Blood Work

'I don't know, what does it matter who told me?'

'Someone took five inches of sharpened steel and tried to make a shish kebab out of his organs with it. Maybe that was the guy who told you, that's what matters.'

Riley shook his head. 'Get real, Detective. Whoever did it is going to keep his mouth shut, isn't he?'

Skinner glared at him for a moment or two, resisting the urge to slap him hard around the head again just for the fun of it. 'Let's get back to the point, shall we?'

'Which is?'

'Which is: you were a friend of Kevin Norrell.'

'Says who?'

Skinner looked around the cell. 'You see anyone else standing in this fucking room?'

Riley shrugged again. 'I knew him a little.'

'Come off it, Riley. You think we don't read files? You grew up on the same estate as him. You've been busted together more than once. You knew the man.'

Riley hesitated for a moment, as if weighing up his options. Finally he said, 'Yeah, I knew him.'

'He's on remand. He gets to speak to people. And the information is that you and he were buddy-buddy in here.'

'Someone has to watch your back.'

'You did a good job of watching his.'

Riley held his skinny arms up. 'What good would I be? You know Norrell, he didn't need me riding on his wing.'

'So what did you do for him?'

'I've been here a while. I know who's who and what's what. I filled him in.'

'What was he going to tell Delaney?'

Riley pulled a face, so Skinner slapped him hard again. Sometimes he loved being a policeman. Riley yelped and the guard from outside looked in again. He grinned and nodded to Skinner with approval.

'For Christ's sake, what was that for?'

He flinched and pressed back against the wall as Skinner leaned in, but he didn't hit him this time. 'I'll ask the question again. What was he going to tell Delaney?'

Riley shook his head, agitated now. 'I honestly don't know. His court case was coming up soon. Preliminary hearings. He told me he had stuff on Chief Superintendent Walker. Maybe he was looking to make a deal.'

'He said it was about Delaney's wife.'

'He never said anything to me about it. But if he wanted to see Delaney that was a sure-fire way of getting him in.'

'What else would he want to see him for?'

Riley shook his head. 'Fuck knows, you're the detective.'

Some people just couldn't help themselves.

Paul Archer strode angrily down the steps, shrugging into his overcoat. The woman behind the reception desk smiled at him but he ignored her. She wasn't his type and he had taken the afternoon off for more particular distractions than the kind offered in idle badinage with insipid blondes. Paul Archer had the kind of itch that could only be scratched by a certain type of woman. And he knew just where to find her.

Delaney stood in front of the briefing room. On the board behind him were pinned the photographs taken of the dead woman they had found in the woods. Hampstead's very own Black Dahlia, he couldn't help thinking.

'All right, listen up.' Delaney raised his voice above the chatter that filled the room and conversations died as they focused their attention on the detective inspector. 'Now, as yet we don't have any ID on the woman. We think she was murdered sometime during last night. We're placing her age, give or take a few years, in her mid-twenties.'

'Was she killed in the woods, or dumped there?' Audrey Hobson, a uniformed inspector in her fifties, called out.

'Best we can tell, she was killed where we found her.'

'An opportunist killing, or was she taken there?'

'We don't know, Audrey. It was lousy weather. It was cold, windy, raining. It's unlikely she'd be in the woods alone at that time of night.'

PC Bob Wilkinson spoke out. 'It's possible. Like Sally said earlier. Maybe it's some witchcraft thing. She's dressed up as a goth. You know how some of them fruitcakes are. Lesbians and pagans, give them a full moon and they start believing all kind of bollocks. '

Diane Campbell glared at him. 'Not very helpful, Constable.'

Delaney stopped himself from smiling as he held his hand up to quell the beginnings of laughter in the room. 'Nothing's discounted. Most likely scenario is that she was taken there, though. Sex attackers don't usually hang around in rainstorms looking for victims.'

Sally Cartwright held up her hand. She looked like she should still be in school, Delaney thought, but was glad she wasn't. She may look like a Girl Guide, but he knew beneath that pretty exterior was what his North American colleagues would have called a tough cookie. He'd had to depend on her more than once and she hadn't let him down. 'Yes, Constable?'

'Is there anything in the database matching the MO?'

'Good question. We're running it through at the moment. Until we get the detailed post it's all rather general. No immediate hits.'

Diane Campbell stepped forward. 'What leads are you pursuing, Jack?'

'A flasher was operating early this morning, near the scene of the crime.'

'You think he was involved?'

'Unlikely. But he may have seen something.'

'You have a good ID on him?'

'Pretty good. This isn't a run-of-the-mill flasher.'

'Go on.'

Delaney produced a couple of A3 sheets of paper. He pinned the first on the wall. It showed an artist's rendition of a wild-haired man in his late twenties, early thirties. 'This is the man we're looking for, and this . . .' He hesitated before putting up the second picture. 'This is his penis.'

There was some wincing, some groaning and some laughter at the second picture that Delaney pinned on the board. An artist's rendition, blown up, from the nurse's description, of the man's scarred penis.

'Is that life-size?' Bob Wilkinson couldn't resist it, and now the laughter rippled round the room like a rumbling sea at high tide.

'All right, children, that's enough.' Diane Campbell's voice barked and the room fell silent. 'Have a look at the picture over there.' She pointed at the dead woman's mutilated body. 'Any one of you find anything funny in that?' She looked pointedly at Bob Wilkinson.

'No, ma'am.'

Delaney's phone chose that moment to ring. He looked at the caller and shrugged apologetically at his boss. 'I've got to take this. I'll be right back.'

Delaney strode quickly from the briefing room before Diane Campbell could stop him and answered the call in the corridor outside. 'What have you got for me, Jimmy?'

On the other end of the phone, DI Jimmy Skinner's voice sounded thin and echoing, the sound of men in the background telling Delaney he was calling from the prison. 'Hi, Jack. I'm at Bayfield.'

'I gathered. Go on.'

'Nobody's talking. I put the hard word on Neil Riley, Norrell's old oppo, and according to him Kevin Norrell was taken down because of the kiddie porn.'

'You believe him?'

'I don't know, Jack. Something feels hinky.'

'You reckon it has anything to do with my wife?'

'Maybe. But you know as well as I do that you can trust Norrell as far as you could throw him one-handed. Which is ruddy nowhere. The guy's a timeserving prick of the first order.'

'Why lie about it?'

There was a pause and Delaney could picture Skinner shrugging at the other end of the line. 'The guy was desperate. That much seems clear. Whether it was because he knew there was a hit out on him, or about the trial coming up, who knows? His mate reckons that he had something on Chief Superintendent Walker, perhaps. He was looking to deal. Maybe talking about your wife was the best way to get you in to see him.'

'Maybe . . .' But Delaney wasn't convinced. Kevin Norrell had the brainpower of a fermented melon, but even he wouldn't be stupid enough to jerk Delaney's chain over his dead wife. Delaney glanced down at the stairs at the end of the corridor as the sound of high heels clicking rhythmically on the wooden steps grew louder. 'Keep on it, Jimmy.'