by Val McDermid
‘So is that what killed Tom Cross? Foxgloves?’
‘No. What killed him was oleander.’
‘Oleander?’
‘You’ve probably seen it on holiday abroad. It’s a bushy shrub with narrow leaves and the flowers are pink or white. It’s pretty common and it’s very poisonous. I looked it up earlier. There’s a story that some of Napoleon’s soldiers used oleander twigs to kebab their meat with and by morning they were dead. There is an antidote, but often patients die before they can absorb enough of it to make a difference. And to be honest, when you consider Tom Cross’s age and weight, his heart probably wasn’t in great shape to start with. He didn’t have much of a chance. I’m sorry. I know he used to be a police officer.’
‘I never knew him when he was in the job,’ Paula said. ‘But my boss did. So, Dr Blessing…’
‘Elinor. It’s Elinor, please.’
Was she flirting? Paula was too tired to work it out. Or, to be honest, to care. Tonight, all she wanted were the facts, so she could go home and sleep. The coffee wasn’t working, apparently. She stifled a yawn. ‘So, Elinor, have you got any idea when this poison would have been administered? And how?’
‘It acts quite quickly. He said he’d had stomach cramps and a couple of incidents of diarrhoea at the football match. While he was still lucid, he said he’d started feeling bad after lunch. He’d had lamb kebabs with rice and a sauce with herbs, he said. You’ve got two possible sources of oleandrin right there. The lamb could have been marinated with oleander leaves, or sap. Then the twigs could have been used to kebab the lamb. Like the Napoleonic story.’ She shook her head. ‘Horrible. So insidious a way to kill someone. Such a breach of trust.’
‘Did he say where he’d had lunch?’
‘He said someone had cooked it for him. So I imagine it was at their house.’ Elinor rubbed the bridge of her nose as she struggled to remember what Tom Cross had said. ‘Was it Jack…? No, not Jack. Jake. That was it. Jake.’
Suddenly Paula was awake, her mind racing with connections. ‘You’re sure it was Jake and not Jack?’
Elinor looked uncertain, catching a corner of her lower lip with her teeth. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Jake. But I could be mistaken.’
Harriestown High, Paula thought. Jack Anderson. Robbie Bishop, Danny Wade and now maybe Tom Cross. Was that the link? Was that what drew them together? They couldn’t have known each other at school, not given the disparity in ages. But maybe there was some former pupil organization they all belonged to. Some charity event at the school that had brought them together. Some occasion where they’d all witnessed something they shouldn’t have? ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ she said softly.
‘Really?’
‘You have no idea,’ Paula said. Now she was wide awake. She knew there would be no sleep for her until she’d found out where Tom Cross had gone to school. She wasn’t sure where to look for that information at half past ten on a Saturday night, but she knew a woman who would.
Tony drifted slowly up into consciousness. In the space of a week, he’d grown so accustomed to the comings and goings of the nursing staff that the presence of another person in his room was no longer enough to wake him up. It took something more. Something like the suck and slither and pop of a cork leaving a bottle, followed by the soft glug of liquid into plastic. ‘Carol,’ he groaned as he put the pieces together. In the dim city light that seeped through the thin curtains, he could just make out her shape in the chair next to the bed. He fumbled for the bed control and eased himself upwards.
‘Shall I put the light on?’ she asked.
‘Pull the curtain back, let a bit more light in from outside.’
She uncurled from the chair and did as he’d suggested. On her way back, she poured him a glass. He sniffed appreciatively. ‘Lovely, lovely shiraz,’ he said. ‘Funny, I don’t think I would have listed decent wine among the things I would miss most if I was on a desert island. Just shows me how wrong I can be.’ He took another sip, felt himself rising inexorably into consciousness. This must have been a terrible day for you,’ he said.
‘You have no idea,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen things today I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Horrible injuries. Body parts strewn over a football stand. Blood and brains splattered on walls.’ She took a long swallow of her wine. ‘You think you’ve seen it all. You think there can’t be anything worse than the crime scenes you’ve already processed. And then this. Thirty-five dead in the bombing, plus one.’
‘The one being the bomber?’
‘No, the one being Tom Cross.’
He nearly slopped the wine from his cup in his surprise. ‘Popeye Cross? I don’t understand. He died in the bombing?’ His old nemesis’s name was the last one he’d expected to hear in connection with the Bradfield bombing.
‘No. The bombing apparently brought out the hero in him. He just got stuck right in. They say he saved lives out there. No, what did for him was poison. He’d been poisoned before he even got to the match.’
‘Poisoned? How? What with?’
‘I don’t know the details yet. Paula’s somewhere in the hospital getting the information from the doctor who picked up on it. A stroke of luck, really. Because of the bombing she got drafted into A&E, and because of Robbie Bishop, she was particularly receptive to the idea of poisoning.’
‘That makes three,’ he said. ‘And all from round here. Looks like you’ve got a serial poisoner on your patch.’
Carol glared at him. ‘Different poisons, different set-ups. Different delivery systems.’
‘Signature,’ Tony said. ‘Murder at a distance. Targeted administration. Time lag between ingestion and death. These are linked, Carol. You don’t get that many deliberate poisonings these days. They’ve been replaced by guns and divorce. Very Victorian, poisonings. Nasty, insidious, destructive of communities and families. But not very twenty-first century. Admit it, Carol, you’ve got a serial.’
‘I’ll wait for the evidence,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Meanwhile, Tom Cross’s death is the one murder I’m actually allowed to investigate.’ The anger was coming off her in waves. He could almost taste her fury, a dark bitterness laid over the jammy fruit of the wine.
Tony struggled to make sense of Carol’s words. ‘What do you mean, the only one you’re allowed to investigate?’
‘They’ve taken the bombing away from us,’ she said. This new Counter Terrorism Command. The misbegotten marriage of Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorism Branch. The northern arm is based in Manchester. Only now, they’re in Bradfield with their jackboots and their “no names, no pack drill”. Literally. They won’t give you their real names, they don’t wear any numbers. They say it’s to prevent reprisals. I say it’s to prevent any comeback. Paula calls them the Imperial Storm Troopers, and she’s not far off the mark. They’re scary, Tony. Very scary. I saw them in action in Scargill Street, and I tell you, I was ashamed to be a copper.’
‘And they’ve assumed operational command?’ he said, imagining what that must be like for someone with as much pride in herself and her team as Carol had.
‘Totally. We’re supposed to be at their beck and call if they want us to do anything.’ Carol gave a harsh laugh. ‘It’s like being in a police state, and the freaky thing is, I’m supposed to be one of them.’
‘And are you doing what you’re supposed to do?’ Tony asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.
‘What do you think?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Let them do their thing, their rounding up of the usual suspects, their harassment of anybody who happens to be young, male and Muslim. And we’ll do what we’re best at.’
Tony knew what she wanted, what she needed was for him to sympathize, to take her side against those she perceived as the bad guys. To take her part, right or wrong. The trouble was he thought she was wrong. And if there was any value in their relationship, he believed it was rooted in honesty. Some might call it emotional unavailability, and there was likely some truth in th
at too. But he couldn’t lie to Carol, not with any degree of conviction. Nor she to him, he thought. There were times when it was hard to hear the truth; harder still to deliver it. But in the long run, he was convinced they’d both looked back on those moments with an acceptance that they were more closely bound by having survived them. Tony took a deep breath and jumped off the high diving board. ‘And what you’re best at is not investigating and cracking terrorist cells.’
There was a moment of complete silence in the room. ‘Are you saying you agree with what’s happening here?’ He didn’t have to see Carol to picture her indignation.
‘I think policing potential and actual terrorists is a very specific kind of policing,’ he said, trying to tell the truth as he saw it without fuelling her anger. ‘And I think it should be done by specialists. People who are trained to understand the mindset, people who can walk away from their lives and go deep undercover to infiltrate, people who are prepared to climb inside the terrorists’ heads and try to work out where they’re going to take their campaigns next.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t think it’s the same skill set as you and your team possess.’
‘Are you saying it’s right to take this outrage away from us? That we shouldn’t police our own city?’ Carol demanded. He could hear the certainty of betrayal in her voice. She finished her wine and poured another cupful.
‘I’m saying there should be something like the CTC to work with you. Just because they’ve executed it so badly doesn’t mean the idea’s a bad one,’ Tony said gently. ‘This is not about you, Carol. It’s not a criticism of you or your people. It’s not saying you’re crap or incompetent or any of those things. It’s an acknowledgement of the fact that terrorism is different. And it needs a different approach.’
‘A judgement that doesn’t apply to you, I suppose. I bet you think you’re just as well equipped to profile terrorists as you are serial killers?’ Carol said sarcastically.
Tony felt himself in a lose-lose situation. There was no reply that would persuade Carol to back off at this point. He might as well carry on with the truth. It was often the most efficient response. ‘I do think I have some useful insights, yes.’
‘Of course you do. The great doctor.’
Stung at last, Tony said, ‘OK. Try this for size. This bombing doesn’t profile like terrorism.’
That stunned her into silence, he thought. But not for long. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Carol said with a note of deliberation rather than the hostility he’d half-expected.
‘Think about it. What is terrorism for?’
Almost without pause, Carol said, ‘It’s an attempt to force social or political change by violent means.’
‘And how does it aim to do that?’
‘I don’t know…By making the population so afraid that they put pressure on the politicians? I think that’s what IRA terrorism was about.’ Carol leaned forward in her chair, eager and engaged now.
‘Exactly. It aims to create a climate of fear and mistrust. It aims to attack the areas of life where people need to feel safe. So, public transport. Retail. People need to travel, they need to shop. Right away, we can see that a football stadium, crowded though it may be, isn’t in the same category. Nobody is compelled to go to the football in order to survive.’ He grinned. ‘Some fans might think they feel that way, but they know deep down their lives won’t fall to bits in the way they would if they stopped going to work or to the shops.’
‘I take your point. But what if they decided a lower-level target was a better option because the primary targets are just too hard for them now?’
That would be a valid argument if it was true, but it’s not, and you know it. You can’t police every train, every tube, every bus, every shopping mall or supermarket. There’s plenty of soft targets there. So the first support for my argument against this profiling as terrorism is the macro target.’
Carol reached for the wine again, ‘You’ve got more than one support?’
‘You know me, Carol. I like to be well armed against the likes of you. Line of support number two-the micro target. The thing about terrorism is that, for it to work, it has to strike at the lives of ordinary people. The sort of terrorists we’re seeing now do not go for the spectacular assassination. They learned that from the IRA. High-profile murders like Lord Mountbatten and Airey Neave make a big splash, sure. But people are angered and outraged by them, they’re not terrorized. Ask your average person in the street to name the top Irish terrorist events of the troubles, and they’ll say Omagh, Warrington, Manchester, Birmingham, Guildford, the Baltic Exchange. What they remember are the events that made them feel personally threatened.’ He paused to take a drink.
‘So what you’re saying is that the corporate hospitality boxes were the wrong target?’ Carol said.
She’d always been quick. It was one of the things he liked most about her. ‘Exactly,’ Tony said. ‘Going for the fat cats, that’s the sort of thing an anti-globalization terrorist would do. But not the Islamic fundamentalist. He wants maximum bucks for his bangs. An Al-Quaeda type of attack would have placed the bomb lower down, in among the punters. Or in one of the other stands.’
‘Maybe this was the only place they could be sure of getting into? Aziz posed as an electrician, maybe this was the only electrical junction room right under the stands?’
Tony shook his head. ‘Now you’re really reaching. I’m betting the utility layouts are pretty much the same on all four stands. The stadium’s only a few years old, it’s not like it’s a thing of shreds and patches like the old ground was. There’s bound to be other similar spots that would have taken out more of the hoi polloi. No, this was a deliberate choice, and that’s the second reason I’m dubious about this being terrorism.’
‘It’s a bit thin, Tony. Or do you have something else?’ He could hear the edge of scepticism in Carol’s voice.
‘Given how far out of the loop I am, I think you should be impressed with this much. If you’re determined to follow your own lines of inquiry rather than just do what CTC asks you to, there’s maybe something there for you to chew on.’ And at least it might keep her out of direct conflict with CTC, he thought. ‘And when you know more about Aziz and his accomplices, it might even make sense.’ Tony leaned back, his energy spent.
‘Actually, we’ve already come up against something that’s a bit odd,’ Carol said. ‘If you’re not too tired?’
His interest quickened in spite of his weariness. ‘I’m OK. What do you have?’
‘It’s kind of weird. We got to the bomb factory ahead of CTC. And that holdall I called you about-it was packed with clean clothes, his passport, driving licence and an e-ticket for this evening’s flight to Toronto. As if he was expecting to come back. Not just to come back to the bedsit, but to get away afterwards without being suspected. Which is absolutely not what suicide bombers do.’
There wasn’t much in the field of human behaviour that made Tony stop in his tracks. But what Carol had to say left him fumbling for a response. ‘No, they don’t,’ he said at last.
‘Sam had this theory that it was some form of talisman,’ Carol said.
‘Doesn’t work,’ Tony muttered, his mind ranging across his experience to try to make sense of what he’d heard. ‘The only thing that I can think of is that he wasn’t a suicide bomber.’ He looked at Carol, her face a dim outline in the near-dark. ‘And if he wasn’t a suicide bomber, then the chances are this wasn’t a terrorist attack.’
Sunday
Carol woke up with the low mutter of TV news in her ears. Her mouth tasted of stale wine and a needle of pain shot down her stiff neck as she tried to move. For a moment she couldn’t think where she was. Then she remembered. Carol coughed and opened her eyes. Tony was watching the TV news footage of the bombing. The newsreader was talking about the dead, their individual photographs appearing on the screen behind him. Happy, smiling faces, oblivious to their mortality. People whose death had punched holes through the
lives of the living.
‘Did you get much sleep?’ Tony asked, glancing across at her.
‘Apparently,’ Carol said. They’d talked in circles through the rest of the bottle of wine, most of which she’d drunk. When she’d made a move to leave, he’d pointed out that she’d had too much wine to even think about driving. Both knew that the chances of getting a taxi in the small hours of Sunday morning in central Bradfield were low to vanishing. So he’d given her a blanket and she’d stretched out in the chair. She’d expected to doze restlessly, but to her surprise she’d woken feeling rested and alert. She cleared her throat and looked at her watch. Quarter to seven. Time enough to go home, feed Nelson, shower and change and get back in time for her morning conference.
‘Good. What are your plans for today?’ He turned the volume down on the TV.
‘Briefing with the team at eight, then I’m going to talk to Tom Cross’s widow.’ She pulled a face. ‘That’ll be fun, given how he always blamed me for his fall from grace.’ She stood up, trying to shake the creases from her trousers, not wanting to think about the state of her make-up or her hair.
‘You’ll be fine. There’s got to be a link there somewhere.’
Carol stopped midway through combing her hair with her fingers, struck by the sort of thought thrown up by the subconscious during sleep. ‘What if your crazy idea about this not being terrorism is right and this is all part of a vendetta against Bradfield Victoria?’
Tony smiled. ‘What? Alex Ferguson’s scared of what’ll happen when Manchester United come to Victoria Park next month?’
‘Very funny. Better not make jokes like that around CTC. It’s a well-known fact that you have to have your sense of humour surgically removed when you join them.’
‘I know that. I do watch Spooks.’