Mark Pearson - Blood Work

She was in a foul mood. Jack Delaney, the son of a bitch. She didn't know why she let him get to her, but he did. Kate Walker, in her own opinion, was, if anything, a woman born of logic, of reason. She was clinical, sharp; her judgement a precision instrument. Only that instrument was letting her down lately, and she didn't know how to fix it. She looked out of the window again, seeing her reflection smudgy and blurred, and that was exactly how she felt. Smudgy and blurred. She wasn't sure quite who she was any more. She leaned against the side of the train, putting as much space between her and the fat man as possible and felt a shiver run up her spine. Somebody was walking on her grave. Dancing on it. She looked around expecting to see someone watching her, but, if they were, they had looked away. Looking away was the English virtue after all. Never get involved, never show your emotions, never get off the boat. Maybe Jack Delaney was more English than he would have liked to admit. There was a man who was never going to get off the boat.

Delaney stood in the carriageway, swaying with the rhythm of the train, holding on to a strap hanger and keeping his balance, just about, as the train bucked and shifted under his feet as it rattled noisily through the underground tunnels.

He should have let Diane Campbell take him home, back to his sterile new house in Belsize Park. He should have left the pub after just one drink and then made a start on the decorating, making the place a home and not just a house. Somewhere where his daughter Siobhan would want to visit, would want to stay a few days with him. But Delaney didn't do one quick drink, and he hadn't wanted to go home, it didn't feel like home to him, nowhere had for a long time. Those dark thoughts hadn't been turned off yet and he didn't think they would. Not tonight. Tonight he needed more than alcohol to fight his demons.

He wished he had never visited the cemetery. He'd told Kate Walker that he'd only gone because he owed it to the old man who had taken a bullet for him. But it wasn't true. He'd gone to see her and now he wished he hadn't. It wasn't a time for complications. He had a focus now and he needed to keep that focus, but Kate had set a fire burning, created a physical thirst that he needed to quench.

A man leaned against him as the train turned a corner and Delaney looked back at him and the man quickly moved away, half muttering an apology and avoiding eye contact.

Delaney watched the man move through the crowded train, keen to put distance between them and Delaney didn't blame him. Tomorrow he was going to take steps. People were going to pay for what happened four years ago and pay in blood. But tonight he could taste the iron and copper in his mouth, could feel the murmurs in his blood like the low thrumming of a bass string. Tonight Delaney had another agenda.

He looked ahead, past the crowded-together commuters who were packed into the carriageway with the resigned look of cattle being herded to slaughter and as some stood up to disembark he saw the dark-haired woman. She was looking at her own reflection in the window as the train jolted and the lights dipped, yellow and sulphurous, so that Delaney's brown eyes smouldered in the low light like a hunting wolf's.

He came to a decision and reached into his pocket as the train clattered to a standstill.

Kate walked out of the Tube station scowling as the wind came howling up Hampstead High Street sweeping the rain into her face. She stepped back into the entrance and waited for the weather to abate. She looked at her watch, still not relishing the idea of going back to her empty house, but she had a film on DVD to watch and three-quarters of a bottle of Cloudy Bay chilling in her fridge. Damn Delaney, she thought for the hundredth time that day, wishing again, also for the hundredth time, that she'd never gone to the funeral. She tried to persuade herself that she'd gone for the old man, not on the off chance of seeing that ungrateful Irish bastard. She'd nearly put her life on the line to save his miserable skin, not to mention that of his daughter's, and what thanks did she get? Used and discarded. He made her feel like the cheap kind of whore he obviously felt comfortable with. She strode angrily out into the rain, sod the man, her life had been on hold for long enough. Time to push the play button, and not on the DVD machine. She hurried up the street towards the Holly Bush. Physician, heal thyself, that's what they said, didn't they? Well, she was going to write out a large prescription in her own name: vodka-based, repeat as required.

She crossed the street and, as she did, she felt that familiar tingle in her spine again, but, as she blinked the rainwater from her eyes and looked back, she couldn't see anyone following her. She hurried on up the slight hill, keeping her face down and angled away from the rain. Within minutes she was pulling the old, heavy door behind her, closing out the wind and the weather, the rainwater dripping from her black overcoat on to the rough wooden floor of the pub as she shook her hair and wiped a hand across her eyes, hoping her waterproof mascara was holding up and hearing the sweet, soulful tones of Madeleine Peyroux cutting across the chatter in the room. They didn't always have music playing; the manager said that the hubbub of conversation was the real music of the place and she agreed with him. It was just part of what made the pub special. Tonight though she was grateful for the music, it shielded her from other people's thoughts.

As she knew it would be, even this early, the pub was busy. She walked up to the right-hand bar where luckily there was a vacant stool. She pulled it forward, sat on it and smiled briefly at the young, Australian barman behind the counter. 'Large one please, Stuart.'

The barman nodded back at her, lifted up a jug of ready-made Bloody Mary and poured Kate a glass. Kate took a long pull, the sharp kick of vodka mingling with the bite of the pepper and the tang of the celery salt. She took another sip and sighed. Time to heal.

Janet Barnes had never had to work hard at soliciting admiring glances from men; her ex-boyfriend, a failed stand-up comic, said that she had the kind of body that pouted if it didn't get attention. Usually she enjoyed that attention, but tonight there was one man in particular who was looking at her from across half the length of the train carriage, and her skin crawled. She pulled her raincoat tight around her, but if anything it just accentuated her lush, curvy figure. She looked out of the window, the featureless rush of Victorian brick wall flickering past scant inches away. There was talk of London flooding in the news again. Steps being made to improve the Thames Barrier. She remembered the flooding of last year. Whole areas, families, homes, lives ruined in the North of England. She couldn't help wondering what would happen here if the Thames were to ever break its banks. The Underground system would be flooded. Thousands of tonnes of water would pour into the network. Would the passengers all be drowned or electrocuted? All those electric rails running everywhere. Another problem for that Eton-educated, class clown Boris Johnson to sort out. Not a problem for her, mind. Any luck and she'd be out of the miserable city long before that happened, if it ever did. Just a few more quid saved up, a few more months, get the winter over with and she'd be out of the capital, out of the country and over the mountains she'd fly to sunny bloody Spain. Put this miserable, sodding, rain-drenched country behind her once and for bloody good. Just because she dressed like a goth didn't mean she had to live like a bloody vampire, time for a change of image she reckoned.

Her double reflection in the windows, hovering over the flashing bricks, was smeared and bleary, a ghostly dull orange from the flickering lights in the tube carriage. She was sure, though, she could still make out the dark-haired man watching her. Good-looking, she supposed, but definitely something creepy about him, the way he stared at her when he thought she wasn't watching. She wouldn't be surprised if he was having a crafty hand shandy under the dark coat he was wearing. If she had a five-euro note for every time some man had accidentally brushed up against her in the crowded tube with a hard-on in his pants and a glassy look to his eyes she could have retired and moved to Spain years ago. She could have papered the road there and back with them.