Blood Work (19 page)

He looked again at the blinking light on the
machine and felt no urge to play the message. He
knew what it would be, but he had no time for petty
distractions. Not today. Today he was on a high. He
was floating. He was invincible.

He looked at the scuffed toes of his cowboy boots
and reached down to peel a wet leaf from one of
them. He held the leaf to his nose, smelling the
mossy tones of it, the woodland smell, the faint but
sweet smell of organic matter beginning to
decompose. He rubbed his other hand on the crotch
of his trousers, feeling himself harden again as he
drew in another deep sniff of the leaf and looked at
the photos he had taken of a young detective
constable dressed in a nurse's uniform. She certainly
was very pretty.

Delaney thanked Margaret Johnson once more and
closed the door to her office behind him. He had
made her look at the photos again and then asked her
to pull the records of all the nurses currently working
at the hospital. One by one they had gone through
the records, looking at each passport photo attached
to each nurse's personnel file and by the end of it
were none the wiser. Margaret Johnson had been
right. The dead woman had not been working at the
South Hampstead Hospital. At least they knew that
now, if precious little else.

Delaney could see Sally Cartwright's upbeat mood
had been dented a little. Not because she would have
wanted the glory of making the nursing connection,
of that he was sure. She was disappointed, just like he
was, that they hadn't been able to identify the
woman. If they could do that then it was a start to
identifying her killer. Put a name to her and then
maybe they could track the sick bastard down before
it was too late. Before he struck again. But in
Delaney's heart, he knew that it was a distinct possibility
that it was already too late. He turned to his
assistant. 'Come on.'

'Where are we going, sir?'

'To the clap clinic.'

'I beg your pardon?

Delaney laughed drily, amused at the shocked look
on the young detective constable's face. 'You start
going out with uniform, it's best you know where it
is.' He smiled again as Sally's face reddened and
walked towards the stairs. 'Come on, it's on the third
floor.'

Sally called after him and hurried to catch him up.
'I hope you know that from reading the poster, sir.'

Delaney walked up the first flight of stairs and
looked at the signs pointing off to the maternity
clinic and back to A&E and felt a fluttering in his
heart. He stopped by the window and pulled out his
mobile phone. 'You go on, Sally. I'll meet you at the
top.'

'Sir?'

'I need to make a call.'

Sally continued up the stairs and he waited before
she was out of sight before he hit the redial button on
the phone. After Kate's answerphone message kicked
in again he closed the phone, the blood draining from
his face as he gazed down the familiar corridor.

The nurse was a small dark-haired woman in her
early twenties with delicate, almost oriental,
features. Her hands were small too, but precise.
She moved a pillow under the woman's head.
The woman's eyes were closed, her breathing
operated by an artificial respirator. The
mechanical pumps making an obscene sound.
Her body was invaded with tubes and wires, and
the beat of the heart monitor sent out a contrapuntal
and discordant rhythm to the respirator.
She was living in form only.

Delaney stood at the foot of the bed as the
nurse finished adjusting the pillow so that the
woman's dark hair fanned neatly on it. There
was no twitch beneath her eyelids, no smile
tugging at the corner of her lips, and there never
would be again. She was dead. All it needed was
for Delaney to let them turn the machine off.

The consultant was sympathetic. 'If there was
any hope at all I would advise against it. Of
course I would, but the brain stem has suffered
too much damage. For all intents and purposes
she is already dead.'

Delaney looked at him for a long moment,
scared to ask the question but needing to know
the answer. 'And the baby?'

The consultant shook his head sadly. 'I'm
sorry.'

Delaney's head nodded downward as he gave
permission. He couldn't hold back the tears any
longer. His world went dark as the obscenity of
the pump ceased and the heart-monitor line
became still.

Delaney looked out of the window, his hand still
clutching the phone like a rosary. He'd lost his wife
and his baby in a matter of heartbeats four years ago
and it had all but destroyed him. Now, though, he
was being given a second chance. The woman he had
come to love was carrying his child. His stupidity had
almost lost her, but he'd be damned if he'd let
anything or anyone come between them now. He
opened the phone and hit speed dial. The phone rang
at the other end and on the fifth ring cut into Kate's
voice.

'This is Kate Walker. I am unavailable right now
but leave me a message and I promise I will get back
to you as soon as possible.'

'Kate. This is Jack. I'm sorry.' He sighed. 'I'm sorry
about everything. Call me.'

He closed the phone and nodded to himself. He
wasn't going to let history repeat itself. It was time to
do the right thing. Finally.

Agnes Crabtree was sixty-eight years old and her
knee joints were feeling every year of them that
morning. The damp weather didn't help and Agnes's
mood was even more depressed than usual. Six
bloody months of winter nowadays. It would be
April at least till there was a bit of warmth again and
her aching bones might get some respite. Some doctor
had been banging on about seasonal disorder on
morning television earlier. SAD or something. And it
was bloody sad. She made it up the flight of stairs
and rested. Putting her bucket of cleaning materials
on the floor and caught her breath. Not that she
wanted to be breathing too deeply. The whole place
smelled of piss. And not cat piss at that. Just as well
she only cleaned on the inside of this flat, she
reckoned. She groaned as she leaned over to pick up
her equipment and fumbled a key into the lock of the
flat. She took one or two steps into the flat, saw the
long coloured scarf on the floor first and then
registered what it was attached to. She tried to
scream but her throat seized up with shock. She
quickly stepped back, the pain in her knees ignored.
The front door closed in her face and she finally
found herself able to scream. She screamed again and
stumbled backwards, her legs trembling. Her shaking
hand went to her mouth and she took another step
backwards, tripping over the can of Mr Sheen that
had fallen from her dropped bucket. Her arms
windmilled in the air as she lost her balance and
crashed down the stairs. Her screams died as she
landed at the bottom, her old head slapping on the
wet concrete to lie at an odd angle, her eyes closed
and a thin trickle of blood leaking from the corner of
her mouth.

Delaney put his case on the table and pulled out a
file. He removed the e-fit picture and handed it to Dr
Andrew Burke, a silver-haired man in his early
thirties. Delaney reckoned that maybe the rigours of
his job, the sights he'd seen on a daily basis, had sent
his hair prematurely grey.

The man shook his head as he studied the picture.
'Sorry, he doesn't look familiar. He might have been
in yesterday, you say?'

'Might have been.'

'I'll get Suzanne. She was on the morning shift
yesterday. She might recognise him.'

The doctor left the room. Sally picked up the
picture that the doctor had left on the desk. 'Why do
you think he came here?'

'It's pretty common.'

'What is?'

'Flashers. Think about it, he gets to expose himself
and have the goods handled at the same time.' He
shrugged with a rueful smile. 'And if he's got a thing
about nurses . . .'

Sally grimaced. 'Please tell me you're joking.'

Delaney grinned again. 'It's a sick world we live in,
Sally.'

'You can say that again.'

'A pound to a penny our boy likes to get his pickle
tickled.'

Sally frowned. 'Don't they stick little spoons up?'

Delaney nodded and Sally grimaced again. The
office door opened and the doctor came back in
followed by an Afro-Caribbean woman, five foot two
and weighing close to a couple of hundred pounds by
Delaney's reckoning, but she fitted into her neat,
dark blue uniform like a Horse Guard on parade.

Andrew Burke gestured towards her. 'This is
Suzanne.'

'How can I help you, Inspector?' Her voice was
thick and rolling, like a wave of wind through a field
of molasses cane.

Delaney held the photo out to her and she nodded.
'Yes, bless him, he was here yesterday. If it's who I
think it is.'

'Why bless him?'

'The poor lad. He's had some disfigurement.'

'Scarring to his penis?'

The nurse nodded. 'Indeed. And then he got a bit
embarrassed when we did some tests.'

'Embarrassed?' Sally asked.

The nurse smiled at her. 'He got himself a little
aroused. It does happen.'

Sally's scowl deepened.

Delaney took the photo from her. 'If you could let
me have his name and contact details it would be very
useful.'

'Sure. It will take a few minutes.'

'Quick as you can.'

Suzanne looked up sharply at the seriousness in his
voice, and hurried away to get the information.

Outside the clinic Sally could barely contain her
exuberance.

'You think he's our man, sir?'

'He's our flasher, that's about all we know for
sure.'

'Should we call it in, send uniform round?'

'We'll take care of it, but first, as we're here, let's
see if the Kraken has woken up.'

Sally looked at him puzzled. 'Sir?'

A stray dog slowly approached the motionless body
of Agnes Crabtree, tentatively sniffing the air, and
moved closer. It was a ragged thing. A composite of
hair and bone and appetite, scabby, starving and
neglected. It nuzzled Agnes's face with its jaw and
scented the fresh blood that had spilled along the
pitted line of her chin into a small, brown stain on the
wet stone. The smell made the dog's stomach rumble
and flex with pain. He opened his jaw wider and,
taking the old woman's ear between his teeth, gave a
little tug. Agnes Crabtree groaned and shifted but did
not awaken and slumped again, her breath exhaling
in a wet, barely audible sigh. But the dog had long
gone by then, his tail between his legs and his meal
forgotten. In his experience human beings never
meant anything but pain.

Delaney looked down at the still motionless body of
Kevin Norrell as Sally picked up his medical chart at
the foot of the bed.

'He's lucky to be alive.'

'If he makes it.'

'What do you think he knows?'

'People talk in prison. They brag. Someone may
have told him something. Maybe he was involved
himself.' Delaney shrugged.

Sally hesitated then put Norrell's chart back and
looked at her boss. 'Yesterday I looked at the reports,
boss. The incident . . .'

Delaney, hearing the hesitation in her voice,
glanced over at her. 'Just spit it out, Sally.'

'The hold-up at the petrol station.'

It flashed back unbidden into Delaney's mind. The
darkness of the night split by the sound and the flare
of lighting cracking. Of glass exploding, of tyres
squealing and a woman's voice screaming, then
silence. Those shards of glass flying through the night
air like barbs of conscience to bury deep into
Delaney's brain. The guilt hooking him, ever since,
like a bloodstained puppet to jerk and twitch under
the hand of a punishing god.

'What about it, Detective Constable?' he asked
simply.

'They robbed the place. And then they left,
shooting out the window. Why would they do that?'

'Because they're mindless thugs.'

'Maybe. But three heavily tooled-up villains and a
driver? Sounds like a professional job to me.'

'Go on.'

'For a petrol station?' Sally shrugged. 'Makes no
sense. Everyone knows they don't have the sort of
cash on the premises to merit that kind of operation.'

Delaney took it in, the realisation giving him a
feeling in his stomach akin to a lift dropping several
floors quickly. Sally was right, he had been the worst
kind of idiot. Four years of alcohol-induced rage, but
it had been directed at himself not at the people really
responsible. He'd been flailing around in his own
misery and self-disgust to see what Sally had seen
almost immediately. No self-respecting, professional
outfit would target a petrol station, it made no sense.

'So, it wasn't a robbery?'

'No, sir, I don't think it was.' She looked at her
boss sympathetically. 'I think it was a warning, and
your wife just got in the way.'

'Warning to who?'

I don't know, sir.'

Delaney looked down at the sleeping figure of
Kevin Norrell. The comatose man knew something,
he was certain of that. But Sally had provided him
with somewhere to start at least. Four years of
nothing. Dead ends and false trails. And now his
bright-eyed detective constable, fresh out of college,
was seeing things he should have seen straight away.
He cursed himself for a fool and then realised he
didn't have the time for any more self-pity. It was
time to put matters right.

'Come on then, Sally.'

'Where to?'

'Work.'

Delaney held the piece of paper the Afro-Caribbean
nurse had given him tightly in his hand. The flasher
was called Ashley Bradley, he was twenty-eight years
old, on unemployment benefit and lived at 28b
Morris Street in Chalk Farm, just a couple of stops
down on the Northern Line from South Hampstead
Tube.

He was heading for the exit when he saw a familiar
face waiting at the lift. He stopped and waved Sally
ahead. 'Wait for me in the car, Sally.' He tossed her
the keys. 'You can drive.'