his face. If he could have articulated a question he would have done so. But the paralysis had spread to his face now. His eyes closed and the pump under his ribcage, made of tissue and muscle, spasmed.
A low sound of thunder rumbled overhead again and, as the wind picked up whistling wet leaves over his motionless form, the rain fell. Sending splashes of mud into the air and forming a channel of artificial tears from the surgeon's closed eyes.
Delaney pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged into it.
'Did you get that address?' he asked Sally Cartwright.
She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and handed it to him.
'Thanks.' He stuffed the paper into his jacket pocket. 'Get on to records. I want to know if any other crimes were reported in the neighbouring properties around the same time.'
'Sir.'
Kate stood up also and put on her coat, looking for her scarf for a moment and then grimacing as she remembered why she no longer had it.
'Where are you going, Kate?'
Kate turned round to Delaney, ready to say something flip, but when she saw the concern in his eyes the temptation vanished. 'I need to go home.'
'You're not staying at that house. You can stay with me.'
Kate hesitated for a moment and then nodded, relief coursing through her blood. 'I still need to go home, get some things.'
Delaney picked up his car keys off his desk.
'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 glasses 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 brass bell above it danced on its coiled brass 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
