Beneath the Bleeding

Wednesday

4:27, according to the clock in the bottom right corner of the laptop screen. Sound sleep had never been one of Tony’s accomplishments, but general anaesthesia seemed to have buggered it up completely. He’d slipped easily enough into slumber around ten, but it hadn’t lasted. Sleep seemed to be coming in fifty-minute chunks, punctuated with varying intervals of wakefulness. While the fifty-minute hours did seem ironically apposite for a clinical psychologist, he could have wished for more therapeutic effects.

He’d last shimmered into consciousness just after four. This time, he knew instinctively that there was no going back in the immediate future. At first, he lay still, his thoughts circling the re-emergence of his mother in his life in spite of his best intentions to move on to something else. It didn’t matter that there was nothing there but frustration and regret, a tightening gyre of pain and bitterness that kept him from sleep. It seemed impossible to ignore.

With an effort of will, he wrenched his thoughts round to the death of Robbie Bishop. He’d moved on from his memories of Robbie’s grace and glories to those elements that had more to do with his own expertise.

‘You’re not a novice,’ Tony said, his voice soft but distinct. ‘Even with beginner’s luck, you’d never have got away with this if it was your first outing. Not with someone as high-profile as Robbie. Whether you did this for personal reasons or because somebody paid you, you’ve done it before.’

He rolled his head against the pillows, trying to ease the stiffness in his neck. ‘Let’s call you Stalky. It’s as good a name as any, and you know I always like to make it a little bit personal. The question is, were you really an old school friend, Stalky? Maybe you were just pretending. Maybe Robbie was too polite to say he didn’t remember you. Or maybe he was conscious of the fact that his fame made him memorable compared to the other kids who were at school with him. Maybe he didn’t want to seem like an arsehole, acting like he’d never seen you before. Even so, even with Robbie’s reputation for being a nice guy, you’d still be taking a hell of a risk.

‘But if you were genuinely an old school friend, you were taking an even bigger risk. This is Bradfield, after all. Chances are that a fair chunk of the people in Amatis that night had also been at Harriestown High. They’d have recognized Robbie, for sure. But they might also have recognized you, unless you’ve changed a lot since schooldays. Very high-risk strategy.’

He found the bed controls and raised himself to a sitting position, wincing as his joints shifted. He pulled the bed-table across and flipped the laptop open, hitting the power switch. ‘You took a lot of risks, either way. And you took them with confidence. You got right alongside Robbie and nobody noticed you. You have definitely done this before. So let’s find your previous victims, Stalky.’

The light from the screen morphed in colour and intensity as Tony began his search, casting light and shade on his features, creating movement where none existed. ‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘Show yourself. You know you want to.’

Carol opened the blinds that cut her off from the rest of the team. She’d called the case conference for nine, but although it was only ten past eight, they were all there. Even Sam, who hadn’t dropped her off till five to four. She wondered whether his sleep had been more refreshing than hers. She’d been conscious of him watching and waiting till she was safe inside the basement flat she rented from Tony. Then it had been her turn to watch and wait. As Carol fed the complaining Nelson, she kept an eye out until Sam’s lights swept across her kitchen window and the hedge that demarcated next door’s drive from theirs. Once she was sure he was really gone, she’d poured herself a resort-sized brandy and headed upstairs.

Picking up the mail from the doormat was a reasonable thing to do and it provided a pretext for her to climb the stairs to Tony’s first-floor office. She laid the letters on the desk, then subsided into the armchair opposite the one he habitually chose. She loved this chair-its depth, its width, its enveloping cushions that seemed to hold her close. In scale, it felt like a cave, as adult armchairs feel to children. In this seat, she’d discussed her cases, talked through her feelings about her team members, explored the need for justice that drove her to do this job in the teeth of all the dangers and disappointments. He’d talked about his theories of offender behaviour, his frustrations with the mental health system, his burning desire to make people better. She couldn’t even hazard a guess at the number of hours they’d spent at ease with each other in this room.

Carol curled her legs under her and snuggled, glugging half of the brandy without a shudder. Five minutes, then she’d head back downstairs. ‘I wish you were here,’ she said out loud. ‘I feel like we’re getting nowhere. Normally, nobody would be expecting much progress at this stage in a case like this. But this is Robbie Bishop and the eyes of the world are watching. So getting nowhere isn’t going to be an option.’ She yawned, then finished the drink.

‘You scared me, you know,’ she said, burrowing more deeply into the squashy cushions. ‘When Chris told me you’d run into the mad axeman, I felt like my heart stopped, like the world went into slow motion. Don’t you ever do that to me again, you bastard.’ She shifted her head, butting a cushion into a more comfortable shape, closing her eyes and feeling her body unwind as the alcohol hit. ‘Wish you’d warned me about your mother, though. She’s something else. No wonder you’re as weird as you are.’

The next thing Carol had known was the blare of the radio alarm from the bedroom across the hallway. Stiff and disorientated, she’d stumbled to her feet and checked her watch. Seven o’clock. Less than three hours’ kip. Time to start all over again.

And here she was, showered, in fresh clothes, caffeine levels already jitterbug high. Carol combed her thick blonde hair with her fingers and started skimming the pile of Robbie Bishop news stories Paula had already clipped for her. Focusing hard, because the last thing she wanted to do was examine how she had spent her night. She only looked up when Chris Devine knocked and entered, a brown paper bag in her hand. ‘Bacon and egg roll,’ she said succinctly, dropping it on the desk. ‘We’re ready when you are.’ Carol smiled at her retreating back. Chris had a knack for the gesture of solidarity, the little touches that made her colleagues feel supported. Carol wondered how they had managed before she’d joined them. The plan had been for Chris to be there from the off, but her mother’s terminal cancer had kept her in her old job with the Met for three months longer than she’d anticipated. Carol sighed. Maybe if Chris had been around from the get-go, Detective Inspector Don Merrick would still be among them.

‘Pointless,’ she chided herself, reaching for the bag and tucking in without really registering what she was eating. Hardly a day went by without her wondering whether this or that detail might have made a difference to Don. In her heart, she knew she was only trying to find a way to blame herself instead of him. Tony had told her more than once that it was OK to be angry with Don for what he’d done. But it still didn’t feel possible, never mind right.

As she ate, Carol made a few notes, sketching a rough agenda for the case conference. By quarter to nine, she was ready. There was no reason to wait for the prearranged time, so she emerged from her office and assembled the team around her. Carol stood in front of one of the whiteboards that contained a digest of all the information they had amassed so far on Robbie Bishop.

On her word, Sam kicked off the proceedings with a recap of their interview with Bindie Blyth. He finished up with Bindie’s vague theory about gambling. ‘Anybody have any comment?’ Carol asked.

Stacey, their computer and ICT specialist, waggled her pen. ‘She’s right that there’s a huge amount of gambling money swilling around in the Far East. And a lot of it is staked on football. The Australians in particular have done a lot of investigative work into the way they use computer networks to rake the money in. And yes, there’s a lot of associated crime and corruption. But the point is, the gambling syndicates don’t have to resort to assassination to skew the odds in their favour. They can buy what they need.’

‘You’re saying that even with the amount of money we pay our footballers, they’ve still got their hands out for more?’ Paula feigned shock.

‘There’s more than one way to fix a game,’ Stacey said. ‘Arguably, the match officials have more influence over outcome. And they don’t earn mega salaries.’

Sam snorted derisively. ‘And they’re so crap, nobody would notice them doing it on purpose. If a referee can give one player three yellow cards in the same game when he’s supposed to send him off after the second one, imagine what he could do if he was taking backhanders. So you’re saying that while these gambling syndicates might cross the line to make sure the sums come out in their favour, you don’t think they’d go as far as murder?’

Stacey nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. It doesn’t match the way they go about things.’

Kevin looked up from the gun he was doodling on his pad. ‘Yeah, but that’s what you might call the traditional end of dodgy gambling. See, this ricin thing, that spells Russian mafia to me. A lot of those guys, they’re ex-KGB and FSB. It was the KGB that helped the Bulgarians assassinate Georgi Markov using ricin. What if the Russians have decided they want a slice of the international betting cash? It would be just like them to be so bloody heavy-handed.’

Stacey shrugged. ‘It makes a kind of sense, I suppose. But I’ve not heard anything about the Russians getting into this sort of thing. Maybe we should ask Six?’

Carol shuddered. The last thing she wanted was to allow the intelligence services anywhere near her operation. Their reputation slithered before them, in particular their reluctance to go away empty-handed once they’d been invited in. Carol didn’t want to have her murder inquiry transformed into some sinister conspiracy until she was certain it wasn’t a straightforward murder for one of the customary motives. ‘Until we’ve got something more solid connecting the Russians to this, I’m not going near the spooks,’ she said firmly. ‘At this point, we have nothing to suggest Robbie Bishop’s murder was anything to do with gambling or the Russian mafia. Let’s wait till we have some evidence before we get over-excited about theories like Bindie’s. We’ll keep it in mind, but I don’t think it’s worth spending investigative resources on it right now. Stacey, what have you got for us?’

Never at her best when dealing with humans, Stacey shifted in her seat and studiously avoided eye contact. ‘So far, I’ve found nothing of interest on Bishop’s computer. No emails sent after his night out on Thursday, except one to his agent agreeing to an interview for a Spanish men’s magazine. Also, he never visited the bestdays.co.uk website. Not from his home computer, at any rate. His history list is almost exclusively related to football or music. He bought some new speakers online just last week. Which kind of knocks the suicide idea on the head, if that was in anybody’s mind.’

‘I don’t know. If I was depressed, I might spend a few bob to cheer myself up,’ Sam said. Catching Carol rolling her eyes, he hastily added, ‘Not that we’re thinking suicide.’

‘Not with ricin. Too obscure, too painful, too slow,’ Carol said, echoing what Denby had said to her. ‘As for the Best Days website, given that Robbie did have the url on him, I think we can assume that whoever he was drinking with that night was familiar with the site. Stacey, do you think there’s any way they can help us?’

‘Depends on their attitude,’ she began.

‘And on whether they’re football fans,’ Kevin said.

Stacey looked dubious. ‘Maybe. What I thought we could ask for in the first instance is for them to send an email to all their Harriestown High subscribers asking them to contact us with a recent photo and an account of their movements on Thursday night. That way, we set things in motion without having to wait for a warrant.’

‘Isn’t that sending out a big fat warning to our killer?’ Kevin asked. ‘Tipping them off to our interest? I went to Harriestown High, you know. We weren’t the most authority-friendly bunch. Harriestown wasn’t yuppified back then, it was pretty rough. Even in Robbie’s day, it wasn’t the sort of place where they fall over themselves to help the police. You’re dealing with the kind of people who could easily send a photo of someone completely different just to wind us up, never mind throwing us off the trail. I say we ask the site for the names and addresses of their subscribers and if they won’t come across, we go for the warrant.’

Carol saw the momentary flash of irritation in Stacey’s eyes. She normally kept her opinions on her colleagues’ lack of understanding of the world of information technology to herself; it was rare to catch a glimpse of her true feelings.

Assuming an air of weary patience, Stacey said, ‘The only address the website will have stored for their subscribers is the email address. It’s possible they may have credit card billing addresses, but even if they do, that’s covered by the data protection legislation and we definitely would need a warrant to get that. The important thing here is that, however we get in touch with these people, there’s no way to keep it secret. The first person we talk to will be online before we’re back in our cars, posting our line of inquiry. We might as well be upfront from the start. The online community is much more inclined to co-operate when they’re included in the process. We take them with us, we get their help. We treat them as potentially hostile and they’ll make our life twice as difficult.’ It was a major speech for Stacey. A measure, Carol thought, of how seriously she was taking this case.

‘OK. Give it a whirl, Stacey. See if you can get the Best Days people to co-operate. If you hit a wall, come back to me. And, Kevin? You can cast an eye over the pics from your era, see if your old classmates are confounding your expectations and telling the truth. Chris?’ Carol turned to the sergeant. ‘How did you guys get on at Amatis?’

Chris shook her head. The bar staff who were on duty on Thursday remember seeing Robbie in the vodka bar, but they were too busy to pay attention to the company he was keeping. Same with the punters. I think we can probably rule out a stunning blonde. They would have noticed that, I suspect. Paula did notice one thing…’ Chris tipped a nod to Paula and took a sheet of paper out of a folder. ‘There’s CCTV covering the bar area. Unfortunately for our purposes, it’s there to keep an eye on the staff, not the punters. It’s the management’s way of making sure all the cash ends up in the till and that nobody is dealing drugs from behind the bar. So it’s not pointed at the customers. However, we did get this.’ She moved to the whiteboard and pinned up a grainy enlargement. ‘This is Robbie,’ she said, pointing to a hand on the very edge of the photo. ‘We know it’s him because of the Celtic ring tattoo on his middle finger. And next to him, we can see someone else.’ A couple of inches from Robbie’s fingertips was half a hand, a wrist and a section of forearm. ‘Male,’ she said, her expression a mixture of disgust and triumph. ‘A few more degrees of angle on the camera and we’d have him. As it is, all we know is that it is a him and that he doesn’t have a tattoo on the right half of his right hand, wrist or lower arm.’ She stepped away from the board and sat down again. ‘So at least Stacey can tell the website people we’re only interested in the blokes.’

‘Can we, though? Can we be sure this is the person he was referring to?’ Sam butted in.

‘Sure as we can be. We’ve been through all the footage and we’ve not been able to put anybody else alongside Robbie. Someone talking to him from behind wouldn’t have been able to get at his drink. See, it’s too close to Robbie for anyone to tamper with it except the person facing him at the bar.’

‘OK.’ Sam subsided. ‘Point taken.’

‘Thanks, Chris. Anybody else got anything?’

‘I’ve got the results from the street CCTV,’ Paula said. ‘I got the graveyard-shift CID to work it through the night. Robbie definitely didn’t leave by the front door, which is a massive pain in the arse because that area’s saturated with cameras. He must have left by the side door, the so-called VIP exit. There’s no coverage there-the club wants to keep on the good side of its so-called celebrity patrons. This way, there’s no temptation for the club’s security staff to flog stuff to the gossip mags. If there are no pix of C-list TV reality-show arseholes shagging some drunken fan up against the wall, they’re not going to be exposed in print. So goes the theory.

‘The back lane behind the club opens out into Goss Street, the effective border of Temple Fields…’ Paula paused for a moment, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. And of course, Temple Fields has pretty sketchy coverage. Too many of the businesses there are reliant on the streetlife for them to want CCTV, so they always oppose the council when they want to put more cameras up. So we don’t have any footage of Robbie entering Goss Street. What we do have, however, is a very brief clip from one of the cameras on Campion Way. I’ve just put it up on the network, you’ll all be able to see it on your screens. But here it is for now.’ She pulled a laptop towards her and tapped the mouse pad. The interactive whiteboard to the side of Carol immediately sprang to life, an obscure picture appearing, an abstract chiaroscuro of dark and light created by the streetlights on Campion Way. ‘This is pretty raw,’ Paula said. ‘We should be able to get it cleaned up a bit. But I don’t know how helpful it’s going to be.’

The camera was looking down the street, angled to pick up car number plates as kerb crawlers idled down Campion Way. At first, nothing moved. Then two figures emerged from a cross street, paused at the kerb, waiting for a night bus to pass, then walked briskly across the road and disappeared down the other arm of the side street. Knowing Robbie Bishop was the target made it possible to distinguish the walker closest to the camera as the footballer. But the person beyond him was nothing but a darker smudge, except for one brief moment at the kerbside when a blur of white appeared at Robbie’s shoulder.

‘And the killer is Caspar the friendly fucking ghost,’ Kevin said. At least we know he’s white. Almost makes you think he knew the camera was there.’

‘I think he did know,’ Paula said. ‘I think it’s very instructive that this is the only CCTV camera shot we have of Robbie and his probable killer. Even with the scant coverage there is in Temple Fields, it’s impossible to get from one side to the other without being picked up at least once on camera.’ She tapped again on the mouse pad. This time, a map of Temple Fields appeared, with Amatis and the CCTV cameras highlighted. Paula tapped again. This time, a scarlet line zigzagged through the streets, avoiding all but the Campion Way camera. ‘By taking this route, they were only picked up from the side. And for less than a minute. Any other route and they’d have been filmed head-on. Look at the way they must have come. You don’t make all those twists and turns by chance. And I don’t think it was Robbie who was avoiding the cameras.’

They all stared at the map for a long moment. ‘Well spotted, Paula,’ Carol said. ‘I think we can safely say that we are looking for somebody local. Somebody who attended Harriestown High School and who has intimate knowledge of Temple Fields. With all respect, Kevin, this is looking more like one of your fellow former pupils than the Russian mafia. Unless of course they’re using local talent. So let’s keep our minds open. Paula, do we know how they left Temple Fields?’

‘It’s a blank, chief. There are plenty of smart flats in that part of town these days. Or they might have got into a car. We’ve no way of knowing. All we can say for sure is that they don’t show up on foot on any of the main drags on that side of Temple Fields.’

‘OK. Let’s see if we can get any more commercial CCTV footage of the area. Are we any further forward on where he might have got the ricin?’

Kevin consulted his notebook. ‘I spoke to a lecturer in the pharmacology department at the university. He says it’s easy to make. All you need are some castor beans, lye and acetone and a few basic bits of kitchen equipment-a glass jar, coffee filter, tweezers, that level of stuff.’

‘Where do you get castor beans?’ Chris asked.

‘They’re common anywhere south of the Alps. You can buy them online without any trouble. Basically, if any of us wanted to make enough ricin to wipe out the people in this building, we could do it by a week on Wednesday. I don’t think there’s any mileage in trying to trace the components,’ Kevin said wearily.

It was hard not to let despondency seep into the briefing. Carol told herself they had made some progress, even if it did feel insignificant. Every investigation had stages where it felt bogged down. Soon the forensic and pathology results would begin to trickle in. Please God, that might give them a crack they could lever open into a break.

Red-hot worms covered in barbed hooks tore through his flesh. Stoicism abandoned, Tony screamed. The pain subsided into a pulsing stab, an electric eel inside his thigh. The breath escaped from him in tight little groans. ‘Everybody says having the drains out is the worst,’ the middle-aged nurse said cosily.

‘Ungh,’ Tony grunted. ‘Not wrong.’ Sweat beaded his face and neck. His whole body stiffened as he felt the twinge of a movement in the second drain. ‘Just a minute. Gimme a minute,’ he gasped.

‘Better out than in,’ the nurse said and carried on regardless.

Knowing what was coming didn’t make the second one any easier to endure. He clenched his hands and eyes shut and took a deep breath. As the scream died away, a familiar voice grated in his ears. ‘He’s always been a big girl’s blouse,’ his mother said conversationally to the nurse.

‘I’ve seen strong men cry, having their drains out,’ the nurse said. ‘He’s done better than many.’

Vanessa Hill patted the nurse on the shoulder. ‘I love the way you girls stick up for them. I hope he’s not giving you any trouble.’

The nurse smiled. ‘Oh no, he’s being very well behaved. He’s a credit to you, really, Mrs Hill.’ And she was gone.

His mother’s bonhomie left with her. ‘I had a meeting with the Bradfield Cross Trust. I thought I’d better show my face. What are they saying?’

‘They’re going to try me in a leg brace, see if I can get out of bed today or tomorrow. I’m pushing to be out of here by next week.’ He recognized the dismay on her face and considered winding her up. But the small boy in him kicked in, warning him that the consequences would probably not be worth the moment of pleasure. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to let them discharge me into your care. Even if I tell them that’s where I’m going, all you’ll have to do is turn up when they’re sending me home. Then you can deliver me to my own house.’

Vanessa smirked. The girlfriend going to take care of you, is she?’

‘For the last time, she is not my girlfriend.’

‘No, I suppose that would be too much to hope for. Pretty girl like that. Smart too, I don’t doubt. She could do better for herself, I expect.’ Her lips compressed into a thin line of disapproval. ‘You’ve never had my talent for attracting interesting people. Apart from your father, of course. But then, we’re all entitled to one mistake.’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment, could I? Since you’ve never told me anything about him.’ Tony heard the bitterness in his voice and wished it gone.

‘He thought he was better off without us. In my book, that makes us better off without him.’ She turned away, looking out of the window at a flat grey sky. ‘Listen, I need you to sign something.’ She faced him, leaning her shoulder bag on the bed and taking out a folder of papers. ‘Bloody government, they try to screw us for every penny. Your gran’s house, it’s in both our names. She did it that way to save me paying inheritance tax. It’s been rented out all these years. But with the property market the way–’

‘Wait a minute. What do you mean, Gran’s house is in both our names? This is the first I’ve heard of it.’ Tony pushed himself up on one elbow, wincing but determined.

‘Of course it’s the first you’ve heard of it. If I’d left it up to you, you’d have had it running as a probation hostel or a halfway house for some of your precious nutters,’ Vanessa said without a trace of indulgent affection. ‘Look, I just need you to sign the instructions to the solicitor and the transfer deed.’ She produced a couple of sheets of paper and placed them on the bed-table, grabbing the bed control and fiddling with the buttons.

Tony found himself being shunted up and down as Vanessa tried to figure out how to get him to sit up. ‘Why am I only hearing about this now? What about all the rent money?’

Satisfied with the bed position, Vanessa flipped her wrist dismissively. ‘Would have been wasted on you. What would you have done with it? Bought more bloody books? Anyway, you’ll get your share when you sign up for the sale.’ She raked in her bag and came up with a pen. ‘Here, sign these.’

‘I need to read them,’ Tony protested as she pushed the pen between his fingers.

‘What for? You’ll be none the wiser once you’re done. Just sign, Tony.’

It was, he thought, impossible to know whether she was trying to con him. Her manner would have been the same either way. Impatience, irritation, the unmistakable conviction that he, like the rest of the world, was trying to throw any available obstacle in her path. He could try standing up to her, demand the opportunity to read the papers in full and the time to think over what she wanted. But right now, he didn’t care. His leg hurt, his head hurt, and he knew she could take nothing from him that mattered. Yes, she might be keeping from him things that were his. But he’d got along fine without them so far and he probably would continue to do so. Getting her off his case and out of his room was much more important. ‘OK,’ he sighed. But before he could use the pen, the door swung open and Mrs Chakrabarti entered like a predatory schooner, her fleet round her in battle order.

In a single move, Vanessa spirited the papers away and into her bag. Under the cover of a pat on the hand, she removed the pen, all the while giving Mrs Chakrabarti the benefit of her finest corporate smile.

‘You must be the famous Mrs Hill,’ the surgeon said. Tony thought he imagined a dryness in her tone that he couldn’t quite believe.

‘I owe you a debt of gratitude for making such a good job of my son’s knee,’ Vanessa replied sweetly. The idea of being crippled for life is one he’d struggle to come to terms with.’

‘I think most people would.’ The surgeon turned to Tony. ‘I hear they managed to get your drains out without killing you.’

His smile felt ancient and tired. ‘Just about. I think it hurt more than being hit in the first place.’

Mrs Chakrabarti raised her eyebrows. ‘You men are such babies. It’s as well you don’t have to give birth or the human race would have died out a long time ago. So, what we are going to do now is to remove that big heavy splint and see what happens. It’s going to hurt like blazes, but if this pain is too much, then attempting to stand is certainly going to be beyond you.’

‘I’ll be off, then,’ Vanessa cut in. ‘I never could stand to see him suffer.’

Tony let the lie pass. It was worth it to see the back of her. ‘Do your worst, then, he said as the door closed behind Vanessa. ‘I’m tougher than I look.’

Stacey Chen was also tougher than she looked. She’d had to be. In spite of a phenomenal talent for programming and systems analysis, little had come easily to her. The silicon-based world should have been blind to her gender and her status as the child of immigrant parents, but it had turned out to be just as biased as everywhere else. That was one reason why she’d turned her back on a brilliant academic career and opted for the police. She’d made her first million while she was still an undergraduate with a clever bit of code she’d sold to a US software giant which secured their operating system against potential software conflicts. But success had come with a larding of condescension and she knew she didn’t want to be part of that world.

In the police, however, you knew exactly where you were. Nobody apart from the bosses in offices far removed from the sharp end pretended your gender and ethnicity didn’t matter. It was prejudiced, but it was honest. She could put up with that because what Stacey loved more than anything was the opportunity the police service gave her to fiddle around inside other people’s computer lives. She could nose around in people’s emails, wriggle her way through their perversions and dig up the secrets they thought they’d buried. And it was all legal.

The other thing about police work was that there was no possible conflict between her salaried life and her freelance work. Her monthly pay packet barely covered the overheads of her city-centre penthouse, never mind the made-to-measure suits and shirts she wore to the office. The rest of the cash–and there was a lot of it–came from the code she wrote in her home office on her own machines. That was one kind of satisfaction. Poking her nose into other people’s privacy was the other. These days, she had what she wanted, but by God, she’d earned it.

The only downside was that from time to time, she had to deal with people face to face. For some reason, the police still believed that you got better results when you were breathing the same air as the people you were questioning. Very twentieth century, Stacey thought as her GPS system announced, ‘Destination road reached.’

The headquarters of Best Days of Our Lives didn’t look like any software company Stacey had ever visited. It was a suburban semi on the outskirts of Preston, a short but traffic-choked distance from the M6. It seemed odd that a company which had been the subject of a multi-million dollar buyout attempt only months before was based in a 1970s box that couldn’t with the best will in the world have been worth much more than a couple of hundred thousand. But it was the address registered at Companies House and the one they’d given her via email.

The front door opened as Stacey climbed out of the car and a woman in her late twenties dressed in fashionably ripped jeans and a Commonwealth Games rugby shirt smiled cheerfully. ‘You must be DC Chen,’ she said in a West Country accent. ‘Come on in.’

Stacey, who had dressed carefully in geek chic Gap chinos and hoodie, smiled back. ‘Gail?’

The woman pushed her streaked blonde hair back and held out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, come on in.’ She ushered Stacey into a living room crammed with sofas and chairs. Children’s toys were piled in a random heap in the corner by the TV set. A coffee table was strewn with magazines and print-outs of lists. ‘Sorry about the mess. We’ve been trying to move for about a year now but we never seem to have the time to look at houses.’

The idea of not having children ever was fine with Stacey. She loved the clean lines of her loft, its space and its harmony. Living here would drive her nuts. No two ways about it. ‘It’s OK,’ she lied.

‘Can I get you a drink? Tea, coffee, herbal tea, Red Bull, Diet Coke…Milk?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Stacey smiled, her dark almond eyes turning up at the corners. ‘I didn’t realize you guys ran the business from home. Cracking idea, by the way.’

‘Thanks.’ Gail dropped on to one of the sofas and pulled a face. ‘It started as a hobby. Then it took over our lives. We have big corporations contacting us pretty much every day, wanting to buy us up. But we don’t want it to change and become all about making money. We want it to stay about people, about lives reconnecting. We’ve had people come together after a lifetime apart. We’ve been to weddings. We’ve got a whole cork board of photos of Best Days babies.’ Gail grinned. ‘I feel like a fairy godmother.’

Stacey recognized the quote. She’d read it in a couple of online interviews Gail had given about the business and its impact on people’s lives. ‘It’s not all sunshine, though, is it? I’ve heard marriages have broken up as well.’

Gail fiddled with the frayed cloth on the sofa arm. ‘Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’

‘Not good publicity, though, is it?’

Gail looked slightly baffled, as if she was wondering how this conversation had derailed itself so quickly from the sunny and warm. ‘Well, no. To be honest, we try to avoid talking about that side of things.’ She grinned again, but less certainly this time. ‘No need to harp on about it, I say.’

‘Quite. And I’m sure the last thing you want is to be associated in a negative way with a murder inquiry,’ Stacey said.

Gail looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘Murder? That can’t be right.’

‘I’m investigating the murder of Robbie Bishop.’

‘He’s not one of our members,’ Gail said sharply. ‘I’d have remembered if he was.’

‘We have reason to believe that he was drinking with somebody who is one of your members on the night he was poisoned. It’s possible…’

‘Are you trying to tell me one of our members murdered Robbie Bishop?’ Gail reared back into the sofa, as if she was trying to get away from Stacey.

‘Please, Gail, just listen.’ Stacey’s patience was wearing thin. ‘We believe the person he was drinking with may have seen something, or Robbie may have said something to them. We need to trace that person and we think they were a member of Best Days of Our Lives.’

‘But why?’ Gail looked frantic. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because Robbie told another friend he was having a drink with someone from school. And we found a scrap of paper with the website url in the pocket of the trousers he was wearing.’

‘That doesn’t mean…’ Gail kept shaking her head, as if the movement could make Stacey disappear.

‘What we want you to do is to send a message to all of your male subscribers who were at Harriestown High with Robbie, asking them if they were the person who was drinking with him on Thursday. And because they might be nervous about admitting it, we also want them to send you a recent photograph and an account of their movements between ten in the evening on Thursday and four in the morning on Friday. Do you think you can do that for us?’ Stacey smiled again. It was as well the children were not at home, for her expression would surely have reduced them to terrified tears.

‘I don’t think…’ Gail’s voice trailed off. ‘I mean…It’s not what people sign up for, is it?’

Stacey shrugged. The web is, by and large, a positive place. I think people will respond well to being asked for help. Robbie was a popular guy.’ She pulled out a phone with email capacity. ‘I can email you the message we’d like you to send out.’

‘I don’t know. I need to talk to Simon. My husband.’ Gail leaned forward, reaching for the mobile on the coffee table.

Stacey shook her head, miming regret. The thing is, we don’t have time to waste here. Either we do this the nice way, where you stay in control of your addresses and your system, or we do it the other way, where I get a warrant and we cart your computers out of here and I do whatever it takes to get your subscribers to come across. It may not be pretty and I doubt you’ll have much of a business left to attract the corporate sharks once somebody leaks to the press that you tried to obstruct the investigation into Robbie Bishop’s murder.’ Stacey spread her hands. ‘But, hey, it’s up to you.’ Chris Devine would have been proud of her, she thought, monstering the poor woman so thoroughly.

Gail looked at her with hatred. ‘I thought you were one of us,’ she said bitterly.

‘You’re not the first one to make that mistake,’ Stacey said. ‘Let’s go and send some emails.’

Vanessa drew her reading glasses from her face and dropped them by her pad. ‘I think that’s us,’ she said.

The plump woman opposite her settled back in her chair. ‘I’ll get everything under way,’ she said. Melissa Riley had been Vanessa Hill’s second-in-command for four years. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, she persisted in her belief that Vanessa’s steely professionalism disguised a heart of gold. Nobody who was that shrewd or swift in her assessments of human behaviour and personality could really be as hardboiled as Vanessa seemed to be. And today, finally, there was proof of that. Vanessa had cancelled all her appointments to be at the bedside of her injured son. OK, she’d reappeared mid-morning and had been working like a Trojan ever since, but still. She’d only come away because her son’s partner had insisted on relieving her. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, her smooth face shining with concern.

‘Feeling?’ Vanessa frowned. ‘I’m fine. It’s not me that’s in the hospital.’

‘It must have been a terrible shock, all the same. And to see your son laid up like that…I mean, as a mother, you want what’s best for them, you want to take their pain away…’

‘You do,’ Vanessa said, her tone indicating the conversation was at an end. She could see Melissa was gagging for something more intimate. Her social work training had left her avid for other people’s disasters. There were times when Vanessa wondered if Melissa’s brilliant organizational skills were sufficient to outweigh her desire to insinuate her fat little fingers into every crevice of any passing psyche. Today, it was a close call.

‘And of course, you’re absolutely riven with anxiety about his recovery,’ Melissa said. ‘Have they said whether he’ll walk properly again?’

‘He might have a limp. He’ll probably have to have another surgery.’ It killed Vanessa to reveal this much, but she understood that sometimes she had to give a little to maintain the respect of her team. As Melissa wittered on, she wondered what it felt like to be consumed with maternal concern. Mothers talked about bonding with their kids, but she’d never felt that burning intimacy they spoke of. She’d felt protective towards her baby, but it didn’t seem much different from the way she’d felt about her first puppy, the runt of the litter who’d had to be bottle-fed. In a way, she was relieved. She didn’t want to be chained to this child, to feel a physical absence when they were apart as she’d heard other women describe. But she had known right from the start that her lack of response was not the sort of thing it was acceptable to admit to. For all she knew, there were millions of women who felt as disengaged as she did.

But as long as there were Melissas out there laying claim to the moral high ground, Vanessa and her multitudes would have to pretend. Well, that wasn’t such a big deal. She’d spent most of her life pretending one thing or another. Sometimes she wondered if she really knew any more what was real and what was constructed.

Not that it mattered. She would do as she had always done. Look after number one. She didn’t owe Tony a damn thing. She’d fed and clothed him and put a roof over his head till he’d left for university. If there was any debt owed, it was in the other direction.

Running a unit like hers meant there was no hiding place, Carol thought bitterly as some sixth sense kicked in and she looked up to see the main office door open on John Brandon. The time it took her Chief Constable to cross the office to her cubicle was enough for Carol to compose herself mentally, to review what little there was to share.

She stood up as he walked into her small domain. She was conscious that Brandon and his wife were her friends, a consciousness that made her stand on ceremony whenever they met in the semi-public arena of the police HQ. ‘Sir,’ she said with a tight smile, waving him to a chair.

Brandon, his lugubrious bloodhound face reflecting her own low spirits, eased into the chair with the care of a man suffering back pain. ‘The world has its eye on us today, Carol.’

‘Robbie Bishop will get the same commitment from my team as every other victim, sir.’

‘I know that. But our investigations don’t usually attract quite this much attention.’

Carol picked up a pen and rolled it between her fingers. ‘We’ve had our moments,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a problem with being the focus of the media’s attention.’

‘Other people do, though. I have bosses and they want a quick result. Bradfield Victoria’s board want this brought to a successful conclusion ASAP. It’s unsettling their players, apparently.’ Brandon was enough of a diplomat to hide his feelings generally, but today, his irritation was just visible beneath the surface. ‘And it seems that every citizen of Bradfield was Robbie Bishop’s number one fan.’ He sighed. ‘So where are we up to?’

Carol weighed up her choices. Should she make the little she had sound more or less than it was? More would put pressure on her to deliver on it; less would put pressure on her to find something to chase. She settled for laying it out exactly as it was. At the end of her short recital, John Brandon looked even more miserable. ‘I don’t envy you,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t want a result. Anything you need in terms of bodies and resources, let me know.’ He got up.

‘It’s not a matter of resources now, sir. It’s a matter of information.’

‘I know.’ He turned to go. His hand was on the door handle when he looked back. ‘Do you need me to sort out another profiler? With Tony out of action?’

Carol felt a flash of panic. She didn’t want to have to forge a working relationship with somebody whose judgements would be based on a scant knowledge of her and her team. She didn’t want to have to worry about how to mitigate another psychologist’s conclusions. ‘It’s his leg that’s busted, not his brain,’ she said hastily. ‘It’ll be fine. When there’s something for a profiler to get his teeth into, Dr Hill will be there for us.’

Brandon raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t let me down, Carol.’ Then he was gone, walking across the office with a word of encouragement.

Carol stared at his back, fizzing with anger. The implied criticism in his words was out of order. No other officer under John Brandon’s command had done more to demonstrate commitment to the job, or to the abstract principles of justice that drove her. No other officer had a better track record when it came to dealing with the kind of destructive high-profile cases that fucked up lives and made Bradfield’s citizens look over their shoulders in fear. And he knew that. Somebody somewhere must have given him one hell of a kicking to make him act as if he didn’t.

DC Sam Evans was supposed to be canvassing residents of the converted warehouse where Robbie Bishop had lived. The boss had had this idea that Robbie might have said something to a fellow resident in the sauna or the steam room after his night out at Amatis, something that might lead them to the poisoner. Sam thought the idea was crap. If there was one thing that people like Robbie Bishop learned, it was to keep your mouth shut in front of anybody who might be tempted to grass you up to Heat or the Bradfield Evening Sentinel diary. He knew that Carol Jordan thought he needed to mend his maverick ways, especially after Don Merrick’s decision to follow a hot lead without waiting for back-up had ended so disastrously. She had indicated there was no room now for anything other than team spirit, but he knew she hadn’t got where she was today by putting her own interests second. She couldn’t blame him for doing his own thing as long as he got results.

So instead of pointless door-knocking, he was holed up in his own living room, laptop on his knees, Robbie Bishop’s emails on his screen. Stacey had said there was nothing there, but he didn’t think she’d had time to go through them one by one. Not when she’d been doing all the techie stuff with his hard drive as well. She might have skimmed the emails, but he’d bet this month’s salary that she hadn’t scrutinized them in detail.

After an hour, he couldn’t find it in his heart to find fault with Stacey for her presumed dereliction. It was bad enough that Robbie cleaved to the text message style of prose, making it less than straightforward to read. Even worse was the banality of his messages. If there was a duller correspondent than Robbie Bishop, Sam hoped earnestly he’d never have to wade through his mail. He supposed the ones about music might contain something worth reading if you had a consuming passion for the minutiae of obscure trip-hop tracks. Maybe Robbie’s fascination for bpm made Bindie’s heart race. All it did for Sam was provoke a strong desire for sleep.

The love stuff was almost as boring as the music. And since Bindie was his principal correspondent, love and music was most of what there was. But Sam wasn’t about to give up. He understood that the most interesting information was often the stuff that was most deeply buried. And so he persevered.

The clue came halfway through the third hour of excruciating assertions of love and analyses of music. He almost missed it, so casually was it buried among the other stuff. Robbie had written, ‘Maybe u shd report this fuckwit. U say he means u no harm, bt wot abt me? Peple like him do al kinds of shit with guns & stuff. Let’s talk about it l8r.’

It didn’t make much sense on its own. Sam went back to the email filing cabinet and called up the saved incoming mail folder. When he clicked to open it, the message read, ‘You have 9743 messages in this folder. It may take some time to sort these messages. Do you want to go ahead?’ He clicked and while he waited, checked the date on Robbie’s outgoing message.

It took only a few seconds to find the message from Bindie that had prompted Robbie’s reply. ‘I’m starting to get a bit weirded out by this geezer who keeps turning up at gigs,’ Sam read.

‘He’s been sending me letters for a while now-beautiful fancy handwriting, looks like it’s written with a fountain pen–all telling me how we’re meant to be together and how the BBC are conspiring to keep us apart. None of it very sensible, but whatever, he seemed harmless enough. Anyway, he’s finally figured out that I do live club gigs too and he’s started showing up there. Thankfully most of them won’t let him in becoz he fails the dress code, but then he just hangs around outside. He’s taken to parading up and down with a placard saying there’s a plot to keep him from me. So one of the doormen took it on himself the other week to show him that spread we did for the Sunday Mirror for Valentine’s Day. And apparently he was very put out. Ever since, he’s been telling all the door crews that you’ve hypnotized me and made me your sex slave. And that he’s going to put it to rights. I don’t imagine for a moment that he will do anything except crawl back in his burrow eventually, but it is a BIT freaky.’

Sam drew his breath in slowly. He’d been sure there was something to be found on Robbie’s computer. Something that would finally give them a solid lead. And here it was. Twenty-four carat freak. Just the sort who would come up with some complicated plot involving a rare poison and a slow, horrible death.

He smiled at the screen. A couple of phone calls to nail it down, then he’d show Carol Jordan how wrong she was to sideline Sam Evans.

Tony refined the search parameters again and set his metacrawler to work once more. Google was fine for broad-brush searches, but when it came to fine-tooth comb work, it was hard to beat the search engine an FBI profiler colleague had given him with a nod and a wink. ‘It takes a little longer, but you can see the hair in their ears and nostrils,’ he’d said. Tony suspected a lot of what it did was in breach of European data protection laws, but he didn’t think the cops would be coming after him any time soon.

The big advantage he had over his American counterparts was that the sample he was looking at was much smaller than theirs. If an FBI profiler wanted to look at suspicious deaths of white males between the ages of twenty and thirty over the previous two years, he’d have something like 11,000 cases to consider. But in the UK, the total number of murders committed over two years scarcely reached 1600. When suspicious deaths were added, the numbers rose a little, but not by much. The difficulty Tony faced was actually to identify the target group he was interested in. With relatively few murders committed, there was less impetus to break them down into neat categories of age, gender and race. He’d wasted much of the day acquiring information that had turned out to be completely irrelevant. The process was slowed even further because his concentration span had been temporarily shrunk by drugs and anaesthesia. Tony was embarrassed at the number of times he’d started into consciousness, laptop in hibernation and drool running down his chin.

He had, however, narrowed his search to nine cases by the time Carol arrived in the early evening. He’d wanted to do better, to have something to show her, to prove he was still in the game. But clearly he wasn’t, not yet. So he decided to say nothing about his trawl.

She looked frayed round the edges, he thought, watching her slip out of her coat and pull the chair up to the bedside. Eyes heavy-lidded, recent lines showing the strain at the corners. Mouth a despondent line. He knew her well enough to read the process as she pulled herself together and smiled for him. ‘So, how did it go today?’ she asked. ‘Looks pretty different from here.’ She nodded at the shape under the covers.

‘It’s been quite a day. I got my drains out, which was frankly the most painful experience of my life to date. After that, getting the splint off was a piece of piss.’ He gave a wry little smile. ‘Actually, I’m exaggerating. The splint coming off was no picnic either. But it’s all relative. And now I have a leg brace that holds the joint in place.’ He gestured at the lump under the covers. ‘Apparently the wound is healing well. They took me down for an X-ray, and the bone is also looking in pretty good shape. So tomorrow the sadists from physiotherapy are let loose on me to see if I can get out of bed.’

‘That’s great,’ Carol said. ‘Who knew you’d be back on your feet so soon?’

‘Hey, let’s not get carried away here. Out of bed means a short stagger on a walking frame, not the Great North Run. It’s going to be a long road back to anything like I was before.’

Carol snorted. ‘You make it sound like you were Paula Radcliffe. Come on, Tony, you were hardly the Rambling Boy of Bradfield.’

‘Maybe not. But I had a great action,’ he said, his upper body miming an athletic movement.

‘And you will have again,’ Carol said indulgently. ‘Pretty good day, then.’

‘More or less. My mother stopped by, which does take the shine off any given twenty-four hour period. Apparently, I own half of my grandmother’s house.’

‘You’ve got a granny as well as a mother that I don’t know about?’

‘No, no. My grandmother died twenty-three years ago. When I was still at university. Half a house would have come in quite handy then. I was always skint,’ he said vaguely.

‘I’m not sure I’m following this,’ Carol said.

‘I’m not sure I did either, not entirely. I think I’m still a little less than morphine-free. But what I understood my mother to say is that her mother left me half of her house when she died. It seems to have slipped my mother’s mind. It’s been rented out for the last twenty-three years, but my mother thinks it’s time to sell it and she needs my signature on the documents. Of course, whether I’ll ever see a penny of the proceeds is another matter.’

Carol stared at him in disbelief. ‘That’s theft, you know. Technically speaking.’

‘Oh, I know. But she is my mother.’ Tony wriggled himself more comfortable. ‘And she’s right. What do I need money for? I have everything I need.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ She dumped a carrier bag on the bed-table. ‘All the same, I can’t say I approve.’

‘My mother is a force of nature. Approval’s irrelevant, really.’

‘I thought your mother was dead. You’ve never spoken about her, you know.’

Tony looked away. ‘We never had what you’d call a close relationship. My gran did most of the hands-on child rearing.’

That must have been strange. How was it for you?’

He squeezed out a dry little laugh. The Yorkshire translation of The Gulag Archipelago. Without the snow.’ Please God, let the flippancy divert her.

Carol harrumphed. ‘You men are such wimps. I bet you never went to bed cold or hungry.’ Tony said nothing, unwilling to invite either anger or pity. Carol pulled a wooden box from the bag, opening it up to reveal a chess set. Tony frowned, bemused. ‘Why are you setting up a chess board?’ he said.

‘It’s what intelligent people are supposed to do when one of them is in hospital.’ Carol’s tone was firm.

‘Have you been secretly watching Ingmar Bergman films, or what?’

‘How hard can it be? I know the moves, I’m sure you do too. We’re both smart. It’s a way of exercising our brains without working.’ Carol continued to lay out the pieces without pause.

‘How long have we known each other?’ Tony was laughing now.

‘Six, seven years?’

‘And how often have we played any kind of game, never mind chess?’

Now Carol paused. ‘Didn’t we once…No, that was John and Maggie Brandon.’ She shrugged. ‘Never, I guess. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.’

‘You’re wrong, Carol. There are very good reasons why we shouldn’t.’

She leaned back. ‘You’re afraid I’ll beat you.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘We both like winning too much. That’s just one of the reasons.’ He pulled his notepad and pen towards him and started scribbling.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to humour you,’ he said absently as he wrote. ‘I’m going to play a game of chess with you. But first, I’m going to write down why it will be a disaster.’ He carried on writing for a couple of minutes, tore off the page and folded it in half. ‘Let’s do it, then.’

Now it was Carol’s turn to laugh. ‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Never more serious.’ He picked up a white and a black pawn, muddled them in his hands and offered her his fists. Carol chose white, and they were off.

Twenty minutes later, they were down to three pieces each and a long tedium of strategy beckoned. Carol let out a huge breath. ‘I can’t take it. I resign.’ Tony smiled and handed her the piece of paper. She opened it and read aloud. ‘I take far too long to make a move because I’m exploring all the possibilities four moves ahead. Carol plays kamikaze, trying to get as many pieces off the board as possible. When there are hardly any pieces left and it’s clear it’s going to take for ever, Carol gets bored and cross and resigns.’ She dropped the paper and gently punched his arm. ‘You bastard.’

‘Chess is a very clear mirror of how individuals think,’ Tony said.

‘But I’m not a quitter,’ Carol protested.

‘Not in real life, no. Not when there’s something meaningful at stake. But when it’s just a game, you can’t see the point of expending all that energy with no guarantee of a result.’

Ruefully, Carol scrambled the pieces together and closed the box on them. ‘You know me too well.’

‘It’s mutual. So, given you’ve studiously avoided it so far tonight, dare I ask how the Robbie Bishop investigation’s going?’

Carol snapped the chess set open again. ‘How about another game?’

Tony gave her a sympathetic look. ‘That bad, eh?’

Five minutes later, having listened to Carol’s thorough resumé of what had happened since last they’d met, he was forced to agree. It was indeed that bad. Later, when she tiptoed out as his eyes were closing, the faintest of smiles lifted one corner of his mouth. Maybe tomorrow he would have something better than a game of bad chess for her.