‘Well, then just keep thinking, Sally. It’s what you’re good at.’
‘Sir.’
‘And pull off at the next left.’
‘That’s not the way to Harrow.’
‘I know that, Cassidy. It’s not the way to Amarillo, either. We’re going to Pitshanger to see someone first.’
‘Who?’
‘One of my cousins.’ Delaney paused for a moment. ‘One of my cousins on the respectable side.’
*
Kate was sitting in the police surgeon’s office, which was a small room downstairs just off the custody and booking area. She looked up when there was a knock on her door and DI Bennett stuck his head round.
‘Got a minute?’
Kate gestured with her hand. ‘Sure. Come in. Just catching up with the paperwork.’
‘Don’t get me started on paperwork. Cut down the number of forms we have to fill in and we’d raise our solve rate exponentially, you ask me.’
‘Who was it who said bureaucracy is the bedrock of incompetence?’
Bennett shrugged. ‘I don’t know but if he was in the Met I imagine he’d have been fired.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m on my way over to part of your university. Thought you might like to tag along.’
‘I told you I’m not working there this week.’
Bennett smiled. ‘I know you did.’
Kate looked at him. ‘You’re not hitting on me, are you, Inspector Bennett? I thought we cleared all that up.’
Bennett laughed. ‘No. No. I don’t swing my truncheon on another man’s beat.’
Kate looked at him coolly. ‘
‘I was speaking metaphorically.’
‘Let me guess … Germaine Greer is your godmother.’
Bennett shrugged. ‘When I am with attractive women, I just use humour as a defence mechanism. What can I say?’
‘You can say what you’re doing here. I am busy. It’s paperwork but I’m busy.’
‘Someone has come forward. From the university. We might have a name for your stabbing victim.’
‘Go on.’
‘A fellow student across the corridor from some fellow in their hall of residence called the police because he was concerned. This guy hasn’t been home since last night, he missed his lectures this morning and he matches the description.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Jamil Azeez. Second-year student. Studying law. An Iranian.’
Kate looked at the paperwork on her desk and stood up, pulling her coat, a tailored black cotton jacket that matched her skirt, off the back of the chair. ‘The paperwork can wait.’
‘Bennett nodded ‘Good call. I’ll drive.’
Kate threw him a cool look, snatched up her car keys off her desk and rattled them at him pointedly. ‘We’ll both drive.’
‘Shame. I thought we could have got to know each other better on the way there, and you could tell me all about Inspector Delaney. He seems a fascinating character from all I hear.’
‘I wouldn’t believe half of what you’ve heard. He’s a lot worse than that.’
Bennett pointed at her jacket. ‘You’ll need something warmer than that on. It’s cold out there.’
Kate grabbed her black parka with its faux-fur trim and sailed out of the office, leaving DI Bennett to follow in her wake.
*
Pitshanger Village is a small area some miles west of Central London, just outside Ealing and off the Western Avenue. Hidden in the scar of housing that runs from well east of the city to the borders of the Green Belt in the west, it is a little-known but exclusive area. Like a miniature version of Greenwich Village in New York it is home to artists and writers, to musicians, cameramen, actors, lawyers, businessmen and businesswomen. It has boutique bakeries, independent bookshops, organic pizza-parlours. A bit like Hampstead Village, Delaney thought as they turned along Pitshanger Lane, but not that much, not by a long chalk. Well heeled by Prada, though. Christ, he thought to himself, I’m turning into one of them. Maybe moving to Belsize Park hadn’t been such a good idea, after all: he’d be wearing Hunter wellies next and buying the
‘Something up, sir?’
‘It’s cold, Sally. That’s all. Sure, I’d never have left the sun-kissed shores of Cork if I’d have known the weather
