Sally coloured lightly but laughed out loud. 'A few of us are meeting up for drinks, that's all.'
Delaney nodded, not entirely convinced. 'Right.'
'You're welcome to join us.'
Delaney nodded again. 'If you say so.'
'Anyway. It wouldn't be a crime, would it?'
'Not in my world.' Delaney's brief moment of good humour curled up and died as he walked forward and saw the dark-haired woman standing outside the scene-of-crime tent.
'Dr Walker. Nice scarf.'
Kate turned and looked at him, and cursed inwardly, as she took her scarf off and pulled the protective coverings over the work boots she had changed into. She should have known Delaney would turn up. He was, after all, less than a mile away, just like her, when the call had come in.
'Inspector.' She was surprised at how calm her voice sounded, how cool.
'Have you got anything for us?'
'Like you I've only just arrived. From what I've seen from here, a young woman, I'm guessing mid-twenties.'
'No ID?'
PC Wilkinson stepped forward. 'Nothing yet, sir. We're going to finger-search the area but there was nothing on her person. She had a handbag but it was empty apart from some condoms and a tube of KY jelly.'
'Nothing else?'
'She had a Tube ticket.'
Delaney nodded. South Hampstead Tube station was a stone's throw from the edge of that part of the heath.
'Who found her?'
Wilkinson nodded over to the path where the nurse, Valerie Manners, stood, sipping shakily from a cup of tea as a female PC talked to her.
'I'll want to speak to her next. Make sure she stays here, Bob.'
'Boss.'
Delaney moved to the entrance of the tent. 'Let's have a look.'
Kate Walker followed him in. The small space was already bustling. SOCO had cleared the overhanging undergrowth, carefully cutting away the branches and shrubbery that had partially hidden the body. A video-camera operator was filming the scene, while a photographer, blond-haired and in his twenties, was doing the same. The bright flashes poked needles in Delaney's sore eyes.
Kate looked down at the woman. She had black boots on her feet, calf-length and high-heeled, black leggings, a short black, leather skirt with an ornate, silver buckled belt. She was naked from the waist up. Her long hair was dyed deep black, and she was wearing black eyeshadow and lipstick. A goth. Kate felt the irony of it. A subculture that had death as part of its make-up, no pun intended. She would have laughed if it wasn't so pitifully sad. The woman was beautiful, in a painted-doll kind of way, with a full, voluptuous figure. Kate had to blink tears away as she looked at what had been done to her.
A bruise ran along the lower part of the dead woman's jaw on the right side of the face. The purple mottling even more obscene against the deathly white of her skin.
On the opposite side her neck had been slashed from ear to the larynx. Below her neck, a knife had opened up a circular hole, ripping down and exposing the bones of her spinal column. The large blood vessels on either side of the neck had been slashed, and blood had run down her semi-naked body in jagged sheets. The heart had been pumping when the wounds were made, spraying the blood
