Hard Evidence (13 page)

'The point is, Ms Simmons, you recommended
Candy Morgan for release.'

Elaine Simmons smiled at him in a neutral
kind of way. 'I'm guessing here that you don't
usually have much time for the likes of me,
Inspector.'

'You'd be guessing right.'

'Wishy-washy liberals, holding the criminals'
hands and treating them with more respect than
their victims.'

'Sounds about the right description.'

'We all have a job to do.'

'If you kept on holding their hands, maybe that
would work.'

'What do you mean?'

'See, if you held on to them, then those hands
couldn't be put to use again, could they?
Strangling people. Stabbing or glassing people.
Raping. Sodomising. Old ladies, young children.'

'You're not a fan of probation and rehabilitation,
I take it?'

'Are you?'

'I wouldn't be in this job if I wasn't.'

'Every single week someone is murdered or
raped by an offender on parole. Let out early on
the recommendation of yourself or one of your
colleagues.'

'We're not the bad guys, Inspector. These
statistics should be put into context. Last year
only point six per cent of offenders assessed as
high risk reoffended.'

Delaney could feel a throbbing in his temples
and a red mist building up behind his eyes. 'I was
just putting matters into the context, Ms
Simmons, of the fact that career criminals are let
out after serving only half their time. Let out on
probation due to the fact that the government
reckons it is more cost-effective to let murderers
loose on the street than to build the prisons needed
to house them all.'

Elaine smiled sympathetically. 'I'm sorry you see
it that way.'

'Save your apologies for Jenny Morgan's
father.'

'I don't feel he has cause for alarm.'

Delaney couldn't believe what he was hearing.
'His psychotic sister has kidnapped his daughter,
for Christ's sake. I should think he has every good
reason to be alarmed.'

'Candy Morgan was assessed very thoroughly
before she was released. I really don't think she
poses a threat to anyone, least of all her niece.'

'She cut somebody's ear off. She sliced a guard's
face open with a razor.'

'She changed.'

'They all change when parole comes up.'

'Candy was different.'

Delaney laughed dismissively. 'They're all different,
they're all innocent.'

'Have you spoken to her, Inspector?'

'Obviously not. That's why we're here.'

'When you speak to her, you'll see what I mean.'

'You have nothing to give us that will help us
find her?'

'I've no idea where she is. But I can assure you
that the girl is in no danger.'

'How can you be so sure?'

Elaine hesitated, then shook her head. 'You'll
just have to take my word for it.'

Delaney looked at her, realisation dawning.
'You know something, don't you?'

'No. I have no idea where she is.'

'But you know something. She has told you
something?'

'Anything we ever spoke about is confidential.
You know that, Inspector.'

'I know that a twelve-year-old girl is missing.'

'I'm sorry, but I can't help you.'

'Bullshit!' Delaney slammed his hand down
hard on her desk.

Elaine jumped back, startled.

'You know anything that can help us find
that girl then you tell us now. Or so help me
I'll make you pay for it if anything happens to
her.'

Elaine Simmons met his angry look. 'Believe it
or not, Inspector, you're not the first person to
shout at me.'

Sally intervened diplomatically. 'We just want
to find the girl. I'm sure you can see that.'

'Of course I can. And if I could help in any way
I would. Like I said, I honestly and genuinely
believe that Candy Morgan is a changed woman.
She has had a horrible, troubled life but she has
turned it around. She's turned a corner.'

'She's turning a corner straight back to
Holloway when we catch up with her.'

'And if she hasn't done anything wrong?'

'Of course she's done something wrong.'

'She's a relative. It makes a difference.'

Delaney leaned in. 'You want to help Candy
Morgan?'

'Yes, I do.'

'Then tell us what you know.'

'I'm sorry, there's nothing else to tell.'

Delaney's mobile phone rang; he snapped it
open, irritated.

'Delaney?'

He listened for a moment or two then thanked
the caller and hung up. He stood up and nodded
to Sally. 'We're out of here.'

'Where to?'

'Back to Holloway.'

Delaney opened the door for Sally and looked
back at Elaine Simmons.

'I hope you sleep well at night.'

'As it happens, I don't, Inspector. And you know
why?'

'Surprise me.'

Because I actually care about the people I deal
with. To you they may be worthless scum. But to
me they are victims just as much as the people they
have offended against.'

'And it's all the fault of society, I suppose?'

'You're carrying a lot of anger around with you,
Inspector. It's not healthy.'

'You going to offer to counsel me?'

'Not me, but you should get help. That kind of
anger. You let that build and someone is going to
end up getting hurt.'

'Maybe someone already has.'

Delaney followed Sally through the door and
pulled it firmly shut behind him.

Sally looked at him a little nervously. 'What did
you mean by somebody already being hurt?'

'Don't worry about it.'

He walked ahead, the tension showing in the
taut muscles of his shoulders.

A loose tile let a shaft of sunlight poke through the
roof, throwing a small spill of speckled gold on to
the attic floor. Dust motes danced in the beam of
light as a spider crawled out of the eaves and
stopped frozen in the centre of the small golden
circle.

Across the attic, in the dark, Jenny Morgan's
eyes widened and she shrank back against the
hard angle of the roof. She hated spiders. Always
had. It seemed to her that the spider had stopped
because it had seen her. She let out a low whimper
and shrank even further back, hunching her
shoulders. She cried out a little as the blue nylon
cord that was tied to her wrists bit in roughly. The
other end of the rope was tied to an iron hoop
beyond her reach, so she was trapped. Alone. In
the dark, and terrified.

The spider stiffened slightly and then suddenly
shot with lightning speed back into the shadows.
Jenny let out a small sigh of relief, her young heart
pumping blood so fast that she could feel it in her
chest and her ears.

Then a sound came and she stiffened again. The
sound of footsteps on the ladder that led into the
loft. As she looked across, the woman who
claimed to be her aunt was coming towards her. In
the darkness she couldn't see the expression on her
face or the look in her eyes, but what she could see
was the spill of sunlight flashing off steel as the
woman raised the carving knife that she held in
her right hand.

And Jenny screamed.

Delaney leaned his elbow out of the window as
they waited in a long line of traffic queuing up to
Archway. Sally glanced across at him. 'You think
there should be a difference between sentencing
men and women, then? That women should be
treated differently?'

'We don't make the law, Sally.'

'Most female prisoners are in for crimes that
don't really pose a risk to society. Theft, handling
stolen goods, petty crimes to help feed their
family. The children of those women are often
then put into care. And that's just seeding crime
for the future. We're breeding criminals and the
prison system is a large part of it.'

'What about Candy Morgan, do you think she
should have been released?'

Sally sighed. 'She obviously has mental health
problems.'

She spun the wheel, pulling the car back into
the prison car park, and showed her warrant
card to the security guard who manned the gate,
Delaney did likewise and they were waved
through to drive on and find a space.

He stared ahead as he took off his seatbelt.
'Elaine Simmons may sit in her ivory tower and
make decisions based on political correctness
because she doesn't have to deal with the consequences.
You and I do. And if she is wrong about
Candy Morgan, then it is little Jenny who will pay
the price.'

Sally undid her belt and Delaney turned to her.
'No point us both going in. You wait here. I won't
be long.'

He got out of the car and shut his door. Sally
wound her window down, grateful for a slight
breeze that shifted the hot and heavy air a little.

She sat back in her seat and put the radio on.
Radio Four. Some sitcom about a care worker and
her variably eccentric colleagues dealing with life
in modern London. She chuckled a little but the
programme was finishing and the next item was
the news, which she had heard already that day
about ten times. She turned the radio right down
and leaned her head back, closing her eyes,
enjoying the warmth of the day and falling into a
light doze.

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 . . .'

'Tell her to stay away from the steam.'

Howard put his arm on his brother's shoulder.
'Don't worry, Jake. She's not going to burn
her.'

'She burned you, though, didn't she?'

Howard nodded, his eyes narrowing at the
memory. 'But Jenny's going to be all right. The
police are going to find her.' He looked up at
Delaney. Angry, challenging.

'We'll do our best.'

'Because if I find Candy first, I'll fucking kill
her.'

Delaney looked into the hard, cold certainty
of those eyes and recognised the truth in them.
He'd seen that same cold hate many, many times
in the eyes of killers who had sat opposite him
across that desk or across others in other cities.
He'd seen it in rapists, in wife-beaters, in
murderers.

And he'd seen it in his own bloodshot eyes
every morning since his wife was killed. If he
could stand face to face with her killers they'd
see that look and it would be the last thing they
ever saw. That much he had promised her cold
body.

A loud crack on the door startled Delaney out of
his thoughts and he turned to see DC Cartwright
coming into the room. She looked nervous.

'What is it, Constable?'

'You'd better come, sir.'