Blood Work Read online

  Sean Norrell was the first to find voice. 'What the fuck you think you're doing?'

  And Kevin Norrell punched the jagged, broken bottle forward, as hard as he could, stabbing it into his father's thigh. Sean Norrell squealed like a snared rabbit and dropped to his knees, his hands cupping the wound, watching horrified as blood spilled through his spread fingers.

  Thirty-two years later on and Norrell held up his own hand, letting the shower water run through his fingers, shaking his head as if to clear the memories.

  His father hadn't died that night. The damage to his thigh was excruciating but treatable, an inch higher and it would have been his groin, the surgeon had pointed out, and that would have been a lot more serious. Sent home from hospital he managed to sell the remaining lump of cannabis resin he had left and pay Mickey Ryan most of what he owed him, not enough to save himself from a beating, mind, and the boys who gave him it laughed as they remembered that he had been nearly bottled in the nuts by his own son. They made sure to give him a kick or two in the groin before they were done. The kicking reopened the wound and Sean Norrell, rather than seeking medical attention, simply self-medicated with cheap whisky and strong lager and the wound became infected. He died some weeks later from septicaemia.

  Norrell turned the shower off and wrapped his towel around himself. He had been in juvenile detention when he had heard the news of his father's death, and if he had shed a tear at the time it was certainly not through grief. As he left the shower block he nodded at a thickset man who occupied the cell next door to his. The man didn't meet his eye and Norrell knew it meant something. But he was ready. The time was long past when Kevin Norrell was going to be anybody's bitch. That interfering, bastard Irish copper was going to make sure of that.

  Jack Delaney shrugged. 'So he's not happy where he is. Why should we give a monkey's toss?'

  'He claims he knew nothing about Walker's paedophile activities. He fears for his safety at Bayfield.'

  'The sooner that shite is put down like a rabid dog the better, you ask me.'

  'Not too soon. Norrell claims to know something about your wife's death. That's his bargaining chip. He says he'll only speak to you.'

  'And you'll let me do it?'

  'I will if you're back on the force.' Diane dug into her pocket and pulled out an unopened letter. 'I never processed your resignation, Jack. Far as anyone knows you've been on extended leave these last weeks.' She smiled once more. 'Emotional problems.'

  'You must have been pretty sure about me.'

  Diane held the smile like a sniper cradles a rifle. 'Men might not be to my taste, Jack. Doesn't stop me understanding them pretty damn well.'

  Delaney finished his pint and stood up.

  'Where are you going?'

  'I'm going to talk to him.'

  Campbell shook her head. 'Not today. I've arranged the interview for tomorrow morning. Come on, cowboy. Sit down, I'll get you another pint.'

  Diane Campbell picked up his empty glass and headed for the bar, threading her way through the group of young men who had now started singing, 'Get 'em down you Zulu warrior, get 'em down you Zulu chief.' She had never understood what the song was about, and the prospect of seeing a naked man, however young and fit, held as much attraction for her as a Cherry Cola held for Jack Delaney. She waited at the bar for the drinks and looked back at him. She had put her career on the line keeping him in his job. Bringing down Superintendent Walker, however guilty he might have been, had not enamoured Delaney to the senior brass. In fact she had to outright lie to the powers that be to keep him out of jail, let alone keep his warrant card. Possession of an unlicensed firearm was not looked upon with favour, not to mention the little matter of nearly killing one of her sergeants. That the sergeant in question, Eddie Bonner, helped to cover up Walker's activities was neither here nor there. Sergeant Bonner was dead and, whatever forensic pathologist Kate Walker might think, the dead did not make good witnesses. Diane handed the barmaid the correct change, flashed her a flirty smile then walked back to Delaney carrying the drinks carefully through the packed bar. It might very well come back and bite her on her bony arse, but she reckoned she had done the right thing. Delaney was a good man to have in her camp, she knew that much about him if little else.

  Diane handed the Irishman his pint, spying the barely contained violence in brown eyes and figured Norrell better not be yanking on the cowboy's lariat.

  Kevin lay on the top bunk in his cell squeezing an exercise ball, the tendons of his hand standing out like ropes of wire as he contracted it. The man below him fidgeted nervously. Norrell didn't blame him. Like the man in the shower, he wouldn't meet his eyes. Something was in the air. He could almost taste the tension. Norrell smiled humorously as he squeezed the ball again. Whatever it was he would be ready to meet it, or die trying. One way or another he was getting out of prison.

  Diane Campbell glanced across at the pub windows, noticing that the rain had eased up a little. She sipped on her third glass of mineral water and looked across at Delaney. There was a glassy look in his eyes now, less anger and a softer focus. Not surprising since had moved on to drinking Scotch with his Guinness, for some reason insisting on Glenmorangie rather than his favoured Bushmills, and had had six or seven doubles. She wasn't sure that he hadn't slipped in a quick one or two when she had gone to the Ladies. Never mind about the ban on smoking in pubs, what about putting enough cubicles in and banning women from using the place like a lounge for gossip? She didn't envy a man his penis, that was for sure, but she did admire its functional practicality. She swallowed her drink. She was desperate for a cigarette. Diane looked at Delaney pointedly. 'Come on, cowboy, drink up. I'm taking you home.

  Delaney looked at her steadily, the very faintest of slurs in his voice. 'I've got my car outside.'

  'Yeah, and that's where it's staying. You're not causing anyone else's death this month. Not on my watch.'

  Delaney laughed. 'Did you really just say "not on my watch", Diane?'

  'You heard it, partner. The mule is staying parked right where you left it, and I'm taking you back to the High Chaparral.'

  Delaney shook his head as he stood up. 'Just drop me off at a Tube station.'

  'Which one?'

  'Northern Line.' He drained his pint of Guinness, coaxed the last drop of whisky from his glass into his mouth and walked with her to the door. He was almost balanced.

  *

  Kate Walker didn't normally take the Tube. It wasn't so much that she was a snob, she just didn't like the crammed-in, close proximity of people. It wasn't just the look of them or the smell of them – which was bad enough with their wet, rain-sodden clothes – but she knew what people were capable of, the extent of their random cruelties. As a forensic pathologist she knew that far better than most. If she had learned the hard way that you couldn't trust the people you were related to or worked with . . . then you sure as hell couldn't trust strangers. She wouldn't be taking the Tube at all, in fact, but her car was booked in at the garage for a service and an MOT, and her mechanic wouldn't be dropping it back at her house until the early evening. So she had gone by train and taxi to the cemetery for the funeral earlier that afternoon of the caretaker who had been murdered in the course of Delaney's last case. She was pleased she had been able to take flowers for the grave, but in all other ways the journey had been wasted. She had hoped to be able to speak to Jack, discuss what happened with them, but she might as well have been speaking to the dead caretaker for the amount of emotional response she got from Delaney. The prospect of going straight home to an empty house had depressed her even more and so she had spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and buying nothing. Nothing fitted. Nothing was right. Nothing shifted the black cloud of her mood. And so here she was now, stuck on the Tube with a bunch of people she neither knew nor felt any inclination to know.

  She looked down at her court shoes. Expensive, chic, sexy, she thought. Black suited her colouring. The shoes were now spattered with mud
and rain and the shine had come off them, just like the shine had come off her day.

  The train juddered to a halt, mid-tunnel, and the lights in the carriage flickered and dimmed before coming back up. She positioned her heel in one of the grooves that ran along the floor and swivelled her foot, wondering when they were going to update the trains. It took just over a couple of hours to get from Paris to St Pancras on the Eurostar fast link nowadays, but it could take an age just to go a few stops on this damned service. The lights dimmed again; low and yellow. Kate looked along the length of the carriage. There was something curiously Gothic about the Northern Line, she thought. Other lines, other stations had a late-Victorian sensibility to them, she knew that, but the Northern Line in places had a quintessentially spooky feel to it. Wood and brass and strange lamps, transportation by Hammer House of Horror.

  The train shuddered and clanked as the wheels started turning again. She looked out of the window as the train flashed noisily through the tunnel once more and pulled her coat tight about her. It was early evening and the train was full, its motion, as it rocked from side to side, throwing the overweight man next to her against her body every time the train rounded a corner. He didn't seem too keen to move away, either, perfectly happy to invade her personal space. She sighed and gritted her teeth.

  She was in a foul mood. Jack Delaney, the son of a bitch. She didn't know why she let him get to her, but he did. Kate Walker, in her own opinion, was, if anything, a woman born of logic, of reason. She was clinical, sharp; her judgement a precision instrument. Only that instrument was letting her down lately, and she didn't know how to fix it. She looked out of the window again, seeing her reflection smudgy and blurred, and that was exactly how she felt. Smudgy and blurred. She wasn't sure quite who she was any more. She leaned against the side of the train, putting as much space between her and the fat man as possible and felt a shiver run up her spine. Somebody was walking on her grave. Dancing on it. She looked around expecting to see someone watching her, but, if they were, they had looked away. Looking away was the English virtue after all. Never get involved, never show your emotions, never get off the boat. Maybe Jack Delaney was more English than he would have liked to admit. There was a man who was never going to get off the boat.

  Delaney stood in the carriageway, swaying with the rhythm of the train, holding on to a strap hanger and keeping his balance, just about, as the train bucked and shifted under his feet as it rattled noisily through the underground tunnels.

  He should have let Diane Campbell take him home, back to his sterile new house in Belsize Park. He should have left the pub after just one drink and then made a start on the decorating, making the place a home and not just a house. Somewhere where his daughter Siobhan would want to visit, would want to stay a few days with him. But Delaney didn't do one quick drink, and he hadn't wanted to go home, it didn't feel like home to him, nowhere had for a long time. Those dark thoughts hadn't been turned off yet and he didn't think they would. Not tonight. Tonight he needed more than alcohol to fight his demons.

  He wished he had never visited the cemetery. He'd told Kate Walker that he'd only gone because he owed it to the old man who had taken a bullet for him. But it wasn't true. He'd gone to see her and now he wished he hadn't. It wasn't a time for complications. He had a focus now and he needed to keep that focus, but Kate had set a fire burning, created a physical thirst that he needed to quench.

  A man leaned against him as the train turned a corner and Delaney looked back at him and the man quickly moved away, half muttering an apology and avoiding eye contact.

  Delaney watched the man move through the crowded train, keen to put distance between them and Delaney didn't blame him. Tomorrow he was going to take steps. People were going to pay for what happened four years ago and pay in blood. But tonight he could taste the iron and copper in his mouth, could feel the murmurs in his blood like the low thrumming of a bass string. Tonight Delaney had another agenda.

  He looked ahead, past the crowded-together commuters who were packed into the carriageway with the resigned look of cattle being herded to slaughter and as some stood up to disembark he saw the dark-haired woman. She was looking at her own reflection in the window as the train jolted and the lights dipped, yellow and sulphurous, so that Delaney's brown eyes smouldered in the low light like a hunting wolf's.

  He came to a decision and reached into his pocket as the train clattered to a standstill.

  Kate walked out of the Tube station scowling as the wind came howling up Hampstead High Street sweeping the rain into her face. She stepped back into the entrance and waited for the weather to abate. She looked at her watch, still not relishing the idea of going back to her empty house, but she had a film on DVD to watch and three-quarters of a bottle of Cloudy Bay chilling in her fridge. Damn Delaney, she thought for the hundredth time that day, wishing again, also for the hundredth time, that she'd never gone to the funeral. She tried to persuade herself that she'd gone for the old man, not on the off chance of seeing that ungrateful Irish bastard. She'd nearly put her life on the line to save his miserable skin, not to mention that of his daughter's, and what thanks did she get? Used and discarded. He made her feel like the cheap kind of whore he obviously felt comfortable with. She strode angrily out into the rain, sod the man, her life had been on hold for long enough. Time to push the play button, and not on the DVD machine. She hurried up the street towards the Holly Bush. Physician, heal thyself, that's what they said, didn't they? Well, she was going to write out a large prescription in her own name: vodka-based, repeat as required.

  She crossed the street and, as she did, she felt that familiar tingle in her spine again, but, as she blinked the rainwater from her eyes and looked back, she couldn't see anyone following her. She hurried on up the slight hill, keeping her face down and angled away from the rain. Within minutes she was pulling the old, heavy door behind her, closing out the wind and the weather, the rainwater dripping from her black overcoat on to the rough wooden floor of the pub as she shook her hair and wiped a hand across her eyes, hoping her waterproof mascara was holding up and hearing the sweet, soulful tones of Madeleine Peyroux cutting across the chatter in the room. They didn't always have music playing; the manager said that the hubbub of conversation was the real music of the place and she agreed with him. It was just part of what made the pub special. Tonight though she was grateful for the music, it shielded her from other people's thoughts.

  As she knew it would be, even this early, the pub was busy. She walked up to the right-hand bar where luckily there was a vacant stool. She pulled it forward, sat on it and smiled briefly at the young, Australian barman behind the counter. 'Large one please, Stuart.'

  The barman nodded back at her, lifted up a jug of ready-made Bloody Mary and poured Kate a glass. Kate took a long pull, the sharp kick of vodka mingling with the bite of the pepper and the tang of the celery salt. She took another sip and sighed. Time to heal.

  Janet Barnes had never had to work hard at soliciting admiring glances from men; her ex-boyfriend, a failed stand-up comic, said that she had the kind of body that pouted if it didn't get attention. Usually she enjoyed that attention, but tonight there was one man in particular who was looking at her from across half the length of the train carriage, and her skin crawled. She pulled her raincoat tight around her, but if anything it just accentuated her lush, curvy figure. She looked out of the window, the featureless rush of Victorian brick wall flickering past scant inches away. There was talk of London flooding in the news again. Steps being made to improve the Thames Barrier. She remembered the flooding of last year. Whole areas, families, homes, lives ruined in the North of England. She couldn't help wondering what would happen here if the Thames were to ever break its banks. The Underground system would be flooded. Thousands of tonnes of water would pour into the network. Would the passengers all be drowned or electrocuted? All those electric rails running everywhere. Another problem for that Eton-educated, class clown Boris Johnson to
sort out. Not a problem for her, mind. Any luck and she'd be out of the miserable city long before that happened, if it ever did. Just a few more quid saved up, a few more months, get the winter over with and she'd be out of the capital, out of the country and over the mountains she'd fly to sunny bloody Spain. Put this miserable, sodding, rain-drenched country behind her once and for bloody good. Just because she dressed like a goth didn't mean she had to live like a bloody vampire, time for a change of image she reckoned.