damp with perspiration.
'Overdoing it on the brandy again?'
She spun around, her mouth open in shock, her arm dropping, spilling the brandy from her glass into the rich pile of the carpet.
'How did you get in?' Her voice trembled as she looked at the man in front of her.
'I always kept a spare key in the garden shed. If you didn't want me here you should have changed the locks.'
'Get out!' Helen screamed at him and threw the brandy glass. The man laughed as it missed him by five feet and smashed against her new Liberty-print wallpaper that she had always wanted but had never been allowed.
Paul Archer shook his head, the laughter in his eyes dying in an instant. 'Seems like you never learn, Helen. No matter how many lessons you're given, you never learn. But as someone once remarked . . . repetition is an excellent learning tool.'
Helen shook with terror as Paul Archer moved towards her. She tried to get away but she could only make a few steps towards the door and then her legs wouldn't move, her muscles useless, she felt her knees buckle and she slid, almost in slow motion, to the floor. She tried to get up but couldn't. She watched helpless as her ex-husband looked down on her as he took off his shirt, which he folded neatly and put on the sofa, then unbuckled his belt and lowered his trousers. She tied to move backwards but couldn't. She could barely scream as he stood above her naked, stroking himself with his right hand, hardening. Her eyes flicked to the right, to the broken brandy glass, lying against the wall. If she could just reach that she could take that smile off his face for good.
Delaney leaned against the wall in the small entrance to South Hampstead station watching the commuters as they spilled out of the lift and bustled for the exit. A couple of uniforms were waiting outside and Sally Cartwright stood next to Delaney looking at her watch. Across from them was the ticket office and station master's room. The door opened and an angry-looking man, with dark, wavy hair and an accent spooned with silver, glared across at them.
'Haven't you people got anything better to do?'
Simon Elliot, a police surgeon in his thirties, came out behind him and shook his head at Jack. He wasn't the one they were looking for. Delaney shrugged at the angry man with the posh voice and held his hands out apologetically.
'We're just doing a job here.'
'Your family must be very proud of you.'
The man walked off in a huff and Sally looked at her watch again.
'Keen to be somewhere, Constable?'
'Like I said earlier, we're having a drink a bit later. You're welcome to join us.'
Delaney looked at her deadpan. 'You know me, Sally. I don't drink during the week.'
'Just a bit of a headache was it this morning, sir? A migraine?'
'Along those lines.'
Delaney listened as another train pulled out of the tunnel many feet below, feeling the ground vibrate beneath his feet, and watched the indicator that showed another lift was on its way up. So far they had interviewed two of the three potential suspects identified by Valerie Manners and had no luck with either of them. Any resemblance to the flasher on the heath's southern common disappeared below buckle level.
Kate felt nauseous as she finished reading the statement. Helen Archer explaining in clinical detail the assault her ex-husband had made on her. No, not assault, she corrected herself mentally, the rape. As she read the clinical words she could picture all too clearly in her mind what had happened. Helen suspected that Paul Archer had laced her brandy with some sort of sedative, some kind of date-rape drug.
