Blood Work Page 9

  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.

  'I'm sorry, but that won't be possible. It wouldn't be appropriate, I'm afraid, Inspector.'

  'I was responsible for the man's arrest, and he has vital information on another case, sir.'

  The superintendent picked up the folder again and waved it at Delaney. 'As I recall it, after his arrest he had to spend time in accident and emergency with a suspected fractured skull. And the other case is the incident in which your wife died?'

  'That's right.'

  'Given your involvement in that incident, and the fact that it was your wife who was killed, I don't think it is appropriate for you to take the lead on this investigation. Which is why I have instructed Detective Inspector Skinner to coordinate with the prison authoritie
s and their internal investigation.'

  'With respect, sir, Norrell said he would only speak to me.'

  The superintendent frowned. 'I don't think he is in any condition to speak to anyone just now.'

  'Convenient timing.'

  Superintendent Napier sighed. 'Concentrate on this dead woman on the common, Delaney. Any movement on identifying her?'

  'Nothing yet, but we're working on it. She doesn't match anyone on the missing persons' register.'

  'I want a tight lid, Delaney. I've already had the press wanting details.'

  'Maybe it would help, sir. Someone probably knows her.'

  'We speak to the press when I say. We clear on that, Inspector?'

  'Sir.'

  Delaney turned to leave, pausing at the door as the superintendent called him back.

  'One more thing, Delaney.'

  'Sir?'

  'I am well aware what happened between you and my predecessor. Diane Campbell argued very strongly for bringing you back into the fold. I think you should know that I had grave misgivings but allowed myself to be persuaded by her. I hope you are not going to let me down.'

  'Just let me do my job, sir. That's all I ask.'

  The superintendent stood and picked up the file, nodding a dismissal to Delaney. 'Go and do it then.'

  Delaney shut the door behind him. Napier walked across to a filing cabinet and put the folder in the top drawer. He looked at himself in the mirror and smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. He kept himself in very good condition. A punishing fitness schedule, good bone structure and clear, ebony skin made him look younger than his fifty-two years, but the white hair above his ears told the true story. As he looked at his temples critically, he considered, yet again, dyeing his hair, but then discounted it, as he always did. Gravitas was far more becoming in a career policeman than vanity. And George Napier was nothing if not ambitious.

  He sat back behind his desk and thought about the surly policeman who had just left his office. He wasn't sure there was a place for people like him in the force any more, but time would tell: Jack Delaney could be a help or a hindrance to him. And most of the people who had spoken to the superintendent said Delaney was a first-rate detective with good instincts and a great success rate. If his foot danced a little outside the touchline now and again that was fine by him, as long as he didn't drop the ball. But if he did lose it in the tackle, if he became more of a liability than an asset, then George Napier was going to come down on him like an All Blacks front line. Guaranteed.

  Delaney paused at the drinks cooler filling a cup as DI Jimmy Skinner approached. Delaney was still considered tall, at six feet, but Jimmy Skinner had a good few inches on him. He was a lot thinner, though, and pale-faced from too many nights playing Internet poker. His wife had left him the previous January because he had refused to walk away from an online game at midnight to hear Big Ben chime the New Year in and kiss her on the final bong. He had felt quite justified, however, as he was holding two aces with a third on the flop. But his wife didn't see it that way, and now he had even more time on his hands. 'You've simply got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them,' he had told his divorce lawyer, who had told him that it was his balls his wife was holding, fiscally speaking, and that she was going to cut them off. Which she proceeded to do, leaving Skinner a fiscal soprano.

  Skinner helped himself to a cup of water and looked at Delaney. 'You spoke to the new big cheese then?'

  Delaney drank his water in a long gulp almost feeling the liquid rehydrating his veins. 'Yup.'

  'What do you make of him?'

  'Remember the old joke about how to become a policeman?'

  'Grow a tit on your head and paint it blue?'

  Delaney threw his cup in the bin. 'You're looking into the Norrell thing, I hear.'

  'You tag along any time you want to, Jack.'

  Delaney nodded. 'Appreciate it, Jimmy.'

  'You were due to see him this morning?'

  'First thing, yeah.'

  'Seems like a hell of a coincidence he was taken out before you got there then.'

  Delaney grunted. 'I don't believe in coincidences.'

  'You think he genuinely knew something about your wife's death?'

  'Nothing in it for him if he was making it up.'

  'Kevin Norrell was never a grass.'

  'Yeah, well, your perspectives change when you're standing naked in a shower surrounded by hardened criminals. No pun intended.'

  'True.'

  'Or when there's a contract out on you.'

  Skinner looked at him, a little surprised. 'You think that was the case?'

  'I think as soon as he started offering to sing like a canary, someone wanted to snap off his beak and clip his wings. Permanently.'

  'He was meant to go down hard. That's for certain. But if they thought he was dealing kiddie porn . . . ?' He shrugged. 'Could just be that, cowboy.'

  'It's too neat. Someone in there wanted him shut up and quickly.'

  Delaney and Skinner walked back towards the CID offices. 'You saw one of the guys who attacked him?'

  'Martin Quigley. But he isn't saying anything. Norrell smashed him up pretty good with a lavatory bowl. Fractured his jaw in three places.'

  'Helpful.'

  'But he can write. He claims they took Norrell out as a matter of course, like they would any other kiddie fiddler, given half the chance. No other agenda.'

  'You believe him?'

  'I don't know. He might have been roped in. He's just as much an ape for hire as Norrell himself. Paid to hurt not to think. And Norrell was involved with Walker who was involved big time in kiddie porn. It's a good cover story if you have another reason for wanting him dead.'

  Delaney said goodbye to Skinner, stuck his head round the CID office door and beckoned to Sally Cartwright. 'Come on, Constable, you're with me.'

  Sally stood up from her desk, a little flushed, quickly closing down the report she had been reading on her computer. She picked up her jacket from the back of her chair and joined Delaney.

  He looked back at her computer as her screensaver came on. 'What are you working on?'

  'Just catching up with some paperwork.' She avoided his eyes and headed briskly out to the corridor. 'Where are we going?'

  'South Hampstead Tube.'

  'Sir?'

  Delaney walked beside her and held out a photofit picture that the computer artist had generated from Valerie Manners' description of the flasher on the common. 'Our man might have been wearing a suit, she said?'

  'Apparently. Under his mac,' Sally confirmed.

  'So what does that tell us?'

  'That flashing isn't just a blue-collar crime and he's probably not a student.'

  'Exactly, he's up too early in the morning for a start. Maybe he was giving his John Thomas a quick airing before putting in a hard day at the office . . .' He looked at Sally and smiled. 'As it were.'

  'Which do you reckon came first, sir? The book or the expression? I've often wondered.'

  'What are you on about?' Delaney asked, puzzled.

  'John Thomas and Lady Jane. Lady Chatterley's Lover.'

  Delaney threw her a look. 'I know you've got a degree and all that shite, Detective Constable, but do you think you could save the book-club chit-chat for your weekend dinner parties and concentrate on the case?'