Beneath the Bleeding

Thursday

The sequence of events that had practically buried Paula McIntyre had also reintroduced her to the balm of nicotine. She hated the smell of stale smoke in the house; it reminded her too much of when Don Merrick had been camping out in her spare room. He’d been her mentor, teaching her so many of the skills she now took for granted. And then he’d become her friend. She’d been the one he turned to when his marriage had imploded and, after his death, she’d been the one who’d had to pack up his personal possessions and return them to the wife who’d pushed him into feeling he had something to prove. Now Paula missed his friendship enough without creating occasions for memory. So she’d spent time, money and energy building a deck on the back of her house with a covered area where she could huddle in the morning with her coffee and cigarettes, trying to pull enough of herself together to make it into the shower and then the office. She was under no illusions about her relationship with the job. She still loved it enough almost to forgive it for what it had done to her. And the time she had spent talking to Tony Hill had helped her to understand that only by staying with Bradfield Police would she ever come anywhere near healing the scars. Some people recovered from trauma by putting as much distance between themselves and their past as was humanly possible. She wasn’t one of those.

She dragged on her Marlboro Red, loving the feeling but hating the need. Every morning she berated herself for starting again. And every morning, she reached for the packet before her first mouthful of coffee had made it as far as her stomach. To begin with, she’d told herself it was only a temporary crutch. First case she helped to crack, she’d be able to walk away from it. She’d never been more wrong. Cases had come and gone, but the fags were still with her.

Today was a typically brutal Bradfield morning; low sky, air bitter with pollution, a swirl of damp wind that cheated its way through clothes to the very bones. Paula shivered and smoked and started out of her seat when her phone rang. She grabbed it from her pocket and frowned. Nobody but work would dare call at this time of the morning. But she didn’t recognize the number. She froze for a moment, swore out loud at herself and pressed a key. ‘Hello?’ she said cautiously.

‘Is that DC McIntyre?’ Ulster accent, dark growl of a voice.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Martin Flanagan. From Bradfield Victoria.’

Recognition dawned a split second ahead of the name. ‘Mr Flanagan, of course. I’m sorry, there’s no…’

‘No, no, it’s me that’s got something for you. With all the worry about Robbie, like, it completely slipped my mind. Until I came in this morning and there it was.’

Paula sucked smoke and tried to stay calm. She hadn’t got to be the queen of the interrogation suite by letting her impatience show. ‘Totally understandable,’ she said. ‘Just take your time, Martin.’

An audible breath. ‘Sorry, I’m getting way ahead of myself. Sorry. One of the things we do at the Vics, we do random drug testing on the lads. It’s in our interests to keep them clean. Any road, I totally forgot that we tested on Friday morning. And of course, that meant Robbie.’

Paula dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her heel. ‘And you got the results this morning?’ she said, trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

‘That’s right. That’s why I’m calling you. Ah Jesus…’ Flanagan’s voice cracked and he coughed to cover it. ‘I don’t even know if I should be telling you this. I mean, it was days before he died.’

‘There was something on Robbie’s test?’

‘You could say that. According to the lab…Christ, I can’t bring myself to say it.’ Flanagan sounded close to tears.

Paula was already through the kitchen door and moving towards the stairs. ‘I’m coming round right now, Martin,’ she said. ‘Just sit tight. Don’t say anything to anyone. I’ll be with you inside the half hour. OK?’

That sounds fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in my office. I’ll tell them you’re coming.’

To her surprise, Paula felt tears pricking her eyes. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, knowing it was a lie and knowing it didn’t matter.

The pathology suite at Bradfield Cross Hospital was the home ground for Carol Jordan’s specialist team. This was where the bodies that interested them ended up, under the careful knife and watchful eyes of Dr Grisha Shatalov. Shatalov’s great-grandparents had emigrated from Russia to Vancouver eighty-five years before; Grisha had been born in Toronto and liked to claim his move to the UK was part of the family’s slow migration back east. Carol liked his soft accent and his self-deprecating humour. She also liked the way he treated the dead with the same respect she felt he’d give his own family. For Carol, the morgue helped to reaffirm her personal commitment to finding justice. Faced with the victims, the desire to bring the villains to justice always burned that little bit brighter inside her. Grisha’s consideration for those victims had resonated with her and built a bridge between them.

Today, she was here for Robbie Bishop. The post mortem should have been done the day before, but Grisha had been in Reykjavik at a conference and Carol hadn’t wanted anyone else working on this particular body. Grisha had started work early and by the time Carol arrived, he was almost finished. He looked up as she walked in, acknowledging her presence with a curt nod. ‘Ten minutes and we’ll be done, DCI Jordan.’ His formality was for the benefit of the digital recording which might one day be produced in court. Off-mike, she was Carol to him.

She leaned against the wall. Impossible not to feel sadness seeping through her at the thought of what Robbie had been. Lover, son, friend, athlete. Someone whose grace had been beamed round the world, whose talent had made people happy. All that gone now, gone because some bastard’s need not to have him in the world outweighed all the positives. It was her job to find who that bastard was and to make sure they never got the chance to repeat their act of destruction. She’d never relished the job nor hated its difficulties more than she did that day.

At last, Grisha was done. The body approximated wholeness again; the samples were taken, the organs weighed and the incision stitched. Grisha peeled off gloves and mask, stripped off his apron and stepped out of his lab boots. In stocking soles, he padded down the corridor to his office, Carol in his wake.

The office was a defiant gesture against the concept of the paperless workplace. Crammed folders, loose sheets, bound stacks of paper covered every surface except for the chair behind the desk and a lab stool against the wall. Carol took up her customary perch and said, ‘So what have you got for me?’

Grisha dropped into his chair like a stone. His perfectly oval face was grey from lack of sleep and daylight, a combination of the job and a baby who had yet to discover the delight of unbroken sleep. His grey eyes, shaped like long, low pyramids, had matching shadows underneath them and his full lips seemed to have become bloodless. He looked more like a prisoner than a pathologist. He scratched a stubbled cheek and said, ‘Not much that you don’t know already. Cause of death, multiple organ failure as a result of ricin poisoning.’ He held up one finger. ‘I should qualify that by saying my conclusion is based on the information supplied by the doctors treating him at the time of his death. We’ll have to wait for our own tox screening before we can confirm that officially, let’s be clear about that, eh?’

‘Nothing else?’

Grisha smiled. ‘I could tell you all about his physical condition, but I don’t think that would take you any further. There is one thing that may or may not have some bearing on how he died. There’s some ano-rectal trauma-nothing much, just some internal bruising in the anal area. And also some faint irritation of the tissue just above the anal sphincter.’

‘Provoked by what?’ Carol asked.

‘The bruising is consistent with sexual activity. I’d say the rough side of consensual. Not rape. Well, not rape in the sense of him being held down and forcibly penetrated. But quite forceful. No semen traces, so I couldn’t hazard an opinion as to whether he was penetrated by a penis or something else. A dildo, a bottle, a carrot. Could have been anything of a reasonable size, really.’ He smiled. ‘As we both know from this line of work, it takes all sorts.’

‘Does it look like this sort of sexual activity was something he did regularly?’

Grisha stroked his chin, a hangover from a recently departed goatee. ‘I’d say not. There’s no evidence of Robbie indulging in regular anal sex. He might have gone for a neat little butt plug, but nothing the size of a penis.’

‘And the tissue irritation? What about that? What does that tell us?’

Grisha shrugged. ‘Hard to say. Given where it is, whatever caused it, any trace is going to be long gone. It’s the sort of thing you might get if some foreign substance was inserted into the anus.’

‘Like ricin? Would that produce a reaction like this?’

Grisha leaned back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Theoretically, I suppose.’ He returned to the vertical abruptly. ‘I thought he was presumed to have inhaled it?’

Carol shook her head. ‘We assumed his drink or food had been spiked.’

‘No way. Not if Dr Blessing’s account of the process of his dying is correct. What it is, Carol…the symptoms manifest in a different way if you ingest ricin rather than inhale it. But if you absorbed it through a sensitive mucous membrane like the rectum, then your symptoms would be more like inhalation than ingestion. Now, until I did the PM, I would have gone for the inhalation theory.’

Carol shook her head. ‘Everybody we’ve spoken to is adamant he didn’t do drugs. I don’t think they’re trying to protect his memory. I think they’re telling the truth. Besides, the hospital labs tested their samples and found no traces of recreational drugs.’

Grisha raised his eyebrows, obviously mildly sceptical. ‘Depending on what he was given and when he took it, there might not have been traces by the time they took their samples. But if he genuinely didn’t snort drugs, I’d say this is maybe how the ricin got into his system. It would have had a vehicle-a Hard Fat NF suppository, a gel capsule, something like that. But again, we’re not going to find any traces, not this long after the event. I’ve taken samples, obviously. We might just get lucky, but don’t hold your breath.’

Carol sighed. ‘Great. This is shaping up to be the case from hell. I’ve got the brass and the media jackals all over me, looking for a quick resolution. Which frankly is about as likely as Bradfield Vics signing me as Robbie’s replacement.’

Grisha leaned forward and clicked his mouse. ‘I’ll do what I can to help, but you’re right, it’s a tough one.’ He flashed her a sympathetic smile. ‘But while I’ve got you here, it’s been too long since we had you over for dinner. I know Iris would love to see you.’ He peered at the screen. ‘How would Saturday be for you?’

Carol thought for a moment. ‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Seven?’

‘Make it eight. I have some hospital visiting to do first.’

‘Hospital visiting?’

‘Tony.’

‘Oh, of course, I heard about that. How is he?’ Before Carol could answer, there was a tap at the door. ‘Come in,’ Grisha called.

Paula stuck her head round the door. ‘Hi, Doc. I’m looking for…’

‘You found her,’ Grisha said.

Paula grinned and walked in. ‘It doesn’t hurt that you’re here too, Doc.’ She waved an envelope at them. ‘I think we’re finally cooking with gas, chief. I’ve just come from a meeting with Martin Flanagan. He really didn’t want to come clean-’

‘But you’d already worked the McIntyre charm on him,’ Carol said. She’d seen enough of Paula’s killer interview technique not to be surprised.

‘I think it’s that he cares more about us catching Robbie’s killer than the reputation of the club, to be honest. Anyway, according to Mr Flanagan, it totally slipped his mind that the club did a routine drug sweep on Friday. Like all the rest of them, Robbie peed into a bottle. Unlike the rest of them, in his case, out came roofies.’ She pulled a sheet of paper out of the envelope and proffered it to Grisha.

‘Positive for rohypnol,’ Grisha read. ‘I’ve heard of this lab, they’re supposed to be pretty thorough. But you should contact them, ask if they’ve got any of Robbie’s sample left. I’m not seeing enough detail here to get any accurate sense of how much and when.’ He handed the paper to Carol.

‘I think we know when. Thursday night in Amatis,’ Carol said sourly.

Grisha frowned. ‘Probably not, actually.’ He tapped keys, clicked his mouse. ‘That’s what I thought. The forget-me pill. It starts to take effect between twenty minutes and half an hour of being ingested. So if Robbie had been given it in the nightclub, by the time he left he’d have been acting like he was totally off his face.’

‘Nobody’s even suggested he was drunk,’ Paula said. ‘And he was moving OK on that CCTV footage.’

‘So he must have trusted whoever he was with enough to go somewhere else with him. Somewhere he was given a drink spiked with rohypnol,’ Carol said, thinking aloud.

‘Its effects are aggravated by alcohol, so given that he’d been drinking earlier, he’d likely be out of it within an hour of taking it,’ Grisha said. ‘He’d go along with whatever was happening to him. He wouldn’t resist anal penetration. He wouldn’t mind having a suppository inserted rectally. And he wouldn’t remember anything about it afterwards. It’s the perfect murder, really. By the time your victim dies, his connection to you is a long way away.’

Carol handed the paper back to Paula. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘But this is a bitch of a case. Every scrap of information we get seems to make things harder.’

Half an hour later, they were harder still. Carol sat in her office, door closed, blinds drawn to avoid distraction. Elbows on the desk, one hand held the phone to her ear, the other clutched a chunk of her hair. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ she said.

‘Actually, you did. But it’s just as well, there’s shit I need to get sorted,’ Bindie Blyth said, her voice rusty from sleep. She coughed, cleared her throat then sniffed. Carol could hear her moving.

‘There’s something I need to ask you. It’s a bit personal.’

The unmistakable snap of a lighter, then the inhalation of smoke. ‘Isn’t this where I’m supposed to say, “It’s all right, nothing’s personal in a murder investigation”?’ Bindie said in a passable American accent.

There was, Carol thought, no easy answer to that one. ‘I think it’s more that nothing’s private in a murder investigation. We need to find out everything we can about our victims, even if it turns out to be completely irrelevant. We’re not being prurient. Just prudent. She tutted at herself. ‘I’m sorry, that sounded glib. It wasn’t meant to be. I mentioned my colleague, the psychologist. He always reminds me that you can never know too much about the victim of a murder. So I hope you’ll forgive me for what might feel like prying.’

‘It’s OK, I’m kind of hiding behind flippancy. Fire away with your questions, I’m not going to take offence.’

Carol took a breath. There was no point in coyness here. ‘Did Robbie like anal sex?’ she asked.

A surprised snort of laughter exploded down the phone. ‘Robbie? Robbie take it up the arse? You have got to be joking. I tried to talk him into it, but he was totally convinced that any straight man who liked pegging was a secret gay.’

‘Pegging?’ Carol felt ancient and out of touch beside Bindie.

‘You know. Bend Over Boyfriend stuff. Shagging your bloke with a dildo. It’s called pegging.’

‘I’d not heard the term before.’

‘That’ll be living up North,’ Bindie said. Her tone said she was teasing, but Carol felt hopelessly provincial nonetheless. ‘My ex, the guy I was with before Robbie, he was really into it. I still have the harness and the dildos and all the gear. I tried to get Robbie to go for it, but honestly, you’d think I was suggesting we went out and found some stray dogs to shag. He didn’t even like having a finger in his arse when we were fucking.’

‘We found a butt plug in his bedside table drawer,’ Carol said neutrally.

A moment’s silence. ‘That would be mine,’ Bindie said. ‘It’s all right, I don’t want it back.’

‘Right,’ Carol said. ‘Thanks for being so frank with me.’

‘No problem. Now, what was the personal question?’ Bindie gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Sorry. I told you I was being flippant. Why do you want to know what Robbie liked to do in bed?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you details of an ongoing investigation,’ Carol said, aware she wanted to give Bindie something in return. ‘We’re pursuing several lines of inquiry. But I’ll be honest, it’s a slow process.’

Time’s not the issue, Chief Inspector,’ said Bindie, never more serious than now. The issue is catching the fucker who did this.’

Imran opened and closed the drawers in his bedroom once again. That made five times, Yousef reckoned. ‘You gotta have everything you need by now, man,’ he said. ‘You checked a million times already.’

‘Easy for you to say. I don’t want to get to the airport and bang, no iPod. Or get to Ibiza and find my number one Nikes are still under the bed here, know what I mean?’ Imran dropped to the floor and raked an arm under the bed.

‘You’re not going to get to the airport at all if you don’t get your arse in gear,’ Yousef said. That’s a clapped-out Vauxhall van you’ve got, not the Batmobile.’

‘And it’s not like you’re Jeremy Clarkson, cousin.’ Imran bounced back on his feet again. ‘OK, I’m sorted.’ He zipped up his holdall, still looking mildly uncertain, patted his pockets. ‘Passport, money, tickets. Let’s get gone.’

Yousef followed Imran downstairs and waited patiently while he said goodbye to his mother. Anyone would think he was going for a three-month trek in the Antarctic, not a three-night freebie to Ibiza. Eventually, they managed to get out of the house. Imran tossed the van keys to Yousef. ‘You might as well get used to it while I’m there to sort out any problems,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the clutch sticks a bit, know what I mean?’

Yousef didn’t care about the clutch. What he cared about was taking possession of a van that had ‘A1 Electricals’ emblazoned along the side. ‘Whatever,’ he muttered, starting the van and slamming it into first. The stereo cut in, blasting out some Tigerstyle drum and bass remix so loud it made Yousef flinch. He reached for the volume control and turned it right down. ‘Cut it out, Imran,’ he complained. ‘My ears.’

‘Sorry, man. Them Scottish soldiers know how to hit it.’ Imran punched him gently on the shoulder. ‘Man, I’m gonna hear some great sounds in Ibiza. I really appreciate this, cuz.’

‘Hey, it’s cool. I mean, clubbing’s never been my thing,’ Yousef said. As soon as he’d realized their plan would be made much easier if he could lay hands on a proper tradesman’s van, he’d known his cousin Imran was the answer. The question then became how to separate Imran and his vehicle for two or three unsuspecting days. They’d talked it over a few times, trying to come up with a plan that would work, then Yousef had his brainwave. It wasn’t uncommon for customers and suppliers to hand out freebies, supposedly to encourage loyalty. Neither Yousef nor Sanjar was big into the club scene, but Imran loved to dance the night away. Yousef could pretend that he’d been given a three-day clubbing break in Ibiza then pass it on to Imran as a gesture of goodwill. Imran would be in Ibiza, and Yousef would have access to the van. It had worked like a dream. Imran had been so chuffed that he hadn’t even thought to question why they were going to the airport in his van rather than Yousef’s. Now, ‘You’re welcome, man,’ Yousef said. And he meant it.

‘Yeah, but, I mean, you could have sold it on to somebody, made some readies.’ Imran rubbed fingers and thumb together.

‘Hey, you’re family.’ Yousef half-shrugged one shoulder. ‘We should be there for each other.’ He felt a twinge of guilt. What he was planning would drive a stake through the heart of his family. It would twist the kaleidoscope and create a completely different picture of his actions. He didn’t think any of his relatives would be praising his family spirit any time soon.

‘Yeah, that’s what everybody says, but when it comes to putting money in their pockets, it’s a different story,’ Imran said cynically. ‘So yeah, I’m totally impressed with you, cuz.’

‘Yeah, well, you take it easy out there.’

‘I’ll be cool.’ Imran’s fingers crept towards the volume knob. ‘Just a little bit, yeah?’

Yousef nodded. ‘Sure.’ The music filled the van. Even at low volume, the bass reverberated in his bones. There were only two years between him and Imran, but he felt like his cousin was still a kid. He’d been like that himself not so long ago, but he’d changed. Things had happened to him, things that had made him grow up and take responsibility. Now, when he looked at Imran, he felt like they were from different generations. Different planets, even. It was amazing how someone else’s interpretation of the world could lead you to question what you’d taken for granted all your life. Recently, Yousef had come to understand the way the world really worked and it made a nonsense of pretty much everything he’d been encouraged to believe in.

‘Only thing I feel bad about is missing the match on Saturday, innit? It’s gonna be a big deal, saying goodbye to Robbie. Is Raj going?’

Yousef nodded. ‘Wild horses, man. You’d think it was me or Sanjar had died, not some football player.’

Imran reared back in his seat. ‘Whoa, that’s heresy, cuz. Robbie wasn’t just “some football player”.’ He signed the inverted commas in the air with his fingers. ‘He was the football player. Home-town boy turned hero. We loved Robbie, I tell you. Loved him. So you tell Raj, say goodbye to Robbie from me.’

Yousef rolled his eyes. Had the world gone mad? Hysterical grief over Robbie Bishop, and not a hair turned over the daily death tolls in Iraq and Palestine and Afghanistan. Something had gone badly wrong with their values. He couldn’t pretend that he’d been the world’s most perfect Muslim, but at least his thinking had never been as twisted as Imran’s.

Imran fell silent, his fingers beating time on his denim-clad thighs, his Nikes tapping on the rubber floor mat. It kept him occupied the rest of the way to Manchester Airport. Yousef pulled up in the drop-off zone outside Terminal One, keeping the engine running while Imran grabbed his bag and got out. He stuck his head in the door. ‘Be cool, Yousef. See you Monday.’

Yousef smiled. He wouldn’t be seeing Imran on Monday. But there was no need to tell his cousin that.

Tony drifted up from a delicious sleep. Delicious because it came from genuine exhaustion, not a drug-induced escape. Who knew it could take so much energy to get out of bed, move three metres into a bathroom clutching a walking frame, pee and then get back to bed? When he’d slumped back on the pillows, he felt as if he’d climbed a small mountain. The physio had been happy with his progress; he’d been delirious. She’d promised him elbow crutches tomorrow. The excitement was almost too much for him.

He sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and woke the laptop from its hibernation. Before sliding into sleep, he’d set up a final array of searches but he’d been out for the count before it finished. He hadn’t been optimistic; he’d even begun to accept that he might not find what he was looking for. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there, just that it was too well hidden.

The screen cleared and to his surprise, a little box in the middle of the display read, ‘(1) match found’. The brackets meant that the match wasn’t perfect but that it was over 90 per cent congruent with the terms of his search. Wide awake now, Tony summoned the search results.

It was a story from a free newspaper covering the west side of Sheffield. There wasn’t much detail, but there was enough to give Tony pause for thought as well as material for further detailed searches.

Eagerly, he typed in a new set of parameters. This was going to be interesting. It looked as if he might just have something to show Carol after all.

Sam Evans left his jacket hanging on his chair and strolled out of the office as if he had nothing more pressing on his mind than a trip to the toilet. Once the door closed behind him, however, he picked up speed and headed for the lifts. He descended to the car park and got into his car. Out came the mobile and he dialled Bindie Blyth’s number.

She answered on the second ring. When he identified himself, she groaned. ‘Not more questions. I’ve already had your DCI on this morning.’

Sweat popped out on Sam’s forehead. What if he’d called earlier, before Carol Jordan? How would he have explained himself to the woman who already had him marked down as too much of a maverick? Shit, he had to be careful with this stuff. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been bothered twice. We each have our own lines of inquiry,’ he said, hoping to Christ he wasn’t about to cover the same ground as his boss.

‘Well, that’s a relief. I didn’t fancy a second excursion into the wilder reaches of my sex life. So, how can I help you, Detective?’

‘Back in February, you wrote an email to Robbie about some guy that was bothering you. Turning up to gigs. Minor stalker stuff. Do you remember?’

Bindie groaned. ‘Do I remember? It would be hard to forget.’

‘Can you tell me a bit more about what happened?’

‘You can’t think this has anything to do with Robbie’s death? This was a pathetic little no-mark, not some criminal mastermind.’

‘I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t check out every possibility,’ Sam said. ‘So tell me all about this guy.’

‘It started off with letters, cards, flowers, that sort of thing. And then he began to turn up when I was DJ’ing at clubs. Mostly, they wouldn’t let him in because he looked too geeky or freaky or whatever. But sometimes he would get in and he’d hang around the stage or the booth, trying to talk to me, or have his picture taken with me. It was irritating, but it felt pretty harmless. Then Robbie and I had a bit of a bust-up in public one night. You know how it is. A few drinks, things get a little out of hand? We ended up having a screaming match outside a club. The paparazzi picked it up, it was all over the papers and the mags. I mean, we’d made up by the time the pictures hit the streets, but it’s breaking up, not making up that gets the headlines.’ He heard her light a cigarette and waited for her to continue. Waiting. A trick he’d learned from Paula.

‘So this geezer takes it upon himself to defend my honour against this evil boyfriend who is not treating me as he should. He confronts Robbie as he’s leaving the team hotel in Birmingham. Starts reading the riot act. Nothing violent, just loud and a bit embarrassing, according to Robbie. Though of course, Robbie was the last man alive to admit to being scared. Anyway, the police were called, the geezer got carted off to the cells. Turns out that was just the wake-up call he needed. According to the cop I spoke to, once the potential consequences of his behaviour were explained to him, he saw the light. Desperately sorry, realized he’d got things out of proportion. And of course he would leave me and Robbie alone in future. So they let him off with a caution. And in fairness, I haven’t heard anything from him since. And that’s all I can tell you.’

Somehow, it all sounded too pat to Sam. From what he knew about stalkers, they didn’t just pack up and go home when somebody rattled their cage. If they were stupid, they kept on doing the same kind of thing only more so till they eventually got locked up for it. And by that stage, there was often blood and teeth on the carpet. If they were smart, they either found another object for their warped affections or they became more subtle. And the smart ones often ended up causing even more blood and teeth on the carpet. Ask Yoko Ono about that. ‘You’ve really not heard from him since?’

‘Nope. Not even a sympathy card about Robbie.’

‘Have you had many of those?’ Sam asked.

‘Forty-seven delivered by hand yesterday at the BBC. I expect there’ll be more in the post today.’

‘We might want to have a look at those.’

Bindie made an exasperated noise. ‘She was right, your boss. Nothing’s private in a murder investigation. What do you want me to do? Bag them up and post them to you?’

‘If you could bag them up, I’ll have somebody collect them. At your convenience, obviously. If we could just backtrack…’

‘His name was Rhys Butler. He lived in Birmingham. That’s all I can tell you. I gave all the letters and cards to the Brummie cops. Just in case he went off on one again.’

‘Thank you. You read my mind.’

Bindie snorted. ‘Hardly a Booker prize-winner, Detective.’

Sam hated witnesses who thought they were cleverer than the cops. ‘The name of the officer who dealt with you would also be helpful,’ he said, working at keeping the sarcasm out of his voice.

‘Hang on a minute, I’ve got his details somewhere…’ The sound of movement, a drawer being opened, another cigarette lit. At last, she came up with the information. ‘DC Jonty Singh. God, it’s so beautiful, what’s happened to names in this country. Jonty Singh. What a fab name. I love that cricket, the most English thing in the world, has Ramprakash and Panesar alongside Trescothick and Strauss. I adore the way we went from empire to multi-culti in the space of fifty years. Doesn’t that bring a smile to your face, Sam?’

He didn’t much care, All that mattered was that Jonty Singh was the sort of name it wouldn’t be hard to track down in a big force like the West Midlands Police. He also noticed she had gone from ‘detective’ to ‘Sam’ and wondered if she was flirting. It was hard to tell, given her on-air personality. And even if she was, it wasn’t something he wanted to pursue. Didn’t want to be her next bit of rough. ‘Thanks for your time,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said, suddenly serious again. ‘It’s all I can do for him now. I really cared about him, you know.’

‘I know,’ Sam said, desperate now to get off the phone and get cracking on his lead. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ He ended the call abruptly. Now, if only he had a computer in his car like the uniformed patrol guys. He’d be well away, fingers flying, carrying him on the next step of his journey. Instead, he’d have to go back to his desk and hope that Stacey wasn’t watching his every keystroke. He was on to something and he was damned if he was going to give anyone else a look in.

He was on tenterhooks waiting for her arrival, but still Tony didn’t announce his discovery the moment Carol walked in. He wanted to savour the anticipation. Besides, he had to admit there was something gratifying about her concern for his welfare. All the ebb and flow of pain and danger that had infiltrated their relationship had left little room for something as simple as sitting around being kind to each other. He knew she’d experienced that-still experienced it, for all he knew–with her family, but it had never been something he’d known. Kindness had always been viewed as weakness in his family. So even though he didn’t entirely know what to do with it, he wasn’t about to sacrifice a moment of their closeness to the demands of work. They’d get to that soon enough.

It was, he recognized, a reordering of his priorities. The part of himself that viewed his own reactions as a perpetual experiment was intrigued to see whether it would last and what it would mean. But to his surprise, there was another part that was happy just to go with the flow.

So Carol asked about his day and he told her. They had a conversation that he thought must be what ordinary friends and even lovers might weave together routinely. But of course, it couldn’t last. There had to come a point where equilibrium demanded that he ask about her day. And she told him.

At the end of the recital, she leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair and ran her fingers through her thick hair. ‘This is unlike any other case I’ve ever worked on. When murder happens, two or more people come face to face. An act takes place and somebody dies. You can connect the dots. You’ve got forensics, witnesses, evidence. A precise point in time. But there’s nothing like that here. There’s a huge gap between the act that killed Robbie Bishop and the death itself. And we don’t know when or where or with whom that fatal act took place.’ She scuffed the carpet with the toe of her shoe. ‘The more we find out, the more obscure it gets. Kevin was right, this killer is Caspar the fucking friendly ghost.’

Tony waited for a second, to make sure she’d got her frustration out. ‘It’s not quite as bad as you make out. We do know some things about him. I mean, apart from the Harriestown High connection and that he knows Temple Fields as well as a hooker.’

Carol gave him a sceptical look. ‘Like what?’

‘We know he’s a planner. He’s thought this through and decided what level of risk he can safely assume, so we know he’s not reckless. He doesn’t feel the need to see his victim’s pain. He’s happy for it to happen offstage. So whoever he was at school, he wasn’t the class bully. Do we know if Robbie was a bully at school?’

Carol shook her head. ‘Apparently not. He was a charmer, by all accounts. Though we’ve still got to plough through everybody on the Best Days website who knew him.’

‘Right. So this is not about revenge for adolescent humiliation. Unless the revenge element is about success…’ Tony’s voice tailed off and he frowned. ‘I need to think about that some more. But we do know he must know something about chemistry or pharmacology. I mean, he’s not just making ricin, he’s making ricin suppositories. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

Carol leaned into the carrier bag she’d brought with her and produced a screw-top bottle of Australian shiraz. ‘I’d start with the internet. That’s where we learn everything new these days, isn’t it? Are you allowed some of this?’

‘Probably not, but don’t let that stop you. There’s a couple of plastic tumblers in the bathroom.’

When Carol returned with two substantial doses of red wine, he said, ‘And speaking of the internet…’

‘Mmm?’ Carol savoured her drink. She’d sneaked a couple of glasses after the post mortem, but apart from that, this was her first of the day, a small achievement in itself.

‘I don’t think this is the first time he’s done this. There’s too much assurance here for a beginner.’

He could see the scepticism on her face. ‘You see serial killers everywhere, Tony. What possible evidence do you have for saying that? Apart from not liking the fact that this killer is either very good or very lucky.’

‘I don’t believe in lucky. Lucky is what we call it when our intuition leads us in the right direction. And intuition is a product of observation and experience. Did you know there’s been some recent research that suggests we make better decisions when we trust our gut reactions than when we weigh up the pros and cons of a situation?’

Carol grinned. ‘I see Captain Tangent is reasserting himself. You didn’t answer the question, Tony. What evidence do you have for saying he’s done this before?’

‘Like I said, Carol: the internet. Source of all bollocks and a bit of wisdom too. Since we spoke last night, I’ve been on the prowl. And I found something very interesting.’ He reached for his laptop, tapped the mouse pad and turned the machine to face Carol. As she skimmed the short local paper story on screen, he said, ‘Danny Wade. Twenty-seven years old. He died two weeks ago at his luxury home on the outskirts of Sheffield. He was poisoned by deadly nightshade. Belladonna, the beautiful lady. Supposedly in a fruit pie prepared by his Polish housekeeper. The fruit pie works, you see, because belladonna berries are notoriously sweet. And there’s a belladonna bush by the patio. You need to find out if that was container-grown, by the way. It’s possible the killer brought it with him. The housekeeper denies making any fruit pie even though the remains of a pie containing deadly nightshade berries was found in the fridge. And the night he died was her night off. She was staying with her boyfriend in Rotherham, like she did every Wednesday and Saturday. They opened the inquest then adjourned it pending further inquiries.’

‘I don’t understand why you think this–’ pointing at the screen ‘–is anything to do with Robbie Bishop,’ Carol said. ‘It seems to be straightforward. The housekeeper made a mistake with the berries, and now she’s lying about it. Tragic accident. That’s what the story says.’

‘But what if she’s not lying? If she’s telling the truth, it’s the second instance of a man in his twenties being the victim of a very bizarre poisoning.’ Tony tried to turn so he could face Carol more directly, but it wasn’t possible. ‘Move that chair so I can see you properly,’ he said impatiently. ‘Please.’

Slightly surprised, Carol did as he asked. ‘OK, now you can see me. This is just supposition, Tony.’

‘It’s always supposition till the evidence is nailed down. Supposition is what I do. We call it profiling. People other than me speak of it as if it’s a science, but it’s supposition based on experience and probability and instinct. More art than science a lot of the time, if we’re honest. Even the algorithms that the geographic profilers use, they’re based around probabilities, not certainties.’

‘So show me something that outweighs the probability of an immigrant housekeeper lying about accidentally killing her boss,’ Carol said. He could see she was humouring him, that she thought his sharp edge blunted by pain and drugs and strange sleep patterns.

‘Danny Wade wasn’t local to where he was killed. He moved to Dore on the western edge of Sheffield a couple of years ago because he was sick and tired of being pestered where he was living. In Bradfield. The reason he couldn’t get any peace and quiet there was that three years ago, he won the lottery. Big time. He got just over five million. He’d worked for Virgin Trains as a conductor. He was unmarried. The two things he cared about were model railways and his dogs, a pair of Lakeland terriers. He was a bit of a loner. Until he won the money. Then suddenly they all came out of the woodwork. Old school friends after a handout. Former workmates acting like he owed them. Distant relatives suddenly remembering that blood’s supposed to be thicker than water. And it all got a bit too much for Danny.’

‘Still, at least he had the money,’ Carol said. ‘It can buy you a lot of peace and quiet, five million.’

‘So Danny found out. He upped sticks and bought himself a lovely house on the edge of the moors. High walls, electric gates. Lots of space for model railway layouts. Didn’t tell anyone where he’d gone, not even his mum and dad. Nobody to bother him except for Jana Jankowicz who is by all accounts a very nice young woman with a fiancé who is working as an electrician on a building site in Rotherham.’

Carol shook her head in disbelief. ‘Where did you dig all this up? This is tons more background than there is in the local paper.’

Tony looked pleased with himself. ‘I spoke to the reporter. Stories like this, they’ve always got more in their notebook than they get on the page. She gave me Jana’s mobile number. So I called her. And, according to the lovely Jana, Danny was happy as a pig with his dogs and his railways and his three meals a day. But here’s the thing. I already found out Danny was a pupil at Harriestown High. Two years ahead of Robbie Bishop. And although Jana’s English wasn’t up to deep and meaningful conversations, she did understand enough to tell me that Danny had come back from the local pub a few nights before his death, saying he’d met somebody he was at school with.’ He grinned, a dog with two tails. ‘What do you think of that?’

Carol shook her head. ‘I think you’re stir crazy.’

He threw his arms out in a gesture of frustration. ‘There are connections, Carol. Murder at arm’s length by weird poisons. Both victims went to the same school. Both rich men. And both met up with an old school friend before they died.’

Carol filled up her glass and took a swig of her wine. Her body language was as combative as her words. ‘Come on, Tony. Danny’s death wasn’t murder. As far as I can see, nobody except you thinks it was anything other than a tragic accident. I don’t know much about poisons, but I do know that if you slip somebody deadly nightshade in the pub, they’re going to be dead that night, not a few days later. And Danny wasn’t in the same year as Robbie. Think back to your schooldays. You hang with the kids in your own year. Older kids don’t want to have anything to do with you, and only losers hang out with kids younger than them. So anybody who was a school friend of Robbie’s probably wasn’t going to be a friend of Danny’s. I mean, it doesn’t sound like they had much in common.’ Carol let her hands fall open as if she were weighing two items against each other. ‘Let’s see. Ace footballer. Model railway geek. Hmm. Let me think.’ She pointed at the newspaper story on the laptop screen. ‘Look at Danny. He’s not good looking. He’s not athletic. What could he have in common with Robbie Bishop?’

Tony looked crestfallen. They both became very rich from humble beginnings,’ he tried.

‘And much good it did them. Better to be lucky than rich when rich ends up dead before you’re out of your twenties.’ Carol slugged back the rest of her wine. ‘Nice thought, Tony. Very interesting. But I think you’re snatching at ghosts. And I need to go home and try to get a decent night’s sleep.’ She stood up and pulled her coat on, then leaned across to give him an awkward hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ll try to come in tomorrow. See what else you can come up with to entertain me, OK?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. He’d learned a long time ago that disappointment was often the spur to his best work.

Jonty Singh looked like a big rumpled bear propped up in the corner of the balti restaurant in the centre of Dudley, incongruous against the traditionally kitsch decor. When Sam had tracked him down, DC Singh had suggested they meet for a meal in his local. Since he was doing Sam the favour, there really was no argument. ‘I’ll be the big bugger up the back in a brown pinstripe suit and no turban,’ he’d said. Sam didn’t anticipate any problem recognizing him and he was right. As soon as he walked into the Shishya Balti, he spotted Singh, talking animatedly to a waiter. He hadn’t lied about his size; he was crammed into the corner chair at a table for four and even sitting, he towered over the table. He had a thick mop of shiny black hair, big brown eyes, a fleshy nose and a prominent chin. It wasn’t a face you’d forget in a hurry.

Sam weaved through the crowded restaurant. Half a dozen steps in, the big man broke off his conversation and homed in on the stranger in town. The waiter slipped away and Sam approached. As he drew near, Singh pushed himself to his feet. A couple of inches over six feet, he was an imposing sight. ‘Sam Evans?’ he said, his voice a much lighter tenor than his frame implied. He reached out and shook Sam’s hand in a two-handed grip. ‘I’m Jonty Singh, pleased to meet you. How’re you doing?’ Even in those few words, the unmistakable Black Country accent grated on Sam’s ear.

‘Good, thanks.’

‘Park yourself.’ Singh gestured at the chair opposite him and waved to the waiter. ‘Two large Cobras, soon as you like.’ His grin was open and friendly. ‘Now, do you trust me to order for both of us or what?’

Sam was in no doubt what the correct answer was. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, resigning himself to some gargantuan selection of over-sauced meat, unidentifiable vegetables and clumpy rice. He didn’t have to drive all the way to Dudley for that, but if that was what it took to find out what he needed to know about Rhys Butler, he’d swallow manfully and stop on the motorway for antacids.

‘I love this place,’ Singh confided. ‘Two of my uncles own it, but that’s just a bonus. I’d eat here every bloody night if I could.’

Sam tried to keep his eyes away from Singh’s sizeable belly and held back the obvious retort. ‘You can’t beat a good curry,’ he lied. Singh summoned the waiter and rattled off a stream of what Sam presumed to be Punjabi.

Singh turned his attention back to Sam. ‘So, you’re interested in Rhys Butler. Well, a nod’s as good as a wink round here, Sammy. It doesn’t take Brainiac to figure out that you’re on the Robbie Bishop case. Funny, I was talking about giving you lads a bell about our Rhys, but my sarge thought it was far too long a shot. And then you turn up on my voicemail, looking for a briefing.’ He gave a rolling laugh that turned heads three tables away. ‘Nice to be right.’

To be honest, Jonty, we’ve got fuck all to go at. This is me clutching at straws,’ Sam said. The waiter scurried up with a stack of spiced poppadoms and a plate of mixed pickles. Jonty fell on them like an attack dog on a kitten. Sam waited for his initial onslaught to pass, then delicately broke a piece off one. At least they were crisp and fresh, he thought as the smoky bite of black pepper tickled his soft palate.

‘So when the lovely Bindie told you about Rhys Butler, you thought you’d have a sniff around? Quite right, Sammy, just what I’d have done in your shoes.’

Sam didn’t bother to correct the misapprehension as to how Butler’s name had entered the investigation. ‘So what can you tell me about Rhys Butler?’

A foot-high mound of bhajis and pakoras arrived at the table and Singh set about it. In between mouthfuls, and sometimes alarmingly during them, he told the story of Rhys Butler. ‘Normally, it would be a uniform matter, a brawl outside a nightclub. But we got dragged in because of who was involved.’ He grinned. ‘Course, there are them as think we should have just let young Rhys kick the shit out of Robbie, on account of Robbie set up the winning goal for the Vics against Villa in the cup quarter-final last year. But despite what you might have heard about West Midlands, we don’t stand for that kind of nonsense no more round here.’

Sam bit into a perfect fish pakora-crisp on the outside, meltingly moist inside-and began to revise his initial impression of the Shishya as just another identikit curry house. ‘Great food,’ he said, correctly estimating the way to Singh’s heart.

The big man lit up. ‘Fan-bloody-tastic, innit? Anyway, by the time we arrive, it’s all over. According to the witnesses, Robbie came out of the club with a couple of mates, and Rhys Butler threw himself at him, fists and feet flying. Lucky for Robbie, our Mr Butler’s not much cop when it comes to fighting. He lands a couple of kicks and punches, but Robbie’s mates soon drag him off and hang on to him till my colleagues in uniform get there. Once we arrive, we decide to take everybody down the nick and sort it out there, away from prying eyes and cameras.’

Nothing remained of the appetizers but a scatter of crumbs. Before Sam could draw breath, the plate was whisked away and replaced by half a dozen bowls of various main dishes. A platter of mushroom biryani appeared, flanked by stacks of assorted Indian breads. The varied aromas tickled Sam’s nose, kindling a hunger he hadn’t anticipated. Singh piled his plate high, gesturing to Sam to do the same. He didn’t need a second invitation.

‘At first, Robbie’s all for letting it go. He’s not really hurt, people get carried away, no harm done, blah, blah, blah. Then I mention Butler’s name and suddenly it’s all, “Throw the book at the bastard, bang him up, danger to society.” I don’t get it, frankly. I leave him ranting at my oppo, and I head back down to the interview room to see if Butler wants to talk about it. And then it all comes out. How Bindie Blyth is the love of his life, only Robbie’s come between them, and he’s not treating her like he should. So Butler decided to teach him a lesson.’

Singh pointed with his fork at a dark brown stew. ‘You’ve got to get yourself outside that. Lamb and spinach and aubergine and nobody but my auntie knows what spices. I tell you, you’d sell your granny for a bowl of that.’ He tore off a chunk of paratha and scooped up the lamb stew, dextrously getting the loaded bread into his mouth without spilling a drop.

‘So I lay it out for him. How, if he carries on like this, he’s going to end up behind bars. And how that will destroy a nice middle-class lad like him. How he’ll lose his home, his job…And that’s when he really loses it. Tears and snotters, the lot. Turns out he’s already lost his job. That’s what’s tipped him over the edge. So we have a little chat and by the end of it, he’s seen the error of his ways.’ He paused to shovel more food down.

‘Great grub,’ said Sam. ‘I really appreciate this after the week I’ve had. So what happened then?’

‘Well, I go back to have another word with Robbie. I point out he’s not going to be doing any favours to his girlfriend or himself if he drags this poor pathetic bastard through the courts. I tell him how Butler is promising never to contact Bindie again, to leave her alone from this day forward, and how I think the best thing for everybody is to give Butler a caution and let the whole thing drop. Robbie’s not thrilled with that, but he does see the sense of keeping it all out of the papers. Eventually, I promise I’ll keep a personal eye on Butler, and Robbie caves in. And we agree that if Bindie hears from Butler again, I’ll have him for harassment.’ He looked expectantly at Sam.

‘And?’ Sam dutifully said.

‘I kept my word. Every couple of weeks for the next few months, I dropped in unannounced on Butler. First time, the place was papered with photos of Bindie and articles about her. I told him he should get rid of the stuff. That if he was planning on getting over her and getting a life, he needed to not be seeing her face every minute of the day. Next time I went, the place was clean. You’d not have known he’d ever heard of her. And so it went on. I never heard a dickie bird from her or from Robbie, so I guess he kept his word. Then, about six weeks ago, he finally managed to get another job. Moved away to Newcastle and that’s all she wrote.’ He turned his attention away from the food briefly and hunted through his pockets. He drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Sam. ‘Forwarding address in Geordieland.’

Sam pocketed it without looking. This new job…What is it that Butler actually does for a living?’

Jonty Singh gave a slow, wicked grin, revealing a slick of spinach filling the gap between his front teeth. ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he said. ‘He works as a lab assistant. In the pharmacology industry.’

Carol was right. He was snatching at ghosts. But not the ones she imagined. Tony rolled his head from side to side on the pillow. He needed to talk, but there was no possible listener for him. He couldn’t involve Carol in this because there were things about himself he did not want her to know. The only psychiatrist he trusted enough to unburden himself to was on a sabbatical in Peru. And he couldn’t imagine explaining these ills to one of Mrs Chakrabarti’s acolytes.

He sighed and pressed the nurse call button. There was someone he could trust to keep his secrets. The only question was whether they would let Tony pay him a visit.

It took twenty minutes, a call to Grisha Shatalov, a wheelchair and a porter, but finally Tony found himself alone with the chilled corpse of Robbie Bishop. Tony’s chair was backed against the rack of mortuary drawers, Robbie pulled out next to him. ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you,’ Tony said as the door closed behind the porter. ‘I promise I’m going to do all I can to help Carol find the person who did this to you. In return, you can listen to me for a while.

‘There are some things you can never say to another living soul. Not when you do what I do. Nothing could prepare you for the horror and disgust you’d see on their faces. And that would just be the start of it. They wouldn’t be able to let it go. They’d have to do something about it. Something about me.

‘And I really don’t want them to do something about me. Not because I’m happy, pain-free and well adjusted. Because obviously I’m none of those things. How could I be, doing what I do?

‘But what I am is well-balanced. What is it that W.B. Yeats says? “In balance with this life, this death.” That’s me. In perfect equilibrium on the tipping point between life and death, sanity and madness, pleasure and pain.

‘You mess with that at your peril.

‘So, this isn’t about me wanting to change. Because I don’t see any need for change. I can live with myself very well, thank you. But when you do what I do, it’s impossible to deny it has an impact. I’m subject to the opinions of others, after all. People who are not like me–and that accounts for about ninety-nine per cent of the population, I’d say–constantly make judgements about me that are based more on their needs than on my truth. That’s why I don’t want anyone to hear what I have to say about my mother. Especially Carol.

‘I passed the local primary on my way to buy milk the other morning and there they were, the kids and the parents, every expression from delight to despair on both sets of faces. It made me wonder about my own childhood memories. There are lots of fragments-an image of a living room whose owner I can’t now put a name to, the taste of dandelion and burdock tied eternally to the sound of rain on the scullery roof, the smell of my grandmother’s dog, the feel of damp grass on my knees, the shocking intensity of wild strawberries on the tongue. Fragments, but not many fully formed incidents.’ He ran a hand over his face and sighed.

‘I’ve sat in group therapy sessions and listened to other people talking at length and in remarkable detail about things that happened to them as children. I can’t be sure whether they were remembering for real, making it up, or constructing a story that fit the few key elements they really could dredge up from the sludge of memory. All I know is that it doesn’t match the way my memory works. Not that I’d want their memories. They veer from the banal to the truly horrendous. None of them talks about childhood the way writers and poets and film-makers do. These are not histories you would feel any nostalgia for.

‘That’s the one thing I do have in common with those non-fragmentary narrators. I have no nostalgia for my childhood. I am not the person at the dinner party who waxes lyrical about the endless summers of childhood, the golden light on skinned knees and the delicious pleasures of gang huts and tree houses. On the rare occasions when I get invited, I am the one who sits mute on the subject of their youth. Trust me, nobody wants to hear the few joined-up bits I can remember.

‘An example. I’m playing on the rug in front of the fire at my gran’s house. My gran collects ship ha’pennies for reasons too obscure to have stuck in my mind. There’s a whole biscuit tin full of them, almost too heavy for me to lift. I’m allowed to play with the ha’pennies, and I like to build castle walls with them. The best part is pretending to be the enemy after they’re finished; they collapse in a very satisfying way. So I’m on the rug with the ha’pennies, minding my own business. Gran is watching the telly but it’s a grown-up programme so I’m not interested.

‘The door opens and my mum comes in, damp with rain from the walk from the bus stop. She smells of smoke and fog and stale perfume. She takes her coat off like she’s fighting it. She flumps down in the armchair, scrabbling in her bag for her cigarettes and sighing. Gran’s mouth tightens and she gets up to make some tea. While she’s gone, Mum ignores me, tilting her head back to blow smoke at the ceiling. Picturing her face now, I see it as petulant and put-upon. I didn’t have the words as a child, but I knew even then to keep my distance.

‘Gran brought the tea through and handed a mug to Mum. She took a sip, pulled a face because it was too hot, then put it down on the broad arm of the chair. Her sleeve must have caught it as she moved her hand away, for it tipped into her lap. She jumped up, scalded, doing a funny little dance, kicking the ha’pennies all over the floor.

‘And I laughed.

‘I wasn’t laughing at her. God knows, I understood only too well by then that pain was never comical. My laughter was nervous, a release of anxiety and surprise. But, beside herself with hurt and shock, my mum understood nothing of that. She yanked me to my feet by the hair and slapped me so hard my hearing stopped functioning. I could see her mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear a thing. My scalp was a shivering sheath of agony and my face stung like I’d been swiped with a bundle of nettles.

‘Next thing was, Gran pushed Mum back into the chair. Mum let go my hair as she dropped down, then Gran grabbed me by the shoulder, marched me into the hall and threw me into the cupboard so hard I bounced off the back wall. It was morning before the door opened again.

‘I know this wasn’t an isolated incident. I know that because I have so many different fragments of sojourns in the cupboard. What I don’t have, by and large, are whole incidents. Various professionals have offered to help me fill in the blanks, as if that would somehow be desirable. As if it would be a treat for me to have access to more lovely memories like that one.

‘They’re more crazy than I am.’ He sighed. ‘And now she’s back. She’s been out of my life for so long I could kid myself that I was over her. Like a bad love affair. But I’m not.’ He rolled himself forward and pushed the drawer close. ‘Thanks for listening. I owe you one.’

Blinking the tears from his eyes, Tony manoeuvred the wheelchair over to the phone. He didn’t quite understand why, but something inside him had shifted, leaving him indefinably easier. He dialled the porters’ extension. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’

The Mother of Satan. That’s what they called the end product Yousef was aiming for. Triacetone triperoxide. TATP. Supposedly given its nickname because of its instability. And that’s why he was being more careful than he’d ever been in his life. Careful made it possible to do extraordinary things. The London tube bombers had carted it about in backpacks. On and off trains. Walking from train to tube. So if he got it right, it would be safe. Until he wanted it not to be, of course.

He read the instructions one more time. He’d already committed them to memory, but he’d also printed them out in a large font. Now, he stuck the sheets up on the wall above his makeshift lab bench. He put on his protective gear then took his chemicals from the fridge one by one, placing the three containers on the bench. Eighteen per cent hydrogen peroxide bought from a chemical supplier for wood bleaching. Pure acetone from the specialist paint company. Sulphuric acid for batteries from the motor bike supply shop. He set a beaker, a measuring tube, a thermometer, a stirring rod and an eyedropper, all made of glass, and a sealable Kilner jar alongside them. It felt very weird. He’d never done anything so grown-up in his life, yet it felt like being back at school in the chemistry lab. The mad scientist in short trousers.

He walked away from the bench and took off his gloves and ear protectors. He needed something to help calm his nerves. He took his iPod from his backpack, plugged the little buds into his ears and set random shuffle on his personal chilling playlist. Some slow beats from Talvin Singh filled his head. Imran would laugh at his choice of music, but he didn’t care. Yousef replaced his ear protectors and gloves and set to work.

First, he filled the sink basin with ice, pouring in a little cold water to make it more effective as a chiller. He put the empty beaker in the ice bath and took a deep breath. This was the point of no return. From here on, he was a bomber. However beautiful his reasons, in the eyes of the world he was crossing a line that nothing could redeem. Lucky, then, that he didn’t give a shit what the world thought of him. Where it mattered, he would be forever regarded as a hero, a man who did what had to be done, and in a way that also made a statement.

He measured out the hydrogen peroxide, then poured it into the beaker. Swallowed hard, then did the same with the acetone. Gently placed the thermometer in the beaker and waited for the temperature to drop to the correct level. Stood humming softly along to Nitin Sawhney’s Migration. Anything rather than think about what was going to happen beyond this process.

Now the tricky part. He sucked up a precise amount of sulphuric acid with the eyedropper. Drop by slow drop, he added it to the mix, keeping a careful eye on the temperature. Above ten degrees, it would explode. This was the point where most amateur bomb makers got too enthusiastic, added too much too fast and ended up in bits against the nearest surfaces. Yousef was absolutely clear that wasn’t going to happen to him. His fingers were trembling, but he was careful to move the eyedropper away from the beaker every time he added a drop.

Once the recipe was complete, he began stirring with the glass rod. Fifteen minutes, the recipe said. He timed himself. Then, infinitely slowly, he eased the beaker out of its bath and put it in the fridge, making sure that the temperature setting was at its lowest. Tomorrow evening, he would return and carry out the next stage. But for now, he’d done all he could.

Yousef closed the fridge and felt his shoulders drop with relief, He’d trusted the recipe; he was no fool and he’d checked it against others he’d managed to track down on the internet. But he knew that things could and did go wrong in the preparation of explosives. What a pointless waste that would have been. He stripped off his protective gear and tossed it on the lumpy bed.

Time to go home and be the dutiful son and brother. Two more nights, then no more of that. He loved his family. He knew that would be cast into doubt by what he was going to do, but it was incontrovertible for Yousef himself. He loved them and he hated that he was going to lose them. But some things were stronger than family bonds. Recently, he’d found out just how strong.