So Jack didn't know what he was supposed to do. He loved his wife, really loved her. But the tensions over the last few months had put a strain on them both. And Jack had made a mistake. He'd had an affair. Not even an affair really, just a one-night stand, but the guilt of it ate away at him on a daily basis like a virus. Like a flesh-eating disease. And, because he felt guilty, he got angry, and covered it up by arguing with his wife. It was a vicious circle and Jack wasn't at all sure how to get out of it. But he had made an effort tonight and was grateful that he had had. They had had a lovely meal and a lovely evening. For the first time in ages they hadn't argued. They'd enjoyed each other's company, they'd made each other laugh and Jack couldn't for the life of him understand why he had strayed. And especially with whom.
As they had left the restaurant and started up the car engine, Sinead had insisted they get more petrol. Jack would have argued, he was well aware that they had enough in the tank to get home three times over, but it was one of his wife's pet foibles, she never let the petrol gauge drop below a quarter of a tank. And so they had turned right at the bottom of the hill and drove out of Pinner up to Pinner Green, where there was a petrol station that would be open at that time of day. It was a hot summer night, the heat still cooking the air and only the faintest breaths of wind. Venus was bright in the night sky and Delaney took it to be an omen. He pointed at the star. 'If men are from Mars and women are from Venus. And if men like bars, what do women like?'
Sinead laughed and slapped him on the arm. It was a musical laugh, like the sound of trickling mountain water over cool slate.
Delaney spun the wheel, turning into the forecourt of the petrol station. The adverts finished and the Cowboy Junkies started to play. 'Blue Moon'. One of Delaney's favourites. 'Now you can't tell me that isn't proper music.'
His wife laughed again. 'I can't tell you anything, Jack. I've learned that much by now.'
Delaney had got out of the car and popped open the petrol tank; he was reaching for the fuel nozzle when the plate-glass window of the shop exploded. Delaney instinctively raised his arm to protect his eyes from the storm of flying glass. His wife's scream carried over the sound of the shotgun blast and two men came out of the shop. Thickset men dressed in black with balaclavas covering their heads, shotguns held waist level, sweeping the forecourt in front of them.
They shouted at Delaney, but he couldn't hear them; their shotguns trained on him and he watched them frozen for a moment, until his wife screamed at him and her words finally registered.
'For Christ's sake, Jack, get in the car.'
And he did, watching as a Transit van drove through the forecourt with its back doors open. One of the men jumped in and the other ran to catch up. Delaney turned the key in the ignition and gunned the engine, not listening as his wife shouted at him, putting the car in gear and screeching after them, swerving to avoid an incoming car.
The second man jumped into the van, half falling back with the motion and landed with a bone-jarring crash on his knees, but a hand to the inside wall of the van steadied him and he brought his shotgun round to bear on the pursuing car. Delaney's wife screamed and the sound ripped into Delaney's consciousness like ice-cold water as he realised what he was doing. Too late. The shotgun fired again and Delaney's windscreen exploded, the car spinning out of control as the screaming blended with the screeching of brakes and the crumpling of metal . . .
Delaney shook his head to clear the thought and frowned as he pulled the car to a stop outside a block of upscale apartment buildings on the left-hand side of Pinner Green heading towards Northwood Hills.
'What's up, boss?'
'The petrol station.'
'What about it?'
'It's not here any more.'
Jenny Hickling turned back to the fifteen-year-old boy who was following her. Nervously flicking his long and greasy hair like a girl.
'Get a move on for fuck's sake. I ain't got all fucking day.'
'All right, keep your knickers on.'
'That supposed to be funny?'
The boy shuffled after her. His jeans were hanging off his scrawny arse gangsta-style, and although he swaggered as best he could, Jenny reckoned he wasn't as cocksure as he thought he was. She knew the type, posh kids bunking off from the grammar school up the road, dressing like hoodies and trying to talk the talk. About as convincing as her uncle Gerard who used to dress up as Marilyn Monroe at every opportunity, complete with a blonde wig and five o'clock shadow. She reckoned the boy was cherry. She'd probably get away with only a couple of strokes and the scratch of her fingernail across the business end before he'd shoot his load. She'd agreed to give him a blow job but she reckoned she wouldn't have to. She wasn't bothered about giving him a suck, it was just she weren't going to let him stick it in her mouth unprotected and she hated the taste of latex. It reminded her of the washing-up gloves her bitch of an Irish mother used to wear when she washed her mouth out for swearing. Before Jenny grew too big of course. She had believed the threat that if she tried to do it one more fucking time she'd wake up with a fucking carving knife in her throat, if that wasn't what her pervert English teacher, Mr Gingernut Collier, called a contradiction in fucking terms. She looked back at the kid who was still limping along behind. He wanted it, that much was clear, but he was still nervous as shite. His older brother was at the University of Middlesex, wherever the fuck that was, and he had nicked some gear off him. Primo gear, he had called it, like something he had heard on late-night TV. But if Jenny guessed right the prissy boy wouldn't know primo gear from a knobbly stick up his arse.
She turned the corner into the backyard of a block of flats. The bottom corridors weren't overlooked, and if she had a penny for every dick she'd dealt with back there she'd have a good pound or two and no fucking mistake.
'Will you get a fecking move on?'
She walked up the step into the covered walkway where the wheelie bins were kept and stopped dead in her tracks. The body of Agnes Crabtree lay right in front of her. One leg trailing up the steps and her head at an angle God hadn't intended. She was pretty sure of that.
She turned back to the pimply teenager who had turned white as a sheet and was running away as fast as he could move. Which wasn't very fast; she almost laughed when he tripped over and landed head first in a puddle, but the smile died as soon as it was born as she realised the little gobshite had taken the gear, primo, or otherwise with him.
She pulled out her mobile phone and dialled 999. 'Ambulance. There's an old lady here not looking so tickety-fucking-boo.'
She gave the woman on the other end of the line the address, then grimaced when she asked her how old she was. 'I'm fourteen, so I won't be here when they get here, all right.' She closed the phone down, then cursed, they'd be able to trace her from her phone number. But she reckoned the woodentops, as her mother called them, would have better things to do than chase up a bleeding truancy.
She looked down at the body of Agnes Crabtree. 'I hope they sort you out, missus.' Then she set off in pursuit of the pimply boy, though she reckoned his knob must have shrivelled to the size of an acorn at the sight of the dead woman, if it hadn't retracted up inside him altogether.
Delaney looked out of the passenger window as they drove along the Western Avenue, at least the rain had stopped, but the flyover was clogged fairly solidly as they moved slowly towards White City. He looked over to where the old dog-racing track used to be and realised how much London had changed over the last twenty years or so. And not for the better. Delaney had a theory that a city could only take so many people. Too many rats in a cage meant that some, already feral, turned psychotic and in his experience humans were no different. It might not be against the laws of God for so many millions of people to be crammed together in one space, but it was certainly against the laws of nature. We are the architects of our own destruction sure enough, he thought drily. He should have got out of London when he had a chance. If he had listened to his wife four years ago things would have turned out very different.