Murder Club - Mark Pearson [58]
MICHAEL ROBINSON STOOD on the platform at Baker Street waiting for the east-bound train that had just left Edgware Road and would take him to Piccadilly Circus.
He jiggled some coins in his jacket pocket. Not that he was scared as such, more a nervous excitement. He had a meeting first and then he was free to spend some time in Soho. It had been more than twelve months since he had enjoyed female company and he intended to savour the opportunity now. Ideally, he would have liked to pay that haughty bitch Stephanie Hewson another visit. He felt himself harden as he remembered the look she had given him in the courtroom that morning. Since he had recovered consciousness in hospital, every day, every night he had replayed in his mind what he had done to her in that Scout hut in Harrow-on-the-Hill. Grunting as he entered her, her gasps of pain making him harder still. He could remember the feel of her. His hands on her cool buttocks as he rammed himself into her. He remembered taking his knife and cutting her. Her sudden intake of breath. He remembered walking home over the back of the hill. Her scent in his nostrils, and he hardened again almost immediately.
He’d look for someone just like her. There were plenty of women to choose from in Soho, if you had the cash in your pocket. He hadn’t bought a new knife, though. The old one was hidden somewhere no one would ever find it and he wasn’t going to risk trying to recover it. He was many things, but one thing Michael Robinson wasn’t, was any man’s fool. He wasn’t any man’s bitch, either. And certainly not that arrogant fuck DI Jack Delaney’s. Coming into his house. Threatening him. The fuck didn’t have any idea who he was dealing with. But he was going to find out soon enough just what kind of man Robinson was. Delaney could wait, howevert. Wheels were in motion and the bastard would get what was coming to him.
Stephanie Hewson – she’d get what was coming to her soon too. But for now he was going to concentrate on himself. He jingled the coins in his pocket again, and a slow smile spread across his face as he imagined what lay ahead for him that evening.
He stepped forward as the train came clattering out of the tunnel from Marylebone.
And then he felt a lancing needle of pain in his right thigh. An unbearable pain searing through his neural pathways. His body convulsed and he stepped forward into thin air. He didn’t even have time to scream before the east-bound train hit him.
And then he didn’t think much of anything at all.
He was dead.
42.
DELANEY CAME INTO the bedroom loosening his tie.
Kate was sitting up in bed reading the latest Shardlake novel. The hunchback of Olde London town solving crimes for Henry the Eighth. Not Delaney’s cup of tea. It seemed to him that the serial killer Shardlake never caught was old Henry himself. Kate’s glasses were perched on the end of her nose and she peered over them at Jack as he tossed his tie on the chair beside the bed.
‘Where’ve you been, Jack?’ she said.
Delaney leaned over and kissed her. ‘My car broke down.’
‘Again? Isn’t it about time you got rid of that old thing?’
‘Probably. But I like my Saab.’
‘It doesn’t like you.’
‘Got the Tube.’
Kate wrinkled her nose suspiciously. ‘After a couple of beers, by the smell of you, I’d say.’
‘I might have had a couple. It’s been a bit of a day.’
‘Funny how your car often breaks down when you’ve had a bit of a day.’
Delaney lay on the bed and rested his head on the pillow. ‘Just a coincidence.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences.’
Delaney grinned. ‘Me neither.’
‘I heard about the court case.’
‘Hard not to.’
‘Yes. Pretty much over the news continually.’
‘Small-news day.’
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘Nothing, darling. Old cowboy here, he’s pretty much bullet-proof.’
‘Man from Krypton?’
‘Something like that.’
Kate rested her head on his chest and he stroked her hair. ‘How was your day?’ he asked her.
‘Not the best, if I am honest.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Not yet.’
Delaney nodded. ‘Fair play.’
‘What about yours?’
‘Started bad, got worse, ending up