Mark Pearson - Blood Work

A look of confusion passed momentarily across his face. If he could have articulated a question he would have done so. But the paralysis had spread to his face now. His eyes closed and the pump under his ribcage, made of tissue and muscle, spasmed.

A low sound of thunder rumbled overhead again and, as the wind picked up whistling wet leaves over his motionless form, the rain fell. Sending splashes of mud into the air and forming a channel of artificial tears from the surgeon's closed eyes.

Delaney pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it.

'Did you get that address?' he asked Sally Cartwright.

She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and handed it to him.

'Thanks.' He stuffed the paper into his jacket pocket. 'Get on to records. I want to know if any other crimes were reported in the neighbouring properties around the same time.'

'Sir.'

Kate stood up also and put on her coat, looking for her scarf for a moment and then grimacing as she remembered why she no longer had it.

'Where are you going, Kate?'

Kate turned round to Delaney, ready to say something flip, but when she saw the concern in his eyes the temptation vanished. 'I need to go home.'

'You're not staying at that house. You can stay with me.'

Kate hesitated for a moment and then nodded, relief coursing through her blood. 'I still need to go home, get some things.'

Delaney picked up his car keys off his desk.

'And one other thing, Jack.'

Delaney looked at her quizzically.

'We'll take my car.'

'We have to make a slight detour first.' Delaney turned back to Sally as they walked to the door. 'Keep me in touch.'

'Sir.'

She stuck her thumb up in the air without looking at her boss, her attention focused on her computer screen, looking at the reports Kate Walker had printed out and the crime-scene photographs. She wondered whether she'd ever be able to look at photos like them and not feel physically sick. She fervently hoped not.

Sanjeev Singh was tall but as thin as a Lowry stick man. He wore large, black-framed glasses and was never dressed in anything other than a two-piece brown suit. He had always been of a nervous disposition and so why he had put a jangling bell over the entrance to his shop was a mystery to anyone who knew him.

He flinched as the door creaked open and the brass bell above it danced on its coiled brass spring, jangling his nerves once more.

'We're about to close,' he called over his shoulder as he placed an art deco sugar sifter, conical-shaped and decorated in Spring Crocus pattern, carefully back in a display cabinet. He put the price page next to it: four hundred and fifty pounds.

'Nice piece.'

He turned round and smiled at Kate, but his smile faded as Delaney stepped forward.

'We're not here for antiques.'

Sanjeev Singh lifted his arms and made an expansive gesture with his shoulders, a gesture he had used many times to good effect in the amateur pantomimes he had appeared in. 'I am sorry, but antiques is all I deal in.'

Delaney showed him his warrant card. 'It's information we need.'

Singh frowned. 'I don't understand.'

'Four years ago you sold your petrol station in Pinner Green. We want to know why, and we want to know who to.'

The antique dealer's shoulders slumped, and any pretence at good humour disappeared. 'My lawyers handled the sale. It was to a development company. I wanted to get out of the trade. Buy an antiques shop. The timing was right. Now I am sorry, but I really have to close.'

'It wasn't good timing for my wife, Mr Singh.'

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.'