Blood Work

'Come on, let's be having you!'

He smiled sadly and put it back in his locker. Took out his bright yellow duffel coat and closed the locker door. It was Amy's birthday in three days' time. Her twenty-first, and he had taken the rest of the week off to visit her. It'd give him a chance to get out to the shops and buy her something spectacular for it too. James Collins was a strict believer that special occasions should be marked appropriately. He had already made the call to his favourite jeweller in Piccadilly and he would visit there first thing in the morning before catching the train from Liverpool Street to Thorpe station in Norwich. The Canaries were playing at home at the weekend too, so he had, he sincerely hoped, double cause for celebration.

He sketched a wave at the receptionist as he strode through reception. The thunderstorm that had been raging only minutes before had stopped as suddenly as it began. He paused outside in the sheltered entrance and shivered suddenly, looking behind him. He thought he sensed someone watching him but there was no one there. Someone must have walked on his grave, he thought with a half-amused smile. He fastened the buttons of his coat and was glad to leave the hood of the duffel down as he strode across the car park. The cold air and the brisk walk would do him good, wake him up a bit.

Five minutes later and he was walking across the heath. Cutting through some trees on a little short cut that took a few minutes off his journey. He stopped abruptly. There was a sharp pain in his neck and he raised his hand to brush the stabbing branch away. But no branch was there and the muscles in his arm suddenly didn't seem to work. His knees buckled, toppling him to fall face up on the wet and muddy ground. A face he recognised was looking down at him.

A look of confusion passed momentarily across his face. If he could have articulated a question he would have done so. But the paralysis had spread to his face now. His eyes closed and the pump under his ribcage, made of tissue and muscle, spasmed.

A low sound of thunder rumbled overhead again and, as the wind picked up whistling wet leaves over his motionless form, the rain fell. Sending splashes of mud into the air and forming a channel of artificial tears from the surgeon's closed eyes.

Delaney pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it.

'Did you get that address?' he asked Sally Cartwright.

She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and handed it to him.

'Thanks.' He stuffed the paper into his jacket pocket. 'Get on to records. I want to know if any other crimes were reported in the neighbouring properties around the same time.'

'Sir.'

Kate stood up also and put on her coat, looking for her scarf for a moment and then grimacing as she remembered why she no longer had it.

'Where are you going, Kate?'

Kate turned round to Delaney, ready to say something flip, but when she saw the concern in his eyes the temptation vanished. 'I need to go home.'

'You're not staying at that house. You can stay with me.'

Kate hesitated for a moment and then nodded, relief coursing through her blood. 'I still need to go home, get some things.'

Delaney picked up his car keys off his desk.

'And one other thing, Jack.'

Delaney looked at her quizzically.

'We'll take my car.'

'We have to make a slight detour first.' Delaney turned back to Sally as they walked to the door. 'Keep me in touch.'

'Sir.'

She stuck her thumb up in the air without looking at her boss, her attention focused on her computer screen, looking at the reports Kate Walker had printed out and the crime-scene photographs. She wondered whether she'd ever be able to look at photos like them and not feel physically sick. She fervently hoped not.

Sanjeev Singh was tall but as thin as a Lowry stick man. He wore large, black-framed glasses and was never dressed in anything other than a two-piece brown suit. He had always been of a nervous disposition and so why he had put a jangling bell over the entrance to his shop was a mystery to anyone who knew him.

He flinched as the door creaked open and the brass bell above it danced on its coiled brass spring, jangling his nerves once more.

'We're about to close,' he called over his shoulder as he placed an art deco sugar sifter, conical-shaped and decorated in Spring Crocus pattern, carefully back in a display cabinet. He put the price page next to it: four hundred and fifty pounds.

'Nice piece.'

He turned round and smiled at Kate, but his smile faded as Delaney stepped forward.

'We're not here for antiques.'

Sanjeev Singh lifted his arms and made an expansive gesture with his shoulders, a gesture he had used many times to good effect in the amateur pantomimes he had appeared in. 'I am sorry, but antiques is all I deal in.'

Delaney showed him his warrant card. 'It's information we need.'

Singh frowned. 'I don't understand.'

'Four years ago you sold your petrol station in Pinner Green. We want to know why, and we want to know who to.'

The antique dealer's shoulders slumped, and any pretence at good humour disappeared. 'My lawyers handled the sale. It was to a development company. I wanted to get out of the trade. Buy an antiques shop. The timing was right. Now I am sorry, but I really have to close.'

'It wasn't good timing for my wife, Mr Singh.'

Sanjeev Singh looked at Delaney again, recognition dawning in his eyes. He gestured with his hands again, hands that were suddenly trembling even more than was usual.

'Look, I am sorry about what happened to your wife. The next day someone made me an offer for the place and I accepted it.'

'Why?'

'Why do you think? I don't know who was behind it but their methods were pretty clear.'

'Somebody wanted you out?'

'I'd had an offer before but I turned it down. I thought that if they were desperate for my property they could pay top dollar. But that same week the florists next door had an accidental fire. Their dog, a Labrador, died in the fire. They sold. And after what happened to me, I sold too.'

'Who to?'

The man shrugged again, apologetically. 'I don't know. It was all done through a lawyer.'

'Okay.' Delaney gestured to Kate. 'Come on, let's get your things.'

Kate held up her hand. 'One minute.' She turned to the trembling Indian. 'One more thing.'

Sanjeev clasped his hands together. 'Please, I have told you everything I know.'

'What's your best price on the sugar sifter?'

A smile almost came back on his face. 'You have a remarkable eye, madam. This here is—'

'Yes, I know,' Kate said, interrupting. 'It's Clarice Cliff. What will you take for it?'

Some minutes after they had left, Sanjeev Singh finally brought his shaking hands under enough control to pick up a telephone.

Kate pulled her car to the side of the road with a practised spin of the wheel. She snapped her seat belt open and turned to Delaney. 'I won't be long.'

'I'm coming with you, Kate.'

She turned the key to open the front door of her house and the first thing that struck her was the cold, the wind was blowing from the inside out. The second thing was the carnage.

Every room in the maisonette had been turned upside down. In the lounge bookcases had been toppled to the floor, sofas and chairs upended, CDs and records strewn as though a hurricane had blown through the place. Her bedroom was equally ravaged, and in the kitchen, plates and crockery had been smashed, the table legs snapped off, food scattered everywhere. Kate was too numb to cry out. She looked at Delaney, fury bubbling through her. She slammed the open back door shut. 'We have to get him, Jack. We have to stop him.'

She began to shake, willing herself to stop but unable to get her twitching muscles to comply.

Delaney took two quick steps to her side and enveloped her in a hug. 'It's going to be all right, Kate. I swear it.'