Blood Work (9 page)

At the mortuary Kate Walker scrubbed her hands,
holding them under the hot water and rubbing the
brush as if to scratch away the touch of Paul Archer.
She felt like dipping them in acid.

'Are you all right, Dr Walker?' Lorraine Simons
had come into the room and was watching her,
concern evident in her eyes.

'I'm fine.' Kate finished her hands, drying them
and slipping on a pair of latex gloves.

'You had a phone call earlier. Dr Jane Harrington.
She didn't leave a message.'

Kate nodded. 'It can wait. She can't.' She walked
across to the mortuary table where the body of the
murdered girl was laid out in cold, clinical repose.
Her naked skin pearlescent white under the bright
lights, like a dead snow queen.

Kate watched as her assistant joined her at the
table, wheeling across the stack of instruments with
which they would try and ascertain the manner of the
young woman's death. Quantify it. Render a human
life into its constituent parts. Why was she doing
this? she thought to herself. Working with the dead?
Maybe her friend Jane was right, she had always been
so sure of herself. But suddenly everything was
shifting for her, nothing was fixed. Her career had
always been a focus, a constant. Now? Now she
didn't even know who she was any more.

She glanced across at her young assistant. 'What
made you want to do this job?' she asked.

Lorraine looked at her a little puzzled. 'Don't you
remember asking me that in my interview?'

Kate smiled apologetically. 'There were a lot of
interviews. A lot of interviewees, all of them saying
the same thing. I just wondered what it really was for
you?'

Lorraine picked up a scalpel and ran her thumb
along the blunt part of it. 'All through medical school
I wanted to be a surgeon.'

'What changed?'

'It was a gradual thing, really. But one night, I was
an intern on surgical rotation and a couple of
children were brought in. A ten-year-old boy and a
six-year-old girl. They had both been repeatedly
stabbed. By their father.'

'Go on.'

'He was a manic-depressive. On a cocktail of
antidepressants, booze and marijuana. He had an
argument with his wife, picked up a carving knife and
stabbed both his kids to punish her.'

'Nice.'

'The boy lasted an hour. We did what we could but
he had lost a lot of blood. We worked on the girl
through the night. There were multiple complications,
she had been stabbed nine times. We brought
her out of surgery and had to take her back in as she
arrested in recovery. She arrested again on the table.'
She put the scalpel down and looked steadily at Kate.
'When she arrested again we had to let her go. Even
had she survived she would have been brain-dead.
There was nothing we could do. We had to tell the
mother she had lost both her children. Some hours
later the mother jumped in front of a train on the
Northern Line at Chalk Farm.'

Kate shook her head sympathetically. 'It wasn't
your fault. You did what you could.'

Lorraine nodded. 'I don't blame myself. There's
only one person responsible for their deaths. But I
couldn't deal with it any more. I couldn't deal with
the fact that whatever you do, however much you try,
eventually someone will die. And if you are going to
be a surgeon you have to be able to deal with that.
You have to be able to detach emotionally. And I
couldn't. And I didn't want to go into general
practice.' She looked down on the cold body of the
dead woman. 'At least in here you can't fail. Nobody
pays a price for your mistakes.'

'That's true . . .' Kate looked at the dead woman's
face, at her neck, at the start of the first incision, but
knew that she was lying to her young assistant.
'. . . and at least you didn't say you had a crush on
Amanda Burton.'

'Who?'

'Good answer.'

Kate looked back at the dead woman's neck again
and then bent down to get a closer look. 'What do
you make of this?'

Lorraine moved around the table to see what Kate
was looking at. 'It appears to be some kind of
puncture wound.'

'Get the camera. Let's take some close-up shots.

Jack Delaney took a big bite out of his second bacon
sandwich that day and grunted with approval.
'You're an irritating bastard at the best of times, Roy,
but you make a halfway decent sandwich.'

'From anyone else I'd tell them to stick their head
in a pig, but coming from you, Inspector Delaney, I'll
take that as a big fucking compliment.' Roy smiled
broadly, his teeth like an old piano with half the keys
missing, and turned back to the book he was reading.
A new science-fiction blockbuster by Peter F.
Hamilton from whom he had nicked the name for his
burger van.

Delaney walked across to Sally Cartwright who
was delicately eating a bean burger as she leaned
against the bonnet of her car. Her small teeth made
precise, uniform bites. Delaney leaned beside her on
the bonnet finishing his sandwich and considered
matters. Now that the body of the young goth
woman had been removed to the morgue, the SOCOs
and uniforms were conducting a fingertip search and
dusting any suitable surface. Given the overnight rain
Delaney doubted there would be any chance of lifting
any prints. Kate Walker had barely said three words
to him since returning to the scene-of-crime tent. He
hadn't expected her to be sweetness and light to him
but he had hoped she could keep a professional
neutrality, at least. He knew he had hurt her, but they
had only slept together once after all, and that hardly
constituted a relationship. And the fact of the matter
was he had only ended their affair because he didn't
want to see her getting hurt. He knew his own
failings better than anybody and he knew he wasn't
in a place right now to be of any use in her life. He
couldn't remember who said it but he remembered
the quote about the eleventh commandment. 'Never
sleep with anybody who has got more problems than
you have.' He reckoned that between Kate Walker
and himself that would be a close run thing. One
thing was sure, though, she was certainly taking the
case this morning a whole lot more personally than
he had ever seen her take one before. Kate Walker
had always been practically a byword for icy
efficiency, but the dead goth had certainly got to her
in some way, that much was painfully obvious.

'Sir?'

Delaney blinked out of his thoughts and looked at
Sally. 'Sorry, what?'

'I was asking about the raggedy-haired man. You
think he's connected with the dead girl?'

Delaney finished his sandwich. 'I don't know. I
think we should find him, though.'

'Do you think there is a sexual connection with the
murder?'

Delaney wiped his hands and stood up. 'We'll find
out soon enough if there is. But she was naked from
the waist up which suggests a sexual element. And
the psychiatrists tell us often enough that in these sort
of crimes the knife becomes a phallic substitute.'

'Boys and their toys, eh, Inspector?'

'Something like that. Come on, Constable. Or are
you going to take all day eating that burger?'

Delaney walked off, crossing over the road and
headed towards White City police station, purpose in
his stride.

Diane Campbell looked up from her desk as Delaney
came into her office. She gestured to him as she took
out a packet of cigarettes and walked to the window.
'Keep an eye out. The new super has a bug up his arse
about smoking. Anyone would think it's against the
law.'

'It is, Diane.'

She smiled and fired up a cigarette and opened her
window slightly. 'So, what have you got for me,
cowboy?'

Delaney shrugged. 'Nothing new. The body is at
the morgue.'

'What's your instinct? Sexual predator? First date
gone wrong? Homicidal maniac?'

'I don't know, boss. A lot of anger there, that much
is clear.'

'Killed in the woods, or dumped there?'

'The doc reckons she was killed where we found
her. The blood-spatter patterns seem pretty
conclusive.'

'Did she give a time of death?'

'Last night.' He shrugged. 'Hopefully we'll know
more after the post.'

Diane took a drag on her cigarette and looked at
him. 'And what did you get up to after I dropped you
off?'

'I went home and tucked myself straight up in bed
like a good boy.'

'Yeah, right.'

He smiled, but his eyes were flat. Remembering.

Delaney hunched the collar of his jacket around his
neck and leaned back, shielding himself from the
wind as he lit the cigarette that was his excuse for
getting off the train. The dark-haired woman in the
carriage had reminded him of Kate. It wasn't her.
Wasn't remotely like her, apart from the hair. But he
couldn't keep her out of his mind and, suddenly
claustrophobic with his thoughts, he had hurried
through the closing doors, shouldered through the
crowds, up the escalator and out into the fresh, cool
air.

Eight o'clock at night and it was already dark. The
black clouds overhead were pregnant with rain, a real
burst of it looked imminent, but the pavement was
bright from the street lamps and the wash of light
that spilled from the broad windows of WH Smith
which Delaney was leaning against. He stood there
for a moment or two, watching people hurry across
the road and into the safety of the station. He
watched a woman in her forties with dyed, ill-kempt,
blonde hair and a red vinyl jacket walk near the
phone boxes, scanning the eyes of approaching men,
looking to make a deal, needing another fix and not
caring about the weather.

Delaney finished his cigarette and walked back to
the station entrance. A couple of stops up the
Northern Line and he'd be in Belsize Park. Back
home. Only it didn't feel like home to him and he was
not sure it ever would. He paused at the entrance.
Maybe he should do as his boss suggested. He'd had
quite a few drinks already but he was a very long way
from being rat-arsed. He shook another cigarette out
of a packet and lit it, feeling his heart pound in his
chest, and came to a decision. He blew out a stream
of smoke and started walking. Away from the station
towards the British Library. He crossed over the
road, running to dodge the traffic, and walked a
couple of hundred yards up Pentonville Road
towards Judd Street and went into a pub on the
corner of the two roads. An Irish bar, a proper one,
not a diddly shamrock theme pub. The warmth and
the noise wrapped around him as he entered, the light
was bright but, for a change, Delaney didn't mind
that. He walked across the scuffed wooden floor to
the long, scruffy bar and ordered a large whiskey and
a pint of Guinness from the freckled woman in her
thirties who was stood behind it. He had downed the
whiskey before the Guinness had settled and ordered
another one. He was sipping it a little bit more slowly
when a soft, hot, moist voice whispered in his ear.

'Hello, stranger.'

He turned round and took another sip of the
whiskey, looking into the cool, green eyes of the
woman who had sat on the stool next to him. Her hip
rubbing against his thigh. She was dressed in skintight
jeans, a cream-coloured wool jumper and a
brown suede jacket. Delaney smiled at her and raised
his glass. 'Stella Trant.'

'In the flesh.' Stella leaned against the bar putting
her shoulders back in a feline manner, stretching the
jumper across her braless chest.

Delaney smiled again and looked again into her
deep, green eyes, seeing the playfulness sparking in
them now. 'Buy you a drink?'

Stella smiled, nodding, and rubbed her arm,
wincing a little.

'You hurt yourself?'

'Tennis elbow. Professional injury.'

'You play tennis?'

'Swinging a whip. Toy one, made of suede. Some
guy had me manacle him to a wall in his cellar and
pretend to whip him heavily for an hour.' She rubbed
her arm again. 'The novelty soon wears off.' She
looked at him pointedly and smiled. 'Reminds me a
lot of you by the way. Same hair, same dress sense.'

Delaney shook his head, a smile on the edge of his
lips. 'Not me. I don't play at things.'

'Is that a fact?'

Delaney looked at her steadily as he finished his
second whiskey. 'Not unless I win.'

'Maybe next time I'll let you.'

Superintendent George Napier did little to hide his
dislike of the man standing in front of his desk. The
man's eyes were bloodshot, his hair was too long, too
curly, too far from neatly combed. Altogether there
was a sense of looseness to his appearance. Jack
Delaney. Slack Delaney more like! Too cocky, too
casual, too damned indifferent. George Napier was
not a man who did casual and had little time for
those that did. He didn't much care for the Irish
either. He didn't trust them. He still remembered
hundreds of Irish men and women lining the streets
of Kilburn to mark the funeral of one of their IRA
heroes. Once a criminal always a criminal in his
book, and he recognised the status of the IRA as a
legitimate political operation about as much as he
recognised the legitimacy of the claim Argentina had
on the Falklands. Mainly he didn't like the man's
sullen, mute insolence. No respect for authority. That
was obvious. Like many of his generation he would
have benefited from National Service.

George Napier was too young himself to have gone
through National Service, but he had joined the
Territorial Army while at university and when he
graduated it had been a toss-up between the armed
forces and the police. The police had won by a
narrow margin. The man in front of him wouldn't
last a weekend with the TA he decided, let alone the
proper army.

As far as he was concerned the police force should
be like a domestic army. Anybody who didn't realise
they were fighting a war nowadays hadn't read the
papers or listened to the news. Never mind the war
on terror; the amount of guns and knives on the
streets made the boroughs of London every bit as
dangerous a place to live as Beirut in his opinion.
And to fight that, to bring law and order back to the
country, took vision, it took backbone and it took
discipline, by God. And although he knew that the
man standing in front of him had been responsible
for bringing down a couple of bad apples within the
department, he was far from convinced that Delaney
wasn't a bruised fruit himself. He put the report he
had been reading into a folder and shook his head.