Blood Work

Delaney walked over to him. 'What's going on?'

'You've had a wasted journey, I'm afraid.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Kevin Norrell was assaulted this morning. By some of his fellow prisoners. It was a very serious incident.'

'He's dead?'

The warden shook his head slightly. 'He's in intensive care in the South Hampstead up the road. He hasn't recovered consciousness.'

Sally joined Delaney. 'Comatose?'

The warden shrugged. 'Unconscious is all I know.'

'What's the prognosis?'

The warden spread his hands. 'I don't know; you'll have to talk to the hospital but it's probably too early to say.'

Delaney nodded. 'Who did it?'

'We're not exactly sure.'

Delaney glared at him. 'What the hell do you mean, you're not exactly sure?'

'All right, Inspector. Just calm it down, will you? Five men attacked him in the showers early this morning. He was knifed, hit his head badly. He lost a lot of blood.'

'Who were they?'

'We don't know who all of them were. Two of them got away.'

'How?' Delaney couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'This is supposed to be a secure prison for God's sake.'

'Three of the men were badly hurt by Norrell. Two of them are dead, the other is in intensive care.'

'And you've got no security footage?'

'The camera was taken out. That's why the two officers were dispatched. If they hadn't got there in time, Norrell would definitely be dead.'

'And they just let two of them walk away from it?'

'They were prioritised on dealing with the injured people.'

'Convenient.' Delaney couldn't keep the sarcasm from his voice.

'What exactly are you implying, Inspector?'

'What motivated the assault?'

'You know as well as I do, there could be any number of reasons. I have it on good authority that Norrell was involved in the manufacture and distribution of child pornography. Particularly nasty child pornography at that. You know what happens to people like that in prison if they're not in a segregated unit.'

'And why wasn't he in a segregated unit?'

'Because he wasn't charged with paedophile activities, Inspector, as you very well know. He was charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was a category-A prisoner and treated as such.'

'I want to talk to the guards who broke up the fight.'

'I'm afraid that won't be possible right away.'

'Why not? There's been a death, a serious assault. This is a police matter now.'

'And an investigation is under way. Your involvement will need to be officially sanctioned.' He shrugged, apologetically. 'At this moment it is out of both our hands.'

Delaney looked at him steadily. 'You know why I was due to speak to him?'

'I do. And I'm sorry.'

'Then you also know why I'm not going to just let this go?'

'Of course I do. And I want you to know that I will do everything in my power to help you, Inspector Delaney. Work with me on this.'

Delaney turned to Sally. 'Come on, Constable.'

'Sir.'

Delaney held the door open and turned back to the governor pointedly as Sally walked out. 'I'll be coming back. And in the meantime, you have my mobile number. You call me night or day you hear anything.'

'I am on your side, Inspector.'

Delaney held his gaze a moment longer and then left. The governor took off his glasses, running his hand over his brow, damp suddenly in the air-conditioned room.

*

Kate Walker shrugged out of her raincoat as she entered the suite of rooms and nodded distractedly to Lorraine Simons, her recently graduated assistant, who was still in the early days of training to become a forensic pathologist. She hung up the coat on an old wooden hatstand and walked past the trainee's desk, straight to her own office. She heard the young woman say something but had absolutely no idea what it was. She closed the door behind her, sat at her desk and, holding her head in her hands, cursed herself in a low whisper as she tried to put together a picture from the jigsaw pieces of memory from the night before.

She remembered travelling on the Tube, she remembered deciding to go to the Holly Bush rather than returning straight home, although now she wished to God she hadn't, she remembered having the first couple of Bloody Marys, and then she remembered chatting to the tall, handsome man in his late thirties, with dark curly hair and the kind of dark, come-to-bed eyes that were lately proving to be her undoing; but after that she had absolutely no memory whatsoever. It was a complete blank. She couldn't remember a damn thing from about eight thirty last night to waking up with a complete and total stranger in her bed at seven thirty that morning. And that wasn't something Kate Walker did. Ever.

She had shown the man, Paul Archer, out in the morning but had barely said ten words to him. Just hurried him out before closing the door on him, feeling the heat burn her face then as it was now as she shamefully tried to recall the previous night's events. Tried desperately hard, but failed absolutely.

The door to her office opened and Lorraine stuck her head round the corner. She was twenty-five, with strawberry-blonde hair, a body trim from cycling, a heart-shaped face, innocent eyes and the kind of optimism only found in the unworldly young or the terminally stupid.

'I was asking if you wanted any coffee, Dr Walker? I'm just about to make a trip to Starbucks.'

Kate found a smile from somewhere. 'Thanks, Lorraine, get us a hot chocolate and a croissant. And, please, it's Kate, not Dr Walker.'

Lorraine nodded. 'It's the weather for it. Don't know what happened to the summer.'

Kate smiled again, ironically. 'In our job you get to learn pretty fast that all things pass, Lorraine. All things end.'

Lorraine grimaced. 'Cheery thought.'

Kate flapped a dismissive hand at her. 'Go on, get the drinks.'

Lorraine closed the door behind her and as it did Kate's smile headed south faster than a penguin on a promise. She made a small fist of her right hand and put the nail of her thumb between her teeth. She deliberated for a second or two, then picked up the phone and rapidly tapped in some numbers. After a moment her call was answered. 'It's Kate,' she said quickly, needing to spill the words out. 'I think I've done something really stupid.'

She listened to the response, looking up at the ceiling. 'It's nothing like that. But I need to see you.' She looked through the glass window of her office to see Lorraine, bundled up against the cold, heading out the door and sighed. 'I need you to do some tests on me, Jane.'

'What kind of tests?' Jane Harrington's voice boomed, shocked, from the earpiece of her phone. Kate held it away from her ear then put it back and spoke into it, her voice a hoarse whisper. 'I think I might have been raped.'

South Hampstead Hospital was built, like many similar institutional buildings throughout the country, in the mid-Victorian era. In the year 1860 to be exact. It started life as a hospital for consumption and other diseases of the chest and much of the old Victorian architecture was still present, although new buildings had been attached over the years, most notably the teaching wing of the hospital which was inaugurated in 1904. The majority of the property was Grade II listed, now, which meant a lot of the offices and consulting rooms were poorly heated, relying on old, cast-iron radiators that the administration hadn't yet managed to justify the expense of replacing. What the rooms lost in terms of heat, however, was more than made up for in terms of ambience and in architectural charm.

Jane Harrington's office was a testament to clutter. The shelves lining her walls were jammed with books, with papers, with articles clipped from medical journals, with videos and DVDs and with a poorly tended ivy or two in inappropriate pots. Her equally cluttered desk sat beneath a bay window that looked out over a small quadrangle, at the far end of which stood the towered east wing of the original hospital. The windows were leaded lights, the desk was old oak and a visitor might be forgiven for imagining they were in the study of a don from one of the older colleges of Oxford or Cambridge.