Blood Work (14 page)

Caroline smiled apologetically. 'You'll have to
excuse me for a moment. One of the downsides of
being pregnant is that you have to go to the loo every
five minutes.'

'Okay.'

'I might be some time.' She grinned at Kate again,
more broadly this time. 'Why don't you make yourself
at home? Read something.' She gestured at her
desk on which were stacked a pile of magazines and
a single, blue folder. Kate looked at the name on the
folder,
Helen Archer
, and smiled gratefully back up
at the police surgeon.

'Thanks, Caroline.'

'Take your time.'

Caroline left and Kate pulled the folder towards
her, took out the documents and started to read.

Helen Archer's hand shook slightly as she went into
her house, closed her front door behind her and
double locked it. On the way back home, with the
wind howling and throwing the fallen leaves against
her bare legs, she had jumped at every barking dog or
creaking tree branch, flexing its long, skeletal fingers
as though deliberately taunting her.

She walked across the polished oak floor of her
hallway, kicking off her low-heeled shoes and letting
her feet sink comfortably in the luxurious pile of the
cream-coloured carpet in her lounge. She went
straight to the walnut sideboard next to the
fireplace, poured herself a large brandy and took a
healthy swig. It was expensive brandy, as smooth as
the silk on her bed upstairs, but she still gasped a
little as it went down. Coughing and catching her
breath she took another sip, slower this time, and
felt the warmth of it spread through her body. She
crossed over to her curtains and pulled them shut,
then switched on a couple of side lamps and dimmed
the main light. A red light was blinking on the
answerphone on top of the coffee table in front of an
enormous, red, buffalo-hide sofa, something her ex-husband
insisted they buy and she hadn't got round
to replacing. Its overwhelming size was a constant
reminder of him. She punched the play button on
the answerphone. It was his voice again and her
fingers tightened on her brandy glass, her knuckles
white.

'Don't be like this, Helen. We need to talk. We
need to sort things out.' His voice was calming,
soothing. As though he were talking to one of his
patients. 'Call me back. You don't want to make me
angry.' And there was steel in his voice now.
Unsheathed. Brutal.

She clicked the phone off, ignoring the blinking
light that signalled there were many more messages.

She drained her brandy and then poured another,
sipping at it as she looked at herself in the large, gilt
mirror that was above the fireplace. She flicked her
hair from side to side and ran her fingers softly
through her thick tresses. It was honey-blonde again,
the same colour as it had been at twenty-six when she
had first met Paul. Not entirely her natural colour,
but not far off it. He had asked her to change it in the
early days and she had refused. But he had asked time
and again, and by that time she had found herself
falling in love with him. And it wasn't such a big
deal, was it? Only a hair colour. She had dyed it a
deep brunette, the colour he wanted. The colour of
one of those women from the original
Charlie's
Angels
. And she quite liked it at first. Made her look
like a different person. Like putting on a mask. But
the collar and cuffs hadn't matched he'd said. The
curtains and the carpet. He thought he was so
damned amusing. So he had made her shave her body
hair. Shaved quite nude, just like he did himself. He
had told her that it was for health reasons. She
laughed drily as she remembered his words, but she
knew better than that. It was because he thought it
made his cock look bigger, that was the simple truth.
The brandy was chasing away her nerves and
replacing them with anger. How could she have been
so wrong about a person? How could she have
thought she loved him? He'd seemed so gentle with
children, and she always thought that he wanted
some of his own. That was one of the reasons why
she married him. She'd always wanted a family and
she had made that clear to any man who ever wanted
to get serious with her. At the age of twelve she had
known how many children she wanted and that
hadn't changed since. She took another sip of her
brandy and unconsciously rubbed her stomach as she
looked down at the flickering flames roaring hungrily
around the logs now.

It wasn't long after the honeymoon that the
excuses started. It was always his career, a new
posting, a promotion. Just as everything was settled
and he promised they could start a family, he got
offered something new. More money to pay for
school fees, he had said, and it meant they had had to
move to London. Then there was a new house to
find, and to decorate and renovate. And the new job
meant he had to focus on that so the family would
have to wait for another short while. And that short
while became a year and then another year. Then one
day Helen realised she was well into her thirties and
he was never going to change.

Except he did.

He became violent. She swallowed more of the
brandy, its taste bitter in the back of her throat now.
She felt a little disorientated, her eyes momentarily
out of focus, and she suddenly felt hot, a little giddy.
She put the back of hand on her forehead and it was
damp with perspiration.

'Overdoing it on the brandy again?'

She spun around, her mouth open in shock, her
arm dropping, spilling the brandy from her glass into
the rich pile of the carpet.

'How did you get in?' Her voice trembled as she
looked at the man in front of her.

'I always kept a spare key in the garden shed. If
you didn't want me here you should have changed
the locks.'

'Get out!' Helen screamed at him and threw the
brandy glass. The man laughed as it missed him by
five feet and smashed against her new Liberty-print
wallpaper that she had always wanted but had never
been allowed.

Paul Archer shook his head, the laughter in his eyes
dying in an instant. 'Seems like you never learn,
Helen. No matter how many lessons you're given,
you never learn. But as someone once remarked . . .
repetition is an excellent learning tool.'

Helen shook with terror as Paul Archer moved
towards her. She tried to get away but she could only
make a few steps towards the door and then her legs
wouldn't move, her muscles useless, she felt her knees
buckle and she slid, almost in slow motion, to the
floor. She tried to get up but couldn't. She watched
helpless as her ex-husband looked down on her as he
took off his shirt, which he folded neatly and put on
the sofa, then unbuckled his belt and lowered his
trousers. She tied to move backwards but couldn't.
She could barely scream as he stood above her naked,
stroking himself with his right hand, hardening. Her
eyes flicked to the right, to the broken brandy glass,
lying against the wall. If she could just reach that she
could take that smile off his face for good.

Delaney leaned against the wall in the small entrance
to South Hampstead station watching the commuters
as they spilled out of the lift and bustled for the exit.
A couple of uniforms were waiting outside and Sally
Cartwright stood next to Delaney looking at her
watch. Across from them was the ticket office and
station master's room. The door opened and an
angry-looking man, with dark, wavy hair and an
accent spooned with silver, glared across at them.

'Haven't you people got anything better to do?'

Simon Elliot, a police surgeon in his thirties, came
out behind him and shook his head at Jack. He
wasn't the one they were looking for. Delaney
shrugged at the angry man with the posh voice and
held his hands out apologetically.

'We're just doing a job here.'

'Your family must be very proud of you.'

The man walked off in a huff and Sally looked at
her watch again.

'Keen to be somewhere, Constable?'

'Like I said earlier, we're having a drink a bit later.
You're welcome to join us.'

Delaney looked at her deadpan. 'You know me,
Sally. I don't drink during the week.'

'Just a bit of a headache was it this morning, sir? A
migraine?'

'Along those lines.'

Delaney listened as another train pulled out of the
tunnel many feet below, feeling the ground vibrate
beneath his feet, and watched the indicator that
showed another lift was on its way up. So far they
had interviewed two of the three potential suspects
identified by Valerie Manners and had no luck with
either of them. Any resemblance to the flasher on the
heath's southern common disappeared below buckle
level.

Kate felt nauseous as she finished reading the statement.
Helen Archer explaining in clinical detail the
assault her ex-husband had made on her. No, not
assault, she corrected herself mentally, the rape. As
she read the clinical words she could picture all too
clearly in her mind what had happened. Helen
suspected that Paul Archer had laced her brandy with
some sort of sedative, some kind of date-rape drug.
But the levels hadn't been strong enough, clearly, as
she could still remember what had happened. She had
remembered being powerless as he had knelt beside
her on the carpet, lifting her legs apart, raising her
skirt, taking off her underwear and violating her as
she tried desperately for her limbs to work again.
And finally they had. As she recognised the telltale
signs, the little mewing noises, the tightening of his
buttocks, the widening of his eyes as he sucked his
breath quickly in over his teeth, his wife had
summoned enough strength to jerk his body
sideways, off her and out of her and shuffled away
like an injured crab as he jerked in spasm and came,
spilling his seed into the carpet.

Evidence.

The lift doors opened and about thirty or so people
came out into the small concourse that formed both
the entrance and exit to Hampstead station. Delaney
was relieved to see that their third suspect looked to be
among them, although he could only see his curly,
brown hair. He had his head down reading the
Evening Standard
, but he looked up as the group
spilled though the lift doors. He was an IC1 male, in
his early thirties, wearing a charcoal-grey suit and his
eyes flashed with shock and then anger as he saw
Delaney. They recognised each other almost immediately.
Delaney knew he was not one of the men in
the security footage that Valerie Manners had identified
as a possible suspect. But he looked a little like
him, even though his hair was far longer and curlier
than it had been when Delaney had last seen him.

The man looked ahead, saw the uniforms chatting
outside on the street and, panicking, he grabbed a
young woman and shoved her straight at Delaney
and Sally Cartwright then took off at a run, out of
the exit and down the street, flashing past the
uniforms.

Delaney left the detective constable to pick the
young woman up and went after the man, shouting
at the officers to follow as he raced up the street.

The man ahead shouldered past a couple of people
waiting at the bus stop, the briefcase in his hand
waving wildly as he ran pell-mell towards the road
that led to the common and the southern reaches of
the heath.

Delaney breathed heavily, his lungs on fire, feeling
the muscles in his thighs burn as he hammered his
legs down on the hard pavement. He swerved around
the people waiting at the bus stop and shouted for the
man to stop.

He didn't.

Delaney cursed through panted breath and picked
his pace up. He was beginning to regret his two visits
to Roy's burger van. A bacon sandwich or two is one
thing going down, it's an altogether different thing
coming up, and if he didn't catch the guy sprinting
ahead of him soon he was either going to throw up
or have a heart attack, probably both.

He spurted forward, blowing fast now. Christ on a
bicycle he needed to do more exercise. He flicked his
eyes heavenward in the slightest gesture of apology
for the blasphemy of his thoughts then dived forward
to rugby-tackle the man round his legs and bring him
down hard on the pavement.

At school Delaney was considered a great prospect
for the game. Natural speed combined with courage
bordering on stupidity, a keen intelligence and the
ability to read the play on the hoof made him a
superstar of school rugby in his early teens. As he
grew older and taller and filled out in the shoulders,
he was not only playing with boys much older than
himself, he was playing better than them. There was
talk of national trials. But then, at the age of fifteen,
Delaney discovered girls and his ambitions for glory
on the muddy field were swapped for ambitions of a
more comfortable kind, and certainly not of a team
nature. He played his last game of rugby when he
was eighteen years old and so it was more than
twenty years since he'd practised the move.

He missed the man entirely.

Smashing down on to the cold, slick pavement he
cried out and skidded forward like a clubbed seal on
ice, his right shoulder wrenched out of its socket
again, a recurring legacy of a motorcycle accident in
his mid-twenties.

The man ahead turned back to look, the smile on
his face and the smart remark on his lips quickly
dying as Sally Cartwright charged up to him and, not
bothering with the technical rules of the game
Delaney had once played, tackled him high,
wrapping her arm round his neck and pulling him
violently to the ground. At Twickenham she might
have got a yellow card, in South Hampstead she got
a shout of encouragement from the two uniformed
officers who followed closely behind and grabbed the
man, pulled him roughly to his feet and cuffed him.

Delaney took a moment or two to catch his breath,
his face like a satisfied shepherd's sunset.