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Pied Piper away, doesn't mean there isn't
more of the vermin that were on his payroll still on
the job, scratching their feet and sniffing their noses
in the air.' He looked pointedly across as a couple of
uniforms approached.
    Delaney took a bite out of his sandwich. 'I'll bear
it in mind.' He turned back to Sally. 'Come on, let's
get out of here.'
    Roy called after him. 'Madonna? My doughnut
more like!'
    Delaney walked off, Sally took a couple of gulps of
her tea and threw the cup in the black plastic dustbin
at the side of the van. 'Cheers, Roy.'
    'De nada. And you watch your back too, Detective
Constable. That man is a disaster area in size ten
brogues.'
    Sally winked at him. 'At least you know where you
are with him.'
    Roy nodded. 'In fucking trouble most like.' Roy
turned to the two uniformed constables who had
arrived and were watching Sally hurry after Delaney
with undisguised appreciation. Roy grunted at them.
'Out of your league, boys. Out of your league.'
    'Just give us a couple of bacon rolls, Roy.'
    Roy leaned forward confidentially. 'Can I interest
you lads in some pirate DVDs?'
    The older uniform sighed patiently. 'Go on?'
    'I've got Treasure Island , The Black Hawk , and of
course Pirates of the Caribbean , the complete boxed
set.'
    Neither of the uniforms laughed.
    Kate stood for a long while in the bathroom. The
clothes she had been wearing last night were in a
heap in the corner. She pulled the belt tight around
the towelling robe she had on and looked at herself in
the mirror. Her waterproof mascara had lived up to
its name, but her eyeshadow and lipstick were
smeared and her face looked pale against the almost
black of her tangled and disarrayed curls. Whatever
slight tan she might have picked up in the summer
months seemed to have disappeared overnight. She
walked across to the shower unit and put her hand
on the tap. She held it there for a moment or two, the
metal chill on her hand. And then she took it away
again. She wouldn't shower that morning. She took
the towelling robe off and carefully folded it, then
picked up her clothing from the night before and
dressed herself.
    In 1903 Holloway Prison became a purely women-only
facility. Coupled with the ending of transportation
and the closing of Newgate, it meant a new
prison for male offenders had to be built, a place to
house those prisoners who were to be evicted to
accommodate the fairer sex. The site chosen in the
last, dying breaths of the Victorian era was a bit of
undeveloped park and scrubland some two miles or
so south of Hampstead Heath and a mile or so west
of Delaney's new house in Belsize Park. Bayfield
Prison was an all-categories facility that held up to
six hundred prisoners. As the urban wealth of
Hampstead and Belsize Park spread further out, the
building was an incongruous intruder, a social blot
on an increasingly upmarket landscape. But it lay
hidden in its own ten acres of land, tall trees sheltering
the place from view on the main road; it was still
a lot closer, in many ways, to Kilburn than it was to
Hampstead.
    Sally pulled up at the iron gates that stood at the
end of the long driveway and waited for the
uniformed guard to check her identification. She
wound her window down, flinching as the rain
lashed at her face, and held her warrant card out. The
guard grunted, monosyllabically, then waved her
forward and signalled to the guard house. Electric
motors whirred and the heavy iron gates swung open.
Sally slipped the car in first gear and drove down
through the gates and along the quarter-mile or so of
private road that led up to the prison.
    'What's Norrell got to say do you think, guv?'
    Sally's question pulled Delaney out of his reverie.
He had been thinking along the same lines. 'I've no
idea.'
    'You reckon he was involved in the petrol station
hold-up?'
    Delaney shook his head. 'Maybe, but who knows?
If he was involved he'll have lived to regret