barely contained violence in brown eyes and figured Norrell better not be yanking on the cowboy's lariat.
Kevin lay on the top bunk in his cell squeezing an exercise ball, the tendons of his hand standing out like ropes of wire as he contracted it. The man below him fidgeted nervously. Norrell didn't blame him. Like the man in the shower, he wouldn't meet his eyes. Something was in the air. He could almost taste the tension. Norrell smiled humorously as he squeezed the ball again. Whatever it was he would be ready to meet it, or die trying. One way or another he was getting out of prison.
Diane Campbell glanced across at the pub windows, noticing that the rain had eased up a little. She sipped on her third glass of mineral water and looked across at Delaney. There was a glassy look in his eyes now, less anger and a softer focus. Not surprising since had moved on to drinking Scotch with his Guinness, for some reason insisting on Glenmorangie rather than his favoured Bushmills, and had had six or seven doubles. She wasn't sure that he hadn't slipped in a quick one or two when she had gone to the Ladies. Never mind about the ban on smoking in pubs, what about putting enough cubicles in and banning women from using the place like a lounge for gossip? She didn't envy a man his penis, that was for sure, but she did admire its functional practicality. She swallowed her drink. She was desperate for a cigarette. Diane looked at Delaney pointedly. 'Come on, cowboy, drink up. I'm taking you home.
Delaney looked at her steadily, the very faintest of slurs in his voice. 'I've got my car outside.'
'Yeah, and that's where it's staying. You're not causing anyone else's death this month. Not on my watch.'
Delaney laughed. 'Did you really just say 'not on my watch', Diane?'
'You heard it, partner. The mule is staying parked right where you left it, and I'm taking you back to the High Chaparral.'
Delaney shook his head as he stood up. 'Just drop me off at a Tube station.'
'Which one?'
'Northern Line.' He drained his pint of Guinness, coaxed the last drop of whisky from his glass into his mouth and walked with her to the door. He was almost balanced.
*
Kate Walker didn't normally take the Tube. It wasn't so much that she was a snob, she just didn't like the crammed-in, close proximity of people. It wasn't just the look of them or the smell of them – which was bad enough with their wet, rain-sodden clothes – but she knew what people were capable of, the extent of their random cruelties. As a forensic pathologist she knew that far better than most. If she had learned the hard way that you couldn't trust the people you were related to or worked with . . . then you sure as hell couldn't trust strangers. She wouldn't be taking the Tube at all, in fact, but her car was booked in at the garage for a service and an MOT, and her mechanic wouldn't be dropping it back at her house until the early evening. So she had gone by train and taxi to the cemetery for the funeral earlier that afternoon of the caretaker who had been murdered in the course of Delaney's last case. She was pleased she had been able to take flowers for the grave, but in all other ways the journey had been wasted. She had hoped to be able to speak to Jack, discuss what happened with them, but she might as well have been speaking to the dead caretaker for the amount of emotional response she got from Delaney. The prospect of going straight home to an empty house had depressed her even more and so she had spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and buying nothing. Nothing fitted. Nothing was right. Nothing shifted the black cloud of her mood. And so here she was now, stuck on the Tube with a bunch of people she neither knew nor felt any inclination to know.
She looked down at her court shoes. Expensive, chic, sexy, she thought. Black suited her colouring. The shoes were now spattered with mud and rain and the shine had come off them, just like the shine had come off her day.
The train juddered to a halt, mid-tunnel, and the
