'Sir?'

'England, Sally. That's what it's down to. G.o.d's punishing us, each and every one of us. And He's doing it by making us live in this s.h.i.tehole of a country.'

Sally followed him out the door, not replying. She guessed some people just weren't morning persons.

The window was slightly open and the wind whistling outside knocked the blind against the wooden frame with an inconsistent rhythm. Kate woke slowly. Lifting one eyelid, she winced a little and closed it again. She murmured softly and turned on to her side. She reached out a hand and snaked her fingers through the man's curly hair and smiled. 'Jack, wake up.'

She slid her hand down over his shoulder to tangle her fingers in his chest hair, only his skin was completely smooth. She frowned, puzzled for a moment, then her smile faded, her eyes shot open with realisation and she looked, horrified, at the naked man sleeping beside her in her bed.

's.h.i.t!'

She turned over again and looked at the clock radio on her bedside cabinet. It was half past seven. She cursed again and tried to remember what had happened the night before. And couldn't.

's.h.i.t.'

Quarter to eight and the rain was still falling, although lighter than it had been. Detective Inspector Jack Delaney and Detective Constable Sally Cartwright were stamping their feet as they stood outside 'Bab's Kebabs' burger van round the corner from the police station. Roy, the corpulent owner and chef, was flipping bacon on the hot griddle plate as Delaney and Sally sheltered from the persistent drizzle as much as they could under the awning.

'Point in case . . .' He pointed his egg slice at Delaney. 'What did you reckon of Madonna's "American Pie", Inspector?'

Delaney shrugged. 'I liked it.'

'Yeah, well, you would. My point exactly. Every man and his dog in the rest of the world thinks it's a piece of s.h.i.t, but you like it.'

'It's a song, not a sacred cow. People should be more tolerant.'

Roy laughed. 'Ever heard of the pot and the kettle?' He fixed Delaney with a puzzled expression. 'I heard you'd quit the job anyway.'

'I did.'

'What happened then?'

's.h.i.t happened, Roy. You ought to know about that. And they needed me to clean it up. Only man for the job.'

Roy winked at Sally. 'And I bet you're right glad to have this little ray of bog-trotting sunshine back.'

Sally laughed. 'We're all glad.'

Roy shook his head. 'Yeah, well, I wouldn't be betting any large change on that.'

Delaney stirred some sugar in his coffee. 'You got that right.'

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 f.u.c.king 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 s.e.x. 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 a.s.saulted 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sault?'

'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 p.o.r.nography. Particularly nasty child p.o.r.nography 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.'

'I'm afraid that won't be possible right away.'

'Why not? There's been a death, a serious a.s.sault. This is a police matter now.'

'And an investigation is under way. Your involvement will need to be officially sanctioned.' He shrugged, apologetically. 'At this moment it is out of both our hands.'

Delaney looked at him steadily. 'You know why I was due to speak to him?'

'I do. And I'm sorry.'

'Then you also know why I'm not going to just let this go?'

'Of course I do. And I want you to know that I will do everything in my power to help you, Inspector Delaney. Work with me on this.'

Delaney turned to Sally. 'Come on, Constable.'

'Sir.'

Delaney held the door open and turned back to the governor pointedly as Sally walked out. 'I'll be coming back. And in the meantime, you have my mobile number. You call me night or day you hear anything.'

'I am on your side, Inspector.'

Delaney held his gaze a moment longer and then left. The governor took off his gla.s.ses, running his hand over his brow, damp suddenly in the air-conditioned room.

Kate Walker shrugged out of her raincoat as she entered the suite of rooms and nodded distractedly to Lorraine Simons, her recently graduated a.s.sistant, who was still in the early days of training to become a forensic pathologist. She hung up the coat on an old wooden hatstand and walked past the trainee's desk, straight to her own office. She heard the young woman say something but had absolutely no idea what it was. She closed the door behind her, sat at her desk and, holding her head in her hands, cursed herself in a low whisper as she tried to put together a picture from the jigsaw pieces of memory from the night before.

She remembered travelling on the Tube, she remembered deciding to go to the Holly Bush rather than returning straight home, although now she wished to G.o.d she hadn't, she remembered having the first couple of b.l.o.o.d.y Marys, and then she remembered chatting to the tall, handsome man in his late thirties, with dark curly hair and the kind of dark, come-to-bed eyes that were lately proving to be her undoing; but after that she had absolutely no memory whatsoever. It was a complete blank. She couldn't remember a d.a.m.n thing from about eight thirty last night to waking up with a complete and total stranger in her bed at seven thirty that morning. And that wasn't something Kate Walker did. Ever.

She had shown the man, Paul Archer, out in the morning but had barely said ten words to him. Just hurried him out before closing the door on him, feeling the heat burn her face then as it was now as she shamefully tried to recall the previous night's events. Tried desperately hard, but failed absolutely.

The door to her office opened and Lorraine stuck her head round the corner. She was twenty-five, with strawberry-blonde hair, a body trim from cycling, a heart-shaped face, innocent eyes and the kind of optimism only found in the unworldly young or the terminally stupid.

'I was asking if you wanted any coffee, Dr Walker? I'm just about to make a trip to Starbucks.'

Kate found a smile from somewhere. 'Thanks, Lorraine, get us a hot chocolate and a croissant. And, please, it's Kate, not Dr Walker.'

Lorraine nodded. 'It's the weather for it. Don't know what happened to the summer.'

Kate smiled again, ironically. 'In our job you get to learn pretty fast that all things pa.s.s, Lorraine. All things end.'

Lorraine grimaced. 'Cheery thought.'

Kate flapped a dismissive hand at her. 'Go on, get the drinks.'

Lorraine closed the door behind her and as it did Kate's smile headed south faster than a penguin on a promise. She made a small fist of her right hand and put the nail of her thumb between her teeth. She deliberated for a second or two, then picked up the phone and rapidly tapped in some numbers. After a moment her call was answered. 'It's Kate,' she said quickly, needing to spill the words out. 'I think I've done something really stupid.'

She listened to the response, looking up at the ceiling. 'It's nothing like that. But I need to see you.' She looked through the gla.s.s window of her office to see Lorraine, bundled up against the cold, heading out the door and sighed. 'I need you to do some tests on me, Jane.'