Delaney sighed and Sally Cartwright and Bob Wilkinson had to try hard not to smile. 'Just tell us what happened?'

'I was walking on to the heath-'

Delaney interrupted her. 'You hadn't seen anybody earlier, somebody coming off the heath perhaps?'

The woman shook her head. 'Not a single soul. Weather like this tends to keep people at home or in their cars, doesn't it?'

Sally looked up from her notebook. 'And the man who exposed himself to you . . . ?'

'He was in his late twenties I'd say, maybe thirties. Semi-priapic.'

'I'm sorry?' Sally asked.

Wilkinson smiled. 'He had a hard-on, Sally.'

'Yeah, thanks, Bob,' said Delaney.

'Well, partly so, enough I guess for him to waggle,' added the nurse. 'It was early, and it was pretty cold, mind you.'

Delaney held up his hand. 'Can we concentrate on the man, not just the member?'

'He was about five ten, wearing a fawn-coloured overcoat, he might have had a suit on under his coat, he had dark trousers anyway.'

Sally flicked back through her notebook. 'You called him a raggedy man earlier.'

Valerie Manners nodded. 'Yes, it was his hair.'

Delaney waited patiently, but when there was nothing forthcoming, said, 'And? What about his hair?'

'It was raggedy, you know?'

'No?'

'Sort of wild, curly. A bit like yours.' She pointed to Delaney. 'Only longer and it hadn't been combed, it was sticking out.'

'Like his c.o.c.k,' said Bob Wilkinson, his smile suddenly dying on his lips as Delaney glared at him, the detective inspector's already thin patience finally worn through.

At the mortuary Kate Walker scrubbed her hands, holding them under the hot water and rubbing the brush as if to scratch away the touch of Paul Archer. She felt like dipping them in acid.

'Are you all right, Dr Walker?' Lorraine Simons had come into the room and was watching her, concern evident in her eyes.

'I'm fine.' Kate finished her hands, drying them and slipping on a pair of latex gloves.

'You had a phone call earlier. Dr Jane Harrington. She didn't leave a message.'

Kate nodded. 'It can wait. She can't.' She walked across to the mortuary table where the body of the murdered girl was laid out in cold, clinical repose. Her naked skin pearlescent white under the bright lights, like a dead snow queen.

Kate watched as her a.s.sistant joined her at the table, wheeling across the stack of instruments with which they would try and ascertain the manner of the young woman's death. Quantify it. Render a human life into its const.i.tuent parts. Why was she doing this? she thought to herself. Working with the dead? Maybe her friend Jane was right, she had always been so sure of herself. But suddenly everything was shifting for her, nothing was fixed. Her career had always been a focus, a constant. Now? Now she didn't even know who she was any more.

She glanced across at her young a.s.sistant. 'What made you want to do this job?' she asked.

Lorraine looked at her a little puzzled. 'Don't you remember asking me that in my interview?'

Kate smiled apologetically. 'There were a lot of interviews. A lot of interviewees, all of them saying the same thing. I just wondered what it really was for you?'

Lorraine picked up a scalpel and ran her thumb along the blunt part of it. 'All through medical school I wanted to be a surgeon.'

'What changed?'

'It was a gradual thing, really. But one night, I was an intern on surgical rotation and a couple of children were brought in. A ten-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. They had both been repeatedly stabbed. By their father.'

'Go on.'

'He was a manic-depressive. On a c.o.c.ktail of antidepressants, booze and marijuana. He had an argument with his wife, picked up a carving knife and stabbed both his kids to punish her.'

'Nice.'

'The boy lasted an hour. We did what we could but he had lost a lot of blood. We worked on the girl through the night. There were multiple complications, she had been stabbed nine times. We brought her out of surgery and had to take her back in as she arrested in recovery. She arrested again on the table.' She put the scalpel down and looked steadily at Kate. 'When she arrested again we had to let her go. Even had she survived she would have been brain-dead. There was nothing we could do. We had to tell the mother she had lost both her children. Some hours later the mother jumped in front of a train on the Northern Line at Chalk Farm.'

Kate shook her head sympathetically. 'It wasn't your fault. You did what you could.'

Lorraine nodded. 'I don't blame myself. There's only one person responsible for their deaths. But I couldn't deal with it any more. I couldn't deal with the fact that whatever you do, however much you try, eventually someone will die. And if you are going to be a surgeon you have to be able to deal with that. You have to be able to detach emotionally. And I couldn't. And I didn't want to go into general practice.' She looked down on the cold body of the dead woman. 'At least in here you can't fail. n.o.body pays a price for your mistakes.'

'That's true . . .' Kate looked at the dead woman's face, at her neck, at the start of the first incision, but knew that she was lying to her young a.s.sistant. '. . . and at least you didn't say you had a crush on Amanda Burton.'

'Who?'

'Good answer.'

Kate looked back at the dead woman's neck again and then bent down to get a closer look. 'What do you make of this?'

Lorraine moved around the table to see what Kate was looking at. 'It appears to be some kind of puncture wound.'

'Get the camera. Let's take some close-up shots.

Jack Delaney took a big bite out of his second bacon sandwich that day and grunted with approval. 'You're an irritating b.a.s.t.a.r.d at the best of times, Roy, but you make a halfway decent sandwich.'

'From anyone else I'd tell them to stick their head in a pig, but coming from you, Inspector Delaney, I'll take that as a big f.u.c.king compliment.' Roy smiled broadly, his teeth like an old piano with half the keys missing, and turned back to the book he was reading. A new science-fiction blockbuster by Peter F. Hamilton from whom he had nicked the name for his burger van.

Delaney walked across to Sally Cartwright who was delicately eating a bean burger as she leaned against the bonnet of her car. Her small teeth made precise, uniform bites. Delaney leaned beside her on the bonnet finishing his sandwich and considered matters. Now that the body of the young goth woman had been removed to the morgue, the SOCOs and uniforms were conducting a fingertip search and dusting any suitable surface. Given the overnight rain Delaney doubted there would be any chance of lifting any prints. Kate Walker had barely said three words to him since returning to the scene-of-crime tent. He hadn't expected her to be sweetness and light to him but he had hoped she could keep a professional neutrality, at least. He knew he had hurt her, but they had only slept together once after all, and that hardly const.i.tuted a relationship. And the fact of the matter was he had only ended their affair because he didn't want to see her getting hurt. He knew his own failings better than anybody and he knew he wasn't in a place right now to be of any use in her life. He couldn't remember who said it but he remembered the quote about the eleventh commandment. 'Never sleep with anybody who has got more problems than you have.' He reckoned that between Kate Walker and himself that would be a close run thing. One thing was sure, though, she was certainly taking the case this morning a whole lot more personally than he had ever seen her take one before. Kate Walker had always been practically a byword for icy efficiency, but the dead goth had certainly got to her in some way, that much was painfully obvious.

'Sir?'

Delaney blinked out of his thoughts and looked at Sally. 'Sorry, what?'

'I was asking about the raggedy-haired man. You think he's connected with the dead girl?'

Delaney finished his sandwich. 'I don't know. I think we should find him, though.'

'Do you think there is a s.e.xual connection with the murder?'

Delaney wiped his hands and stood up. 'We'll find out soon enough if there is. But she was naked from the waist up which suggests a s.e.xual element. And the psychiatrists tell us often enough that in these sort of crimes the knife becomes a phallic subst.i.tute.'

'Boys and their toys, eh, Inspector?'

'Something like that. Come on, Constable. Or are you going to take all day eating that burger?'

Delaney walked off, crossing over the road and headed towards White City police station, purpose in his stride.

Diane Campbell looked up from her desk as Delaney came into her office. She gestured to him as she took out a packet of cigarettes and walked to the window. 'Keep an eye out. The new super has a bug up his a.r.s.e about smoking. Anyone would think it's against the law.'

'It is, Diane.'

She smiled and fired up a cigarette and opened her window slightly. 'So, what have you got for me, cowboy?'

Delaney shrugged. 'Nothing new. The body is at the morgue.'

'What's your instinct? s.e.xual predator? First date gone wrong? Homicidal maniac?'

'I don't know, boss. A lot of anger there, that much is clear.'

'Killed in the woods, or dumped there?'

'The doc reckons she was killed where we found her. The blood-spatter patterns seem pretty conclusive.'

'Did she give a time of death?'

'Last night.' He shrugged. 'Hopefully we'll know more after the post.'

Diane took a drag on her cigarette and looked at him. 'And what did you get up to after I dropped you off?'

'I went home and tucked myself straight up in bed like a good boy.'

'Yeah, right.'

He smiled, but his eyes were flat. Remembering.

Delaney hunched the collar of his jacket around his neck and leaned back, shielding himself from the wind as he lit the cigarette that was his excuse for getting off the train. The dark-haired woman in the carriage had reminded him of Kate. It wasn't her. Wasn't remotely like her, apart from the hair. But he couldn't keep her out of his mind and, suddenly claustrophobic with his thoughts, he had hurried through the closing doors, shouldered through the crowds, up the escalator and out into the fresh, cool air.

Eight o'clock at night and it was already dark. The black clouds overhead were pregnant with rain, a real burst of it looked imminent, but the pavement was bright from the street lamps and the wash of light that spilled from the broad windows of WH Smith which Delaney was leaning against. He stood there for a moment or two, watching people hurry across the road and into the safety of the station. He watched a woman in her forties with dyed, ill-kempt, blonde hair and a red vinyl jacket walk near the phone boxes, scanning the eyes of approaching men, looking to make a deal, needing another fix and not caring about the weather.

Delaney finished his cigarette and walked back to the station entrance. A couple of stops up the Northern Line and he'd be in Belsize Park. Back home. Only it didn't feel like home to him and he was not sure it ever would. He paused at the entrance. Maybe he should do as his boss suggested. He'd had quite a few drinks already but he was a very long way from being rat-a.r.s.ed. He shook another cigarette out of a packet and lit it, feeling his heart pound in his chest, and came to a decision. He blew out a stream of smoke and started walking. Away from the station towards the British Library. He crossed over the road, running to dodge the traffic, and walked a couple of hundred yards up Pentonville Road towards Judd Street and went into a pub on the corner of the two roads. An Irish bar, a proper one, not a diddly shamrock theme pub. The warmth and the noise wrapped around him as he entered, the light was bright but, for a change, Delaney didn't mind that. He walked across the scuffed wooden floor to the long, scruffy bar and ordered a large whiskey and a pint of Guinness from the freckled woman in her thirties who was stood behind it. He had downed the whiskey before the Guinness had settled and ordered another one. He was sipping it a little bit more slowly when a soft, hot, moist voice whispered in his ear.

'h.e.l.lo, stranger.'

He turned round and took another sip of the whiskey, looking into the cool, green eyes of the woman who had sat on the stool next to him. Her hip rubbing against his thigh. She was dressed in skintight jeans, a cream-coloured wool jumper and a brown suede jacket. Delaney smiled at her and raised his gla.s.s. 'Stella Trant.'

'In the flesh.' Stella leaned against the bar putting her shoulders back in a feline manner, stretching the jumper across her braless chest.

Delaney smiled again and looked again into her deep, green eyes, seeing the playfulness sparking in them now. 'Buy you a drink?'

Stella smiled, nodding, and rubbed her arm, wincing a little.

'You hurt yourself?'

'Tennis elbow. Professional injury.'

'You play tennis?'

'Swinging a whip. Toy one, made of suede. Some guy had me manacle him to a wall in his cellar and pretend to whip him heavily for an hour.' She rubbed her arm again. 'The novelty soon wears off.' She looked at him pointedly and smiled. 'Reminds me a lot of you by the way. Same hair, same dress sense.'

Delaney shook his head, a smile on the edge of his lips. 'Not me. I don't play at things.'

'Is that a fact?'

Delaney looked at her steadily as he finished his second whiskey. 'Not unless I win.'

'Maybe next time I'll let you.'

Superintendent George Napier did little to hide his dislike of the man standing in front of his desk. The man's eyes were bloodshot, his hair was too long, too curly, too far from neatly combed. Altogether there was a sense of looseness to his appearance. Jack Delaney. Slack Delaney more like! Too c.o.c.ky, too casual, too d.a.m.ned indifferent. George Napier was not a man who did casual and had little time for those that did. He didn't much care for the Irish either. He didn't trust them. He still remembered hundreds of Irish men and women lining the streets of Kilburn to mark the funeral of one of their IRA heroes. Once a criminal always a criminal in his book, and he recognised the status of the IRA as a legitimate political operation about as much as he recognised the legitimacy of the claim Argentina had on the Falklands. Mainly he didn't like the man's sullen, mute insolence. No respect for authority. That was obvious. Like many of his generation he would have benefited from National Service.

George Napier was too young himself to have gone through National Service, but he had joined the Territorial Army while at university and when he graduated it had been a toss-up between the armed forces and the police. The police had won by a narrow margin. The man in front of him wouldn't last a weekend with the TA he decided, let alone the proper army.

As far as he was concerned the police force should be like a domestic army. Anybody who didn't realise they were fighting a war nowadays hadn't read the papers or listened to the news. Never mind the war on terror; the amount of guns and knives on the streets made the boroughs of London every bit as dangerous a place to live as Beirut in his opinion. And to fight that, to bring law and order back to the country, took vision, it took backbone and it took discipline, by G.o.d. And although he knew that the man standing in front of him had been responsible for bringing down a couple of bad apples within the department, he was far from convinced that Delaney wasn't a bruised fruit himself. He put the report he had been reading into a folder and shook his head.

'I'm sorry, but that won't be possible. It wouldn't be appropriate, I'm afraid, Inspector.'

'I was responsible for the man's arrest, and he has vital information on another case, sir.'

The superintendent picked up the folder again and waved it at Delaney. 'As I recall it, after his arrest he had to spend time in accident and emergency with a suspected fractured skull. And the other case is the incident in which your wife died?'

'That's right.'

'Given your involvement in that incident, and the fact that it was your wife who was killed, I don't think it is appropriate for you to take the lead on this investigation. Which is why I have instructed Detective Inspector Skinner to coordinate with the prison authorities and their internal investigation.'

'With respect, sir, Norrell said he would only speak to me.'

The superintendent frowned. 'I don't think he is in any condition to speak to anyone just now.'

'Convenient timing.'

Superintendent Napier sighed. 'Concentrate on this dead woman on the common, Delaney. Any movement on identifying her?'

'Nothing yet, but we're working on it. She doesn't match anyone on the missing persons' register.'

'I want a tight lid, Delaney. I've already had the press wanting details.'

'Maybe it would help, sir. Someone probably knows her.'