Blood Work (33 page)

'I can understand it must have been a terrible
experience—'

'You understand nothing!' She spat the words at
him, the rifle shaking in her hands for the first time
as her hands shook with fury.'

'They killed our baby.'

'What do you mean?'

'What do you think I mean? Our baby died!'

'Yours and Michael's?'

'We were a family. We were supposed to be a
family. They took that away from us.'

Delaney looked at the rifle trembling in her hands,
and held his hand up again, trying to keep the disgust
from his face and voice. 'It's okay.'

'Nothing is okay. It was supposed to be routine but
they made a mistake with the anaesthetic and had to
deliver my baby by Caesarean section. I heard them!'

Delaney could see the madness and rage still
dancing in her eyes. 'That must have been terrible for
you.'

'He died because of their butchery. Then they
performed a hysterectomy. Performed it without my
consent.'

'They were trying to help you.'

'No.' Her voice was quiet now and Delaney didn't
feel more reassured by it, in fact he felt the opposite.
'I am a trained veterinary nurse by trade, not a
receptionist. I took that job just to get close to them,
Detective. So I understand surgery. I heard them
admit their mistakes. They murdered my baby and
then they cut out my womb. So that's why, Detective.
A life for a life.'

'And the mutilations? Did they deserve that?'

She smiled joylessly again. 'It's what they did to
me.' Her eyes dropped to her stomach and the smile
fell from her lips. 'They mutilated me.'

Delaney could hear the change in the tone of her
voice. As if their conversation was at an end. He had
to say something. Do something.

Audrey Hill raised the rifle a fraction, pointing at
his heart now, as if she had come to a decision. 'Do
you believe in God, Inspector?'

Delaney shrugged. 'Yeah I do. Someone has to be
responsible for all this shite.'

She didn't smile this time. 'Now that we know how
big the universe really is . . .' She shook her head
puzzled. 'How can you believe in God? We're not
ants. Were not even germs. So if there is no justice
from God, we have to make our own, don't we?'

'It doesn't have to be like this.'

'It already is, Detective Inspector Delaney.'

Delaney heart thudded in his chest as he heard a
familiar voice shout out.

'Jack,' Kate called from the front door. 'Are you in
there?'

'Stay back!' Delaney shouted, almost screamed it.
'Just stay where you are.'

'Jack!'

Kate walked into the room and as Audrey Hill
spun round and pointed the rifle at her, she froze in
place.

'Maybe I'll just shoot her then.'

Delaney saw her hand trembling on the trigger, the
madness in her eyes and stepped forward. Kate
Walker was the woman he loved. He knew that now
more than ever. He loved her and she was carrying
his child. He wasn't going to lose another one.
'Jessica Tam isn't dead and Michael isn't bringing her
here,' he said.

'What are you talking about?'

'I killed him. Michael's dead.'

The woman shook her head, shocked, as she spun
round and trained the rifle back on him. 'You're
lying!'

Delaney took another step towards her. 'I put a
bullet in his diseased brain, Audrey. He's dead, it's
over. Now put down the rifle.'

Delaney watched her hands tremble. He didn't
know if it was a deliberate tightening of her finger on
the trigger as the rifle fired, or if it was accidental. He
didn't register the sound of Kate screaming, he didn't
know that Sally Cartwright had come charging into
the room and was throwing herself at Audrey Hill.

Falling to the floor, he didn't know anything at all.

He was already dead.

When she was seven years old Kate Walker had
attended her grandmother's funeral. It was a bitterly
cold day in October, and, as she had stood in the rain
in her black coat and her black skirt with a black hat
on her head that did nothing to stop the swirling bite
of the wind, she had decided she didn't like funerals
or cemeteries. Why couldn't people live for ever?
Why couldn't she be seven for ever? Why do people
have to grow up and die?

Maybe, at heart, that was why she had become a
pathologist. Maybe she chose her career to answer
that question. As a young boy will break apart a
favourite toy to try and see how it works, maybe she
had been breaking apart human bodies. Dissecting
and disassembling them to their component parts,
flesh, tissue, sinew and blood, to answer the question
that, outside religion, had no answer. She had learned
that as a child Michael Hill had killed and tortured
animals, for the same reason, before his sickness had
been identified and he had been put on medication.
Medication his abusive sister had later withheld from
him. Had she, herself, been doing the same thing all
this time, Kate wondered, only with dead human
bodies? Maybe she was a lot more like him than she
realised. She shivered. She was nothing like Michael
Hill. She was alive, for one thing.

She shivered because it was cold that day as well.
Not as bitterly cold as the day of her grandmother's
funeral, but the wind had an edge like a scalpel and
Kate put her right hand around the folds of her scarf
and pulled it tight to her throat. It was a cashmere
scarf, white, and she found comfort in the warmth of
its touch. She never thought she would buy a
coloured scarf ever again.

She looked down at the gravestones. At the surname
DELANEY carved twice in bold chisel strokes.

She still didn't know why people had to die. In all
her years of medical training she hadn't even come
close to knowing. She only knew that people did. The
important thing to do, she had decided, if you were
living, was to live.

Jack Delaney had come back to life in more ways
than one. She took her hand from her scarf, took his
hand in her own and squeezed it.

He looked at her and smiled sadly and she had
never felt more alive. She remembered the confusion
of that evening. Delaney collapsing to the floor. His
body in such a bad state, after the battering he had
taken over the previous few days, that his heart
had literally given out at the massive dose of
tranquilliser shot into him. He claimed that he knew
that Kate would have her medical bag with her in
the car, and, moreover, as he knew that the surgical
registrar James Collins had survived over night,
after being shot with the same drug, he was going to
be fine. But Kate didn't believe him. He knew the
risk he had been taking, but he took it anyway. He
deliberately goaded the woman into shooting him
because she was threatening me, Kate thought, and
threatening the life of our unborn baby. Kate
couldn't remember the words she mumbled as she
stabbed the adrenalin shot into his lifeless heart, but
it was a prayer of some kind. And in those few
moments between life and death her own heart
almost stopped itself as the world tilted on its axis
once more for Delaney and he breathed again.
Opening his eyes and smiling with them at her as
though reborn.

She looked back down at the gravestones of his
wife and son and realised she could never tell Jack the
terrible truth about the boy. That when the baby had
been born it had needed blood; the surgical team had
checked automatically but Jack Delaney was not a
match.

He wasn't a match because he hadn't been the
father.

Jack knelt down on one knee, laid some flowers on
his wife's grave, stayed there for a moment, then stood
up and put his arm around Kate's waist. 'Let's go.'

They walked back towards the cemetery gates.
Jack had told her that the man responsible for his
wife's death was dead. He didn't provide any more
details, nor yet did she ask for them. What she knew
was that Jack Delaney was a new man. There was
still a darkness at the heart of him but he had closed
a chapter on his life and was ready to start a new one.
A new one with her.

For the first time in her life she truly felt protected
and she truly felt loved, the barriers she had fought so
long to build were coming down.

That night they made love for the first time. It
seemed.

It was three o'clock in the morning. Kate murmured
drowsily, half awake, half asleep. She settled into her
pillow and put her arm around Delaney's waist and
then started, flashing to the morning she woke up
with Paul Archer in her bed. But as she lay back on
her pillow she remembered more; lowering her
barriers had let Delaney truly into her life, but it also
brought back memories, as though it was only now
that she was strong enough to deal with them.

She was quite drunk. Goodness knows how
many vodkas she had had. She was dancing to
another female singer now. She sang along and
wobbled a bit. She sat down on the sofa.

'Ooops.'

Paul Archer stood up and reached for his
jacket. 'I'd better be getting home.'

'Where do you live?'

'Finchley. I used to live down the road. My
soon-to-be ex-wife has the house.' He shrugged
with a smile. 'The bitch.'

She looked at her watch. 'It's too late. You'll
never catch a taxi. Not at this time of night.'

'Then I'll walk.'

'To Finchley?! No!' She wagged a finger and
was aware her words were slurred. And the
more she tried to concentrate, the more slurred
they seemed to become. 'You'll stay here. No
funny business. But you might as well stay.'

Paul Archer smiled. He was a good-looking
man, and she reckoned that smile had charmed
the pants off plenty of women in the past. But all
she wanted to do was go to bed and sleep for a
week. She stood up and stumbled her way to the
hall closet where she pulled out a duvet and
handed it to him. 'The sofa is large enough to
sleep on.' She knew that, because the last man she
had given the duvet to was Jack bloody Delaney.
'You sleep here and I'll see you in the morning.'

She went to her own bedroom, left her pile of
clothes on the floor and climbed into bed. She
looked at the ceiling for a moment or two, at
least the room wasn't spinning. She turned off
the light and a short while later she heard Paul
Archer come into the room.

'It's cold out there. Can't I sleep with you?
Like you say, no funny business, I promise.'

She couldn't remember speaking but she
remembered shaking her head. And she
remembered the sound of him taking off his
clothes and climbing into bed and thinking what
the hell, as long as he just went to sleep.

'You try anything,' she said, 'and you're out
the door.' She remembered him leaning over her.
Showing his left wrist which had a Celtic tattoo
of a chain. He turned it around so she could see
the chain was broken. 'See this. I had it done the
day after my wife made me leave my house. It's
a symbol of freedom. I used to have a watch on
this wrist which she bought me. I sold that the
same day as well. Ten thousand pounds. She was
a passive bitch as well, but she warmed up when
I taught her how.'

Kate's eyelids drooped. 'What are you
saying?'

His voice was hard now. 'I'm saying it would
be no fun fucking you like this. Like a drunken
slut. But I want you to know that when I am
ready
. . .
I will fuck you. And what you want
will have nothing to do with it.'

She struggled, trying to tell him to get out, but
she couldn't seem to speak and his voice became
soft and soothing like melted molasses as he
stroked her forehead.

He spoke some more but she couldn't
remember the words, she couldn't make them
out. It was like nonsense he was speaking. And
she couldn't keep her eyes open. She felt herself
falling as if into a deep chasm of sleep and then
she remembered no more.

Kate sat bolt upright in bed and reached for the
telephone on the bedside cabinet, hurriedly dialling a
number.

Delaney stirred and rubbed his eyes. 'What's going
on?'

'Shush.'

The phone rang a few times and was picked up.
The voice on the other end of the line far from
pleased.

'This had better be good. Have you any idea what
bloody time it is?'

'Jane, it's Kate.'

'Kate.' The sleepy voice on the other end of the line
became more alert. 'What the hell's going on? Are
you all right?'

'I'm fine. Just tell me . . . Paul Archer. He worked
with children, you said?'

'Yes.'

'What specialty?'

'Paediatric psychology. Mainly in the area of
trauma counselling.'

'Does he use hypnosis?'

'Yes, I think he does.'

'Son of a bitch.'

'Has something happened?'

Kate smiled. 'No. Nothing happened. That's
exactly the point. I'll speak to you later.' She hung up
the phone and smiled broadly at Jack. Then she
realised something else.

'Oh, shit.' She almost whispered it.

Helen Archer looked up a little startled as Kate
came into one of the rooms for witnesses at the
courthouse. Her hand flew involuntarily to her
mouth like a wounded bird as she bit on a fingernail.
She willed her hand down. 'Sorry, I'm a bundle
of nerves today.'

'I can understand,' said Kate.

'I nearly felt like not turning up. I'm not sure, when
I see him, how I'm going to react. I'm not sure I can
do it.'

'He's a forceful man. I don't blame you, Helen.'

'But he deserves to pay for what he's done, doesn't
he?'

Kate looked at the woman, could see the nerves
running through her body like electricity, making her
twitch and fidget. 'When we talked earlier this week,
you said he was wearing a watch. That night, when
he attacked you . . . you said he was wearing the
watch you bought him as an anniversary present?'

Helen Archer nodded, a little puzzled by the
question. 'That's right. He always wore it. He didn't
care about scratching me. About hurting me.'

'That was the same night?'

'What same night?'

'As the rape?'

Helen stood up and gestured with her trembling
hands, agitated now. 'Yes, of course it was the same
night! Why are you asking me that?'

'He told me he sold the watch, Helen.'

'When?'

'The day after he moved out of the house.'

'He's a liar. He's always been a liar. When did he
tell you this?'

'The night he stayed at my place. I am getting some
of the memory back. Flashes of it.'

'Are you saying you don't believe me?'

'What about his wrist, Helen? What can you tell
me about his wrist?'

'There's nothing to tell. He had his watch on.' She
shook her head angrily. 'I don't understand why you
are talking like this.'

'Because he had his wrist tattooed, Helen. The day
after he moved out of the house.'

'He's lying.'

'To me? At that time, why would he? You made no
mention about his watch in your police statement. It
was only to me you mentioned it and that was after
he told me about the watch. Only I didn't remember
at the time.'

Helen Archer seemed to slump, she sat back on the
chair and looked up at Kate, pleading with her sad
eyes. 'What if it didn't happen that night? Not that
one time. But what if it happened a lot before, when
we were married? Does that make him any less
guilty?'

Kate sighed. 'I don't know, Helen.'

'What if he made my life a living hell?' Her voice
was more strident now and she stood up again.
'What if he phoned every day after he moved out?
What if he kept leaving messages on the answerphone?
Not threatening messages. Not anything you
could take to the police. But I understood what he
meant. I understood the subtext. With Paul it was his
way, always. You didn't tell him it was over.'

Kate remembered the whispered words Paul
Archer had said to her.

'So you set him up, you invited him over and let
him have sex with you?' she asked.

Helen tore at her thumbnail. Her voice on the edge
of manic. 'What are you going to do?'

'That was why there was no evidence of drugs,'
said Kate. 'There never were any, were there?'

Helen looked at her, the desperation naked in her
eyes. 'What are you going to do?' she said again.

But Kate couldn't answer her.

Back in the entrance foyer of the courthouse, Delaney
stood up gratefully from the long wooden bench he
had been sitting on as Kate approached. He could see
how tense she was.

'What did she say?'

'She lied to me, Jack. She lied to everyone.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I have to do what's right. I'm going to have to
testify. I'm an officer of the court.'

Kate Walker felt a tickle in the back of her throat.
She coughed into her hand a little and realised she
was sweating. She had been in court many times
before, but this time felt different. She looked across,
reassured to see Jack sitting in the public gallery. He
gave her a smile. But she couldn't get the muscles in
her face to smile back. She placed her hand on the
Bible and promised to tell the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.

'Can you tell us in your own words what happened
that night?'

Kate blinked, she had been lost in thought and had
missed most of what the barrister had been asking
her.

She looked across at Paul Archer. He was sat with
his arms folded, looking at her with a calm, self-assured
expression.

'We had been drinking. I had been drinking quite a
lot, in fact. It was late. It was cold and I thought it
unlikely Dr Archer would flag down a cab easily.'