He took out a ten by eight black-and-white photo of the belt and buckle and handed it across to her.
Sally leaned in. 'We thought it might have been a qualifying gift. She was found near the hospital and we figured she may have worked here.'
The woman nodded. 'It's a possibility. It's the sort of buckle that a nurse might well have. When you say she was found . . . may I ask what the circumstances were?'
'She was murdered,' Delaney said shortly. 'Her throat was cut and her body was slashed. Repeatedly, and with some force.'
Margaret Johnson swallowed and nodded at the folder, steeling herself. 'I had best take a look then.'
Delaney handed the file across to her and Sally could see moisture forming in the older woman's eyes as she looked through the photos one by one.
'The poor woman.' Her voice cracked, and she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes. 'I'm sorry.'
She handed the file back.
'I'm sorry you had to see those, but we need to know,' Delaney said.
'I meant I'm sorry because I can't help you.'
'Mrs Johnson?'
'She may well have been a nurse. But she didn't work here.'
The man looked at the answerphone by his bed. It was an old-fashioned one that he had never got around to replacing. You could have it through your line on BT so you didn't need a separate piece of equipment, but he had never cared for that. He liked the mechanics of things. He liked taking them apart to see how they worked. Always had. As a kid he had opened the backs of clocks to see the hidden, inner workings.
He looked again at the blinking light on the machine and felt no urge to play the message. He knew what it would be, but he had no time for petty distractions. Not today. Today he was on a high. He was floating. He was invincible.
He looked at the scuffed toes of his cowboy boots and reached down to peel a wet leaf from one of them. He held the leaf to his nose, smelling the mossy tones of it, the woodland smell, the faint but sweet smell of organic matter beginning to decompose. He rubbed his other hand on the crotch of his trousers, feeling himself harden again as he drew in another deep sniff of the leaf and looked at the photos he had taken of a young detective constable dressed in a nurse's uniform. She certainly was very pretty.
Delaney thanked Margaret Johnson once more and closed the door to her office behind him. He had made her look at the photos again and then asked her to pull the records of all the nurses currently working at the hospital. One by one they had gone through the records, looking at each passport photo attached to each nurse's personnel file and by the end of it were none the wiser. Margaret Johnson had been right. The dead woman had not been working at the South Hampstead Hospital. At least they knew that now, if precious little else.
Delaney could see Sally Cartwright's upbeat mood had been dented a little. Not because she would have wanted the glory of making the nursing connection, of that he was sure. She was disappointed, just like he was, that they hadn't been able to identify the woman. If they could do that then it was a start to identifying her killer. Put a name to her and then maybe they could track the sick bastard down before it was too late. Before he struck again. But in Delaney's heart, he knew that it was a distinct possibility that it was already too late. He turned to his assistant. 'Come on.'
'Where are we going, sir?'
'To the clap clinic.'
'I beg your pardon?
