Riley shrugged again. 'I knew him a little.'
'Come off it, Riley. You think we don't read files? You grew up on the same estate as him. You've been busted together more than once. You knew the man.'
Riley hesitated for a moment, as if weighing up his options. Finally he said, 'Yeah, I knew him.'
'He's on remand. He gets to speak to people. And the information is that you and he were buddy-buddy in here.'
'Someone has to watch your back.'
'You did a good job of watching his.'
Riley held his skinny arms up. 'What good would I be? You know Norrell, he didn't need me riding on his wing.'
'So what did you do for him?'
'I've been here a while. I know who's who and what's what. I filled him in.'
'What was he going to tell Delaney?'
Riley pulled a face, so Skinner slapped him hard again. Sometimes he loved being a policeman. Riley yelped and the guard from outside looked in again. He grinned and nodded to Skinner with approval.
'For Christ's sake, what was that for?'
He flinched and pressed back against the wall as Skinner leaned in, but he didn't hit him this time. 'I'll ask the question again. What was he going to tell Delaney?'
Riley shook his head, agitated now. 'I honestly don't know. His court case was coming up soon. Preliminary hearings. He told me he had stuff on Chief Superintendent Walker. Maybe he was looking to make a deal.'
'He said it was about Delaney's wife.'
'He never said anything to me about it. But if he wanted to see Delaney that was a sure-fire way of getting him in.'
'What else would he want to see him for?'
Riley shook his head. 'Fuck knows, you're the detective.'
Some people just couldn't help themselves.
Paul Archer strode angrily down the steps, shrugging into his overcoat. The woman behind the reception desk smiled at him but he ignored her. She wasn't his type and he had taken the afternoon off for more particular distractions than the kind offered in idle badinage with insipid blondes. Paul Archer had the kind of itch that could only be scratched by a certain type of woman. And he knew just where to find her.
Delaney stood in front of the briefing room. On the board behind him were pinned the photographs taken of the dead woman they had found in the woods. Hampstead's very own Black Dahlia, he couldn't help thinking.
'All right, listen up.' Delaney raised his voice above the chatter that filled the room and conversations died as they focused their attention on the detective inspector. 'Now, as yet we don't have any ID on the woman. We think she was murdered sometime during last night. We're placing her age, give or take a few years, in her mid-twenties.'
'Was she killed in the woods, or dumped there?' Audrey Hobson, a uniformed inspector in her fifties, called out.
'Best we can tell, she was killed where we found her.'
'An opportunist killing, or was she taken there?'
'We don't know, Audrey. It was lousy weather. It was cold, windy, raining. It's unlikely she'd be in the woods alone at that time of night.'
PC Bob Wilkinson spoke out. 'It's possible. Like Sally said earlier. Maybe it's some witchcraft thing. She's dressed up as a goth. You know how some of
