by Val McDermid
Carol curled her legs under her and snuggled, glugging half of the brandy without a shudder. Five minutes, then she’d head back downstairs. ‘I wish you were here,’ she said out loud. ‘I feel like we’re getting nowhere. Normally, nobody would be expecting much progress at this stage in a case like this. But this is Robbie Bishop and the eyes of the world are watching. So getting nowhere isn’t going to be an option.’ She yawned, then finished the drink.
‘You scared me, you know,’ she said, burrowing more deeply into the squashy cushions. ‘When Chris told me you’d run into the mad axeman, I felt like my heart stopped, like the world went into slow motion. Don’t you ever do that to me again, you bastard.’ She shifted her head, butting a cushion into a more comfortable shape, closing her eyes and feeling her body unwind as the alcohol hit. ‘Wish you’d warned me about your mother, though. She’s something else. No wonder you’re as weird as you are.’
The next thing Carol had known was the blare of the radio alarm from the bedroom across the hallway. Stiff and disorientated, she’d stumbled to her feet and checked her watch. Seven o’clock. Less than three hours’ kip. Time to start all over again.
And here she was, showered, in fresh clothes, caffeine levels already jitterbug high. Carol combed her thick blonde hair with her fingers and started skimming the pile of Robbie Bishop news stories Paula had already clipped for her. Focusing hard, because the last thing she wanted to do was examine how she had spent her night. She only looked up when Chris Devine knocked and entered, a brown paper bag in her hand. ‘Bacon and egg roll,’ she said succinctly, dropping it on the desk. ‘We’re ready when you are.’ Carol smiled at her retreating back. Chris had a knack for the gesture of solidarity, the little touches that made her colleagues feel supported. Carol wondered how they had managed before she’d joined them. The plan had been for Chris to be there from the off, but her mother’s terminal cancer had kept her in her old job with the Met for three months longer than she’d anticipated. Carol sighed. Maybe if Chris had been around from the get-go, Detective Inspector Don Merrick would still be among them.
‘Pointless,’ she chided herself, reaching for the bag and tucking in without really registering what she was eating. Hardly a day went by without her wondering whether this or that detail might have made a difference to Don. In her heart, she knew she was only trying to find a way to blame herself instead of him. Tony had told her more than once that it was OK to be angry with Don for what he’d done. But it still didn’t feel possible, never mind right.
As she ate, Carol made a few notes, sketching a rough agenda for the case conference. By quarter to nine, she was ready. There was no reason to wait for the prearranged time, so she emerged from her office and assembled the team around her. Carol stood in front of one of the whiteboards that contained a digest of all the information they had amassed so far on Robbie Bishop.
On her word, Sam kicked off the proceedings with a recap of their interview with Bindie Blyth. He finished up with Bindie’s vague theory about gambling. ‘Anybody have any comment?’ Carol asked.
Stacey, their computer and ICT specialist, waggled her pen. ‘She’s right that there’s a huge amount of gambling money swilling around in the Far East. And a lot of it is staked on football. The Australians in particular have done a lot of investigative work into the way they use computer networks to rake the money in. And yes, there’s a lot of associated crime and corruption. But the point is, the gambling syndicates don’t have to resort to assassination to skew the odds in their favour. They can buy what they need.’
‘You’re saying that even with the amount of money we pay our footballers, they’ve still got their hands out for more?’ Paula feigned shock.
‘There’s more than one way to fix a game,’ Stacey said. ‘Arguably, the match officials have more influence over outcome. And they don’t earn mega salaries.’
Sam snorted derisively. ‘And they’re so crap, nobody would notice them doing it on purpose. If a referee can give one player three yellow cards in the same game when he’s supposed to send him off after the second one, imagine what he could do if he was taking backhanders. So you’re saying that while these gambling syndicates might cross the line to make sure the sums come out in their favour, you don’t think they’d go as far as murder?’
Stacey nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. It doesn’t match the way they go about things.’
Kevin looked up from the gun he was doodling on his pad. ‘Yeah, but that’s what you might call the traditional end of dodgy gambling. See, this ricin thing, that spells Russian mafia to me. A lot of those guys, they’re ex-KGB and FSB. It was the KGB that helped the Bulgarians assassinate Georgi Markov using ricin. What if the Russians have decided they want a slice of the international betting cash? It would be just like them to be so bloody heavy-handed.’
Stacey shrugged. ‘It makes a kind of sense, I suppose. But I’ve not heard anything about the Russians getting into this sort of thing. Maybe we should ask Six?’
Carol shuddered. The last thing she wanted was to allow the intelligence services anywhere near her operation. Their reputation slithered before them, in particular their reluctance to go away empty-handed once they’d been invited in. Carol didn’t want to have her murder inquiry transformed into some sinister conspiracy until she was certain it wasn’t a straightforward murder for one of the customary motives. ‘Until we’ve got something more solid connecting the Russians to this, I’m not going near the spooks,’ she said firmly. ‘At this point, we have nothing to suggest Robbie Bishop’s murder was anything to do with gambling or the Russian mafia. Let’s wait till we have some evidence before we get over-excited about theories like Bindie’s. We’ll keep it in mind, but I don’t think it’s worth spending investigative resources on it right now. Stacey, what have you got for us?’
Never at her best when dealing with humans, Stacey shifted in her seat and studiously avoided eye contact. ‘So far, I’ve found nothing of interest on Bishop’s computer. No emails sent after his night out on Thursday, except one to his agent agreeing to an interview for a Spanish men’s magazine. Also, he never visited the bestdays.co.uk website. Not from his home computer, at any rate. His history list is almost exclusively related to football or music. He bought some new speakers online just last week. Which kind of knocks the suicide idea on the head, if that was in anybody’s mind.’
‘I don’t know. If I was depressed, I might spend a few bob to cheer myself up,’ Sam said. Catching Carol rolling her eyes, he hastily added, ‘Not that we’re thinking suicide.’
‘Not with ricin. Too obscure, too painful, too slow,’ Carol said, echoing what Denby had said to her. ‘As for the Best Days website, given that Robbie did have the url on him, I think we can assume that whoever he was drinking with that night was familiar with the site. Stacey, do you think there’s any way they can help us?’
‘Depends on their attitude,’ she began.
‘And on whether they’re football fans,’ Kevin said.
Stacey looked dubious. ‘Maybe. What I thought we could ask for in the first instance is for them to send an email to all their Harriestown High subscribers asking them to contact us with a recent photo and an account of their movements on Thursday night. That way, we set things in motion without having to wait for a warrant.’
‘Isn’t that sending out a big fat warning to our killer?’ Kevin asked. ‘Tipping them off to our interest? I went to Harriestown High, you know. We weren’t the most authority-friendly bunch. Harriestown wasn’t yuppified back then, it was pretty rough. Even in Robbie’s day, it wasn’t the sort of place where they fall over themselves to help the police. You’re dealing with the kind of people who could easily send a photo of someone completely different just to wind us up, never mind throwing us off the trail. I say we ask the site for the names and addresses of their subscribers and if they won’t come across, we go for the warrant.’
Carol saw the momentary flash of irritation in Sta
cey’s eyes. She normally kept her opinions on her colleagues’ lack of understanding of the world of information technology to herself; it was rare to catch a glimpse of her true feelings.
Assuming an air of weary patience, Stacey said, ‘The only address the website will have stored for their subscribers is the email address. It’s possible they may have credit card billing addresses, but even if they do, that’s covered by the data protection legislation and we definitely would need a warrant to get that. The important thing here is that, however we get in touch with these people, there’s no way to keep it secret. The first person we talk to will be online before we’re back in our cars, posting our line of inquiry. We might as well be upfront from the start. The online community is much more inclined to co-operate when they’re included in the process. We take them with us, we get their help. We treat them as potentially hostile and they’ll make our life twice as difficult.’ It was a major speech for Stacey. A measure, Carol thought, of how seriously she was taking this case.
‘OK. Give it a whirl, Stacey. See if you can get the Best Days people to co-operate. If you hit a wall, come back to me. And, Kevin? You can cast an eye over the pics from your era, see if your old classmates are confounding your expectations and telling the truth. Chris?’ Carol turned to the sergeant. ‘How did you guys get on at Amatis?’
Chris shook her head. The bar staff who were on duty on Thursday remember seeing Robbie in the vodka bar, but they were too busy to pay attention to the company he was keeping. Same with the punters. I think we can probably rule out a stunning blonde. They would have noticed that, I suspect. Paula did notice one thing…’ Chris tipped a nod to Paula and took a sheet of paper out of a folder. ‘There’s CCTV covering the bar area. Unfortunately for our purposes, it’s there to keep an eye on the staff, not the punters. It’s the management’s way of making sure all the cash ends up in the till and that nobody is dealing drugs from behind the bar. So it’s not pointed at the customers. However, we did get this.’ She moved to the whiteboard and pinned up a grainy enlargement. ‘This is Robbie,’ she said, pointing to a hand on the very edge of the photo. ‘We know it’s him because of the Celtic ring tattoo on his middle finger. And next to him, we can see someone else.’ A couple of inches from Robbie’s fingertips was half a hand, a wrist and a section of forearm. ‘Male,’ she said, her expression a mixture of disgust and triumph. ‘A few more degrees of angle on the camera and we’d have him. As it is, all we know is that it is a him and that he doesn’t have a tattoo on the right half of his right hand, wrist or lower arm.’ She stepped away from the board and sat down again. ‘So at least Stacey can tell the website people we’re only interested in the blokes.’
‘Can we, though? Can we be sure this is the person he was referring to?’ Sam butted in.
‘Sure as we can be. We’ve been through all the footage and we’ve not been able to put anybody else alongside Robbie. Someone talking to him from behind wouldn’t have been able to get at his drink. See, it’s too close to Robbie for anyone to tamper with it except the person facing him at the bar.’
‘OK.’ Sam subsided. ‘Point taken.’
‘Thanks, Chris. Anybody else got anything?’
‘I’ve got the results from the street CCTV,’ Paula said. ‘I got the graveyard-shift CID to work it through the night. Robbie definitely didn’t leave by the front door, which is a massive pain in the arse because that area’s saturated with cameras. He must have left by the side door, the so-called VIP exit. There’s no coverage there-the club wants to keep on the good side of its so-called celebrity patrons. This way, there’s no temptation for the club’s security staff to flog stuff to the gossip mags. If there are no pix of C-list TV reality-show arseholes shagging some drunken fan up against the wall, they’re not going to be exposed in print. So goes the theory.
‘The back lane behind the club opens out into Goss Street, the effective border of Temple Fields…’ Paula paused for a moment, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. And of course, Temple Fields has pretty sketchy coverage. Too many of the businesses there are reliant on the streetlife for them to want CCTV, so they always oppose the council when they want to put more cameras up. So we don’t have any footage of Robbie entering Goss Street. What we do have, however, is a very brief clip from one of the cameras on Campion Way. I’ve just put it up on the network, you’ll all be able to see it on your screens. But here it is for now.’ She pulled a laptop towards her and tapped the mouse pad. The interactive whiteboard to the side of Carol immediately sprang to life, an obscure picture appearing, an abstract chiaroscuro of dark and light created by the streetlights on Campion Way. ‘This is pretty raw,’ Paula said. ‘We should be able to get it cleaned up a bit. But I don’t know how helpful it’s going to be.’
The camera was looking down the street, angled to pick up car number plates as kerb crawlers idled down Campion Way. At first, nothing moved. Then two figures emerged from a cross street, paused at the kerb, waiting for a night bus to pass, then walked briskly across the road and disappeared down the other arm of the side street. Knowing Robbie Bishop was the target made it possible to distinguish the walker closest to the camera as the footballer. But the person beyond him was nothing but a darker smudge, except for one brief moment at the kerbside when a blur of white appeared at Robbie’s shoulder.
‘And the killer is Caspar the friendly fucking ghost,’ Kevin said. At least we know he’s white. Almost makes you think he knew the camera was there.’
‘I think he did know,’ Paula said. ‘I think it’s very instructive that this is the only CCTV camera shot we have of Robbie and his probable killer. Even with the scant coverage there is in Temple Fields, it’s impossible to get from one side to the other without being picked up at least once on camera.’ She tapped again on the mouse pad. This time, a map of Temple Fields appeared, with Amatis and the CCTV cameras highlighted. Paula tapped again. This time, a scarlet line zigzagged through the streets, avoiding all but the Campion Way camera. ‘By taking this route, they were only picked up from the side. And for less than a minute. Any other route and they’d have been filmed head-on. Look at the way they must have come. You don’t make all those twists and turns by chance. And I don’t think it was Robbie who was avoiding the cameras.’
They all stared at the map for a long moment. ‘Well spotted, Paula,’ Carol said. ‘I think we can safely say that we are looking for somebody local. Somebody who attended Harriestown High School and who has intimate knowledge of Temple Fields. With all respect, Kevin, this is looking more like one of your fellow former pupils than the Russian mafia. Unless of course they’re using local talent. So let’s keep our minds open. Paula, do we know how they left Temple Fields?’
‘It’s a blank, chief. There are plenty of smart flats in that part of town these days. Or they might have got into a car. We’ve no way of knowing. All we can say for sure is that they don’t show up on foot on any of the main drags on that side of Temple Fields.’
‘OK. Let’s see if we can get any more commercial CCTV footage of the area. Are we any further forward on where he might have got the ricin?’
Kevin consulted his notebook. ‘I spoke to a lecturer in the pharmacology department at the university. He says it’s easy to make. All you need are some castor beans, lye and acetone and a few basic bits of kitchen equipment-a glass jar, coffee filter, tweezers, that level of stuff.’
‘Where do you get castor beans?’ Chris asked.
‘They’re common anywhere south of the Alps. You can buy them online without any trouble. Basically, if any of us wanted to make enough ricin to wipe out the people in this building, we could do it by a week on Wednesday. I don’t think there’s any mileage in trying to trace the components,’ Kevin said wearily.
It was hard not to let despondency seep into the briefing. Carol told herself they had made some progress, even if it did feel insignificant. Every investigation had stages where it felt bogged down. Soon the forensic and pathology results would beg
in to trickle in. Please God, that might give them a crack they could lever open into a break.
Red-hot worms covered in barbed hooks tore through his flesh. Stoicism abandoned, Tony screamed. The pain subsided into a pulsing stab, an electric eel inside his thigh. The breath escaped from him in tight little groans. ‘Everybody says having the drains out is the worst,’ the middle-aged nurse said cosily.
‘Ungh,’ Tony grunted. ‘Not wrong.’ Sweat beaded his face and neck. His whole body stiffened as he felt the twinge of a movement in the second drain. ‘Just a minute. Gimme a minute,’ he gasped.
‘Better out than in,’ the nurse said and carried on regardless.
Knowing what was coming didn’t make the second one any easier to endure. He clenched his hands and eyes shut and took a deep breath. As the scream died away, a familiar voice grated in his ears. ‘He’s always been a big girl’s blouse,’ his mother said conversationally to the nurse.
‘I’ve seen strong men cry, having their drains out,’ the nurse said. ‘He’s done better than many.’
Vanessa Hill patted the nurse on the shoulder. ‘I love the way you girls stick up for them. I hope he’s not giving you any trouble.’
The nurse smiled. ‘Oh no, he’s being very well behaved. He’s a credit to you, really, Mrs Hill.’ And she was gone.
