Blood Work (7 page)

'Kate.'

She looked round, her heart thudding in her chest,
to see Paul Archer.

He smiled at her, his voice friendly. 'Kate, what are
you doing here? Were you looking for me?'

Kate couldn't speak, she couldn't breathe, she
leaned back against her car, fighting to control the
panic.

Archer smiled at her. 'Is everything all right?'

She found her voice. 'Get away from me.'

Archer looked puzzled. 'What are you talking
about?'

'I know what you did. So just stay away from me.'

'I've got no idea what you're talking about. I
haven't done anything.'

'Last night . . .'

'Last night was your idea. You invited me back to
your place, remember.'

Kate shook her head angrily. 'You're not going to
get away with this.'

'Get away with what? I didn't do anything.'

'You're lying.'

'Nothing happened, Kate. We both got drunk, you
suggested I stay over. We slept together, but nothing
happened, if that's what you're worried about.'

Kate desperately wanted to believe him, but knew
that something was wrong, something was definitely
wrong. She knew her own body, didn't she? 'Then
why can't I remember?'

Archer smiled at her, genuinely amused. 'You were
absolutely paralytic, Kate. It's not unusual.'

Kate stepped closer to him, she wanted to knock
the arrogant smirk off his cocky face. She wanted to
hurt him, really hurt him. 'You're not going to get
away with it, you sick pervert!' Archer grabbed both
of her arms and she struggled furiously but his grip
was like a vice. She looked up at him with livid eyes,
her face contorted in fury. 'Let me go now, or I swear
you will regret it!'

He pushed her away, the thin veneer of urbanity
stripped from his face now as he sneered, 'What
makes you think I'd want something like you?'

Kate slapped him hard across his face and went to
slap him again but he caught her hand. 'Let go of my
hand!' she yelled at him, red-faced with fury.

'You heard the lady.'

Archer released his grip on her and turned round to
see a man looking at him impassively, scant inches
away, a young woman standing behind him. The
man was easily Archer's height, but had a few years
on him and Archer was in far better physical shape.
He poked the stranger in the chest. 'Back off,
sunshine, and take your little friend with you. This is
none of your business.'

Delaney punched him in the face. A hard straight
punch to the bridge of his nose. So fast Archer didn't
even see it coming. He gasped out in pain and
dropped to his knees, completely taken aback.
'You've broken my fucking nose.' Blood was spilling
from his nose on to his hands.

Delaney turned back round to speak to Kate but
she was already striding towards her car, her scarf of
many colours flapping behind her long, curly hair
like a sexy Doctor Who. Roy, from the burger van,
would have approved, Delaney reckoned. He walked
up to her as Kate got in her car, slammed the door
shut and kicked over the engine.

'Kate!'

But she was gone, her wheels spinning, throwing
up gravel like tiny shrapnel as she accelerated to the
exit.

Archer was still whimpering, incredulous. 'You
broke my fucking nose.'

Delaney ignored him, 'Come on, Sally.' He walked
across the car park to their car.

DC Cartwright looked down at Archer who was
staring at the blood on his hands in shock and utter
disbelief. 'I'd get a plaster for that if I were you. They
should have one in there.'

She jerked her thumb towards the hospital
entrance and walked after Delaney.

Sally Cartwright adjusted the rear-view mirror
watching the man Delaney had decked as he
hobbled, clearly in pain, to the hospital entrance, a
bloody handkerchief held to his nose. She turned the
ignition key and looked across at Delaney, a slight
frown creasing her neatly shaped eyebrows. 'Seat
belt, sir.'

Delaney rolled his eyes and pulled his seat belt
across, snapping it into place. 'Just drive, will you,
Constable?'

'Sir.'

She slipped the clutch out and pulled the car
smoothly out of the exit; no gravel flew behind them
as she indicated left and headed towards the south
part of Hampstead Heath.

After driving in silence for a couple of minutes she
flicked a glance at her boss. 'What was all that about,
do you reckon, sir?'

'I have absolutely no idea, Sally.'

'She seemed pretty upset.'

'Yup.'

'Do you think he'll make a complaint against you?'

'He doesn't know who I am.' Delaney shrugged
and went back to staring out the window. Sally raised
an eyebrow again and concentrated on the road
ahead.

When he was sure the detective constable wasn't
looking, Delaney rubbed his left hand over his right
knuckles and winced. He had no idea what was going
on with the man he had punched, or what he had to
do with Kate. He had probably broken the man's
nose who, after all, was right, it had been none of his
business. It had felt good though, for all the wrong
reasons. It had been a morning of frustrations,
getting so close to discovering the identity of his
wife's killers, only to be thwarted at the final hurdle.
And he wasn't so unaware as to not realise he still
had issues with Kate Walker. He had punched the
man half out of anger, half out of a desire to impress
her. He had told Kate that he didn't have room in his
life for her, and it was true. He had too many
unresolved matters to set straight. But if he had no
room in his life for her, then why was there such a
great hole in it?

Kate Walker's hands were still shaking as she slipped
the gear into fourth and stepped on the accelerator
pedal. Shaking, she realised, with shock and anger.
Of all the people in the world she didn't want
knowing about last night and what had happened to
her, it was Jack Delaney. What on earth was the man
doing there, for God's sake? It was bad enough that
he had humiliated her yesterday, broke her heart and
made her so depressed that she went to chase her
blues away with vodka. If it hadn't been for him she
would never have gone to the Holly Bush, would
never have let a complete stranger chat her up at the
bar. She wasn't a student, she wasn't a silly young
girl who didn't know any better and didn't realise the
dangers. In fact, she knew the dangers better than
most, but had still let the man under her guard. Just
like she had let Delaney under her guard, and look
what had happened there. And, of course, he just had
to be there when she confronted Paul Archer, making
a fool of herself. She slammed the palm of her hand
down hard on her horn, the hooter blaring out loudly
and causing the cyclist she was overtaking to wobble
dangerously to the side of the road.

She fought to calm her anger, steady the adrenalin
coursing through her veins. But the truth was she was
getting angrier by the minute. She had seen it in Paul
Archer's eyes. He was amused. He was mocking her.
There was a cold chill in those eyes. He had raped
her. She absolutely believed it now. Believed it with a
cold certainty in the heart of her soul. But she had
absolutely no idea what she was going to do about it.

Paul Archer held a water-soaked handkerchief to his
throbbing nose and wiped away the last vestiges of
blood. The pain was like a thin spike driven into his
forehead. He looked at his face in the mirror and
turned left and right to look at each profile. As far as
he could tell, and he was pretty qualified to tell, his
nose wasn't broken. He put his hands under the cold
water, watching as the deep red blood became
thinner and paler as it swirled away. He scooped
some of the cold water into the palm of his hand and
held it against his forehead for a moment or two,
waiting for the pain to ease.

Stepping away he snatched a paper towel and
rubbed his hands dry as he walked across to the
window, fumbling open a pack of Demerol and
swallowing a couple. He looked out at the car park
below and beyond. Puddles of rainwater, like
irregular-shaped, murky mirrors, reflected the dark
clouds, scudding in the skies above. There was
nothing reflected in Paul Archer's eyes though. They
stared ahead with a blank, cold certainty.

When he was nine years old, a couple of older boys
at school, brothers, had bullied him. Making him
drop his packed lunch of cheese and piccalilli
sandwiches on to the rain-soaked tarmac of the
playground. Kids didn't like other kids who were
different and these two reckoned Paul Archer fancied
himself as better than them because he didn't have to
eat school lunches. As Paul watched his sandwiches
soak up the muddy rain he didn't fight back, he
didn't say a word, just picked up his Tupperware box
and walked away, not even hearing the laughs and
insults that were shouted after him. Paul was too
intent listening to the cool voice of reason inside his
head. The one that said no slight should go
unpunished. And if he wasn't big enough or strong
enough or old enough to make them suffer then he
would hurt the thing they loved. He waited three
weeks and then very early one Saturday morning he
climbed over the fence of their back garden, rolled a
lawn-mower against the door of the kennel where
their pet dog, a Staffordshire bull terrier, slept,
poured petrol he had taken from his dad's shed all
over it and set it alight.

The adult Paul Archer held a hand to his throbbing
nose again; there were many things he knew now that
he hadn't as a child, but one thing that hadn't
changed was that certain knowledge of the joy of
retribution. He knew it as surely as night follows day.
As death follows life. As pleasure follows pain.

Someone was going to pay.

In the front part of the head, in the roof of each
nostril, lies a group of mucous-covered sacs. The
olfactory epithelium. About five square centimetres
in size and containing about ten million receptor
cells. Using these receptors the human nose can
differentiate, it has been claimed, between four
thousand and ten thousand different odours. Odour
is at the very genesis and denouement of human
existence. A smell receptor has been identified in
human sperm – the sperm literally smells its way to
the egg. And death, as any policeman or mortician
knows, is certainly no friend of the olfactory organ.
However, the unmistakable smell of a deceased and
decaying body had had no time to develop that
morning and PC Bob Wilkinson reckoned his young
colleague was as glad of that fact as anyone.

PC Danny Vine had already thrown up twice
within the space of half an hour and Wilkinson,
taking pity on him, had sent him to the front of the
path to prevent anyone from disturbing the crime
scene. Move along please. Nothing to see here. Only,
of course, there was. There was plenty to see. But
none of it pleasant.

The mechanics of investigation had already been
set in motion. A large section of the surrounding area
had been cordoned off with yellow tape stretching
from tree to tree in a rough diamond shape, covering
about a quarter of an acre. The yellow tape with
'
police do not cross
' written upon it, the yellow tape
that unfailingly attracted the prurient attention of the
scandal-hungry public, just as the scent of another
dog's waste always attracted canine interest. The sort
of thrill-seeking interest the public had in other
people's misfortune and pain, feeding off it like some
kind of sick parasites. Road crash syndrome.

Police vans had been parked outside the cordoned
area and uniformed police and white-suited scene-of-crime
officers, SOCOs, went about containing the
integrity of the site. Aluminium telescopic poles had
been snapped open and joined together to form a
skeletal framework which was positioned over the
area immediately surrounding the body. Plastic sheets
had been run over the frame so that the structure
took on the appearance of a wedding marquee. Only
within the frame, there was no cheery fiddle music,
there was no three-tiered cake on a stand, no punchbowl,
no laughing guests, no nervous best man and
certainly no blushing bride with a blue garter on her
stocking and a hungry husband by her side. Inside
was the dead body of a woman in her mid-twenties,
with black hair, black lipstick and black blood
crusting the edges of the deep slash wounds to her
chest, throat and abdomen.

Delaney and Sally Cartwright nodded at PC Danny
Vine as they ducked under the tape and headed
towards the murder scene. Danny responded with a
half-hearted smile.

'You all right, Danny?' Sally asked.

The constable nodded again, unconvincingly.
'Something I ate.'

'You still on for tonight?'

The constable smiled again, more warmly this
time. 'Yeah, I'll be there. Bells on.'

Sally flashed him a quick smile and hurried to join
Delaney.

'Something I should know about?' he asked.

'Sir?'

'Poster boy back there. You and he sharing
handcuffs?'

Sally coloured lightly but laughed out loud. 'A few
of us are meeting up for drinks, that's all.'

Delaney nodded, not entirely convinced. 'Right.'

'You're welcome to join us.'

Delaney nodded again. 'If you say so.'

'Anyway. It wouldn't be a crime, would it?'

'Not in my world.' Delaney's brief moment of
good humour curled up and died as he walked
forward and saw the dark-haired woman standing
outside the scene-of-crime tent.

'Dr Walker. Nice scarf.'

Kate turned and looked at him, and cursed
inwardly, as she took her scarf off and pulled the
protective coverings over the work boots she had
changed into. She should have known Delaney would
turn up. He was, after all, less than a mile away, just
like her, when the call had come in.

'Inspector.' She was surprised at how calm her
voice sounded, how cool.