Part 9 (1/2)

Diane Campbell glared at him. 'Not very helpful, Constable.'

Delaney stopped himself from smiling as he held his hand up to quell the beginnings of laughter in the room. 'Nothing's discounted. Most likely scenario is that she was taken there, though. s.e.x attackers don't usually hang around in rainstorms looking for victims.'

Sally Cartwright held up her hand. She looked like she should still be in school, Delaney thought, but was glad she wasn't. She may look like a Girl Guide, but he knew beneath that pretty exterior was what his North American colleagues would have called a tough cookie. He'd had to depend on her more than once and she hadn't let him down. 'Yes, Constable?'

'Is there anything in the database matching the MO?'

'Good question. We're running it through at the moment. Until we get the detailed post it's all rather general. No immediate hits.'

Diane Campbell stepped forward. 'What leads are you pursuing, Jack?'

'A flasher was operating early this morning, near the scene of the crime.'

'You think he was involved?'

'Unlikely. But he may have seen something.'

'You have a good ID on him?'

'Pretty good. This isn't a run-of-the-mill flasher.'

'Go on.'

Delaney produced a couple of A3 sheets of paper. He pinned the first on the wall. It showed an artist's rendition of a wild-haired man in his late twenties, early thirties. 'This is the man we're looking for, and this . . .' He hesitated before putting up the second picture. 'This is his p.e.n.i.s.'

There was some wincing, some groaning and some laughter at the second picture that Delaney pinned on the board. An artist's rendition, blown up, from the nurse's description, of the man's scarred p.e.n.i.s.

'Is that life-size?' Bob Wilkinson couldn't resist it, and now the laughter rippled round the room like a rumbling sea at high tide.

'All right, children, that's enough.' Diane Campbell's voice barked and the room fell silent. 'Have a look at the picture over there.' She pointed at the dead woman's mutilated body. 'Any one of you find anything funny in that?' She looked pointedly at Bob Wilkinson.

'No, ma'am.'

Delaney's phone chose that moment to ring. He looked at the caller and shrugged apologetically at his boss. 'I've got to take this. I'll be right back.'

Delaney strode quickly from the briefing room before Diane Campbell could stop him and answered the call in the corridor outside. 'What have you got for me, Jimmy?'

On the other end of the phone, DI Jimmy Skinner's voice sounded thin and echoing, the sound of men in the background telling Delaney he was calling from the prison. 'Hi, Jack. I'm at Bayfield.'

'I gathered. Go on.'

'n.o.body's talking. I put the hard word on Neil Riley, Norrell's old oppo, and according to him Kevin Norrell was taken down because of the kiddie p.o.r.n.'

'You believe him?'

'I don't know, Jack. Something feels hinky.'

'You reckon it has anything to do with my wife?'

'Maybe. But you know as well as I do that you can trust Norrell as far as you could throw him one-handed. Which is ruddy nowhere. The guy's a timeserving p.r.i.c.k of the first order.'

'Why lie about it?'

There was a pause and Delaney could picture Skinner shrugging at the other end of the line. 'The guy was desperate. That much seems clear. Whether it was because he knew there was a hit out on him, or about the trial coming up, who knows? His mate reckons that he had something on Chief Superintendent Walker, perhaps. He was looking to deal. Maybe talking about your wife was the best way to get you in to see him.'

'Maybe . . .' But Delaney wasn't convinced. Kevin Norrell had the brainpower of a fermented melon, but even he wouldn't be stupid enough to jerk Delaney's chain over his dead wife. Delaney glanced down at the stairs at the end of the corridor as the sound of high heels clicking rhythmically on the wooden steps grew louder. 'Keep on it, Jimmy.'

Delaney snapped his phone shut and looked across as Kate came up the stairs and headed towards the briefing room, unwrapping her scarf from her neck and taking off her gloves. If she was a little taken aback to see Delaney waiting outside the door, she didn't betray it in her body language. Delaney watched her confident stride, the determined set to her jaw, but in her eyes he saw something that disturbed him. Something that went against her usual, poised exterior. Something that reached out to him in a primal sense. Something very much like fear.

'Kate.'

'Not now, Jack.' She sailed past him.

Delaney hurried after her and took her arm. He was shocked to see the way she flinched away. 'I'm sorry.'

She looked at him, anger flaring behind the fear that was still liquid in her deep, brown eyes. 'Sorry for what exactly?'

Delaney hesitated. 'I didn't mean to startle you.'

Kate nodded, as if his answer had confirmed her thoughts, lessened him once again in her eyes, and he felt the shame of it like a creeping feeling on his skin. 'I need to get to the meeting,' she said.

She opened the door and walked into the briefing room before Delaney had a chance to say anything more.

Jimmy Skinner was heading down the iron staircase to be taken back through to the reception area when Derek Watters, the guard who had been posted outside Neil Riley's cell, fell into step behind him. He spoke quietly.

'You want to know what was going down with Kevin Norrell?'

Skinner turned back to look at him but the guard gestured him on.

'Just keep walking. I'll talk to you about it, but not here and not for gratis.'

'What are you after?'

'A drink. A serious drink. I reckon Delaney's good for it.'

'When and where?'

They reached the bottom of the stairs.

'Six o'clock. The Pillars of Hercules. Soho.'

Skinner nodded, imperceptibly, as another guard approached.

'All right, Derek. I'll take him from here.'

Derek Watters slapped Skinner on the arm as the other guard led him away and back towards the entrance.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, it doesn't matter what time of year, Soho is a busy place. But the White Horse pub, just down the road from Walker's Court, was relatively quiet today; as quiet as it was most days during the week, after lunch and before the workers came off s.h.i.+ft. Later on it would be bustling with the regulars who preferred the scruffy traditionalism of a proper London boozer to the trendy bars that had recently sprung up around Soho like mushrooms in an autumn wood. Soho took its name, most believed, from the old hunting cry Soho, much like the Tally ho that still sounds from blue-blooded lips up and down the s.h.i.+res, hunting ban or no. Less fanciful, perhaps, was that the name just came from a shortening of South Holborn.

The dark-haired man sitting on his own in the pub preferred the first version. As far as he was concerned, Soho was still a hunting ground. The best kind.