Blood Work

The man held his hands up, nodding and scuttling out of the door like a scorpion on a hot skillet.

Delaney thought about Mickey Ryan as he watched the barman scurry away. There wasn't a detective in the Met who hadn't come up against him in one way or another. But he was the original Teflon man, nothing stuck to him. Witnesses were silenced, detectives were bought off, blackmailed or terrorised. He was a brutal, vicious, successful, self-made man. A shining example of everything Thatcher's Britain had created.

Delaney took off the balaclava. He didn't care if Mickey Ryan saw him. In fact he wanted him to know who was putting him in the ground.

He walked to the back of the small auditorium, past the stage and the pole, not even registering the slightly sour smell of body oil that tainted the air like a cheap perfume.

It wasn't hard to find Ryan's office. He pushed the door open holding the gun forward and walked in. It was a windowless room, but glowed with opulence. Rich carpeting, Tiffany-style lamps, artwork on the walls. His dead wife's brother-in-law would fit right in here, Delaney thought. Mickey Ryan was sitting behind a large desk typing on a laptop. He looked up, bored.

'What do you want, Delaney?'

Delaney gestured at the cubic man who stood not far from his boss.

'Put your hands up, Nigel.'

The man glared at him. 'My name's not fucking Nigel.'

'Just do what he says, Pete.'

The man raised his hands, glaring venomously at Delaney.

Delaney turned back to the man behind the desk. 'Tell him to stop staring at me, Mickey. I might just wet myself.'

'What the fuck do you want, Delaney?'

'You know what I want.'

'I'm the fucking oracle of Delphi, am I now?'

'No, you're a two-bit slag who has made good on other people's misery for far too long. And now it's time to pay the rent.'

Ryan laughed out loud. 'Do you hear this guy, Pete? He should be on the fucking telly.' His smile died. 'After what happened to Norrell and that prison guard, you should have taken the hint, Delaney. Nobody fucks with me and walks away.'

'That a fact?' Delaney moved the gun forward aiming at his forehead.

'You had the balls, Irishman, you'd have done it already. Your wife was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all. If someone hadn't interfered she'd still be alive today, wouldn't she? That's down to you.'

Delaney's finger tightened on the trigger as he put his left hand on his right shoulder. 'You should have killed me when you had the chance.'

'Yeah, well, can't get the staff, isn't that what they say? But I've got a better man on the case now.'

Delaney smiled unimpressed. 'Who, Nigel here?'

'No,' said Mickey Ryan. 'Him.' And pointed behind Delaney.

Delaney couldn't stop himself from turning round as he felt a presence behind him, and reacted unable to conceal the surprise at who he saw.

'Liam?'

'Sorry, Jack.' And his cousin hit Delaney on the side of the head with a narrow leather cosh.

He dropped to the floor like a hanged man with the noose cut.

Jimmy Skinner rang the bell for a third time. There was still no answer. He looked around him then picked up the door ram he had brought with him just in case, and smashed the door open. A Siamese cat screamed at him and went howling and hissing past his legs, nearly knocking him over. He guessed the operation it had had, whatever it was, had been a success.

Inside the maisonette the smell was pretty bad. The cat obviously hadn't been let out for a couple of days. He walked into the lounge and opened the windows. On the mantelpiece there was a photo of a woman. He picked it up and looked at it closely, he could see a slight resemblance to the woman he had seen on the website but he would have never recognised her. The woman in the photo had mousy hair and wore little make-up. She smiled shyly at the camera. No wonder nobody had phoned in after their televised appeals for information about her. In the kitchen the cat's litter tray needed to be cleaned out. Skinner crinkled his nose, picked up a black leather Filofax from the kitchen table and took it back into the lounge.

He flicked through the pages and turned to the diary section. She had kept a list of appointments with clients. One of the names, Paul Archer, jumped out at him, but he couldn't put his finger on why. Seemed he liked rough games and she had refused to see him any more, blacklisted him with her contacts too. He filed the name away. Somebody had a grudge with her, that much was obvious. Another part of the Filofax was day-to-day diary stuff. After half an hour he flicked back to the contacts section; he sighed and closed the Filofax and walked over to a table that had a collection of framed photographs on it and picked one up. It showed two women, one in her twenties and one in her thirties. Hands around each other's waists and smiling at the camera, as if they knew their profession was to be judged now by the quality of that smile as much as it was by the service and care they provided.

And he realised as he looked at the photograph that they had all got it completely wrong.

Delaney felt like someone had taken a heavy hammer and struck him on the head. It was definitely time for a new job, he thought. Somewhere warm. Somewhere quiet. But, as he cracked open his bloodshot eyes, he realised that new employment prospects were the least of his problems. His hands had been tied behind his back and he was sitting in a lock-up garage somewhere, propped uncomfortably on a wooden chair. The door opened and Mickey Ryan walked in, followed by his cubic minder and his traitorous fucking cousin. If Delaney could have worked up the saliva he would have spat at him.

There was a metallic clang. Delaney looked across to see the gorilla of a henchman putting a toolbox on the workbench that ran along the whole left-hand side of the garage. The man made Kevin Norrell look human, he realised with a shudder.

'You might wonder why you are still alive, Delaney.'

'Must be my guardian angel.'

Ryan laughed, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement. 'I wonder if you'll still be laughing when my man here goes to work on you with a pair of needle-tooth pliers.

Liam stepped forward. 'Nobody said anything about that.'

'Nobody points a gun at me and gets away with it. You're going to learn that, Delaney. And that grassing tub of lard Norrell is going to be next.' He turned to Liam. 'Put one in his gut, give him something to think about.'

Liam raised the pistol he had been holding in his right hand, a semi-automatic with a silencer. Delaney could see no mercy, no compassion in his eyes as he pulled the trigger.

The minder made a sound like a dog swallowing a fly and dropped to the floor, a hand fluttering towards his heart but not making it. Liam pointed the gun at Mickey Ryan.

'The fuck you think you're doing?'

'The fuck you think I'm doing?' Liam retorted.

Ryan shook his head. 'We had a deal.'

'I don't make deals with scum. Gut shot, wasn't it?' He pulled the trigger again, and Mickey Ryan dropped to his knees, squealing and holding his stomach. 'Hurts, doesn't it?'

Ryan's face had gone purple and he hissed between his teeth, but if they were words they were not intelligible.

Liam grabbed a Stanley knife from the toolbox and slashed the ropes binding his cousin.

Delaney stood up and wobbled on his legs. He had to hold on to his cousin's arm before he could steady himself. 'What's going on?'

Liam smiled. 'I made some calls after you left. Figured out what was what and realised you'd be way out of your depth.'

'I had it covered.'

'Sure you did, cousin. But you weren't going to kill him, were you?'

Delaney didn't answer.

'Which means that one way or another he would have ended up killing you.'

'Maybe.'

'No maybe about it.'

'What did you have to hit me for, then?'

'You might be ten kinds of death-wish on legs, Jack, but I still enjoy my life. I did what I had to do. And you should be grateful, so take a Panadol and shut the fuck up with the whining already.'