Blood Work (12 page)

'Go on.'

Delaney produced a couple of A3 sheets of paper.
He pinned the first on the wall. It showed an artist's
rendition of a wild-haired man in his late twenties,
early thirties. 'This is the man we're looking for, and
this . . .' He hesitated before putting up the second
picture. 'This is his penis.'

There was some wincing, some groaning and some
laughter at the second picture that Delaney pinned on
the board. An artist's rendition, blown up, from the
nurse's description, of the man's scarred penis.

'Is that life-size?' Bob Wilkinson couldn't resist it,
and now the laughter rippled round the room like a
rumbling sea at high tide.

'All right, children, that's enough.' Diane
Campbell's voice barked and the room fell silent.
'Have a look at the picture over there.' She pointed at
the dead woman's mutilated body. 'Any one of you
find anything funny in that?' She looked pointedly at
Bob Wilkinson.

'No, ma'am.'

Delaney's phone chose that moment to ring. He
looked at the caller and shrugged apologetically at his
boss. 'I've got to take this. I'll be right back.'

Delaney strode quickly from the briefing room
before Diane Campbell could stop him and answered
the call in the corridor outside. 'What have you got
for me, Jimmy?'

On the other end of the phone, DI Jimmy Skinner's
voice sounded thin and echoing, the sound of men in
the background telling Delaney he was calling from
the prison. 'Hi, Jack. I'm at Bayfield.'

'I gathered. Go on.'

'Nobody's talking. I put the hard word on Neil
Riley, Norrell's old oppo, and according to him
Kevin Norrell was taken down because of the kiddie
porn.'

'You believe him?'

'I don't know, Jack. Something feels hinky.'

'You reckon it has anything to do with my wife?'

'Maybe. But you know as well as I do that you can
trust Norrell as far as you could throw him one-handed.
Which is ruddy nowhere. The guy's a timeserving
prick of the first order.'

'Why lie about it?'

There was a pause and Delaney could picture
Skinner shrugging at the other end of the line. 'The
guy was desperate. That much seems clear. Whether
it was because he knew there was a hit out on him, or
about the trial coming up, who knows? His mate
reckons that he had something on Chief Superintendent
Walker, perhaps. He was looking to deal.
Maybe talking about your wife was the best way to
get you in to see him.'

'Maybe . . .' But Delaney wasn't convinced. Kevin
Norrell had the brainpower of a fermented melon,
but even he wouldn't be stupid enough to jerk
Delaney's chain over his dead wife. Delaney glanced
down at the stairs at the end of the corridor as the
sound of high heels clicking rhythmically on the
wooden steps grew louder. 'Keep on it, Jimmy.'

Delaney snapped his phone shut and looked across
as Kate came up the stairs and headed towards the
briefing room, unwrapping her scarf from her neck
and taking off her gloves. If she was a little taken
aback to see Delaney waiting outside the door, she
didn't betray it in her body language. Delaney
watched her confident stride, the determined set to
her jaw, but in her eyes he saw something that
disturbed him. Something that went against her
usual, poised exterior. Something that reached out to
him in a primal sense. Something very much like fear.

'Kate.'

'Not now, Jack.' She sailed past him.

Delaney hurried after her and took her arm. He
was shocked to see the way she flinched away. 'I'm
sorry.'

She looked at him, anger flaring behind the fear
that was still liquid in her deep, brown eyes. 'Sorry
for what exactly?'

Delaney hesitated. 'I didn't mean to startle you.'

Kate nodded, as if his answer had confirmed her
thoughts, lessened him once again in her eyes, and he
felt the shame of it like a creeping feeling on his skin.
'I need to get to the meeting,' she said.

She opened the door and walked into the briefing
room before Delaney had a chance to say anything
more.

Jimmy Skinner was heading down the iron staircase
to be taken back through to the reception area when
Derek Watters, the guard who had been posted
outside Neil Riley's cell, fell into step behind him. He
spoke quietly.

'You want to know what was going down with
Kevin Norrell?'

Skinner turned back to look at him but the guard
gestured him on.

'Just keep walking. I'll talk to you about it, but not
here and not for gratis.'

'What are you after?'

'A drink. A serious drink. I reckon Delaney's good
for it.'

'When and where?'

They reached the bottom of the stairs.

'Six o'clock. The Pillars of Hercules. Soho.'

Skinner nodded, imperceptibly, as another guard
approached.

'All right, Derek. I'll take him from here.'

Derek Watters slapped Skinner on the arm as the
other guard led him away and back towards the
entrance.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, it doesn't matter
what time of year, Soho is a busy place. But the
White Horse pub, just down the road from Walker's
Court, was relatively quiet today; as quiet as it was
most days during the week, after lunch and before the
workers came off shift. Later on it would be bustling
with the regulars who preferred the scruffy
traditionalism of a proper London boozer to the
trendy bars that had recently sprung up around Soho
like mushrooms in an autumn wood. Soho took its
name, most believed, from the old hunting cry
Soho
,
much like the
Tally ho
that still sounds from blue-blooded
lips up and down the shires, hunting ban or
no. Less fanciful, perhaps, was that the name just
came from a shortening of South Holborn.

The dark-haired man sitting on his own in the pub
preferred the first version. As far as he was
concerned, Soho was still a hunting ground. The best
kind.

The White Horse was a pub he liked to drink in
and watch people. A spit-and-sawdust bar with a
dirty, wooden planked floor and a look about it as
faded as an old man's shirt. The man liked it because
he could look at the whores as they worked the street
outside, and watch them closer when they came in for
a nip of cheap vodka against the elements. Their
skinny legs sometimes encased in fishnet stockings
and knee-length boots, sometimes bare and cold in
red leather shoes, their painted smiles cracking in the
sudden warmth like old varnish as they took a brief
respite from the cold outdoors.

At the moment, however, there were just a few
tourists sheltering from the persistent rain and a
couple of old men, seated separately and so far gone
on strong beer that time meant nothing them. When
they got up in the morning the pub was open and
when they went home and collapsed the pub was
open, and all that filled the hours in between waking
and sleeping was the slow annihilation of thought,
feeling and memory. Annihilation by the pint and
shot glass.

The man seated at the round table by the entrance
door watched the old men with contempt undisguised
in his eyes. His right hand caressed his left
wrist.

He looked up at the television set above the corner
of the bar. He'd been watching the news now for
over an hour. No mention of his own artistry that
day on the heath. No mention at all. And that made
him angry.

The woman reading the news was young, blonde
and very pretty. The man took a sip of his drink and
watched her lips moving, not listening to the words
she was saying. It was all irrelevant. Her lips were
full, coloured with a soft, strawberry-pink lipstick.
He licked his own lips, as if he could taste hers.

He ran his finger around the circle of moisture on
the cracked surface of the wooden table and something
sparked in his eyes. Not anger, or self-pity, but
desire. He looked up at the television screen again. At
the face of Melanie Jones, the news reporter from Sky
News, as she smiled at the camera and wittered on
about the change in the weather and coastal erosion
in some Norfolk village nobody had ever heard of.

It was clear they had no knowledge of what he had
done. And it was equally clear that the police had
failed to grasp the significance of it. He needed to go
to work again. Sometimes it took two pieces of the
puzzle for someone to see the connection. Sometimes
it took more. Well, if they needed another piece, he'd
give it to them.
Can you see what it is yet?
Art is
nothing without an audience after all. He smiled to
himself taking another sip of his drink and looked at
the elderly man at the bar who was watching him
with a curious look in his eye, after a moment or two
the man looked away and turned his attention back
to his pint of Guinness. Some things you didn't want
to look at too closely.

Especially in London.

Kate Walker looked at the photographs on the wall.
Pictures of a young woman, once vital, now lying on
a cold shelf in the morgue. Anatomy of a murder. She
looked at the cold savagery of the slashes on the
woman's body and felt sick for her race.

Kate could feel the restlessness in the room behind
her as she continued to look at the photos. But she
needed a moment or two to collect herself. Her heart
was racing, as it had been since morning, and her
skin was clammy. She'd never felt like this before in
one of these meetings. Some people were terrified
talking to a large number of people, it was the top
fear in the country, bigger even than spiders or
snakes, but that had never been one of her phobias.
She knew more than most people she ever met and
didn't mind demonstrating it. It was a measure of just
how rattled she was that she was nervous now. She
took a breath or two and turned round and nodded
to the assembled policemen and women. 'As you
already know we're putting her age at mid-twenties.
Time of death between one o'clock and two o'clock
last night.'

The young constable who had been guarding the
body from the prurient gaze of the public earlier in
the morning raised his hand.

'Can I ask a question?'

'Of course,' Kate said. 'What is it, Constable?'

'How can you be so sure about the time of death?
What are the signs?' Danny Vine asked, his notebook
open and his pen ready.

Amusement rippled round the room. Kate glared at
them. 'All right. Some of you know as much about
forensic pathology as I do – in your own opinion. But
for the benefit of those who don't, there are a number
of ways of determining time of death. It's a science
but it's not an exact science. Rigor mortis usually sets
in about three or four hours after death with full
rigor about twelve hours later. Our victim hadn't
reached that stage yet. So that's one thing. Ambient
temperature plays a part though. Three to four hours
is the norm with mild temperatures.'

'It was brass monkeys last night, ma'am.'

'Yes, thank you, Constable Wilkinson. You're
right, it was bloody cold last night so that skews our
calculations. But there are other factors we can use.'
She looked across to see Danny Vine was taking
copious notes. Keen to be a detective, she reckoned.
She took a sip of water to allow him to catch up.

'Other conditions factor in. The age of the body,
how active the person was prior to death. If they were
very active then rigor mortis can set in quicker. We
don't know what this woman was doing prior to her
murder but at that time of night we can assume she
hadn't been jogging on the heath. So we look at other
indicators.' She pointed to the photos mounted on
the display panels.

'The heart, as you all know, is a muscle that pumps
blood around the body. Once that pump stops
working, at the time of death, blood collects in the
most dependent parts of the body. That is livor
mortis. Then the body stiffens, which is rigor mortis,
and then with no heat being generated post mortem,
the body begins to cool and this is the algor mortis
stage.'

She pointed at the blue staining on the body of the
dead woman. 'Blood will collect in those parts of the
body that are in contact with the ground. Most
commonly the back and the buttocks when the
person is lying face up. The skin is pale because all
the blood that keeps it pink drains into the larger
veins. It can take minutes or hours after death, but
livor mortis will manifest itself on the skin.'

She pointed to a close-up photograph of the discoloration
on the woman's face. 'These purplish
blemishes are what embalmers call post-mortem
stain. It takes a few hours but after that the blood
becomes what we call fixed. That is, it won't move to
other parts of the body if the corpse is moved. So we
can use that to also determine where the murder took
place. And, in this instance, together with the other
factors such as the arterial spray in the immediate
area, we can say pretty definitely that the woman was
killed in the place where she was discovered.'

Kate walked back to the desk and took another sip
of water. She was aware that Delaney was watching
her but determined to keep professional.

'There is a condition, at the time of death, known
as primary flaccidity.'

'Bob Wilkinson knows all about that,' a female
officer called out from the back of the room, and
laughter erupted. Kate smiled, the grim photos on
the wall behind were testament to the seriousness
of the situation but the laughter didn't mean anyone
in the room wasn't focused on the dead woman, and
finding justice for her. Black humour was just a
coping mechanism, after all.

She held up a hand. 'All right, settle down.
Constable Wilkinson is already no doubt well aware
that there are medications available on prescription
for his particular ailment, so there is no need for
embarrassment nowadays.'

Bob Wilkinson scowled, taking the ribbing in good
heart.