'And one other thing, Jack.'

Delaney looked at her quizzically.

'We'll take my car.'

'We have to make a slight detour first.' Delaney turned back to Sally as they walked to the door. 'Keep me in touch.'

'Sir.'

She stuck her thumb up in the air without looking at her boss, her attention focused on her computer screen, looking at the reports Kate Walker had printed out and the crime-scene photographs. She wondered whether she'd ever be able to look at photos like them and not feel physically sick. She fervently hoped not.

Sanjeev Singh was tall but as thin as a Lowry stick man. He wore large, black-framed gla.s.ses and was never dressed in anything other than a two-piece brown suit. He had always been of a nervous disposition and so why he had put a jangling bell over the entrance to his shop was a mystery to anyone who knew him.

He flinched as the door creaked open and the bra.s.s bell above it danced on its coiled bra.s.s spring, jangling his nerves once more.

'We're about to close,' he called over his shoulder as he placed an art deco sugar sifter, conical-shaped and decorated in Spring Crocus pattern, carefully back in a display cabinet. He put the price page next to it: four hundred and fifty pounds.

'Nice piece.'

He turned round and smiled at Kate, but his smile faded as Delaney stepped forward.

'We're not here for antiques.'

Sanjeev Singh lifted his arms and made an expansive gesture with his shoulders, a gesture he had used many times to good effect in the amateur pantomimes he had appeared in. 'I am sorry, but antiques is all I deal in.'

Delaney showed him his warrant card. 'It's information we need.'

Singh frowned. 'I don't understand.'

'Four years ago you sold your petrol station in Pinner Green. We want to know why, and we want to know who to.'

The antique dealer's shoulders slumped, and any pretence at good humour disappeared. 'My lawyers handled the sale. It was to a development company. I wanted to get out of the trade. Buy an antiques shop. The timing was right. Now I am sorry, but I really have to close.'

'It wasn't good timing for my wife, Mr Singh.'

Sanjeev Singh looked at Delaney again, recognition dawning in his eyes. He gestured with his hands again, hands that were suddenly trembling even more than was usual.

'Look, I am sorry about what happened to your wife. The next day someone made me an offer for the place and I accepted it.'

'Why?'

'Why do you think? I don't know who was behind it but their methods were pretty clear.'

'Somebody wanted you out?'

'I'd had an offer before but I turned it down. I thought that if they were desperate for my property they could pay top dollar. But that same week the florists next door had an accidental fire. Their dog, a Labrador, died in the fire. They sold. And after what happened to me, I sold too.'

'Who to?'

The man shrugged again, apologetically. 'I don't know. It was all done through a lawyer.'

'Okay.' Delaney gestured to Kate. 'Come on, let's get your things.'

Kate held up her hand. 'One minute.' She turned to the trembling Indian. 'One more thing.'

Sanjeev clasped his hands together. 'Please, I have told you everything I know.'

'What's your best price on the sugar sifter?'

A smile almost came back on his face. 'You have a remarkable eye, madam. This here is-'

'Yes, I know,' Kate said, interrupting. 'It's Clarice Cliff. What will you take for it?'

Some minutes after they had left, Sanjeev Singh finally brought his shaking hands under enough control to pick up a telephone.

Kate pulled her car to the side of the road with a practised spin of the wheel. She snapped her seat belt open and turned to Delaney. 'I won't be long.'

'I'm coming with you, Kate.'

She turned the key to open the front door of her house and the first thing that struck her was the cold, the wind was blowing from the inside out. The second thing was the carnage.

Every room in the maisonette had been turned upside down. In the lounge bookcases had been toppled to the floor, sofas and chairs upended, CDs and records strewn as though a hurricane had blown through the place. Her bedroom was equally ravaged, and in the kitchen, plates and crockery had been smashed, the table legs snapped off, food scattered everywhere. Kate was too numb to cry out. She looked at Delaney, fury bubbling through her. She slammed the open back door shut. 'We have to get him, Jack. We have to stop him.'

She began to shake, willing herself to stop but unable to get her twitching muscles to comply.

Delaney took two quick steps to her side and enveloped her in a hug. 'It's going to be all right, Kate. I swear it.'

And Kate, feeling the strength in his arms, feeling the pa.s.sion in his voice, believed him. For the first time in years she felt protected. She loved him, she knew that now more than ever. He was the first man she had ever truly let into her life. He had hurt her, but she realised that she had been hurt so deeply because she loved him so deeply. She held him as though she could bind him to her for ever. Jack Delaney was part of her now and she would never let him go.

Delaney pulled out his phone. 'Dave, it's Delaney. I need to get a couple of units down here. Kate Walker's house has been trashed.'

Ten minutes later, Kate put down the small suitcase that she had packed, and locked her front door. Delaney picked up her suitcase and walked towards her car as she fished in her pocket for her car keys. She was just thinking that at least the Clarice Cliff sugar sifter hadn't been in the house, when a shot rang out in the night air like a sudden crack of thunder. Kate instinctively looked up at the sky then screamed as Delaney rocked on his heels, a surprised look on his face, then stumbled and fell sideways to crumple on to the cold, wet pavement.

Kate rushed over to him, calling his name, begging him to speak. But Delaney was beyond speech; he was beyond comprehension. She tried to shield his body with her own as she fumbled in her pocket for her phone, looking about desperately to see where the shot had come from.

'Stay with me, Jack. Stay with me.'

Her voice was no more than a whisper, but it echoed in her mind like a thunderous prayer. Before her trembling fingers could punch in 999 on her phone keypad, the sound of police sirens from the squad cars that Delaney had asked for came roaring into her street. And she prayed continually as she tried to find a pulse. 'Stay with me, Jack. Please stay with me.'

He rubbed the soft fabric over the gleaming grip of the gun. He had already anointed the wood with beeswax and polished it in with an old yellow duster. He was just giving the final finish with the superior cloth. He rubbed it some more, seeing his reflection looking back at him, distorted in the smooth surface of the wood. His eyes were widened and smiling.

He held the cloth to his nose and sniffed deeply as though it were an oxygen mask. Then he opened it out and lay it on the coffee table, like a trophy. It was a pair of plain, white cotton panties that he had stolen, like the scarf, from Dr Kate Walker's house.

DAY THREE.

The rain had stopped sometime in the middle of the night. But the ground wasn't cold enough yet to freeze, and so the paths that ran through Hampstead Heath like veins through a body were slick with wet mud and leaves. Gillian Carter, a twenty-seven-year-old bookshop a.s.sistant, picked her way carefully down one of the paths. Not an easy task as the dog she had on the other end of the lead, a Briard, weighed nearly as much as she did and had the energy of a roomful of pre-school children on a diet of Red Bull. A bird clattered out of the trees ahead and the dog leapt after it. Gillian Carter, faced with the choice of losing control of the dog or herself on the slippery downward slope, chose the former and let the lead fly from her hand.

'Jake!' she called after the dog, but he was focused on the bird swirling upwards through the air and soon disappeared deep into the bracken. Gillian stopped to catch her breath and sighed. It wasn't even her dog. She was looking after him for some neighbours whilst they went for a holiday to Tenerife. Lucky b.u.g.g.e.rs, she thought, as she skirted around a particularly large puddle on the path. She didn't envy them Tenerife, just the sun. Gillian would kill for a week of sunshine. She absolutely detested England in the winter, and even though every year she promised herself a trip to sunnier climes, she had yet to deliver on that promise.

'Jake!' she called again as she followed his trail through the bracken, more in hope than expectation, but was pleasantly surprised to see the frisky dog bounding up to her. There was some cloth in his mouth.

She bent down to take it from him and realised that it was a Burberry scarf. Some chav and his girlfriend getting jiggy with it on the heath, she speculated with a disapproving quirk of an eyebrow. Although, to be fair, in this weather she admired their resilience, if not their respect of urban social niceties.

She would have turned back to the path but the dog trotted into a small clearing ahead and barked at the prostrate and motionless figure of a small, bald man.

'My G.o.d!' Gillian gasped and ran over. She knelt and tried to find a pulse in his neck. She couldn't be sure but she thought she could feel the faintest of murmurs. She pulled out her phone and dialled emergency services. Slipping out of her Barbour jacket, she laid it under the man's head. Thank goodness that he was wearing such a thick coat, she thought, because even though it made him look like an ancient, hairless Paddington Bear, it had probably saved his life.

Kate Walker knew she shouldn't do it, but, as she sat at her friend's computer terminal, she couldn't help herself. She typed in the access code Jane Harrington had, under duress, given her, and typed in DELANEY to pull up his hospital records. She knew enough not to trust anything the staff at the hospital had told her. She wasn't a relative; she didn't know exactly what she was. Girlfriend didn't sound right. Partner was a bit formal for what they had had. Mother of his child, she decided, that was what she was, and that gave her rights.

The first hit came up with Siobhan Delaney.

Not the rights to look at confidential medical records, maybe, but the man she loved was recovering from an operation and she wanted to know how bad the damage was, she justified to herself.

But not the right to read his ex-wife's records. Kate found herself unable to click the screen away and carried on reading it instead. That night had defined Delaney, after all, for the last four years. It had certainly defined their relationship, if such it was. And so, moral qualms pushed aside, Kate read the report.

Everything was much as she knew it to be. His pregnant wife, suffering heavy blood loss, was rushed into theatre. They had performed an emergency C section. The baby, and subsequently the mother, had died. The procedures seemed in order, everything but the outcome was in order.

Apart from one thing.

She read the doc.u.ment again and wished she never had.

Kate closed down the computer screen. She'd read the reports on Jack's injury. He had been incredibly lucky. The bullet had pa.s.sed through the lower part of his left shoulder, it had broken no bones and was well clear of any organs. Had the police not arrived when they did, she reflected, it was quite likely that whoever had shot him would have crossed the road and finished the job. And her with him, likely as not. She shivered at the thought.

The door creaked open and Jane Harrington came back into her office, carrying a couple of mugs of coffee.

'Keep meaning to get some WD40 on that,' she said.

'I'm sorry?' Kate looked back at her, not at all sure what she had said.

'The door. Needs some oil.'

Kate took the coffee and took a sip. It was welcome. She had been up all night. Waiting for Delaney to go into surgery. Waiting by his bedside after the operation. At seven o'clock she had called her friend. She needed to do something, even it was just to see his records for herself. Things were spiralling out of control, that much was clear. And Kate needed to do something. She needed to try and take control. And the one thing she did know about was medicine.

Her friend observed the way she held both hands round the coffee mug, as if to warm more than her fingers. 'How is he, Kate?'

'He's going to be okay. For now. The bullet did as little damage as possible under the circ.u.mstances. He must have an guardian angel looking over him.'

'Or the other kind.'

'What do you mean?'

'He's not had a lot of luck just lately, has he?'

Without being aware she was doing it, Kate ran a hand protectively over her stomach. 'Maybe that's all about to change.'

'What about you?'

'What about me?'

'With everything that's going on, Kate. Have you made any decisions?'

Kate took another sip of her coffee. 'Yeah, I've decided I'm not going to take any more c.r.a.p in my life.'

He was at the bottom of a deep pool, but the light streaking down from the green disc ahead was bright and strong, the gravel and pebbles beneath his questing fingers were dappled with it. They shone like precious stones. Jack held his breath as he searched. He had to find it, that one special pebble. He had to find it and put it back in its rightful place and then everything would be all right. The world would be right again.

He didn't know how long he had been under but he felt the stale oxygen in his lungs swelling his chest painfully. He let a slow trickle of air bubble from his lips as he raked his fingers through the stones. He tried to fight back the rising panic as the carbon dioxide in his lungs now put a dull throbbing in his head. He let out another trickle of air and with one last scan of his straining eyes he realised he had failed in his mission, for now at least. He kicked his legs and swam up to the ovoid shape, the underside of his rowing boat. But as he neared it and tried to put his hand up to pull himself out, a thick arm descended, wrapping around his neck and keeping him beneath the water. His legs thrashed wildly as stars started exploding before his eyes, he knew he had to break free, he couldn't hold his breath any longer. He had to break free or drown. But he couldn't. He couldn't loosen the grip.

Delaney eyes flew open in panic, he tried to breathe but couldn't. Then the man standing over him, dressed in a white doctor's coat, released the grip on his throat slightly and Delaney gulped in hungry swallows of air.

The man grunted, letting Delaney breathe but keeping an iron grip on his throat, keeping him pinned to the hospital bed. 'You got a good reason why I shouldn't kill you here and now?'

'No. But you have.'

'That a fact?'

Delaney shrugged as calmly as he could under the circ.u.mstances. 'Seems to be, Norrell.'

Norrell glared at him and finally grunted again. 'I'll make a deal with you.'

'Go on.'

'I'll let you live and I'll even tell you who was behind the petrol station job. Who it was that got your wife killed.'

'The shooter.'

Norrell shook his head. 'The shooter was just a tool. You want the man who set the whole thing in motion.'

'And in return?'

Norrell shook his head. 'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'You're a loaded gun, Delaney, I'm just pulling the trigger.' Norrell took his hand off Delaney's throat. 'It was Mickey Ryan.'

Delaney rubbed his sore throat. The man really did have hands like hams. 'How do you know?'

'He came to me first. I turned him down.'

Delaney was impressed. People didn't turn Mickey Ryan down. He was as close to an organised crime G.o.dfather as west London had. From a small-time drug dealer, he had built his empire up over the years like a Richard Branson of sleaze. Serious crime had been after him for years, but he was clever, his money was invested offsh.o.r.e. Put into holding companies. Sh.e.l.ls. It made sense he was behind the property deal in Pinner Green. Never mind the downturn, as far as Delaney was concerned property prices were still the crime of the century. No wonder sc.u.m like Mickey Ryan was involved.