was going to be this bleeding miserable year in and year out.’
‘We had a cracking summer, sir.’
‘Seems like a lifetime ago now.’
Sally looked through the softly thwumping windscreen wipers at the rain-drenched urban landscape of West London beyond and couldn’t help but agree. London in the summer was a different place. No doubt about that.
A short while later, Sally pulled the car to a stop on the street across from the library, next door to the bookshop that was painted Tardis blue and was busy with customers, seemingly defiant in the face of the recession and the competition from Amazon and the supermarkets. Maybe people in Pitshanger could afford to pay the full price for books, or maybe they just didn’t want to be seen shopping in Asda or Tesco. ‘Do you want me to wait in the car?’ she said.
Delaney shook his head. ‘Not at all, Sally. Come with me. We might need some thinking done after all. And you’re the girl for that.’
‘Woman, sir.’
‘Jeez, you’re all so keen to grow up. I don’t know what’s wrong with the youth of today, I surely to God don’t.’
‘I sometimes think you were born a grumpy old man, sir.’
‘Nah,’ said Delaney. ‘A proper miserable personality is like a good beer belly – it takes many years and serious application to achieve it.’
Sally glanced across as Delaney levered his tall athletic frame out of the car, at his flat stomach and powerful shoulders. ‘Well, at least you’ve got time for the beer belly, sir.’
Delaney closed the car’s passenger door and pulled the collar of his jacket up against the cold rain that was slanting across the street. Then he led Sally across the road, past the bookshop and through a double doorway to a staircase leading up into a group of flats called Kenmure Mansions that ran above the shops that lined the street. They both shook the moisture from their hair as they climbed upward. Delaney’s shoes clattered loudly on the bare concrete steps and Sally’s curiosity was piqued. She knew better than to ask him what they were doing here – she’d find out soon enough, she was sure of that. Must be pretty important for him to delay getting to Harrow, she knew that much. Or then again, maybe she didn’t, she realised. Who knew with Jack Delaney, after all? The man was about as predictable as the weather in barbecue season.
Delaney walked past a number of doors, all black, all well kept, before stopping and tapping on one that was painted bottle green and had a shiny brass knocker. There was a small metallic plaque on the wall beside it. Sally kept her expression neutral but flicked her glance sideways to read it.
Before she had a chance to ask Delaney if that was his cousin the door opened. A tall woman in her late forties with long honey-coloured hair and sparkling blue eyes looked Delaney up and down critically and then smiled. ‘It’s good to see you, cousin.’
‘And you, Mary.’ He gave her a hug.
‘Well, you’d best come through.’ She looked at Sally and tilted her chin teasingly. ‘And who is this beautiful young thing with you? I hope you’re not up to your old tricks again, Jack Delaney?’
Sally blushed despite herself and held her hand out. ‘I’m a detective constable. I work with Inspector Delaney. Sally Cartwight.’
‘Pleased to meet you, darling.’
Mary shook Sally’s hand in a warm grip, clasping the other hand over and patting it.
Delaney gestured that they should go in. ‘She’s my right-hand woman, Mary, and that thirsty, more importantly, that she can barely speak for the dust in her throat. Let’s get the kettle on.’
‘Come in, come in, then! It’s you that’s standing there on the step like a kidnapped garden gnome who’s lost his fishing rod.’ Mary waved them in, laughing. ‘And kettle, you say? Are you sure you’re my cousin? What have you done with him, Sally? Signed him up for the pledge?’
Sally laughed. ‘Not in this life.’
Mary led them through into a beautifully decorated and surprisingly large lounge. Large windows looked out onto the street below but the double glazing muted the noise of the traffic so that it barely registered. A young woman stood up from the couch as they walked in. She had thick curly hair that was midnight black and shiny, flawless olive skin and beautiful almond-shaped eyes that seemed to shine. If she was one of Cleopatra’s hand maidens, Sally thought, she’d have probably had her killed.
‘This is Gloria, Sally,’ said Delaney.
The woman smiled and held her hand out. ‘I’m the girl in the boot,’ she said.
*
Whitefriars Hall was a brick-built building, constructed sometime in the early 1970s to house the burgeoning population of students in the ever-expanding West London University. The university had several buildings spread throughout the west of the city: old technical colleges, art colleges and a polytechnic that had been assimilated under the banner of West London University at the beginning of the 1990s. The Conservative government’s idea for getting more people into university by simply renaming the polytechnics.
‘More universities, that’s what the world needs isn’t it, Kate?’ said DI Bennett as he pulled his car to a stop in the car park outside the halls of residence. ‘Never mind if there’s no jobs for the poor sods when they graduate. Half of them would be better off studying to be mechanics.’
‘Is that meant to be a dig?’ asked Kate frostily as she snapped open her seat belt before letting it zip back into place with a definite clunk.
‘Not at all,’ said Bennett, enjoying her discomfiture. ‘You are clearly a successful driven woman. It’s not your fault that your car wouldn’t start – you probably flooded the engine.’
