Blood Work

A muffled knocking sound brought Delaney groaning to consciousness. He half opened a gummed-up eye and cursed as a bright, white light stabbed into his sore optic nerves. He held an arm across his face and groaned again. As far he could tell, he was lying, fully dressed, on a cold concrete floor, but he had absolutely no idea where. A sharp pain lanced through the back of his skull as he tried to move, and he gasped out loud. He crinkled his eyes again to open them a merest crack. He was in a white room. Bare white walls, white ceiling and a painted concrete floor. A light bulb dangled overhead and there was a low, mechanical, murmuring hum coming from somewhere close by. Delaney's head felt like he had been hit by a heavy, blunt object, but he had no memory of it. He rolled to one side, wincing with pain, and slowly opened one eye again. As his vision blurred into near focus he could make out a chest freezer against the opposite wall from where he was lying. He realised that was where the humming was coming from. The knocking resumed and Delaney suddenly realised where he was. He had made it home, but only as far as his garage. He rolled over again, covering his eyes, and tried to ignore the knocking which was becoming more urgent now, snatches of memory coming back to him of the night that had just passed.

But the knocking persisted. Delaney stood up, wincing as the blood flowed through the sore and swollen areas of his brain and lurched to the garage door. He opened it, shielding his face against the sudden lash of wind and rain that spiralled in, and looked angrily over at the attractive young woman, dressed in a smart black suit, who was standing on his front doorstep.

'What the hell are you doing here, Sally?'

DC Sally Cartwright smiled at him, enthusiasm and energy radiating from her like a Ready Brek advert.

'The chief inspector thought—'

'She thought what?' Delaney barked. And regretted it immediately.

'She thought that you might like someone to drive you for your meeting with Norrell. She mentioned dropping you off at the Tube station last night.'

'Did she?'

Sally smiled again, innocently. 'She suspected you might not have gone straight home, sir.'

Delaney flapped his hand and gestured her in. '"Meeting", you make it sound like a bloody sales conference, and for God's sake, come in, Constable.'

Sally walked into the built-in garage, gratefully shutting the door on the wind and rain behind her.

'What the hell happened to summer?'

'Don't know, sir.'

'Come through.'

Delaney led her through the garage up a couple of small steps and into the kitchen that lay off it. It was almost as bare as the garage. White modern units, but nothing personal, no pictures or furniture. A kettle on the countertop. A couple of mugs. A whisky tumbler. Delaney opened some cupboards, scowled and shut them again. 'Have you got any Nurofen on you, Sally?'

She shook her head. 'Sorry, sir.'

'Co-codamol? Paracetamol? Aspirin? Anadin? Ibuprofen? Panadol?'

'Don't use them, sir.'

Delaney slammed a drawer shut, frustrated, and again regretted it. 'You'll learn,' he said, wincing.

'I've got a line of coke.'

Delaney looked across at her, half hopeful, and Sally laughed. 'Joking, sir.'

Delaney nodded. 'Not funny, Constable.' There was a time when Delaney had used the stuff, and not that long ago. Only a little dab now and again, mind, a wet tip of a finger's worth, to keep him sharp. But the business with Walker and Bonner had made him more circumspect. He'd never been a user. Whiskey was his drug of choice, even using the Scottish variety lately. And cigarettes of course. The day they made them illegal was the day he resigned for good. He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a packet. 'You got a lighter, Sally?'

'You shouldn't smoke in the house, sir.'

'It's my goddamn house.'

'Exactly. And you want to keep it nice, sir.' She smiled, taking the edge of her words. 'For your daughter's sake.'

Delaney cursed and stuffed the packet back in his jacket pocket then sketched a hand in the air. 'What do you think of it?'

Sally smiled politely. 'Very minimalist.'

Delaney opened another cupboard and found a jar of coffee. 'Not got round to sorting it out yet.'

'How long have you been here?'

'A week.'

'Just a suggestion, but maybe some furniture.'

'You any idea what this cost?'

Sally shrugged. 'Three-bedroomed house, integral garage, Belsize Park? Way out of my league.'

'An arm and a fucking leg that's what it cost me. You want to investigate serious fraud, look into the price of property.'

'You don't have to tell me.'

Delaney found a couple of mugs and poured some coffee into them. 'Karl Marx had the right of the matter, I reckon.' He opened the integrated fridge and cursed. 'No frigging milk.'

Sally smiled. 'I'm all right anyway, sir.'

'Well, you bloody would be. We'll get one on the way. Just have a seat and look shiny. I won't be a minute.'

Delaney opened the door to the lounge. Sally went through to the lounge as Delaney headed upstairs. It was a large room with French windows leading on to a small courtyard garden. Like the kitchen the lounge was noticeably devoid of furniture, but there were some packing cases, one of which had a small television sitting on top of it. The walls were bare. The house, unlike its owner, was a blank canvas.

Sally sat on one of the packing cases and felt a spark of jealousy. A three-bedroomed house spitting distance from the station. Like she had said it was far more than her salary could afford, could ever afford looking at the way house prices had gone, never mind the recent fall. Ten per cent or twenty per cent off bleeding expensive was still way out of her league. She hoped Delaney got round to buying some furniture and making it a proper home soon, though. Criminal waste otherwise. Delaney had only bought the house, she knew, so that his young daughter, Siobhan, could visit him sometimes. After the death of his wife, Delaney's life had been such a train wreck that he didn't even have to think about it when his sister-in-law, Wendy, offered to look after his young girl. That was four years ago, though, his daughter was now seven years old, and the fact that Delaney had wanted to make a home for her with him, at least for some of the time, was a mark of how much he had changed, even in the little time she had known him. The poor girl had been through a lot recently, her aunt stabbed in her own home while Siobhan was held captive upstairs by his deranged ex-boss Superintendent Walker. Delaney and Kate Walker had arrived just in time to save them both; she shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if they hadn't. But Wendy had survived, though she had needed several weeks' recuperation in a private hospital and would be discharged soon. Perhaps Siobhan could get some stability back in her young life. Sally decided she would do her bit, she'd get Delaney to furnish his house properly if she had to drag him down to Ikea herself!

A short while later and Delaney was back downstairs. He'd had a shave, changed his shirt and put some eye drops in. He didn't look a million dollars she thought, but it was a vast improvement to the raw-eyed man who had greeted her at the garage door. A couple of hundred euros maybe.

'Come on, then.' Delaney led her back through the garage and out into the rain. He scowled up at the sky. 'What's the deal? We don't get autumn any more, it just goes straight from summer to winter.'

'Global warming, sir.'

'Global warming my arse. In the seventies they reckoned it was the Russians fucking about with the weather. But do you know what it's really down to, Detective Constable?'