Blood Work (27 page)

Sanjeev Singh looked at Delaney again, recognition
dawning in his eyes. He gestured with his hands
again, hands that were suddenly trembling even more
than was usual.

'Look, I am sorry about what happened to your
wife. The next day someone made me an offer for the
place and I accepted it.'

'Why?'

'Why do you think? I don't know who was behind
it but their methods were pretty clear.'

'Somebody wanted you out?'

'I'd had an offer before but I turned it down. I
thought that if they were desperate for my property
they could pay top dollar. But that same week the
florists next door had an accidental fire. Their dog, a
Labrador, died in the fire. They sold. And after what
happened to me, I sold too.'

'Who to?'

The man shrugged again, apologetically. 'I don't
know. It was all done through a lawyer.'

'Okay.' Delaney gestured to Kate. 'Come on, let's
get your things.'

Kate held up her hand. 'One minute.' She turned to
the trembling Indian. 'One more thing.'

Sanjeev clasped his hands together. 'Please, I have
told you everything I know.'

'What's your best price on the sugar sifter?'

A smile almost came back on his face. 'You have a
remarkable eye, madam. This here is—'

'Yes, I know,' Kate said, interrupting. 'It's Clarice
Cliff. What will you take for it?'

Some minutes after they had left, Sanjeev Singh
finally brought his shaking hands under enough
control to pick up a telephone.

Kate pulled her car to the side of the road with a
practised spin of the wheel. She snapped her seat belt
open and turned to Delaney. 'I won't be long.'

'I'm coming with you, Kate.'

She turned the key to open the front door of her
house and the first thing that struck her was the cold,
the wind was blowing from the inside out. The
second thing was the carnage.

Every room in the maisonette had been turned
upside down. In the lounge bookcases had been
toppled to the floor, sofas and chairs upended, CDs
and records strewn as though a hurricane had blown
through the place. Her bedroom was equally
ravaged, and in the kitchen, plates and crockery had
been smashed, the table legs snapped off, food
scattered everywhere. Kate was too numb to cry out.
She looked at Delaney, fury bubbling through her.
She slammed the open back door shut. 'We have to
get him, Jack. We have to stop him.'

She began to shake, willing herself to stop but
unable to get her twitching muscles to comply.

Delaney took two quick steps to her side and
enveloped her in a hug. 'It's going to be all right,
Kate. I swear it.'

And Kate, feeling the strength in his arms, feeling
the passion in his voice, believed him. For the first
time in years she felt protected. She loved him, she
knew that now more than ever. He was the first man
she had ever truly let into her life. He had hurt her,
but she realised that she had been hurt so deeply
because she loved him so deeply. She held him as
though she could bind him to her for ever. Jack
Delaney was part of her now and she would never let
him go.

Delaney pulled out his phone. 'Dave, it's Delaney.
I need to get a couple of units down here. Kate
Walker's house has been trashed.'

Ten minutes later, Kate put down the small suitcase
that she had packed, and locked her front door.
Delaney picked up her suitcase and walked towards
her car as she fished in her pocket for her car keys.
She was just thinking that at least the Clarice Cliff
sugar sifter hadn't been in the house, when a shot
rang out in the night air like a sudden crack of
thunder. Kate instinctively looked up at the sky then
screamed as Delaney rocked on his heels, a surprised
look on his face, then stumbled and fell sideways to
crumple on to the cold, wet pavement.

Kate rushed over to him, calling his name, begging
him to speak. But Delaney was beyond speech; he
was beyond comprehension. She tried to shield his
body with her own as she fumbled in her pocket for
her phone, looking about desperately to see where
the shot had come from.

'Stay with me, Jack. Stay with me.'

Her voice was no more than a whisper, but it
echoed in her mind like a thunderous prayer. Before
her trembling fingers could punch in 999 on her
phone keypad, the sound of police sirens from the
squad cars that Delaney had asked for came roaring
into her street. And she prayed continually as she
tried to find a pulse. 'Stay with me, Jack. Please stay
with me.'

He rubbed the soft fabric over the gleaming grip of
the gun. He had already anointed the wood with
beeswax and polished it in with an old yellow duster.
He was just giving the final finish with the superior
cloth. He rubbed it some more, seeing his reflection
looking back at him, distorted in the smooth surface
of the wood. His eyes were widened and smiling.

He held the cloth to his nose and sniffed deeply as
though it were an oxygen mask. Then he opened it
out and lay it on the coffee table, like a trophy. It was
a pair of plain, white cotton panties that he had
stolen, like the scarf, from Dr Kate Walker's house.

The rain had stopped sometime in the middle of the
night. But the ground wasn't cold enough yet to
freeze, and so the paths that ran through Hampstead
Heath like veins through a body were slick with wet
mud and leaves. Gillian Carter, a twenty-seven-year-old
bookshop assistant, picked her way carefully
down one of the paths. Not an easy task as the dog
she had on the other end of the lead, a Briard,
weighed nearly as much as she did and had the
energy of a roomful of pre-school children on a diet
of Red Bull. A bird clattered out of the trees ahead
and the dog leapt after it. Gillian Carter, faced with
the choice of losing control of the dog or herself on
the slippery downward slope, chose the former and
let the lead fly from her hand.

'Jake!' she called after the dog, but he was focused
on the bird swirling upwards through the air and
soon disappeared deep into the bracken. Gillian
stopped to catch her breath and sighed. It wasn't even
her dog. She was looking after him for some neighbours
whilst they went for a holiday to Tenerife.
Lucky buggers, she thought, as she skirted around a
particularly large puddle on the path. She didn't envy
them Tenerife, just the sun. Gillian would kill for a
week of sunshine. She absolutely detested England in
the winter, and even though every year she promised
herself a trip to sunnier climes, she had yet to deliver
on that promise.

'Jake!' she called again as she followed his trail
through the bracken, more in hope than expectation,
but was pleasantly surprised to see the frisky dog
bounding up to her. There was some cloth in his
mouth.

She bent down to take it from him and realised that
it was a Burberry scarf. Some chav and his girlfriend
getting jiggy with it on the heath, she speculated with
a disapproving quirk of an eyebrow. Although, to be
fair, in this weather she admired their resilience, if
not their respect of urban social niceties.

She would have turned back to the path but the
dog trotted into a small clearing ahead and barked at
the prostrate and motionless figure of a small, bald
man.

'My God!' Gillian gasped and ran over. She knelt
and tried to find a pulse in his neck. She couldn't be
sure but she thought she could feel the faintest of
murmurs. She pulled out her phone and dialled emergency
services. Slipping out of her Barbour jacket, she
laid it under the man's head. Thank goodness that he
was wearing such a thick coat, she thought, because
even though it made him look like an ancient, hairless
Paddington Bear, it had probably saved his life.

Kate Walker knew she shouldn't do it, but, as she sat
at her friend's computer terminal, she couldn't help
herself. She typed in the access code Jane Harrington
had, under duress, given her, and typed in
DELANEY to pull up his hospital records. She knew
enough not to trust anything the staff at the hospital
had told her. She wasn't a relative; she didn't know
exactly what she was. Girlfriend didn't sound right.
Partner was a bit formal for what they had had.
Mother of his child, she decided, that was what she
was, and that gave her rights.

The first hit came up with Siobhan Delaney.

Not the rights to look at confidential medical
records, maybe, but the man she loved was recovering
from an operation and she wanted to know how
bad the damage was, she justified to herself.

But not the right to read his ex-wife's records. Kate
found herself unable to click the screen away and
carried on reading it instead. That night had defined
Delaney, after all, for the last four years. It had
certainly defined their relationship, if such it was.
And so, moral qualms pushed aside, Kate read the
report.

Everything was much as she knew it to be. His
pregnant wife, suffering heavy blood loss, was rushed
into theatre. They had performed an emergency C
section. The baby, and subsequently the mother, had
died. The procedures seemed in order, everything but
the outcome was in order.

Apart from one thing.

She read the document again and wished she never
had.

Kate closed down the computer screen. She'd read
the reports on Jack's injury. He had been incredibly
lucky. The bullet had passed through the lower part
of his left shoulder, it had broken no bones and was
well clear of any organs. Had the police not arrived
when they did, she reflected, it was quite likely that
whoever had shot him would have crossed the road
and finished the job. And her with him, likely as not.
She shivered at the thought.

The door creaked open and Jane Harrington came
back into her office, carrying a couple of mugs of
coffee.

'Keep meaning to get some WD40 on that,' she
said.

'I'm sorry?' Kate looked back at her, not at all sure
what she had said.

'The door. Needs some oil.'

Kate took the coffee and took a sip. It was
welcome. She had been up all night. Waiting for
Delaney to go into surgery. Waiting by his bedside
after the operation. At seven o'clock she had called
her friend. She needed to do something, even it was
just to see his records for herself. Things were
spiralling out of control, that much was clear. And
Kate needed to do something. She needed to try and
take control. And the one thing she did know about
was medicine.

Her friend observed the way she held both hands
round the coffee mug, as if to warm more than her
fingers. 'How is he, Kate?'

'He's going to be okay. For now. The bullet did as
little damage as possible under the circumstances. He
must have an guardian angel looking over him.'

'Or the other kind.'

'What do you mean?'

'He's not had a lot of luck just lately, has he?'

Without being aware she was doing it, Kate ran a
hand protectively over her stomach. 'Maybe that's all
about to change.'

'What about you?'

'What about me?'

'With everything that's going on, Kate. Have you
made any decisions?'

Kate took another sip of her coffee. 'Yeah, I've
decided I'm not going to take any more crap in my
life.'

He was at the bottom of a deep pool, but the
light streaking down from the green disc ahead
was bright and strong, the gravel and pebbles
beneath his questing fingers were dappled with
it. They shone like precious stones. Jack held his
breath as he searched. He had to find it, that one
special pebble. He had to find it and put it back
in its rightful place and then everything would be
all right. The world would be right again.

He didn't know how long he had been under
but he felt the stale oxygen in his lungs swelling
his chest painfully. He let a slow trickle of air
bubble from his lips as he raked his fingers
through the stones. He tried to fight back the
rising panic as the carbon dioxide in his lungs
now put a dull throbbing in his head. He let out
another trickle of air and with one last scan of
his straining eyes he realised he had failed in his
mission, for now at least. He kicked his legs and
swam up to the ovoid shape, the underside of his
rowing boat. But as he neared it and tried to put
his hand up to pull himself out, a thick arm
descended, wrapping around his neck and
keeping him beneath the water. His legs
thrashed wildly as stars started exploding before
his eyes, he knew he had to break free, he
couldn't hold his breath any longer. He had to
break free or drown. But he couldn't. He
couldn't loosen the grip.

Delaney eyes flew open in panic, he tried to breathe
but couldn't. Then the man standing over him,
dressed in a white doctor's coat, released the grip on
his throat slightly and Delaney gulped in hungry
swallows of air.

The man grunted, letting Delaney breathe but
keeping an iron grip on his throat, keeping him
pinned to the hospital bed. 'You got a good reason
why I shouldn't kill you here and now?'

'No. But you have.'

'That a fact?'

Delaney shrugged as calmly as he could under the
circumstances. 'Seems to be, Norrell.'

Norrell glared at him and finally grunted again.
'I'll make a deal with you.'

'Go on.'

'I'll let you live and I'll even tell you who was
behind the petrol station job. Who it was that got
your wife killed.'

'The shooter.'

Norrell shook his head. 'The shooter was just a
tool. You want the man who set the whole thing in
motion.'

'And in return?'

Norrell shook his head. 'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'You're a loaded gun, Delaney, I'm just pulling the
trigger.' Norrell took his hand off Delaney's throat.
'It was Mickey Ryan.'

Delaney rubbed his sore throat. The man really did
have hands like hams. 'How do you know?'

'He came to me first. I turned him down.'

Delaney was impressed. People didn't turn Mickey
Ryan down. He was as close to an organised crime
godfather as west London had. From a small-time
drug dealer, he had built his empire up over the years
like a Richard Branson of sleaze. Serious crime had
been after him for years, but he was clever, his money
was invested offshore. Put into holding companies.
Shells. It made sense he was behind the property deal
in Pinner Green. Never mind the downturn, as far as
Delaney was concerned property prices were still the
crime of the century. No wonder scum like Mickey
Ryan was involved.

'Why'd did you say no?'

Norrell shrugged. 'My dad used to work for him
when I was a kid. He treated my mother like a piece
of shit.'

'Right.'

'I mean she
was
a piece of shit. But . . .' He
shrugged again.

'So what do you expect me to do?' Delaney asked.

'Do what you do best.'

'Which is?'

'Fuck people's lives up.'

Norrell looked at his watch and winked at
Delaney. 'This place isn't good for my health. I'll see
you around.' He strode out of Delaney's private
room.

Delaney thought about pushing the alarm button
by the side of his bed, then discarded the notion. He
knew why Norrell had just volunteered the
information. He might just as well have put a gun to
Mickey Ryan's head himself. There was a contract
out on Norrell and if Delaney removed Ryan he also
removed the contract. Delaney didn't like the idea of
being used by Norrell, but in the end, in the grand
scheme of things, he didn't much give a shite either.
Mickey Ryan was a dead man walking. That was all
that mattered. It was time to cut off his feet. Delaney
lay his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes,
strangely peaceful. The waiting was over.

He had taken the day off and so had plenty of time
to prepare. His lizard-skin cowboy boots had been
polished to a high shine. His black jeans had been
neatly ironed, as had his white shirt. He held the
shoestring tie in his hand and snapped it a couple of
times. Form and functionality.

He had just had a long bath and was planning to
have a nice relaxing morning. He was going to need
plenty of energy tonight. He lay back naked on his
bed and flicked the leather tie at his penis. He
immediately started to stiffen and he flicked it
again, harder this time. His hand moved down and
he held himself for a moment, and then took his
hand away. It was all about release. It was all about
control.

Delaney groaned, his eyelids twitched and then fell
still once more. He was in that halfway stage, not
quite awake, not quite asleep, when you know your
dreams have hold over you, but you are powerless to
let them go.

The smell was universal. The noises in the dark.
Hospital. Other hospitals.

Jack Delaney was nine years old. He was
walking back from school alone. His best friend
Rory had been off sick with measles and he was
forbidden to visit him. Jack was okay with that.
He had seen kids with the measles right enough
and he could do without them. He'd catch up
with Rory when he was well.

Like Jack, Rory was big for his age, bigger
even than Jack. Everyone said when he grew up
he'd either be a policeman or professional
wrestler. It was their joke. What Rory wanted to
do when he grew up was be a carpenter like his
da. Heck, his ma always joked, sure enough he
could just pick the trees out of the ground, he'd
have no need for lumberjacks for his raw
materials. Rory took it in good humour, you had
to keep the women on your side.

Jack agreed with him on that one. He didn't
know what he wanted to do when he grew up,
though. They talked about it often enough but
he couldn't fix himself on anything. Fireman one
week. A soldier a few years back before the
Troubles had flared up in earnest. Sometimes he
secretly dreamed of being a priest. Jack could see
himself standing up there in the pulpit, holding
everybody in awe as he railed and castigated. He
was not so hot at the academics, however, and
he saw how the black crows knew everything
about everything, and that must take an awful
lot of book studying and the like.

He bent down to pick up a pebble form the
path. He threw the stone high in the air to clatter
down on the salt-crusted stones on the beach
below, when he heard the cry. And he recognised
the voice.

He rushed down the path and around the
corner. And there, sure enough, was Liam
Corrigan, his cousin. Liam was a couple of years
younger than Jack, a few inches shorter, and was
surrounded by four older boys with mischief on
their faces and sticks in their hands. Jack could
see that Liam had tears in his eyes and a small
trickle of blood running down his nose.

Jack knew the other boys. All MacWhites. All
trouble. Like the family had always been. Jack
turned to the eldest. 'Brave of you to be taking
on the one boy.'

Barry MacWhite looked at Jack and grinned,
strolling over to him. 'You want to join in, do
you? Do you want some of—'