexed his wrists. There was no chance of sliding them off, the sergeant had made sure of that. He shifted sideways on the seat and looked at Bonner in the rear-view mirror.

'You getting a buzz out of taking me in, Eddie?'

'Someone had to do it, boss. That's what the taxpayers pay their taxes for.' He shrugged. 'Nothing personal.'

'From this angle, it feels kind of personal.'

'What is it we always say? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to be scared of.'

'We know the system better than that, though, don't we?'

Bonner nodded with a sly smile. 'I'd be lying if I said we didn't.'

'It's a frame. I don't know why. But someone has put me in it. Think about it.'

Bonner shook his head again. 'Not my job, Cowboy. I'm just a policeman, and only a sergeant at that. I don't get paid to think.'

Delaney grunted. 'Cheers, mate.'

'I'm not your friend, Delaney. I never was. I work with you. End of story.' He met Delaney's eyes in the mirror. 'That is, I used to work with you.'

Bonner turned his attention back to the traffic and Delaney slumped against the side of the car. He hoped Kate Walker would be careful who she spoke to. One of his colleagues had set him up. They had killed more than once, and to Delaney it was perfectly clear that they would happily kill again.

Siobhan screamed. High-pitched and terrified. She yelled again and Wendy laughed as she pushed the swing higher. 'Don't stop!' Siobhan loved to go as high as she could. She loved it and was terrified by it at the same time. She remembered last year when her dad had taken her to an amusement park. She couldn't get enough of some of the rides. Ones that went high in the air and crashed to the ground. Ones that whirled like gigantic whisks, spinning and wheeling and turning and dipping. She'd laughed, screamed herself hoarse on that day. Her dad had paid for her to go on the rides time and time again, but wouldn't go on them himself, even though she and Wendy had teased him mercilessly. He claimed he had an inner ear problem which meant he couldn't go on spinning rides. Siobhan laughed as she remembered it.

Across the park, a tall man in a dark raincoat sat on a bench and watched as her aunt swung the little girl higher and higher. The man took a long, thin cigar from a case and lit it, the flame from his silver lighter flaring his pupils to pinpricks and flashing the blue of his eyes. He watched Siobhan as she swung higher, her excited, terrified screams loud in the hot evening air. And he smiled.

Delaney looked out of the side window at the traffic speeding past. People hurrying home to their Saturday tea. Hundreds of different lives locked in the bubbles of their own cars. Their own worlds. He thought of the tens of thousands of faces he must have seen through the lens of a car windscreen over the years. Commuters returning home. Sales executives knocking off early. Office workers keen to make happy hour at their local. Nurses, teachers, civil servants, account clerks and shop assistants, bank managers and chemists. People who could work nine to five and switch off with the clock. People who could go home to normal families and normal lives. Something that Delaney couldn't do. He sometimes wondered what his life would have been like if he had become an accountant or a solicitor instead of a policeman. His wife would probably still be alive, he knew that. They'd be living in a nice house in a suburb somewhere outside of London, sitting on the green belt with the country on his doorstep. A wife at home with him and their children, kicking a football in the garden and getting told off for spoiling the vegetable patch. But Delaney wasn't a solicitor, and his wife wasn't alive and complaining about broken tomato plants. She was dead. Delaney looked away from the window and a cold calm came over him.

Bonner swung the wheel, turning the car off the main street into a suburban cut-through, and as he did so, Delaney leaned forward, held his hands out and quickly looped them over Bonner's head, pulling the chain of the cuffs tightly into his neck.

Bonner swerved and fought to keep control of the car. His voice a painful rasp. 'Jesus, Jack. What are you doing? You want to get us killed? Jack?'

But Delaney didn't answer. He flexed the powerful muscles in his forearms and pulled harder. Bonner started choking, unable to speak. He held his hands to his throat, trying to prise Delaney's fingers loose, and as his legs jerked uncontrollably, his foot stamped down on the accelerator and the car swerved off the road, mounted the pavement and smashed headlong into a lamppost. Bonner flew forward, Delaney dragged behind as the airbag exploded in the sergeant's face and the gurgling stopped.

27.

Delaney unhooked his cuffed hands from Bonner's neck and whispered in his ear, 'Nothing personal.'

He awkwardly manoeuvred his hands into Bonner's jacket pocket and pulled out the key for the cuffs. He had just slipped them off his wrists when the wrecked front passenger door was wrenched open and a large, muscular man in a tracksuit leaned in.

'Are you guys all right?'

Delaney nodded, catching his breath. 'I think so, but if you've got a mobile, could you call an ambulance?'

Delaney opened the back door and climbed out.

The large man gave him a puzzled look as he fumbled in his pocket for his phone. 'Jesus. What happened here? You drove straight into that lamppost.'