Blood Work

Jack Delaney took a big bite out of his second bacon sandwich that day and grunted with approval. 'You're an irritating bastard at the best of times, Roy, but you make a halfway decent sandwich.'

'From anyone else I'd tell them to stick their head in a pig, but coming from you, Inspector Delaney, I'll take that as a big fucking compliment.' Roy smiled broadly, his teeth like an old piano with half the keys missing, and turned back to the book he was reading. A new science-fiction blockbuster by Peter F. Hamilton from whom he had nicked the name for his burger van.

Delaney walked across to Sally Cartwright who was delicately eating a bean burger as she leaned against the bonnet of her car. Her small teeth made precise, uniform bites. Delaney leaned beside her on the bonnet finishing his sandwich and considered matters. Now that the body of the young goth woman had been removed to the morgue, the SOCOs and uniforms were conducting a fingertip search and dusting any suitable surface. Given the overnight rain Delaney doubted there would be any chance of lifting any prints. Kate Walker had barely said three words to him since returning to the scene-of-crime tent. He hadn't expected her to be sweetness and light to him but he had hoped she could keep a professional neutrality, at least. He knew he had hurt her, but they had only slept together once after all, and that hardly constituted a relationship. And the fact of the matter was he had only ended their affair because he didn't want to see her getting hurt. He knew his own failings better than anybody and he knew he wasn't in a place right now to be of any use in her life. He couldn't remember who said it but he remembered the quote about the eleventh commandment. 'Never sleep with anybody who has got more problems than you have.' He reckoned that between Kate Walker and himself that would be a close run thing. One thing was sure, though, she was certainly taking the case this morning a whole lot more personally than he had ever seen her take one before. Kate Walker had always been practically a byword for icy efficiency, but the dead goth had certainly got to her in some way, that much was painfully obvious.

'Sir?'

Delaney blinked out of his thoughts and looked at Sally. 'Sorry, what?'

'I was asking about the raggedy-haired man. You think he's connected with the dead girl?'

Delaney finished his sandwich. 'I don't know. I think we should find him, though.'

'Do you think there is a sexual connection with the murder?'

Delaney wiped his hands and stood up. 'We'll find out soon enough if there is. But she was naked from the waist up which suggests a sexual element. And the psychiatrists tell us often enough that in these sort of crimes the knife becomes a phallic substitute.'

'Boys and their toys, eh, Inspector?'

'Something like that. Come on, Constable. Or are you going to take all day eating that burger?'

Delaney walked off, crossing over the road and headed towards White City police station, purpose in his stride.

Diane Campbell looked up from her desk as Delaney came into her office. She gestured to him as she took out a packet of cigarettes and walked to the window. 'Keep an eye out. The new super has a bug up his arse about smoking. Anyone would think it's against the law.'

'It is, Diane.'

She smiled and fired up a cigarette and opened her window slightly. 'So, what have you got for me, cowboy?'

Delaney shrugged. 'Nothing new. The body is at the morgue.'

'What's your instinct? Sexual predator? First date gone wrong? Homicidal maniac?'

'I don't know, boss. A lot of anger there, that much is clear.'

'Killed in the woods, or dumped there?'

'The doc reckons she was killed where we found her. The blood-spatter patterns seem pretty conclusive.'

'Did she give a time of death?'

'Last night.' He shrugged. 'Hopefully we'll know more after the post.'

Diane took a drag on her cigarette and looked at him. 'And what did you get up to after I dropped you off?'

'I went home and tucked myself straight up in bed like a good boy.'

'Yeah, right.'

He smiled, but his eyes were flat. Remembering.

Delaney hunched the collar of his jacket around his neck and leaned back, shielding himself from the wind as he lit the cigarette that was his excuse for getting off the train. The dark-haired woman in the carriage had reminded him of Kate. It wasn't her. Wasn't remotely like her, apart from the hair. But he couldn't keep her out of his mind and, suddenly claustrophobic with his thoughts, he had hurried through the closing doors, shouldered through the crowds, up the escalator and out into the fresh, cool air.

Eight o'clock at night and it was already dark. The black clouds overhead were pregnant with rain, a real burst of it looked imminent, but the pavement was bright from the street lamps and the wash of light that spilled from the broad windows of WH Smith which Delaney was leaning against. He stood there for a moment or two, watching people hurry across the road and into the safety of the station. He watched a woman in her forties with dyed, ill-kempt, blonde hair and a red vinyl jacket walk near the phone boxes, scanning the eyes of approaching men, looking to make a deal, needing another fix and not caring about the weather.

Delaney finished his cigarette and walked back to the station entrance. A couple of stops up the Northern Line and he'd be in Belsize Park. Back home. Only it didn't feel like home to him and he was not sure it ever would. He paused at the entrance. Maybe he should do as his boss suggested. He'd had quite a few drinks already but he was a very long way from being rat-arsed. He shook another cigarette out of a packet and lit it, feeling his heart pound in his chest, and came to a decision. He blew out a stream of smoke and started walking. Away from the station towards the British Library. He crossed over the road, running to dodge the traffic, and walked a couple of hundred yards up Pentonville Road towards Judd Street and went into a pub on the corner of the two roads. An Irish bar, a proper one, not a diddly shamrock theme pub. The warmth and the noise wrapped around him as he entered, the light was bright but, for a change, Delaney didn't mind that. He walked across the scuffed wooden floor to the long, scruffy bar and ordered a large whiskey and a pint of Guinness from the freckled woman in her thirties who was stood behind it. He had downed the whiskey before the Guinness had settled and ordered another one. He was sipping it a little bit more slowly when a soft, hot, moist voice whispered in his ear.

'Hello, stranger.'

He turned round and took another sip of the whiskey, looking into the cool, green eyes of the woman who had sat on the stool next to him. Her hip rubbing against his thigh. She was dressed in skintight jeans, a cream-coloured wool jumper and a brown suede jacket. Delaney smiled at her and raised his glass. 'Stella Trant.'

'In the flesh.' Stella leaned against the bar putting her shoulders back in a feline manner, stretching the jumper across her braless chest.

Delaney smiled again and looked again into her deep, green eyes, seeing the playfulness sparking in them now. 'Buy you a drink?'

Stella smiled, nodding, and rubbed her arm, wincing a little.

'You hurt yourself?'

'Tennis elbow. Professional injury.'

'You play tennis?'

'Swinging a whip. Toy one, made of suede. Some guy had me manacle him to a wall in his cellar and pretend to whip him heavily for an hour.' She rubbed her arm again. 'The novelty soon wears off.' She looked at him pointedly and smiled. 'Reminds me a lot of you by the way. Same hair, same dress sense.'

Delaney shook his head, a smile on the edge of his lips. 'Not me. I don't play at things.'

'Is that a fact?'

Delaney looked at her steadily as he finished his second whiskey. 'Not unless I win.'

'Maybe next time I'll let you.'

Superintendent George Napier did little to hide his dislike of the man standing in front of his desk. The man's eyes were bloodshot, his hair was too long, too curly, too far from neatly combed. Altogether there was a sense of looseness to his appearance. Jack Delaney. Slack Delaney more like! Too cocky, too casual, too damned indifferent. George Napier was not a man who did casual and had little time for those that did. He didn't much care for the Irish either. He didn't trust them. He still remembered hundreds of Irish men and women lining the streets of Kilburn to mark the funeral of one of their IRA heroes. Once a criminal always a criminal in his book, and he recognised the status of the IRA as a legitimate political operation about as much as he recognised the legitimacy of the claim Argentina had on the Falklands. Mainly he didn't like the man's sullen, mute insolence. No respect for authority. That was obvious. Like many of his generation he would have benefited from National Service.