Delaney lost himself in the warmth, the taste of whisky on her, the openness in her wide, beautiful eyes. Eyes he could drown in. Then he caught himself and pulled back.
'Sorry.'
Kate shook her head. 'You've got nothing to be sorry about.' She held his head and pulled him back in to her, her teeth nipping his lower lip, hungry now. Passionate.
They stood up, Delaney shrugging out of his jacket and wrapping his strong arms around her pliant body. Holding her, needing her. Kate stood back, catching her breath, her ivory face flushed with desire. She held her hand out and Delaney took it, and she led him from the kitchen, to the stairs towards her bedroom. And Delaney almost made it.
'No. This isn't right, Kate.'
'Jack…'
But Delaney put a hand to her lips so that she couldn't speak.
'Don't, Kate. This isn't the right time.'
'It feels like it to me.'
He shook his head. 'With everything that's going on. I've already involved you in too much already.'
Kate looked at him for a moment. 'I haven't done anything that I haven't wanted to do.'
Delaney nodded, conflicted. 'I'm sorry.'
Kate looked away, embarrassed suddenly. 'There's a big sofa you can sleep on.'
She led him through to the lounge and Delaney sat gratefully on a wide red leather sofa.
'What are you going to do, Jack?'
'I don't know. Someone's very scared. I have to find out why.'
'It all comes back to Jackie Malone?'
Delaney nodded. 'Yeah, I think it does.'
'Somebody murdered her. And whoever it was, someone on the force is protecting him. Setting you up for the fall.'
'Looks that way.'
'I hope you find the bastards.'
Delaney's eyes hardened. 'Oh, I'll find them, Kate.' He was lost in his own thoughts for a moment and then smiled apologetically at her. 'I'll be out of your hair in the morning.'
Kate looked at him and then nodded, finally, with a small smile of her own and left.
Delaney lay back on the sofa, his mind dancing with thoughts he wasn't sure he wanted to be having. This wasn't a time to be getting emotionally involved with someone. And he knew that that was exactly what it was. It wasn't about sex. If it was, he'd already have been in Kate's bed. He'd lied to her earlier about Jackie Malone. They were more than just friends; he had slept with her. Not often, but every now and again, when enough Guinness and whiskey had chased the guilty thoughts of his wife out of his turbulent and troubled brain, he had visited her and they had slept together. And she had written about it in her diary. But they were just friends, there was no emotional context at all apart from that. They could talk, they could relate to each other and they could have sex without it meaning a damn thing. Until the next morning, of course, when Delaney would wake with more than a hangover. He'd wake with the guilt returning tenfold. Guilt that made his stomach cramp and his throat gag drily. That made him hate himself all over again.
Kate coughed quietly, and Delaney snapped out of his reverie. She had returned with a duvet under her arm and a new bottle of whisky in her hand. She put the whisky on a small table and handed Delaney the duvet.
'Are you sure this is what you want?'
Delaney nodded, not meeting her eye. 'Thanks.'
Kate paused, then smiled and ran her fingers gently through his hair. 'If you need anything, you know where I am.'
She walked back to the door and Delaney called after her. 'Kate.'
She turned back, surprised. 'Yes.'
'Thanks.'
'Sure.'
And she left.
The nurse was a small, dark-haired woman in her early twenties with delicate, almost Oriental features. Her hands were small too, delicate again, but precise. She moved a pillow under the woman's head. The woman's eyes were closed, her breathing operated by an artificial respirator. The mechanical pumps making an obscene sound. Her body was invaded by tubes and wires, and the beat of the heart monitor sent out a contrapuntal and discordant rhythm to the respirator. She was living in form only.
Delaney stood at the bottom of the bed as the nurse finished adjusting the pillow so that the woman's dark hair fanned out neatly on it. There was no twitch beneath her eyelids, no smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and there never would be again. She was dead. All it needed was for Delaney to let them turn the machine off.
The consultant was sympathetic. 'If there was any hope at all, I would advise against it, of course, but the brain stem has suffered too much damage. To all intents and purposes she is already dead.'
Delaney looked at him for a long moment, scared to ask the question but needing to know the answer. 'And the baby?'
The consultant shook his head sadly. 'I'm sorry.'
Delaney's head nodded downward as he gave permission. He couldn't hold back the tears any longer. As the obscenity of the pump ceased and the heart monitor line became still, his world went dark.
The small nurse passed him with a sympathetic look, and he wanted to reach out and hold her. To beg her to do the same for him. To pull his plug, because he couldn't bear it. He couldn't live with his wife's death, and what was more, he didn't want to. But he didn't do anything. He was powerless. Impotent. Wasted. All he could do was stand there and sob.
Delaney lay curled, almost foetus-like, on the sofa, his head twitching as in his dreams he looked down once again on the face of his wife. He could almost hear her heart slowing and stopping, the blood lying still in her veins, her breath sighing to a close, and tears fell from his eyes all over again.
Kate sat gently beside him and put her arms around him, cradling him like a child. Delaney awoke, the memories clinging to him like a physical presence, a thick cobweb of pain. Kate murmured reassurance and Delaney held her as though a hurricane might blow him away if he didn't. Kate looked into his eyes and touched a finger to his lips.
'Come to bed.' She took his hand and stood up, and Jack didn't even hesitate as he let her lead him from the room.
29.
Kate stood under the shower. The pressure was turned to maximum but she didn't have the water as hot as she normally did. In fact there was a lot about her this morning that wasn't normal. For one thing, she was smiling quietly to herself, and for another, as she soaped her body with a sponge it was more of a caress than a scrub. She hummed as she poured shampoo into her hand and worked it through her thick tresses of hair.
She rinsed the soap clear and sang too. It was the first time she had sung in the shower for a long time. She bit her lower lip a little guiltily as flashes of memory came back.
'Tell me, Jack. Talk to me.' Low, breathless, husky.
'Dig your nails in. I want to taste blood.'
'Pleasure and pain, Detective Inspector. Very Catholic.'
Delaney laughed, looking into her eyes, at the mischief sparking within them. 'I want to remember the moment.'
And Kate dug her nails into his buttocks, pulling him deeper into her. 'Oh, you'll remember. I'll make sure of that.'
And she set about keeping her promise.
The water pooled at Kate's feet as she leaned into the jet and caught her breath. Just remembering the night before made her hot and bothered again. Hot and bothered in the nicest possible way, and Kate shook her head at herself. Delaney was on the run. He was a wanted man. Wanted for murder. This was certainly not the time to be getting involved, or the man to be getting involved with.
She wrapped her robe around her as she walked into the kitchen and put the large enamel kettle on the range to boil; then, smiling playfully, she slipped the robe off again and walked into her bedroom.
'Time to go to work, Jack.'
But Delaney already had.
Kate sighed; she should have known better.
DC Sally Cartwright was having a bad Sunday morning. Jack Delaney doing a runner meant no one was getting a day off any time soon. She sat at her desk in the CID room with her head reeling. She couldn't believe that Delaney had been arrested and was now somewhere on the loose. Maybe she hadn't been on the force long enough to develop what Bob Wilkinson called his infallible gut instinct for slags, but she knew one thing for sure, and that was that Jack Delaney was no slag. She drank her coffee thoughtfully as Bob, perched on the edge of her desk, leaned in.