Beneath the Bleeding

Saturday

It was getting easier. Tony wasn’t dreaming it. He’d woken up just after six, needing to pee. It had taken less effort and less time to get on to his crutches, and he was sure he was managing to put more weight on his shattered knee. Maybe he could persuade the physio to let him try the stairs today.

He got back into bed and luxuriated in the relief of being horizontal again. Time to get back in touch with the world. He pulled the table over and booted up the laptop. Among the new emails, the one from Paula leapt out at him. Written at 2.13 a.m., it said, Looks like you were right. Positive ID in the pub in Dore. More later. Well done, Doc, good to see you’ve not lost your touch.

Tony made a fist and gave the air a tiny punch. It might not seem much, but from where he was sitting right now, it was a big deal. Profiling was like walking out on the tightrope. Confidence was a crucial part of the performance. If you didn’t believe in yourself, if you didn’t trust your instincts and your judgement, you ended up hedging your bets so much that your profile was worthless. It was an incremental process. If you got something right, it made you feel better about doing it next time, and that increased your chance of being useful. Conversely, you only needed to fuck up once and you started from ground zero next time.

So, given that he was recovering from major surgery and feeling slow as a storyline in The Archers, and given that Carol had already rubbished the idea, getting it right about Danny Wade made him feel pretty damn good about himself. If the same person had killed Danny and Robbie, he should be thinking about what connected the victims to each other and to their killer. Maybe he could be useful from a hospital bed after all.

The flat Jana Jankowicz shared with her boyfriend was spotless. It smelled of polish and air freshener. It had obviously come furnished. Nobody that neat and clean would have chosen such scruffy, unmatched and flimsy items. What made it feel like a home were the hand-quilted throws on the sofa and the photos on the walls-printed on a colour printer and laminated, a cheap and cheerful alternative to professional prints and expensive frames. Jana, a round-faced, dark haired woman with an elusive prettiness, faced Paula over a scrubbed Formica-topped table, its edges chipped and scarred. Between them, an enamel pot of strong coffee and an ashtray. The presence of the ashtray explained the strong chemical smell of synthetic fragrances, Paula thought. Her sinuses would go on a protest strike if she had to live here.

Jana had asked no questions about Paula’s reason for being there. She had agreed to the interview with genial resignation and had greeted her politely. It was as if she had decided the safest way to cope with the police in a foreign country was to be meekly co-operative. Paula had a sneaking feeling it wasn’t Jana’s normal style.

Jana thumbed her way through the photos for a second time. She shook her head. ‘I have never seen any of these men with Mr Wade,’ she said, her English only faintly accented. She was, she told Paula, a qualified teacher of English and French back in Poland. Skills her country couldn’t afford too well right now. She and her fiancé were here to make enough money to buy a house back in Poland. Then they’d go home. They could manage to make ends meet if they didn’t have rent to pay, Jana reckoned.

She paused at the shot of Jack Anderson. This man, though. I think I’ve seen him, but I don’t know where or when.’

‘Maybe he came to the house?’ Paula offered her cigarettes to Jana. She took one and they both lit up while Jana frowned at the photo.

‘I think he came to the house but not to see Mr Wade,’ she said slowly, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. ‘He was selling something. I don’t remember. He had a van.’ She closed her eyes, her brow furrowed. ‘No, it’s no use. I can’t remember. It was a while ago.’ She shook her head, apologetic. ‘I can’t be certain.’

‘Never mind,’ Paula said. ‘Did you ever hear Mr Wade mention a man called Jack Anderson?’

Jana drew on her cigarette and shook her head. ‘You have to understand, Mr Wade didn’t talk about anything personal. I didn’t even know he came from Bradfield.’

‘What about football? Did he ever mention a footballer called Robbie Bishop?’

Jana looked confused. ‘Football? No, model railways. That was what Mr Wade was interested in.’ She spread her hands. ‘He never watched football.’

‘That’s fine. Did anybody come to the house to visit Mr Wade?’ Paula inhaled. Even if the interview wasn’t very productive, at least she could smoke. That wasn’t something you could say about many interviews these days. Even police interview rooms were non-smoking, which some prisoners claimed was a breach of their human rights. Paula tended to agree with them.

Jana didn’t even have to think. ‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think that was a reason to pity him. Some people are happier on their own. I think he was like that. He liked that I was there to cook and clean, but he didn’t want me to be his friend.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way…’ Paula gave a helpless little shrug, the kind that says, I have to ask this and I wish I didn’t. ‘Do you know what he did for sex? I mean, he was a young man, presumably he had sexual desires…’

Jana didn’t seem in the least offended. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘He was never improper with me. I don’t think he was gay, though.’ Paula raised an eyebrow. Jana grinned. ‘No gay porn. But sometimes, those magazines you can get at the newsagents. Nothing very bad. But girls, not boys. Sometimes he would go out in the car without the dogs for a couple of hours. When he came back, he seemed to be a bit embarrassed and he would usually take a bath. Maybe he went to prostitutes, I don’t know.’ She gave Paula a shrewd look. ‘Why are you asking these questions? Are you maybe starting to believe I am telling the truth about not making the pie?’

‘It’s possible Mr Wade’s death is connected to a murder in Bradfield. If that’s the case then yes, it would appear that you’ve been telling the truth,’ Paula said.

‘It would be good if that happened,’ Jana said. A wry smile twisted her plump lips. ‘Getting a job as a housekeeper when the newspapers print that you poisoned your last boss is a bit hard.’

‘I can see that.’ Paula shared Jana’s smile. ‘But if we’re right about the connection, you can bet there will be even more publicity about you not making the pie than there ever was when we thought you had. Maybe that’ll act as a reference.’ She drew the pictures together and put them back in their envelope. ‘You’ve been a big help,’ she said.

‘I wish I knew more,’ Jana said. ‘For his sake as well as mine. He was a good employer, you know. Not demanding, very grateful. I do not think he was accustomed to having someone to do things for him. It would be good if you found the person who killed him.’

Rhys Butler sat with his left arm across his narrow chest, hand cupping his right elbow, right hand covering his mouth and chin. His shoulders hunched, he glared at Carol Jordan from under his gingery brows. His red hair stood up in spikes and clumps, a classic night-in-the-cells hairdo. ‘My client will be pursuing a claim against Bradfield Metropolitan Police for the assault against him,’ his solicitor said sweetly, pushing a strand of her long black hair behind her ear with a perfectly shaped and painted fingernail.

Bloody Bronwen Scott, Carol thought. Proof that the devil wears Prada. Just her luck that the duty solicitor from the night before had been one of the baby lawyers in Scott’s high-profile criminal law firm. And of course, since the case had the potent combination of Robbie Bishop, Carol Jordan and a possibly lucrative civil action against the police, Bronwen herself had grabbed it with both hands. In her immaculately tailored suit and full make-up, she was clearly prepared for the ‘spontaneous’ press interviews she’d doubtless be conducting later that morning. And so the old adversaries faced off across the table again. ‘Good to know he’s come to a decision,’ Carol said. ‘Me, I’m still pondering whether to pursue an action against your client for false imprisonment.’

Sam leaned forward. ‘Not to mention he shouldn’t have legged it the minute he found out we were police officers. Verging on resisting arrest, that is.’

Bronwen gave them both a pitying look and shook her head, as if to say she’d expected better from them. ‘My client is still experiencing some pain as a result of your actions. Nevertheless, he is willing to answer your questions.’ She spoke as if this were an extraordinary favour granted from a great height.

Carol’s confidence took another knock. In her experience, Bronwen Scott’s clients tended to go ‘no comment’, which translated in Carol’s mind to, ‘I did it.’ That she was allowing Rhys Butler to talk to them told Carol that the chances were good she was wasting her time. Still, this might be the one time when a stupid client had managed to overrule the feisty Ms Scott. She pulled her thoughts together and smiled at Butler. ‘Sorry to spoil what must have been a good week for you,’ she said pleasantly.

His forehead wrinkled like skin on rice pudding. ‘What d’you mean?’ he mumbled through his hand.

‘Robbie Bishop dying, of course. That must have cheered you up.’ Butler looked away and said nothing. ‘You probably think that he deserved it,’ she continued. ‘I mean, we know you didn’t think much to the way he treated Bindie.’

Butler glared at her. He let his hand fall from his face and spoke with venom. ‘Bindie chucked him ages ago. Why would I care what happened to him?’

‘Well, I would think you wouldn’t want them to get back together again.’

Butler shook his head. ‘No way. She wouldn’t lower herself. She’s just waiting for the right time so we can be together.’

‘And now Robbie’s dead, that time can’t be far away.’

‘Don’t say anything, Rhys,’ his solicitor butted in. ‘Don’t let her wind you up. Just answer the questions.’

‘You want a question? OK. Where were you between ten p.m. the Thursday before last and four o’clock on the Friday morning?’ Carol fixed him with an unblinking stare.

‘At home. On my own, before you ask. But I was at work until six and back at work on Friday at eight. And I don’t have a car. Just a bike. I’m fast but I’m not that fast,’ Butler said, his attempt at an insolent leer turned into a wince by the pain in his mouth.

‘There’s trains,’ Sam said. ‘Two and a half to three hours, Newcastle to Bradfield. Depending on whether it’s non-stop or change at York. You could have borrowed a car. Or nicked one. Whatever, it’s doable.’

‘Except that I didn’t do it. I was in Newcastle all night.’

They’d have to canvass the stations and train staff, Carol thought. She’d have liked to have done that before they’d arrested Butler, but it had been clear as soon as they’d picked him up off the ground behind his house that he was not going to accompany them voluntarily. She’d had to arrest him to be sure he didn’t do a runner. And now the clock was ticking and she had no evidence. ‘Did you think you were doing Bindie a favour, getting rid of Robbie?’

‘Whoever got rid of him did her a favour, but it wasn’t me,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Are you sure about that? Because I reckon poison would be right up your street,’ Sam came in, as agreed in advance. ‘Let’s face it, when you tried to take him on like a man, Robbie gave you a proper coating. There was no way you could take him in a fair fight. Poison, now that’s more like it. A man can’t fight back against poison.’

Butler flushed, the colour ugly on his pale, freckled skin. ‘I made my point. I made Bindie see that people who really cared about her were prepared to stand up for her. And she got rid of him. I never killed him.’

‘My client has made himself clear, Chief Inspector. I suggest you confine yourselves to questions rather than insinuation and innuendo.’ Scott made a note on her pad.

‘Pharmacology, that’s the line of work you’re in, right?’ Carol said, hoping the tangent would unsettle him.

‘That’s right,’ Butler said.

‘So you’ll know all about ricin?’

‘You probably know more about ricin than I do. I’m a lab technician in a company that makes cough medicine. I wouldn’t know a castor bean if it arrived on toast.’

There was a moment’s grisly silence. Carol could have sworn she saw Bronwen Scott momentarily roll her eyes. ‘So you do know where it comes from,’ Carol said.

‘So does half the country,’ Butler said, his voice rising. ‘All that stuff in the papers about terrorists making ricin? And now Bishop dying from it? We all know where it bloody comes from.’

Carol shook her head. ‘I didn’t remember. I had to look it up after Robbie was diagnosed. I bet most people did. But you remember.’

Butler turned to his lawyer. ‘Are you going to put a stop to this? They’ve got nothing on me.’

Scott gave a smile that showed little sharp teeth. Carol thought she’d probably learned it from a piranha. ‘My client’s right. This is a fishing expedition. Unless you’ve got anything that you have not disclosed this far, you’ve got no grounds for keeping us here. I want you to release my client without charge right now. Because we are done here. He’s not saying another word, and you have nothing.’

The worst of it was, she was right. ‘Police bail,’ Carol said, getting to her feet. ‘We’ll be back round this table again, Ms Scott.’

Bronwen Scott smiled again. ‘Not until you get your act together, Chief Inspector Jordan. You’ll be hearing from us about the assault suit.’

Carol watched them leave, then gave a rueful shrug. ‘That’ll teach me to be impatient,’ she said. ‘They’re going to be laughing about us from John O’Groats to Land’s End.’ She gave herself a shake. ‘Next time you try to blindside one of your colleagues, Sam, see if you can make it worth our while, eh?’

When Carol got back to the MIT room Chris and Paula were waiting for her. They both looked as if they could have used a few more hours’ sleep, and Paula was looking distinctly shifty. ‘Any luck with Butler?’ Chris asked.

‘We’ve got nothing and he’s got bloody Bronwen Scott.’ There was no need to say more. She stifled a yawn, told herself she did not need a drink and settled into her chair. ‘What about you two? Any joy last night at Amatis?’

The other two exchanged a look. ‘Some joy, but not at Amatis, Chris said, shifting in her seat. ‘I agreed to let Paula pursue another line of inquiry–’

‘That’s not how it was, chief,’ Paula interrupted. ‘It wasn’t Sergeant Devine’s responsibility. I talked her into it. It’s down to me. If there’s going to be any trouble, it’s all down to me.’

‘What are you two on about?’ Carol said, amused at their earnestness. ‘If we’re making progress, I don’t much care who’s responsible. Spit it out, Paula. What was your other line of inquiry?’

Paula stared at her feet. ‘I don’t know if you know, but Dr Hill’s been…helping me get myself back together,’ she said, obviously struggling. ‘I was going to quit. But he got me to see things a different way.’

‘I know how good he is at that,’ Carol said gently. She too had needed his talent for repair, though she suspected Paula had gained more from the process because of the lack of intimacy between them.

Paula looked up and met Carol’s eyes, defiance in the line of her jaw. ‘I owe him. So when he asked me to go and see him yesterday, I didn’t hesitate. He told me about another case he believed to be connected to Robbie Bishop. He told me you had already dismissed the idea, and I have to say I wasn’t surprised when he explained how thin it was.’

Carol managed to keep her face still, but inside her composure had evaporated. What the hell was he playing at? At the very least, this felt like lack of faith. At the worst, it felt like betrayal. How could he pluck out one of her own team and use that detective to try to show her how the job should be done? ‘Are you about to tell me you’ve been making inquiries into the death of Daniel Wade?’ she said, her voice dangerously precise.

Paula tensed in her chair but didn’t flinch. ‘Yes, chief.’

Carol tilted her head to one side, considering Paula with the same disdain she gave prisoners in the interview room. ‘And remind me, Detective Constable McIntyre, when exactly you resigned from MIT and commenced your employment with Dr Hill?’

‘It’s not like that,’ Paula began. ‘I owe him.’

‘You had a task assigned to you in a murder inquiry, and you chose to abandon that because a civilian who occasionally works with this unit told you to go and do something else?’ Carol’s voice would have stilled storm. She could see her words cut into Paula and she was petty enough at that moment to be glad.

To her surprise, Chris took up the cudgels. ‘I think what’s important here is what Paula found out, guv. You can see she’s not proud of what she’s done, but there’s no question that she has got a result. She’s a good copper and she doesn’t deserve a caning for going out on a limb. We all do that from time to time.’ Her eyes challenged Carol. They’d had overlapping service in the Met. Carol knew that Chris Devine was bound to know more about her than anybody else on her squad.

‘There’ll be time to deal with the disciplinary side of this after the investigation’s over and done with,’ she said coldly, not wanting to admit the fear Chris’s words had provoked in her. Paula had got a result. Which meant Carol had been wrong to disregard Tony’s opinion. Was she losing it? Was she cutting her nose off to spite her face because he’d seen things she should have but hadn’t? Was the drink taking its toll on her judgement? God only knew she’d seen that happen with plenty of others. ‘What did Dr Hill have you do?’

Looking shaken, Paula told Carol about her trip to the pub and her interview with Jana Jankowicz. She placed the photo of Jack Anderson on the desk. ‘This is the man Carlos identified. Jana thinks he came to the house when Danny was out, but she can’t remember why or when.’

‘We didn’t get any positive IDs on Anderson at Amatis, but one of the barmen thinks he could have been the bloke with Robbie that Thursday night,’ Chris added. ‘All a bit vague, but we thought it might be worth getting Carlos in to work with Stacey to see if we can turn that pic into a better likeness. Different hair, a bit of computer enhancement, that sort of thing.’

Carol felt the rip of conflicting emotions. Part of her wanted to nurse her anger and let them feel the rough edge of her tongue. And the other part of her wanted to congratulate them and set the wheels in motion to find Jack Anderson and bring him in. Even as she recognized the split, the cop in her was battering the angry child into submission. At the same moment, she saw Paula recognize her shift and relax a fraction. ‘Fuck it,’ Carol said, a wry smile creeping out in spite of herself. ‘You have no idea how much I hate being wrong. But next time, Paula-if there is a next time-bring it to me before you go off on one of Tony’s hunches. He’s not always right, you know. And I will always listen.’ As she spoke, she saw Paula’s shoulders drop. There was still a hot coal of anger in Carol’s heart, but she was reserving that for the person who really deserved it. ‘So. Who is Jack Anderson and where do we find him?’

‘That,’ said Chris with a sigh, ‘is where we run into a bit of a problem. According to Stacey, he doesn’t exist.’

‘Meaning what?’ Carol was still prickly, in no mood for guessing games. ‘We have his photo. That must have come from somewhere.’

‘We’ve spoken to the person who sent it to us. And to the third person in the original photo. They both say the same thing. They were at school with Jack Anderson and he used to turn up at the same pub quiz as them. Tuesday nights at the Red Lion in Downton. He was in a team that called themselves The Funhouse. About three years ago, he stopped coming. Our lads asked The Funhouse why Anderson had dropped out and they said he’d moved to Stockport. And that’s where that bit of the trail goes cold,’ Paula said.

‘Because, according to Stacey, he didn’t go to Stockport,’ Chris continued. ‘Or if he did, he’s not registered to vote. He doesn’t pay council tax, he’s not in the phone book, he’s not registered for VAT and he hasn’t filed a tax return for four years. He hasn’t filed for bankruptcy and he doesn’t have a current credit card. Doesn’t it scare you what that girl can find out on a Saturday morning?’

Carol shivered theatrically. ‘I try not to think about it. What about family? Old school friends?’

‘We’re working on it,’ Paula said. ‘According to the bloke who gave us the photo in the first place, Anderson’s dad was in the army. Apparently he was killed in the first Gulf War, not long after Anderson started at Harriestown High. Our source isn’t sure he’s remembering it right, but he thinks it was a friendly-fire incident.’

‘That’s gotta hurt,’ Carol said. ‘What about his mum?’

Chris looked at her notebook. ‘I’m still trying to get detail on this, but we’re being told she committed suicide the summer after Anderson’s first year at university. Sounds like she waited till he was sort of settled then did what she had to do. We’re not sure which university. One guy thought Leeds, the other Manchester. And we’re not sure what he studied either. Might have been biology, might have been zoology. Might have been fucking needlework, frankly. I think the pair of them were making it up as they went along by that point.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Why do they try so hard to please us?’

‘Probably because we have the power to throw their arses in jail, Chris,’ Paula said pointedly.

‘All right, all right, enough of the stand-up routine. Piss off, the pair of you. And don’t come back till you’ve got everything there is to know about Jack Anderson. Including his current address.’ She got up and grabbed her jacket from the coat stand. ‘I’m going to swing by Robbie’s mum and dad’s house. Maybe they remember Jack Anderson. You never know. And then I’m going to talk to a man about officer deployment. Just as well he’s already in hospital, he won’t have far to go to get fixed.’

Ex-Detective Superintendent Tom Cross owned one of the most expensive houses in Bradfield, thanks to a spectacular win on the football pools some years before his enforced retirement. His pension was adequate to support him and his wife comfortably. But nothing could have convinced him he was lucky. There are some people who are incapable of contentment, and Tom Cross was one of them.

He stared moodily out of the bathroom window at a perfectly groomed lawn sloping gently down to the River Brade, where a neat day boat was moored to a concrete jetty. Miserable bloody day for the game, he thought. No matter how well wrapped up he was, his nose would be a bulb of ice by half-time.

Cross turned back to the mirror, switching on his electric shaver and applying it to his heavy jowls. His pale green eyes were prominent, responsible for his old nickname of Popeye. Like his cartoon namesake, Cross still had the massive muscular shoulders and upper arms of the rugby prop forward he’d once been. The mirror didn’t reveal the massive gut that years of fast food and beer had created; Cross had always tended to avoid the truth whenever it made him uncomfortable. Some would say that had been the source of his professional downfall. Cross himself would have laid it at the door of that sanctimonious bitch Carol Jordan.

He shaved swiftly, then ran a deep basin of warm water. He immersed his whole head, running his fingers over the grey bristle that surrounded his bald crown. He rose gasping from the water, his little cupid’s bow mouth spraying droplets over the marble sink surround. Bloody Jordan and bloody John Brandon. Pair of prigs. Jordan had stepped into his shoes and Brandon had put the word out that Tom Cross was a cheat and a liar. It had made it bloody hard to get his mitts on the sort of security work he deserved. At least today, before he froze his arse off watching the struggle to make headway without Robbie Bishop, he’d be working with somebody who recognized his worth.

The letter from Harriestown High had come out of the blue. He’d not been back there since his sixteenth birthday, when he’d buggered off and got himself a job on a building site till he could get taken on as a police cadet. But according to the letter from the head, the school now had a policy of employing former pupils wherever possible. When it came to planning security for a major fundraising event, Tom Cross’s name had been the first to come up.

As invited, he’d called the number on the letterhead. To his surprise, it was an answering machine which simply said, ‘You have reached Harriestown High School. Please leave your name and number and we will call you back as soon as possible.’ The call back came within five minutes, from the head himself. ‘Sorry about the answering machine,’ he’d said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many threatening and abusive phone calls we get from parents.’

Cross snorted. ‘I’d believe you all right. In my day, if the school or the police got in touch with your parents, you were in for the high jump. Now, the parents take the kids’ part and we’re the ones getting the kicking.’

‘Quite so. Thank you for getting back to me. If you’re interested in this project, I think the best thing is for you and Jake Andrews to have a meeting. Jake’s organizing the whole thing. He has all the details at his fingertips. It’s going to be quite the do. Robbie Bishop’s already pledged to support it with his presence, and he’s persuaded his former fiancée to DJ a session. She works for Radio One, you know,’ he added conspiratorially. ‘I’ll have Jake call you.’

And later that day, Jake had indeed called. They’d had a preliminary meeting over lunch in a very fine French restaurant in town. The sort of place Cross wouldn’t normally have chosen, but he would admit they knew how to cook steak and chips. Now, they were going to look at the detailed plans, including the layout of the venue, the stately home of Lord and Lady Pannal. Though God alone knew who they were going to get to headline the event now that Robbie Bishop had popped his clogs.

Cross slapped aftershave on his cheeks, never flinching at the sting. He glanced at his watch, hanging up by the mirror. He’d better get a move on. He was meeting Jake at a pub on the far side of Temple Fields. They’d have a swift half, then go to Jake’s flat for lunch. The lad had been apologetic. ‘Sorry about having to meet in the pub. It’s just that my place is a nightmare to find. Everybody gets lost. I’ve learned it’s just easier to meet in the pub first. All the stuff we need is back at the flat, so I’ll do us some lunch and we can work while we eat. I’m a vegetarian, but don’t worry, I do cook meat for my visitors,’ he’d added with a smile.

Cross walked through to his dressing room and pulled a pair of thermal long johns from his underwear drawer. Thermals on the outside, a good lunch on the inside. He’d survive an afternoon at the football no trouble.

Yousef slammed the door of the bedsit and leaned against it, eyelids pressed tight together, the lump in his throat set to choke him. He’d worked so hard to keep his aim true. He’d silently recited his motivation like a mantra, morning noon and night. He’d held fast to his conviction that his heart and mind were as one. That what he was doing was not only for the best, but also the only possible way forward.

It wasn’t as if he’d tried to kid himself that there would be no consequences. He’d allowed himself to think of how it would be for his family. Intellectually, he’d known they would be shocked and distraught, unable to believe him capable of this. But they’d get over it, he’d told himself. They would get past it, write him out of their lives. The community would sustain them. They’d be all right. Not everyone would agree with what he’d done, but they wouldn’t cast out the whole Aziz family as a result.

But this morning, the enormity of it all had hit him like a train. Not that anything special had happened. They’d all done their usual Saturday-morning stuff. His mother to the local Asian mini-market to buy halal meat, vegetables and fruit for the weekend. His father to the mosque for prayers and conversation with his friends. Raj to the madrassa for an hour of Koranic studies. Sanjar in bed, sleeping off the week. And Yousef to the warehouse to make sure everything was running as it should. It had been strange, knowing he was doing it for the last time. Strange, but not emotional. It was hard to be emotional about an old factory and a bunch of workers who could never become his friends.

The killer had been Saturday lunch. Traditionally, they ate together. His mother always prepared some slow-cooked miracle of spicy lamb and vegetables, with a pile of chapattis to soak it up. It was a brief interlude of family time in a life where everyone was busy with their own concerns. The knowledge that he was never going to experience it again had made it almost impossible for Yousef to eat. And that in turn had provoked his mother to wonder what was wrong with him. She’d only let up when Raj had started whingeing because Sanjar had to make an emergency delivery in Wakefield so he wouldn’t be able to drop Raj off to meet his friends for the football.

‘Don’t worry, Raj, Yousef will take you,’ his mother had said.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I arranged to go over to Brighouse, to meet some guy about a new contract. I haven’t got time.’

‘What do you mean, you haven’t got time? It won’t take you far out of your way to take the boy to meet his friends,’ his mother insisted.

‘What new contract?’ his father demanded.

‘Nobody ever bothers about me,’ Raj wailed.

Sanjar looked at him and winked. He clearly didn’t believe in the new contract either, but whatever he thought Yousef was up to, there was no chance he’d be anywhere near the truth.

And that’s when he’d nearly lost it. His last meal with his family, and it was turning into a bickering match. When they all looked back, there would be no warm memory of a happy family meal, when they still held fast to their illusion of who he was. There would only be the bitter taste of bad feeling.

He’d had to get out then, before he broke down in front of them. Tears had blurred his vision on the drive over to the bedsit. He loved them, and he was never going to see them again.

Yousef shook his head as if to shake off his painful thoughts. There was no going back. He had to look forward. He had to think about a glorious future, when his dreams would come true. He pushed himself away from the door. The last phase still had to be carried out.

Carefully, he packed a catering-sized ghee tin with the TATP, placing the gunpowder engine from a model rocket kit in the middle. He fastened thin plastic-coated wires to the engine with little alligator clips then attached them to an electronic ignition device wired up to an electronic timer in a small bundle held together with packing tape. He hadn’t made this part of the bomb; he had no skills in this area. But it had been explained to him. He was to be ready with the bomb in place at 3.30, two-thirds of the way through the first half. He was to set the timer for forty minutes, so it would go off in the middle of the second half, leaving time enough for him to make his escape. It was simple. Kept simple to minimize what could possibly go wrong.

Concentrating on the assembly of the bomb calmed him down. By the time he’d finished and packed it in the bottom of Imran’s toolbox, he was steady again.

Yousef carried the toolbox down to Imran’s van with great care. He knew how volatile the TATP was, how easily the friction of movement could trigger the chain reaction that would blow him and the rest of the house sky high. He placed it gently on the ground while he opened the back of the van, then laid it on the foam pad he’d already prepared. He closed the doors carefully then stepped away from the van. He wished he smoked.

He checked his watch. Almost time to set off. He wanted to arrive at the staff and players’ entrance about five minutes before kick-off, when the security crew were too busy to pay too much attention to him. Allowing for traffic, he should leave in about five minutes.

Yousef got into the van and fumbled the keys into the ignition. His hands were clammy with sweat. ‘Calm,’ he told himself. No reason to panic. No reason to be afraid. Nothing could go wrong.

He didn’t know about the third component, taped between the ignition and the timer. A component that would change all Yousef’s carefully laid plans.

Tony was feeling very pleased with himself. Today, he was the man who had climbed half a flight of stairs. OK, he’d had a certain amount of difficulty getting back down, but he had made it to the landing. Nine steps up and nine steps down. And not a single fall. He’d been so exhausted afterwards he’d wanted to lie down and weep, but he would leave that bit out when he told the tale.

Tony fired up the laptop and went to Bradfield Victoria’s site. Because he wasn’t good at remembering to keep office hours, he’d subscribed to their private TV channel at the start of the season. So wherever he was, as long as he had broadband access, he could watch the Vics’ games live. He logged on and turned the volume down low. He didn’t need to hear pre-match chat from a couple of second-rate retired footballers and a commentator who had fallen from grace with the networks. All they’d be talking about would be Robbie, and Tony didn’t imagine for a moment they would have any useful insights to offer.

Thinking of Robbie reminded him that he ought to be trying to come up with something that would get Carol past the embarrassment of refusing to follow up his suggestion now it had turned out he’d been right. She was going to be pissed off with herself and the chances were that she would get it out of her system by being pissed off with him. Best to have something ready to head her off at the pass. The only trouble was what.

‘What makes them right for you, Stalky? Is Harriestown High the important connection? What happened there to make you care so much?’ He considered the options, but couldn’t come up with something that could have linked Robbie Bishop and Danny Wade in their schooldays. ‘But that changed,’ he mused. ‘By the time they died, they did have something in common. Rich men, both of them. And the rich are different. So they’d become different. They’d left the rest of Harriestown High in the dirt. They were lucky, you could say. Danny definitely. No skill in the lottery. Just blind luck. But Robbie was lucky too. Right club, right manager. We’ve all seen it go the other way-great talent pissed up against the wall.’ He was struggling and he knew it. Two cases just didn’t yield enough data. It was the hardest thing about his job. The more people who died, the easier it was for him.

So, nothing much to link the victims. What about the murder method? Plant poisons. It was like Dorothy L. Sayers or Agatha Christie. Some village murder mystery. ‘Historically, poisoners were assassins or family members. But now we’ve got guns for the assassins, and forensic toxicology knocked family poisoning on the head a long time ago…So why use it? It’s hard to get your hands on, and getting hold of it leaves a trail. Its only advantage is if you don’t get your kicks out of killing.’ He nodded to himself. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? What you like is not killing, it’s having killed. You like the sense of power but you’ve not got a taste for the dirty work. It’s almost as if you’re keeping your distance. Your innocence. When you left them, they were fine. You don’t have to see yourself as some low-life killer.’ He paused for a moment, lost in thought. ‘You can almost convince yourself you’re giving them a chance. Maybe they’ll be able to beat it, or maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll get lucky. Or maybe their luck’s just run out…And speaking of running out, there are my boys.’ On the screen, the familiar canary yellow shirts were emerging from the tunnel, black bands circling the upper arms of all the players. The Tottenham Hotspur players followed, also wearing black armbands, heads bowed.

The two teams lined up facing each other and Tony edged the volume up in time to hear the commentator say, ‘…for a minute’s silence in memory of Robbie Bishop, who died tragically this week.’

Tony bowed his head and joined the silence. It seemed to pass almost too quickly. Then the crowd roared, the players shuffled their feet and moved into position. Robbie had been formally consigned to memory. Now it was showtime.

The streets around Victoria Park were choked with fans promenading towards the stadium. No cars allowed, held back and diverted by police officers in yellow fluorescent jackets. Just pedestrians and horses, the mounted division relishing home games for the peaceful exercise they almost invariably offered. Through the middle of the yellow streams of home fans was a demarcated ribbon of white, where Spurs supporters strutted their defiance in the enemy’s territory.

There was another, smaller patch of white among the yellow. The A1 Electricals’ van eased forward through a crowd reluctant to part for anything or anyone. Behind the wheel, Yousef prayed steadily, his lips barely moving, his mind racing. If he concentrated on the details, he didn’t have to confront the horror of what he was about to do. The paperwork had got him past the first checkpoint. A policeman stopping traffic heading for the stadium had glanced over the two fake faxes and Yousef’s equally false ID and waved him through without comment. Next came the acid test.

He checked the time. He was right on schedule. The Grayson Street stand loomed ahead of him, the tall wrought-iron gates with the club crest clearly visible. The entrance to the car park for staff and players was a dozen yards past the gates, the way blocked by a barrier and a cordon of security men. He pulled his baseball cap further down so it better obscured his features from above.

Yousef passed the gates, tapping his horn to clear a way through the supporters. The road was even more clogged than usual because the pavement was entirely occupied by the shrine to Robbie Bishop. His photo smiled out at Yousef again and again, the confident grin of a man who sees the world turning his way. He’d been so wrong, Yousef thought.

He swung the wheel round, pointing the van at the barrier. As he drew close, he was surrounded by security men. They looked identically menacing with their black-and-yellow Vics bomber jackets, black jeans and shaved heads. He lowered his window and smiled. ‘Emergency electrical repair,’ he said. ‘There’s a problem with the mains supply under the Vestey stand.’ He produced the faxes. ‘If it blows, there’ll be no power to corporate hospitality.’

The nearest security guard sneered. ‘Poor bastards won’t be able to find their prawn sandwiches in the dark. Gimme a minute, let me show these to the guy on the barrier.’ He took the paperwork and went over to the small cabin by the guard barrier. Yousef could see him showing the faxes to the man inside. He felt the sweat in his armpits and the small of his back.

‘That’s quite a display, innit?’ he said to the guard who had stepped up to take the first one’s place. ‘Poor sod.’

“No kidding,’ the guard said. ‘What kind of evil bastard would do a thing like that?’ He did a double take, as if only just realizing he was speaking to a young Asian male, the tabloid archetype of a contemporary bogeyman. ‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean…You know?’

‘I know. We’re not all like that,’ Yousef said, his toes literally curling with discomfort. Not because he was lying, but because he was lying so cravenly. Before they could get into it any further, the first guard came back with the paperwork.

‘You’ll need to let me take a look in the back of the van,’ he said.

Yousef turned off the engine, took out the keys and walked to the back of the van. He could feel his hands trembling, so he tried to put his body between the lock and the security man. He told himself that he had nothing to worry about, that it was all going to be OK. He swung the door open. The van was lined with cable holders and plastic boxes full of clips, fuses, screws and switches. Reels of various gauges of cable were piled together behind a fence of bungee cord, and Imran’s toolbox sat to one side, a long squat metal box covered in chipped blue paint.

‘You want to open the toolbox?’ the security guard said.

‘Sure.’ Yousef swallowed hard and unclipped the lid. He spread the first layer open to reveal an array of pliers, wire strippers and screwdrivers. ‘OK?’ He laid his hand on the tray, as if he was going to open it further. His bowels were clenching, his bladder bursting. If the bastard guard didn’t back off, the next thing he was going to see was a bomb.

The guard glanced over the tools. ‘Looks like an electrician’s kit to me. OK, mate,’ he said. ‘Park over at the far end.’ He pointed to the extreme edge of the parking area. ‘You’ll see a gate over there. The security bloke there knows you’re on your way. He’ll let you in. You follow the walkway round the corner and it’ll bring you to the staff entrance. They’ll show you where you need to be.’ He winked. ‘They might even let you see a bit of the game if you get the job done quick.’

Yousef did as he was told, hardly able to believe it was all so easy. Once past that first barrier, it was clear that he was accepted as someone with a valid reason to be there. Ten minutes later, head down to avoid the CCTV cameras, he was carrying Imran’s toolbox with its deadly cargo down a narrow service corridor under the middle tier of the giant cantilevered Vestey Stand. The stand, named after Albert Vestey, England and Bradfield Vics’ legendary striker of the inter-war years, contained the media centre up on the top tier as well as the corporate hospitality boxes. As they walked, the ebb and flow of the fans’ chanting and cheering accompanied their steps. Yousef was surprised by how loud it was. He’d thought it would be much quieter inside the stand, insulated by concrete and bodies. But here it was almost as strident as being one of the shouting spectators.

Yousef’s destination was a small room off the service corridor where the electricity junction boxes were housed. From here, the electrical supply to the media centre and the corporate boxes was controlled. Immediately above, separated by a tracery of girders and poured concrete, was the partition wall between two boxes, each of which held a maximum of a dozen spectators. Both of those were flanked by identical boxes. All four boxes, like the others that stretched out on either side of them, were full of people enjoying food and drink at someone else’s expense. The football, it often seemed, was incidental. What mattered was being there.

The guard who had accompanied Yousef from the staff entrance stopped in front of a grey door which featured a yellow plaque with a black lightning bolt on it. ‘Here we go, mate,’ he said, unlocking the door and opening up. He pointed to a house phone on the corridor wall a few feet away. ‘Call down on that when you’re done and I’ll come and lock up behind you.’ He pushed the door open, reached for the light switch then stood back, waving Yousef into the small space. ‘And if you’re done before full time, we’ll find you somewhere to perch for the rest of the match.’

Yousef felt sick, but he managed to smile and nod. The door closed behind him with a soft click. The room was dim and cramped. It smelled of dust and oil. The junction boxes covered the far wall. Cables festooned the walls, their surfaces silted with greasy dust. He didn’t think anyone was going to bother him here, not when there was a match going on a few hundred feet away. But to be on the safe side, he jammed the end of the toolbox against the door. If anyone tried to get in, he’d know about it.

Without warning, Yousef felt his throat tighten as tears welled up in his eyes. This was a terrible thing to be doing. It was the right thing, no doubt about that. The best way to achieve their goal. But he hated that he had to live in a world where things like this were necessary. Where violence became the only language that people listened to. Where violence was the only language available to those who were frustrated at every turn by the way the world was run. George Bush had been right, it was a crusade. Just not the one that bastard in the White House thought it was.

He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. This wasn’t the time or the place for grief or for second thoughts. Yousef opened the toolbox and lifted out the top shelf. Underneath, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap, was the bomb. It didn’t look much. Somehow, Yousef felt it should be grander. More of a statement than could be made by a ghee tin and a kitchen timer.

He checked his watch. He was doing just fine. Twelve minutes past three. He took out a roll of duct tape and fastened the bomb to a bunch of cables halfway up the wall. Then, his mouth dry and his stomach churning, he started to set the timer.

Two minutes in, and Phil Campsie had made a blinding run down the left side, only to be brought low by in a bruising but fair tackle. ‘Oh no,’ Tony cried.

‘Oh no is right,’ Carol said, marching in, all flags flying indignation. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Tony gave her the bemused look of a man who has only been doing what men are supposed to do, not taking in her body language at all. ‘I’m watching the footie,’ he said. ‘The Vics and Spurs. It’s only just started, pull up a chair.’

Carol slapped the screen of his laptop shut. Tony looked outraged. ‘What did you do that for?’

‘How dare you suborn my staff to run around the countryside in pursuit of your little fantasies,’ she shouted.

‘Ah.’ Tony grimaced. That would be Paula, then.’

‘How could you? Especially after I said I didn’t think there was any point?’ Carol paced agitatedly to and fro.

‘Well, that’s precisely why I had to.’ Tony eased his laptop open again. ‘If I could have done it myself, I would have. But as it is, you’re saved the embarrassment of having to admit you passed on the best lead you’ve got so far.’

‘Bullshit. We have a suspect who is nothing to do with Danny Wade.’

Tony tapped the mouse pad to bring the match up again. ‘And I have no doubt that you will also find he’s nothing to do with Robbie Bishop. At least, not as far as his murder’s concerned.’ He gave her a brilliant smile. ‘And now Paula has given you another lovely lead. I mean, she must have. Because if she’d drawn a blank, you’d never have been any the wiser.’

Carol stabbed her index finger at him. ‘You are bloody impossible. You are bang out of order. Paula works for me, not for you.’

Tony gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I could say she helped me out in her own time,’ he said. ‘Because she likes me so much.’

Now it was Carol’s turn to smirk. ‘But that would be a lie. She did it on Bradfield Police’s time, when she was supposed to be working for MIT.’

Tony shook his head, his blue eyes darkening as he prepared to play hardball. He looked at the game on his screen but his words were directed at Carol. You can’t have people working completely undefined hours and then claim all of their waking time is dedicated to your service. Paula’s entitled to breaks. You can’t really complain if she rolls them up into one big slice of time off. I bet she didn’t get eight hours clear between coming off duty last night and starting again this morning. Even your prisoners are entitled to that.’

Carol glared at him. ‘I hate it when you twist things to suit yourself. You were out of order, and you know it. And Paula of all people. You know she’s vulnerable.’

‘I think when it comes to Paula’s mental state, I’m probably a better judge than you.’ He scrutinized her, trying to gauge how angry she still was. ‘Come on, come and sit down and watch a bit of the football with me. The lads are playing their hearts out for Robbie. It’d bring tears to a glass eye, I promise you.’

‘You can’t just deflect this, pretend it didn’t happen,’ Carol said. But he could see she was softening.

‘I’m not. I agree, I was out of order. All I can say is that normally, I would have done it myself. And I thought it was too important to a murder investigation to leave it undone. I will apologize to Paula for putting her in an awkward position, but I’m not going to apologize to you for putting your investigation on the right track.’ He patted the arm of the chair next to the bed. ‘Now, will you sit down and watch the bloody game?’

With obvious ill grace, Carol threw herself into the chair. ‘You know I hate football,’ she grumbled.

‘We’re the ones in yellow,’ he said.

‘Fuck off. I know that,’ she said.

‘So, are you going to tell me about Paula’s brilliant new lead?’ he said as Spurs gained possession and began to make ground.

‘Hasn’t she told you all about it herself?’

He grinned. ‘No, we both understand the chain of command too well.’

‘You ganged up on me,’ she said. He could tell the storm was over.

‘Be grateful we care enough to want to save you from falling on your arse. Like he just did.’ He pointed at a Spurs player apparently tripping over a blade of grass.

As they watched, the commentary was drowned out by a tremendous roaring rumble. Smoke drifted across the screen, then a storm of debris began to rain down on one side of the pitch. Carol and Tony stared at the screen, dumbstruck. Then the commentator’s voice, hysterical, shouting, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, there’s a hole…I can’t hear. Oh my God, there are body parts…I think there’s been a bomb. A bomb, here at Victoria Park. Oh Jesus Christ…’

Now the director had got his act together. The scene changed from the pitch to what had been the Vestey Stand. In the centre of the middle tier, nothing could be seen except a billowing grey cloud of dust. In the rows of seats below the corporate boxes, people were stampeding for the aisles. The shot changed to a close-up of one of the exits, where some fans were fighting to get out while others were passing children over heads to get them clear. Then they were looking at the stand again, only this time there were flames licking the edges of the dust cloud and black spirals of smoke curling up as the dust cloud moved downwards. And now the people were screaming.

Carol was already on her feet and halfway to the door. ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, opening the door and running. Tony barely noticed her going. He was transfixed by the unfolding of tragedy on the screen before him. Without taking his eyes off the laptop screen, he reached for the remote and turned on the TV. It was almost impossible to comprehend what he was seeing.

Bradfield had joined that most exclusive club. The Twin Towers. Kuta Beach. Madrid. London. A list no city wanted to join. But now Bradfield was among them.

And there would be work to be done.

Tom Cross had served most of his years in the police in the shadow of Irish Republican terrorism. Twelve dead in the M62 coach bombing, two kids blown to bits in Warrington town centre, over two hundred injured and a city centre devastated in Manchester. He and his colleagues had learned vigilance, but they’d also been taught what was expected of them.

So when the bomb went off in Victoria Park stadium, Cross’s instincts were to move towards the seat of the explosion. The other 9,346 people in the Vestey Stand did not share his reaction. A floodtide of humanity surged for the aisles and the exits and Cross, sixteen rows below the hospitality boxes, put his head down, grabbed the back of his seat and let it flow over him.

As the press of bodies around him eased, he pulled himself hand over hand to the middle of the row, where there were no people. He started to clamber upwards as fast as he could, wishing he hadn’t eaten so much of the delicious lamb stew Jake Andrews had served him for lunch. His stomach felt distended and tender, as if it was swollen to a drum, its contents swilling from side to side like rainwater in a discarded tyre. Fuck, he thought as he struggled upwards. Bodies everywhere and he was thinking about the state of his guts.

As Cross grew closer, he could see through the dust and smoke to the hole in the stand. Shattered concrete and twisted metal thrust out into the air, as if a giant fist had punched through from behind. Bodies lay at grotesque angles on the wreckage, most of them clearly dead, many of them lacking limbs. Through the claustrophobic ringing in his ears, he could hear the crackle of flame, the moans of the injured, the PA system begging people to leave in an orderly manner, the sound of distant sirens getting louder. He could smell blood and smoke and shit, taste them on his tongue. Carnage. That’s what he was tasting.

The first person still breathing that he came across was a woman, hair and skin turned grey by the dust. Her lower left leg was shattered, blood pulsing from the wound. Cross pulled the belt from her trousers and tied off a tourniquet above her knee. The blood slowed to an ooze. Her eyelids flickered then closed again. He knew the rules about not moving the injured, but if the fire travelled fast, she would be caught up in it. There was no real choice here. Cross slid his arms under the woman and lifted her, grunting with the effort. He stepped over debris, edging sideways till he came to an aisle. He laid her down carefully and went back for more, dimly aware that there were others joining him, some in the fluorescent jackets of the emergency services.

He had no sense of how much time passed. All he knew was the dirt and the blood and the nausea and the sweat pouring down his face and the pain in his guts and the bodies, always the bodies. He worked alone and with others, shifting debris, giving the kiss of life, moving bodies and telling the injured the old familiar lies. ‘It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. It’s going to be all right.’ It was never going to be all right again, not for any of the poor bastards caught in this shitstorm.

And all the time he was working, he was feeling worse and worse. He put it down to the shock and the exertion. His guts were cramping so much that he had to leave the rescue a couple of times to find a toilet. His bowels emptied in a gusher of liquid both times, leaving him feeling weak and feverish. The third time he tried to return to the bomb site, a paramedic stopped him on the stairs. ‘No way, mate,’ he said. ‘You look terrible.’

Cross sneered. ‘You don’t look so great yourself, pal.’ He tried to push past, but didn’t seem to have the strength. Baffled, he leaned against the wall, sweat pouring from him. He clutched his stomach as another spasm of pain shot through him.

‘Here, put this on.’ The paramedic handed him an oxygen mask and a portable gas cylinder. Cross obeyed. Shock and exertion, that’s what it was. He barely noticed the other man reaching for his arm and taking his pulse. But he did notice that the paramedic looked worried. ‘We need to get you to hospital,’ he said.

Cross lifted the mask. ‘Bollocks. There’s people up there with serious injuries. That’s who needs to be in hospital.’ Again he tried to push past.

‘Mate, I’d say you’re minutes away from a heart attack. Please. Don’t give those bastards the satisfaction of adding another number to the list. Come on, humour me. Let’s walk down to the ambulances together.’

As Cross glared at him, his vision seemed to blur and an arrow of burning pain shot from his gut to the fingertips of his left hand. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he roared, stumbling and clasping his shoulder. The pain fled as swiftly as it had come, leaving him sweating and nauseous. ‘OK,’ he panted. ‘OK.’

Carol made it to A&E in time to catch one of the emergency ambulances being despatched to Victoria Park. As they raced through the streets, siren screaming and blue light strobing, she was on the phone. First to Stacey in the office, telling her to send the rest of the team to meet her at the stadium. Then to John Brandon. He too was in motion, pulled away from a shopping expedition with his wife, who now found herself trying to drive like a police driver without the advantage of lights or siren. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘I know your first instincts are to help preserve life, but I don’t want your team involved in the rescue and evacuation. We can’t forget this is also a crime scene. Forensic teams are on their way, and your job is to work with them to make sure they can collect and preserve as much as possible.’

‘Is it mine?’ she asked.

‘Only until the Counter Terrorism Command get here from Manchester,’ Brandon said. ‘They’re on their way. They’ll be with us within the hour. Then you’ll have to step away. But till they get here, yes, the command is yours.’

‘Will CTC take over the whole investigation?’ Carol asked, snatching at a grab handle as they took a corner on what felt like two wheels.

‘In effect, yes. You’ll be working to them. I’m sorry, Carol. That’s the way it is. They’re the specialists.’

Her heart sank. Come tomorrow, she and her detectives would be no more than gofers for those arrogant bastards in CTC who thought being the saviours of mankind gave them the right to walk over anybody and anything in their way. She’d had enough dealings with the Anti-Terrorism Branch and the Special Branch before they’d been amalgamated into the new, bespoke CTC. She knew they thought they were the lords of creation and that people like her and her team were put on this earth to do their grunt work. Bad enough that there were likely dozens dead from a terrorist bomb. Traumatic enough for her team without having to deal with a bunch of outsiders who didn’t know the ground and didn’t have to take responsibility for their actions. They wouldn’t be the ones left to mop up the consequences of shattered relationships among communities and between those communities and the ones left behind to police them.

‘Any figures yet?’ she asked, knowing it was pointless to complain to Brandon, as powerless in this as her team was.

‘At least twenty. There will be more.’

‘And the rest of the crowd? Where are we evacuating to?’

‘Contingency plans say the school playing fields further down Grayson Street. But I suspect most of them are putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the stadium. It’s going to be a nightmare, getting witness statements for this one.’

‘We’ll do our best. I need to go, we’re nearly there,’ Carol said, recognizing the swaying view through the windscreen. People were streaming past on either side, forcing the ambulance to slow to walking pace. It was like one of those war movies where an army of refugees were desperately fleeing the enemy.

At last, they made it into the parking area behind the Vestey Stand. Already, the cars parked there were blocked in by police cars and fire engines. The ambulances were parked along the outside edge, ready for a quick getaway. Even as Carol jumped out, one of the other ambulances sped past them, blues and twos.

From the outside, the stadium looked virtually untouched. There was a small hole in the outer skin of the towering stand, but it looked innocuous. The clues to what had happened here were elsewhere. Hoses from the fire engines and the stadium’s hydrants snaked along the ground and in through the turnstiles. Firefighters moved purposefully towards the stand, looking like astronauts in their protective gear. Paramedics hustled to and fro with assorted bits of kit. And in dribs and drabs, the injured, the dying and the dead were brought forth, carried and stretchered by paramedics and police.

Carol could barely take it in. Bradfield looked like Beirut. Or Bangladesh. Or some other faraway place on the news. It looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster, everyone caught on the hop, nobody really knowing what to do but somehow getting done what was essential. People milled around, some purposeful, others less so. And at the heart of it, the injured, the dying and the dead.

She pulled herself together. She had to find out who was in charge, gather her team and do what she could to secure the seat of the explosion. First, she fastened her ID on to the outside of her jacket. Then Carol approached the nearest uniformed cop. He’d just helped an elderly man with blood running down one side of his face into an ambulance and was about to head back to the stand. ‘Constable,’ she called, running the short distance over to him. He stopped and turned. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat, his uniform trousers filthy. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said. ‘Major Incident Team. Who’s the officer in charge?’

He looked at her with a glazed look. ‘Superintendent Black.’

‘Where can I find him?’

He shook his head, ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve been up…’ he waved his arm towards the stand. ‘Match day, he’s usually up in the top deck. He’s got a cubicle up by the media centre. You want me to show you?’

‘Just point me in the general direction,’ Carol said. ‘You’ve obviously got more important things to do.’

He nodded. ‘You could say that. Take the end staircase all the way up. It’s the first one you come to on the left.’

In the mouth of the stairwell, she came up against a young constable who looked completely terrified. ‘You can’t go up there,’ he gabbled. ‘Nobody’s allowed. It’s not safe, it’s not been cleared by the dogs. Nobody up there, the super’s orders.’

‘That’s who I’m looking for. Superintendent Black.’

The young lad pointed to where two fire engines stood together in an L-shape. ‘He’s over there. With the fire chief.’

Carol weaved her way across. People were sitting on the ground, parts of them bleeding. Paramedics moved among them, performing a primitive triage. Some they dealt with, some they sent to ambulances, others they summoned stretchers for. Waves of firefighters passed through, their presence somehow reassuring. It was the 9/11 effect, Carol thought. Since then, firemen with their chiselled, smoke-blackened faces and the deliberate walk imposed by their bulky gear had become iconic.

Among the injured, other fans wandered around in a daze. The police were checking them out, making sure they weren’t obviously injured, then encouraging them to leave the stadium area. All around her, faces in shock, eyes blank, lips bitten. She picked her way through the chaos, wondering how the hell she was supposed to treat this as a crime scene.

To her amazement, she recognized one of the casualties. Staggering towards her, the familiar bulk of Tom Cross. She hadn’t seen him since he’d left the force seven years before, but he was unmistakable. He was grey faced and filthy, leaning on a paramedic who was clearly struggling under the weight. Cross caught sight of her and shook his head. ‘Just catch the fucking bastards,’ he said, his voice thick and phlegmy.

‘Is he OK?’ she asked the paramedic.

‘If we can get him to hospital in time. He’s been a proper hero, but he’s taken a bit too much out of himself,’ the man said.

‘Let me help,’ Carol said, trying to get Cross to lean on her.

‘Never mind me,’ he snarled. ‘Go and do your job. You can buy me a drink when it’s all over.’

‘Good luck,’ she called after him.

When she finally reached the makeshift command post, she was already feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead of them all. She found Black and a senior fire officer poring over an architect’s drawing of the stand. ‘We’ve got the fire under control,’ she heard the fireman say. ‘Apart from the furnishings in the boxes, there’s not much that’s combustible.’

‘Something to be grateful for.’ Black looked round as Carol cleared her throat. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, his voice irritable.

‘DCI Jordan, Major Incident Team.’

‘You’ve come to the right place,’ the fireman said. ‘It doesn’t get much more major than this.’

‘It’s my job to work the crime scene,’ Carol said.

‘I thought CTC were on their way,’ Black said, frowning. ‘Surely that’s up to them?’

‘Until they get here, it’s mine,’ she said briskly. This wasn’t the time to get into a protocol wrangle. ‘Do we know what we’re looking at here?’

The fire chief pointed to a small room on the plan. This is where we think it came from. My lads tell me it looks like there are human remains in there. So, the presumption is suicide bomber. We also think it was probably TATP, like the London tube bombings. It has a particularly distinctive signature.’

‘That’s all speculation, obviously. Until forensics and the bomb guys have been in there,’ Black added.

‘Where are forensics?’

‘Waiting for the all-clear to go in.’

‘Is the Bomb Squad here?’ Carol asked.

‘On their way. We’ve got a couple of explosives dogs going through the stands now,’ Black said.

‘OK. Get one of the dogs to clear the bomb locus, please.’ She smiled up at the fireman. ‘I’m going to need some protective gear for me and my team. And we’ll need someone to show us the way. Can you help us out?’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not exactly safe,’ he said.

‘All the more reason for us to get what we can while we can,’ she said. The gear?’

He looked her up and down. ‘It’s going to be a bit big on you, but you’re welcome to what we’ve got. Where’s the rest of your team?’

‘Give me a minute.’ Carol stepped to one side, aware that Black was pissed off with her assumption of control over the crime scene. She got her phone out and called Kevin. ‘Bring me up to speed,’ she said.

‘I’m five minutes away. I’ve got Paula and Sam with me. Chris is on her way separately, Stacey’s back at the office. She’s already calling in as much CCTV footage of the stadium approaches as she can get.’

She told him where to meet her, asked him to brief Chris, then called the forensics team. ‘Be ready to roll in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘We’re going in.’

The closer they approached to the site of the explosion, the warmer it became. Carol could feel the sweat plastering her hair to her head under the bulk of the oversized fire helmet she was wearing. The fire officer picked his way along the debris-strewn corridor. Behind Carol came a skeleton forensics crew, followed by her own team.

He stopped abruptly a dozen feet from the edge of a jagged crater in the floor. ‘There you go,’ he said. That’s what used to be the electrical junction room for the corporate hospitality boxes and the media centre.’

Not much remained. The walls had been pulverized, the cables shredded and the pipework that had been buried in concrete had been transformed into shrapnel. The force of the bomb had punched outwards and upwards. The walls above had peeled back like the segments of an orange and she could see daylight through the gap. As Carol stared at the destruction, she realized that the red shreds and patches scattered at random over the remains of the room were human flesh and blood. Not much turned her stomach these days, but this was a sight that made her gag. She swallowed hard. ‘Can we get round to the other side?’ she asked.

The fireman nodded. ‘From the other end.’

‘OK.’ She turned to the forensics team. ‘I want half of you to start from the other side. We want as much trace evidence as we can get, but I don’t want anybody taking risks. We’ll do as much as we can, then we’ll get the experts to build us some sort of platform so we can access the rest. It looks as if we’ve got the remains of a suicide bomber here, but let’s get as much material as possible so we can be sure whether there was one or more of them.’

The white-suited technicians set about their business. Cameras flashed, tweezers gripped, bags were filled and labelled. Carol moved back to her team. ‘I want you to backtrack through the stand. We don’t know how he got in, but there must be security cameras. Paula, Sam-figure out where the access points are and start checking the footage. Kevin, stay here with the SOCOs, take a look at the scene and see what you can come up with. Chris, with me.’

She headed back the way they’d come, Chris at her side. ‘Punters don’t get into service corridors,’ she said. ‘Somebody brought him in. We need to find the security staff and whoever was on duty in the corporate hospitality reception. He didn’t just walk in off the street with a rucksack bomb. Let’s see what we can dig up before CTC turn up.’

It took them twenty minutes to track down the people they were looking for. The crisis evacuation plan provided a safe haven for stadium staff in the assembly hall of Grayson Street Primary. But nobody had keys for the school. At first, it had looked as if the staff were going to melt into the afternoon, but an enterprising turnstile manager had insisted they stay together and shepherded them quarter of a mile down the road to the Chinese restaurant where he liked to eat lunch. The owner had welcomed them with open arms and an avalanche of free dim sum. The only problem was that nobody knew where they were. Finally, Carol had managed to get a number for one of the hospitality receptionists and tracked them down.

It took another twenty minutes to get the bare bones of what had happened. Carol left Chris taking more detailed statements and she headed back to the stadium, making a couple of quick calls on the way. Even in the short time she had been away, things had moved on. The streets around the stadium were much clearer, and were being kept that way by the mounted division. A couple of low loaders were moving cars from the immediate vicinity of the stadium to make way for emergency vehicles. And in the middle of the Vestey Stand car park was the biggest caravan Carol had ever seen. The white trailer looked like a converted cargo container, with two rows of opaque windows along the side. Apart from a strip of black-and-white checks, like a police cap band, there was no identification. A single door in the end of the trailer was flanked by two black-clad officers in riot gear and helmets, semi-automatic pistols held across their bodies. It looked as if the cavalry had arrived. Carol headed for it.

As she approached, both guards shifted, pointing their weapons towards her. Here we go. Bully boys and borderline sociopaths masquerading as our saviours. She pointed to her ID. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan. Bradfield Metropolitan Police Major Incident Team commander. Here to see whoever is in charge now.’

One of them turned away and muttered into his radio. The other didn’t let his hard, flat stare lighten for an instant. Carol stood her ground, reminding herself that this wasn’t about her, it was about the injured, the dying and the dead. Don’t get angry. Don’t give them an excuse to sideline you even further. This is your patch, you have something to contribute. Don’t let them stop you doing your job.

The one with the radio turned back and stepped closer, checking the photo on her ID against her face. ‘A few more grey hairs and a few more wrinkles,’ she said. His tough guy expression didn’t even twitch. He reached behind him for the door handle, pushed it open and indicated with his gun that she should enter. Biting her lip and refusing to give in to the temptation to shake her head in wonder, Carol did as she was instructed.

She walked into a low-ceilinged entrance hall. A narrow flight of metal stairs led upwards. Two doors faced her, and two more black-clad cops, one at the foot of the stairs, the other between the doors. The one by the stairs stood to one side and said, ‘Up top, ma’am.’

Feeling as if she was in a low-budget spy movie, Carol climbed the stairs, a hollow clang at every step. Another vestibule, another guard, who nodded her through another door. She walked into a spartan conference room containing a metal-topped trestle table and eight folding chairs. John Brandon sat in one; three others were occupied by men in black leather jackets over black T-shirts. Two had a pale shadow of stubble on their skulls. The third had a short fuzz of dark hair. At first glance, the only way to tell them apart was the extent to which male-pattern baldness had carved out its territory.

The one in the middle said, ‘Thanks for joining us, DCI Jordan. Have a seat.’

‘Hello, sir,’ Carol said to Brandon as she sat down next to him. She turned to the one facing her. ‘And you are?’

He smiled. It did nothing to dispel his carefully cultivated air of menace. ‘We don’t do names and ranks. Security. You can call me…David.’

‘Security? I’m a DCI. I’ve worked for NCIS. Who do you think I’m going to tell?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing personal, Carol. I know your record and I’ve got nothing but respect for you. But we operate along very strict guidelines that are there for our protection. And given the work we do, us being protected means that everybody else is better protected.’

He might work out of Manchester, but his accent said London and the Met. He had that swagger she’d learned to detest when she’d worked there. She’d bet there weren’t many women working in CTC. It wasn’t a female-friendly environment. All that macho posturing, covering up for the fact that they didn’t really have any autonomy. They might like to pretend they ran the game, but the truth was they didn’t take a toilet break without the say-so of the dedicated antiterrorist team of the Crown Prosecution Service. The men in black might deliver the menace, but they were only the message-boys for their masters in Ludgate Hill. And it was clear Brandon had no stomach to stand up to the message-boys or their masters.

‘Fine. No names, no pack drill. And if you don’t mind, we’ll skip the pep talk about how we’re all on the same side and we’re all going to work together to nail the bastards who did this. I know the rules. My team and I are at your disposal.’

He breathed heavily through his nose. ‘Glad to hear it, Carol. I’m sure your local knowledge is going to be very helpful to us. Of course, we’ve got intelligence which you haven’t about the hothead fundamentalists on your patch. We’ll be shaking the trees and seeing who falls out. We’ll…’

‘Round up the usual suspects?’ she said sweetly. ‘Actually, we might have saved you a bit of time on that already. There’s a van parked down in the Grayson Street staff and players’ car park. A1 Electricals. Just before three, a young Asian man drove in. He had what looked like authentic paperwork to carry out an emergency electrical repair in the Vestey Stand. One of the security staff took him up to the junction box room and let him in. Less than ten minutes later, the bomb went off. I think it’s reasonable to assume our van driver was also our suicide bomber.’ She took out her notebook. ‘According to the PNC, the van is registered to an Imran Begg, 37 Wilberforce Street, Bradfield.’ She closed the notebook. ‘It’s about five doors down from the Kenton Mosque. You might want to tread carefully when you go knocking.’

‘Thank you, Carol. We’ll take it from here. If there’s anything we need your people for, we’ll let you know. Meantime, I know you’ve got a high-profile murder case to be getting on with, so we won’t keep you from that. We’ve also got our own dedicated forensic team, so we’ll be releasing your people back to you once we’ve collected their evidence.’

Carol tried not to show how she was seething inside. ‘Where will you be based?’ she asked. She knew their practice was to take over a police station and evict its usual inhabitants.

‘We were just talking about that,’ David said. ‘Normally we’d take any suspects back to our dedicated suite in Manchester.’

‘However, I suggested David and his team could use Scargill Street for interviews and custody,’ Brandon said.

‘Good idea,’ Carol said. Scargill Street had been taken out of mothballs for the Queer Killer investigation seven years before and had been kept on the back burner ever since, a perpetual Cinderella waiting for the refurb. Letting the CTC loose there would keep them out of the way without creating a pool of homeless officers trying to find perches on everybody else’s already overcrowded territory.

‘And that’s fine as far as it goes, given the scale of this investigation. In Manchester, we’re tooled up for specific, targeted raids, not the kind of sweep we’re going to end up doing here. But Scargill Street isn’t wired up for the latest kit. So we’re also going to use your Major Inquiry suite at HQ,’ David said.

This time, Carol couldn’t hide her dismay. ‘So where’s my team supposed to work from?’ she demanded.

‘David’s people can use the HOLMES2 office,’ Brandon said. ‘You’re not using that for Robbie Bishop’s murder.’

He was right. The Home Office Large Major Enquiry System had been set up as a means of filtering and classifying the volume of information generated either by a series of crimes or a single wide-ranging event. Each force had its own dedicated team of HOLMES2 officers. They were highly trained, skilled officers and Carol didn’t hesitate to use them when it was appropriate. But wherever possible she relied on Stacey and her prodigious talents to manage the MIT investigations.

The problem was that now it looked as if there might be linkage between Danny Wade and Robbie, the logical next step was to set up a HOLMES2 analysis of the material produced by both inquiries. But if CTC were in there, that avenue would be closed to them. She knew this was the time to protest, but she couldn’t do that without raising something Brandon knew nothing about. And this was not the time to undermine her Chief Constable.

‘And it’ll be nice and handy when we need you to help us out,’ David said cheerily. He pushed his chair back. ‘Right, I think we’re done here for now.’ He stood up.

Carol remained seated. ‘Do we have any numbers yet?’ she asked.

David looked down at the man on his right, the one with the quarter inch of hair. ‘Johnny?’

‘Thirty-five confirmed dead so far. Another ten or so critical in hospital. Somewhere in the order of a hundred and sixty injured, ranging from lost limbs to cuts and bruises.’

Now Carol stood up and took a couple of steps towards the door. ‘Oh, by the way, I probably should have mentioned: I’ve got a couple of officers on their way to Imran Begg’s address. Obviously, I sent them out before I knew you were here. I’ll let you know what they come up with, if you’ll give me a number I can reach you on?’

David’s face betrayed nothing. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ He took a card from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and crossed the room to give it to her. All it said was DAVID and a mobile number. ‘I look forward to hearing from you, Carol. But it’s time to call off the dogs.’

She walked out with Brandon at her heels. Once they were outside, she rounded on him. ‘Do you seriously expect me to ignore this? Not to investigate the biggest crime ever to take place on my ground?’

Brandon refused to meet her eyes. ‘It’s out of our hands, Carol. Force majeure.’

She shook her head. ‘A mad world. What about identifying the dead? Talking to their families?’

‘Uniform will handle that,’ Brandon said. ‘Do what you’re best at, Carol. Go and find Robbie Bishop’s killer. Believe me, you’re better out of this shit.’ He waved his arm to encompass the stadium and the CTC trailer. He shook his head sorrowfully and walked away.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Carol muttered. John Brandon seemed to have forgotten the crucial element of what made her the copper she was. Like Sam Evans, she was a maverick. But what motivated her, what had always motivated her, was not self-interest but a passion for justice. Something David and Johnny still had a lot to learn about. ‘The lesson starts here,’ she muttered.

The architects of the Kenton Mosque had made no attempt to have their building blend in with the surrounding area. A grid of red-brick terraces dating back to the turn of the twentieth century surrounded the off-white walls and gilt-topped minarets. ‘It never ceases to amaze me that they got planning permission for that,’ Kevin said as they drove into Wilberforce Street. ‘How do you think they pulled it off?’

Paula rolled her eyes. ‘How do you think, Kevin? The planning committee know they’d be heading straight for a shitstorm if they said no.’

‘Careful, Paula. You’re sounding a tad racist there,’ Kevin said, teasing her. He’d worked with enough racist cops to recognize one who wasn’t.

‘It’s not race, it’s religion I have a problem with. Doesn’t matter if it’s Ulster Protestants, Liverpool Catholics or Bradfield Muslims. I hate loudmouthed clerics who play the bigot card every time anyone says no to them. They create a climate of censorship and fear and I despise them for it. I tell you, I’ve never been more proud to be gay than when Parliament passed that bill outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Who knew there was a single issue that could unite the evangelical Christians, the Catholics, the Muslims and the Jews? My small contribution to ecumenism. There’s a space up ahead on the right,’ she added.

Kevin squeezed into the parking space and they walked back past half a dozen houses, aware that they were an object of curiosity, dislike or anxiety to everyone who clocked them. In this part of Kenton, the part that hadn’t been gentrified by the invading army of hospital workers and students, they were the exotics. They stopped outside number 37, neatly painted, anonymous, net curtains at the windows. The door was opened by a small, slight woman in shalwar kameez, a dupata covering her head. She looked horrified to see them. ‘What is it? Who are you?’ she said before either of them could say a word.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Matthews and this is Detective Constable McIntyre.’

Her hands flew to her face. ‘I knew it. I knew something bad would happen if he went there, I knew it.’ She moaned and turned away, calling, ‘Parvez, come here at once, it is the police, something has happened to Imran.’

Kevin and Paula exchanged looks. What was going on?

A tall stooped man in traditional dress appeared behind the woman. ‘I am Parvez Khan. Imran is my son. Who are you?’

Kevin explained again who they were. ‘We wanted to talk to Imran Begg,’ he said.

The man frowned and looked down at the woman. ‘You said something has happened to Imran? What has happened?’ He looked at Kevin. ‘What has happened to our son?’

Kevin shook his head. ‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding. We just want to talk to Imran. About his van.’

‘About his van? What is this about his van? He doesn’t have his van with him. You’re not here because he’s had an accident?’ the man asked, obviously perplexed.

Kevin didn’t want to be the one to say ‘bomb’. So he persisted. ‘Where is Imran?’

‘He is in Ibiza,’ the woman said. ‘He is on holiday. It was a gift from his cousin Yousef. Yousef took him to the airport on Thursday morning. He called us when he got there, just to let us know he was safe. He’s not coming back till tomorrow. So if his van has been in an accident, it is not Imran’s fault.’ Her bewilderment was obviously not an act.

‘Who’s got his van?’ Kevin said, trying to cut through the confusion.

‘His cousin Yousef. They went to the airport in Imran’s van,’ the man said. ‘Yousef is supposed to pick him up tomorrow in the van.’

‘And where can we find Yousef?’ Kevin asked.

‘Downton Vale. One four seven Vale Avenue. But what has happened? Has there been an accident?’ Mr Khan looked from one to the other. ‘What has happened?’

Kevin shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’ He flashed a quick, tired smile. ‘Be grateful your boy is out of the country. Thanks for your help.’

As they turned to walk away, a white Transit van screamed round the corner and raced down the street towards them. Kevin stopped and looked over his shoulder at the frightened faces of Imran Begg’s parents. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘Come on, Paula, time we were somewhere else.’

As the black-clad armed police officers piled out of the van, they hurried back to the car. They were almost there when a voice yelled, ‘Oi. You two.’

Kevin grabbed the car door, but Paula stopped him. ‘They’re armed, Kevin. Armed and hyped.’

He grunted something incomprehensible and turned round. One of the interchangeable men in black was a few feet away from him, Heckler and Koch at the ready. The others had disappeared into Parvez Khan’s house. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded.

‘DS Matthews, DC McIntyre. Bradfield Police Major Incident Team. And who the fuck are you?’

‘That’s irrelevant. We’re CTC. This is our game now.’

Kevin took a step forward. ‘I want some ID,’ he said. ‘Something to prove you’re not just some private army.’

The man in black just laughed. ‘Don’t push your luck.’ He turned on his heel and sauntered away.

Kevin stared after him. ‘Can you believe that? Can you fucking believe that?’

‘Only too easily,’ Paula sighed. ‘Are we off to Downton Vale, then?’

‘Oh, I think so. Better not tell the DCI, though. If that lot are anything to go by, it’ll be easier all round if we leave her out of the loop for now.’

It didn’t matter how many drills you did, you were never prepared for the real thing, Dr Elinor Blessing thought. A&E was a chaos of voices and bodies, the walking wounded and the triage teams, harassed nurses and stressed doctors trying to cope with whatever they were going to have to deal with next. Elinor had dealt with the only two chest trauma cases fairly swiftly. Neither was life-threatening and she had them admitted to Mr Denby’s ward as soon as they were stable. As she leaned against the wall in a quiet corner, writing up their charts, a flustered nurse caught sight of her and came over.

‘Doctor, I’ve got a man who came in on one of the Victoria Park ambulances, but I can’t make sense of his symptoms,’ he said.

Elinor, who was close enough to her training to feel reasonably confident with medical emergencies outside her speciality, pushed herself upright and followed him to a cubicle. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Paramedics brought him in. He’d been helping to rescue the injured, but he was on the point of collapse. They reckoned he might be about to arrest,’ the nurse said. ‘His pulse is all over the place. First it’s up around 140, then it’s down to 50. Sometimes it’s regular, then it’s arrhythmic. He’s been sick three times, bloody vomit. And his hands and feet are freezing.’

Elinor glanced at the chart for his name, and looked at the big man on the bed. He was conscious, but clearly in distress. ‘When did you start feeling ill, Mr Cross?’ she asked.

Before he could answer his body was seized with an uncontrollable tremor. It was over in seconds, but it was enough to convince Elinor Blessing that this was no normal cardiac ailment. ‘Start of the match. Before the bomb. My guts were griping,’ he managed to force out.

She reached out and touched his hand. In spite of the warmth in the hospital, his hands were like ice. His pale gooseberry eyes stared up at her, fear and pleading evident on his face. ‘Have you had any diarrhoea?’

He gave a faint nod. ‘Came out of me like water,’ he said. ‘Two, three times.’

Elinor ran through the mental checklist. Nausea. Diarrhoea. Erratic heart rate. Central nervous system problems. Bizarre and unlikely though it seemed, this looked like her second poisoning case in a week. And both connected to Bradfield Victoria. She gave herself a mental shake. Sometimes coincidence was exactly what it was, no more, no less. And sometimes poisoning was more to do with ignoring food hygiene than criminality. It wasn’t yet against the law to eat something past its sell-by date. ‘What did you have to eat at lunchtime?’ she asked.

‘Lamb kebabs. Rice with a fancy sauce with herbs.’ He was having trouble speaking. As if his mouth wasn’t quite working properly.

‘In a restaurant?’

‘No. He cooked it. Jake…’ Cross frowned. What was the name? He couldn’t grasp it. It felt too far away, just out of reach.

‘Can you remember how long ago that was?’ Elinor asked.

‘Dinner time. One o’clock, half past?’

Three hours ago. Well past the magic sixty minutes where washing out his stomach was a worthwhile option. ‘OK, we’re going to try to make you a bit more comfortable,’ she said.

She took the nurse to one side. ‘I’m not sure but I think he’s got some sort of cardiac glycoside poisoning. Digoxin or something.’

The nurse stared at her, panic widening his eyes. ‘He came in from Victoria Park. Are you saying the terrorists used some sort of chemical weapon?’

‘No, I’m not saying that,’ she said impatiently. ‘Symptoms this serious don’t start that fast. He was already poisoned before he got to the football. I need five minutes to check out the differentials just in case I’m wrong and the treatments just in case I’m right. Meanwhile, I need you to administer oxygen and set up an IV and a pulse oximeter. We need an ECG and we also need constant cardiac monitoring. Can you get that started? I’ll be back in five.’

Leaving the stunned nurse behind her, Elinor headed for the nurses’ station and a web-enabled PC. It didn’t take long for her to dismiss the differentials. The treatment was straightforward too. The administration of Fab fragments was the standard antidote to cardiac glycoside poisoning. She printed out the treatment sheet and headed back to the cubicle where she’d left Tom Cross.

He was, she thought, getting worse. His expression was bemused, his pulse more thready. ‘I’ve phoned down to the pharmacy. They’ve got thirty vials of Fab fragments in stock. I’m going down myself to pick them up and sign for them. It’ll take too long if we send a porter. Get the ECG under way ASAP, and if he goes into cardiac distress, go with the lidocaine.’

The nurse nodded. ‘Leave it with me.’ He shook his head. ‘Hardly seems real, does it? You get a bomb, you get some guy acting like a hero and the next thing, he’s lying here poisoned. You couldn’t make it up, could you?’

‘Let’s see if we can give him a happy ending, at least,’ Elinor said, already on her way. Somehow, she didn’t think this was the week for happy endings.

As soon as they turned out of Wilberforce Street, Paula slapped the magnetic blue light on top of the car. ‘Go for it, McQueen,’ she said.

‘How long do you think we’ve got?’ Kevin asked.

‘Depends how traumatized Imran’s mum and dad are by the Imperial Storm Troopers. I tell you, they scare the living shit out of me. But you can bet your bottom dollar there’s another busload of them waiting for another address to invade. So let’s work on the basis that we have no time to waste. Shouldn’t you be taking Downton Road?’ she said, snatching at the passenger grab handle as Kevin threw the car round a corner and into another grid of back streets.

‘It’ll be choked this time on a Saturday. All the shopping traffic from the Quadrant Centre. We’ll make better time this way.’

When it came to traffic, Paula knew to trust Kevin. Once, he’d been a Detective Inspector but he’d blotted his copybook so dramatically he’d almost been kicked out of the force. His path to redemption had included a six-month stint in traffic, a job for which he had been so spectacularly over-qualified they’d been glad to see the back of him. But it had left him with a useful working knowledge of the city’s traffic patterns and the sort of short cuts that only taxi drivers appreciate. So she shut up and held tight.

They made it to Vale Avenue in record time. Kevin gave a satisfied sigh when he pulled up outside cousin Yousef’s address. ‘I enjoyed that,’ he said. ‘Got those bastards out of my system.’

Paula pried her fingers from the grab handle. ‘I’m glad it was good for you. So, what’s our line here?’

Kevin shrugged. ‘Be straight with them. Was Yousef driving the van? Where is Yousef now? Can we look at Yousef’s room? Be helpful because we are the nice guys and you may need some friends. The next wave won’t ask.’

Paula snorted as she got out of the car. The next lot won’t even wipe their boots.’ She looked up the steep drive at the brick semi perched on the side of the hill. It didn’t exactly say, ‘We’ve made it’, but it was certainly a few rungs further up the ladder than the Beggs’ house. An elderly Toyota Corolla and a four-year-old Nissan Patrol sat on the drive. ‘Somebody’s home,’ she said.

The door was answered by a young man in his mid-twenties dressed in sports trousers and a V-necked cotton sweater. His haircut was razor sharp, his gold chains a hairsbreadth away from bling. He had the faintly insolent cock of the head that Paula had seen on too many men of his age, regardless of ethnicity. ‘Yeah?’ he said.

They held out their ID and Kevin introduced them. ‘And you are?’

‘Sanjar Aziz. What’s all this about? You want to talk to Raj about the bomb or what?’ He seemed surprisingly cool.

‘Raj?’ Paula said.

‘Yeah, my little bro. He was at the game, innit? Gave his name to one of your lot and came home because he knew our mum would be going mental as soon as she heard about it. You wanna come in?’

They stepped into the hallway. Laminate floor, a couple of rugs Paula wouldn’t have minded having in her own house. The air smelled of lilies, the fragrance coming from a large vase of stargazers on the windowsill. ‘Actually, Raj isn’t the reason we’re here,’ Kevin said.

Sanjar stopped in his tracks and swung round. ‘Do what?’ Now there was a hostile edge to his stare. ‘What’s all this about, copper?’

‘We’re here about Yousef.’

Sanjar frowned. ‘Yousef? What do you mean, Yousef?’ He sounded agitated. ‘You must have it wrong. Yousef is Mr Law Abiding. He doesn’t even talk on his phone while he’s driving. Whatever anybody’s said he’s done, they’re way wrong.’

Kevin took a deep breath. Nobody ever thought their family members could do any wrong. At least, not when they were talking to the police. ‘Is there somewhere we can sit down and talk?’ he said.

‘What do you mean, sit down and talk? What is going on here?’ At the sound of Sanjar’s raised voice, a door opened. A teenage face appeared, scared and hollow-eyed. Sanjar caught the movement. ‘Shut the door, Raj. Lie down like Mama told you. She’ll be back from the shop soon, she’ll kill you if you’re wandering about.’ He flapped his hands, shooing the boy back inside. Once the door was closed again, he led them into the kitchen. A small table with barely enough room for four chairs sat against one wall, cream units lining the other three. The room smelled faintly of spices, warm and bitter at one and the same time. Sanjar gestured to the table. ‘Sit down, then.’ He threw himself into the furthest chair with ill grace. ‘So. What’s this about Yousef?’ he demanded.

‘Where’s your mum and dad?’ Paula asked.

Sanjar shrugged impatiently. ‘My mum went down the shops to get some stuff for this soothing drink she wants to make for Raj. And Saturday afternoon, my dad’ll be down the mosque, drinking tea and arguing about the Koran.’ His face showed the perennial pitying contempt of child for parent. ‘He’s the devout one in this house.’

‘OK. When did Yousef go out?’ Paula asked.

‘After dinner. Mam wanted one of us to drop Raj off at the football. I had to go over to Wakefield and Yousef said he was going to meet someone in Brighouse about a new contract.’ He shifted in his seat. Paula wondered if he was hiding something.

‘New contract?’ Kevin interrupted.

The family firm. First Fabrics. We’re in the rag trade. We deal both ends-with the fabric importers and with the middlemen who buy finished articles for the retail trade. I don’t know anything about who he was meeting in Brighouse, it was news to me. So, did something happen over there? Did he get in a ruck with somebody?’

‘Do you know what he was driving?’ Kevin asked.

‘He was driving our cousin Imran’s van: A1 Electricals. See, Yousef’s van needed some work doing, and Imran was off to Ibiza for a few days, so it made sense to borrow his wheels. Save on a rental, right? Look, for the last time, is one of you going to tell me what all this is about?’

Kevin’s eyes slid round to Paula’s. She could see he really didn’t know how to say this. ‘Sanjar,’ she said, ‘can you think of any reason why Yousef would have been at Victoria Park this afternoon?’

He looked at her as if she was crazy. ‘Yousef? No, you’ve got it wrong. Raj was at the game.’ He gave a nervous little laugh. ‘I don’t know how, but there’s been a mix-up. Raj gave his name to a cop, I don’t know how it’s ended up coming back as Yousef. Yousef didn’t give a toss about football.’

‘What was Yousef wearing when he went out?’ Paula asked.

‘Wearing? Shit, I don’t know.’ Sanjar shook his head and twisted his face into a thoughtful expression. ‘No, wait. He had black trousers and a shirt on at dinner. A plain white shirt. And when he was going off, I saw him putting Imran’s overalls on. He said the clutch kept slipping and if he had to get out and mess around with it, he didn’t want his shirt getting all mucky. He likes to make a good impression, my brother.’

‘You see, here’s the thing,’ Paula said gently. ‘Obviously you know what happened this afternoon, because of Raj.’

Sanjar nodded slowly, a new look of caution on his face. He wasn’t stupid. ‘You’re telling me Yousef’s dead,’ he said. ‘You’re telling me he was at the football? And now he’s dead.’ His face begged to be contradicted. He didn’t want to believe what he thought they were telling him.

‘Not quite,’ Paula said.

Kevin, conscious of the time slipping by, said, ‘A man wearing A1 Electricals overalls and driving your cousin’s A1 Electricals van was responsible for delivering and setting off the bomb in Victoria Park. Yes, we think Yousef’s dead, but not because he got caught by chance. We think your brother was a suicide bomber.’

Sanjar skidded backwards on his chair, only saved from falling by his closeness to the kitchen cupboards. ‘No,’ he shouted, stumbling to his feet, ‘No fucking way.’

‘That’s how it looks,’ Paula said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Sanjar looked deranged. ‘Sorry? Fucking sorry? Don’t give me sorry.’ He waved his hands at them. ‘You are so wrong. My brother’s not a fucking terrorist. He’s…he’s…he’s just not like that.’ He punched the wall. ‘This is so fucked. So totally fucked. He’s going to walk in that door and laugh at you, man. No way. Just, no way.’

Paula put a hand on his arm and he jerked away as if he’d been contaminated. ‘You need to get yourself together,’ she said. ‘We are the nice guys. Very soon, the Counter Terrorism Command team are going to be here and they are going to tear your house and your lives apart. I know what we’ve told you is a terrible shock, but you have to be strong, for Raj and for your parents. Now, you and me are going to sit down and make a list of all the people Yousef knew and hung out with. And my colleague is going to go upstairs and search Yousef’s room. Which one is it?’

Sanjar blinked hard, as if he was trying to orientate himself in a world turned upside down. ‘Straight ahead at the top of the stairs. He shares with Raj. Yousef’s bed’s the one on the left.’ He felt behind him for the chair and slumped into it as Kevin left the room. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he mumbled. ‘There’s got to be some mistake.’ He looked up at Paula, his dark eyes red-rimmed. ‘There could be a mistake, right?’

‘It’s always possible. Tell you what, let me take a DNA sample from you, that’ll speed things up.’ She took a buccal swab kit from her bag and popped the lid. ‘Open wide.’ Before he could think twice about it, she swabbed the inside of his cheeks and sealed the tube shut. She opened her notebook and patted his hand. ‘Come on, Sanjar. Help us here. Everybody you can think of that Yousef knew.’

Sanjar reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. Paula knew by instinct that his mother didn’t allow smoking in the house. It was a measure of how distraught he was that he was even contemplating it. But if he went for it, so would she. Without a second thought. ‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘But these other people that are coming?’

‘The Counter Terrorism Command?’

‘Yeah. Are they going to like, arrest me and my family?’

‘I won’t lie to you,’ Paula said. ‘They might. The best way you can avoid that is to be totally honest. Never mind holding back anything you think they don’t need to know. Because they will find out, believe me. And if they find out you are not telling them the whole truth, then it will be very hard on you. Now, let’s have these names.’

Carol sat in her office and seethed. The most challenging investigation of her career, and she was effectively sidelined. Already her HQ building was crawling with the CTC personnel. According to Brandon, there were two hundred and fifty of them either there or on their way. They already had dedicated lines set up between the HOLMES suite and Ludgate Circus. When she’d gone through to find out what they wanted from her team, she’d been told her services were not required, though they wouldn’t mind having Stacey Chen on a free transfer for the duration.

She’d gathered the tatters of her dignity around her and withdrawn. Back in the MIT office, Stacey was already co-ordinating the transfer of digital CCTV footage around the stadium. ‘They want you next door,’ Carol said.

Stacey sniffed. ‘Is it a request or an order?’

‘At this point, it’s a request. That could change, though.’

Stacey glanced up from the screen she was working. ‘I’ll stay here, then. I take it we’re not just walking away?’

Carol shook her head. ‘We’ll keep our fingers in the pie. It’s our patch. And we do still have Robbie Bishop’s murder to solve. Do you want a brew?’

‘Earl Grey, please. Stacey was already immersed in her screen again.

Carol leaned against the wall, waiting for the kettle to boil. Chris Devine barrelled through the door looking thoroughly pissed off. ‘Fucking CTC bastards,’ she said to Stacey, who gestured with her head towards Carol. ‘Sorry, guv,’ she muttered, throwing her jacket over the nearest chair.

‘No need. You want a brew?’

‘I could use a large Scotch,’ Chris grumbled. ‘Failing that, a mug of builder’s tea would hit the spot.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was just wrapping up my interviews with the hospitality reception crew when half a dozen of them came barging in. You can hear them coming a corridor length away.’

‘It’s the boots,’ Carol said, pouring water on teabags.

That and the swish of their musclebound thighs rubbing together. So in they come, and as soon as they see me, it’s “on your bike, love,” like I was a journalist or something. I was out of there before you could say jackbooted fascists. And before they’d let me come back here, they made me sit down and type up my interview product. Like I was going to sneak off and not let them look at my homework.’ She shook her head. ‘I thought I was leaving them SO12 arseholes behind when I moved up here.’

Carol handed over the teas. ‘We have to co-operate,’ she said. ‘Which is not to say we can’t also plough our own furrow.’

‘Speaking of which, where’s the rest of the crew?’

‘Paula and Kevin are out there following up on the A1 Electricals van, see what they can get ahead of the CTC. People have a way of clamming up when the men in black kick the doors down,’ Carol said. ‘I’m not sure about Sam. He was checking out CCTV in the Vestey Stand last time I saw him.’

‘He’ll be off following some red-hot lead he doesn’t want to share with the rest of us poor imbeciles,’ Chris said dryly.

‘He’s his own worst enemy,’ Stacey said without looking up. ‘He does it for all the right reasons.’

Chris and Carol shared a look. Neither could remember Stacey ever commenting on any of her colleagues. Her complete refusal to gossip was legendary. ‘Later,’ Chris mouthed conspiratorially at Carol. She slurped a mouthful of tea and breathed deeply. ‘I tell you, I never want to see the likes of that again. I still can’t get my head round the carnage. Thirty-five dead, they’re saying. I never thought I’d see that in Bradfield.’

‘It’s amazing it wasn’t more,’ Carol said. ‘If he’d planted it at the same spot on the opposite stand where there were just seats instead of corporate boxes, there would have been hundreds dead.’ She closed her eyes momentarily. ‘It’s too horrible to contemplate.’

‘There would have been more if the crowd hadn’t behaved so well. I expected more crush injuries. I tell you, I know it’s a cliché, but it is things like this that bring out the best in people. Did you see that woman on Grayson Street, set up a trestle table outside her house, making cups of tea for people? Spirit of the Blitz an’ all that.’

‘And sometimes it’s the unlikeliest people who end up being heroes,’ Carol said. ‘I saw a bloke this afternoon-one of the paramedics was taking him to an ambulance, he’d taken too much out of himself getting people out of the wreckage. And I knew this bloke. He used to be one of us till he got drummed out of the Brownies for planting evidence in a murder inquiry. He’s the last person I would have had down for helping anybody other than number one. So I suppose we’ve all got it in us to do the decent thing.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Except maybe the men in black.’

Right on cue, one of the foot soldiers stuck his head round the door. ‘You got a DCI Jordan anywhere round here?’

That would be me, officer. How can I help you?’

‘You’re wanted down Scargill Street. Some spot of bother with one of your lads?’ He began to retreat but Carol stopped him with a look that would have corroded tungsten.

‘Who wants me?’

‘Whoever’s in charge. Look, I’m just the messenger, all right?’ He breathed heavily and cast his eyes upwards. ‘You already know all I know.’

‘I’ll finish my bloody tea,’ Carol muttered. But the defiance was only skin deep. Within five minutes, she was out the door, leaving Stacey and Chris to wonder what the hell Sam Evans had done this time.

They didn’t have much time for speculation. Not long after Carol’s departure, Paula and Kevin burst in, looking pleased with themselves. Kevin, who was walking like a man with a bad back, made straight for Stacey, then opened his jacket and took out a laptop. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘The bomber’s laptop.’

Stacey raised her eyebrows. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘From the bomber’s bedroom.’

‘Alleged bomber,’ Paula cut in. ‘Yousef Aziz. He was certainly driving the van and wearing the overalls earlier today.’

Chris came over and prodded the laptop with her finger. ‘I don’t think we’re supposed to have this.’

‘No, and I don’t think we’ll be hanging on to it for long, so I need to get as much off it as I can,’ Stacey said, reaching for it.

‘How did you get that away from the men in black?’ Chris said.

‘Speed,’ Paula said. ‘We were in and out before they got there.’ She explained their progress from Imran Begg to Yousef Aziz. ‘I suspect the CTC guys freaked them out so comprehensively it took them a while to give up Aziz and his address. They’re so bloody scary, it’s counter-productive when you’re dealing with decent law-abiding people. They just freeze up. Which worked to our advantage. We got a good twenty minutes with Aziz’s brother Sanjar, and the CTC were just turning into the street as we were driving out of it.’

‘Nice work,’ Chris said. ‘So how’s it looking? The usual? Young bloke gets his head turned by the mad mullahs and the Al-Quaeda quartermasters fix him up with the necessary?’

Paula sat down on the desk next to Chris. ‘I don’t know. His brother was adamant that Aziz wasn’t into that stuff. According to Sanjar, Yousef was dead set against fundamentalism.’

‘We can’t judge Yousef on what his brother says,’ Kevin said. ‘Look at the London bombers. Their friends and families acted like they were gobsmacked. OK, I didn’t find a bomb-making manual in the bedroom, but I didn’t get that long in there, and some of the newspapers and books were in script I couldn’t read. We’ll have a better idea when the CTC have stripped the house back to the bricks and gone through every piece of paper.’

‘They’ll know,’ Chris corrected him cynically. ‘Who knows what they’ll decide to tell us.’

‘You don’t need them, Stacey said absently. ‘You’ve got his laptop and you’ve got me.’

‘Go, Stacey,’ Kevin said, punching the air. ‘Where’s the DCI, by the way?’

‘Down Scargill Street,’ Chris said.

‘Of her own free will?’

‘Kind of. I think Sam’s dropped a bollock. One of the men in black came in and said there was a problem with one of her lads. And since you’re sitting here, chances are it’s not you.’

Paula raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh shit. Poor old Sam. What do you think is worse? Pissing off the Imperial Storm Troopers or having to be rescued by the chief on the warpath?’

Carol had never seen anything like it. Scargill Street had been transformed into a citadel under siege. Armed police guarded every exit and a police helicopter hovered above, its spotlight pinning her shadow to the ground as she approached. It took a full three minutes for the guard on the back door to get her entry clearance, and when she walked into the familiar hallway, another armed officer was waiting to escort her. ‘I thought it was supposed to be secret, where you hold your terrorist suspects?’ she said conversationally as they marched through deserted corridors towards the custody suite.

‘It is a secret. We don’t tell the media.’

‘You’ve got a city-centre police station better guarded than Buckingham Palace and you think people won’t notice?’

‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’ he said, taking the turn that Carol knew would bring them to the cells. ‘They’re not allowed to print it.’

Give me strength. Carol closed her eyes momentarily. ‘I thought it was somebody staging an attack that you were worried about.’

‘We’re not worried,’ he said, in a tone that said the conversation was over. He knocked on the door that led to the custody area. A moment passed, then they were buzzed in. The guard opened the door for her and stood back. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Someone will come and get you.’ He slammed the door behind her.

The familiar area was empty apart from the custody sergeant sitting behind the desk, his paperwork in front of him. To her surprise, Carol recognized him from the first investigation she’d ever worked for Bradfield Police. She walked over, saying, ‘It’s Sergeant Wood, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right, ma’am. I’m surprised you remembered. It must be, what…? Seven years?’

‘Something like that. I didn’t expect to see one of ours working the desk.’

‘It’s the one concession they made to the notion that somebody has to guard the guards,’ Wood said. ‘I’m supposed to make sure nobody’s human rights get breached.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Like I could stop them doing anything they wanted behind closed doors.’ Before Carol could reply, a loud buzzer sounded. Wood waved her urgently to one side. ‘Against the wall, please, ma’am. For your own good. Now you get to see the grunts in action.’

Three corridors radiated off from the custody area like the tines of a trident. The clatter of heavy boots on hard flooring came first, then four of them with semi-automatics at port arms came running round the corner at the far end of the corridor. All in black riot gear, all with shaved heads, all terrifying. They stopped outside a cell door and began chanting, ‘Stand up, stand up, stand up.’ The noise seemed to go on for a very long time, though it could not have been more than half a minute. Carol could feel the adrenalin coursing through her, the fearsome sound reverberating inside her chest, and she was one of the empowered. How much worse must it be for anyone under arrest?

The lead grunt threw the door open so hard it slammed against the wall. Three of them disappeared inside while the fourth filled the doorway. Carol could hear more shouting. ‘On your feet. Against the wall. Face the wall. Spread your arms. Spread your legs. Stand still, you fucker.’ On and on, an endless barrage of commands. At last, the door man moved away and two of his colleagues backed out of the cell. The third person out was a young Asian man, eyes wide, jaw set. He was trying to look through his guards, but they kept thwarting him by thrusting their faces towards his.

Once in the corridor, he was forced against the wall. One man behind him, one to the side, one in front. The fourth man ranged ahead of them, shouting, ‘Clear!’ every time he passed a doorway. They escorted the prisoner down the hallway, moving at a speed that made him take tiny little steps.

When the lead officer emerged in the custody area, he did a double take and stumbled when he saw Carol. ‘Identify yourself,’ he barked at her, swinging round and shouting, ‘Hold right there,’ back down the corridor.

Carol rolled her eyes. ‘Well, obviously, I’m a cop.’ She took out her ID and gave him name and rank. She jerked a head at Wood. ‘He knows who I am.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he barked in military tones. ‘All clear,’ he shouted. Carol watched while the prisoner was led into the interview corridor and hustled into one of the rooms there. The grunts took up post outside the room.

‘Jesus,’ Carol said, exhaling.

‘Something else, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I hate those bastard bombers as much as the next one, but I wonder what price we’re paying when we fight them like this,’ Wood said. ‘Before this afternoon, I was as gung-ho as anybody else. But what I’ve seen today…This special training they’ve had. I think they come out with three key words-intimidation, intimidation, intimidation. Anybody that gets dragged in and put through this and they’ve done nowt-well, it’s a recruiting sergeant for the mad mullahs, isn’t it?’

‘I’m losing count of how many times I’ve had to take a deep breath today,’ Carol said. ‘Do you know who I’m supposed to see, by the way? There’s things I need to be doing. Thirty-five people died this afternoon. I don’t see how it serves their families to have me kicking my heels down here.’

‘Didn’t they tell you?’ Wood said, resignation on his face.

‘No, they didn’t. I was just told that one of my lads was in a spot of bother.’

Wood shook his head. ‘Rings no bells with me. Hang on a minute.’ He picked up a phone. ‘I’ve got DCI Jordan here…Well, I think you should make time…With respect, we’ve all got a lot on our plates this afternoon…’ He looked at the phone in disgust and put it down. ‘Give them a minute,’ he said, parodying their tough tones.

A couple of minutes passed, then the man Carol knew only as Johnny came through the door that led to the main part of the station. ‘DCI Jordan. If you’d come with me, please.’

‘Where And why?’ Carol asked, her temper hanging by a thread.

Johnny glanced at Wood. ‘I’ll explain everything in a minute, if you’d just come with me.’

Carol sketched a wave to Wood. ‘If I’m not back in half an hour, Sergeant, call Mr Brandon.’

‘There’s no need to be so bolshie, you know,’ Johnny said plaintively as they climbed the stairs to the main part of the station. ‘We really are all on the same side.’

‘That’s what worries me,’ Carol said. ‘Now, why the hell am I here?’

Johnny led her into a small office and waved her to a chair. He picked up another chair, turned it round and straddled it, his muscular arms folded across the back. ‘I’d really like for us to build some bridges here. It doesn’t help your team or mine if we’re at odds.’

Carol shrugged. ‘So talk to me. Don’t act as if my team is part of the problem. Don’t patronize us. For a start, you could try treating me like a ranking officer by telling me why I’m here.’

‘Point taken. Your boy Sam?’

‘See what I mean? “Your boy Sam.” He’s Detective Constable Evans. Yes?’

Johnny inclined his head. ‘DC Evans was at the stadium. What was he supposed to be doing?’

‘Are you interviewing me?’ Carol said, not even trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice.

Johnny ran a hand over his shaven head, his expression perplexed. ‘Look, he said, sounding exasperated. ‘We got off on the wrong foot. You don’t like us trampling all over your ground, and I totally understand that. I am not interrogating you, I’m just trying to clarify something before it turns into a situation for all of us.’

‘That’s not how it feels.’

‘No. I realize that. We’re not very good at manners. We’re not supposed to be. They knock the etiquette out of us when they train us for CTC. I’m sorry. I know we come off as arseholes, but that’s how we need to be, doing what we do. We’re not stupid, though. We didn’t get our ranks because of our size.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of frankness. ‘One of our teams found your DC in a quiet corner of the stadium with a young Asian male dressed in overalls. He was clearly questioning him. When our guys appeared, the witness, suspect, whatever, clammed up. And your boy refused to share the product of his interview. So we brought them back here. Since when neither of them has said a bloody word. Apart from their names. Oh, and the Asian wants a lawyer. So, I thought to myself, what’s the best way to resolve this? And I thought of you.’

‘You thought of me how? As somebody you could bully? Somebody you could intimidate?’

Johnny gave a harsh sigh. ‘No. I thought of you as somebody who had impressed me with her smarts. Somebody who had a rep in the Met…’

‘What do you mean, a rep in the Met?’ Carol demanded defensively.

Johnny looked disbelieving. ‘A rep as a bloody good cop,’ he said. ‘What do you think? People I respect think you’re the dog’s bollocks. So I thought you were the one who could persuade DC Evans to co-operate with this investigation.’

‘Where is he?’

Johnny considered for a long moment. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to him.’

She followed him back down the hall to another interview room. Sam Evans was sitting on a chair tipped back against the wall, hands clasped behind his head in an attitude of relaxation. When Carol walked in, he jerked forward and stood up. ‘Sorry you got dragged into this,’ he said.

Carol turned to Johnny. ‘Could you leave us, please?’

Johnny bowed his head and retreated. Sam watched him go, shaking his head with ill-disguised contempt. ‘What have they said I’ve done?’

They say they found you interviewing a young Asian male wearing overalls at Victoria Park. That the pair of you clammed up and refused to say anything. That you won’t hand over the product of your interview.’ Carol leaned against the wall, her arms folded across her chest.

Sam gave an incredulous little laugh. ‘That’s one spin you could put on it. Try it from another angle. For a start, he’s wearing overalls because he’s a cleaner at the stadium. Nothing suspicious about that, is there? For another thing, he’s clearly not a suspect. His name is Vijay Gupta. He’s a Hindu, not a Muslim. So it seems to me that the CTC guys are getting their knickers in a twist over somebody who is in no sense a potential suspect. I don’t have any product to hand over, ma’am. We’d barely started talking.’

Carol didn’t know whether to believe him. He was, she knew, the perfect dissembler. What mattered was getting him out of there. Then she could find out whether he was telling the truth. ‘Give me a minute,’ she said.

She went back outside, where Johnny was waiting. ‘There’s nothing to tell. The man he had just begun questioning isn’t even a Muslim. Now, if you’re sincere about building bridges, you shouldn’t stop me leaving here right now, with my officer. And I suggest you let Mr Gupta go home, since the only thing he’s done to warrant your suspicion is to talk to a police officer.’ She turned round, opened the door and said, ‘DC Evans? Time we were on our way.’

Head high, Carol led the way through familiar corridors to the back entrance of Scargill Street. Nobody tried to stop them. Once they were in the car and out of the car park, Sam said, ‘Working on the principle that we were being recorded, I wasn’t strictly accurate in there, ma’am.’

Carol flashed a quick glance at his rueful face and sighed. ‘That’s what I was afraid of, Sam. That funny smell? It’s bridges burning.’

Carol’s plans to follow up Sam’s disclosure were thwarted by the unexpected presence of John Brandon in her squad room, forbidding in his dress uniform, cap under his arm. Her heart sank. Had her latest run-in with CTC made it back ahead of her? He looked as serious as she’d ever seen him. She’d barely made it through the door when he spoke. ‘DCI Jordan, I was looking for you. I need a word.’ He gestured towards her office and she led the way in.

‘Carol, I have some difficult news,’ he said, settling into one of the visitors’ chairs and tossing his cap carelessly on to the other.

‘Sir?’

‘You remember Tom Cross? Ex-Detective…’

She nodded, caught off-balance by the direction of the conversation. ‘I saw him this afternoon at Victoria Park. A paramedic was helping him to an ambulance. He’d apparently been helping the injured, but he’d taken too much out of himself.’ Understanding dawned. ‘He didn’t make it,’ she said, surprised at the stab of sorrow she felt.

‘No, he didn’t make it. His heart gave out.’

‘That’s tragic,’ Carol said. ‘Who’d have thought that helping other people would be the death of him? Did he have heart problems?’

Brandon shook his head. ‘No. And it would appear that it wasn’t helping with the rescue attempts that killed him.’ He looked troubled; Carol suddenly saw how he had aged in the past few years and it gave her a disturbing glimpse of her own mortality.

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘One of the doctors on the civil emergency team down at Bradfield Cross is Elinor Blessing.’

Carol nodded. ‘She’s the one who spotted the ricin poisoning.’

‘Exactly. And she says herself that’s probably the only reason poison occurred to her in this case. But occur to her it did. Sadly, before they could get enough of the antidote into his system, his heart failed. They tried to keep him going till they could finish the treatment, but it didn’t work out.’

Shocked, Carol clutched at a straw. ‘You sure she’s not just seeing poison everywhere because of Robbie?’

‘I suppose it’s possible. But she says this wasn’t ricin. She thinks it was another plant derivative, though. Foxgloves or something. The bottom line is that she says she can’t write this up as natural causes or accident.’

‘So, murder, then?’ Carol said.

‘It looks that way. At least to Dr Blessing it does. I want your team on this. He was one of us, no matter what happened at the end of his career. You should look at possible links to Robbie Bishop too. Maybe ask Tony what he thinks, if he’s up to it.’ Brandon picked at a piece of lint on his black trousers. ‘I know it’s a bit of an irony, given what Tom thought about Tony and his ilk. But we throw everything at this. Leave his widow till tomorrow, but somebody should talk to the doctor this evening. She should be in A&E till late.’ He stood up and retrieved his cap.

‘We’ll do our best,’ Carol said. ‘But there were another thirty-five murders in Bradfield today. We’re trying to give them our best attention too.’

Brandon turned back, his face stony. ‘Leave them to CTC. Concentrate on Tom Cross.’

‘With respect, sir…’

‘That’s an order, Chief Inspector. I’ll expect a preliminary report on Monday.’ He marched out of the room, erect as if on parade.

That is just so wrong,’ Carol muttered under her breath. ‘So bloody wrong.’ She leaned back in her chair and sat for five minutes staring at the ceiling. Then she jumped to her feet and stood in the doorway. ‘Everybody-in here, now,’ she called.

They jammed themselves in, Kevin and Chris claiming the chairs on the grounds of seniority. ‘Sorry about this,’ Carol said. ‘But I don’t want anybody barging in on us. Sam, keep an eye on the main door. OK. Here’s how it is. I know you are all as angry and upset as I am about the attack on Victoria Park this afternoon. It was a horrific experience for everyone concerned. But it’s our job to get beyond our emotional response and to do what’s necessary.’ She pushed her hands through her shaggy blonde hair and jiggled her head. ‘And I believe you’re all as determined to do that as I am.

‘Only problem is, we’ve been told not to investigate the thirty-five murders that happened in our force area this afternoon. Or at least, not unless we’re invited to carry out certain tasks on behalf of the CTC. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s just not good enough for me. It’s my intention to pursue such lines of inquiry as come our way. We have a unique perspective here-this is our patch and we know it. We’ll pass on outcomes to CTC, but in the first instance, what comes to us stays with us. It’s probably not going to do our careers any good, but I’m not in this for the sake of the glory. If there’s any one of you who isn’t happy about that, say so now. I won’t hold it against you, and there’s plenty of other work to be going on with.’ She looked around expectantly. Nobody moved.

‘OK. In that case, we’re in this together. Now…’ She saw Stacey raise one finger. ‘Stacey?’

‘We’ve already got Yousef Aziz’s laptop,’ she said. ‘Kevin and Paula brought it back from his house.’

Carol frowned. ‘Who’s Yousef Aziz?’

‘The bomber,’ Kevin said. He brought her up to speed on what he and Paula had uncovered. ‘We didn’t want to phone you when you were with CTC,’ he added apologetically.

‘Not a problem. Great work, guys. How are you doing with it, Stacey?’

‘He tried to cover his tracks, but it’s all over his hard disk. Recipes for TATP, how to build a bomb, how to make a detonator. Deleted emails inquiring about the availability of chemicals. I’m copying it all right now, before we hand it over to CTC. What’s interesting…’ she tailed off, unsure of her ground when she wasn’t talking about her speciality.

‘Yes?’ Carol said. ‘What’s interesting is…?’

‘Well, it’s a bit of a dog that didn’t bark,’ Stacey said. ‘Apart from the deleted emails about the chemicals, there are no emails at all on this laptop. Nothing to indicate any co-conspirators. It’s clean. Either there’s another computer somewhere, or they communicated face to face and via texts, or he did this by himself.’

‘There must be a computer at work. It’s a family firm, he’ll have had access,’ Chris said.

‘Too late,’ Stacey said. ‘CTC have already got that.’

‘How do you know that?’ Chris said.

‘News footage on Sky. They just showed the men in black raiding First Fabrics and walking out with armfuls of hardware,’ Stacey said. ‘That’s the advantage of having two screens.’

‘Thanks, Stacey. That’s given us something to think about Carol said. ‘And we do have something else which we think we have to ourselves at this point. Sam?’

Sam squared his shoulders, ready to strut a little. ‘I got a lovely break at Victoria Park. When Chris texted us to say the suspect was a young Asian man wearing overalls and a baseball cap, I was walking along the back of the stand when what do I see but an Asian male wearing overalls and a baseball cap. So I get alongside him double quick. Turns out he’s not even Muslim. His name’s Vijay Gupta and he’s a cleaner at the ground. I run the bomber’s description past him and when I get to the A1 Electricals van, I see him reacting. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but when I push him, he says he saw a van like that on Thursday evening. He and his brother were visiting a cousin who lives in a bedsit in Colton and he noticed the van because it was parked round the back, out of the way, where him and his cousin usually park so they don’t piss off the residents, and he’d never seen it there before.’ Sam couldn’t keep the self-satisfied grin off his face.

‘You did get an address before they huckled you off to Scargill Street?’ Kevin said stiffly.

‘Oh yeah, I got an address.’ Sam reached for a piece of paper and a marker pen off Carol’s desk. He wrote something down, then displayed it for all to see. ‘You could say I got an address.’

‘No, Sam, you didn’t get an address. We got an anonymous phone tip,’ Carol said firmly. ‘Things are already difficult enough with CTC without us going out of our way to make things worse. We got a phone tip and we decided to check it out before we wasted CTC’s time with it. That’s the line. Now, before we all get stuck into that, there are a couple of other matters. Paula, I know it feels like a lifetime ago, but did you get any further with tracking down Jack Anderson?’

Paula looked at Stacey, who shook her head. ‘No, chief. No progress.’

‘And I got nowhere with Robbie’s parents. They’d never heard the name. So we’ve got no active leads to pursue on Robbie?’ They all exchanged glances, disappointment obvious. ‘I’d prefer it if that wasn’t the case, but it does mean we’re not being derelict by looking at other things. And there is one very big other thing that has just landed in our laps. Seven years ago, a detective superintendent left Bradfield Police under something of a cloud,’ Carol said, an image of her old boss as he had been slipping unwanted into her mind.

‘Popeye Cross,’ Kevin said.

Carol inclined her head towards him. ‘That’s right. Well, Tom Cross redeemed himself this afternoon. He was one of the heroes who dragged the injured to safety after the bomb. He ended up being taken to hospital himself. He died there earlier this evening. But not because of anything he did in the wake of the bombing. According to the doctor who treated him, he was poisoned.’

‘Poisoned?’ Paula interrupted. ‘Like Robbie? With ricin?’

‘No, not with ricin. Though the doctor who treated Tom Cross is the same one who diagnosed the ricin in Robbie,’ Carol said.

‘Sounds like she’s either one smart cookie or else Munchausen’s by Proxy,’ Chris said. Carol thought she was only half-joking.

‘Well, that’s what we’re going to have to figure out. Paula, I want you to go down to Bradfield Cross A&E and talk to Dr Blessing.’

Paula’s face said it all. They were chasing the big game, she was consigned to the small fry. ‘But, chief…’

‘Paula, you’re the best interviewer we have. Besides, you know her already. I need you to do this because we need everything we can get from her. What poison it was. When it was likely to have been administered. Make arrangements for samples to go to toxicology, and get the results from any lab work they did at Bradfield Cross. Stacey, get what you can from Aziz’s hard drive, then be very polite and hand it in to the CTC people in the HOLMES suite. The rest of you, with me. It’s time to do what we’re paid for.’

‘It’s a bit freaky, this Tom Cross murder,’ Kevin said as Chris eased the car through the heavy traffic towards Yousef Aziz’s address.

‘What? Because you knew the geezer?’

‘Well yeah, that. But the poison thing. If Danny Wade and Robbie Bishop are connected, that’s two guys who went to Harriestown High and ended up poisoned, right?’

‘Right. But I don’t think where they went to school is a big deal.’

‘No? Would it surprise you if I told you that Tom Cross is another former pupil of Harriestown High?’ Kevin was drumming his fingers on his knees. ‘Another one who started off with nothing and ended up loaded. He won the pools, you know.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Chris said. ‘You’re right, it is a bit freaky. But I think that’s all it is.’

Kevin shook his head. ‘No. Three’s the charm. It’s more than just a bizarre coincidence.’

Chris swore at a white van cutting in front of her. ‘How can it be? You think somebody’s killing people from your old school because they’ve made a bob or two? I tell you, even Tony Hill would balk at that one.’

‘You can’t argue with the facts.’

‘We don’t know hardly any of the facts,’ Chris pointed out. ‘But if you think you’re on the right track, you’d better watch your back,’ she added, a tease in her voice.

‘What do you mean? I’m skint, me,’ Kevin said.

‘Yeah, but you drive a rich man’s car, she said, slowing for the final turn before their destination.

‘It’s not a rich man’s car. You could have it for sixteen grand,’ Kevin said. ‘Anyway, it’s not me I’m worried about. There’s other rich bastards around who went to the Double Aitch. Maybe we should be warning them.’

Chris shook her head, amused. ‘Do me a favour? Make sure I’m in the room when you run it past Jordan.’ She pulled up on double yellow lines outside their target address. ‘OK, here we are.’ She got out of the car but Kevin didn’t move. Chris leaned back into the car. ‘Come on, Kev. Brood on your own time. We’ve got Imperial Storm Troopers to piss off.’

He scratched his head and opened the door. ‘For once, I wish Tony Hill was around,’ he said as he followed Chris up the drive. ‘Poison, the Double Aitch and money. Times three. He’d make a case.’

It didn’t take long to find out which bedsit had belonged to Yousef Aziz. Two knocked doors and they had the answer. For form’s sake, Carol knocked and shouted, ‘Police, open up,’ before Sam and Kevin shoulder-charged the door. Checking that they were all gloved up, Carol led the way into the comfortless room. The bitter tang of chemicals hung in the air, making her eyes water and her sinuses prickle.

There wasn’t much to occupy the four of them. A fridge that contained nothing but labelled containers of chemicals; a draining board with rinsed glass apparatus; a torn packet of rocket engines with two still inside the clear plastic; and a small sports holdall.

‘Should we get the bomb guys up here to check out the holdall?’ Kevin asked, his face tight with nerves.

Her first instinct was to say, No, to hell with it. But when she examined that gut reaction, she couldn’t find a rationale for it. And without a rationale, she couldn’t take that level of risk with their lives. For a moment, she dithered, hating herself for it. She wanted to inspire her team, not give them grounds for worry. ‘Give me a minute,’ she said, stepping out on to the landing. She pulled out her phone and called Tony’s hospital room. He answered on the first ring. ‘Carol,’ he said before she spoke. It surprised her because the hospital phones had no called ID feature. Then she understood that he didn’t expect calls from anyone else.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine. But I need your help. Imagine we’re in the bedsit the bomber used to build his device. There’s no evidence of anybody else being involved. There’s a holdall sitting by the door. Is it likely to be booby-trapped?’

‘No,’ he said decisively.

‘Why? I mean, that was my gut reaction, but why?’

‘It’s another gesture of contempt. Look, here we are, right in the midst of you. This is how we work, this is who we are. We want to show you just how easy this is. Go ahead, Carol. Open the bag.’

She let out a sigh of relief. ‘Thanks.’

‘And if I’m wrong, and you do get blown to kingdom come, I’ll buy you dinner.’

She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’

‘Come round when you’re done. It doesn’t matter how late it is, just come.’

‘I will She closed the phone and walked back in. The other three were clustered round the draining board reading a list of instructions on the wall.

‘Organized little shit,’ Chris said.

‘But still no sign of any accomplices,’ Sam noted.

‘We’re opening the bag,’ Carol said. ‘Well, I’m opening it. Out on the landing, you three.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Chris said. ‘If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for all of us, right, guys?’ Both men looked uncertain, but they made no move for the door. ‘Come on, the Al-Quaeda lot don’t booby-trap their bomb factories, they want us to see how clever they are.’ So saying, she grabbed the bag, swung it on to the narrow bed and unzipped it.

It was a moment of profound bathos. Nothing could have been further from what they expected. A pair of jeans, a pair of chinos. A pair of blue Converse shoes. Five T-shirts. Two striped Ralph Lauren shirts. A lightweight fleece hoodie. Four pairs of boxers, four pairs of black sports socks. ‘Looks as if he was planning on coming back here,’ Carol said, puzzled. ‘What kind of suicide bomber packs for his trip to paradise?’

Chris had her hand inside the bag, fumbling with a zip. ‘There’s more,’ she said, reaching in. A state-of-the-art mobile WAP phone, a digital camera, an EU passport, a driving licence and a folded sheet of paper. Chris handed the paper to Carol who unfolded it.

‘It’s an e-ticket. For this evening’s flight to Toronto,’ she said. ‘Booked through hopefully.co.uk.’

Chris reached for her phone. ‘Christ, I hope Stacey’s still got his machine.’ She dialled and said, ‘Stace? It’s Chris. You still got Aziz’s laptop?…Great. He’s got a flight booked through hopefully.co.uk. I need you to…yeah, that’s it. Call me back.’ She ended the call. ‘She’s going to see whether he saved his ID and password on the computer. If he did, then she can access his booking history, see what else comes up.’

Kevin was studying the passport and the driving licence. This is very odd,’ he said. ‘Not only does it look like he was planning to come back, it also looks like he didn’t expect to be a suspect. He’s using his own passport and his own driving licence, as if he doesn’t expect anybody in Canada to be looking for him. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Maybe it was his own little fantasy,’ Sam said. ‘What got him through it.’

Carol picked up the mobile phone and bagged it. This goes to Stacey. The rest of it, put it back together again the way you found it, Chris. Time to come clean.’ She took out her phone and the card she’d been given earlier and keyed in the unfamiliar number. When it was answered, she said, ‘David? This is Carol Jordan. I think we’ve found your bomb factory.’ She tossed the bagged phone to Sam and made the ‘shoo’ gesture with her free hand. ‘An anonymous tip. Didn’t want to bother you with it until we were sure it panned out.’ She winked at Chris and Kevin. ‘No, we haven’t touched a thing. You never know what might be booby-trapped…No, I’ll have my officers wait here for you.’ She gave him the address and ended the call. ‘When the CTC get here, you’re free to go.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s been a long day. We’ll reconvene at eight tomorrow.’

Walking across the cracked tarmac to her car, Carol felt every minute of that long day. Her muscles ached and her body craved a drink. There were plenty of bottles at home, stacked in the rack, waiting for her. But she had one more call to make before she could choose one of those. Maybe she could stop at an off-licence, pick out a decent red, something good to share. He’d like that. And it gave her all the excuse she needed to slip into the comforting embrace of alcohol. Anything to take her mind away from those twisted and torn bodies. When she closed her eyes, she did not want to revisit the injured, the dying and the dead.

The waiting area of A&E at Bradfield Cross had nothing to recommend it as a place to spend a Saturday night. People wandered around with plastic cups of tea, bottles of water and cans of fizzy drinks, looking dazed and miserable. The chairs were full of bewildered and exhausted relatives of the injured, their children sleeping or grizzling. Journalists kept sneaking in and drifted from person to person, trying to get some quotes before they were spotted and ordered out. The department had been closed to routine casualties, which provoked frequent loud arguments with the security guards, battles which threatened to spill over from the verbal to the physical at any moment. When Paula arrived, a pair of drunks with bloody faces had been remonstrating with the security guards. She had walked straight up to them, face to face and toe to toe with the noisier one. ‘Fuck off now or spend the night in the cells,’ she snarled. ‘Don’t you know what happened here today? Take your scratches somewhere else.’

The drunk thought about it for a millisecond then, seeing something implacable in her face, he backed off. ‘Fucking dyke pig bitch,’ he shouted once he was far enough away.

The security guards looked almost impressed. ‘If we could threaten them like that, we’d have no trouble of a night,’ one said, holding the door open for her.

‘You obviously need more dyke pig bitches to teach you how to do it, she muttered as she waded through the sea of miserable humanity to the desk. She looked up at the clock. Ten past ten. Her interview with Jana Jankowicz felt like half a lifetime away. A receptionist with cornrows and nails that could have been stripped off and used as luges for small children gave her a cool, weary look. ‘I’m looking for Dr Blessing,’ she said, producing her ID.

The receptionist sniffed. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Take seat,’ she added automatically.

Paula wanted to laugh and to cry simultaneously. ‘I’ll just wait here, if it’s all right with you.’ She leaned against the counter and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the discordant background noises.

A touch on her arm made her start back to full consciousness. Elinor Blessing was looking at her with a faint smile. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought only junior doctors could actually sleep standing up.’

Paula cracked a smile. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said. ‘Thanks for seeing me. I know you’re run off your feet today.’

‘It’s eased up now,’ Elinor said, leading Paula back into the main wing of the hospital. ‘We’ve pretty much done all we can down here. It’s just that we’ve still got some patients who really need to be admitted, only we’ve not got beds for them here. You’ve saved me from having to call round to try and find somewhere for them to go.’

They ended up in a doctors’ coffee room on the third floor. It reminded Paula of every similar room she’d ever been in. The same battered chairs past their best, rickety tables marked with rings, unmatching mugs and hectoring notices about washing up, stealing biscuits and putting rubbish in bins. Elinor got a couple of mugs of coffee from a machine and plonked one in front of Paula. ‘That should keep you awake till some time next week. It’s junior-doctor strength.’

‘Thanks.’ Paula didn’t know why this woman was being so nice to her, but she wasn’t about to fight it. She took a sip of coffee and found no grounds to disagree with Elinor’s assessment of the brew. ‘So, Tom Cross. You think he was poisoned?’ Paula took out her notebook.

Elinor shook her head. ‘When I spoke to someone earlier, that’s what I thought. Now I’ve had some of the labs back, I don’t think so. I know so.’

‘OK. And what did your tests tell you?’

Elinor fiddled with her mug. ‘Most doctors, the only poisoning they’ll ever see is when people take deliberate or accidental overdoses. We’re not trained to look for it. Not really. So it’s very weird for me to see two cases of deliberate poisoning in the same week. At first, I thought I was imagining things. But wasn’t. Tom Cross was deliberately poisoned with a cardiac glycoside.’

‘Can you spell that for me?’ Paula gave Elinor her best pathetic shrug. ‘And then can you tell me what it is?’

Elinor took the notebook from her and wrote it down. ‘A cardiac glycoside is a naturally occurring compound, generally found in plants. It acts primarily on the heart, either beneficially or not, depending on the glycoside in question and on how much you absorb. An example would be foxgloves, which are the source of digoxin. It’s used as a heart medicine, but the wrong dose will kill you.’ She handed back the notebook with a smile.

‘So is that what killed Tom Cross? Foxgloves?’

‘No. What killed him was oleander.’

‘Oleander?’

‘You’ve probably seen it on holiday abroad. It’s a bushy shrub with narrow leaves and the flowers are pink or white. It’s pretty common and it’s very poisonous. I looked it up earlier. There’s a story that some of Napoleon’s soldiers used oleander twigs to kebab their meat with and by morning they were dead. There is an antidote, but often patients die before they can absorb enough of it to make a difference. And to be honest, when you consider Tom Cross’s age and weight, his heart probably wasn’t in great shape to start with. He didn’t have much of a chance. I’m sorry. I know he used to be a police officer.’

‘I never knew him when he was in the job,’ Paula said. ‘But my boss did. So, Dr Blessing…’

‘Elinor. It’s Elinor, please.’

Was she flirting? Paula was too tired to work it out. Or, to be honest, to care. Tonight, all she wanted were the facts, so she could go home and sleep. The coffee wasn’t working, apparently. She stifled a yawn. ‘So, Elinor, have you got any idea when this poison would have been administered? And how?’

‘It acts quite quickly. He said he’d had stomach cramps and a couple of incidents of diarrhoea at the football match. While he was still lucid, he said he’d started feeling bad after lunch. He’d had lamb kebabs with rice and a sauce with herbs, he said. You’ve got two possible sources of oleandrin right there. The lamb could have been marinated with oleander leaves, or sap. Then the twigs could have been used to kebab the lamb. Like the Napoleonic story.’ She shook her head. ‘Horrible. So insidious a way to kill someone. Such a breach of trust.’

‘Did he say where he’d had lunch?’

‘He said someone had cooked it for him. So I imagine it was at their house.’ Elinor rubbed the bridge of her nose as she struggled to remember what Tom Cross had said. ‘Was it Jack…? No, not Jack. Jake. That was it. Jake.’

Suddenly Paula was awake, her mind racing with connections. ‘You’re sure it was Jake and not Jack?’

Elinor looked uncertain, catching a corner of her lower lip with her teeth. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Jake. But I could be mistaken.’

Harriestown High, Paula thought. Jack Anderson. Robbie Bishop, Danny Wade and now maybe Tom Cross. Was that the link? Was that what drew them together? They couldn’t have known each other at school, not given the disparity in ages. But maybe there was some former pupil organization they all belonged to. Some charity event at the school that had brought them together. Some occasion where they’d all witnessed something they shouldn’t have? ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ she said softly.

‘Really?’

‘You have no idea,’ Paula said. Now she was wide awake. She knew there would be no sleep for her until she’d found out where Tom Cross had gone to school. She wasn’t sure where to look for that information at half past ten on a Saturday night, but she knew a woman who would.

Tony drifted slowly up into consciousness. In the space of a week, he’d grown so accustomed to the comings and goings of the nursing staff that the presence of another person in his room was no longer enough to wake him up. It took something more. Something like the suck and slither and pop of a cork leaving a bottle, followed by the soft glug of liquid into plastic. ‘Carol,’ he groaned as he put the pieces together. In the dim city light that seeped through the thin curtains, he could just make out her shape in the chair next to the bed. He fumbled for the bed control and eased himself upwards.

‘Shall I put the light on?’ she asked.

‘Pull the curtain back, let a bit more light in from outside.’

She uncurled from the chair and did as he’d suggested. On her way back, she poured him a glass. He sniffed appreciatively. ‘Lovely, lovely shiraz,’ he said. ‘Funny, I don’t think I would have listed decent wine among the things I would miss most if I was on a desert island. Just shows me how wrong I can be.’ He took another sip, felt himself rising inexorably into consciousness. This must have been a terrible day for you,’ he said.

‘You have no idea,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen things today I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Horrible injuries. Body parts strewn over a football stand. Blood and brains splattered on walls.’ She took a long swallow of her wine. ‘You think you’ve seen it all. You think there can’t be anything worse than the crime scenes you’ve already processed. And then this. Thirty-five dead in the bombing, plus one.’

‘The one being the bomber?’

‘No, the one being Tom Cross.’

He nearly slopped the wine from his cup in his surprise. ‘Popeye Cross? I don’t understand. He died in the bombing?’ His old nemesis’s name was the last one he’d expected to hear in connection with the Bradfield bombing.

‘No. The bombing apparently brought out the hero in him. He just got stuck right in. They say he saved lives out there. No, what did for him was poison. He’d been poisoned before he even got to the match.’

‘Poisoned? How? What with?’

‘I don’t know the details yet. Paula’s somewhere in the hospital getting the information from the doctor who picked up on it. A stroke of luck, really. Because of the bombing she got drafted into A&E, and because of Robbie Bishop, she was particularly receptive to the idea of poisoning.’

‘That makes three,’ he said. ‘And all from round here. Looks like you’ve got a serial poisoner on your patch.’

Carol glared at him. ‘Different poisons, different set-ups. Different delivery systems.’

‘Signature,’ Tony said. ‘Murder at a distance. Targeted administration. Time lag between ingestion and death. These are linked, Carol. You don’t get that many deliberate poisonings these days. They’ve been replaced by guns and divorce. Very Victorian, poisonings. Nasty, insidious, destructive of communities and families. But not very twenty-first century. Admit it, Carol, you’ve got a serial.’

‘I’ll wait for the evidence,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Meanwhile, Tom Cross’s death is the one murder I’m actually allowed to investigate.’ The anger was coming off her in waves. He could almost taste her fury, a dark bitterness laid over the jammy fruit of the wine.

Tony struggled to make sense of Carol’s words. ‘What do you mean, the only one you’re allowed to investigate?’

‘They’ve taken the bombing away from us,’ she said. This new Counter Terrorism Command. The misbegotten marriage of Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorism Branch. The northern arm is based in Manchester. Only now, they’re in Bradfield with their jackboots and their “no names, no pack drill”. Literally. They won’t give you their real names, they don’t wear any numbers. They say it’s to prevent reprisals. I say it’s to prevent any comeback. Paula calls them the Imperial Storm Troopers, and she’s not far off the mark. They’re scary, Tony. Very scary. I saw them in action in Scargill Street, and I tell you, I was ashamed to be a copper.’

‘And they’ve assumed operational command?’ he said, imagining what that must be like for someone with as much pride in herself and her team as Carol had.

‘Totally. We’re supposed to be at their beck and call if they want us to do anything.’ Carol gave a harsh laugh. ‘It’s like being in a police state, and the freaky thing is, I’m supposed to be one of them.’

‘And are you doing what you’re supposed to do?’ Tony asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.

‘What do you think?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Let them do their thing, their rounding up of the usual suspects, their harassment of anybody who happens to be young, male and Muslim. And we’ll do what we’re best at.’

Tony knew what she wanted, what she needed was for him to sympathize, to take her side against those she perceived as the bad guys. To take her part, right or wrong. The trouble was he thought she was wrong. And if there was any value in their relationship, he believed it was rooted in honesty. Some might call it emotional unavailability, and there was likely some truth in that too. But he couldn’t lie to Carol, not with any degree of conviction. Nor she to him, he thought. There were times when it was hard to hear the truth; harder still to deliver it. But in the long run, he was convinced they’d both looked back on those moments with an acceptance that they were more closely bound by having survived them. Tony took a deep breath and jumped off the high diving board. ‘And what you’re best at is not investigating and cracking terrorist cells.’

There was a moment of complete silence in the room. ‘Are you saying you agree with what’s happening here?’ He didn’t have to see Carol to picture her indignation.

‘I think policing potential and actual terrorists is a very specific kind of policing,’ he said, trying to tell the truth as he saw it without fuelling her anger. ‘And I think it should be done by specialists. People who are trained to understand the mindset, people who can walk away from their lives and go deep undercover to infiltrate, people who are prepared to climb inside the terrorists’ heads and try to work out where they’re going to take their campaigns next.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t think it’s the same skill set as you and your team possess.’

‘Are you saying it’s right to take this outrage away from us? That we shouldn’t police our own city?’ Carol demanded. He could hear the certainty of betrayal in her voice. She finished her wine and poured another cupful.

‘I’m saying there should be something like the CTC to work with you. Just because they’ve executed it so badly doesn’t mean the idea’s a bad one,’ Tony said gently. ‘This is not about you, Carol. It’s not a criticism of you or your people. It’s not saying you’re crap or incompetent or any of those things. It’s an acknowledgement of the fact that terrorism is different. And it needs a different approach.’

‘A judgement that doesn’t apply to you, I suppose. I bet you think you’re just as well equipped to profile terrorists as you are serial killers?’ Carol said sarcastically.

Tony felt himself in a lose-lose situation. There was no reply that would persuade Carol to back off at this point. He might as well carry on with the truth. It was often the most efficient response. ‘I do think I have some useful insights, yes.’

‘Of course you do. The great doctor.’

Stung at last, Tony said, ‘OK. Try this for size. This bombing doesn’t profile like terrorism.’

That stunned her into silence, he thought. But not for long. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Carol said with a note of deliberation rather than the hostility he’d half-expected.

‘Think about it. What is terrorism for?’

Almost without pause, Carol said, ‘It’s an attempt to force social or political change by violent means.’

‘And how does it aim to do that?’

‘I don’t know…By making the population so afraid that they put pressure on the politicians? I think that’s what IRA terrorism was about.’ Carol leaned forward in her chair, eager and engaged now.

‘Exactly. It aims to create a climate of fear and mistrust. It aims to attack the areas of life where people need to feel safe. So, public transport. Retail. People need to travel, they need to shop. Right away, we can see that a football stadium, crowded though it may be, isn’t in the same category. Nobody is compelled to go to the football in order to survive.’ He grinned. ‘Some fans might think they feel that way, but they know deep down their lives won’t fall to bits in the way they would if they stopped going to work or to the shops.’

‘I take your point. But what if they decided a lower-level target was a better option because the primary targets are just too hard for them now?’

That would be a valid argument if it was true, but it’s not, and you know it. You can’t police every train, every tube, every bus, every shopping mall or supermarket. There’s plenty of soft targets there. So the first support for my argument against this profiling as terrorism is the macro target.’

Carol reached for the wine again, ‘You’ve got more than one support?’

‘You know me, Carol. I like to be well armed against the likes of you. Line of support number two-the micro target. The thing about terrorism is that, for it to work, it has to strike at the lives of ordinary people. The sort of terrorists we’re seeing now do not go for the spectacular assassination. They learned that from the IRA. High-profile murders like Lord Mountbatten and Airey Neave make a big splash, sure. But people are angered and outraged by them, they’re not terrorized. Ask your average person in the street to name the top Irish terrorist events of the troubles, and they’ll say Omagh, Warrington, Manchester, Birmingham, Guildford, the Baltic Exchange. What they remember are the events that made them feel personally threatened.’ He paused to take a drink.

‘So what you’re saying is that the corporate hospitality boxes were the wrong target?’ Carol said.

She’d always been quick. It was one of the things he liked most about her. ‘Exactly,’ Tony said. ‘Going for the fat cats, that’s the sort of thing an anti-globalization terrorist would do. But not the Islamic fundamentalist. He wants maximum bucks for his bangs. An Al-Quaeda type of attack would have placed the bomb lower down, in among the punters. Or in one of the other stands.’

‘Maybe this was the only place they could be sure of getting into? Aziz posed as an electrician, maybe this was the only electrical junction room right under the stands?’

Tony shook his head. ‘Now you’re really reaching. I’m betting the utility layouts are pretty much the same on all four stands. The stadium’s only a few years old, it’s not like it’s a thing of shreds and patches like the old ground was. There’s bound to be other similar spots that would have taken out more of the hoi polloi. No, this was a deliberate choice, and that’s the second reason I’m dubious about this being terrorism.’

‘It’s a bit thin, Tony. Or do you have something else?’ He could hear the edge of scepticism in Carol’s voice.

‘Given how far out of the loop I am, I think you should be impressed with this much. If you’re determined to follow your own lines of inquiry rather than just do what CTC asks you to, there’s maybe something there for you to chew on.’ And at least it might keep her out of direct conflict with CTC, he thought. ‘And when you know more about Aziz and his accomplices, it might even make sense.’ Tony leaned back, his energy spent.

‘Actually, we’ve already come up against something that’s a bit odd,’ Carol said. ‘If you’re not too tired?’

His interest quickened in spite of his weariness. ‘I’m OK. What do you have?’

‘It’s kind of weird. We got to the bomb factory ahead of CTC. And that holdall I called you about-it was packed with clean clothes, his passport, driving licence and an e-ticket for this evening’s flight to Toronto. As if he was expecting to come back. Not just to come back to the bedsit, but to get away afterwards without being suspected. Which is absolutely not what suicide bombers do.’

There wasn’t much in the field of human behaviour that made Tony stop in his tracks. But what Carol had to say left him fumbling for a response. ‘No, they don’t,’ he said at last.

‘Sam had this theory that it was some form of talisman,’ Carol said.

‘Doesn’t work,’ Tony muttered, his mind ranging across his experience to try to make sense of what he’d heard. ‘The only thing that I can think of is that he wasn’t a suicide bomber.’ He looked at Carol, her face a dim outline in the near-dark. ‘And if he wasn’t a suicide bomber, then the chances are this wasn’t a terrorist attack.’