Mark Pearson - Blood Work

Sally took a sip of her herbal tea. 'Why?'

'He put down some of your own, Detective Constable. Never very popular thing to do.'

Delaney scowled at Roy. 'I didn't sign up for the police force to win popularity contests.'

Roy handed a bacon sandwich over the counter to him. 'Just watch your back is all I'm saying, cowboy. You put the Pied Piper away, doesn't mean there isn't more of the vermin that were on his payroll still on the job, scratching their feet and sniffing their noses in the air.' He looked pointedly across as a couple of uniforms approached.

Delaney took a bite out of his sandwich. 'I'll bear it in mind.' He turned back to Sally. 'Come on, let's get out of here.'

Roy called after him. 'Madonna? My doughnut more like!'

Delaney walked off, Sally took a couple of gulps of her tea and threw the cup in the black plastic dustbin at the side of the van. 'Cheers, Roy.'

'De nada. And you watch your back too, Detective Constable. That man is a disaster area in size ten brogues.'

Sally winked at him. 'At least you know where you are with him.'

Roy nodded. 'In fucking trouble most like.' Roy turned to the two uniformed constables who had arrived and were watching Sally hurry after Delaney with undisguised appreciation. Roy grunted at them. 'Out of your league, boys. Out of your league.'

'Just give us a couple of bacon rolls, Roy.'

Roy leaned forward confidentially. 'Can I interest you lads in some pirate DVDs?'

The older uniform sighed patiently. 'Go on?'

'I've got Treasure Island, The Black Hawk, and of course Pirates of the Caribbean, the complete boxed set.'

Neither of the uniforms laughed.

Kate stood for a long while in the bathroom. The clothes she had been wearing last night were in a heap in the corner. She pulled the belt tight around the towelling robe she had on and looked at herself in the mirror. Her waterproof mascara had lived up to its name, but her eyeshadow and lipstick were smeared and her face looked pale against the almost black of her tangled and disarrayed curls. Whatever slight tan she might have picked up in the summer months seemed to have disappeared overnight. She walked across to the shower unit and put her hand on the tap. She held it there for a moment or two, the metal chill on her hand. And then she took it away again. She wouldn't shower that morning. She took the towelling robe off and carefully folded it, then picked up her clothing from the night before and dressed herself.

In 1903 Holloway Prison became a purely women-only facility. Coupled with the ending of transportation and the closing of Newgate, it meant a new prison for male offenders had to be built, a place to house those prisoners who were to be evicted to accommodate the fairer sex. The site chosen in the last, dying breaths of the Victorian era was a bit of undeveloped park and scrubland some two miles or so south of Hampstead Heath and a mile or so west of Delaney's new house in Belsize Park. Bayfield Prison was an all-categories facility that held up to six hundred prisoners. As the urban wealth of Hampstead and Belsize Park spread further out, the building was an incongruous intruder, a social blot on an increasingly upmarket landscape. But it lay hidden in its own ten acres of land, tall trees sheltering the place from view on the main road; it was still a lot closer, in many ways, to Kilburn than it was to Hampstead.

Sally pulled up at the iron gates that stood at the end of the long driveway and waited for the uniformed guard to check her identification. She wound her window down, flinching as the rain lashed at her face, and held her warrant card out. The guard grunted, monosyllabically, then waved her forward and signalled to the guard house. Electric motors whirred and the heavy iron gates swung open. Sally slipped the car in first gear and drove down through the gates and along the quarter-mile or so of private road that led up to the prison.

'What's Norrell got to say do you think, guv?'

Sally's question pulled Delaney out of his reverie. He had been thinking along the same lines. 'I've no idea.'

'You reckon he was involved in the petrol station hold-up?'

Delaney shook his head. 'Maybe, but who knows? If he was involved he'll have lived to regret it.'

Bayfield Prison, finished late in 1902, was three storeys high and had four wings on four sides, forming a central exercise area which could be monitored from observation posts on each corner. There were no windows on the exterior walls, which gave the brick building an imposing, severely functional look.

Sally pulled the car up to the parking area and they walked over to the visitors' entrance and, after the usual security checks, were shown through to a waiting area in the front of the prison. Delaney sat on an orange plastic chair bolted to a wall underneath a window, then stood up again and paced impatiently, looking out of the window and wishing he could fire up a cigarette. He kicked his shoe against the wall and looked at his watch. Ten past eight and way past time they should have seen Norrell.

He paced around the room for a minute more and had just decided to go and have a hard word with somebody when he heard the door open and looked across to see the warden walk in. Ron Cornwell was a tall man, six foot five but thin. He had pale blond hair and an apologetic smile on his face. 'Sorry, Inspector, I tried to get hold of you on your mobile earlier. And I've been held up on the telephone.'

Delaney walked over to him. 'What's going on?'

'You've had a wasted journey, I'm afraid.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Kevin Norrell was assaulted this morning. By some of his fellow prisoners. It was a very serious incident.'

'He's dead?'

The warden shook his head slightly. 'He's in intensive care in the South Hampstead up the road. He hasn't recovered consciousness.'

Sally joined Delaney. 'Comatose?'

The warden shrugged. 'Unconscious is all I know.'

'What's the prognosis?'

The warden spread his hands. 'I don't know; you'll have to talk to the hospital but it's probably too early to say.'

Delaney nodded. 'Who did it?'

'We're not exactly sure.'

Delaney glared at him. 'What the hell do you mean, you're not exactly sure?'

'All right, Inspector. Just calm it down, will you? Five men attacked him in the showers early this morning. He was knifed, hit his head badly. He lost a lot of blood.'

'Who were they?'

'We don't know who all of them were. Two of them got away.'

'How?' Delaney couldn't believe what he was hearing. 'This is supposed to be a secure prison for God's sake.'

'Three of the men were badly hurt by Norrell. Two of them are dead, the other is in intensive care.'

'And you've got no security footage?'

'The camera was taken out. That's why the two officers were dispatched. If they hadn't got there in time, Norrell would definitely be dead.'

'And they just let two of them walk away from it?'

'They were prioritised on dealing with the injured people.'

'Convenient.' Delaney couldn't keep the sarcasm from his voice.

'What exactly are you implying, Inspector?'

'What motivated the assault?'

'You know as well as I do, there could be any number of reasons. I have it on good authority that Norrell was involved in the manufacture and distribution of child pornography. Particularly nasty child pornography at that. You know what happens to people like that in prison if they're not in a segregated unit.'

'And why wasn't he in a segregated unit?'

'Because he wasn't charged with paedophile activities, Inspector, as you very well know. He was charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was a category-A prisoner and treated as such.'

'I want to talk to the guards who broke up the fight.'