Читать книгу Beneath the Bleeding - Val McDermid, Val McDermid - Страница 11

Sometimes being right was no pleasure at all, Elinor thought as she stared at the lab report. This was definitely one of those times. The test results were incontrovertible. Robbie Bishop had enough ricin in his system to kill him several times over.

Elinor paged Denby, asking him to meet her at the ICU. As she crossed the covered walkway that linked the labs to the main hospital, she couldn’t avoid the sight of Robbie Bishop’s fans, their patient vigil rendered pointless by the piece of paper she held in her hand. According to one of the women in admin who had been holding forth in the staff canteen that morning, the hospital had been inundated with offers of blood, kidneys and anything else that might be donated to help Robbie. But there was nothing anyone could give Robbie now that would alter the fate in prospect.

As she approached the ICU, she folded the report in half and shoved it in her pocket. She didn’t want any of the security staff to glimpse its contents as they checked her ID before allowing her into the unit. The tabloids had their spies everywhere; the least she could do was to ensure Robbie’s last hours were as dignified as possible. She cleared security and crossed the reception area, spotting Martin Flanagan slumped against the end of a sofa. When he saw her, he jumped to his feet, eagerness and anxiety chasing the exhaustion temporarily from his face. ‘Any news?’ he asked, his flat Ulster accent lending the simple question an incidental air of aggression. ‘Mr Denby’s just gone in. Did he send for you?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Flanagan,’ Elinor said automatically. ‘There’s really nothing I can tell you right now.’

His face collapsed in on itself again, hope disappearing with her words. He dragged his fingers through his silver-streaked hair, a beseeching look on his face. ‘They won’t let me sit with him, you know. His mum and dad are here, they get to be with him. But not me. Not now he’s in there. I signed Robbie when he was just fourteen, you know. I brought him on. He’s the best player I’ve ever worked with and he’s got the heart of a lion.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, you know? Seeing him brought so low. He’s been like a son to me.’ He turned his face away from her.

‘We’re doing all we can,’ Elinor said. He nodded and dropped back on to the sofa like a sack of potatoes. It didn’t do to get emotionally involved, she knew that. But it was hard to see Flanagan’s pain and not feel connected.

Being in the ICU was one of life’s great levellers, she thought as she walked into the dim space with its bays crammed with equipment. Here, it didn’t matter whether you were a household name or a nobody. You got the same total commitment from the staff, the same access to whatever means it took to keep you alive. And the same restrictions on visitors. Immediate family only, and they could and would be unceremoniously shunted to one side if necessary. Here, the needs of the patient were paramount, and here the medical staff ruled supreme, if only because the patients were in no fit state to question them.

Elinor headed straight for Robbie Bishop’s cubicle. As she drew near, she could see the couple sitting on the left of the bed. A man and woman in their middle years, they were both clearly in the grip of the tension that comes with abject fear. Their focus was fierce and aimed exclusively at the figure wired to the machines. For all the notice they were taking of Thomas Denby standing at the end of the bed, he might as well be invisible. Elinor wondered if they had grown so accustomed to seeing their son from afar that they were somehow transfixed by his proximity as well as his infirmity.

She paused on the fringes of the group, the dim lighting creating a chiaroscuro effect that made her feel as if she were spying on a diorama in a gallery. At the heart of it, Robbie Bishop, a pale mockery of his former glossy self. Hard to imagine now, that mastery of the beautiful game, those fluid breaks down the wing and the curving crosses that had created so many opportunities for Bradfield Victoria’s strikers. Impossible to equate the puffy, waxen face with the glowing good looks that had earned millions promoting everything from organic fruit and vegetables to deodorant. His familiar mop of light brown hair, expertly streaked to make him look like a surfer dude, was lank and dark now, grooming being lower on the priority list of hospital staff than it was on that of premiership footballers. And Elinor was the one who was about to wrench the last shreds of hope from this dramatic tableau.

She took a step forward and cleared her throat tactfully. Only Denby registered her arrival; he turned, gave her a half-nod and ushered her away from the bedside towards the side office where the nurses were stationed. Denby smiled at the two nurses sitting in front of computer terminals and said, ‘Can you give us a minute, please?’

Neither looked particularly pleased at being shunted out of their own space, but they were conditioned to obey consultants. As the door closed behind them, Elinor pulled the test results from her pocket and handed them over. ‘It’s not good,’ she said.

Denby read the report, his face impassive. ‘No room for doubt there,’ he muttered.

‘So what do we do now?’

‘I tell his parents, you tell Mr Flanagan. And we do everything we can to make sure that Mr Bishop suffers as little as possible during his last hours.’ Denby was already turning, making for the door.

‘What about the police?’ Elinor said. ‘Surely we have to tell them now?’

Denby looked perplexed. ‘I suppose so. Why don’t you do that while I talk to Mr and Mrs Bishop?’ And he was gone.

Elinor sat at the desk and stared at the phone. Eventually she picked it up and asked the hospital switchboard to connect her to Bradfield police. The voice that answered sounded brisk and down-to-earth. ‘My name is Elinor Blessing and I’m a Senior House Officer at Bradfield Cross Hospital,’ she began, heart sinking as she realized how improbable her news was going to sound.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I think I need to talk to a detective. I need to report a suspicious death. Well, when I say death, he’s actually still alive. But he’s going to be dead before too long.’ Elinor winced. Surely she could have put it better than that?

‘I’m sorry? Has something happened? An assault?’

‘No, nothing like that. Well, I suppose technically, yes, but not in the way you’re thinking. Look, I don’t want to waste time explaining this over and over again. Can you just put me through to someone in CID? Someone who deals with murder?’

Tuesdays, Yousef Aziz made a point of dropping in on his main middleman. Knowing what he knew, it was hard to motivate himself, but for the sake of his parents and his brothers, he forced himself to do more than simply go through the motions. He owed them that, at least. His family’s textile business had survived in the teeth of fierce competition because his father had understood the value of personal relationships in business. That had been the first thing he had taught his two elder sons when he had initiated them into First Fabrics. ‘Always take care of your customers and suppliers,’ he’d explained. ‘If you make them your friends, it makes it hard for them to dump you when times get tough. Because the first rule of business is that times will always get tough sooner or later.’

He’d been right. He’d weathered the collapse of the textile business in the North when cheap imports from the Far East had all but obliterated British garment manufacturers. He’d hung on by the skin of his teeth, always keeping one step ahead, jacking up the quality of his merchandise when he couldn’t pare his costs any further, carving out new markets at the higher end of the game. And now it was all happening again. This time, the customers were driving the changes. Clothes were going for a song, fall-apart fashions available in chain stores for peanuts. Buy it cheap, wear it once, sling it. The new philosophy had infected a whole generation regardless of class. Girls whose mothers would have taken poison rather than enter a cut-price fashion store rubbed shoulders with teenage mothers on benefit in Matalan and TK Maxx. So Yousef and Sanjar were sticking to the tried-and-tested formula for survival.

And he hated it. Back when his father had started the business, he’d been dealing mostly with other Asians. But as First Fabrics had stabilized and established itself, they had to deal with all sorts. Jews, Cypriots, Chinese, Brits. And the one thing they all had in common was that they acted like 9/11 and 7/7 had given them the right to treat any Muslim with contempt and suspicion. All the misapprehensions and downright deliberate misunderstandings of Islam operated as the perfect excuse for racism. They knew it wasn’t acceptable to be openly racist any more, so they’d found another way to express their racism. All the stuff about women wearing the hijab. The complaints about them speaking Arabic or Urdu instead of English all the time. Fuck, had they never been to Wales? Go into a coffee bar there and suddenly it’s like nobody ever learned English.

What pissed off Yousef more than almost anything else was the way he was treated by people he’d known for years. He’d go into a factory or a warehouse where he’d been buying or selling for the seven years since he’d started working for his dad. And now, instead of the locals greeting him by name and having a laugh with him about the football or the cricket or whatever, their eyes slid away from him like he was slick with oil. Either that or they did that false, bright thing that made him feel patronized, like they were only being nice so they could preface their remarks in the pub with, ‘Of course, some of my best mates are Muslims …’

Today, though, he bit back his anger. It wasn’t like this was going to be for ever. As if to confirm the thought, his mobile rang just as he was pulling in to the car park behind Howard Edelstein’s factory. He recognized the ring tone and smiled, putting the phone to his ear. ‘How’s it going?’ the voice on the other end said.

‘All according to plan. It’s great to hear from you, I wasn’t expecting you to call this morning.’

‘Cancelled meeting. I thought I’d give you a quick bell, just to make sure everything was on track.’

‘You know you can rely on me,’ Yousef said. ‘When I say I’ll do something, it’s as good as done. Don’t worry about me bottling out.’

‘That’s the one thing I’m not worried about. You know we’re doing the right thing.’

‘I do. And I tell you, days like these make me glad we decided to do it this way.’

‘You having a bad one?’ The voice was sympathetic, warm.

‘The kind of arse-licking I hate. But I won’t be doing this for much longer.’

A chuckle at the other end of the phone. ‘That’s for sure. This time next week, the world will feel like a very different place.’

Before Yousef could respond, the familiar figure of Howard Edelstein himself loomed up beside his driver’s door, sketching a little wave and gesturing with his thumb towards the building. ‘I gotta go,’ Yousef said. ‘I’ll see you.’

‘Count on it.’

Yousef thumbed the phone shut, jumping out of the car with a smile on his face. Edelstein nodded at him, unsmiling. ‘Let’s get sorted, then,’ he said, leading the way indoors without waiting to see if Yousef was following.

This time next week, Yousef thought. This time next week, you bastard.

Carol stared at Thomas Denby, taking in the image. Prematurely silver hair swept back from his forehead, a single lock falling loose over one eyebrow. Greenish blue eyes, pink skin. A beautifully cut charcoal pinstripe suit, jacket thrown open to reveal a flamboyant scarlet lining. He could have sat for a portrait of the archetype of the successful young consultant. What he absolutely didn’t look like was someone whose idea of a good time was to wind up a senior police officer. ‘So let me get this straight. You’re reporting a murder that hasn’t happened yet?’ She wasn’t in the mood to be messed around, and keeping her waiting for the best part of fifteen minutes hadn’t been the best way to get things started.

Denby shook his head. ‘Murder is your word, not mine. What I am saying is that Robbie Bishop is going to die, probably within the next twenty-four hours. The reason he is going to die is that he has ricin in his system. There is no antidote. There’s nothing we can do for him except to limit his pain as much as possible.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘I know it sounds bizarre. Like some James Bond film. But yes, we’re sure. We’ve done the tests. He’s dying from ricin poisoning.’

‘Could it be suicide?’

Denby looked bemused. ‘I shouldn’t think so for a moment.’

‘But could it? In theory?’

He looked faintly annoyed. Carol thought he probably wasn’t accustomed to having his views questioned. He lined up his pen with the edge of the file in front of him. ‘I’ve been reading up on ricin since my SHO proposed it as the possible cause of Robbie Bishop’s symptoms. Ricin works by invading the cells of a person’s body and inhibiting the cells from synthesizing the proteins they need. Without the proteins, cells die. The respiratory system fails, the heart stops. I haven’t seen any suggestion in the literature that it’s ever been used for suicide. Against it, you’d have to say it’s far from readily available. You’d have to have some skills as a chemist to manufacture it, even supposing you could get your hands on the raw material. Either that or you’d have to have connections to a terrorist organization – they allegedly found it stockpiled in the Al-Quaeda caves in Afghanistan. The other aspect militating against it is that it’s a long-drawn-out and very painful way to go. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose it as a means of suicide.’ He spread his hands and raised his shoulders to emphasize his point.

Carol made a note on her pad. ‘So we could also rule out accident, by the sounds of it?’

‘Unless Mr Bishop was in the habit of hanging around castor oil factories, I would say so,’ Denby said brusquely.

‘So how did it get into his system?’

‘He probably inhaled it. We’ve examined him thoroughly and we can’t find any puncture wounds.’ Denby leaned forward. ‘I don’t know if you remember the case of the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in the late seventies? He was assassinated with a pellet of ricin fired from a doctored umbrella. Once we knew ricin was involved here, I had our ICU team make a thorough examination of Mr Bishop’s skin. No sign of any foreign body being injected.’

Carol felt bemused. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ she said. ‘It’s not the sort of thing that happens in Bradfield.’

‘No,’ Denby said. ‘That’s why it took us a couple of days to figure it out. I suppose it was the same for the doctors at UCH who treated Alexander Litvinenko. The last thing they expected to confront was radiation poisoning. But it happened.’

‘How could he be poisoned without realizing it?’

‘Quite easily,’ Denby said. ‘The data we have on ricin tell us that, if injected, as little as 500 micrograms could be enough to kill an adult. There’s animal research that indicates that inhaling or ingesting similar amounts could be lethal. A 500 microgram dose of ricin would be about the size of the head of a pin. Not hard to slip into a drink or into some food. In those quantities, it would be tasteless.’

‘So we’re looking for someone who had access to his food or drink?’

Denby nodded. ‘That’s the most likely route.’ He fiddled with his pen. ‘It might also be infiltrated into a recreational drug such as cocaine or amphetamine, something snorted. Again, one would not notice any taste or smell.’

‘Do you have blood and urine samples that you can test for recreational drugs?’

Denby nodded. ‘I’ll see that it’s done.’

‘How did you figure it out?’

‘My SHO, Dr Blessing. I think you or one of your colleagues spoke to her in the first instance?’

‘Yes, I know Dr Blessing contacted us. But what alerted her?’

Denby gave a little smirk. Carol liked him even less. ‘I don’t want to sound vain, but Dr Blessing reckoned that if I couldn’t work out what was wrong with Mr Bishop, then it must be something quite a long way out of the ordinary. She checked out the symptoms in our online database and ricin poisoning was the single thing that fit the bill. She brought her conclusions to me, and I ordered the standard test. It came back strongly positive. There really is no room for doubt, Chief Inspector.’

Carol closed her notebook. ‘Thanks for explaining this so clearly,’ she said. ‘You said you’d been reading up on ricin – is there any chance you could put some sort of briefing together for me and my officers?’

‘I’ll get Dr Blessing on to it right away.’ He stood, indicating that the interview was over as far as he was concerned.

‘Can I see him?’ Carol said.

Denby rubbed his thumb against his jaw. ‘Nothing much to see,’ he said. ‘But yes, I’ll take you through. His parents may have come back – they were in the relatives’ room. I had to break the news to them, and they were understandably shocked and upset. I asked them to stay put until they were feeling a little calmer. It doesn’t help the ICU team if people are in an emotional state around the patients.’ He spoke dismissively, as if the smooth running of a hospital ward were infinitely more important than the anguish of parents about to lose a son.

Carol followed him to Robbie Bishop’s bedside. The two chairs by the bed were empty. Carol stood at the foot of the bed, taking in the various monitors, the tubes and machines that were keeping Robbie Bishop as stable as possible on what was going to be a short journey to death. His skin was waxy, a sheen of sweat visible on his cheeks and forehead. She wanted to hold this image in her head. This was going to be a nightmare investigation for all sorts of reasons, and she wanted to make sure she didn’t lose sight of the human being at the heart of it. The media would be clamouring for answers, the fans would be demanding someone’s head on a platter and her bosses would be eager to cover themselves in whatever glory she could drag out of the situation.

Carol was determined to find out who had destroyed Robbie Bishop, and why. But for her own sake, she needed to be sure she was pursuing his killer for the right reasons. Now she’d seen him, she could be a lot more sure of that.

Detective Constable Paula McIntyre knew all about shock and grief. She’d seen countless examples and she was still recovering from experiencing the extremes of both at first hand. So she didn’t read anything into Martin Flanagan’s behaviour other than the obvious fact that he had been shattered to the core by the news Dr Blessing had delivered.

His was the active, agitated response. He couldn’t keep still. It didn’t surprise Paula; she’d seen it before, particularly with men whose livelihoods centred round physical activity, whether on a building site or a sports field. Flanagan paced restlessly, then threw himself into a chair where he fidgeted with fingers and feet till he could stand the confinement no longer. Then he was back on his feet, quartering the room. Paula simply sat, the still point of his whirling world.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Flanagan said. He’d been saying it ever since Paula had arrived, the short sentence a punctuation between everything else he said. ‘He’s been like a son to me, you know. I can’t believe it. This is not what happens to footballers. They break bones, they strain muscles, they snap ligaments, you know. They don’t get poisoned. I can’t believe it.’

Paula let him wind himself up, waiting till he began to wind down before starting with her questions. She was used to waiting. She had become very good at it. Nobody was better at the art of the interview than Paula, and that was due in no small part to her knack of knowing when to dive in and when to hold back. So she waited till Martin Flanagan ran out of steam and fell silent, his forehead leaning against the cool glass of the window, his hands on the wall on either side of the frame. She could see the reflection of his face, haggard with pain.

‘When did Robbie first show signs of being ill?’ she asked.

‘Saturday breakfast. We always stay at the Victoria Grand the night before home games.’ Flanagan shrugged one shoulder upwards. ‘It’s a way of keeping tabs on them, you know. Most of them, they’re young and stupid. They’d be out on the town till all hours if we didn’t keep them on a tight leash. I sometimes think we should have them electronically tagged, like they do with cats and dogs and paedophiles.’

‘And Robbie said he was feeling ill?’

Flanagan sniffed. ‘He came over to my table. I was with Jason Graham, my assistant, and Dave Kermode, the physio, and Robbie said he was feeling out of sorts. Tight chest, sweaty, feverish. And his joints were aching, like he was coming down with the flu, you know. I told him to finish his breakfast and go to his room. I said I’d get the team doctor to come and take a look at him. He said he wasn’t hungry, so he’d just go upstairs and get his head down for a bit.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, so I can’t.’

‘So Friday night, he definitely wasn’t out on the town?’

‘No way. He shares with Pavel Aljinovic.’ He turned to face Paula and slid down the wall into a crouch. ‘The goalkeeper, you know. They’ve shared since Pavel came to Bradfield two seasons back. Robbie always says Pavel’s a boring bastard, keeps him honest.’ A sad smile tugged at his mouth. ‘There’s some I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them, you know, but Pavel’s not one of them. Robbie’s right, Pavel is a boring bastard. He’d never have tried to sneak out for a night on the randan. And he wouldn’t have let Robbie do it either.’

‘I’m a bit at sea here,’ Paula said. ‘I don’t really have much of a sense of what Robbie’s typical routine was. Maybe you could run me through it? Say, from Thursday morning?’ Paula wasn’t sure how long the symptoms of ricin poisoning took to develop, but she reckoned going back to Thursday would cover the moment of its administration.

‘We had a UEFA cup match on Wednesday night, so they had Thursday morning off, you know. Robbie came in to see the physio, he’d taken a knock on the ankle and it was a bit swollen. Nothing serious, but they all take their physical condition seriously. It’s their living, you know. Anyway, he was done by half past ten. I assume he went home. He’s got a flat down in the Millennium Quarter, just off Bellwether Square. He turned up for training on Thursday afternoon. We just did a light session, you know. Concentrating on skills more than tactics. We were done by half past four. And I’ve no idea what he did after that.’

‘You don’t have any sense of how he spent his free time?’ Just like a son to you, Paula thought ironically. Robbie Bishop might be twenty-six years old, but if he was anything like most footballers she’d read about in the tabloids, he probably had arrested development. The lifestyle of a sixteen-year-old granted unlimited pocket money and access to beautiful women. The last person who would know what he was up to was anyone in a parental role.

Flanagan shrugged. ‘They’re not children, you know. And I’m not like some managers. I don’t barge into their homes and turn off their stereos and kick their girlfriends out. There are rules about not going out the night before a game. But apart from that, they do their own thing.’ He shook his head again. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘And what was Robbie’s thing?’

‘There’s a fitness centre where he lives. They’ve got a full-sized pool down in the basement. He likes to swim, relax in the sauna, that kind of thing. He’s good pals with Phil Campsie, he’s got a bit of land up on the edge of the moors. They go fishing and shooting together.’ Flanagan pushed himself upright and recommenced his restless pacing. ‘That’s about all I can tell you.’

‘What about girlfriends? Was Robbie seeing anybody special?’

Flanagan shook his head. ‘Not that I knew about. He was engaged for a while. Bindie Blyth, the Radio One DJ. But they called it a day about three months ago.’

Paula’s interest quickened. ‘Who called it a day? Robbie, or Bindie?’

‘I don’t know anything about that. But he didn’t seem to be that bothered, you know.’ He leaned his forehead against the window again. ‘What’s all this got to do with somebody poisoning Robbie, anyway? It’s not his team-mates or his ex who’d be doing that kind of thing.’

‘We have to look at all the possibilities, Mr Flanagan. So, since Bindie, he’s been what? Playing the field?’ Paula winced at her unintentional pun. Please let him not think I’m taking the piss.

‘I suppose.’ He turned back, rubbing his temples with his fingers. ‘You’d have to ask the lads. Phil and Pavel, they’d likely know.’ He looked longingly at the door that led to the ICU. ‘I wish they’d let me see him, you know. To say goodbye, at least. I can’t believe it.’

‘What about Friday? Do you know what he did then?’

‘We were at the training ground on Friday.’ Flanagan paused for a moment. ‘Come to think of it, he was a bit lacklustre. Head down, a bit slow off the ball. As if he was kind of dozy. I didn’t think anything of it, you know. They all have their off days and, frankly, you’d rather they had them on a training session than a match. He wasn’t off it enough for me to do anything about it, though. And then when he said he had the flu on Saturday, I put it down to that.’

Paula nodded. ‘Anyone would have done the same. Now, I have to ask you this. Is there anyone you can think of who has a grudge against Robbie? Has he had any hate mail? Any problems with stalkers?’

Flanagan winced and shook his head. ‘You don’t get to where he is without pissing off one or two people along the way. You know? Like, there’s always been a bit of needle between him and Nils Petersen, the Man United centre-back. But that’s football. It’s not real life. I mean, if he ran into Petersen in a bar, they’d likely indulge in a bit of argy-bargy, but that’d be the size of it. It wouldn’t come to blows, never mind poisoning.’ He threw his hands into the air. ‘It’s insane. It’s like something in a bad film. There’s nothing more I can tell you, because none of it makes sense.’ He gestured towards the door with his thumb. ‘That lad in there is dying and it’s a tragedy. That’s all I know.’

Paula sensed she’d reached the end of Flanagan’s capacity for answers. They’d probably have to talk to him again, but for now she thought there wasn’t likely to be much more he could tell her. She stood up. ‘I hope you get to say goodbye, Mr Flanagan. Thank you for talking to me.’

He nodded, too distracted now to care what she had to say. Paula walked away, thinking about death and second chances. She’d been given her life back, complete with its load of survivor guilt. But thanks to Tony Hill, she was starting to understand that she had to make that gift mean something. Robbie Bishop was as good a place to start as any.

Not all of Robbie Bishop’s fans were outside Bradfield Cross. Those who lived in Ratcliffe had decided against the cross-town journey and settled for bringing their bunches of supermarket flowers and their children’s paintings to Bradfield Victoria’s training ground. They were propped along the chain-link fence that kept the punters away from the stars. Detective Sergeant Kevin Matthews couldn’t help a faint shudder of distaste as he waited for the gate security to call through and confirm their permission to enter the ground. He couldn’t be doing with these public outpourings of synthetic emotion. He wouldn’t mind betting that none of those who had made their pilgrimage to the Ratcliffe ground had ever exchanged more than a few words along the lines of, ‘And who shall I sign it to?’ with Robbie Bishop. It wasn’t so long since Kevin had had to mourn for real, and he resented the cheapness of their gestures. In his view, if the pilgrims lavished those emotions on the living – their kids, partners and parents – the world would be a better place.

‘Tacky,’ Chris Devine said from the passenger seat as if reading his mind.

‘This is nothing to what there’ll be in a couple of days, after he’s actually died,’ Kevin said as the guard waved them through, pointing to the parking area near the long, low building that impeded the view of the field from the street. He slowed as they passed the Ferraris and Porsches of the players. ‘Nice motors,’ he said approvingly.

‘You’ve got a Ferrari, haven’t you?’ Chris said, recalling something Paula had told her.

He sighed. ‘Mondial QV cabriolet, Ferrari red. One of only twenty-four right-hand-drive cabs ever built. She’s a dream machine, and she’s going soon.’

‘Oh no. Poor Kevin. Why are you getting rid?’

‘She’s really only a two-seater and the kids are getting too big to squeeze in. She’s a single person’s car, Chris. I don’t suppose you’re interested?’

‘A bit rich for my blood, I think. I’d never hear the end of it from Sinead. She’d be telling me it was my mid-life crisis car.’

‘Shame. I’d like to be sure she’s going to a good home. At least I’ve managed to get a stay of execution for a bit.’

‘How come?’

‘There’s this journalist, Justin Adams. He writes for the car magazines and he wants to do an article about ordinary blokes who drive extraordinary cars. Apparently a cop with a Ferrari is right up his street. So I got Stella to agree that I get to keep the car till the magazine article comes out, so I don’t get the piss taken out of me for having my name and my photo in a magazine when I don’t own the car any more.’ Chris grinned. ‘Sounds like a good deal to me.’

‘Yeah, well, the countdown begins next week, when we do the interview.’ Kevin sniffed as he got out of the car. ‘Digestive day,’ he said.

‘What?’

He pointed to the west, where a two-storey brick building slumped along the boundary of the playing fields. ‘The biscuit factory. When I was a kid, I trained for a season with the Vic juniors. When the wind’s in the right direction, you can tell what biscuits they’re baking. I always thought it was a refined form of torture for teenage lads trying to keep fit.’

‘What happened?’ Chris asked, following him round the end of the changing pavilion.

Kevin strode ahead of her so she couldn’t see the regret on his face. ‘I wasn’t good enough,’ he said. ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’

‘That must have been rough.’

Kevin gave a little snort of laughter. ‘At the time, I thought it was the end of the world.’

‘And now?’

‘The money would have been better, that’s for sure. And I’d have a fleet of Ferraris.’

‘True,’ Chris said, catching up with him as he paused, looking out across the grass where a couple of dozen young men were dribbling balls around traffic cones. ‘But for most footballers, you’re on the scrapheap by the time you’re our age. And what’s left? Sure, a handful make it into management, but a lot more end up behind the bar in some shitty pub trading on their glory days and bitching about the ex-wife that cleaned them out.’

Kevin grinned at her. ‘And you think that would be worse than this?’

‘You know it would.’

As they rounded the building, a man in shorts and a Bradfield Victoria sweatshirt headed their way. He looked to be in his middle forties, but he was in such good shape it was hard to be certain. If his dark hair had still been in a mullet, he’d have been instantly recognizable to football fans and indifferents alike. But now it was cut close to his head, it took Kevin a moment to realize he was face to face with one of the heroes of his youth.

‘You’re Terry Malcolm,’ he blurted out, twelve again and besotted with the ball skills of the England and Bradfield midfielder.

Terry Malcolm turned to Chris with a smile and said, ‘I’ll be all right if I ever get Alzheimer’s. You’d be amazed how often people feel the need to tell me who I am. You must be Sergeant Devine. I’m only guessing, mind. In a hopeful sort of way, on account of he’s not my type and I can’t see myself calling him Devine.’ His expression said he was accustomed to people finding him funny and charming. Kevin, already disillusioned with his former hero, was pleased to see Chris Devine unmoved.

‘Mr Flanagan told you why we’re here?’ Kevin said, his tone slightly incredulous. As if he couldn’t quite believe anyone who worked for Bradfield Vic could be so flippant while their finest player lay dying.

Malcolm looked suitably chastened. ‘He did. And believe me, I’m gutted about Robbie. But I can’t afford to let my feelings show. There’s another twenty-one players on the squad who need to stay motivated. We’ve got Spurs in the premiership on Saturday and we can’t afford to be dropping points at this stage in the season.’ He gave Chris the benefit of his smile again. ‘I hope that doesn’t sound callous. Like I said, I’m gutted. But our boys need to be kept on their toes. On Saturday, we’ll be winning it for Robbie. All the more reason not to chuck our routines in the bin.’

‘Quite,’ Chris said. ‘And we need to check out Robbie’s movements in the forty-eight hours before he started feeling ill on Saturday. We want to talk to his mates. The ones who are close enough to know what he was up to between the end of training on Thursday and breakfast on Saturday.’

Malcolm nodded. ‘You want to talk to Pavel Aljinovic and Phil Campsie. Robbie bunks up with Pavel when we’re in a hotel. And Phil’s his best mate.’ Malcolm made no move to summon the players.

‘Now, Mr Malcolm,’ Chris said.

Again the cheap and cheesy smile. ‘It’s Terry, love.’

It was Chris’s turn to smile. ‘I’m not your love, Mr Malcolm. I am a police officer investigating a very serious attack on one of your colleagues. And I want to talk to either Pavel Aljinovic or Phil Campsie right now.’

Malcolm shook his head. ‘They’re training. I can’t interrupt that.’

Kevin flushed an unbecoming scarlet, his freckles darkening across his cheeks. ‘Do you want me to arrest you for police obstruction? Because you’re going the right way about it.’

Malcolm’s lip lifted in a sneer. ‘I don’t think you’ll be arresting me. Your boss likes his seat in the directors’ box far too much for that.’

‘That cuts both ways,’ Chris said sweetly. ‘It means we have a hotline to your boss, too. And I don’t think he’d be very impressed to hear you’ve been impeding our inquiries into the attempted murder of his star player.’

Although Chris had spoken, it was Kevin who was on the receiving end of a glare of deep dislike. Malcolm was clearly one of those men who could only flirt with women and talk with men. ‘I’ll get Pavel.’ He gestured with his thumb towards the pavilion. ‘Wait inside there, I’ll sort you out a room in a minute.’

Five minutes later, they were sitting in a weights room that smelled of stale sweat and muscle rub. The Croatian international goalkeeper was hot on their heels. As he walked in, his nose twitched and a look of distaste crossed his chiselled features. ‘Stinks in here, sorry,’ he said, pulling a plastic chair from a short stack against the wall and sitting down opposite the two detectives. ‘I am Pavel Aljinovic.’ He nodded formally to them both.

The word that came to Kevin’s mind was ‘dignified’. Aljinovic had shoulder-length dark hair, normally pulled back in a tight ponytail on match days, but flowing free this afternoon. His eyes were the colour of conkers baked in the oven then polished on a sleeve. High cheekbones over hollow cheeks, full lips and a narrow, straight nose made him look almost aristocratic. ‘Coach says somebody tried to poison Robbie,’ he said, his accent faint but unmistakably Slavic. ‘How can this be?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Chris said, leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped.

‘And Robbie? How is he doing?’

‘Not very well,’ Kevin said.

‘But he will be OK?’

‘We’re not doctors. We can’t say.’ Chris wanted to avoid making it clear that Robbie’s death was inevitable. In her experience, there was a substantial brake on what people were willing to say once the stakes were raised to murder. ‘It would help if we knew where Robbie was on Thursday and Friday.’

‘Of course he was at training sessions. Thursday night, I don’t know what he did.’ Aljinovic spread his big goalkeeper’s hands. ‘I am goalkeeper, not Robbie’s keeper. But on Friday night, we shared the hotel room. We all had dinner together, like usual. Steak and potatoes and salad and a glass of red wine. Fruit salad and ice cream. We always have the same thing, me and Robbie. Actually, most of the guys. We went upstairs about nine o’clock. Robbie took a bath and I called my wife. We watched the Sky football channel together until about ten, then we went to sleep.’

‘Did Robbie have anything out of the mini-bar?’ Kevin asked.

Aljinovic chuckled. ‘You don’t know much about football, do you? They don’t give us keys for the minibar. We’re supposed to stay pure. This is why we are in a hotel and not at home. They can control what we eat and drink and they can keep us away from women.’

Chris returned his smile. ‘I thought that was a myth, keeping your strength up before a match by avoiding sex.’

‘It’s not the sex, it’s the sleep,’ Aljinovic said. ‘They like us to have good sleep before a game.’

‘Did Robbie have any food or drink with him? Bottled water, whatever?’

‘No. There is always plenty of water in the room.’ He frowned. ‘You have reminded me. Friday evening, Robbie said he was very thirsty. He said he felt as if he was coming down with a cold or something. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, just that he wasn’t feeling great. And of course in the morning, he thought he had flu. I was worried in case I might catch it. This feeling like flu, is this the poison? Or is he sick too?’

‘It’s the poison.’ Kevin looked directly into his eyes. ‘Did Robbie take cocaine on Friday evening?’

Aljinovic reared backwards, an expression of affront on his face. ‘Of course not. No. Who told you that? Robbie didn’t use drugs. Why are you asking this?’

‘It’s possible he inhaled the poison. If it was mixed in with cocaine or amphetamine, Robbie might not have noticed,’ Chris said.

‘No. This is not possible. Not possible at all. I will not believe this about him.’

‘You said earlier that you’re a goalkeeper, not Robbie’s keeper. How can you be so sure he never uses drugs?’ Kevin said, his voice mild but his eyes intent.

‘We have talked about it. About drugs in sports. And for fun. Robbie and me, we think the same. It’s a fool’s game. You cheat yourself, you cheat the fans, you cheat your club. We both know people who use drugs and we both despise them.’ He spoke vehemently. ‘Whoever poisoned Robbie, they didn’t do it with drugs.’

By the time Carol arrived at Robbie Bishop’s flat, Detective Constable Sam Evans had already made a start on the search. The footballer’s home was a penthouse complete with roof terrace in the heart of the city. The building had been a department store; the main living area was bright with daylight that poured in through metal-framed Art Deco windows. Sam was going through the desk drawers, caught in a shaft of sunlight that made his coffee-coloured skin glow. He looked up as Carol walked in, giving her a rueful shake of the head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not so far.’

‘What kind of nothing?’ She snapped a pair of latex gloves over her hands.

‘Neatly filed bills, bank statements, credit card statements. He pays his bills on time, he pays his credit cards off every month. He’s got an account with a bookie, gambles a few hundred a month on the ponies. Nothing that stands out. I haven’t looked at the computer yet, I thought I’d leave that for Stacey.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. You think she knows what football is?’ Carol said, crossing to look out of the window. A hawk’s-eye view of the city centre; people going about their business, trams criss-crossing, fountains playing, Big Issue sellers cajoling, shoppers dawdling by windows full of promises. None of them thinking about poisoning a premiership footballer with ricin, not today. Tomorrow or the day after, when Robbie Bishop finally died, it would be different. But not today. Not yet. She turned back. ‘What have you done so far?’

‘Just the desk.’

Carol nodded. She looked around. Sam had been right to start at the desk. There weren’t many other search options. The dining area, all glass and steel, had nothing to hide. There were a couple of groups of scarlet leather sofas, one centred on a huge plasma screen home cinema system complete with PlayStation, the other set around a low glass coffee table whose leading edge looked like a breaking wave. A wall of shelves housed a vast collection of DVDs and CDs. Someone would have to go through every one, but she’d leave that to the crime scene team. She walked over to the media collection. The CDs were mostly by people she’d never heard of. The names she did recognize were dance and hip-hop; she assumed the rest were similar in flavour.

The DVDs were roughly arranged – football on two shelves in the middle, popular action and comedy movies beneath them, TV comedy and drama above them. PlayStation and PC computer games filled the bottom shelf. The top one, appropriately, held the porn. Carol skimmed the titles, deciding Robbie’s taste in porn was as unadventurous as his taste in film and drama. Unless there was a secret stash somewhere, it appeared that Robbie’s sexual inclinations were not the sort to get him killed.

Carol wandered through to the bedroom, smiling wryly at the sight of a bed that must have been seven feet wide. The rumpled dark blue silk sheets were piled with fake furs, and a dozen pillows were scattered around. Another plasma TV dominated the wall opposite the bed, and the other walls displayed paintings of nudes that the vendor had almost certainly described as ‘artistic’.

A walk-in wardrobe ran the whole length of one wall. There was an empty section. Carol wondered if that had been where his fiancée had hung her clothes, or if he’d just been having a clear-out. At the far end were two rectangular baskets, one labelled ‘laundry’, the other ‘dry cleaning’. Both were almost full. Presumably, someone else took care of them. Luckily, they hadn’t been in since Robbie had been taken ill.

The top layer of the laundry basket consisted of a pair of Armani jeans, Calvin Klein trunks and an extravagantly striped Paul Smith shirt. Carol picked up the jeans and went through the pockets. At first, she thought they were empty, but as her fingers probed, they encountered a screw of paper rammed right down into the seam of the front right-hand pocket. She pulled it out and gently teased the creases and folds apart.

It was the corner of a page of lined paper, apparently torn from a notebook. Written in black ink was, ‘www.bestdays.co. uk’. Carol took it through to the living area and asked Sam for an evidence bag. ‘What you got, boss?’ he asked, handing one over.

Carol dropped the paper in the bag, sealing and dating it. ‘A url. Probably nothing. Take it back for Stacey, please. You find anything?’

Sam shook his head. ‘I tell you, he looks a pretty boring bastard to me.’

Carol went back through to the bedroom. Bedside tables held few surprises – condoms, breath mints, tissues, a blister pack of Nurofen, a pinkie-sized butt plug and a tube of KY. Carol was pretty sure that, these days, that counted as vanilla. Interestingly, the book tucked into the drawer on the left was Michael Crick’s critical biography of Manchester United’s boss, Alex Ferguson. Though Carol was far from knowledgeable about football, even she knew that in a world of celebrity soccer hagiographies this was an interesting choice.

Nothing in the ensuite bathroom gave Carol a moment’s pause. Sighing, she returned to Sam. ‘It’s almost spooky,’ she said. ‘There’s so little personality here.’

Sam snorted. ‘Probably because he hasn’t got one. These football stars – they’re all stuck in their adolescence. They get picked up by the big clubs before they’ve had their first kiss, and the management system takes over from their mums. If they make the grade, they’re cash rich and common sense poor by the time they’re out of their teens. They’re wrapped in cotton wool and models’ thighs. Way more money than sense or experience. Bunch of Peter Pans with added testosterone.’

Carol grinned. ‘You sound bitter. Did you lose a girlfriend to one of them, or what?’

Sam returned her grin. ‘The women I like are too smart for footballers. No, I’m just bitter because I can’t afford a Bentley GTC Mulliner.’ Sam waved an invoice at her. ‘His new car. Delivery next month.’

Carol whistled. ‘I know men who would kill for one of those. But probably not using ricin.’ As she spoke, her phone rang. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said.

‘This is Dr Blessing. Mr Denby asked me to call you. Robbie Bishop’s taken a turn for the worse. We don’t think he’s got long. I don’t know if you want to be here?’

‘I’m on my way,’ Carol said. She closed her phone and sighed. ‘Looks like this is about to become a murder inquiry.’

They were waiting for Phil Campsie. Chris idly picked up a dumbbell and did a few forearm curls. ‘He’s the ugly one, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘The one who looks like a cross between a monkey and Mr Potato Head?’

‘Phil Campsie, you mean? Yeah, he’s ugly.’ Kevin stretched, yawning. His four-year-old daughter had recently lost the knack of sleeping through the night. His wife, not unreasonably, had pointed out that when Ruby had been breastfeeding, she had been the one who had had to deal with broken nights. Now it was Kevin’s turn to soothe his daughter back to sleep. It didn’t feel fair, not when he was going out to work and Stella was staying home. But it was hard to argue against without sounding like he didn’t love his daughter. ‘He’s very ugly,’ he said through the tail end of the yawn.

‘So it’s not just teenage girls who pair up according to looks.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Pretty one, ugly one. Symbiosis. The pretty one gets to look even better next to the ugly one, and the ugly one gets the pretty one’s cast-offs. Win-win.’

Kevin tutted. ‘That’s not very sisterly of you.’

Chris gave a derisive snort. ‘See, Kevin, you keep conflating lesbian and feminist. Try lesbian and pragmatist next time.’

He grinned. ‘I’ll try and remember. So, you think that’s what was going on with Robbie and Phil?’

‘To some degree. Of course, Phil is also rich and famous, which trumps ugly every time. But I bet it didn’t hurt, going out on the town with one of the most recognizable, handsome and eligible men in Europe. Not to mention sexy.’

‘You think Robbie’s sexy?’

‘Sex appeal is gender blind, Kevin. Don’t tell me you don’t think Robbie is sexy, deep down.’

Kevin flushed. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

‘But you like the way he looks. The way he moves. The way he dresses,’ Chris persisted.

‘I suppose.’

‘It’s all right, it doesn’t mean you’re a poof. All I’m trying to say is that Robbie’s got sex appeal, charisma, call it what you will. David Beckham’s got it, Gary Neville hasn’t. John Lennon had it, Paul McCartney doesn’t. Bill Clinton has it, Dubya definitely doesn’t. And if you don’t have it, the next best thing is to hang around with somebody who does.’ Chris put down the dumbbell as the door opened. She turned on her best smile. ‘Mr Campsie. Thanks for making the time to talk to us.’

Phil Campsie hooked his ankle round the chair and pulled it a couple of feet further away from them before he sat down. ‘It’s for Robbie, innit?’ His London accent was almost as strong as Chris’s own. ‘Do anything for him. He’s me mate.’

Kevin made the introductions. Close up, Phil Campsie was even more unattractive. He had pale, mottled skin like a scrubbed potato, a flat nose that looked as if it had been broken a couple of times. His small grey eyes were set wide on his cannonball head. His reddish hair was cut close and already the shape of male pattern baldness was etched into his hairline. But when he smiled, as well as uneven yellowing teeth he revealed a genuine spark of cheeky warmth. Kevin led off. ‘We hear Robbie probably spends more time with you after work than any of his other teammates.’

‘’S right. Me and Robbie, we’re like that –’ Phil crossed the first two fingers of his right hand.

‘So, what kind of stuff do you guys get up to?’ Chris raised her eyebrows, as if to suggest that nothing he said could shock her.

‘This and that. I got a place outside the city. Bit of land, couple of miles of trout stream. Me and Robbie, we do a bit of rough shooting – rabbits, pigeons, that kind of thing. And we go fishing.’ He grinned, looking like the small boy he must have been not so long ago. ‘I’ve got this woman comes in from the village, cooks and cleans for me. She deals with the stuff we kill. Cooks it all up, sticks it in the freezer. There’s something really cool about eating something you’ve killed yourself, know what I mean?’

‘Impressive,’ Chris said, before Kevin could put his foot in it. ‘And what about a social life? What do you do for fun when you’re not slaughtering the wildlife?’

‘We go out in town,’ Phil said. ‘Nice bit of dinner somewhere smart, then on to a club.’ He gave a curiously self-deprecating little shrug. ‘The clubs like having us. Gives them a bit of a profile. So we get taken to the VIP areas, free champagne, very tasty girls.’

‘We’re interested in Robbie’s movements on Thursday and Friday,’ Kevin said.

Phil nodded, rolling his big shoulders as if squaring up to someone. ‘Thursday after training, we went back to Robbie’s flat. We played on the PlayStation for a bit. GT HD, you know? The new one, with the Ferraris? Well cool. We had a couple of beers then we went out for dinner to Las Bravas. It’s Spanish,’ he added, apparently trying to be helpful.

‘I hear it’s very nice there. What did you have to eat?’ Chris asked, mild as milk.

‘We had a load of tapas between us. We kind of left it to the waiter and he brought us a right old mix of stuff. Most of it was lovely, but I couldn’t be doing with some of the seafood.’ He pulled a face. ‘I mean, who wants to eat a baby squid? Yech.’

‘Did you both eat the same things?’ Kevin said.

Phil thought for a moment, his eyes turning up and to the left. ‘Pretty much,’ he said slowly. ‘Robbie didn’t have the garlic mushrooms, he doesn’t like mushrooms. But apart from that, yeah, we both gave everything a whirl.’

‘And drink?’

‘We was on the rioja. We got as far as the second bottle, but we didn’t finish it.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘We went on to Amatis. D’you know it? Dance club the far side of Temple Fields?’

Kevin nodded. ‘We’re police officers, Phil. We know Amatis.’

‘It’s a nice place,’ Phil said defensively. ‘Nice people. And great music.’

‘You into music, then? You and Robbie?’

Phil blew out a big breath, making his lips flap. ‘Me, I’m not bothered as long as it’s got a decent beat. But Robbie, he’s well into it, yeah. He used to be engaged to Bindie Blyth.’ Seeing their looks of incomprehension, he gave them more. ‘The Radio One late-night DJ. It was music what brought them together.’ He shifted in his seat, sticking his legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. ‘Wasn’t enough to keep them together, though. They split up a couple of months back.’

Chris could feel Kevin come alert beside her. She tried for nonchalant. ‘How come?’ she said.

‘Why d’you wanna know about Bindie?’

Chris spread her hands. ‘Me, I’m just interested in everything. Why did they split?’

Phil looked away. ‘Just wasn’t going anywhere.’

‘Was he messing around behind her back?’ Chris asked.

Phil gave her a cagey glance. ‘This doesn’t go no further, right?’

‘Right. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,’ Chris said.

‘It’s the world we live in,’ Phil said. For an insane moment, Chris thought he was going to make some philosophical point about the human condition. ‘Every time we go out the house, we’re surrounded by people who want to make an impression. Women who want to shag us, blokes who either want to buy us a drink or fight us. And if your girlfriend’s a couple of hundred miles away most of the time, you’d have to be a saint. And Robbie ain’t no saint.’

‘So Bindie got the hump and gave him the elbow?’

‘Pretty much. But they didn’t want the tabloids all over them, so they both agreed they’d just say it was a mutual thing, too hard to keep it going with them both having high-pressure careers. No hard feelings, that sort of thing.’

‘And were there any hard feelings?’ Kevin butted in. Chris wanted to slap him for breaking her flow.

Phil cocked his head. ‘No.’ It came out firm and defensive. Then a frown slowly furrowed his forehead. ‘Wait a minute. You’re not thinking Bindie had anything to do with this?’ He gave a roar of laughter. ‘Fucking hell, it’s obvious you’ve never listened to her show. Bindie’s got balls. If she was that pissed off, she’d have sent Robbie home with his nuts in a paper bag. Bindie’s the kind of woman who lets you have it to your face. No way she’d be sneaking around with poison.’ He shook his head. ‘Mental.’

‘Nobody’s suggesting Bindie had anything to do with this, Phil. We’re just trying to get a picture of Robbie’s life. So, Thursday. Tell us about Amatis.’

Phil shifted in his chair, a man preparing to be less than candid. ‘Not much to tell. We was in the VIP area mostly, drinking champagne. There was a couple of the lads from Yorkshire Cricket Club there, that geezer that presents the TV show about making a mint from what’s in your attic, some twat that was on Big Brother a couple of series back. I didn’t recognize any other blokes. And the usual sort of birds. Tasty but with a bit of class. That’s the sort of bird you get at Amatis.’

‘Was Robbie with anyone in particular?’

Phil thought for a moment. ‘Not really. We was both up dancing, but he wasn’t with the same bird for long. He kept chopping and changing, like he couldn’t find one he really fancied.’ He smirked. ‘Not like me. I pulled practically right away. Jasmine, her name was. Legs up to heaven, tits out to here.’ He mimed substantial breasts. ‘So I wasn’t paying too much attention to Robbie, if you catch my drift. He went down the vodka bar for a while after I clicked with Jasmine. Me and her, we decided to go back to hers, so I went looking for Robbie. Found him on his way back from the toilet. I said I was going back to Jasmine’s, he was cool with that. He said he’d run into somebody he was at school with and they was having a drink.’ Phil shrugged. ‘Next time I saw him was training on Friday and he looked rough as a badger’s arse. I said he looked like he’d made a night of it. He went all sheepish, said he couldn’t actually remember. Well, that’s the way it goes sometimes, innit? You get so wellied, it’s all just a black hole the next morning.’

Chris realized she was holding her breath. She let it out and said, ‘This old school friend. Do they have a name?’

‘He never said. He never even said if it was a bird or a bloke.’ Phil looked upset. ‘I should have asked him, shouldn’t I? I should have taken better care of him.’

Chris hid her disappointment behind a smile. ‘Nobody’s blaming you, Phil. We don’t know when Robbie was poisoned. But in my experience, when somebody is determined to attack another person, it’s very hard to stop them succeeding.’

‘He’s going to be all right, isn’t he? I mean, the doctors know what they’re doing, right?’ He bit his lower lip. ‘He’s strong as an ox, is Robbie. And he’s a fighter.’

Kevin looked away, leaving it up to Chris to decide which way to go. ‘They’re doing their best,’ she said. ‘You guys’ll be out on the town again before you know it.’

Phil pursed his lips and nodded. He looked close to tears. ‘You’ll never walk alone, innit.’ He got to his feet. ‘Right then. I better get back.’

Chris stood up and put a hand on his upper arm. ‘Thanks, Phil. You’ve been a big help.’ She watched him go, broad shoulders bowed, all spring removed from his step. The door closed behind him and Kevin turned to her.

‘I’m guessing you don’t have him down as number one suspect?’

Chris shook her head. ‘He probably thinks ricin is something horses and greyhounds do. At least he gave us something.’

‘The old school mate?’

‘The very same. Lots of potential motive there. Was the golden boy a bit of a bully? Did he seduce somebody else’s girlfriend? Did he commit a dirty tackle that ruined somebody else’s chances of stardom?’

Kevin headed for the door. ‘Definitely a bone for the DCI to chew on.’

‘Just what she needs. Something to take her mind off the fact that nobody told her Tony was in hospital.’

Kevin winced. ‘Don’t. I tell you, if it had been anybody except Paula on duty this weekend, there would have been blood and teeth on the floor.’

‘What is it with Tony and the guv’nor? First time I met them, I was convinced they were an item. But everybody says no, nay, never. I don’t get it.’

‘Nobody gets it,’ Kevin said. ‘Least of all them, I suspect.’

If Sam Evans had a motto, it was that knowledge is power. His application of the aphorism was indiscriminate; he worked at acquiring information about and ahead of his colleagues as thoroughly as he did against criminals. So, after Carol had left Robbie Bishop’s apartment, he decided to sneak a quick look at the footballer’s computer ahead of Stacey. He knew there were good reasons why he should leave it alone, but from what he had gleaned of Robbie Bishop, Sam didn’t expect his computer to be equipped with a logic bomb primed to destroy all data if a stranger attempted to access it.

He was right. It wasn’t even password-protected. It was tempting to start opening files, but he knew that would leave the sort of traces Stacey couldn’t fail to notice. But he reckoned he’d be safe enough copying files on to the blank CD-ROMs he’d found in one of the desk drawers.

It didn’t take him long to realize there wasn’t much worth copying, at least from an information point of view. There were thousands of music files; according to Robbie’s iTunes software, it would take 7.3 days to listen to them all. A serious amount of music, but not likely to shed any light on Robbie’s murder. Also unlikely to serve any useful purpose were a few dozen saved game files, further evidence of his recreational software habit. Instead, Sam concentrated on the emails, the photos and a handful of Word files. Even with such ruthless culling, it still took three CDs to download what he wanted for himself.

Then he closed down the machine, confident that he was bomb-proof. Let Stacey play with it as much as she wanted. He had the head start he needed to make sure he was right out in front of the rest of the team.

Satisfied, Sam turned off the computer and returned to the desk. Now he had something solid to work with, he minded less that he was stuck here when he should be out on the front line interviewing the key players. Bloody Jordan. It didn’t matter what he did, she refused to be impressed. He was going to have to figure out a way to go round her if he was going to make the headway he craved. Sill mildly pissed off, he reached for his cigarettes and lit up. It wasn’t like Robbie Bishop would be back to complain.

Carol stood in the shadows, watching the final act of Robbie Bishop’s tragedy play out before her. Not even the machines could keep him alive any longer. Denby had explained it to her when she’d arrived at the hospital. ‘As I told you before, ricin stops the cells manufacturing the proteins they need, so they start to die. We can compensate for that to some degree with machines, but there comes a point where the blood pressure falls so low we simply can’t get enough oxygen to the brain, and everything begins to shut down. That’s the point we’ve reached now.’

He was, she knew, in no pain. There was morphine to take care of that. And prophanol to keep him asleep. Although he was still technically alive, there was nothing left of what had made Robbie Bishop himself. It was hard to believe that the man she was watching die had inspired his team-mates to a memorable victory only days before. He didn’t look like an athlete any longer. His head was swollen to twice its normal size, his body bloated and distended. Under the thin bedclothes, his formerly beautiful legs looked like twin pillars. Robbie Bishop, sporting hero, idol of millions, looked utterly pitiful.

His mother sat by his side, both hands clutching limp fingers turned black from the lack of peripheral circulation brought on by the very drugs they’d given him in their attempts to raise his blood pressure. Silent tears coursed down her cheeks. She was only in her late forties, but the past couple of days had turned her into an old woman, hunched and bewildered. Behind her stood her husband, his hands tight on her shoulders. The resemblance between him and his son when healthy was striking. Brian Bishop was a living reminder of what Robbie would never become.

On the other side of the bed, Martin Flanagan stood, head bowed, hands clasped in front of him. Carol could see his face was screwed tight with the effort of not crying. After England’s last dismal World Cup exit, Carol had thought it was acceptable for real men to shed tears. Perhaps not for those of Flanagan’s generation, she thought.

As she watched, Robbie’s chest seemed to seize, his body to spasm. All over in seconds. When it was done, the heart monitor’s numbers were plummeting, the blood pressure sinking like a stone, the blood oxygen saturation falling in a blur of digital display. ‘I’m very sorry,’ Thomas Denby said. ‘We need to switch off the life support now.’

Mrs Bishop wailed. Just one long keening cry, then she fell forward, her head against the side of her boy, her hand clawing at his bloated chest, as if she could somehow thrust life back into him. Her husband turned away, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking. Flanagan was slumped against the wall in a crouch, his head on his knees.

It was too much. Carol stepped away. When she emerged into the corridor, Denby was at her shoulder. ‘We’ll have to issue a statement, hold a press conference. I suggest we make it a joint one.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Half an hour enough for you to prepare?’

‘I’m not sure we should …’

‘Look, I’m going to have to tell them what we know, which is that Robbie Bishop died from ricin poisoning. They’re going to want to know what you people are doing. All I’m trying to do is to make sure the whole story comes out at once, rather than have a raft of speculation floating around any announcement I make.’ Denby sounded irritated, a man unaccustomed to being challenged.

Carol had never had any problem standing up to men like Denby, but she had learned to pick her battlegrounds. ‘I suppose I’ve had more experience than you at trying to do my job in the midst of a hostile media rattling their sabres,’ she said sweetly. ‘If it makes it easier for you to have my support at the press conference, I’m sure it can be arranged. Where will we be meeting the press?’

Thoroughly wrong-footed, Denby said curtly, ‘The boardroom on the second floor is probably the best place. I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.’ And he was gone, his white coat so starched it barely stirred in the wind of his passage.

‘Bastard,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘Problems, chief?’ Paula stood in the doorway of the family room where she’d earlier interviewed Flanagan.

‘Mr Denby doesn’t like hanging around. Pronounces death one minute, announces the press conference the next. I’d have liked a little more time to make sure I was up to speed, that’s all.’

‘You want me to ring round the team? Get the bullet points?’

Carol had trouble taking Paula’s eagerness at face value. When she’d found herself in a similar position professionally, she’d felt rage, resentment and a burning desire for vengeance. She couldn’t imagine any circumstances in which she could have worked for those who had let her down and betrayed her trust. Yet instead of hating her, Paula seemed to be even more driven to win her approval. Carol had asked Tony to explain it to her, but he’d been hampered by his own clinical involvement with Paula. All he’d felt able to say was, ‘She genuinely doesn’t blame you for what went wrong that night in Temple Fields. She understands that you didn’t hang her out to dry. That you did everything you could to keep her safe. There’s no hidden agenda here, Carol. You can trust that she’s on your side.’

So now she tried. She smiled and put a hand on Paula’s arm. ‘That would be a big help. I’m going to put some notes together down in the café – I need the caffeine. I’ll see you there in quarter of an hour.’

As she walked, Carol disregarded the hospital rule forbidding mobiles and called her boss. John Brandon, the Chief Constable of Bradfield Metropolitan Police, had been responsible for dragging her back into the world of policing when she’d desperately wanted to leave it for good. He’d created the Major Incident Team she headed up, and he was the one senior police officer she trusted without reservation.

She brought him up to date on the Robbie Bishop situation, explaining the need for a joint press conference.

‘Go ahead,’ Brandon said. ‘You’re the one on the ground. I trust your judgement.’

‘There’s only one thing I’m not sure of – I don’t know whether to go public with murder or stick with suspicious death.’

‘Do you think it’s murder?’

‘Hard to see how it could be anything else.’

‘Then go with murder. High-profile case like this, they’ll crucify us if they think we’re covering our backs. Call it as you see it.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And, Carol – keep me on the page with you on this one.’

Carol ended the call not a moment too soon. As she thrust her phone back into her bag, a TV reporter standing on the fringes of the press battalion recognized her. He broke away, calling her name, running towards her.

Carol smiled and waggled her fingers in a wave. She was deep in the warren of hospital corridors before he reached the main door. It was beginning.

Yousef walked into the living room just after the regional evening news programme began. He started to speak, but Raj and Sanjar both shushed him. ‘What?’ he protested, giving Raj a shove so he’d move up and let Yousef squeeze in on the end of the sofa.

‘It’s Robbie Bishop,’ Sanjar said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘No way,’ Yousef protested.

‘Shush,’ Raj insisted. Of the three brothers, he was the only real football fan. Sanjar loved cricket, but Yousef had never caught the sports bug. Still, given his plans for the weekend, this story was interesting.

On the screen, the newsreader looked solemn. ‘And now we are going live to a press conference at Bradfield Cross Hospital where Robbie Bishop’s doctor, Mr Thomas Denby, is making a statement.’

The picture changed. Some geezer in a serious suit and a sharp haircut was sitting at a table flanked by a good-looking blonde and a nothing brunette in a white coat. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Robbie Bishop died in the Intensive Care Unit here at Bradfield Cross half an hour ago. His parents and Martin Flanagan, the manager of Bradfield Victoria, were with him when he died.’ Posh voice. Cleared his throat and went on. ‘We have known for some hours that there was nothing further we could do for Robbie except to make sure his last hours were as comfortable as possible.’ There was a buzz of voices in the background from reporters who didn’t have the patience or the manners to wait for Denby to say what he had to say. Just like his baby brother, who kept repeating, ‘So what did he die of?’

The posh geezer held up a hand, appealing for quiet. He gave it a few seconds then started again. ‘This morning, we received the results of lab tests that proved conclusively that Robbie Bishop was not suffering from any kind of infection. What killed Robbie Bishop was a substantial dose of the poison ricin.’ The room erupted.

‘Fucking hell,’ Sanjar breathed. ‘Isn’t that what they were arresting all them lads for making? Them so-called terrorists?’

‘Yeah, but most of them got let go,’ Yousef said. ‘I think there was one bloke went on trial for it.’

‘Then they’ll blame us,’ Raj said, his face solemn, his eyes bright. ‘They’ll say it was Muslim fundamentalists. I tell you, I’ve been supporting the Vics since I was a little kid, but that won’t make no difference now.’

Yousef patted his shoulder awkwardly. He felt sorry for Raj, but he had to think of the bigger picture. Which was looking even better now. Recently, he’d been zoning out into a world of his own when he’d been planted in front of the TV, but for this, his mind was fully engaged. ‘Let’s see what they’ve got to say.’

They dragged their attention back to the TV set, where the geezer in the suit had given way to the blonde. ‘My team have already begun our investigation into this tragic death,’ she was saying. ‘We are treating it as a murder inquiry.’ So, a cop, then. ‘We would like to talk to anyone who saw Robbie or spoke to him in the Amatis nightclub in Bradfield late on Thursday evening. We are also interested in his movements after he left the nightclub. We need to find the person who did this. If anyone has information, they should call this number.’ She held up a piece of paper with a free phone number and read it out.

As soon as she finished speaking, the journalistic frenzy began again. ‘Is there any question of terrorist involvement?’ was the one that rose above the rest.

The blonde’s lips pursed in a thin line. ‘There is no reason to suspect terrorism in this case,’ she said. ‘Nor is there any suggestion that anyone else is at risk from the event that killed Robbie Bishop.’

‘When did your investigation begin?’

‘The hospital informed us this morning,’ the cop said.

‘We called the police as soon as the ricin diagnosis was confirmed,’ the suit butted in.

‘Covering his arse,’ Sanjar said as the screen cut back to the studio, where the anchor promised any fresh information as soon as it was available. They moved on to a rapidly assembled montage of Robbie Bishop’s greatest moments on the pitch. Raj stared avidly, soaking up the magic that would never be repeated.

‘I was there,’ he said, as they showed Robbie’s spectacular shot from thirty yards out, the goal that had clinched the Vics’ semi-final slot in the previous season’s UEFA Cup. ‘Oh man, we got no chance in the premiership now. Not without Robbie.’

Yousef shook his head. ‘You should stay away from the games. Till they’ve caught whoever did this.’

‘I’ve got a ticket for Saturday,’ Raj protested. ‘And the next European game.’

‘Yousef’s right,’ Sanjar said. ‘Till they find out who did this, there’s going to be people looking for scapegoats. Even though that cop woman said it wasn’t no terrorist thing, there’s still going to be fuckwits out there who think it’s an excuse to go paki-bashing. Feelings are going to run high, Raj. Better you stay clear.’

‘I don’t want to stay clear. Not from the matches, and not tonight either. Everybody’s going to be down the stadium, paying tributes and that. I want to be part of it. It’s my club too.’ Raj was close to tears.

His elder brothers exchanged a look. ‘Sanjar’s probably right about the matches. Once it’s sunk in, there’ll be bad feeling, no doubt about it. But I’ll come with you tonight if you’re set on that,’ Yousef said, understanding only too well the precariousness of the bridge between the two cultures that claimed his generation. ‘We’ll go together.’

Tony turned the TV off and leaned back on his pillows. The intravenous morphine had worn off and he could feel the beginning of a dull ache in his knee. The nurse had told him sternly that he didn’t have to suffer, that he should summon a nurse and ask for pain relief. He tried moving his leg, testing the limits of his endurance. He reckoned he could wait a little longer. More drugs would just make him go to sleep, and he didn’t want to be asleep now. Not when there was the prospect of a visit.

Carol was in the hospital. He’d just seen her on TV, doing a live press conference. She had a murder. And what a murder. Celebrity corpse and a creepy murder method. She’d want to talk to him about it. Of that he was certain. But he didn’t know when she’d be able to get away.

He thought about Robbie Bishop and of the evenings he’d spent in the cosy cave that was his study, watching Bradfield Victoria on the satellite channel. He recalled a thoughtful player, seldom careless with his passes. In control of himself as much as he’d been in control of the ball. Tony couldn’t remember ever seeing Robbie Bishop pick up a yellow card. But being mindful of what he was doing hadn’t meant a lack of passion. Robbie in his number seven shirt would run himself into the ground. What had made Robbie special, though, were the gorgeous moves he’d created out of nothing, moments when there was no need to explain to unbelievers why football was the beautiful game.

And somebody had wiped that skill and grace from the map. They’d done it in the cruellest of ways, left him a dead man walking. Why would someone choose such a death for Robbie Bishop? Was it personal? Or was it a more general statement? Either was possible. Tony needed more detail. He needed Carol.

He didn’t have long to wait. Within ten minutes of the end of her press conference, Carol was shutting his door behind her, leaning against it as if expecting pursuit. ‘He doesn’t like anybody else getting the limelight, does he?’ Tony said, waving her towards the bedside chair.

‘My way or the highway,’ Carol said, abandoning her defence of the door and throwing herself into the chair. ‘Like just about every consultant I’ve ever dealt with.’

‘You should meet Mrs Chakrabarti. At least she lets you bask in the misapprehension that she’s taking notice of what you say. So, you’ve got the poisoned chalice, have you?’

‘Oh yes. CID took the call and as soon as they realized what they were looking at, they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. I’m not looking forward to the next few days. But enough of me and my troubles.’ Carol made a visible effort to shrug off her problems. ‘How are you?’

Tony smiled. ‘It’s me, Carol. You don’t have to pretend you’ve got room in your head for anything other than Robbie Bishop. And as for me, if you really want to know, I’ll feel a lot better as soon as you stop treating me like an invalid. It’s my knee that’s messed up, not my brain. You can run this past me, same as you would any other murder lacking an obvious motive.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t look like you’re firing on all cylinders, to be honest.’

‘I’m not, clearly. My concentration isn’t great, which makes reading anything complex impossible.’ He made a dismissive gesture towards the books he’d asked her to bring in. ‘But I’m off the intravenous morphine and my brain is returning to what passes for normal. When I’m awake, I’d rather be puzzling over this than watching daytime TV. So, what can you tell me?’

‘Depressingly little.’ Carol ran through what she and her team had established so far.

‘So, to sum up,’ Tony said. ‘We don’t know of anybody who hated him enough to kill him, he was probably poisoned in a nightclub crammed with people and we don’t know where the ricin came from.’

‘That’s about it, yeah. I did find a scrunched-up bit of paper in the pocket of the last pair of jeans he wore. It had a url on it that I’ve not had a chance to check out yet: www.bestdays.co.uk.’

‘We could look at it now.’ Tony offered, pressing the button to raise the bed and wincing as a fresh pain asserted itself. He flipped open the laptop and waited impatiently for it to emerge from hibernation.

‘You in pain?’ Carol asked.

‘A bit,’ he admitted.

‘Can’t they give you something for it?’

‘I’m trying to keep the painkillers to a minimum,’ Tony admitted. ‘I don’t like the way they make me feel. I’d rather have my wits about me.’

‘That’s just stupid,’ Carol said firmly. ‘There’s nothing helpful about pain.’ Without asking permission, she pressed the nurse call button.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Sorting you out.’ She pulled her chair round so she could see the screen.

Tony typed in the url. It took them to a page with the banner heading, ‘The Best Days of Our Lives.’ For only £5 annual membership, the site promised it would provide the best service in the UK for reuniting old school friends and workmates. A brief exploration revealed that by registering with the site, people could check out their old contacts and get back in touch via emails which would be forwarded by the website administration. ‘Why would Robbie Bishop be interested in contacting old school mates?’ Tony said. ‘I’d have thought they’d be falling over themselves to get back in touch with him.’

Carol shrugged. ‘Maybe he wanted to look up an old flame who dumped him? He was footloose and fancy free after the end of his engagement.’

‘I don’t see it. He was good looking, rich and talented. Everywhere he went, women threw themselves at him. And apparently, he was quite happy to catch some of them. He was engaged to a very cool trophy babe. If he was still carrying a torch for somebody who dumped him when he was fifteen, he wouldn’t be behaving like that. And he’d have done something about it before now.’ He shook his head. ‘No, the psychology’s all wrong for that. Do we know for sure it’s Robbie’s handwriting?’

‘We don’t. It’s with forensics now. You think somebody gave it to him?’

‘He told Phil Campsie he was having a drink with someone from school. Maybe whoever he was drinking with suggested he should check out the site, look up some old mates. Robbie’s not interested but he doesn’t want to seem rude so he shoves it in his pocket and forgets all about it.’

‘Could be. It makes sense.’

Tony opened a window and typed in, ‘Harriestown High School, Bradfield.’

‘You know where he went to school?’ Carol sounded suspicious.

‘I follow football, Carol. I know where he grew up. His mum and dad still live in the same house, in Harriestown. He offered to buy them a new place, but they wanted to stay where they belonged.’

‘You don’t learn stuff like that from following football.’

Tony had the grace to look shame-faced. ‘So I surf the gossip from time to time. It doesn’t make me a bad person. Look at that.’ He pointed to the screen. There was a photograph of Harriestown High School, boxy sixties concrete and glass flanking the old Victorian brick core. Beneath a brief history of the school there was a section entitled ‘Famous Alumni’. A couple of MPs, two rock bands who had made a small dent in the charts during the Britpop era, a mid-list crime writer, a minor soap star, a fashion designer and Robbie Bishop. A couple of clicks and he’d brought up the names of Harriestown High School former pupils who had overlapped Robbie Bishop’s years in the school. ‘Whoever gave him the url, chances are the name is here.’

Carol groaned. ‘I suppose it does whittle down the list a little. Rather than checking out every single person who was at school with Robbie, now we only have to go through the ones who are paid-up members of the Best Days of Our Lives.’

‘At least now you’re looking for a needle in a sewing box rather than a haystack.’

‘You think that makes it easier? That’s the trouble with not having an obvious motive. You don’t know where to start.’

Tony winced. ‘And that’s what I’m for, right? The one who narrows things down when “Who benefits?” doesn’t cut the mustard.’

Carol grinned. ‘Something like that. And on that cheerful note, I’m going to leave you to it. I’m off to London to talk to Robbie’s ex.’

‘The lovely Bindie Blyth, would that be?’

‘I see what you mean about surfing the gossip. You’re absolutely right. And before I can take off, I need to sort out some bodies to acquire as much city-centre CCTV footage as we can get our hands on. And then the poor sods have to go through it all.’

‘Rather them than me. What’s the coverage like around Amatis?’

Carol rolled her eyes. ‘It ranges from overkill to nothing at all. The front of the club is well covered, and so are the routes to the nearest multi-storeys. But there’s a side exit near the VIP area. It opens on to an alley that runs down the side of the building. From there, you’re into the warren of Temple Fields back streets. And in spite of our best efforts, far too much of that is still CCTV-free.’ There was a moment’s silence while they both remembered past cases that had revolved around Temple Fields, an area that managed to combine the red-light district, the gay village, designer apartments in converted warehouses and a honeycomb of small businesses. Temple Fields was the cusp of cool and crap, where edgy met enterprising for denizens who spanned the spectrum from criminal to righteous.

‘It’s still the only part of town where anything can happen,’ Tony said, his voice almost dreamy. ‘Good and bad.’

Carol snorted derisively. ‘I’ll have to take your word for the good.’

‘We only ever see the worst. I suspect there’s good magic there too.’

‘Tell that to Paula.’ Carol’s voice was sour, remembering how Paula had almost died in a dingy room in Temple Fields.

Tony smiled. ‘Carol, Paula understands much more about transgression than you or I ever will. She knows what tempers the down side of Temple Fields. For a long time, it was the only place where people like her could be safe. There were gays in Temple Fields long before the gay village became a cool destination.’

It was a gentle rebuke, but one that reminded Carol she couldn’t lay her reactions over Paula’s and expect an exact fit. ‘You’re right,’ she admitted. Before she could say more, a nurse knocked and walked in.

‘What can I do for you?’ she said.

‘He needs pain relief but he won’t admit it,’ Carol said, standing up and gathering her things together.

‘Is that right?’

Tony nodded. ‘I suppose so.’

The nurse consulted his chart and said, ‘I told you, there’s no medals for martyrs here. I’ll bring you something.’

Carol followed her to the door. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back from London, but I’ll try and come by tomorrow.’

‘Good luck,’ Tony said. He wasn’t sorry to see her go; her visit had reminded him how little energy he had. It was a relief to know there would be no other visitors that evening. There were advantages to keeping the world at arm’s length.

For a long time, he had mistrusted those few overtures of friendship that had come his way. He’d believed they were based on the misconception that the face he presented to the world had anything to do with what was going on inside him. He was aware how slender was the connection between the two. And that his own history placed him closer to those he hunted than those on whose behalf he hunted. He knew the extent of his damage and understood that its gift of empathy had to be paid for somehow. By the time he’d plucked up the emotional courage to lay some of the blame on his mother, he’d also acquired enough knowledge to understand that was too easy an option. He had spent years feeling like a child with its face pressed to the window behind which the happy family were celebrating the perfect Dickensian Christmas. It had taken him that long to understand that most of those apparently happy families hid as many dark places as his own. That he was not the only one doing what he called ‘passing for human’. But by then he had built himself a life that willingly embraced solitude and spectatorship.

And then Carol Jordan had arrived. None of his psychology textbooks nor his thousands of hours of clinical practice had prepared him for someone who could walk straight through his defences as if they did not exist. It was both too simple and too complicated. If either of them had been different, they might have been able to fall in love and get it over with. But there had been too many snags and hitches at the start and now it seemed that every time they tentatively considered surrender, the world threw up mountains in their path.

Mostly, he wished it could be different. But sometimes, like now, he recognized that perhaps it was enough for each of them to know there was at least one relationship in their lives that was never going to be hamstrung by them acting out their needs. Whatever they did for each other meant itself alone. When she negotiated wireless access from a hospital bed for him, there was no ulterior motive. And now, he would trawl the world of information online and in his head to help her, just because he could.

When the nurse returned, he dutifully swallowed his medication and lay back, letting his mind wander free. Where there was no obvious motive, it was his talent to tease out meaning. What could Robbie Bishop’s murderer have gained from the act of killing? To understand that would be a giant step on the journey to giving this stranger face and form. It was, thankfully, the sort of giant step he didn’t need two functioning knees for. Just a brain that could possibly be helped on its way by the lovely, soothing chemicals infiltrating his bloodstream.

A twenty-four-hour news agenda is always hungry for headlines. Now that Robbie Bishop had died, the circus had moved from outside the hospital to the Bradfield Victoria stadium. The story had moved so fast that most of the media were there ahead of the fans, having quicker access to their vehicles. To begin with, there were more journalists and camera crew than there were mourners. They milled around in the chilly evening air, cracking black jokes and waiting for the action they knew would arrive soon enough.

Within an hour, they got what they wanted. Hundreds of people drifted around in the shadow of the cantilevered Grayson Street stand, breath puffing in clouds around their heads. Already the iron railings that marked the boundary had become the literal props for bunches of supermarket flowers, beribboned teddies, mourning messages, sympathy cards and photos of Robbie himself. Distraught women wept, men in canary yellow home strips looked as gutted as if they’d just witnessed a five–nil home defeat. Children looked bewildered, youths betrayed. Reporters moved among them, mikes and tape recorders thrust towards the banalities of manufactured emotion. A discreet police presence patrolled the mourners, a precaution against any kind of excess.

Yousef and Raj were among the first to arrive. Yousef felt conspicuous and awkward. He thought he was probably the only person apart from cops and media not wearing a Vics shirt or scarf. He politely declined when a couple of TV reporters asked for his comments and dragged a protesting Raj away from their mikes and cameras. ‘Why can’t I say summat?’ Raj said.

‘You’re supposed to be here because you’re in mourning, not to get your gob all over the TV,’ Yousef said. ‘This isn’t about you, remember?’

‘It’s not fair. I really loved Robbie. I love the Vics. Half the people that’ll end up on the telly or the radio couldn’t give a toss about the team from one week to the next. They just want to get in on the act.’ Raj trailed behind his brother, scuffing his heels on the ground.

‘So let them.’

Another reporter thrust a tape recorder at them. ‘Some people are linking Robbie Bishop’s death to Muslim terrorist production of ricin,’ he gabbled. ‘What’s your view on that?’

‘It’s bollocks,’ Yousef said, finally goaded into speech. ‘Didn’t you hear what that cop said earlier? No reason to link this to terrorism. You’re just trying to stir up trouble. It’s people like you that provoke race riots. My brother here, the only thing he’s fanatical about is Bradfield Vics.’ He spat on the ground. ‘You’ve got no respect. Come on, Raj.’ He grabbed his brother’s sleeve and pulled him away.

‘Great,’ said Raj. ‘I don’t get to talk about Robbie, but you get to shout your mouth off, make us look like troublemakers.’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s not fair.’ Yousef steered Raj away from the media and towards the tributes at the railings. ‘But I’m so sick of that sort of shit. Why would terrorists kill Robbie Bishop, for fuck’s sake?’

‘’Cos he’s a symbol of the decadence of the West, dummy,’ Raj said, imitating the stupid parrot tones of the big mouths he’d heard sounding off in the kebab shops and the mosque car park.

‘That’s true, actually. But not a good enough reason to kill him. Killing Robbie doesn’t create terror, just outrage. For terrorism to work, you need to strike at ordinary people. But that’s too sophisticated an argument for the likes of that wanker with the microphone,’ Yousef said bitterly.