Blood Work

'Whatever is between Kate and me is our concern and certainly none of yours.'

'You want to tell me now or do you want to be eating your meals through a straw for a couple of weeks?'

'Is that a threat, Inspector?'

Delaney stepped in closer. 'Does it sound like a threat?'

Archer moved back into the corner of the lift. 'Don't touch me.' His hand involuntarily went up to touch his nose. 'She tell you she was fucking me the night before?'

Delaney was taken aback. 'Last night?'

Archer's eyes flickered as he corrected himself. 'Not last night. The night before. She picked me up in the Holly Bush and took me back to hers. I told her it was just a one-night stand, but she wanted more.'

Delaney didn't say anything, taking it in.

Archer could see his words had hit home. 'Your problems with her are nothing to do with me,' he said as the lift door opened and he hurried past Delaney out of the lift.

Delaney watched him go then stabbed his finger on the ground-floor button. He couldn't blame Kate, it was exactly the sort of thing he would have done. He remembered that night, he remembered the hot breath of Stella Trant whispering in his ear. He had no moral high horse to ride on. He had no justification for being angry with Kate. But rationalisation was one thing, emotion another. The truth was he was fucking furious. He slammed his open hand hard against the side of the lift as the doors opened. A couple of nurses stepped back as he stormed past, but if he felt at all apologetic for startling them it certainly didn't show on his face.

Out in the car park Delaney opened the passenger door to his car, and got in, banging it behind him. Sally tried to fire up the engine as Delaney pulled out his mobile phone and punched in some numbers. The Saab coughed ineffectually a few times but turned over eventually after Sally gave the accelerator a couple of prods with her foot.

'When did you last have this serviced, sir?'

Delaney didn't answer. Instead he looked out of the passenger window as his call was answered.

'Jimmy, it's Jack. Have you got anything for us?'

'Nothing new,' Skinner answered.

'I'm just leaving South Hampstead Hospital, we've got a lead on the flasher.'

'Right.'

'Norrell hasn't regained consciousness and the other guy is holding to his story.'

'You believe him?'

'I believe they went after Norrell because they thought he was a nonce. But I don't believe that was why they were sicced on to him in the first place.'

'You being careful, Jack?'

'I'm doing what has to be done.'

'Keep me posted.'

Jack closed his phone and gestured at Sally. 'Come on, move it.'

'Chalk Farm, sir?'

'Not just yet.'

'Sir?'

Delaney looked at his watch. 'Pinner Green.'

Sally nodded and pulled the car away as Delaney's phone rang. He looked at who was calling and answered it. 'Hi, Diane.'

'Where are you, Jack?'

'Just following up a lead.'

'The boss wants you in for a press conference.'

'I'll get there when I can.'

'This lead, is it in connection with the South Hampstead Common case, or something else?'

'You wanted me back on the job, didn't you, guv?'

'Just don't let it get in the way. This turns out to be a serial killer and you fuck up on us, Jack, there's no way I can keep your nuts out of the vice.'

'Nice image.'

'Just don't let me down . . .'

'You got it.'

'And don't call me guv!'

Delaney closed his phone. Trouble was, he was good at that. Letting people down.

Jack Delaney and his wife had been eating dinner that Saturday night four years ago in a restaurant at the top of Pinner High Street. Just down from the church they had been married in, a Norman-style edifice that stood on top of the hill like a small, suburban castle. The restaurant served a pan-Asian menu, or Pacificrim fusion as the owner liked to call it. Whatever it was called, though, it wasn't to Jack's taste, he'd never really liked Chinese food. But it was his wife's favourite restaurant. It was their anniversary that evening and the truth was that Jack had a lot of making up to do to her. They had been arguing too much of late. Mainly about his job and the hours he worked. The risks he took. The danger on the streets, the growing proliferation of guns and knives in the hands of teenagers who, with no future ahead of them, valued others' lives as cheaply as their own were valued in turn. It was the same arguments that policemen and policewomen had with their spouses up and down the country and all around the world. But that wasn't all there was to it. Behind it all Jack knew the real reason for the growing tensions between them.

Sinead wanted to go back home. To leave England behind and return to her native Dublin, or move even further out into the country. Even as far as to the heathen, blighted, wind-blown and rain-soaked fields of Cork, whence Delaney had dragged his own sorry Irish arse. Jack had pointed out to her many times that he was ten years old when his parents had moved to England. Although he would hate to admit it to his colleagues, Jack felt that England was more of a home to him now than Ireland. His memories of it were fond enough, but mainly he remembered the lack of work, the lack of money, the struggles his parents had to put food on the table and leather on their feet. The opportunities London offered in the seventies for a man such as his father and a woman like his mother, God rest her soul, who were prepared to put in a long day's work were too good to refuse. And so the family had moved, like many before, across the waters to the mainland. His mother had died when he was eleven years old, run over in the early hours on her way to work by a hit-and-run driver whom the police never found and whose soul, Jack still hoped, was rotting in hell. And so it was his father who had pushed Jack into joining the police. A man needed a profession or a trade, Jack's dad reckoned, and as the boy had maybe the brains but not the inclination for a university degree he should look at the army, the navy or the police force. The idea of serving in Northern Ireland put any notions of joining the armed forces out of Jack's head. He couldn't see himself pointing a rifle at his Northern brothers, Catholic or Protestant, and he certainly couldn't envisage pulling the trigger. But the thought of joining the police had some appeal to him. Maybe it was the spectre of his mother's death, maybe it was just the knowledge that if he didn't join the police he'd go the way of his cousins who lived in Kilburn and made their money on the other side of the legal fence. And so he worked hard enough at school to get the right kind of grades to apply to the Met. Which he did when he was eighteen and hadn't regretted it since.

But lately Sinead had been, subtly at first, and then not so subtly, pushing him to take early retirement. Plenty of people left early, took up another profession. Something safer, something with regular hours. A job that meant she wouldn't be looking at the clock with dread, but with pleasure at the certainty of his arrival home at the given hour. The sound of a phone ringing wouldn't set her heart racing and her mouth dry every time she answered it, terrified that this call would be the one bringing the news she lived her life in fear of. And, moreover, their young girl, Siobhan, was three years old now. A walking, talking miniature human being with her future all before her. And she reminded him, time after time, although the bulge in her belly made it plain, that she was pregnant again and she wanted a secure future for all of them.

The trouble was that Jack Delaney didn't know what he would do back in Ireland. He was too young to retire. Too old to start a new career. And in truth he didn't want to. Jack loved his job. He loved the freedom of it, and although he might work long hours, they weren't hours spent behind a desk or in a neon-lit office, not for most of the time anyway. He got results and at the end of the day that was what really mattered. It's what mattered if you had a decent boss, that is. Someone who was more interested in banging up criminals than brown-nosing their way into senior management. And Jack's boss, Diane Campbell, was diamond.