Delaney took the photo from her. 'If you could let me have his name and contact details it would be very useful.'
'Sure. It will take a few minutes.'
'Quick as you can.'
Suzanne looked up sharply at the seriousness in his voice, and hurried away to get the information.
Outside the clinic Sally could barely contain her exuberance.
'You think he's our man, sir?'
'He's our flasher, that's about all we know for sure.'
'Should we call it in, send uniform round?'
'We'll take care of it, but first, as we're here, let's see if the Kraken has woken up.'
Sally looked at him puzzled. 'Sir?'
A stray dog slowly approached the motionless body of Agnes Crabtree, tentatively sniffing the air, and moved closer. It was a ragged thing. A composite of hair and bone and appetite, scabby, starving and neglected. It nuzzled Agnes's face with its jaw and scented the fresh blood that had spilled along the pitted line of her chin into a small, brown stain on the wet stone. The smell made the dog's stomach rumble and flex with pain. He opened his jaw wider and, taking the old woman's ear between his teeth, gave a little tug. Agnes Crabtree groaned and shifted but did not awaken and slumped again, her breath exhaling in a wet, barely audible sigh. But the dog had long gone by then, his tail between his legs and his meal forgotten. In his experience human beings never meant anything but pain.
Delaney looked down at the still motionless body of Kevin Norrell as Sally picked up his medical chart at the foot of the bed.
'He's lucky to be alive.'
'If he makes it.'
'What do you think he knows?'
'People talk in prison. They brag. Someone may have told him something. Maybe he was involved himself.' Delaney shrugged.
Sally hesitated then put Norrell's chart back and looked at her boss. 'Yesterday I looked at the reports, boss. The incident . . .'
Delaney, hearing the hesitation in her voice, glanced over at her. 'Just spit it out, Sally.'
'The hold-up at the petrol station.'
It flashed back unbidden into Delaney's mind. The darkness of the night split by the sound and the flare of lighting cracking. Of glass exploding, of tyres squealing and a woman's voice screaming, then silence. Those shards of glass flying through the night air like barbs of conscience to bury deep into Delaney's brain. The guilt hooking him, ever since, like a bloodstained puppet to jerk and twitch under the hand of a punishing god.
'What about it, Detective Constable?' he asked simply.
'They robbed the place. And then they left, shooting out the window. Why would they do that?'
'Because they're mindless thugs.'
'Maybe. But three heavily tooled-up villains and a driver? Sounds like a professional job to me.'
'Go on.'
'For a petrol station?' Sally shrugged. 'Makes no sense. Everyone knows they don't have the sort of cash on the premises to merit that kind of operation.'
Delaney took it in, the realisation giving him a feeling in his stomach akin to a lift dropping several floors quickly. Sally was right, he had been the worst kind of idiot. Four years of alcohol-induced rage, but it had been directed at himself not at the people really
