She looked down at her court shoes. Expensive, chic, sexy, she thought. Black suited her colouring. The shoes were now spattered with mud and rain and the shine had come off them, just like the shine had come off her day.
The train juddered to a halt, mid-tunnel, and the lights in the carriage flickered and dimmed before coming back up. She positioned her heel in one of the grooves that ran along the floor and swivelled her foot, wondering when they were going to update the trains. It took just over a couple of hours to get from Paris to St Pancras on the Eurostar fast link nowadays, but it could take an age just to go a few stops on this damned service. The lights dimmed again; low and yellow. Kate looked along the length of the carriage. There was something curiously Gothic about the Northern Line, she thought. Other lines, other stations had a late-Victorian sensibility to them, she knew that, but the Northern Line in places had a quintessentially spooky feel to it. Wood and brass and strange lamps, transportation by Hammer House of Horror.
The train shuddered and clanked as the wheels started turning again. She looked out of the window as the train flashed noisily through the tunnel once more and pulled her coat tight about her. It was early evening and the train was full, its motion, as it rocked from side to side, throwing the overweight man next to her against her body every time the train rounded a corner. He didn't seem too keen to move away, either, perfectly happy to invade her personal space. She sighed and gritted her teeth.
She was in a foul mood. Jack Delaney, the son of a bitch. She didn't know why she let him get to her, but he did. Kate Walker, in her own opinion, was, if anything, a woman born of logic, of reason. She was clinical, sharp; her judgement a precision instrument. Only that instrument was letting her down lately, and she didn't know how to fix it. She looked out of the window again, seeing her reflection smudgy and blurred, and that was exactly how she felt. Smudgy and blurred. She wasn't sure quite who she was any more. She leaned against the side of the train, putting as much space between her and the fat man as possible and felt a shiver run up her spine. Somebody was walking on her grave. Dancing on it. She looked around expecting to see someone watching her, but, if they were, they had looked away. Looking away was the English virtue after all. Never get involved, never show your emotions, never get off the boat. Maybe Jack Delaney was more English than he would have liked to admit. There was a man who was never going to get off the boat.
Delaney stood in the carriageway, swaying with the rhythm of the train, holding on to a strap hanger and keeping his balance, just about, as the train bucked and shifted under his feet as it rattled noisily through the underground tunnels.
He should have let Diane Campbell take him home, back to his sterile new house in Belsize Park. He should have left the pub after just one drink and then made a start on the decorating, making the place a home and not just a house. Somewhere where his daughter Siobhan would want to visit, would want to stay a few days with him. But Delaney didn't do one quick drink, and he hadn't wanted to go home, it didn't feel like home to him, nowhere had for a long time. Those dark thoughts hadn't been turned off yet and he didn't think they would. Not tonight. Tonight he needed more than alcohol to fight his demons.
He wished he had never visited the cemetery. He'd told Kate Walker that he'd only gone because he owed it to the old man who had taken a bullet for him. But it wasn't true. He'd gone to see her and now he wished he hadn't. It wasn't a time for complications. He had a focus now and he needed to keep that focus, but Kate had set a fire burning, created a physical thirst that he needed to quench.
A man leaned against him as the train turned a corner and Delaney looked back at him and the man quickly moved away, half muttering an apology and avoiding eye contact.
Delaney watched the man move through the crowded train, keen to put distance between them and Delaney didn't blame him. Tomorrow he was going to take steps. People were going to pay for what happened four years ago and pay in blood. But tonight he could taste the iron and copper in his mouth, could feel the murmurs in his blood like the low thrumming of a bass string. Tonight Delaney had another agenda.
He looked ahead, past the crowded-together commuters who were packed into the carriageway with the resigned look of cattle being herded to slaughter and as some stood up to disembark he saw the dark-haired woman. She was looking at her own reflection in the window as the train jolted and the lights dipped, yellow and sulphurous, so that Delaney's brown eyes smouldered in the low light like a hunting wolf's.
He came to a decision and reached into his pocket as the train clattered to a standstill.
Kate walked out of the Tube station scowling as the wind came howling up Hampstead High Street sweeping the rain into her face. She stepped back into the entrance and waited for the weather to abate. She looked at her watch, still not relishing the idea of going back to her empty house, but she had a film on DVD to watch and three-quarters of a bottle of Cloudy Bay chilling in her fridge. Damn Delaney, she thought for the hundredth time that day, wishing again, also for the hundredth time, that she'd never gone to the funeral. She tried to persuade herself that she'd gone for the old man, not on the off chance of seeing that ungrateful Irish bastard. She'd nearly put her life on the line to save his miserable skin, not to mention that of his daughter's, and what thanks did she get? Used and discarded. He made her feel like the cheap kind of whore he obviously felt comfortable with. She strode angrily out into the rain, sod the man, her life had been on hold for long enough. Time to push the play button, and not on the DVD machine. She hurried up the street towards the Holly Bush. Physician, heal thyself, that's what they said, didn't they? Well, she was going to write out a large prescription in her own name: vodka-based, repeat as required.
She crossed the street and, as she did, she felt that familiar tingle in her spine again, but, as she blinked the rainwater from her eyes and looked back, she couldn't see anyone following her. She hurried on up the slight hill, keeping her face down and angled away from the rain. Within minutes she was pulling the old, heavy door behind her, closing out the wind and the weather, the rainwater dripping from her black overcoat on to the rough wooden floor of the pub as she shook her hair and wiped a hand across her eyes, hoping her waterproof mascara was holding up and hearing the sweet, soulful tones of Madeleine Peyroux cutting across the chatter in the room. They didn't always have music playing; the manager said that the hubbub of conversation was the real music of the place and she agreed with him. It was just part of what made the pub special. Tonight though she was grateful for the music, it shielded her from other people's thoughts.