by Mark Pearson
A single, skeletal leaf was cartwheeling along the road. It was a dry, brittle, frail thing and it came to rest, finally, in the damp gutter that was already clogged with the decomposing corpses of leaves from the semi-denuded trees that lined the street. A street of wealthy people, whose lives behind the closed oak doors and wrought-iron gates were consumed with problems other than mortgages and council tax or the National Health Service. This was a street of financiers, of publishers, of authors and literary agents, of property developers and quantity surveyors, of Harley Street doctors and surgeons . . . and of a forensic pathologist who had, just that very day, sickened of death, and handed in her notice. The man in a car across the road from her house didn't know that, however, and it wouldn't have made any difference if he had. Her job, after all, had brought her to his attention in the first place.
He looked down at the pointed toe of his cowboy boot as it rested on the accelerator pedal and was glad he had gone for the snakeskin rather than the leather option. He could relate to snakes. The ability to move silently and unseen. The ability to shed one's skin. The ability to bare one's teeth and terrify. He smiled to himself humourlessly, and the light from the watching moon lent his teeth a cast the colour of old ivory. He looked across once more at the empty house and waited.
Hunters knew how to wait after all.
Jennifer Cole looked at the images on her Macbook laptop with professional detachment. A woman in a corset wearing old-fashioned seamed stockings and posing like a Vargas pin-up come to life. She was a full breasted woman in her late twenties, her bee-stung lips painted red with a hint of purple, the tip of her tongue visible and wet with promise, the pupils in her dark painted eyes wide with desire. She wasn't making love to the camera, she was fucking it. Jennifer flicked through the next pictures, some in uniform, some topless, some in elegant lingerie from Agent Provocateur. The burlesque look was very popular at the moment. A hint of goth, a hint of forbidden pleasure. Pain and pleasure, sugar and spice. She spent a lot of money on her lingerie and the photos that she used to update her webpage at least once a month. She probably didn't have to do it so often, but the truth was she enjoyed the ritual of it. The costumery and the perfumes, the candlelight and the moonlight. The black and red satin sheets. The artistry.
It had been a long time since Jennifer Cole had needed the money she made from her services. She had got into it, as most did, from need. But that need had passed. She was selective now too. She didn't work every night and was extremely choosy about her clients. After all, that was the main thrill for her, the power she felt. She didn't feel degraded or used, just the opposite. It was her decision, her choice to make. And it was never something she regretted. She knew about the human body, how it functioned, how it was put together, what parts needed maintenance. Sex was just part of that. And it was fun.
She flicked forward to the last of the images. She was wearing a long fur coat that she had bought on a cruise trip to the Norwegian fjords one year. The real thing, never mind the paint-throwing hypocrites with their leather belts and shoes. It was mink, thick and luxurious. Her hair was piled high on her head with silver threads adorning and confining it. She wore silver boots with high platform soles and heels. The coat was open, her breasts jutting with the pride of the goddess Diana, her sex cupped in the sculptured, rounded vee of a silk thong, and in her right hand a long, silver-handled riding crop.
Her small silver mobile phone rang and she answered it slowly, patting her hair as she looked at herself in the mirror. Her pupils widened as she licked her lips and purred.
'Hello. How may I help you?'
If she'd been a cream cake, she would have eaten herself.
'Angelina. It's me.'
Angelina, her stage name as she liked to think of it, had been taken from an early American feminist hero of hers, Angelina Grimké, and not, as some had assumed, after the famous actress. She looked at the photo of herself holding a crop and thought it must have been an omen of sorts that he should have called just then. 'Hello, bad boy. How have you been?'
There was a pause, then his voice, husky with desire. 'I don't think Santa is going to have me on his nice list this Christmas.'
'You've been naughty?'
The voice on the other end was breathy. 'Ooh, yeah.'
She could hear the need. 'I hope you're not being naughty right now?'
'Not just yet.'
'You want to come and confess to a superior mother?'
'Not today.'
'Oh?'
'I want you to come to me.'
'It's going to cost more.'
'I don't mind paying. Bad men pay for their sins, don't they? Sooner or later we all pay.'
'If they know what's good for them.'
'I know what's good for me.'
Jennifer Cole had only met the man recently. He had visited her a couple of times at her flat in Chalk Farm but she recognised the soft burr in his voice and knew one thing for sure: he was good-looking with kinky tastes. Just her kind of man. She didn't do this to pay the rent, after all.
'Where do you want to meet?'
'I thought we could go for a drink first.'
'It's your dollar, babe. You spend it how you want.'
'That's what I want.'
'Where?'
'Camden?'
'Sure. Tell me when and where.' She listened then hung up the phone and looked at her picture on her laptop again. Only the hair colour was wrong. Her midnight cowboy liked brunettes. She picked a wig off a stand and slipped it over her head. She stood up and picked up the long riding crop from one of her bedside cabinets and gave it a swishing flex in the air. She slammed the crop down hard on the bed with a satisfying thud and smiled. Christmas was coming early to Camden.
Hampstead was huddled against the weather. The scudding clouds had taken on weight and mass now, and although the wind still blew at a constant rate the swollen sky above was black and unbroken. The air was cold and threaded with moisture. Delaney looked up at the night sky, the moon now hidden behind the low wall of cloud that hung over the spread city like a biblical judgement. It shouldn't be so dark this early at this time of year, he thought as he looked at the entrance to the pub, deliberated for a second or two and then tapped a cigarette from a crumpled packet into his hand and searched through his pockets for his matches. The scent of the perfume Opium suddenly filled his nostrils and he realised a woman had come up to stand beside him. She was in her late twenties in a fake-fur coat and was holding a lighter out to him. Delaney was taken aback for a moment then leaned forward so she could light his cigarette.
'Thanks.'
'Not a problem.'
Her voice had the lyrical smoothness of the confident rich, one whose education had eschewed affectation.
Just like Kate's.
The woman closed her lighter and Delaney wondered why someone such as her would approach him, but then realised as the woman walked away and joined her friends that the gesture was just one of solidarity, of friendship. The fraternity of smokers in exile, gathered in groups outside every pub and bar throughout the country, united by the stigma of nicotine.
The woman's friends laughed a little and whispered something to her. She turned to look back at him curiously and Delaney realised he had been staring. He looked away and sipped some smoke from his cigarette into his mouth, then drew it deep so that it burned his lungs. Delaney was sure he saw something akin to pity in the young woman's eyes and the thought of it stung more than the hot smoke. What the hell was he thinking of, buying a house in an area like this? He looked at the window of the pub behind him, bright with colour and noise, he looked through it at the shining faces with smiles full of porcelain, and voices ringing with the confidence of a golden future. He looked at the fashionable ties and slicked-back hair, at the Barbour jackets and coloured, corduroy trousers, and he thought of the dark-haired woman who waited for him at the bar and who fitted in among that crowd like a Hunter Wellington at the Chelsea Flower Show. He
told himself he hadn't moved to be near her. It was to be near his daughter and his sister-in-law and her family. But as he ground out his cigarette on the cold slate beneath his feet, he realised the biggest sin was lying to yourself. The trouble was that, contrary to received opinion, the truth did not set you free. Sometimes the truth was an iron cage of your own fashioning.
He walked through the door, the sounds and chatter around him muted somehow, the light a softness like warmth as he threaded through the crowd and saw her waiting for him at the bar.
'Hello, Jack.'
He could see in her eyes that the drink she held in her hand was not her first. But her gaze was steady and the warmth of her breath was sweet. Her lips had been stained by the tomato juice and Delaney wanted nothing more than to put his arm around her alabaster shoulder and kiss her.
Instead he pulled over a stool, sat beside her and gestured to the barman. 'Another one here please, and I'll have a large . . .' He hesitated for a moment. 'I'll have a large Bushmills. Straight up. No ice, no spittle.'
Kate handed her drink over to the barman. 'Vodka tonic please.' She smiled at Delaney. 'You can only drink so much tomato juice.'
'Of course.'
Delaney waited for her to say more but Kate turned her attentions back to the barman and handed Delaney his drink when it arrived. He took a sip of his whiskey and before he could ask her why she had wanted to see him, Kate spoke.
'I'm pregnant, Jack.'
And for the second or third time in his life the world rocked on its axis. Kate was saying something else but Delaney couldn't hear it. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his temples. He took another sip of his drink and tried to catch her words but failed. 'I'm sorry?' he managed at last.
'It's not a question of anybody being to blame, Jack.'
'No, that's not what I meant. I meant I didn't hear the rest of it.'
'I don't know what the rest of it is, Jack. That's what I'm saying. I don't know what to think, I just wanted you to know, that's all. And I didn't want to tell you on the telephone.'
Delaney nodded, still taking it in. 'I'm the father?'
Kate looked at him, trying to read his eyes, cursing herself for drinking too much again and clouding her judgement. 'Yes, Jack. You're the father.'
'I see.'
Kate took another swallow of her drink. 'Is that it?'
'I don't know, Kate.' He shrugged. 'What was that business this morning, in the hospital car park?'
Kate shook her head, the colour drained out of her face and Delaney couldn't work out if it was through fear or through anger. 'This has got nothing to do with him.'
'If he's hurt you in some way, I want to help.'
Kate had to fight back the tears but she was damned if she was going to let him see her cry. 'You're a knight in shining armour, are you, Jack?'
'Hardly, but I could see something was wrong. I can be a friend, can't I?'
Kate pushed her glass away and stood up a little unsteadily. 'You know what, this was a bad idea. We have to talk, but not now.'
She picked her coat up off the back of her chair and would have walked away but Jack held her arm, gently, as he stood up himself. He looked into her eyes and could see the need in them as naked as a flame. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and hold her and tell her that he was there for her in every way that she wanted. But the visions of the dead man in Greek Street and the comatose body of Kevin Norrell held him back. The violence visited upon his wife four years ago was still a force loose in his world, a force that he could neither identify nor control. So in that moment, between breathing and speaking, as he looked into Kate Walker's eyes, he knew that the past still had a grip on him as tight as the clasp of a drowning man. He could not offer Kate the emotional lifeline she so clearly needed. 'Let me know what you decide.'
Kate looked at him, the hurt sparking in her eyes. He wished he could kiss it away, but he knew, also, that the kind of pain she was feeling took a lifetime of disappointment to build, and its healing was way beyond the small amelioration provided by such short-lived gestures.
'Fuck you, Jack.' She brushed his arm aside and walked quickly to the door. Delaney let her go. Turning back to the bar again and looking at his reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall behind the counter, he felt his face burning with shame.
Outside, Kate made no effort to hold back the tears that were now streaming down her face. What had she expected of the man after all? She'd had no illusions, no dreams that the fact of her pregnancy would drive him begging for forgiveness into his arms. What had she expected of him then? The truth was that she didn't know, but the cold reality of the encounter was too much for her to bear. He wanted to be friends, he wanted her to let him know what she decides! Christ, if she had had a shotgun in her hands right then she would have cut him in half with it. She dashed the back of her right hand across her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking? She should have known Delaney would be as emotionally available as a piece of the frozen Donegal turf or wherever it was he came from. But the trouble was she knew exactly what she was thinking, even if she hadn't been honest with herself. She wanted to tell him all about Paul Archer, about what she thought he had done to her. She wanted to tell him everything and she wanted him to take care of it for her. She wanted him to fold her in his arms and tell her that he loved her. How stupid was that? She wiped her hand across her eyes and crossed the road, barely registering the horn blaring from a passing car that had to swerve to miss her. She hated herself for being so weak and formed a fist of her right hand. If she had to do it all on her own then that was how it was going to be. Damn Delaney. Damn all men, if it came to that. Kate Walker had been her own woman for thirty-odd years and she wasn't about to let that change now. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes dry. She knew what she was going to do.
Delaney finished a second whiskey in five minutes. He looked at his watch. He should never have let Kate go off on her own like that, she deserved to know what was going on. He had no intention of letting the matter of Kevin Norrell drop. Norrell had something to tell him that would lead him to his wife's killers. Derek Watters's murder proved that much. He had never bought the idea that the attack on Kevin Norrell was just some sort of rough justice in prison. Kevin Norrell was an ignorant, ill-bred, psychopathic Neanderthal with as much conscience as a rabid stoat, but he wasn't a nonce. Delaney was pretty sure about that. So that meant the attack on Norrell and Watters's murder was to stop them both from getting information to him. He should have told Kate that. She would have understood. But her revelation that she was pregnant had taken him completely by surprise. He needed to talk to her. He finished his glass and considered for a moment as the barman gestured to see if he wanted another. He shook his head and headed for the door.
It took Delaney a matter of minutes to reach Kate's house. He crossed the road and looked up at the windows. There were no lights on. It had been ten minutes since she had stormed out of the pub. She should definitely be home by now. He hated to think of her in there alone with the lights out, curled up on her sofa sobbing. He walked up to the door and rang the bell. After a short while he rang it again, but there was no answer. He banged his fist on the door a few times and called her name out but still there was no answer.
'Come on, Kate. If you're in there open the door. We need to talk. Jeez, I know I've been a prick, just let me talk to you.'
Apart from a curtain twitching in her neighbour's property there was no response. He glanced at his watch and then looked up the road. There was no sign of her. He took out his mobile and quickly tapped in her name. After a few rings her voice on an answerphone cut in asking him to leave a message. He hesitated and then closed the phone. He hated leaving messages and what could he say anyway? He looked up once more at the dark windows. If Kate was at home she clearly wasn't ready to talk to him just yet. He pulled his overcoat closed and set off back down the road. He was tempted to keep going as he neared his new house, keep going further down the
hill and then turn right into the Richard Steele pub. Take the prescription in iron-rich Guinness and amber measure, repeat as necessary, but for the first time in a very long while he realised he didn't want to be alcohol-numbed; he knew he was going to need a clear head about him.