'Keen to be somewhere, Constable?'
'Like I said earlier, we're having a drink a bit later. You're welcome to join us.'
Delaney looked at her deadpan. 'You know me, Sally. I don't drink during the week.'
'Just a bit of a headache was it this morning, sir? A migraine?'
'Along those lines.'
Delaney listened as another train pulled out of the tunnel many feet below, feeling the ground vibrate beneath his feet, and watched the indicator that showed another lift was on its way up. So far they had interviewed two of the three potential suspects identified by Valerie Manners and had no luck with either of them. Any resemblance to the flasher on the heath's southern common disappeared below buckle level.
Kate felt nauseous as she finished reading the statement. Helen Archer explaining in clinical detail the assault her ex-husband had made on her. No, not assault, she corrected herself mentally, the rape. As she read the clinical words she could picture all too clearly in her mind what had happened. Helen suspected that Paul Archer had laced her brandy with some sort of sedative, some kind of date-rape drug. But the levels hadn't been strong enough, clearly, as she could still remember what had happened. She had remembered being powerless as he had knelt beside her on the carpet, lifting her legs apart, raising her skirt, taking off her underwear and violating her as she tried desperately for her limbs to work again. And finally they had. As she recognised the telltale signs, the little mewing noises, the tightening of his buttocks, the widening of his eyes as he sucked his breath quickly in over his teeth, his wife had summoned enough strength to jerk his body sideways, off her and out of her and shuffled away like an injured crab as he jerked in spasm and came, spilling his seed into the carpet.
Evidence.
The lift doors opened and about thirty or so people came out into the small concourse that formed both the entrance and exit to Hampstead station. Delaney was relieved to see that their third suspect looked to be among them, although he could only see his curly, brown hair. He had his head down reading the Evening Standard, but he looked up as the group spilled though the lift doors. He was an IC1 male, in his early thirties, wearing a charcoal-grey suit and his eyes flashed with shock and then anger as he saw Delaney. They recognised each other almost immediately. Delaney knew he was not one of the men in the security footage that Valerie Manners had identified as a possible suspect. But he looked a little like him, even though his hair was far longer and curlier than it had been when Delaney had last seen him.
The man looked ahead, saw the uniforms chatting outside on the street and, panicking, he grabbed a young woman and shoved her straight at Delaney and Sally Cartwright then took off at a run, out of the exit and down the street, flashing past the uniforms.
Delaney left the detective constable to pick the young woman up and went after the man, shouting at the officers to follow as he raced up the street.
The man ahead shouldered past a couple of people waiting at the bus stop, the briefcase in his hand waving wildly as he ran pell-mell towards the road that led to the common and the southern reaches of the heath.
Delaney breathed heavily, his lungs on fire, feeling the muscles in his thighs burn as he hammered his legs down on the hard pavement. He swerved around the people waiting at the bus stop and shouted for the man to stop.
He didn't.
Delaney cursed through panted breath and picked his pace up. He was beginning to regret his two visits to Roy's burger van. A bacon sandwich or two is one thing going down, it's an altogether different thing coming up, and if he didn't catch the guy sprinting ahead of him soon he was either going to throw up or have a heart attack, probably both.
He spurted forward, blowing fast now. Christ on a bicycle he needed to do more exercise. He flicked his eyes heavenward in the slightest gesture of apology for the blasphemy of his thoughts then dived forward to rugby-tackle the man round his legs and bring him down hard on the pavement.
At school Delaney was considered a great prospect for the game. Natural speed combined with courage bordering on stupidity, a keen intelligence and the ability to read the play on the hoof made him a superstar of school rugby in his early teens. As he grew older and taller and filled out in the shoulders, he was not only playing with boys much older than himself, he was playing better than them. There was talk of national trials. But then, at the age of fifteen, Delaney discovered girls and his ambitions for glory on the muddy field were swapped for ambitions of a more comfortable kind, and certainly not of a team nature. He played his last game of rugby when he was eighteen years old and so it was more than twenty years since he'd practised the move.
He missed the man entirely.
Smashing down on to the cold, slick pavement he cried out and skidded forward like a clubbed seal on ice, his right shoulder wrenched out of its socket again, a recurring legacy of a motorcycle accident in his mid-twenties.
The man ahead turned back to look, the smile on his face and the smart remark on his lips quickly dying as Sally Cartwright charged up to him and, not bothering with the technical rules of the game Delaney had once played, tackled him high, wrapping her arm round his neck and pulling him violently to the ground. At Twickenham she might have got a yellow card, in South Hampstead she got a shout of encouragement from the two uniformed officers who followed closely behind and grabbed the man, pulled him roughly to his feet and cuffed him.
Delaney took a moment or two to catch his breath, his face like a satisfied shepherd's sunset.
'You all right, boss?'
Delaney got to his knees, his right arm dangling uselessly by his side, and looked up at Sally, who was grinning a little too broadly for his liking, and gasped hoarsely. 'I wore him out for you.'
'Course you did, sir.'
Delaney stood fully up, dusted the wet leaves from his trousers with his good hand and walked over to where the tackled man was watching him, amused.
'I take it you don't play for the London Irish, Delaney?'
'I play on the only team that counts, you little shite.'
The man winked at Sally and indicated Delaney. 'You get to an age and suddenly you can't perform, if you know what I mean.'
Sally smiled back. 'Oh yeah, and how's your performance been of late?'
'I've had no complaints, darling.'
Sally pretended to be surprised. 'Really? Only an elderly nurse we were talking to earlier said you could only manage to fly the flag at half mast this morning.'
The guy looked over at Delaney. 'What's she on about?'
Sally turned to her boss. 'Do you know him then, sir?'
Delaney nodded. 'This here is Andy Ware. Aka Chemical Andy. Small-time drugs dealer, full-time pain in the arse. The last time I saw him he had a skinhead haircut. Peroxide blond.'
'Yeah, well, you got to move with the times, haven't you? I do a lot of business with the brothers nowadays . . .' Correcting himself. 'Did a lot of business. All behind me now of course. I've gone legit.'
Sally looked him up and down, unimpressed. 'What's up then, Chemical? Couldn't you get hold of any Viagra? Or was it just too cold for you this morning?'
'The fuck are you talking about, woman?'
Sally gestured towards his groin. 'The little man, flashing it on the heath this morning, were you?'
'I haven't been flashing anything.' He swirled his hips. 'And let me tell you, there ain't nothing little about this baby.'
'What are you doing here, Andy?' Delaney cut him short.
'I live here. Last I knew that ain't a crime.'
'You caught the train just after eight this morning. What have you been doing all day?'
'Working. Like I say, I'm out of the life.'
'Working at what? Somehow I can't see you as an estate agent.'