Blood Work

Bingo.

He bent down, put his finger through the ring and pulled it open and called out.

'Sally.'

'Sir, you can't come down here.'

'It's all right, Sally, it's just me.'

Delaney took off his jacket and walked down the stairs.

'You can't see me like this.'

'I can't see a thing,' said Delaney. 'It's like the black hole of Calcutta down here.'

'Don't mention Indian restaurants.'

Delaney could hear the fragility behind her laugh, he reached out with his jacket and she managed to drape it around her shoulders. Delaney went back to the bottom of the stairs and fumbled for the light switch. He found and turned it on; a bare bulb flared up overhead. It was a small wine cellar. Empty apart from a side table, a mirror and his young assistant who was manacled to the wall, her arm raised like an overeager child with the answer to a difficult question in class.

'Did he hurt you, Sally?'

She shook her head. 'He took me to another bar for a drink. He must have slipped something in it, because I remember feeling suddenly woozy and I hadn't drunk that much. He said he'd drive me home. The last thing I can remember is getting into his car. And then I passed out.'

Delaney took a hold of the ring set into the wall with his one good hand and tried pulling it. It wouldn't budge. He managed to loosen the manacle a little, but not enough for Sally to free her hand.

'Don't worry, Sally, we'll get you out.'

'Michael Hill, sir. Did he hurt anyone else?'

'No, and he's not going to hurt anyone again. He's dead.'

'Good!'

Delaney nodded. She was right. He headed back to the steps. 'I'm going upstairs to find something to get you free with.'

Delaney walked up the stairs and into the kitchen and stopped dead as he saw the rifle pointing at him.

He looked at the person holding it and held his hands up. She looked familiar to him but he couldn't place her at first. And then he did. She was the receptionist at the South Hampstead Hospital. She wasn't smiling.

'Put the rifle down,' he said.

The woman smiled and there was poison in it. 'I don't think so.'

'Who are you?'

'Not that it's going to matter to you, but my name is Audrey Hill.'

Delaney nodded. 'Michael Hill, he's your husband?'

'No, Detective Delaney. He's my baby brother. I brought him up.'

'You know who I am then?'

'I know exactly who you are.'

'And you knew what your brother was doing?'

'He didn't do anything, Detective. He never does without my permission . . .' She looked at Delaney with flat eyes, and he felt a chill run up his spine. 'Not any more.'

Delaney swallowed drily, his mind racing, running through the options. He wasn't thinking so much about himself, he was thinking about the young, near-naked detective constable chained to the wall in the cellar beneath them. He had to keep her talking, he had to keep this madwoman away from her. He didn't know what he was going to do but he knew this much, she stopped talking and it was over for him. Over for both of them.

'Why then, Audrey?'

She moved closer to Delaney, her unblinking eyes staring at him like a entomologist might examine a newly discovered specimen. 'Neither of them suffered. They were all painless deaths. Anaesthetised and then a simple cut to the jugular. They died in their sleep.'

'And the surgeon?'

The woman shrugged. 'We were disturbed. I'll get back to him later.'

'What had they done to you?'

Delaney tried to edge closer to her but she raised the rifle and shook her head very slightly. 'This is a tranquilliser rifle, but it's loaded for very large animals. It's hard to describe the damage it would do to a human central nervous system.'

Delaney held up his hands, calming. 'Why did you kill them, Audrey?'

'Because of what they did to me.'

'What?'

'Were you aware that one in seven hundred people wake up during an operation under general anaesthetic, Detective?' she said.

Delaney wasn't. 'No,' he replied.

'You're paralysed, immobile, you can't move. Not even an eyelid. But you can feel. Feel the cold steel of the scalpel slicing into you. Feel your flesh parting as they open you up.'

Delaney didn't respond, it was putting it mildly to say that he already had a very bad feeling about this woman, he knew what she was capable of, after all. He could feel the anger and sickness radiating off her like the shimmering haze of a tarmac road in a heatwave.

Audrey Hill took another step closer to him. 'You can hear too, Detective Inspector. And that's the worst part of it. They were talking, the two sluts whispering to each other about clients they'd fucked. The surgeon talking about football to the vapid nurse. Talk, talk talk, When they should have been concentrating on what they were doing. The anaesthetist spotted something was wrong and put me under again, but by then it was too late.'

'I can understand it must have been a terrible experience—'

'You understand nothing!' She spat the words at him, the rifle shaking in her hands for the first time as her hands shook with fury.'

'They killed our baby.'

'What do you mean?'

'What do you think I mean? Our baby died!'

'Yours and Michael's?'

'We were a family. We were supposed to be a family. They took that away from us.'

Delaney looked at the rifle trembling in her hands, and held his hand up again, trying to keep the disgust from his face and voice. 'It's okay.'

'Nothing is okay. It was supposed to be routine but they made a mistake with the anaesthetic and had to deliver my baby by Caesarean section. I heard them!'

Delaney could see the madness and rage still dancing in her eyes. 'That must have been terrible for you.'

'He died because of their butchery. Then they performed a hysterectomy. Performed it without my consent.'

'They were trying to help you.'

'No.' Her voice was quiet now and Delaney didn't feel more reassured by it, in fact he felt the opposite. 'I am a trained veterinary nurse by trade, not a receptionist. I took that job just to get close to them, Detective. So I understand surgery. I heard them admit their mistakes. They murdered my baby and then they cut out my womb. So that's why, Detective. A life for a life.'

'And the mutilations? Did they deserve that?'

She smiled joylessly again. 'It's what they did to me.' Her eyes dropped to her stomach and the smile fell from her lips. 'They mutilated me.'

Delaney could hear the change in the tone of her voice. As if their conversation was at an end. He had to say something. Do something.

Audrey Hill raised the rifle a fraction, pointing at his heart now, as if she had come to a decision. 'Do you believe in God, Inspector?'

Delaney shrugged. 'Yeah I do. Someone has to be responsible for all this shite.'

She didn't smile this time. 'Now that we know how big the universe really is . . .' She shook her head puzzled. 'How can you believe in God? We're not ants. Were not even germs. So if there is no justice from God, we have to make our own, don't we?'

'It doesn't have to be like this.'

'It already is, Detective Inspector Delaney.'

Delaney heart thudded in his chest as he heard a familiar voice shout out.

'Jack,' Kate called from the front door. 'Are you in there?'

'Stay back!' Delaney shouted, almost screamed it. 'Just stay where you are.'

'Jack!'

Kate walked into the room and as Audrey Hill spun round and pointed the rifle at her, she froze in place.

'Maybe I'll just shoot her then.'

Delaney saw her hand trembling on the trigger, the madness in her eyes and stepped forward. Kate Walker was the woman he loved. He knew that now more than ever. He loved her and she was carrying his child. He wasn't going to lose another one. 'Jessica Tam isn't dead and Michael isn't bringing her here,' he said.