Mark Pearson - Blood Work

He rubbed the soft fabric over the gleaming grip of the gun. He had already anointed the wood with beeswax and polished it in with an old yellow duster. He was just giving the final finish with the superior cloth. He rubbed it some more, seeing his reflection looking back at him, distorted in the smooth surface of the wood. His eyes were widened and smiling.

He held the cloth to his nose and sniffed deeply as though it were an oxygen mask. Then he opened it out and lay it on the coffee table, like a trophy. It was a pair of plain, white cotton panties that he had stolen, like the scarf, from Dr Kate Walker's house.

The rain had stopped sometime in the middle of the night. But the ground wasn't cold enough yet to freeze, and so the paths that ran through Hampstead Heath like veins through a body were slick with wet mud and leaves. Gillian Carter, a twenty-seven-year-old bookshop assistant, picked her way carefully down one of the paths. Not an easy task as the dog she had on the other end of the lead, a Briard, weighed nearly as much as she did and had the energy of a roomful of pre-school children on a diet of Red Bull. A bird clattered out of the trees ahead and the dog leapt after it. Gillian Carter, faced with the choice of losing control of the dog or herself on the slippery downward slope, chose the former and let the lead fly from her hand.

'Jake!' she called after the dog, but he was focused on the bird swirling upwards through the air and soon disappeared deep into the bracken. Gillian stopped to catch her breath and sighed. It wasn't even her dog. She was looking after him for some neighbours whilst they went for a holiday to Tenerife. Lucky buggers, she thought, as she skirted around a particularly large puddle on the path. She didn't envy them Tenerife, just the sun. Gillian would kill for a week of sunshine. She absolutely detested England in the winter, and even though every year she promised herself a trip to sunnier climes, she had yet to deliver on that promise.

'Jake!' she called again as she followed his trail through the bracken, more in hope than expectation, but was pleasantly surprised to see the frisky dog bounding up to her. There was some cloth in his mouth.

She bent down to take it from him and realised that it was a Burberry scarf. Some chav and his girlfriend getting jiggy with it on the heath, she speculated with a disapproving quirk of an eyebrow. Although, to be fair, in this weather she admired their resilience, if not their respect of urban social niceties.

She would have turned back to the path but the dog trotted into a small clearing ahead and barked at the prostrate and motionless figure of a small, bald man.

'My God!' Gillian gasped and ran over. She knelt and tried to find a pulse in his neck. She couldn't be sure but she thought she could feel the faintest of murmurs. She pulled out her phone and dialled emergency services. Slipping out of her Barbour jacket, she laid it under the man's head. Thank goodness that he was wearing such a thick coat, she thought, because even though it made him look like an ancient, hairless Paddington Bear, it had probably saved his life.

Kate Walker knew she shouldn't do it, but, as she sat at her friend's computer terminal, she couldn't help herself. She typed in the access code Jane Harrington had, under duress, given her, and typed in DELANEY to pull up his hospital records. She knew enough not to trust anything the staff at the hospital had told her. She wasn't a relative; she didn't know exactly what she was. Girlfriend didn't sound right. Partner was a bit formal for what they had had. Mother of his child, she decided, that was what she was, and that gave her rights.

The first hit came up with Siobhan Delaney.

Not the rights to look at confidential medical records, maybe, but the man she loved was recovering from an operation and she wanted to know how bad the damage was, she justified to herself.

But not the right to read his ex-wife's records. Kate found herself unable to click the screen away and carried on reading it instead. That night had defined Delaney, after all, for the last four years. It had certainly defined their relationship, if such it was. And so, moral qualms pushed aside, Kate read the report.

Everything was much as she knew it to be. His pregnant wife, suffering heavy blood loss, was rushed into theatre. They had performed an emergency C section. The baby, and subsequently the mother, had died. The procedures seemed in order, everything but the outcome was in order.

Apart from one thing.

She read the document again and wished she never had.

Kate closed down the computer screen. She'd read the reports on Jack's injury. He had been incredibly lucky. The bullet had passed through the lower part of his left shoulder, it had broken no bones and was well clear of any organs. Had the police not arrived when they did, she reflected, it was quite likely that whoever had shot him would have crossed the road and finished the job. And her with him, likely as not. She shivered at the thought.

The door creaked open and Jane Harrington came back into her office, carrying a couple of mugs of coffee.

'Keep meaning to get some WD40 on that,' she said.

'I'm sorry?' Kate looked back at her, not at all sure what she had said.

'The door. Needs some oil.'

Kate took the coffee and took a sip. It was welcome. She had been up all night. Waiting for Delaney to go into surgery. Waiting by his bedside after the operation. At seven o'clock she had called her friend. She needed to do something, even it was just to see his records for herself. Things were spiralling out of control, that much was clear. And Kate needed to do something. She needed to try and take control. And the one thing she did know about was medicine.

Her friend observed the way she held both hands round the coffee mug, as if to warm more than her fingers. 'How is he, Kate?'

'He's going to be okay. For now. The bullet did as little damage as possible under the circumstances. He must have an guardian angel looking over him.'

'Or the other kind.'

'What do you mean?'

'He's not had a lot of luck just lately, has he?'

Without being aware she was doing it, Kate ran a hand protectively over her stomach. 'Maybe that's all about to change.'

'What about you?'

'What about me?'

'With everything that's going on, Kate. Have you made any decisions?'

Kate took another sip of her coffee. 'Yeah, I've decided I'm not going to take any more crap in my life.'

He was at the bottom of a deep pool, but the light streaking down from the green disc ahead was bright and strong, the gravel and pebbles beneath his questing fingers were dappled with it. They shone like precious stones. Jack held his breath as he searched. He had to find it, that one special pebble. He had to find it and put it back in its rightful place and then everything would be all right. The world would be right again.

He didn't know how long he had been under but he felt the stale oxygen in his lungs swelling his chest painfully. He let a slow trickle of air bubble from his lips as he raked his fingers through the stones. He tried to fight back the rising panic as the carbon dioxide in his lungs now put a dull throbbing in his head. He let out another trickle of air and with one last scan of his straining eyes he realised he had failed in his mission, for now at least. He kicked his legs and swam up to the ovoid shape, the underside of his rowing boat. But as he neared it and tried to put his hand up to pull himself out, a thick arm descended, wrapping around his neck and keeping him beneath the water. His legs thrashed wildly as stars started exploding before his eyes, he knew he had to break free, he couldn't hold his breath any longer. He had to break free or drown. But he couldn't. He couldn't loosen the grip.