Death Row - Mark Pearson [8]
Breathing in the rich smells wafting out of a kebab shop as they passed it Kate realised she was pretty hungry herself. It had been a long shift – she’d grabbed a quick sandwich before coming on duty at six but that seemed like a lifetime ago now and she was thinking she might just pick up a crêpe Suzette herself to enjoy with a well-earned and well-chilled glass of Viognier when she got home. Loaded with calories, she knew, but hey, she had just had a workout and, after the day she had had, she reckoned she deserved a treat or two. She smiled to herself as they passed Big Enchilada, the Mexican restaurant Rodrigues Sanchez worked in, where a chicken-and-ribs joint had once been. She glanced at the menu – tacos and burritos and her favourite, chicken quesadillas, marinated and grilled chicken meat folded in toasted tortillas with three kinds of melted cheese and fiery jalapeño sauce. Kate felt her mouth salivating and her arteries hardening at the same time and considered for a moment buying some takeout to bring home to share with Jack. And then she remembered the haunted battered face of the woman who worked long hours waitressing here to pay the rent on the squalid bedsit that they had just left. Remembered the pain written into her fragile flesh and the hurt branded in her eyes and Kate’s appetite disappeared. Besides, Jack had an early start tomorrow and would probably be sound asleep in bed. And as for her glass of Viognier? She was pregnant so that was going to have to wait a long while; it would be quite a good few months before she could look forward to that luxury again.
Kate pulled her coat tighter around herself, shivering with the cold as they continued walking past the restaurant towards Regents Park Tube station. She enjoyed her shifts as a police surgeon but on nights like this she wondered sometimes if she had done the right thing – giving up her job as a forensic pathologist. But she chased the thought away: she’d had many cold, late nights in that career too and general practice and teaching at the university gave her variety, gave her new challenges and, more importantly, it put her into contact with people. Living people. She’d been among the dead for too long in too many ways and for the first time in a very long while she felt a proper part of the real world again. She felt she belonged again. Beside her Bob Wilkinson was talking, but she wasn’t really listening. She was still thinking about Jack Delaney. Earlier he had taken a call from one of his Irish cousins and it had clearly affected him. She had pressed him for details but he had fobbed her off. She knew him well enough by now to know when he was concealing something, and she knew him well enough to realise that he was as stubborn as a rock when he wanted to be. He’d tell Kate what was going on when he was ready to, she guessed. Bob Wilkinson stopped and she realised he was waiting for her to say something.
‘I’m sorry, Bob. I was miles away. What were you saying?’
Wilkinson laughed. ‘I was just saying you were miles away and wondered what was on your mind?’
Kate opened her mouth to reply but at that moment a loud scream, piercing and terrified, came from a side road just ahead of them. They both ran