Blood Work (24 page)

'They'll tell you all about it there.'

'I told them they should never have got that dog.
Twelve years old he was when he bit him. Right in
the privates.' She shivered and shook her head.
'Made a terrible mess it did.'

'Come on, Mrs Bradley. I'll make sure they get you
a nice cup of tea,' the uniformed officer said as she
led the old woman away.

Delaney looked at the photos in Ashley Bradley's
room. They'd all be taken down, sent to the command
centre that would now be running the case.
Everything Delaney wanted to do would have to go
through them, which made him practically redundant.
Only Delaney didn't want to be off the case.
The killer had made it personal, dressing the last
victim in a scarf like Kate's. Or maybe it
was
Kate's.
The idea that the bastard might have her somewhere
and be taunting him with the knowledge turned his
stomach. He had called her office and had been told
that Kate had called in, saying she wouldn't be in
until later that day, but that could have been done
under duress. The damn woman wasn't answering
her phone and Delaney had no way of knowing if it
was deliberate or not.

He brought his mind back to the subject in hand
and tapped a few of the photos. 'A lot of these
interior pictures are taken in the same place. He
obviously has his favoured hunting grounds like
South Hampstead Heath and the common.' He
tapped another photo, an interior shot this time.
'And I reckon I know where this is.'

Sally looked at where he was pointing. 'Where,
sir?'

'That shopping arcade at the bottom of
Bayswater.'

'Whiteleys?'

'That's the one.' Delaney tapped on another photo.
'Look at him, he's hanging around the entrance to the
ladies' toilet there.'

'Why?'

Delaney looked back at her. 'Why? Because he's a
sick fucking pervert. Come on.'

They were heading for the front door when
Delaney's phone rang. He snatched it out of his
pocket and looked at the caller ID. 'What have you
got for me?'

He grabbed a pen out of his pocket and wrote an
address on the back of his hand. 'One other thing,
Dave. Get Bob Wilkinson and some backup to get
down Whiteleys in Bayswater. It looks like a
favourite hangout for our boy. Second floor near the
ladies' toilets.' He closed his phone and reached into
his pocket.

'Give me the car keys, Sally.'

'Sir?'

'Just give me the keys.' He took the keys from her
and thrust a ten-pound note in her hand. 'I'll see you
back at the factory.'

Sally would have responded but Delaney was
already flying down the steps taking them two at a
time.

*

Kate held Helen Archer's hand for a moment as she
stood on her doorstep. 'I'll be there at the trial.'

Helen squeezed her hand back. 'Thanks, Kate.
Don't worry. He's going to pay for what he's done to
us. He's going to pay big time.'

Kate stood for a moment or two on the step after
the door had been closed. Troubled. Little flashes of
memory were coming unbidden into her
consciousness. It was something Helen had said.
'He's going to pay big time.' She was in her lounge,
drunk. There was music playing. Some country folk
record. Alison Krauss maybe. She'd bought it because
she thought Jack Delaney might like it. But she had
never gotten the chance to play it to him.

'Here you are, you. Alison bloody Krauss and
the
. . .
' Her words slurred slightly and she took
a moment to steady herself. 'Alison Krauss and
the Union Station. You ever heard of them?' She
turned round to the man in her living room. A
tall man with dark curly hair who she had only
just met. She must have invited him back, but
she couldn't remember doing it.

'Can't say I have,' Paul Archer said.

'Well, here she is.' She pushed play on her CD
player and music filled the room. Fiddles and
guitars. She walked over to the sideboard and
poured herself a large glass of Scotch. 'Join me.'

The man shook his head. 'Mixing vodka and
whisky?'

Kate beamed and took a big swallow of it. 'Ish
a cocktail.'

Archer smiled back at her. 'You're going to
pay for that in the morning. Pay for it big time.'

Kate put her hand on Helen Archer's door to
steady herself. She must have invited him back. What
else was there that she couldn't remember? She
turned around and almost fell back against the door
with shock.

'What the hell are you doing?'

'I need to speak to you.'

'No.' She shook her head and tried to push past.
'I've got nothing to say to you.'

But he held her arm, and she had to look up at him
again. At the dark curly hair and the dark brown
eyes. But in those eyes she didn't see scorn or hate or
self-importance. She saw hurt, pain and concern.
Enough to break her heart. She stopped struggling,
all resistance gone, the bones in her body like soft
fabric.

'What do you want, Jack?'

'We need to talk.'

Heavy drops of rain splashed onto the windscreen of
his car and Delaney turned the ignition a notch and
flicked his wipers on, but made no move to start his
engine.

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 . . .'

'Go on.'

'We're looking at millions of pounds' worth of
profit.'

'And who owned the development company?'

'An outfit called Blue Heaven Property.'

'And who owns that?'

'It was just set up for this venture. But it links to a
shell company called Hunter Developments.'

Delaney sighed. 'Get to the point, Roger.'

'That's just it, Hunter Developments, like I say, is
a shell company. The trail leads offshore. Financed
out of the Cayman Islands.'