Mark Pearson - Blood Work

Next to him, Kate sighed and pulled her coat tighter to herself, as if cashmere and wool could protect her from her emotions. 'What do you want to say, Jack? I haven't got the energy for an argument.'

'I know. And I'm sorry. I've been trying to get hold of you all morning.'

'How did you know where I was?'

'I got the boys to triangulate your mobile.'

'Is that legal?'

'I needed to speak to you.'

'And it couldn't have waited?'

'I thought you were dead, Kate.'

Kate looked over at him, shocked. 'What are you talking about?'

'There was another murder. Another bad one. Mutilation…' He shook his head at the memory. 'We think it's the same man.'

'What's that got to do with me? I've given my notice in, you know.'

Delaney took her gloved hands and held them tight. 'No, I didn't know. But she was wearing your scarf, Kate. The victim. It was either yours or one exactly the same. It was deliberate.'

'And you thought it was me, you thought the victim was me?'

Delaney nodded. 'For a moment. And what he did to her…'

Kate sat there for a moment, letting him hold her hands as she took it all in.

'I don't want to lose you again, Kate.'

She felt the tiny pinpricks in her eyes again. God, but the man's timing was bloody excellent. She finally collected her thoughts and squeezed his hands back.

'You're right. We do need to talk. But not here. Not now. There are things we need to take care of first. Things I need to do.'

'I've been all kinds of fool, Kate. I won't deny that. But it stops here for me, it stops right now.'

Kate nodded, unable to meet his eyes. She knew if she did kiss him, then all control on the train wreck of her life would be lost for ever. She took her hands out of his clasp. 'Take me home first, Jack.'

'It might not be safe.'

'I need to see if my scarf is there.'

Delaney hesitated for a moment and then fired the engine up and pulled the car away from the kerb. Kate stole a sideways glance at him and saw something she wasn't sure she had seen before in his eyes. She couldn't be certain, but it looked something like hope.

The busker, in tie-dyed jeans and a floral shirt, sitting near the bottom of the stairs had a small, portable amplifier to boost his voice and the sound of his guitar to echo around the mall. He flicked his long, braided hair and started singing. A John Lennon song. Ashley Bradley scowled as the music started up, he was never a fan of the Beatles. Any of them. Smug bastards in stupid suits, you asked him.

He flexed his knees a little bit more and held the bag he was carrying a little lower. At the bottom of the bag was a hole, and through the hole, pointing upwards, protruded the lens of a video camcorder. Just a little hole, which was great, because camcorders could be really small now and it made his job a lot easier. The one thing in the world that Ashley Bradley was truly grateful for, apart from stretch fabric, was technology. Technology was a marvellous thing. It gave him the Internet and it gave him the camcorder, with the built-in hard drive, which he was now positioning under the skirt of the young lady in front of him on the escalator. He liked to imagine what colour panties she was wearing, not that he really minded. Others did, of course, some of the guys he swapped files with on the web were very specific. Had to be white and cotton or no deal. Or leather. Or a thong. But for Ashley, the colour of them didn't matter at all, because it meant he had lucked out. Ashley Bradley was a commando hunter. But they were rare. And part of the thrill for him was the anticipation. He wouldn't know if he had bagged one until he got home and downloaded what he had shot so he could see it on the computer screen. And it had been some weeks since he had a result. He had a real good feeling about the woman in front of him. She looked like butter wouldn't melt, and in his experience they were the worst. He'd have loved to have had a rummage through her drawers, he reckoned he'd find all kind of toys.

He could feel the escalator begin to flatten out which snapped him out of his reverie; he moved the bag back towards him, looked up and saw two uniformed policemen at the top of the stairs staring straight at him. He turned around and began running down the stairs, pushing people out of the way but not getting very far. He leapt over the side of the escalator on to the steps travelling downwards and began running down them as the two policemen above him gave chase. At the bottom he clattered into a group of foreign-looking nuns, and after he had pushed them aside, the young black copper was nearly on him. He darted left and was putting his foot down but hadn't seen the busker who was sitting on the floor, tripped right over him, smashing his guitar into the ground and splintering the wood. The busker's shocked, amplified voice filled the shopping centre.

'You broke my fucking guitar!'

Danny Vine and Bob Wilkinson, who arrived a little later, had to drag Bradley bodily away to save him from being strangled by the outraged New Age hippy. 'Fucking muppet! I'll fucking kill you!'

Kate sensed as soon as she entered her house that something was wrong. She walked down the hallway to the kitchen. She looked at the hooks hanging on the back of the kitchen door and shook her head. 'It's not here, Jack. What the hell's going on?'

Delaney shrugged. 'I don't know. But I'm going to find out.'

Kate shook her head. 'No, we're going to find out. Who was attending at the scene from my office?'

'Patrick Neally.'

Delaney's phone rang, echoing loudly in the stone-flagged kitchen as he pulled it from his pocket. 'Delaney.'

'It's Bob Wilkinson.'

'Go on, Bob.'

'You might want to get down the nick.'

'You got him?'

'Yeah, you were on the money. But I'd get down here quick if I were you. The shiny boys from serious crime are all over him.'

'We're on our way.'

Delaney put his hand on Kate's arm and steered her out. If she felt displeasure at his touch she didn't display it. 'Who have they got?' she asked.

'Ashley Bradley.'

'He's the killer?'

'He had pictures of both victims on his walls and he's a class-A pervert, we know that.'

'Why the bloody hell would he take my scarf though?'

Delaney fished his car keys out as Kate locked her front door behind her. 'I don't know, Kate.'

But he had an idea.

Ashley Bradley sat uncomfortably on the hard, plastic chair. The central ridge cut into him painfully. He wasn't wearing underpants, he never did when he went out on a mission, but he now wished that he had been. He shifted again and adjusted himself.

Delaney watched, through the one-way mirror, as the suit- and tie-wearing finest from the serious crime squad interviewed him. He flicked the switch so he could hear the words.

'You want to tell us about the photos on the walls of your bedroom?'

'It's not a crime.'

'Yes it is, Ashley.'

'No it's not. It's perfectly legal to take pictures of people in public places.'

Delaney was amazed, as ever, at the calm arrogance of degenerates caught right in the act. People who looked at child pornography were only doing it for research. Convicted child abusers claimed it was a form of love as ancient as humanity. Delaney would have liked to have gone into the room and given Ashley Bradley some tough love right then. The kind that draws blood.

His mobile phone rang and Delaney, seeing the ID, flicked the switch off on the intercom.

'What have you got for me, Roger?'

'The properties in Pinner Green. A development company was set up to buy out the existing businesses there and convert them to luxury apartments. Took about a year to set up. The petrol station, independently owned, was the last to be sold. Given the time of the development and the time the last of the luxury apartments were sold at the height of the market two years ago…'