Blood Work

A few minutes later he turned it off again. The fools still hadn't made the connection. A small mention of a woman found dead. Being treated as murder but that was it. No mention of the one on Hampstead Heath. No mention of what they signified. He laughed out loud, quite careless of the curious looks he was getting from across the street. Idiots the lot of them. Delaney smoked, didn't he? Another idiot. He couldn't see a clue if it was served up on a silver plate for him.

He looked at his watch once more, started whistling a Michael Jackson song and wandered back towards his office. In a couple of hours he'd be off rota. Then the fun could begin again.

Helen's eyes were like cold flint as she remembered. 'There was no evidence of any date-rape drug that they could find. I got away whilst he was dressing. Locked myself in my bedroom and called the police from there. But he had plenty of time before they arrived to rinse out the decanter. Replace the brandy. Clean the carpet where it had spilled.'

'Yes.'

'They took me down the police station. It was horrible, Kate. You could see it in the eyes of the men. They didn't believe me. My voice was slurred, I'd drunk a lot of brandy, laced or otherwise.'

Kate looked at her sympathetically. She knew what it was like, she'd drunk far too many vodkas to have any control, to have any defences that night. Helen was blaming herself for that much at least, and Kate could well understand how she felt. The if only that changed lives for ever.

'The police surgeon on call was different. She believed me. She treated me like the victim I was in all this.' Her voice hardened. 'But I'm not going to be a victim any more, Kate. I'll see that bastard in court and make him pay.'

'I know.'

'And do you know what the worse thing was, Kate?'

'Go on.'

'On our fifth wedding anniversary I bought him a watch.' The bitterness sharp in her voice. 'A Rolex. An eighteen-carat white-gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona. Seventeen thousand pounds' worth.'

Kate nodded, not sure what to say.

'A big manly watch for a big manly man. He had his arm over my throat and around my head, pinning me down, so that the watch scratched my cheek and was pushed against my ear. And he was grunting with each thrust like an animal, like I was some kind of mechanical toy.' Her nostrils flared wide as she breathed deeply. 'And I could hear the tick-tock of the clock before each thrust. Tick, thrust. Tock, thrust. Tick . . .'

She took in another gulp of air and looked at Kate with eyes filled with sadness.

'I bought that watch as a symbol of my love for him.'

Delaney drummed his fingers impatiently on the dashboard of his car as Sally drove them away from Roger Yates's office.

'Back to White City, sir?' Sally asked.

'Not just yet. Take us back to Bradley's flat. I want to look at those photos again.'

'Sir.'

'If they let us that is. This will have been bumped over our heads.'

'What do you mean?'

'If he's a serial killer now the glory boys from Paddington Green will be all over this like a rash.'

He pulled out his phone and pushed a speed-dial button, putting it on loudspeaker as he rummaged in his pockets. 'Slimline, it's Jack Delaney.'

'Shoot.'

'I need a favour.'

'This the kind of favour that might cost someone his job?'

'Probably not.'

Delaney could hear him sighing on the other end of the line.

'Go on then.'

'I want you to get one of the guys to triangulate a number, locate a mobile phone for me. But keep it off the books.'

'Whose phone is it?'

'Just get me the location, Dave.'

'Give me the number then.'

Delaney pulled out a piece of paper and read the number to him, then closed the phone. Sally looked across at him but didn't say anything.

The SOCO team was leaving as Sally and Delaney walked up the steps to Bradley's flat. His grandmother was watching them go, less than pleased.

She recognised Delaney and grabbed his arm.

'Here. Can't you do anything about them? You should see the mess they're making.'

'Sorry. Nothing I can do.'

'They won't let me back in my own house. And I've got Murder She Wrote to watch in a minute.'

'Sorry.'

Delaney gently took her hand off his arm as a uniformed female officer came across.

'They say I've got to go down the police station, Detective Inspector. What's he done now then?'

'They'll tell you all about it there.'

'I told them they should never have got that dog. Twelve years old he was when he bit him. Right in the privates.' She shivered and shook her head. 'Made a terrible mess it did.'

'Come on, Mrs Bradley. I'll make sure they get you a nice cup of tea,' the uniformed officer said as she led the old woman away.

Delaney looked at the photos in Ashley Bradley's room. They'd all be taken down, sent to the command centre that would now be running the case. Everything Delaney wanted to do would have to go through them, which made him practically redundant. Only Delaney didn't want to be off the case. The killer had made it personal, dressing the last victim in a scarf like Kate's. Or maybe it was Kate's. The idea that the bastard might have her somewhere and be taunting him with the knowledge turned his stomach. He had called her office and had been told that Kate had called in, saying she wouldn't be in until later that day, but that could have been done under duress. The damn woman wasn't answering her phone and Delaney had no way of knowing if it was deliberate or not.

He brought his mind back to the subject in hand and tapped a few of the photos. 'A lot of these interior pictures are taken in the same place. He obviously has his favoured hunting grounds like South Hampstead Heath and the common.' He tapped another photo, an interior shot this time. 'And I reckon I know where this is.'

Sally looked at where he was pointing. 'Where, sir?'

'That shopping arcade at the bottom of Bayswater.'

'Whiteleys?'

'That's the one.' Delaney tapped on another photo. 'Look at him, he's hanging around the entrance to the ladies' toilet there.'

'Why?'

Delaney looked back at her. 'Why? Because he's a sick fucking pervert. Come on.'

They were heading for the front door when Delaney's phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID. 'What have you got for me?'

He grabbed a pen out of his pocket and wrote an address on the back of his hand. 'One other thing, Dave. Get Bob Wilkinson and some backup to get down Whiteleys in Bayswater. It looks like a favourite hangout for our boy. Second floor near the ladies' toilets.' He closed his phone and reached into his pocket.

'Give me the car keys, Sally.'

'Sir?'

'Just give me the keys.' He took the keys from her and thrust a ten-pound note in her hand. 'I'll see you back at the factory.'

Sally would have responded but Delaney was already flying down the steps taking them two at a time.

*

Kate held Helen Archer's hand for a moment as she stood on her doorstep. 'I'll be there at the trial.'

Helen squeezed her hand back. 'Thanks, Kate. Don't worry. He's going to pay for what he's done to us. He's going to pay big time.'

Kate stood for a moment or two on the step after the door had been closed. Troubled. Little flashes of memory were coming unbidden into her consciousness. It was something Helen had said. 'He's going to pay big time.' She was in her lounge, drunk. There was music playing. Some country folk record. Alison Krauss maybe. She'd bought it because she thought Jack Delaney might like it. But she had never gotten the chance to play it to him.