He took out a ten by eight black-and-white photo of the belt and buckle and handed it across to her.

Sally leaned in. 'We thought it might have been a qualifying gift. She was found near the hospital and we figured she may have worked here.'

The woman nodded. 'It's a possibility. It's the sort of buckle that a nurse might well have. When you say she was found . . . may I ask what the circ.u.mstances were?'

'She was murdered,' Delaney said shortly. 'Her throat was cut and her body was slashed. Repeatedly, and with some force.'

Margaret Johnson swallowed and nodded at the folder, steeling herself. 'I had best take a look then.'

Delaney handed the file across to her and Sally could see moisture forming in the older woman's eyes as she looked through the photos one by one.

'The poor woman.' Her voice cracked, and she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. 'I'm sorry.'

She handed the file back.

'I'm sorry you had to see those, but we need to know,' Delaney said.

'I meant I'm sorry because I can't help you.'

'Mrs Johnson?'

'She may well have been a nurse. But she didn't work here.'

The man looked at the answerphone by his bed. It was an old-fashioned one that he had never got around to replacing. You could have it through your line on BT so you didn't need a separate piece of equipment, but he had never cared for that. He liked the mechanics of things. He liked taking them apart to see how they worked. Always had. As a kid he had opened the backs of clocks to see the hidden, inner workings.

He looked again at the blinking light on the machine and felt no urge to play the message. He knew what it would be, but he had no time for petty distractions. Not today. Today he was on a high. He was floating. He was invincible.

He looked at the scuffed toes of his cowboy boots and reached down to peel a wet leaf from one of them. He held the leaf to his nose, smelling the mossy tones of it, the woodland smell, the faint but sweet smell of organic matter beginning to decompose. He rubbed his other hand on the crotch of his trousers, feeling himself harden again as he drew in another deep sniff of the leaf and looked at the photos he had taken of a young detective constable dressed in a nurse's uniform. She certainly was very pretty.

Delaney thanked Margaret Johnson once more and closed the door to her office behind him. He had made her look at the photos again and then asked her to pull the records of all the nurses currently working at the hospital. One by one they had gone through the records, looking at each pa.s.sport photo attached to each nurse's personnel file and by the end of it were none the wiser. Margaret Johnson had been right. The dead woman had not been working at the South Hampstead Hospital. At least they knew that now, if precious little else.

Delaney could see Sally Cartwright's upbeat mood had been dented a little. Not because she would have wanted the glory of making the nursing connection, of that he was sure. She was disappointed, just like he was, that they hadn't been able to identify the woman. If they could do that then it was a start to identifying her killer. Put a name to her and then maybe they could track the sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d down before it was too late. Before he struck again. But in Delaney's heart, he knew that it was a distinct possibility that it was already too late. He turned to his a.s.sistant. 'Come on.'

'Where are we going, sir?'

'To the clap clinic.'

'I beg your pardon?

Delaney laughed drily, amused at the shocked look on the young detective constable's face. 'You start going out with uniform, it's best you know where it is.' He smiled again as Sally's face reddened and walked towards the stairs. 'Come on, it's on the third floor.'

Sally called after him and hurried to catch him up. 'I hope you know that from reading the poster, sir.'

Delaney walked up the first flight of stairs and looked at the signs pointing off to the maternity clinic and back to A&E and felt a fluttering in his heart. He stopped by the window and pulled out his mobile phone. 'You go on, Sally. I'll meet you at the top.'

'Sir?'

'I need to make a call.'

Sally continued up the stairs and he waited before she was out of sight before he hit the redial b.u.t.ton on the phone. After Kate's answerphone message kicked in again he closed the phone, the blood draining from his face as he gazed down the familiar corridor.

The nurse was a small dark-haired woman in her early twenties with delicate, almost oriental, features. Her hands were small too, but precise. She moved a pillow under the woman's head. The woman's eyes were closed, her breathing operated by an artificial respirator. The mechanical pumps making an obscene sound. Her body was invaded with tubes and wires, and the beat of the heart monitor sent out a contrapuntal and discordant rhythm to the respirator. She was living in form only.

Delaney stood at the foot of the bed as the nurse finished adjusting the pillow so that the woman's dark hair fanned neatly on it. There was no twitch beneath her eyelids, no smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and there never would be again. She was dead. All it needed was for Delaney to let them turn the machine off.

The consultant was sympathetic. 'If there was any hope at all I would advise against it. Of course I would, but the brain stem has suffered too much damage. For all intents and purposes she is already dead.'

Delaney looked at him for a long moment, scared to ask the question but needing to know the answer. 'And the baby?'

The consultant shook his head sadly. 'I'm sorry.'

Delaney's head nodded downward as he gave permission. He couldn't hold back the tears any longer. His world went dark as the obscenity of the pump ceased and the heart-monitor line became still.

Delaney looked out of the window, his hand still clutching the phone like a rosary. He'd lost his wife and his baby in a matter of heartbeats four years ago and it had all but destroyed him. Now, though, he was being given a second chance. The woman he had come to love was carrying his child. His stupidity had almost lost her, but he'd be d.a.m.ned if he'd let anything or anyone come between them now. He opened the phone and hit speed dial. The phone rang at the other end and on the fifth ring cut into Kate's voice.

'This is Kate Walker. I am unavailable right now but leave me a message and I promise I will get back to you as soon as possible.'

'Kate. This is Jack. I'm sorry.' He sighed. 'I'm sorry about everything. Call me.'

He closed the phone and nodded to himself. He wasn't going to let history repeat itself. It was time to do the right thing. Finally.

Agnes Crabtree was sixty-eight years old and her knee joints were feeling every year of them that morning. The damp weather didn't help and Agnes's mood was even more depressed than usual. Six b.l.o.o.d.y months of winter nowadays. It would be April at least till there was a bit of warmth again and her aching bones might get some respite. Some doctor had been banging on about seasonal disorder on morning television earlier. SAD or something. And it was b.l.o.o.d.y sad. She made it up the flight of stairs and rested. Putting her bucket of cleaning materials on the floor and caught her breath. Not that she wanted to be breathing too deeply. The whole place smelled of p.i.s.s. And not cat p.i.s.s at that. Just as well she only cleaned on the inside of this flat, she reckoned. She groaned as she leaned over to pick up her equipment and fumbled a key into the lock of the flat. She took one or two steps into the flat, saw the long coloured scarf on the floor first and then registered what it was attached to. She tried to scream but her throat seized up with shock. She quickly stepped back, the pain in her knees ignored. The front door closed in her face and she finally found herself able to scream. She screamed again and stumbled backwards, her legs trembling. Her shaking hand went to her mouth and she took another step backwards, tripping over the can of Mr Sheen that had fallen from her dropped bucket. Her arms windmilled in the air as she lost her balance and crashed down the stairs. Her screams died as she landed at the bottom, her old head slapping on the wet concrete to lie at an odd angle, her eyes closed and a thin trickle of blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.

Delaney put his case on the table and pulled out a file. He removed the e-fit picture and handed it to Dr Andrew Burke, a silver-haired man in his early thirties. Delaney reckoned that maybe the rigours of his job, the sights he'd seen on a daily basis, had sent his hair prematurely grey.

The man shook his head as he studied the picture. 'Sorry, he doesn't look familiar. He might have been in yesterday, you say?'

'Might have been.'

'I'll get Suzanne. She was on the morning shift yesterday. She might recognise him.'

The doctor left the room. Sally picked up the picture that the doctor had left on the desk. 'Why do you think he came here?'

'It's pretty common.'

'What is?'

'Flashers. Think about it, he gets to expose himself and have the goods handled at the same time.' He shrugged with a rueful smile. 'And if he's got a thing about nurses . . .'

Sally grimaced. 'Please tell me you're joking.'

Delaney grinned again. 'It's a sick world we live in, Sally.'

'You can say that again.'

'A pound to a penny our boy likes to get his pickle tickled.'

Sally frowned. 'Don't they stick little spoons up?'

Delaney nodded and Sally grimaced again. The office door opened and the doctor came back in followed by an Afro-Caribbean woman, five foot two and weighing close to a couple of hundred pounds by Delaney's reckoning, but she fitted into her neat, dark blue uniform like a Horse Guard on parade.

Andrew Burke gestured towards her. 'This is Suzanne.'

'How can I help you, Inspector?' Her voice was thick and rolling, like a wave of wind through a field of mola.s.ses cane.

Delaney held the photo out to her and she nodded. 'Yes, bless him, he was here yesterday. If it's who I think it is.'

'Why bless him?'

'The poor lad. He's had some disfigurement.'

'Scarring to his p.e.n.i.s?'

The nurse nodded. 'Indeed. And then he got a bit embarra.s.sed when we did some tests.'

'Embarra.s.sed?' Sally asked.

The nurse smiled at her. 'He got himself a little aroused. It does happen.'

Sally's scowl deepened.

Delaney took the photo from her. 'If you could let me have his name and contact details it would be very useful.'

'Sure. It will take a few minutes.'

'Quick as you can.'

Suzanne looked up sharply at the seriousness in his voice, and hurried away to get the information.

Outside the clinic Sally could barely contain her exuberance.

'You think he's our man, sir?'

'He's our flasher, that's about all we know for sure.'

'Should we call it in, send uniform round?'

'We'll take care of it, but first, as we're here, let's see if the Kraken has woken up.'

Sally looked at him puzzled. 'Sir?'

A stray dog slowly approached the motionless body of Agnes Crabtree, tentatively sniffing the air, and moved closer. It was a ragged thing. A composite of hair and bone and appet.i.te, scabby, starving and neglected. It nuzzled Agnes's face with its jaw and scented the fresh blood that had spilled along the pitted line of her chin into a small, brown stain on the wet stone. The smell made the dog's stomach rumble and flex with pain. He opened his jaw wider and, taking the old woman's ear between his teeth, gave a little tug. Agnes Crabtree groaned and shifted but did not awaken and slumped again, her breath exhaling in a wet, barely audible sigh. But the dog had long gone by then, his tail between his legs and his meal forgotten. In his experience human beings never meant anything but pain.

Delaney looked down at the still motionless body of Kevin Norrell as Sally picked up his medical chart at the foot of the bed.

'He's lucky to be alive.'

'If he makes it.'

'What do you think he knows?'

'People talk in prison. They brag. Someone may have told him something. Maybe he was involved himself.' Delaney shrugged.

Sally hesitated then put Norrell's chart back and looked at her boss. 'Yesterday I looked at the reports, boss. The incident . . .'

Delaney, hearing the hesitation in her voice, glanced over at her. 'Just spit it out, Sally.'

'The hold-up at the petrol station.'

It flashed back unbidden into Delaney's mind. The darkness of the night split by the sound and the flare of lighting cracking. Of gla.s.s exploding, of tyres squealing and a woman's voice screaming, then silence. Those shards of gla.s.s flying through the night air like barbs of conscience to bury deep into Delaney's brain. The guilt hooking him, ever since, like a bloodstained puppet to jerk and twitch under the hand of a punishing G.o.d.

'What about it, Detective Constable?' he asked simply.

'They robbed the place. And then they left, shooting out the window. Why would they do that?'

'Because they're mindless thugs.'

'Maybe. But three heavily tooled-up villains and a driver? Sounds like a professional job to me.'

'Go on.'

'For a petrol station?' Sally shrugged. 'Makes no sense. Everyone knows they don't have the sort of cash on the premises to merit that kind of operation.'

Delaney took it in, the realisation giving him a feeling in his stomach akin to a lift dropping several floors quickly. Sally was right, he had been the worst kind of idiot. Four years of alcohol-induced rage, but it had been directed at himself not at the people really responsible. He'd been flailing around in his own misery and self-disgust to see what Sally had seen almost immediately. No self-respecting, professional outfit would target a petrol station, it made no sense.

'So, it wasn't a robbery?'

'No, sir, I don't think it was.' She looked at her boss sympathetically. 'I think it was a warning, and your wife just got in the way.'

'Warning to who?'

I don't know, sir.'

Delaney looked down at the sleeping figure of Kevin Norrell. The comatose man knew something, he was certain of that. But Sally had provided him with somewhere to start at least. Four years of nothing. Dead ends and false trails. And now his bright-eyed detective constable, fresh out of college, was seeing things he should have seen straight away. He cursed himself for a fool and then realised he didn't have the time for any more self-pity. It was time to put matters right.

'Come on then, Sally.'

'Where to?'

'Work.'

Delaney held the piece of paper the Afro-Caribbean nurse had given him tightly in his hand. The flasher was called Ashley Bradley, he was twenty-eight years old, on unemployment benefit and lived at 28b Morris Street in Chalk Farm, just a couple of stops down on the Northern Line from South Hampstead Tube.

He was heading for the exit when he saw a familiar face waiting at the lift. He stopped and waved Sally ahead. 'Wait for me in the car, Sally.' He tossed her the keys. 'You can drive.'

Sally looked over to where Delaney's gaze was focused and her mouth twisted in disapproval. 'Do you think that's a wise idea, sir?'

'Just do it, Constable.'