Blood Work (5 page)

Kate smiled again, ironically. 'In our job you get to
learn pretty fast that all things pass, Lorraine. All
things end.'

Lorraine grimaced. 'Cheery thought.'

Kate flapped a dismissive hand at her. 'Go on, get
the drinks.'

Lorraine closed the door behind her and as it did
Kate's smile headed south faster than a penguin on a
promise. She made a small fist of her right hand and
put the nail of her thumb between her teeth. She
deliberated for a second or two, then picked up the
phone and rapidly tapped in some numbers. After a
moment her call was answered. 'It's Kate,' she said
quickly, needing to spill the words out. 'I think I've
done something really stupid.'

She listened to the response, looking up at the
ceiling. 'It's nothing like that. But I need to see you.'
She looked through the glass window of her office to
see Lorraine, bundled up against the cold, heading
out the door and sighed. 'I need you to do some tests
on me, Jane.'

'What kind of tests?' Jane Harrington's voice
boomed, shocked, from the earpiece of her phone.
Kate held it away from her ear then put it back and
spoke into it, her voice a hoarse whisper. 'I think I
might have been raped.'

South Hampstead Hospital was built, like many
similar institutional buildings throughout the
country, in the mid-Victorian era. In the year 1860 to
be exact. It started life as a hospital for consumption
and other diseases of the chest and much of the old
Victorian architecture was still present, although new
buildings had been attached over the years, most
notably the teaching wing of the hospital which was
inaugurated in 1904. The majority of the property
was Grade II listed, now, which meant a lot of the
offices and consulting rooms were poorly heated,
relying on old, cast-iron radiators that the administration
hadn't yet managed to justify the expense of
replacing. What the rooms lost in terms of heat,
however, was more than made up for in terms of
ambience and in architectural charm.

Jane Harrington's office was a testament to clutter.
The shelves lining her walls were jammed with
books, with papers, with articles clipped from
medical journals, with videos and DVDs and with a
poorly tended ivy or two in inappropriate pots. Her
equally cluttered desk sat beneath a bay window that
looked out over a small quadrangle, at the far end of
which stood the towered east wing of the original
hospital. The windows were leaded lights, the desk
was old oak and a visitor might be forgiven for
imagining they were in the study of a don from one
of the older colleges of Oxford or Cambridge.

Jane hung up her telephone, shocked at what she
had heard. Kate Walker was more than just a dear
friend, she was like a younger sister to her.

She drummed her fingers on her desk for a
moment, then snatched up her telephone and pushed
the button to connect with her administrative
assistant. 'Adrian, it's Jane. Can you cancel my
tutorials for this morning and rearrange as best you
can? Thank you.'

She hung up again and looked out of the window
at a group of nurses who were walking across the
quad, their traditional black cloaks flapping in the
wind like a storytelling of ravens. She always thought
the collective noun rather odd. Less sinister, she
supposed, than a murder of crows. The cloaks were
originally coloured blue with the founding of the
hospital, but with the death of Prince Albert they had
been changed to black. Like the ties of Harrow
schoolboys, the colour was originally only to last for
a hundred years as a memorial to the German father
of nine, but like the school, again, South Hampstead
Hospital had stuck with it. Jane watched them
thoughtfully as they walked out of sight, hurrying out
of the persistent rain into the main part of the
hospital. She came to a decision and picked up the
telephone once more and punched in a number. 'I'd
like to speak to Dr Caroline Akunin please.'

She waited for a moment while the call was put
through. 'Caroline. It's Jane Harrington. Have you
left for the frozen steppes yet or are you still on call
as a police surgeon?' She listened and nodded tersely.
'Good, I need a favour.'

*

The sight of a man's penis would not normally have
alarmed Valerie Manners. She was a nurse after all
and nearing retirement. She had seen more examples
of the male reproductive organ than most women of
her generation, even including those who had lived
through the free love era of the sixties and the wife-swapping
fad of the seventies. This one, however, was
attached to a raggedy man, and although not
impressive, was unpleasantly semi-priapic and being
wagged in her general direction as she cut though the
lower part of South Hampstead Common on her way
home after a late shift at the hospital. Caught off
guard, she ran off the path and through some trees
and bushes into open grassland, running uphill and
not looking back. She ran for three and a half minutes
and then stopped, realising that she wasn't being
followed. Panting for breath she leaned against a tree
and willed her wildly beating heart to calm down. She
berated herself for a fool, flashers weren't rapists.
They might develop into rapists but at the flasher
stage of their development they were usually
harmless. She knew that much from reading American
crime novels. She put her panicking down to tiredness
and being too wired after far too may cups of coffee
to get her though the night shift. She was getting too
old to work nights, she told herself. Her breathing
slowed eventually and as she smoothed down her
rumpled uniform, a bird fluttered noisily up through
the branches of a tree nearby, startling her again. She
looked across at the undergrowth beneath the tree
and something caught her eye. She moved a little
nearer, tentatively, and bent down to have a closer
look. When she saw what it was, Valerie Manners,
who had been a nurse for more years than she
remembered, who had always despised those trainees
who fainted or screamed at the sight of blood and
injury, screamed, backed against the tree, all colour
drained from her face, and fainted.

Sally Cartwright spun the wheel, kicking up loose
bits of gravel, and parked her car next door to a
brand-new Land Rover Discovery. She turned to
Delaney. 'You got any coins, sir?'

Delaney looked across at her puzzled. 'What for?'

'The parking meter.'

Delaney shook his head in disbelief and opened her
glovebox and pulled out an
on police business
sign,
which he put on the dashboard.

'Anybody clamps this car, Constable, and they'll
have their bollocks as Adam's apples.'

'Yes, sir.'

Sally smiled and opened the door, looking up at the
neo-Gothic splendour of the grand entrance to the
South Hampstead Hospital. Delaney followed her
glance, taking in the familiar sight. One thing the
Victorians were good at. Hospitals and cemeteries.

They walked in through the main reception and
headed towards the intensive care unit, or ICU; just
like the acronyms with the Met, Delaney had trouble
keeping up. Why they couldn't just stick with what
people knew and what made sense, was a puzzle
beyond the capabilities of his detective brain. Too
many middle managers in unnecessary jobs, he
suspected.

Sally followed him as he walked up the long
sweeping staircase at the end of the corridor. The
floor was cool, tiled and clean, but the smell of the
place was just as every bit unpleasant to Delaney as it
always had been. Even as a kid he had hated the smell
of hospitals, the particular ethyl odours hanging in
the air like an anaesthetist's gas. As a child it had
reminded him of boring hours at sick relatives'
bedsides, and of operations he had had, once for a
broken wrist and another when a kidney was
removed. But as an adult the smell reminded him of
just one thing: the death of his wife. He strode
forward purposefully as he reached the top of the
staircase and turned left to the intensive care unit. At
least now, maybe, if Norris survived, he could learn
something about why his wife had had to die four
years ago on that cold station forecourt in Pinner
Green. He could finally learn who did it. And, more
importantly, with that knowledge he could visit
retribution on those responsible. It wouldn't ease the
guilt he still felt over her death, nothing would do
that, but the need to root out and hurt the people
who had cut short her life was as powerful in him as
the need for his lungs to draw breath and his heart to
pump blood.

Since his mid-teens Kevin Norrell had been a
larger-than-life character. Now, however, as Delaney
looked down at his massive frame he looked as
harmless as a beached and rotting whale. He nodded
at the armed and uniformed police officer who stood
on guard outside the intensive care room and turned
to the young doctor who was adjusting a drip that
protruded, like a number of others, from the
comatose Norrell's arm. 'What's the prognosis?'

The junior doctor shrugged. 'He lost a lot of blood
from the stabbing. He had to be resuscitated on the
way into hospital and again on the operating table.'

Sally looked down at the grotesque figure on the
bed. 'What does that mean?'

Delaney answered. 'It means his brain was
deprived of oxygen for a while, he could be brain-damaged.'
He turned back to the young doctor.
'How bad is it?'

The junior doctor shrugged again. 'We'll wait and
see. If he doesn't come round we'll do some more
tests. Check his brain activity.'

'When will you know?'

'Check back later in the day.'

Delaney nodded. 'Can I see the other guy?'

'He's in surgery now. When he comes out you can
see him. You won't be able to talk to him though, not
for a while.'

Delaney and Sally walked back down the corridor,
outside and across the car park to a small canteen
that was run by volunteers to provide refreshment to
the hospital visitors. It was a wooden A-frame and
built like an alpine ski lodge, as incongruent in the
rain-slashed English morning as a palm tree in
Piccadilly.

Sally went inside while Delaney held back, taking
advantage of a lull in the rain to spark up a cigarette.
He drew deep on it, ignoring the disapproving
glances from passers-by as he let out a stream of
smoke. He felt conflicted. Ordinarily, seeing Norrell
in intensive care would have brightened his mood.
But the steroid-enhanced, bonehead muscle for hire
had information stored somewhere within his
Neolithic brain that Delaney needed. The thought
that the man might die was almost too much for him
to bear. Not when he was this close, not after so long.

He ground his cigarette under heel and went inside
to join Sally who had brought a couple of teas over
to a small table by the window. Inside the cafe was
more like a scout hut, or the village hall from
Dad's
Army
. Delaney sat down half expecting to see 'Dig
for Victory' posters on the wall or 'Eat less Bread'.
He took a sip of his tea, scowled and poured some
sugar into it from a glass dispenser.

Sally looked at him for a moment. 'Do you want to
talk about it?'

'Talk about what?'

'What happened that night?'

'No.'

Sally didn't answer him for a second. 'We were due
to interview Norrell this morning, right?'

'Operative word being due.'

'In connection with the murder of your wife?'

'That's right.'

Sally seemed to steel herself. 'Well, the last time I
looked, and with all due respect, sir, I'm a police
detective. Not a waitress. Not a chauffeur. Not a
dogsbody.'

Delaney waved a hand, a little amused by her
angry tone. 'And the point would be?'

'That this is a police investigation, as you told the
governor. And as far as I know I'm on your team,
aren't I?'

Delaney looked at her for a moment then sighed.
'I'm sure you know it all anyway.'

'Go on.'

'About four years ago. I was off duty. I stopped to
fill up in a petrol station when it was being raided.
They were armed with shotguns. My wife was in the
car with me.'

'What happened?'

'One of them fired his sawn-off, shattering the
plate window. I jumped in the car and attempted to
follow them. They shot back at us. Disabling the car.
Killing my wife.'

'I'm sorry.'

Delaney nodded. 'As I said, you've heard it all
before. We were never able to trace the van, we never
found out the identity of the raiders. It was a closed
book. A cold case. And then Norrell started talking
about it.'

'You think he was genuine? You really think he
knew something?'

Delaney shrugged his shoulders. 'I hope so. I hope
he lives long enough for us to find out.'

He looked out of the window; the wind had picked
up again and with it the rain. Fat beads of water were
splashing repeatedly and loudly against the glass of
the window, running quickly down the pane now.
Delaney turned back to Sally Cartwright.

'I'm going outside for another smoke.'

Kate walked across the quadrangle. Her head was
angled down, her eyes squinting against the rain.
She looked at her shoes, getting more spattered and
besmirched by the minute, but she barely registered
the fact. Still numb, her mind still reeling, she
walked in a daze, not noticing her friend waving to
her through the window of her office or the man at
the far end of the quadrangle who was watching
her.

She crossed the quad and walked into the entrance,
shaking her hair as she hurried up the stone steps to
the first floor. Jane Harrington ushered her into her
office, making sympathetic noises about being wet
through and helping her out of her coat as she shut
the door behind her. 'Sit down, Kate. I'll make some
tea. Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?'