Blood Work (11 page)

The newly qualified constable shrugged. 'They're
on their way. Hard to tell.'

'Well, it's not good enough. I'm due back on shift
in a few hours and I've hardly had time to catch forty
winks, let alone have a proper sleep.'

'You could always call in. You have had a
traumatic day.'

The nurse shook her head angrily. 'You see, that's
what's wrong with this generation. The slightest
thing and people can just call in. Where would we be
if the RAF had just
called in
in 1940?'

'I don't know, ma'am.'

'Well, I tell you where we'd be. We'd be right here,'
she said, realising that wasn't quite what she meant.
'Only we wouldn't be speaking English, would we?
We'd be speaking German.'

'I've got an A level in German.'

Valerie glared at him. 'Is that supposed to be
funny?'

'No. I was just saying.'

'And that's another wrong. People are always "just
saying". In my day, young man, people
did
. They
didn't say. They got on with it. They got the job
done.'

Danny Vine sighed inwardly with relief as the
handle on the door turned and DI Jack Delaney and
DC Sally Cartwright came into the room.

'Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms Manners.'

Valerie smiled sweetly at Delaney. 'That's quite all
right, Detective Inspector. As I was just explaining to
the young officer . . .' she gestured unimpressed at
Danny Vine, 'I am only too happy to do my civic
duty. Only too happy.'

'We're very grateful.'

The nurse held her hand up. 'No gratitude
necessary. I am from a generation that steps up to the
line when the call comes.'

Delaney pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. He
opened a folder and put the photographs of the men
they had pulled from the security footage from South
Hampstead Tube station.

'I'd like you to look at these photos, Ms Manners.
See if you recognise any of the men as the gentleman
you encountered this morning.'

'The pervert, you mean. He was certainly no
gentleman.'

She pulled out a pair of glasses from her handbag
and perched them on the end of her nose as she
looked at the photographs Delaney had handed her
across the table. She studied each one for a long time
before looking up and taking her glasses off. 'They all
look possible.'

'But you can't be sure.'

The nurse shrugged apologetically. 'Well, if I'm
honest my eyes weren't exactly drawn to his face, if
you see what I mean.'

Sally Cartwright stepped forward. 'Could you look
again, Ms Manners?'

Valerie Manners picked up the photos and looked
at them again, then shook her head and handed the
photos back to Sally. 'Sorry, but any one of them
could be him. Is it possible to see photos of the area
of exposure, as it were?'

Sally blinked, not quite sure she had heard
correctly. 'I beg your pardon?'

'I am a nurse after all. And it might help.'

Danny Vine couldn't hold back a short laugh and
Delaney glared at him. 'Wait outside, Constable.'

'Sir.' Danny hurried out of the room, shutting the
door behind him.

Delaney turned back to Valerie Manners. 'I'm
sorry, ma'am. But that won't be possible. It would be
a procedural irregularity, I'm afraid.'

'It's just the injury. Very unlikely two people
would have the same.'

Delaney took the photos off Sally and flicked
through them quickly. 'What do you mean, the
injury?'

'To his penis. Quite extensive scarring, and some
deformation I would say.'

'What?' Delaney couldn't believe what he was
hearing.

'It was quite noticeable.' She looked up at
Delaney's surprised expression. 'I'm sorry. Didn't I
mention that?'

'No, ma'am. You didn't.'

'Do you think it might be important?'

DI Jimmy Skinner was well aware that the chatter
beneath him had stopped as soon as the clang of his
hard leather shoes on the metal walkway echoed
around the large building. He looked over the railing,
down at the many prisoners who were scattered
about the recreation area, their faces turned up to his
momentarily and then back to what they had been
doing. Noise filled the building again. The sound of
caged men resigned to their fate. The truth was
Jimmy Skinner felt a lot of empathy for them. They
were all gamblers in the main, much like him. Jimmy
recognised that, just like he had been in the past
many, many times, these men had been fucked on the
river. Deliverance they called it. The odds had been in
his favour, it was science after all, but the cards had
turned up and defied the odds and he had taken a bad
beat. He himself had taken a lot of bad beats over the
years, just like the men below. Someone had lost their
nerve or a car had failed to start, or a family that
should have been on holiday had cancelled at the last
minute and were at home when they shouldn't have
been. Bad beats all. Or the baddest beat of the lot:
being born in the wrong part of London in the wrong
kind of family. The kind of family that had no hope
outside of crime. No hope because the system had
fucked them on the river before they'd even been
born, and now the only way out was by the gun or
knife, or with a flame and a spike and a packet of
temporary oblivion to trade. So he felt a kind of
sympathy for them. Not for the rapists, mind, or the
child abusers or the soulless killers. For them he'd
have a rope waiting, see how the cards fell on the
ultimate gamble of all.

The prison guard coughed and Jimmy Skinner
turned back to him and carried on walking towards
the open cell doors and put the men below out of his
mind. One thing you learned playing poker was that
you put the past behind you and moved on to your
next game. Chasing losses was a sure way to
destruction and Jimmy Skinner wasn't that kind of
gambler. He didn't play to lose, he played to stay
even, so he could play again.

The officer, a wide-set man in his forties with steel-grey
hair and eyes as bereft of humour as a
warehouse guard dog, stood by the open door of one
of the cells and jerked with his thumb to show Jimmy
the man inside.

Neil Riley was a scrawny, long-haired man in his
early thirties, with skin the colour of church candles
and tattoos covering both his arms. Tattoos that
hadn't been modelled on any works of the great
Renaissance artists as far as Jimmy Skinner could see.
He was sat on his bed rolling a cigarette and looked
up dispassionately as the policeman entered the cell.

Jimmy fished a new packet of cigarettes out of his
pocket and threw it on the bed besides him. The man
looked at it, a sneer quirking the corner of his thin-lipped
mouth. 'You better do better than fucking
that.'

Jimmy nodded then picked up the packet of
cigarettes from the bed, put them in his pocket and
slapped the man back-handed, hard across his face.

'The fuck you think you're doing? I got rights, you
know.'

A snort of laugher came from the guard outside
and Jimmy clicked his fingers to get the man's
attention. 'First rule. You don't swear in my
presence.'

'Fuck that.'

Jimmy hit him hard again, the other side of his face
this time, open-palmed.

'Jesus Christ!'

Skinner hit him back-handed again. 'Or
blaspheme.'

Neil Riley scrambled up on the bed, putting his
back to the wall and held his hand up at Skinner. 'All
right, you made your f—' He caught himself. 'You
made your point.'

Skinner nodded. 'Good.'

'And I don't know what you want to see me for. I
don't know anything about anything.'

'You know Kevin Norrell, don't you?'

'I knew him.'

Skinner leaned in pointedly. 'He isn't dead yet,
Riley.'

The sallow-faced man looked surprised. 'I
thought—'

'What did you think?'

'I heard he was dead, that's all.'

'And where did you hear that from?'

Riley shrugged. 'Word gets round. What do you
think, this place is a Carmelite nunnery? You think
nobody talks?'

Skinner was a little surprised, and ignoring his own
rules, said, 'What do you know about the fucking
Carmelites?'

'I went to a convent primary school.'

'I thought that was just for girls?'

'No. Some are mixed up to a certain age.'

Skinner caught himself. 'Can we get back to the
fucking point here?'

'I was just saying.'

'Never mind all that bollocks, just tell me who told
you Norrell was dead.'

'I don't know, what does it matter who told me?'

'Someone took five inches of sharpened steel and
tried to make a shish kebab out of his organs with it.
Maybe that was the guy who told you, that's what
matters.'

Riley shook his head. 'Get real, Detective.
Whoever did it is going to keep his mouth shut, isn't
he?'

Skinner glared at him for a moment or two,
resisting the urge to slap him hard around the head
again just for the fun of it. 'Let's get back to the
point, shall we?'

'Which is?'

'Which is: you were a friend of Kevin Norrell.'

'Says who?'

Skinner looked around the cell. 'You see anyone
else standing in this fucking room?'

Riley shrugged again. 'I knew him a little.'

'Come off it, Riley. You think we don't read files?
You grew up on the same estate as him. You've been
busted together more than once. You knew the man.'

Riley hesitated for a moment, as if weighing up his
options. Finally he said, 'Yeah, I knew him.'

'He's on remand. He gets to speak to people. And
the information is that you and he were buddy-buddy
in here.'

'Someone has to watch your back.'

'You did a good job of watching his.'

Riley held his skinny arms up. 'What good would
I be? You know Norrell, he didn't need me riding on
his wing.'

'So what did you do for him?'

'I've been here a while. I know who's who and
what's what. I filled him in.'

'What was he going to tell Delaney?'

Riley pulled a face, so Skinner slapped him hard
again. Sometimes he loved being a policeman. Riley
yelped and the guard from outside looked in again.
He grinned and nodded to Skinner with approval.

'For Christ's sake, what was that for?'

He flinched and pressed back against the wall as
Skinner leaned in, but he didn't hit him this time. 'I'll
ask the question again. What was he going to tell
Delaney?'

Riley shook his head, agitated now. 'I honestly
don't know. His court case was coming up soon.
Preliminary hearings. He told me he had stuff on
Chief Superintendent Walker. Maybe he was looking
to make a deal.'

'He said it was about Delaney's wife.'

'He never said anything to me about it. But if he
wanted to see Delaney that was a sure-fire way of
getting him in.'

'What else would he want to see him for?'

Riley shook his head. 'Fuck knows, you're the
detective.'

Some people just couldn't help themselves.

Paul Archer strode angrily down the steps,
shrugging into his overcoat. The woman behind the
reception desk smiled at him but he ignored her. She
wasn't his type and he had taken the afternoon off
for more particular distractions than the kind
offered in idle badinage with insipid blondes. Paul
Archer had the kind of itch that could only be
scratched by a certain type of woman. And he knew
just where to find her.

Delaney stood in front of the briefing room. On the
board behind him were pinned the photographs
taken of the dead woman they had found in the
woods. Hampstead's very own Black Dahlia, he
couldn't help thinking.

'All right, listen up.' Delaney raised his voice above
the chatter that filled the room and conversations
died as they focused their attention on the detective
inspector. 'Now, as yet we don't have any ID on the
woman. We think she was murdered sometime
during last night. We're placing her age, give or take
a few years, in her mid-twenties.'

'Was she killed in the woods, or dumped there?'
Audrey Hobson, a uniformed inspector in her fifties,
called out.

'Best we can tell, she was killed where we found
her.'

'An opportunist killing, or was she taken there?'

'We don't know, Audrey. It was lousy weather. It
was cold, windy, raining. It's unlikely she'd be in the
woods alone at that time of night.'

PC Bob Wilkinson spoke out. 'It's possible. Like
Sally said earlier. Maybe it's some witchcraft thing.
She's dressed up as a goth. You know how some of
them fruitcakes are. Lesbians and pagans, give them
a full moon and they start believing all kind of
bollocks. '

Diane Campbell glared at him. 'Not very helpful,
Constable.'

Delaney stopped himself from smiling as he held
his hand up to quell the beginnings of laughter in the
room. 'Nothing's discounted. Most likely scenario is
that she was taken there, though. Sex attackers don't
usually hang around in rainstorms looking for
victims.'

Sally Cartwright held up her hand. She looked like
she should still be in school, Delaney thought, but
was glad she wasn't. She may look like a Girl Guide,
but he knew beneath that pretty exterior was what
his North American colleagues would have called a
tough cookie. He'd had to depend on her more than
once and she hadn't let him down. 'Yes, Constable?'

'Is there anything in the database matching the
MO?'

'Good question. We're running it through at the
moment. Until we get the detailed post it's all rather
general. No immediate hits.'

Diane Campbell stepped forward. 'What leads are
you pursuing, Jack?'

'A flasher was operating early this morning, near
the scene of the crime.'

'You think he was involved?'

'Unlikely. But he may have seen something.'

'You have a good ID on him?'

'Pretty good. This isn't a run-of-the-mill flasher.'