Val McDermid – Beneath the Bleeding (страница 18)

‘I was there,’ he said, as they showed Robbie’s spectacular shot from thirty yards out, the goal that had clinched the Vics’ semi-final slot in the previous season’s UEFA Cup. ‘Oh man, we got no chance in the premiership now. Not without Robbie.’

Yousef shook his head. ‘You should stay away from the games. Till they’ve caught whoever did this.’

‘I’ve got a ticket for Saturday,’ Raj protested. ‘And the next European game.’

‘Yousef’s right,’ Sanjar said. ‘Till they find out who did this, there’s going to be people looking for scapegoats. Even though that cop woman said it wasn’t no terrorist thing, there’s still going to be fuckwits out there who think it’s an excuse to go paki-bashing. Feelings are going to run high, Raj. Better you stay clear.’

‘I don’t want to stay clear. Not from the matches, and not tonight either. Everybody’s going to be down the stadium, paying tributes and that. I want to be part of it. It’s my club too.’ Raj was close to tears.

His elder brothers exchanged a look. ‘Sanjar’s probably right about the matches. Once it’s sunk in, there’ll be bad feeling, no doubt about it. But I’ll come with you tonight if you’re set on that,’ Yousef said, understanding only too well the precariousness of the bridge between the two cultures that claimed his generation. ‘We’ll go together.’

Tony turned the TV off and leaned back on his pillows. The intravenous morphine had worn off and he could feel the beginning of a dull ache in his knee. The nurse had told him sternly that he didn’t have to suffer, that he should summon a nurse and ask for pain relief. He tried moving his leg, testing the limits of his endurance. He reckoned he could wait a little longer. More drugs would just make him go to sleep, and he didn’t want to be asleep now. Not when there was the prospect of a visit.

Carol was in the hospital. He’d just seen her on TV, doing a live press conference. She had a murder. And what a murder. Celebrity corpse and a creepy murder method. She’d want to talk to him about it. Of that he was certain. But he didn’t know when she’d be able to get away.

He thought about Robbie Bishop and of the evenings he’d spent in the cosy cave that was his study, watching Bradfield Victoria on the satellite channel. He recalled a thoughtful player, seldom careless with his passes. In control of himself as much as he’d been in control of the ball. Tony couldn’t remember ever seeing Robbie Bishop pick up a yellow card. But being mindful of what he was doing hadn’t meant a lack of passion. Robbie in his number seven shirt would run himself into the ground. What had made Robbie special, though, were the gorgeous moves he’d created out of nothing, moments when there was no need to explain to unbelievers why football was the beautiful game.

And somebody had wiped that skill and grace from the map. They’d done it in the cruellest of ways, left him a dead man walking. Why would someone choose such a death for Robbie Bishop? Was it personal? Or was it a more general statement? Either was possible. Tony needed more detail. He needed Carol.

He didn’t have long to wait. Within ten minutes of the end of her press conference, Carol was shutting his door behind her, leaning against it as if expecting pursuit. ‘He doesn’t like anybody else getting the limelight, does he?’ Tony said, waving her towards the bedside chair.

‘My way or the highway,’ Carol said, abandoning her defence of the door and throwing herself into the chair. ‘Like just about every consultant I’ve ever dealt with.’

‘You should meet Mrs Chakrabarti. At least she lets you bask in the misapprehension that she’s taking notice of what you say. So, you’ve got the poisoned chalice, have you?’

‘Oh yes. CID took the call and as soon as they realized what they were looking at, they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. I’m not looking forward to the next few days. But enough of me and my troubles.’ Carol made a visible effort to shrug off her problems. ‘How are you?’

Tony smiled. ‘It’s me, Carol. You don’t have to pretend you’ve got room in your head for anything other than Robbie Bishop. And as for me, if you really want to know, I’ll feel a lot better as soon as you stop treating me like an invalid. It’s my knee that’s messed up, not my brain. You can run this past me, same as you would any other murder lacking an obvious motive.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t look like you’re firing on all cylinders, to be honest.’

‘I’m not, clearly. My concentration isn’t great, which makes reading anything complex impossible.’ He made a dismissive gesture towards the books he’d asked her to bring in. ‘But I’m off the intravenous morphine and my brain is returning to what passes for normal. When I’m awake, I’d rather be puzzling over this than watching daytime TV. So, what can you tell me?’

‘Depressingly little.’ Carol ran through what she and her team had established so far.

‘So, to sum up,’ Tony said. ‘We don’t know of anybody who hated him enough to kill him, he was probably poisoned in a nightclub crammed with people and we don’t know where the ricin came from.’

‘That’s about it, yeah. I did find a scrunched-up bit of paper in the pocket of the last pair of jeans he wore. It had a url on it that I’ve not had a chance to check out yet: www.bestdays.co.uk.’

‘We could look at it now.’ Tony offered, pressing the button to raise the bed and wincing as a fresh pain asserted itself. He flipped open the laptop and waited impatiently for it to emerge from hibernation.

‘You in pain?’ Carol asked.

‘A bit,’ he admitted.

‘Can’t they give you something for it?’

‘I’m trying to keep the painkillers to a minimum,’ Tony admitted. ‘I don’t like the way they make me feel. I’d rather have my wits about me.’

‘That’s just stupid,’ Carol said firmly. ‘There’s nothing helpful about pain.’ Without asking permission, she pressed the nurse call button.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Sorting you out.’ She pulled her chair round so she could see the screen.

Tony typed in the url. It took them to a page with the banner heading, ‘The Best Days of Our Lives.’ For only £5 annual membership, the site promised it would provide the best service in the UK for reuniting old school friends and workmates. A brief exploration revealed that by registering with the site, people could check out their old contacts and get back in touch via emails which would be forwarded by the website administration. ‘Why would Robbie Bishop be interested in contacting old school mates?’ Tony said. ‘I’d have thought they’d be falling over themselves to get back in touch with him.’

Carol shrugged. ‘Maybe he wanted to look up an old flame who dumped him? He was footloose and fancy free after the end of his engagement.’

‘I don’t see it. He was good looking, rich and talented. Everywhere he went, women threw themselves at him. And apparently, he was quite happy to catch some of them. He was engaged to a very cool trophy babe. If he was still carrying a torch for somebody who dumped him when he was fifteen, he wouldn’t be behaving like that. And he’d have done something about it before now.’ He shook his head. ‘No, the psychology’s all wrong for that. Do we know for sure it’s Robbie’s handwriting?’

‘We don’t. It’s with forensics now. You think somebody gave it to him?’

‘He told Phil Campsie he was having a drink with someone from school. Maybe whoever he was drinking with suggested he should check out the site, look up some old mates. Robbie’s not interested but he doesn’t want to seem rude so he shoves it in his pocket and forgets all about it.’

‘Could be. It makes sense.’

Tony opened a window and typed in, ‘Harriestown High School, Bradfield.’

‘You know where he went to school?’ Carol sounded suspicious.

‘I follow football, Carol. I know where he grew up. His mum and dad still live in the same house, in Harriestown. He offered to buy them a new place, but they wanted to stay where they belonged.’

‘You don’t learn stuff like that from following football.’

Tony had the grace to look shame-faced. ‘So I surf the gossip from time to time. It doesn’t make me a bad person. Look at that.’ He pointed to the screen. There was a photograph of Harriestown High School, boxy sixties concrete and glass flanking the old Victorian brick core. Beneath a brief history of the school there was a section entitled ‘Famous Alumni’. A couple of MPs, two rock bands who had made a small dent in the charts during the Britpop era, a mid-list crime writer, a minor soap star, a fashion designer and Robbie Bishop. A couple of clicks and he’d brought up the names of Harriestown High School former pupils who had overlapped Robbie Bishop’s years in the school. ‘Whoever gave him the url, chances are the name is here.’

Carol groaned. ‘I suppose it does whittle down the list a little. Rather than checking out every single person who was at school with Robbie, now we only have to go through the ones who are paid-up members of the Best Days of Our Lives.’

‘At least now you’re looking for a needle in a sewing box rather than a haystack.’

‘You think that makes it easier? That’s the trouble with not having an obvious motive. You don’t know where to start.’