"Blood Work" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pearson Mark)

PROLOGUE

A group of noisy, enthusiastic young men gathered around one corner of the bar of the Unicorn, a mock- Tudor pub. A large-screen TV was commanding their attention. England was playing South Africa in a friendly and the atmosphere in the pub was rowdy, but not aggressive.

Detective Inspector Jack Delaney stood at the other end of the bar and waited patiently for the young man, with short cropped hair and arms like strings of rope and the word 'WRATH' tattooed in big, black letters along the length of one forearm, to get around to serving him. Any other day he would have been simmering with barely contained fury as the barman flirted with a couple of South African girls with hair as yellow as corn and strong, bright teeth. But Jack Delaney had other things to occupy his mind that night.

All things coalesce somewhere. All things come together in a pattern. He couldn't see it yet, but he knew it was there. Finding patterns was his job, after all, seeking what linked seemingly disassociated events. What Delaney did know just then, as he waited at the bar, with dark images flashing through his memory, was that he had a focus again. Something to help concentrate all the hurt and pain and anger he had lived with for four years into a single point of energy and use that to move forward out of the wreckage of his past, annihilating anything that got in his way. Jack Delaney didn't do standing still very well.

The barman's casual smile died as he approached Delaney.

'Help you?'

'Pint of Guinness and a pint of lager.'

Delaney threaded his way back through the crowd, smiling almost imperceptibly at the pair of blonde women, who were straining quite noticeably the yellow and green fabric of their 'Boks' rugby shirts, happy to draw attention to themselves. He put the drinks down on the table in front of his erstwhile boss who held a cigarette, as ever, in one hand and a lighter in the other.

Chief Inspector Diane Campbell looked up at him, a devil-may-care smile dancing in her puppy-brown eyes. 'Fifty-pound fine, it's almost worth lighting the bastard up.'

She held the cigarette aloft as if there may have been some doubt as to the identity of the illegitimate object.

Delaney pulled out a chair and sat down. 'True.'

'Meanwhile the fat cats of Westminster can smoke in their bar at the Houses of Parliament. Never mind their bleeding expenses, that's the real problem.'

'Not going political on me, are you, Diane?'

Campbell whipped her neck, flicking her bobbed hair left and right. 'Not in this lifetime.'

'Good to hear.'

Campbell looked at him for a moment, the mischief still in her eyes. 'I saw Kate Walker talking with you at the cemetery.'

'And?'

'Anything you want to tell me about that?'

Delaney took a long pull on his pint of Guinness and thought about it. Thought about Kate and her dark hair, her haunted eyes, her beauty. Her fragility. Remembering the hurt in her eyes as he had stood beneath the naked sky of a west London cemetery and told her that they had no future. He knew the damage that had been done to her as a child by her uncle, his ex-boss Superintendent Walker, knew that damage had scarred her as an adult, knew that that same uncle had tried to kill her because she was helping Delaney rescue his own child, Siobhan, from his clutches. Kate Walker had suffered enough, but he had made her suffer more. He'd already buried one wife, had carried the guilt of it for four years, and when it came to making a choice between the living and the dead…

He had chosen the dead.

He took another swallow of Guinness before putting the glass down and looking Campbell in the eye. 'Not a thing.'

'Wouldn't blame you if there was. She's got a fine figure on her for a brunette.'

Delaney didn't smile. 'We're about to put her uncle away for a long, long time, Diane. That's all I care about.' He leaned across the table and gripped his ex-boss's hand. His grip was firm, uncompromising, but she neither flinched nor sought to release herself from his hold. 'Just tell me what you've heard about my wife's death.'

She nodded, and Delaney released his grip. She resisted the temptation to rub her hand but held Delaney's gaze as he took another long pull on his pint of Guinness.

'Kevin Norrell.'

Delaney put his glass down, his voice arctic. 'What about him?'

The water fell like hard rain. The kind of powerful, punching rain you get in a tropical downpour. Kevin Norrell put his hand against the cool white tiles of the prison shower and felt it pound his body, the jets of water like needles. He bared his teeth. If he had his way the man who had put him in this prison was very shortly going to get him out. The water sounded like rain too as it spattered and puddled around his feet. He'd never liked the sound. It reminded him of his father, Sean Norrell. The memory, as ever, making his hand form involuntarily into a hamlike fist as his mind wandered back to his childhood, the summer of 1977 and the first time he was ever incarcerated.

The Hunter's Moon was a spit-and-sawdust pub halfway between West Harrow and Harrow on the Hill, set in a concrete housing development built in the sixties, complete with a small, built-in shopping precinct. The pub was at the end of a row of shops including a laundromat, a convenience store, an off-licence and a chemist. Three floors of council flats rose above the shops and pub, and were echoed on the opposite side of the street by four floors of similarly grey, utilitarian boxes. The Labour government's vision of utopian, urban living on the architect's drawing board may well have looked like a sunny vision of an ideal future; but whereas his green ink had imagined trees and benches and contented people, the stark concrete reality was inked in far more abrasive colours. The graffiti, though distinctly urban, certainly wasn't art, and couldn't be considered political, unless 'Jane fucks Ted' counted. You could lay money on the fact that the romantic dauber wasn't referring to Edward Heath and Jane Fonda.

It was raining. The kind of constant, wind-blown, swirling, miserable rain that clogged up drains and sewers, and it went with the soulless, plastic signboards above chain-link shutters, the sick, yellow light that leaked from the street lamps, and the garbage that floated on the street like rats go with sewage, or pigeons go with shit.

Half past eight on a cold November's night and the reality of the place was as far removed from the architect's sunny vision as Sean 'The Coat' Norrell was from a working grasp of quantum physics.

Inside the Hunter's Moon, the smoke hung heavy in the air, like a pale cloud. The lino on the floor was colourless and faded, but had once been red, presumably to hide bloodstains. The lights behind the bar were bright, though, as were the coloured lights in the jukebox that was pumping 'Float On' through crackling speakers that, like the rumpled person standing at the bar, had long since seen better days. He was a long-haired, fifty-year-old man with a knee-length, black leather coat. He scowled as he ran filthy, dirt-stained fingers through his greasy locks of hair and winked at the barmaid as he sang along with the record. He cupped his crotch with the other hand and bucked his hips forward in a crude, suggestive motion.

The barmaid had been in the job for well over thirty years and hadn't been impressed by much in the last twenty-nine years of it. Her low-cut top revealed a chest as smooth as corrugated cardboard, and her rasping voice held as much affection as a wheel clamp. 'I wouldn't touch your fucking cock, Sean, if I was wearing asbestos gloves.'

Norrell leered at her and gave a final thrust. 'Your loss, darling.'

'Sit down, and shut the fuck up, Norrell,' came a voice beside him.

Sean Norrell turned to say something but, when he saw who was standing next to him, the words died on his lips. He nodded a deferential smile and sat back on his stool, fumbling a cigarette nervously from a stained packet. He took a sip of his lager and scowled. Harp, thirty-two pence a pint now and it still tasted like cat's piss.

The man stood next to him was dressed in denim jeans, with a denim jacket, short blond hair and piercing, blue eyes. Mickey Ryan, thirty years old with a heart as cold as a Norwegian whore working al fresco. He looked at Norrell now with the kind of approval usually reserved for faecal matter discovered on footwear.

'You got my money?'

'It's in hand.'

Ryan's voice was level, dispassionate as he leaned down and glared in his eyes. 'Your dick will be in my left hand and I'll cut your fucking balls off with a rusty knife you haven't got it by Friday.' The barmaid smiled, approvingly.

'You take my gear you pay me for it.'

'I'm good for it, Mickey. You know that,' Norrell muttered.

But Mickey had already turned back to the barmaid. 'Double vodka.'

She fluttered her spider-leg eyelashes at him and smiled seductively. 'On the house.'

Ryan looked back at Norrell, his eyes like flint. 'You still here?'

Norrell hastily swallowed his lager as Mickey Ryan picked up his drink and headed back to the pool table where a couple of nineteen-year-olds, in skintight hot pants and platforms shoes, waited for the territorial pat of his hand on their young backsides, marking ownership. He'd have liked to pick up a pool cue and smash it across Ryan's smug face. But as the blue-eyed man turned back to look at him pointedly, Norrell put his empty glass on the counter and scurried for the door. You didn't mess with Mickey Ryan. Not ever. Sean Norrell knew where to pick his fights and it wasn't at the Hunter's Moon.

He stepped out from the pub, blinking as the driving rain lashed his face and made his way across the street to the block of flats where he lived. He stumbled into the stairwell and held his hand against a concrete pillar to steady himself, and shake water rain from his long hair. He grunted and walked up the steps to his flat and fumbled his key into the lock of the faded red door of 13 Paradise Villas. They got that about right. Paradise in neon and street lamp. Nirvana by substance abuse. Heaven and hell in a fucking handcart.

He fumbled the door open and stumbled inside to domestic bliss. The theme tune to The Good Life was playing on the television, his runt of a son curled up on the stained, brown velour sofa watching it, his eyes fixed, not even glancing at him. Norrell's nose wrinkled at the smell of charred food.

'For fuck's sake, Linda. How fucking hard is it to cook a sausage?'

His wife, Linda Norrell, glared at him from the kitchen set off the small lounge. She was thirty-two but looked fifty, a sick fifty at that. Rail-thin, with straggly mousy hair that had, at some time, been dyed blonde, she was wearing a pair of tight, drainpipe jeans that made her legs look like sticks, a mauve shirt and a white tank top. The make-up on her face was applied with the delicacy of roadworks and did little to hide the bruising, or the emptiness, around her eyes. A cigarette dangled from tightly pursed lips as she flipped some sausages in a smoking pan, she looked across at her husband, expressionless for a moment, and then a light flickered somewhere in her eyes. 'Fuck you, Sean.'

On the sofa Kevin Norrell tensed. He knew what was about to happen next. On the television screen Barbara Good was telling her husband off for not wiping his wellies before coming into her kitchen. In his kitchen his father was slapping his wife openhanded across the mouth, opening up her lip to bleed afresh. Her screams of abuse mingled with his father shouting back at her, slapping the side of her head like a contrapuntal melody. And suddenly Kevin Norrell had had enough. Tom and Barbara Good might not have a television, but he did, and all he wanted to do was watch it.

The thin boy uncurled himself and stood up from the sofa. At school they called him Pencil Norrell. A gangly boy, tall for his age, his head disproportionately large, a head his neck seemed to struggle to hold up. Once of the older boys had stuck a condom over his head, and laughed as he almost suffocated. Pencil Norrell with a rubber top!

Kevin walked over to the kitchen table and picked up the almost empty bottle of cheap vodka that was stood on it. Lipstick marks smeared the spiralled glass at the top. He held it for a moment listening to the sound of his parents' invective mixing with the cutting bray of Tom Good's laugh. Then he smashed it against the wall. His parents stopped, and looked back at him astonished, their mouths agape like cartoon characters.

Sean Norrell was the first to find voice. 'What the fuck you think you're doing?'

And Kevin Norrell punched the jagged, broken bottle forward, as hard as he could, stabbing it into his father's thigh. Sean Norrell squealed like a snared rabbit and dropped to his knees, his hands cupping the wound, watching horrified as blood spilled through his spread fingers.

Thirty-two years later on and Norrell held up his own hand, letting the shower water run through his fingers, shaking his head as if to clear the memories.

His father hadn't died that night. The damage to his thigh was excruciating but treatable, an inch higher and it would have been his groin, the surgeon had pointed out, and that would have been a lot more serious. Sent home from hospital he managed to sell the remaining lump of cannabis resin he had left and pay Mickey Ryan most of what he owed him, not enough to save himself from a beating, mind, and the boys who gave him it laughed as they remembered that he had been nearly bottled in the nuts by his own son. They made sure to give him a kick or two in the groin before they were done. The kicking reopened the wound and Sean Norrell, rather than seeking medical attention, simply self-medicated with cheap whisky and strong lager and the wound became infected. He died some weeks later from septicaemia.

Norrell turned the shower off and wrapped his towel around himself. He had been in juvenile detention when he had heard the news of his father's death, and if he had shed a tear at the time it was certainly not through grief. As he left the shower block he nodded at a thickset man who occupied the cell next door to his. The man didn't meet his eye and Norrell knew it meant something. But he was ready. The time was long past when Kevin Norrell was going to be anybody's bitch. That interfering, bastard Irish copper was going to make sure of that.

Jack Delaney shrugged. 'So he's not happy where he is. Why should we give a monkey's toss?'

'He claims he knew nothing about Walker's paedophile activities. He fears for his safety at Bayfield.'

'The sooner that shite is put down like a rabid dog the better, you ask me.'

'Not too soon. Norrell claims to know something about your wife's death. That's his bargaining chip. He says he'll only speak to you.'

'And you'll let me do it?'

'I will if you're back on the force.' Diane dug into her pocket and pulled out an unopened letter. 'I never processed your resignation, Jack. Far as anyone knows you've been on extended leave these last weeks.' She smiled once more. 'Emotional problems.'

'You must have been pretty sure about me.'

Diane held the smile like a sniper cradles a rifle. 'Men might not be to my taste, Jack. Doesn't stop me understanding them pretty damn well.'

Delaney finished his pint and stood up.

'Where are you going?'

'I'm going to talk to him.'

Campbell shook her head. 'Not today. I've arranged the interview for tomorrow morning. Come on, cowboy. Sit down, I'll get you another pint.'

Diane Campbell picked up his empty glass and headed for the bar, threading her way through the group of young men who had now started singing, 'Get 'em down you Zulu warrior, get 'em down you Zulu chief.' She had never understood what the song was about, and the prospect of seeing a naked man, however young and fit, held as much attraction for her as a Cherry Cola held for Jack Delaney. She waited at the bar for the drinks and looked back at him. She had put her career on the line keeping him in his job. Bringing down Superintendent Walker, however guilty he might have been, had not enamoured Delaney to the senior brass. In fact she had to outright lie to the powers that be to keep him out of jail, let alone keep his warrant card. Possession of an unlicensed firearm was not looked upon with favour, not to mention the little matter of nearly killing one of her sergeants. That the sergeant in question, Eddie Bonner, helped to cover up Walker's activities was neither here nor there. Sergeant Bonner was dead and, whatever forensic pathologist Kate Walker might think, the dead did not make good witnesses. Diane handed the barmaid the correct change, flashed her a flirty smile then walked back to Delaney carrying the drinks carefully through the packed bar. It might very well come back and bite her on her bony arse, but she reckoned she had done the right thing. Delaney was a good man to have in her camp, she knew that much about him if little else.

Diane handed the Irishman his pint, spying the barely contained violence in brown eyes and figured Norrell better not be yanking on the cowboy's lariat.

Kevin lay on the top bunk in his cell squeezing an exercise ball, the tendons of his hand standing out like ropes of wire as he contracted it. The man below him fidgeted nervously. Norrell didn't blame him. Like the man in the shower, he wouldn't meet his eyes. Something was in the air. He could almost taste the tension. Norrell smiled humorously as he squeezed the ball again. Whatever it was he would be ready to meet it, or die trying. One way or another he was getting out of prison.

Diane Campbell glanced across at the pub windows, noticing that the rain had eased up a little. She sipped on her third glass of mineral water and looked across at Delaney. There was a glassy look in his eyes now, less anger and a softer focus. Not surprising since had moved on to drinking Scotch with his Guinness, for some reason insisting on Glenmorangie rather than his favoured Bushmills, and had had six or seven doubles. She wasn't sure that he hadn't slipped in a quick one or two when she had gone to the Ladies. Never mind about the ban on smoking in pubs, what about putting enough cubicles in and banning women from using the place like a lounge for gossip? She didn't envy a man his penis, that was for sure, but she did admire its functional practicality. She swallowed her drink. She was desperate for a cigarette. Diane looked at Delaney pointedly. 'Come on, cowboy, drink up. I'm taking you home.

Delaney looked at her steadily, the very faintest of slurs in his voice. 'I've got my car outside.'

'Yeah, and that's where it's staying. You're not causing anyone else's death this month. Not on my watch.'

Delaney laughed. 'Did you really just say "not on my watch", Diane?'

'You heard it, partner. The mule is staying parked right where you left it, and I'm taking you back to the High Chaparral.'

Delaney shook his head as he stood up. 'Just drop me off at a Tube station.'

'Which one?'

'Northern Line.' He drained his pint of Guinness, coaxed the last drop of whisky from his glass into his mouth and walked with her to the door. He was almost balanced.

Kate Walker didn't normally take the Tube. It wasn't so much that she was a snob, she just didn't like the crammed-in, close proximity of people. It wasn't just the look of them or the smell of them – which was bad enough with their wet, rain-sodden clothes – but she knew what people were capable of, the extent of their random cruelties. As a forensic pathologist she knew that far better than most. If she had learned the hard way that you couldn't trust the people you were related to or worked with… then you sure as hell couldn't trust strangers. She wouldn't be taking the Tube at all, in fact, but her car was booked in at the garage for a service and an MOT, and her mechanic wouldn't be dropping it back at her house until the early evening. So she had gone by train and taxi to the cemetery for the funeral earlier that afternoon of the caretaker who had been murdered in the course of Delaney's last case. She was pleased she had been able to take flowers for the grave, but in all other ways the journey had been wasted. She had hoped to be able to speak to Jack, discuss what happened with them, but she might as well have been speaking to the dead caretaker for the amount of emotional response she got from Delaney. The prospect of going straight home to an empty house had depressed her even more and so she had spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and buying nothing. Nothing fitted. Nothing was right. Nothing shifted the black cloud of her mood. And so here she was now, stuck on the Tube with a bunch of people she neither knew nor felt any inclination to know.

She looked down at her court shoes. Expensive, chic, sexy, she thought. Black suited her colouring. The shoes were now spattered with mud and rain and the shine had come off them, just like the shine had come off her day.

The train juddered to a halt, mid-tunnel, and the lights in the carriage flickered and dimmed before coming back up. She positioned her heel in one of the grooves that ran along the floor and swivelled her foot, wondering when they were going to update the trains. It took just over a couple of hours to get from Paris to St Pancras on the Eurostar fast link nowadays, but it could take an age just to go a few stops on this damned service. The lights dimmed again; low and yellow. Kate looked along the length of the carriage. There was something curiously Gothic about the Northern Line, she thought. Other lines, other stations had a late-Victorian sensibility to them, she knew that, but the Northern Line in places had a quintessentially spooky feel to it. Wood and brass and strange lamps, transportation by Hammer House of Horror.

The train shuddered and clanked as the wheels started turning again. She looked out of the window as the train flashed noisily through the tunnel once more and pulled her coat tight about her. It was early evening and the train was full, its motion, as it rocked from side to side, throwing the overweight man next to her against her body every time the train rounded a corner. He didn't seem too keen to move away, either, perfectly happy to invade her personal space. She sighed and gritted her teeth.

She was in a foul mood. Jack Delaney, the son of a bitch. She didn't know why she let him get to her, but he did. Kate Walker, in her own opinion, was, if anything, a woman born of logic, of reason. She was clinical, sharp; her judgement a precision instrument. Only that instrument was letting her down lately, and she didn't know how to fix it. She looked out of the window again, seeing her reflection smudgy and blurred, and that was exactly how she felt. Smudgy and blurred. She wasn't sure quite who she was any more. She leaned against the side of the train, putting as much space between her and the fat man as possible and felt a shiver run up her spine. Somebody was walking on her grave. Dancing on it. She looked around expecting to see someone watching her, but, if they were, they had looked away. Looking away was the English virtue after all. Never get involved, never show your emotions, never get off the boat. Maybe Jack Delaney was more English than he would have liked to admit. There was a man who was never going to get off the boat.

Delaney stood in the carriageway, swaying with the rhythm of the train, holding on to a strap hanger and keeping his balance, just about, as the train bucked and shifted under his feet as it rattled noisily through the underground tunnels.

He should have let Diane Campbell take him home, back to his sterile new house in Belsize Park. He should have left the pub after just one drink and then made a start on the decorating, making the place a home and not just a house. Somewhere where his daughter Siobhan would want to visit, would want to stay a few days with him. But Delaney didn't do one quick drink, and he hadn't wanted to go home, it didn't feel like home to him, nowhere had for a long time. Those dark thoughts hadn't been turned off yet and he didn't think they would. Not tonight. Tonight he needed more than alcohol to fight his demons.

He wished he had never visited the cemetery. He'd told Kate Walker that he'd only gone because he owed it to the old man who had taken a bullet for him. But it wasn't true. He'd gone to see her and now he wished he hadn't. It wasn't a time for complications. He had a focus now and he needed to keep that focus, but Kate had set a fire burning, created a physical thirst that he needed to quench.

A man leaned against him as the train turned a corner and Delaney looked back at him and the man quickly moved away, half muttering an apology and avoiding eye contact.

Delaney watched the man move through the crowded train, keen to put distance between them and Delaney didn't blame him. Tomorrow he was going to take steps. People were going to pay for what happened four years ago and pay in blood. But tonight he could taste the iron and copper in his mouth, could feel the murmurs in his blood like the low thrumming of a bass string. Tonight Delaney had another agenda.

He looked ahead, past the crowded-together commuters who were packed into the carriageway with the resigned look of cattle being herded to slaughter and as some stood up to disembark he saw the dark-haired woman. She was looking at her own reflection in the window as the train jolted and the lights dipped, yellow and sulphurous, so that Delaney's brown eyes smouldered in the low light like a hunting wolf's.

He came to a decision and reached into his pocket as the train clattered to a standstill.

Kate walked out of the Tube station scowling as the wind came howling up Hampstead High Street sweeping the rain into her face. She stepped back into the entrance and waited for the weather to abate. She looked at her watch, still not relishing the idea of going back to her empty house, but she had a film on DVD to watch and three-quarters of a bottle of Cloudy Bay chilling in her fridge. Damn Delaney, she thought for the hundredth time that day, wishing again, also for the hundredth time, that she'd never gone to the funeral. She tried to persuade herself that she'd gone for the old man, not on the off chance of seeing that ungrateful Irish bastard. She'd nearly put her life on the line to save his miserable skin, not to mention that of his daughter's, and what thanks did she get? Used and discarded. He made her feel like the cheap kind of whore he obviously felt comfortable with. She strode angrily out into the rain, sod the man, her life had been on hold for long enough. Time to push the play button, and not on the DVD machine. She hurried up the street towards the Holly Bush. Physician, heal thyself, that's what they said, didn't they? Well, she was going to write out a large prescription in her own name: vodka-based, repeat as required.

She crossed the street and, as she did, she felt that familiar tingle in her spine again, but, as she blinked the rainwater from her eyes and looked back, she couldn't see anyone following her. She hurried on up the slight hill, keeping her face down and angled away from the rain. Within minutes she was pulling the old, heavy door behind her, closing out the wind and the weather, the rainwater dripping from her black overcoat on to the rough wooden floor of the pub as she shook her hair and wiped a hand across her eyes, hoping her waterproof mascara was holding up and hearing the sweet, soulful tones of Madeleine Peyroux cutting across the chatter in the room. They didn't always have music playing; the manager said that the hubbub of conversation was the real music of the place and she agreed with him. It was just part of what made the pub special. Tonight though she was grateful for the music, it shielded her from other people's thoughts.

As she knew it would be, even this early, the pub was busy. She walked up to the right-hand bar where luckily there was a vacant stool. She pulled it forward, sat on it and smiled briefly at the young, Australian barman behind the counter. 'Large one please, Stuart.'

The barman nodded back at her, lifted up a jug of ready-made Bloody Mary and poured Kate a glass. Kate took a long pull, the sharp kick of vodka mingling with the bite of the pepper and the tang of the celery salt. She took another sip and sighed. Time to heal.

Janet Barnes had never had to work hard at soliciting admiring glances from men; her ex-boyfriend, a failed stand-up comic, said that she had the kind of body that pouted if it didn't get attention. Usually she enjoyed that attention, but tonight there was one man in particular who was looking at her from across half the length of the train carriage, and her skin crawled. She pulled her raincoat tight around her, but if anything it just accentuated her lush, curvy figure. She looked out of the window, the featureless rush of Victorian brick wall flickering past scant inches away. There was talk of London flooding in the news again. Steps being made to improve the Thames Barrier. She remembered the flooding of last year. Whole areas, families, homes, lives ruined in the North of England. She couldn't help wondering what would happen here if the Thames were to ever break its banks. The Underground system would be flooded. Thousands of tonnes of water would pour into the network. Would the passengers all be drowned or electrocuted? All those electric rails running everywhere. Another problem for that Eton-educated, class clown Boris Johnson to sort out. Not a problem for her, mind. Any luck and she'd be out of the miserable city long before that happened, if it ever did. Just a few more quid saved up, a few more months, get the winter over with and she'd be out of the capital, out of the country and over the mountains she'd fly to sunny bloody Spain. Put this miserable, sodding, rain-drenched country behind her once and for bloody good. Just because she dressed like a goth didn't mean she had to live like a bloody vampire, time for a change of image she reckoned.

Her double reflection in the windows, hovering over the flashing bricks, was smeared and bleary, a ghostly dull orange from the flickering lights in the tube carriage. She was sure, though, she could still make out the dark-haired man watching her. Good-looking, she supposed, but definitely something creepy about him, the way he stared at her when he thought she wasn't watching. She wouldn't be surprised if he was having a crafty hand shandy under the dark coat he was wearing. If she had a five-euro note for every time some man had accidentally brushed up against her in the crowded tube with a hard-on in his pants and a glassy look to his eyes she could have retired and moved to Spain years ago. She could have papered the road there and back with them.

The lights in the Northern Line tunnel brightened, and the train shuddered into Camden Town Tube station like a mechanical climax. She stood up and tightened the belt on her shiny, black, mid-thigh-length raincoat. She knew it did little to distract attention away from herself but didn't care. She was a living Betty Boop. People could look all they like. If they wanted to touch, however, that was a whole separate matter. A whole different negotiation.

She stood on the right of the escalator, some people packed around her and others rushing up the stairs to her left. God only knew what they were in such a hurry for, she thought. At the top of the stairs Janet flashed her Oyster card at the bored-looking Rastafarian who had opened the barrier, which had broken down again, and walked towards the left-hand exit, scowling as the wind blew the rain into her face. She turned back, certain she could feel the eyes of the dark-haired man, now lost in the steady throng of commuters, watching her still. Shaking off the thought she opened up her umbrella and walked out on to the pavement.

It was half past six and the streets were busy, people hustling to the warmth of pubs and restaurants, or pouring like a stream of wet ants into the shelter of the Underground. Janet walked away from the noise and the bustle of the main high street, and the clack of her sharp-heeled footsteps rang out as she walked along Kentish Town Road, fighting to keep control of her umbrella in the swirling wind. After a couple of hundred metres she was grateful to see the welcoming glow of light spilling from the windows of the Devonshire Arms. She folded her umbrella down, opened the door to the pub and stepped inside.

Since the closing of the Intrepid Fox in Wardour Street the Devonshire Arms was now regarded as London's Goth Central. Janet's jet-black hair, black skirt, leggings, T-shirt and make-up were about as unusual there as a pair of chinos and a striped shirt in All Bar One. In fact, some nights, if you weren't dressed all in black, you couldn't get in, and quite right too, Janet thought. There were plenty of places for the squares and the geeks and the city slickers to go to, places that would turn people dressed like her away. That was the thing about London: a place for every prejudice.

The lighting was low, and the pub was already busy. Janet had chosen it for the meet, for just that purpose. It was like a blind date, after all, and it was best to be prepared; in addition to the pack of condoms and the tube of lubricant that she carried in her handbag, she also had a small can of mace. She had smuggled it back illegally from a long weekend trip she had made to New York some months ago. Music was playing, muting the buzz of chatter that filled the air. The Velvet Underground. She ordered a bourbon from a bald-headed woman with multi-coloured tattoos snaking either side of her neck, and sat in the corner of the bar sipping it and watching people as she listened to the music. John Cale's viola screeched discordantly against the slow, hypnotic beat of the drums while Lou Reed sang about a woman not unlike herself. A girlchild dressed in black wearing boots of shiny leather.

The music stopped and Janet looked up as a dark-haired man approached. Hunger in his brown eyes and an amused smile playing on his soft red lips. She looked down at his snakeskin boots that had Cuban heels almost higher than hers, then looked back up at him and smiled herself, her painted lips opening to reveal white, perfect teeth.

'Hello, cowboy.'

Kate finished her second Bloody Mary. The two drinks had done little to lift her dark mood, but she was feeling just a little bit more numb. The edge had been taken off, and she was certainly warmer. She looked over at the rain lashing against the windowpanes and then looked at her watch, debating. It was only a short walk home, but she didn't want to go out in the filthy weather again. She held her glass out to the barman, who went to refill it, and slipped her jacket off, hanging it on a hook in the bar in front of her.

'You tried Nigella's?'

She turned round to see that a tall curly dark-haired man in his late thirties with brown eyes was talking to her.

'I'm sorry?'

'Nigella Lawson. Her recipe for Bloody Marys. It's very good.'

The barman handed Kate her drink and went off to add the charge to her tab.

'No, I don't think I have.' Kate turned back to her drink.

'Got to love a woman who puts Bloody Marys in the breakfast section of a cookbook.'

'I guess,' Kate said without looking at the stranger and sipped her drink. She wasn't in the mood for chit-chat.

Despite her blatant disinterest the man was not put off. He pulled out the recently vacated stool next to hers. 'Do you mind?'

Kate shrugged indifferently.

The man chuckled. 'Half a pint glass with half as much vodka as tomato juice. For breakfast! Like I say, you've got to admire the woman.'

Kate thought that if the woman cut down on her breakfasts a little it might not do her any harm. But maybe that's what men wanted. Meat on the bones. Well, she wasn't going to put on weight to imitate some quasi-Italian domestic goddess, however gorgeous she was. She realised the man had spoken to her again, but didn't have a clue what he had said.

'I'm sorry?'

'I asked… do you know what her secret is?'

Yes, she thought. She knew what her secret was all right. She looked like a woman of appetite. What was it you were supposed to be? A lady in the supermarket and a whore in the bedroom. Well, Nigella Lawson looked like Sophia Loren with a voice that oozed sex and sophistication in equally unfair measures. And could cook to boot. Bitch.

'I don't,' she said simply.

The man smiled. He had quite a nice smile. 'It's to add a dash of dry sherry.'

Kate nodded. 'They put a drop of red wine in them here.'

He smiled again. 'My name's Paul. Paul Archer.'

'Nice to meet you, Mr Archer.' Kate's voice was cordial, but cool.

The man held out his hand. 'Actually, it's Dr Archer.'

Kate hesitated then shook his hand. He had a firm confident grip, and his hand was dry and warm. She smiled and it didn't take much of an effort now. 'Kate Walker.'

'Well, Kate. Can I buy you a drink?'

Kate looked down at her glass, swirling the drink for a moment then downing it and placing the glass firmly back on the bar. Why not? she thought to herself. Why the bloody hell not?

Janet Barnes felt consciousness returning. Not suddenly, it was a struggle like crawling through treacle. Like waking from a long coma. Or nearly waking, that is. Flashes of memory fought to come through as she fell back into the nightmare she was struggling to escape. A train swaying off balance as it rattled along the spine of ancient rails that lay deep beneath an even more ancient city. She felt the eyes of men upon her. Eyes that peeled her clothes from her body. Sweating eyes. Hot, dry, hungry eyes. The sick yellow light of the train carriage wrapped itself around her again as she tried to raise herself to consciousness once more.

She had no idea where she was or how long she had been there. She moaned softly, the sigh escaping her lips like the last breath of a dying man. Her eyelids fluttered briefly, the orbs beneath darting back and forth under the fragile pink membrane, as images flashed through her cerebral cortex like the sparking of a badly wired circuit, and, as she drifted towards unconsciousness once more, she thought she heard snatches of conversation, a voice she almost recognised. She tried to latch on to the thought, but it was like a butterfly dancing out of her hands and high out of reach. Then her eyes stilled and the half-formed thought, and all others with it, floated away entirely as she fell back into oblivion.