Page 51 of Tell No One
Delaney had barely pulled back onto the road before Tag opened his mouth.
“Have I told you that you have a big cock?”
Delaney snorted.
“I wasn’t sure if you knew.” Tag grinned at him. “Or maybe you’re one of those guys who takes a peep when you’re using a urinal.”
“I try not to.”
“Well, youdohave a big cock.”
Delaney mouthed ‘what are you doing?’
“Did you know cocks can shrink by a couple of centimetres if you don’t get hard regularly?”
Why was he not surprised that Tag was ignoring him? Though he did find himself asking, “What does regularly mean?”
“An average bloke gets between eleven and twenty erections a day, and not necessarily because they’re horny. Can be due to stress or anxiety or anger. I mean, isn’t that crazy? Why would you get hard when you’re scared shitless or furious? You’d think it would have the opposite effect.”
“Where are you getting your facts?”
“While I was… The Internet. One thing I did find out that I thought was just sort of lovely was that doctors can grow skin grafts for burn victims from baby foreskins. 23,000 square metres from just one foreskin. I’m sort of sad I wasn’t circumcised when I was a baby but maybe they didn’t have the technology to make the grafts then. I wonder if they tell burn victims where their skin grafts come from? Or when they use them for eyelid replacements?”
Delaney shook his head. “Probably not.”
Tag’s trivia continued until Delaney pulled up next to the house and switched off the engine. He opened the back door for Tag to go inside.
“So anxiety really does make you talk too much,” Delaney said.
Tag widened his eyes in mock surprise. “How did you guess? Oh no, I told you, didn’t I.”
“I’m going to check out the car. You shower. Put your dirty clothes in the washer. Don’t turn it on because I’ll add mine in a few minutes. Pack your stuff up ready to leave.”
Delaney couldn’t find a tracker or a microphone, but he wasn’t reassured. He doubted the presence of a microphone but the tracker could be in a hard-to-get-to place. He didn’t have time to take the car apart and he couldn’t risk using it. The dead guys might have relayed the details back to whoever sent them before they’d broken in.
Normally, trackers were something put on quickly and placed in a spot that was relatively easy to access, but his M4 had been in that garage in Margate for five months. Untouched, he’d thought but… If he’d had detection equipment, he could make certain the car was clean but he’d had to leave the gadget he’d used at Harborne House in the Mercedes.
There was one other place that he wanted to check, but it could wait until he’d showered. He stripped, put his clothes in the machine with Tag’s and set it to the fastest wash, then he cleaned the kitchen floor again before he went upstairs. No matter how many times it was washed, the blood would show up under forensic investigation, but hopefully, there was no reason for it to be checked. The house would be going on the market anyway. He took his gun with him when he went upstairs. Until this was sorted, one way or another, he wanted it handy.
Once he was dressed, Delaney picked up the bag he’d been using for the last five days, emptied it out on the bed and found the tracker stuck under the plastic base board.Shit!He slipped it into his pocket and went downstairs with his laptop.
Tag was eating toast. “Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
“By the way, I’ve put some cardboard over that broken window and cleaned up the glass. Is that okay? You need to call someone to fix it.”
“Uh huh.” Delaney took the perishable food out of the fridge and put it in a bin bag near the door. When he levered the fridge out of position, Tag huffed. “I knew there had to be a hiding place other than behind the logs.”
Delaney pulled out his backpack and put it on the table. Tag washed the plate and knife. Delaney heard the washing machine bleep and transferred the contents to the drier.
“The floor looks okay.” Tag leaned against the utility room door. “Can’t tell anything happened. At least they had the decency to wear gloves.”
“There’s no way to get rid of every trace. Chemicals will show up blood we can’t see. Their DNA will be here too.”
“But no one to tie it to.”
“No.” Delaney put his hand in his pocket, took out the tracker and showed it to him.
