Beneath the Bleeding

Monday

Tony didn’t want to think about Edmund Arthur Blythe. He’d asked the nurse for something stronger than usual to make sure he slept, because he didn’t want to lie awake thinking about Edmund Arthur Blythe. Tony Blythe. That would have been his name if Vanessa had married him. He wondered if he would ever know why that hadn’t happened. With a different woman, he’d either have been able to make a reasonable guess or he’d have been able to ask. But he couldn’t ask his mother. And guessing was pointless because there were so many possibilities. Maybe he’d been married to somebody else. Maybe he’d taken fright at the idea of being married to Vanessa. Maybe she’d never told him she was pregnant. Or maybe she’d told him to bugger off, she’d be better off on her own. For forty-three years Vanessa had kept his identity and the circumstances of their relationship secret. He didn’t think she was suddenly going to feel the need to change that any time soon.

Before Carol had thrown her out last night, Vanessa had claimed her only motive was to protect Tony from the trauma of discovering his father was dead. ‘Protecting him to the tune of a few hundred thousand pounds,’ Carol had pointed out coolly.

Because of the drugs, it had taken him a little while to get his head round what Vanessa had tried to get him to sign. The papers were nothing to do with his grandmother’s house. They were a formal renunciation of his claim on the estate of his late father in favour of his mother. An estate which, according to Carol, amounted to a house in Worcester, fifty-odd thousand in savings and a boat. ‘She’s a criminal, Tony,’ Carol had said. ‘That was attempted fraud.’

‘I know,’ he’d said. ‘But it’s all right.’

‘How can you be so understanding?’ Carol said, frustrated.

‘Because I understand,’ Tony said simply. ‘What do you want me to do? Bring charges against my mother? I don’t think so. Can you imagine how much damage she could do to the pair of us under cover of court privilege?’ It had taken Carol about two seconds to understand the force of what he was saying.

‘Let’s forget it, then,’ she’d said. ‘But if she dares to show her face again, don’t sign anything.’ And she’d gone, taking the papers with her for safe-keeping and leaving a stack of information about the victims. He’d been glad of it. It took his mind off Edmund Arthur Blythe.

And that was why, at seven o’clock sharp on Monday morning, he had filed his request for company information on B&R at the Companies House website. While he waited for them to send the fruits of their search, he began to work his way through the list of Yousef Aziz’s victims.

It was a devastating catalogue. Eight colleagues from an insurance company, celebrating the birth of a child; a primary head teacher and his wife, the guests of executives from the company who had donated his school’s computers; three musicians from a local band who’d just released their first CD; a motivational guru and his two teenage sons, along with the CEO of the mountain bike manufacturing company who had invited them; three men who had been friends since childhood, part of a group of successful businessmen who had a season ticket for the box they occupied. The heartbreaking list went on-the youngest, the seven-year-old son of an MP: the oldest, a seventy-four-year-old retired car dealer.

At first glance, there was no obvious candidate for assassination. But then, nobody had done any serious background work on the victims because nobody was seriously considering an alternative explanation to terrorism. He couldn’t understand why Carol wasn’t more enthusiastic. They’d worked so closely together for so long, her first instinct should be to trust him. But it was as if she was using his accident as an excuse for dismissing his professional opinion. If she didn’t want to take on CTC, fair enough. He could understand that. What he couldn’t understand was why she wasn’t saying that to him, to explain why she was so lukewarm about his ideas. All these years they’d worked together, all the intimacy that went with bouncing ideas back and forth, all the support they’d shown each other. Sure, Carol had seen off his mother. But what had happened to their professional relationship?

His laptop gave the discreet click that told him a new email had arrived. Eagerly, he opened it. There, laid out before him, was the company information relating to B&R. The company secretary was the accountant whose address Stacey already had. The two directors were Rachel and Benjamin Diamond. With an address in Bradfield. Tony drew his breath in sharply and reached for the victim details.

Hastily, he riffled through the sheets. At last, he pulled one page free. His pulse was racing and he could feel the fizz and pop of adrenaline shooting through him. He’d remembered right. No matter what Carol thought, his brain was working just fine. He knew exactly where he’d seen that name already that morning. He spread the paper out on his laptop, devouring the words. This was beyond coincidence. Carol was going to have to listen to him now.

Carol barely recognized the HOLMES suite, so thoroughly had CTC colonized the space. Their information boards broke the room up into segments, their computers and peripherals covered every desk. The air was pungent with male sweat and cigarette smoke. Clearly, the building’s smoking ban did not apply to the chosen of the gods. As she walked in the door, she felt the atmosphere shift. It had been the same every time she’d entered what had been her own territory. A moment of immobility, like dogs scenting strangers; the stillness before the hackles rise. They didn’t like having her here, they wanted her to be afraid of them and their masculinity. She wondered, as she always did, how many of them knew her own history, knew about the rape, knew John Brandon had brought her back from the brink. She wouldn’t mind betting that, even if they knew about the assault, they wouldn’t have heard about the betrayal that had gone hand in hand with what had happened to her. Because the betrayal made men like them look bad.

‘I’m here for the meeting,’ she said to the grunt nearest the door.

Stony faced, he logged off from his terminal and walked her to the far end of the room, where David and Johnny had set up camp behind baffle screens. Before she’d even sat down, David leaned forward, elbows on knees, and said, ‘We’re not having a very good time here, Carol. We’ve rounded up everyone in your fair city that we had any intel on. And it seems like nobody knew our friend Yousef. His brother is a complete waste of time. He’s about as politicized as a toilet seat. As are the so-called mates of our suicide bomber.’ He jumped up and started pacing, pulling a cigarette packet from his jacket as he prowled.

‘This is a non-smoking building,’ Carol said.

‘What are you going to do? Arrest me?’ David sneered.

‘I thought I might just pour the water over your head.’ Carol pointed to the jug on the table. Her smile could have slit a sack from top to bottom.

David tossed the cigarette on the table in frustration. ‘I can’t be arsed arguing with you,’ he said. It wasn’t a bad attempt at face-saving, but Carol knew she’d scored a small victory. Doubtless she’d pay for it down the line, but right now it felt worth it.

‘We wondered if you had any intel we’ve not been given,’ Johnny said. ‘Not necessarily about Yousef, but about Islamic militancy generally.’

Carol shook her head. ‘We leave that to you. Anything we get, it comes to us incidentally, in the course of other stuff. And we pass it on routinely. We’re not holding back any terrorist-related intel.’

‘So what are you holding back?’ Johnny said, pouncing on her careful words. ‘Come on, Carol. We’re not stupid. Lines are for reading between.’

She was saved by the arrival of the third member of their cabal. The one who hadn’t even bothered to give her an alias. He cocked an inquiring glance at Carol.

‘It’s all right,’ David said.

‘Forensics,’ the third man said, tossing a folder on the table. ‘On the bomb. They got lucky. The configuration of the room meant the mechanism stayed relatively intact. Totally what you’d expect. Except for one thing. They say there were two trigger mechanisms. One to be set manually, the other to be activated remotely.’

‘What does that mean?’ Carol said.

David picked up the folder and skimmed the sheet of paper inside. ‘They don’t know. It’s not something we’ve seen before. We’ll have to run it past the cousins and see if they’ve any experience of it.’

‘You mean the Americans?’ Carol said. David nodded. ‘Why don’t you just say so?’ She rolled her eyes. Boys and their toys. ‘So, with all your experience, would you hazard a guess as to what this means?’

The third man dropped into a chair as if he was punishing it for offending him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We don’t do guessing. We do inference and deduction. Me, I think he was going to set the manual timer and get clear. Then if it didn’t go off, he could use his mobile to trigger the device remotely.’

David gave him the look priests normally reserve for heretics. ‘Are you saying you don’t think this was meant to be a suicide bomb?’

‘I’m looking at the evidence and trying to make sense of it,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t mean he’s not a terrorist. Fucking Provos managed to create mayhem without blowing themselves up. Makes sense. You go to all the bother of training somebody to do this shit, you might as well get more than one mission out of them.’

It did make a kind of sense, Carol thought. ‘Funnily enough, we’d been wondering something similar,’ she said.

All three heads swivelled towards her. ‘You what?’ David sounded indignant.

‘In fact, we were wondering whether it was even terrorism,’ she said. ‘Dr Hill suggested Yousef might be a gun for hire, as it were.’

The third man exploded in laughter. ‘You are a fucking tonic,’ he said. ‘I love it. I mean, you need a hit man. Who’re you gonna call? A clothes factory manager. Stands to reason.’ He slapped his thigh. Plus, who’s going to kill thirty-five people for one hit? That’s not how gangsters work, sweetheart.’ He laughed again. ‘Priceless.’

‘That’ll do,’ Johnny said, his voice soft and his eyes dangerous. He turned to Carol. ‘Bottom line? Yousef Aziz was a Muslim. There’s a significant tranche of Muslims who hate us. They want to blow us to kingdom come and impose Sharia law on what’s left. They don’t want peaceful coexistence, they want to destroy us. That’s enough, surely? That’s all that’s going on here, Carol.’

‘Hit man,’ the third man repeated. ‘I love it.’

Carol stood up. ‘There’s just no point talking to you, is there? You live in your own little bubble. If you need a comedy break, you know where to find us.’

She marched out of the room, head high. When Tony had called her just before the meeting, she’d wondered if he was losing it. Seeing ghosts in the natural coincidences of life. Now, she really wished he could be right. She’d like nothing more than to ram an alternative, correct conclusion down their arrogant throats.

Trouble was, she lived in the real world. The one where wishes tended not to come true.

Tony rang Sanjar Aziz, hoping the CTC had decided he was harmless. Otherwise he was going to have to track down the rest of the family to see if they could shed any light on B&R. He didn’t want to face Rachel Diamond without some preparation. This time, Sanjar answered his own phone. ‘Yeah?’ he said, sounding harassed. Tony felt a surge of relief.

‘It’s Tony Hill, Sanjar. I was sorry to hear they’d pulled you in.’

‘Bound to happen sooner or later, innit? At least they let me go in time to make it to Yousef’s funeral.’ He sounded surprisingly calm for someone who had just spent the night in the cells rather than supporting his grieving family.

‘That’s today, is it?’

‘This afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be pretty weird. Apparently there’s not much left to bury.’ Tony could hear him breathing heavily. Sanjar gave a weak laugh. ‘I dunno how we’re going to work out how to get him facing Mecca.’

‘I’m sorry. Are you doing OK?’

‘What do you think? My mum’s devastated, my dad won’t open his mouth and my little brother’s heart-broken and terrified at the thought of going back to school.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, you didn’t deserve that. So, what did you want? Why are you calling me?’

‘I need to ask you a couple of questions. To do with work.’

‘Work? You mean First Fabrics?’

‘Yeah. What can you tell me about a company called B&R?’

‘B&R? They were Yousef’s big idea for how we could change the way we did business.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Margins have got so fucking tight, man. So we needed to cut out the middleman to increase our profits. B&R’s a wholesaler, they sell direct to the retail trade. They’ve got some pretty good accounts. They’re a great match for us.’

‘So this was Yousef’s idea?’ Tony asked.

‘Well, it was something we’d talked about before, but he actually managed to get it off the ground. See, the trouble with cutting out the middleman is that he’s the one who commissions the work from you. He tells you what to make, in effect. Even if it’s your own design that’s been pitched to the store on your behalf, he’s the man. You piss off the middleman and suddenly he’s not calling you with orders.’

‘So how did Yousef get round it?’

‘We increased production. B&R only sell designs from us that are exclusive to them. So the middleman doesn’t see any change in the level of commitment he’s getting from us. We’re not rocking his boat, so he’s not trying to take us down. And we have a new profit centre.’ Sanjar sounded jaded, as if he couldn’t care less whether First Fabrics made a profit.

‘So Yousef just went out and sorted it with B&R?’ Tony asked.

‘He’d like you to think he did, but it was more of an accident than that. Yousef had gone to see Demis Youkalis, one of our middlemen. To let you know, guys like Demis treat guys like us as if we’re dumb fucks who’ve been put on the planet to mess up his day. Just because the Cypriots got off the plane five minutes before we did. Anyway, Demis wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there for so long he’d missed his previous appointment, which was with the guy from B&R.’

‘Was that Benjamin Diamond?’

‘No idea, mate. Yousef just said, “the guy from B&R”. They got talking, and the B&R guy said how much he liked our stuff, and what a pity we were both putting money in Demis’s pocket when he basically does fuck all for it. So they talk a bit more, then they go to a café and try to figure out a different way of doing business. Which is how we ended up where we are, doing business direct with B&R.’

‘Who did Yousef deal with at B&R?’

‘No idea. He used to have regular meetings with them, going through new designs and product ranges, but that was his job. I don’t know who his contact was. It’s not like we would see them socially, know what I mean?’

‘No,’ Tony said. It was a lie but he wanted to hear if Sanjar knew who B&R were. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They’re Jewish, man. It’s not a problem when it comes to doing business, their money’s as good as anybody else’s. But we’re not going to be their friends, you catch my drift?’

‘I understand,’ Tony said. He glanced at his watch. In ten minutes, Paula would be waiting downstairs. ‘You do know that Benjamin Diamond from B&R died in the bombing on Saturday?’

A long silence. ‘No way,’ Sanjar eventually said.

‘I’m afraid so. Are you sure Yousef never mentioned him by name?’

‘No, he always just said “the B&R guy”. I’m pretty sure he never mentioned a name. So maybe it wasn’t this Diamond geezer that he dealt with?’

‘It’s possible. It just seemed like an odd coincidence,’ Tony said mildly.

‘Shit like that, it happens. You get coincidences all the time, right?’

‘We don’t really believe in them in my line of work. I need to go now, Sanjar. I hope you get to bury your brother with dignity.’

‘We’re trying to keep where we’re doing it a secret, he said gloomily. ‘The last thing we want is any trouble kicking off.’

‘Good luck.’ He ended the call and eased himself off the bed and on to his crutches. He’d had a very uncomfortable encounter with Mrs Chakrabarti that morning. The nurses had reported his absences and the contretemps between Carol and his mother. The surgeon had not been impressed.

‘You work in a hospital, Dr Hill,’ she’d said severely. ‘You should understand that patients have the best chance of getting better if they actually follow the directives of those taking care of them. I was thinking we might discharge you today or tomorrow, but frankly, the way you’ve been behaving, I’m afraid to do that in case you have a relapse.’ Then she’d twinkled a smile at him. ‘I don’t want you playing football before the end of the week.’

She’d told him not to go out. But he didn’t have a choice. Somebody had to pursue the line of inquiry, and Carol had made it plain when he’d called her that it wasn’t high on her list of priorities.

‘I’ll go by myself, then,’ he’d told her.

‘I don’t think that’s one of your better ideas,’ Carol said.

‘What? You think I’ll say something I shouldn’t?’

‘No, I think you’ll fall over your crutches and that poor bereaved woman will have to pick you off the floor. I’ll send Paula, she can chaperone you.’

‘I bet she’ll be really thrilled.’

And so it had been agreed that Paula would pick him up outside the Outpatients Department. He didn’t want to pass the nurses’ station, so he decided to take the emergency stairs near his room.

One flight nearly killed him. He was bathed in sweat, his good leg was aching and his broken knee felt as if it was on fire. He wobbled along to the lift and managed to make it to their rendezvous without discovery. Paula was leaning on her car, parked in the ambulance-only zone.

‘You look like you’ve run a half marathon,’ she said, nose wrinkling in distaste.

‘It’s the jogging pants. They’re all I can get over my leg brace.’ Shaking her head in amusement, Paula opened the door and he let himself drop back into the seat, then swung his legs round and in. ‘Just as well Carol didn’t send Kevin in his Ferrari,’ he gasped as he tried to make himself comfortable.

‘We’d have had to get a crane to get you in and out of that,’ Paula said, getting in the driver’s side.

‘Quite. So, what have you been up to?’

She brought him up to speed with their inquiries into Jack Anderson and his aliases. ‘He sounds a bit of an oddball,’ she added. ‘Apparently, when he was at school, he had this list of goals. Like Michael Heseltine’s “I’m going to be Prime Minister” list.’

Until then, nothing Paula had said had piqued Tony’s curiosity. But this was different. ‘Do we know what was on his list?’

‘According to Steve Mottishead, it was stuff like, get a Ferrari, get a house on Dunelm Drive, make a million by age thirty. Not the kind of thing that most people aspire to.’

Her words triggered a chain reaction in Tony’s brain. He gazed at Paula in appalled wonder. ‘Paula, Tom Cross lived on Dunelm Drive. Danny Wade won the lottery; he was a millionaire by age thirty. He’s killing people who went to his school who have achieved his goals.’

Paula took her foot off the accelerator in surprise. The jolt as the gears protested made Tony yelp. ‘That’s crazy,’ she said. ‘Even for you, that’s pretty wild. You’re saying he’s killing people out of envy? Because they’ve got what he wanted?’

Tony’s hands made incoherent shapes in the air. ‘There’s more to it than that…It’s something to do with having his dreams taken away from him, so he’s taking their lives from them. But in essence, yes. His goal list is also his murder list. I bet you that “playing for Bradfield Victoria” or at the very least, “playing premiership football” was on that list too.’

‘You really think that’s it?’ Paula sounded incredulous.

‘It makes sense.’

‘That’s your idea of sense?’

‘Paula, in the world I work in, that’s not just sense, it’s celestial logic.’ He fell silent, holding up a finger to hush her when she tried to speak. He rubbed his eyelids with finger and thumb then turned in his seat to face her. ‘Kevin went to the Double Aitch,’ he said slowly.

‘Kevin? You don’t think-’

‘He drives a Ferrari. He’s Bradfield born, bred and buttered.’ Tony was already struggling to get his phone out of the pocket of his waxed jacket.

‘What are you doing?’ Paula asked.

‘I’m warning him.’ The phone was free and clear, Tony’s index finger poised to strike.

‘You can’t go off on one like that. You’ve got no evidence,’ Paula protested.

‘I’ve got about as much as I usually have when I draw up a profile,’ Tony said. ‘You lot are generally happy enough to act on that.’

Paula bit her lip. ‘Shouldn’t you talk to the chief first? See if she thinks there’s anything to it?’

‘Paula, I’m not asking Kevin to do anything operational. How would you feel if I didn’t say anything and…’ His voice trailed off. He knew exactly how she would feel. He’d listened to her enough to know the answer.

‘Phone him,’ she snapped. ‘You’re right, damn it. You’ve been the only one who’s had a fucking clue on this case. Do it.’

Tony dialled the number and waited. No ring tone, just a straight transfer to voicemail. ‘Shit, his phone’s off…Kevin, this is Tony. This is going to sound crazy, and I’ll explain it all later. I want you to avoid eating or drinking anything that could have been tampered with. Things in tins and bottles and vacuum packs are fine as long as the seals are intact. Or if you’re cooking with fresh ingredients, probably. Because I think there’s a chance you might be next on the poisoner’s list. I can’t go into it now, Paula and I are about to interview someone about Saturday. But…’ He heard a beep in his ear, indicating his time was up. ‘Voicemail,’ he said. ‘I hope he picks it up.’

Paula turned into a driveway. The house, he knew, must have cost the thick end of a couple of million, given its location, its acreage and its size. It was a beautifully proportioned manor house in mellow Victorian brick. Long herbaceous borders flanked the drive. Water features sparkled in the middle distance. It reeked of opulence and good taste.

Paula whistled. ‘Makes you wonder how all those crappy clothes get into the shops. Benjamin Diamond must have used up all his taste on the house.’

‘It’s very choice,’ Tony said. ‘But I don’t suppose any of it makes much difference to his widow right now.’

Paula looked chastened. She pulled up by a row of garages which had obviously started their working lives as stables. ‘Do you need a hand?’ she asked.

‘I think it’s better if I just struggle,’ Tony said, doing just that. Everything hurt today. Mrs Chakrabarti was right. He was in hospital for a reason. Unfortunately, killers never took things like that into consideration.

Rachel Diamond answered the door, introducing herself before Paula had the chance to speak. She wore a charcoal silk shirt tucked into a black skirt that swirled and flowed as she walked. Tony didn’t know much about clothes, but he felt pretty sure Rachel’s mourning outfit didn’t come from any of the chain stores B&R supplied. She ushered them into a large sitting room with a deep pentagonal bay window on one corner, giving on to a vista of shrubbery and trees. In a gap between foliage, there was a turquoise sliver of swimming pool. The room itself was furnished and decorated in a toned-down contemporary version of Victorian domestic style. It had the slightly scuffed air of a room that was used rather than displayed. A touch of vivid colour came from half a dozen bright, warm paintings of desert landscapes.

Rachel fussed over Tony, bringing him a couple of footstools and various cushions so they could establish the most comfortable position for his leg. She knelt by his feet, shifting and adjusting things till he was comfortable. Her dark hair was glossy and thick, but he could see some tiny flecks of silver at the roots. Then she looked up and he had the chance to look at her properly for the first time, free from the distraction of managing leg and crutches.

She had good skin, creamy and faintly olive tinted. He knew she was thirty-four, but if he hadn’t known, he would have placed her in her late twenties. Her well-shaped brows followed the high arch of her eye sockets perfectly, drawing attention to almond-shaped hazel eyes rimmed with red and sporting a fan of faint lines at the corners. Plump cheeks, a nose like the inverted prow of a ship, a lean-lipped mouth bracketed by a pair of lines that gave the impression she smiled a lot. She was striking rather than beautiful, but she looked combatively intelligent and good fun. ‘How’s that?’ she said.

‘As comfortable as it’s been in a week,’ Tony said. ‘Thank you.’

Rachel got to her feet and curled her legs under her in a squashy chintz armchair. Paula was off to one side, happy to look like part of the furniture until she felt the need to make a contribution.

Now there was nothing practical to occupy her, Rachel looked sad and lost. She folded her arms across her chest as if she was hugging herself. The room was warm, but she gave a little shiver. ‘I’m not really clear why you wanted to see me,’ she said. ‘That’s probably me. Nothing’s really making much sense right now.’

‘I wouldn’t expect it to,’ Tony said gently. ‘And I’m sorry to intrude at a time when the last thing you want is strangers in your living room.’

Rachel relaxed slightly, her shoulders dropping and her arms loosening. ‘It fills some of the time,’ she said. ‘Nobody talks about that, do they? They all talk about the grief and the tears and the despair, but they don’t talk about the emptiness of your hours, the way the time stretches out.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I even thought about going into the office, just for something to do. But Lev’s home from school, I need to be here for him.’ She sighed. ‘Lev’s my little boy. He’s only six. He doesn’t understand dead. He doesn’t grasp that it’s permanent. He thinks Daddy’s going to be like Aslan, coming back to life, and everything as it was before.’

Her grief, he thought, was almost tangible. It seemed to flow from her in waves, lapping around him as it filled the room. ‘There are some things I need to ask you,’ he said.

Rachel pressed her hands together as if in prayer, elbows on the chair arm, cheek against the back of one hand. ‘Ask what you like. But I don’t see how it can help you do whatever it is you do.’

There was no way to come at this question delicately. ‘Mrs Diamond, did you know Yousef Aziz?’

She looked startled, as if this was a name she never expected to hear in this house. ‘The bomber?’ She gagged, as if she was going to be sick.

‘Yes,’ Tony said.

‘How would I know some fundamentalist Islamic suicide bomber?’ Each word spilled out as if it took a huge effort. ‘We are Jewish. We go to temple, not to the mosque.’ She sat up convulsively, her hands jerking in irregular, spastic movements.

‘His family’s garment business traded with B&R,’ Paula said, her voice as gentle as Tony’s. ‘You are a director of B&R, Mrs Diamond.’

She looked hunted, an animal at bay. ‘I work in the office. Benjamin, he did all the…He was the one with the…I never heard this name before he blew up my husband.’

‘Is there anybody else at work he might have mentioned Aziz to?’ Paula asked.

‘There’s only us. It’s not a labour-intensive business, our part of it. We did it together. No secretaries, no sales team.’ She smiled, a sad, wistful affair.

‘Are you sure? It’s been in all the papers, Rachel,’ Tony said. ‘His name. The family firm, First Fabrics. You didn’t recognize it?’

Rachel was rocking in her chair, her eyes flickering from one to the other. ‘I recognize the name. I see it in the B&R accounts. But I haven’t been reading the papers. Why would I want to read about this thing? Why would I want to read about how my husband died? You think I’ve been poring over the newspapers?’

‘Of course not,’ Tony said, trying to soothe her agitation. ‘I just thought you might have noticed it. But the thing is, B&R has been dealing directly with First Fabrics. Cutting out the middleman. So I’m thinking that Benjamin must have known Yousef Aziz. They must have spoken on the phone. They must have met. You see, it’s very unusual for there to be any relationship between a bomber and his victims.’

‘Relationship?’ Rachel made it sound as if she’d never heard the word before. ‘What do you mean, “relationship”? What are you suggesting about my husband?’

‘Nothing beyond the fact that they knew each other,’ Tony said hastily. This was not going well. ‘Generally, you see, one of the things that makes it possible for a bomber to carry out his mission is that he can depersonalize his victims. They’re not real people, they’re the enemy, they’re corrupt, whatever. If they have any personal connection to the potential victims, it makes it much harder for them to do what they’ve set their heart on. That’s why I’m curious to know how well Benjamin knew his killer.’ He spread his hands, beseeching. ‘That’s all, Rachel.’

‘How do you know that this, this piece of…this bomber had any idea Benjamin was going to be there? Why would he research which individuals he might kill? He just wanted to make his filthy, stupid point.’ She gave a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘This is just a horrible coincidence.’

She might be right, Tony thought. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Or it would be if the target had profiled right. He clung on to his theory, unwilling to concede that he was wrong when it came to understanding the patterns of human behaviour. ‘It’s possible,’ he said.

She shuddered again, covering her face with her hands. She looked up at him piteously. ‘We paid them money. We have their…In our warehouse, we have things their hands have touched. It disgusts me. What kind of people are they, to do a thing like this to us?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tony said. ‘So very sorry. But I have to be sure. Your husband never spoke about who he dealt with at First Fabrics? He never discussed his meetings with them?’

‘You’re welcome to look at his diary. It’s at the office. But this is all I know. Benjamin was supposed to meet with a Greek Cypriot we buy from, but the man had been delayed. While he was waiting, he met someone from a company whose work we’d bought before, via the middleman. We liked their work, it was good quality, reliable. Which is more than you can say for a lot of them.’ It was an acid little aside. ‘Benjamin told me they’d got talking and they’d ended up doing a deal on some exclusive designs that First Fabrics had worked up themselves. It was an arrangement that worked for both of us. And it was working out.’

‘There was no question of you pulling out of the arrangement? No bad feeling for any reason?’ Paula came in with the detective’s question.

Rachel pushed her hair back from her face, looking suddenly weary. ‘Nothing like that, no. If anything, we were happy to do more business with them. Because of the way we’d set it up, there was a better profit margin for us. Detective, there was no possible business reason for this person to attack Benjamin. As I said before, it can only be some horrible coincidence.’

Before either of them could press further, the door opened and a small boy came in. Slender and dark, he looked as if he still had to grow into his features. He shuffled from foot to foot, fiddling with the fringe on a throw. ‘Mum, I need you to come and help me with my Lego,’ he said, ignoring the strangers in his house.

‘In a minute, darling.’ She turned back to Tony. ‘This is our son, Lev.’ She stood up. ‘I think we’re finished here. There’s truly nothing more I can help you with. Please, let me show you out.’

They followed her to the door, Tony struggling to keep up. Lev walked with them. ‘Do you know my dad?’ he said abruptly to Tony.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Do you look like him?’

Lev eyed him curiously. ‘I will one day,’ he said. ‘But I’m still too little. I just look like me now.’

‘And a very handsome me you are too,’ Tony said.

‘What did you do to your leg? Did somebody blow you up too? Somebody blew up my dad.’

‘No, nobody blew me up,’ Tony said. ‘A man hit me with an axe.’

‘Wow,’ Lev said. ‘That’s pretty cool. Did it hurt?’

‘It still does.’ He’d almost caught up with Paula and Rachel. ‘But it’s getting better.’

Lev reached up and grabbed his hand. ‘Then will you kill the man who hit you with the axe?’

Tony shook his head. ‘No. What I’ll do is try to help him not to do it again. I’m a kind of doctor, Lev. I try to make people feel better inside. If you feel bad inside, there are people like me you can talk to. Don’t be afraid to ask. Your mum will help you find the right one, won’t you, Rachel?’

Rachel swallowed hard, her eyes brimming. ‘Of course I will. Say goodbye now, Lev.’

Somehow, they got out without anybody cracking up. ‘Fuck,’ Paula said as they walked back to the car. ‘That was no fun at all. And no use at all either. She’s got a point, you know. Why would Aziz have any idea that Diamond was in that precise part of the stand? And even if he did, according to what Mrs Diamond said, there’s not a shred of motive.’

‘So it seems,’ Tony said. ‘And I could be totally wrong.’ He dragged himself a few steps nearer the car. ‘On the other hand, I might just be right. And I’d have thought you lot would have been gagging to take my side on this one.’

‘Why?’ Paula stopped and waited for him.

‘Because, if I am right, then CTC will have to piss off home with their tails between their legs.’

Paula grinned, her eyes dancing. ‘When you put it like that…Let’s see if we can find some evidence, Dr Hill.’

Kevin smiled at the phone. ‘That’s right. Aziz. Yousef Aziz. The rental would probably start from the beginning of this week…Yes, I’ll hold.’ He twiddled his pen between his fingers, trying to move it from one side of his hand to the other without dropping it. The voice on the other end spoke to him. ‘OK, fine, thanks for trying.’ He crossed another name off the list and prepared to dial another holiday home rental in Northern Ontario. Of the sites Yousef Aziz had visited, he’d now managed to contact eight out of seventeen. None of them had rented a property to Yousef Aziz. None of them remembered speaking to him or receiving an email from him.

Just as he was about to dial the next number, Carol stopped at his desk. She held out a box of cakes. ‘There you go, Kevin, help yourself. I thought we all needed a bit of sugar to get us through the afternoon.’

He looked at the cakes, wondering. ‘Can I ask where you got them from?’ he asked.

‘The baker’s shop in the precinct,’ Carol said. ‘The one we usually get our cakes from. Why?’

Kevin looked embarrassed. ‘It’s just that…Well, Tony left me a voicemail and told me not to eat anything that could have been tampered with.’

‘He did what?’ Carol’s annoyance was unmistakable beneath the incredulity. ‘Did he say why he thought that?’

Kevin shook his head. ‘He said he’d talk to me later. But I’ve not heard from him since.’

‘I sent Paula out with him. Have you seen her?’

‘She said she was going to hit the bricks in Temple Fields this afternoon with our pictures of Jack Anderson, see if she could get any leads. I’ve not spoken to her since she went out this morning.’

Carol took a deep breath. He could see she was simmering. ‘And what are you doing?’

‘Following up on the rental places that Aziz looked at on his computer.’

‘OK. You stick with that.’ Carol walked back to her own office and closed the door behind her. She called Paula’s mobile. When the call connected, she said, ‘Paula, were you with Tony when he called Kevin this morning?’

‘Yes, I was.’ Paula sounded cautious.

‘Can you tell me why he took it upon himself to warn one of my officers about being poisoned without telling me?’

A short pause, then Paula said, ‘He knew you were in a meeting and he thought it was urgent.’

‘And why does he think someone might want to poison Kevin?’

The short answer is, because Kevin went to Harriestown High and he drives a Ferrari.’

Carol gently massaged her closed eyelids and wished the newborn pain in her head would go as quickly as it had arrived. ‘And does the long answer make any more sense than that?’ she said.

‘When I interviewed Steve Mottishead yesterday, he said Anderson had made a wish list when he was at school. Like Michael Heseltine wanting to be Prime Minister?’

‘Go on.’

‘He remembered a few things off the list. Having a house on Dunelm Drive. Making a million by thirty. Driving a Ferrari. When I told Tony about the list, he reckoned that was what connected the victims, as well as being former pupils of Harriestown High. And then he remembered Kevin’s car. So he made the call.’

‘And you didn’t think that was a little sudden? A little quick off the mark?’

A long silence. ‘We both thought, better safe than sorry, Chief.’

Don Merrick’s name hung in the silence between them. ‘Thanks, Paula. I’ll speak to Tony. Do you happen to know where he is?’

‘I dropped him back at the hospital. He was pretty knackered.’

‘Did you get anything from Mrs Diamond?’ Carol asked.

‘Nothing that takes us any further forward. She made the point that Aziz couldn’t have known her husband was going to be at the match, so it must have been coincidence.’

‘Not necessarily. As I understand it, that was a season ticket box, hired by the same bunch of guys for years now. It’s possible Benjamin Diamond mentioned it in passing in one of their meetings. In my experience of men and football, it’s exactly the kind of thing they like to drop in passing. I think we need to talk to Diamond’s secretary.’

‘He doesn’t have one. According to Rachel, the two of them ran the whole operation between them. She mostly did the office stuff, he mostly did the customer contact.’

‘OK. Good luck with your photo trawl. I’ll speak to you later.’ She put the phone down and pressed her fists against her temples. What was he playing at? She was used to Tony flying off at tangents, but he generally ran things past her. After his last encounter with a killer, she thought he’d finally learned the lesson of thinking before he acted. Obviously, she’d been mistaken. She reached for the phone, girding her loins for the usual complicated encounter. Why couldn’t her life be simple for once?

She was cursed with the granting of her wish. No fractious conversation with Tony. His mobile was switched off and he wasn’t answering the phone in his hospital room. Bloody man. Bloody, bloody man.

The bloody man in question had been roused from a deep sleep by the phone next to his bed. Tony didn’t care who it was, he wasn’t ready for speech yet. That was one of the few joys of being stuck in hospital with a fucked-up knee. In the usual run of things, he had to answer his phone. He had patients who might have urgent needs. He had contracts with several police forces across Europe who might also have pressing requirements. But for now, he was officially out of action and he could ignore the phone. Someone else could take responsibility.

Except of course that he was bound to Carol and her team. Bound in a way that went far beyond the contractual. He probably should have answered the phone. But the meeting with Rachel Diamond had left him drained. He’d come back and taken his drugs, eaten his lunch and fallen straight into a thick, heavy sleep that had left him feeling stupid and inarticulate. Not the best time to talk to police officers if you wanted to convince them you were right about something.

He hoped Kevin had taken him seriously. Certainly what Paula had told him about Steve Mottishead’s recollections was the most chilling thing he’d heard about Stalky the poisoner. The Harriestown High connection was already established in his head. But Jack Anderson’s list, conforming as closely as it did to two of the apparently unconnected victims, had set Tony’s antennae quivering. The mentality that drew up such a list with serious intent was ruthless. Predictably, such a person would pursue their goals relentlessly. But if they lacked empathy, if they had sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, how they would go about dealing with the thwarting of those goals was entirely unpredictable.

He remembered one patient who had proudly told him how she had deliberately split up the marriage of her business partner. Not for any sexual or emotional reason, but because her partner’s wife was less than whole-hearted about the business. ‘I had to do it,’ his patient had explained in the most matter-of-fact way. ‘As long as he stayed married to Maria, he was never going to give the business his full commitment. And I needed that from him. So she had to go.’ If Jack Anderson had been deprived of his dreams, what would he rationalize as a reasonable response?

It seemed that he’d chosen murder. His victims were men who had come from a similar background to his own. They’d attended the same school. In theory, they’d had the same opportunities as him. And they’d demonstrated his dreams weren’t so crazy, because they’d each realized one of his goals. But for whatever reason, Anderson had decided he wasn’t going to be able to achieve the ambitious targets he’d set himself. Some people would have reconciled themselves to that, acknowledging that their adolescent dreams had only been castles in the air. Others would have grown bitter, turned to drink, taken out their frustrations in ways that were mostly self-destructive. Jack Anderson had decided to kill the achievers. That way, they could no longer reproach him for his failure.

That’s why there was no sexual element to the murders, why they were committed at arm’s length. They were about desire, it was true. But not sexual desire.

And why poison? OK, it was perfect if you got no kick out of watching your victims die, and you wanted to avoid suspicion by being a long way away when it happened. That meant you couldn’t go the route of most killers, who opted for methods that were, in essence, unskilled. Guns, knives, blunt instruments. But still, why choose something so arcane, something that felt as though it had come from an Agatha Christie novel?

He had to fathom this out. There had to be a reason. Murderers generally chose to kill using what was to hand, or what they had experience of. What if the poisons were chosen not because they were arcane but because they were close at hand? Carol had already questioned Rhys Butler, a man with access to pharmacological drugs. That had made a kind of sense.

But Anderson wasn’t using prescription drugs. These were all derived from plants. Ricin from the castor oil plant, atropine from belladonna, oleandrin from oleander. Not your everyday garden plants, but nothing wildly exotic either. Who would have a garden with plants like that, though? You’d have to be some sort of specialist. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. Something about gardens and poison. He sat up and woke the laptop. Once he was back online, he Googled ‘poison garden’. The first thing that came up was the Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, a cornucopia of deadly plants, open to the public under strict supervision.

But as Tony discovered when he explored further, this was by no means a new idea. It had been directly inspired by the Medici family, who built a garden near Padua to find better ways to poison their enemies, and by the monks of Soutra Hospital near Edinburgh, who used soporific sponges with exactly the right amount of opium, henbane and hemlock to anaesthetize a body for between two and three days-just as long as it takes to amputate a limb and for the body to come out of shock and go into a natural state of healing. There had been other, private poison gardens through the ages, and Tony found various speculative references to them in newsgroups and blogs.

What if Jack Anderson had access to one of these? What if poison was, for him, the weapon of opportunity? He glanced at the phone. Now would be a good time for it to ring.

Instead, Mrs Chakrabarti entered hot on the heels of a perfunctory knock. ‘I hear you went walkabout again,’ she said without preamble.

‘I came back,’ Tony said. ‘You all tell me I need to be up and about.’

‘ think it’s time you went home,’ she said. ‘Frankly, we can make better use of your bed, and you’re so bloody determined, you’re going to make a great recovery in spite of us. You’ll have lots of visits back here for physio. If you think it’s been tough so far, wait till you have to start moving the joint again.’ She smiled cheerily. ‘You’ll be crying for your mother.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said wryly.

Mrs Chakrabarti laughed. ‘I see your point. Maybe not. But you’ll certainly be crying. So, tomorrow morning, provided my SHO thinks you’re safe to be let out, you can go home. Do you have someone who can help you with shopping and cooking and so forth?’

‘I think so.’

‘You think so? What does that mean, Dr Hill?’

‘There is someone, but I think she’s a bit annoyed with me right now. I’ll just have to hope for pity. Failing that, takeaways that deliver.’

‘Try to behave yourself for the rest of the day, Dr Hill. It’s been an interesting experience, having you as a patient.’

Tony smiled. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

Another knock at the door, another take-charge woman. Carol swept into the room, her mouth open to begin her tirade, stopped short by the sight of Mrs Chakrabarti. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said hastily.

‘I was just going,’ the surgeon said. She turned to Tony. ‘his would be the someone?’

‘Yes,’ he said, nailing his smile firmly to the mast.

‘Better devote some energy to getting on her good side, then.’ She nodded to Carol and left.

‘I suspect that might take more energy than I have right now,’ Tony said, correctly identifying Carol’s mood.

She gripped the bottom rail of his bed. He could see the knuckles whitening. What do you think you’re playing at, Tony? You have one of my best detectives running round the countryside conducting interviews that are going nowhere on something that technically isn’t even our case. You have another of my detectives frightened to eat a cream cake in case the Bradfield Poisoner knows his cake preference and has taken a job at the precinct bakery. And you can’t even keep me in the loop. I hear about the poison stuff from Kevin. I hear you got nowhere with Rachel Diamond from Paula. You know, I’ve stood up for you I don’t know how many times-’

‘That’s not been such a hardship, as it turns out,’ he interrupted, too tired and in too much pain to bear the brunt of Carol’s frustrations with the system that was oppressing her right now. ‘My track record for getting it right is pretty good. And you know it. Hitching your wagon to my star hasn’t exactly earned you the “loser” label.’

She glared at him, clearly shocked as well as angry. ‘You’re saying my success is down to you?’

‘That’s not what I said, Carol. Look, I know you want to take a pop at CTC, but your hands are tied. So you come round here and take it out on me. Well, I’m sorry. I haven’t got the resources to act as your punch bag right now. I’m trying to help you, but if you’d rather I cut you out of the process, fine. I’ll deal with John Brandon instead.’

She literally stepped back, as if he’d slapped her. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’ She looked on the verge of throwing something at him.

Tony screwed his face up and shook his head. ‘Neither can I. Maybe we shouldn’t be talking to each other right now. You’re wound up, and I’m fucked up.’

His words didn’t seem to have had much of a conciliatory effect. That is just so typical of you,’ she shouted. ‘You can’t even have a proper bloody row.’

‘I don’t like fighting,’ he said. ‘It makes me hurt inside. Like I’m a kid again. In the cupboard, in the dark. If the grown-ups are fighting, it must be my fault. That’s why I don’t do rows.’ He blinked hard, to keep the tears at bay. She was the only person in the world who could make him feel so exposed. It didn’t always feel like a good thing. ‘Carol, I’m going home tomorrow. I can’t manage without you. Not in any sense. So can we stop this now? I can’t do it.’

His words stopped her in her tracks. ‘Home? Tomorrow?’

He nodded. ‘I don’t need you to do much. I can get the supermarket to deliver a stack of ready meals…’

Carol tipped her head back, closed her eyes and sighed. ‘You are impossible,’ she said, all the anger dissipated.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tread on your toes. I just wanted to help and not be in your way.’ The jagged edges of the argument still filled the air, but the atmosphere between them had altered to something more like its normal state.

She sat down. ‘So now I’m here, fill me in on what you’re thinking. What can we do about Aziz now Rachel Diamond has closed down that avenue?’

‘I don’t know that it’s closed,’ he said. ‘I just need to work out another approach.’

‘Let me know when you do. I want to be there this time,’ she said firmly. ‘Oh, and here’s something I didn’t get the chance to tell you.’ She explained about the forensic team’s discovery of the two timers. ‘CTC think that it signals a new move, to more IRA-style terrorism, where the bombers live to fight another day. Me, I think it moves us closer to your idea of a hit man. Belt and braces. “If my timer doesn’t go off, I’ll be able to set it off remotely with my mobile.” That sort of thing.’

Tony felt the vague shape of something forming in the back of his mind. ‘That sort of thing,’ he said softly. ‘Yes.’ He gave her a quick, clear smile. ‘We’re moving further and further from any credible assertion of terrorism,’ he said.

‘We just need some incontrovertible evidence. I’m stuck in the middle of two cases where the evidence is intangible.’

Tony made an impatient movement with his hand. ‘When you find Jack Anderson, you’ll find your evidence. I think he’s connected to a poison garden.’

‘What is a poison garden?’

‘They’ve got one at Alnwick Castle,’ he said. ‘That’s a public one, where anybody can go and see all these killer plants. But there are stories and rumours of private ones. Individuals who specialize in growing deadly species of plants that have been seeing people off for as long as there have been people. Hemlock, that killed Socrates. Strychnine, that women used to kill off their husbands in the Middle Ages. Ricin, that killed Georgi Markov in the seventies. You can grow these plants in your back garden if you know your stuff. Wherever risk-averse Jack Anderson is hiding himself and hatching his careful plots, I think you’re going to find a poison garden.’

Carol rolled her eyes. ‘Every time we work together, there comes a point where you trot out some brilliant bloody insight that makes me go, “And how the fuck am I supposed to make use of that?”’

‘And what makes you really crazy is that once you work out how to use it, it turns out to be irritatingly useful,’ he said. ‘It’s what they pay me for.’

‘What? To be irritating?’

To be useful in a way that nobody else is expected to be. Go home now, and sleep on it. Chances are you’ll have figured it out by morning.’

‘You think?’

‘I know. The subconscious is a grafter. Does its best work when we’re asleep. Anyway, you’re going to need all the rest you can get so you can fetch me cups of coffee after a hard day’s crimefighting.’

Carol snorted. ‘Get yourself a thermos and a bit of string.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She kissed the top of his head. ‘And don’t interfere with my staff without talking to me first. OK?’

He smiled, pleased that they’d got past the anger. ‘I promise.’ And when he said it, he meant it.