Beneath the Bleeding (18 page)

‘His name was Rhys Butler. He lived in Birmingham. That’s all I can tell you. I gave all the letters and cards to the Brummie cops. Just in case he went off on one again.’

‘Thank you. You read my mind.’

Bindie snorted. ‘Hardly a Booker prize-winner, Detective.’

Sam hated witnesses who thought they were cleverer than the cops. ‘The name of the officer who dealt with you would also be helpful,’ he said, working at keeping the sarcasm out of his voice.

‘Hang on a minute, I’ve got his details somewhere…’ The sound of movement, a drawer being opened, another cigarette lit. At last, she came up with the information. ‘DC Jonty Singh. God, it’s so
beautiful, what’s happened to names in this country. Jonty Singh. What a fab name. I love that cricket, the most English thing in the world, has Ramprakash and Panesar alongside Trescothick and Strauss. I adore the way we went from empire to multi-culti in the space of fifty years. Doesn’t that bring a smile to your face, Sam?’

He didn’t much care, All that mattered was that Jonty Singh was the sort of name it wouldn’t be hard to track down in a big force like the West Midlands Police. He also noticed she had gone from ‘detective’ to ‘Sam’ and wondered if she was flirting. It was hard to tell, given her on-air personality. And even if she was, it wasn’t something he wanted to pursue. Didn’t want to be her next bit of rough. ‘Thanks for your time,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said, suddenly serious again. ‘It’s all I can do for him now. I really cared about him, you know.’

‘I know,’ Sam said, desperate now to get off the phone and get cracking on his lead. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ He ended the call abruptly. Now, if only he had a computer in his car like the uniformed patrol guys. He’d be well away, fingers flying, carrying him on the next step of his journey. Instead, he’d have to go back to his desk and hope that Stacey wasn’t watching his every keystroke. He was on to something and he was damned if he was going to give anyone else a look in.

He was on tenterhooks waiting for her arrival, but still Tony didn’t announce his discovery the moment Carol walked in. He wanted to savour the anticipation. Besides, he had to admit there was something
gratifying about her concern for his welfare. All the ebb and flow of pain and danger that had infiltrated their relationship had left little room for something as simple as sitting around being kind to each other. He knew she’d experienced that-still experienced it, for all he knew–with her family, but it had never been something he’d known. Kindness had always been viewed as weakness in his family. So even though he didn’t entirely know what to do with it, he wasn’t about to sacrifice a moment of their closeness to the demands of work. They’d get to that soon enough.

It was, he recognized, a reordering of his priorities. The part of himself that viewed his own reactions as a perpetual experiment was intrigued to see whether it would last and what it would mean. But to his surprise, there was another part that was happy just to go with the flow.

So Carol asked about his day and he told her. They had a conversation that he thought must be what ordinary friends and even lovers might weave together routinely. But of course, it couldn’t last. There had to come a point where equilibrium demanded that he ask about her day. And she told him.

At the end of the recital, she leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair and ran her fingers through her thick hair. ‘This is unlike any other case I’ve ever worked on. When murder happens, two or more people come face to face. An act takes place and somebody dies. You can connect the dots. You’ve got forensics, witnesses, evidence. A precise point in time. But there’s nothing like that here. There’s a huge gap
between the act that killed Robbie Bishop and the death itself. And we don’t know when or where or with whom that fatal act took place.’ She scuffed the carpet with the toe of her shoe. ‘The more we find out, the more obscure it gets. Kevin was right, this killer is Caspar the fucking friendly ghost.’

Tony waited for a second, to make sure she’d got her frustration out. ‘It’s not quite as bad as you make out. We do know some things about him. I mean, apart from the Harriestown High connection and that he knows Temple Fields as well as a hooker.’

Carol gave him a sceptical look. ‘Like what?’

‘We know he’s a planner. He’s thought this through and decided what level of risk he can safely assume, so we know he’s not reckless. He doesn’t feel the need to see his victim’s pain. He’s happy for it to happen offstage. So whoever he was at school, he wasn’t the class bully. Do we know if Robbie was a bully at school?’

Carol shook her head. ‘Apparently not. He was a charmer, by all accounts. Though we’ve still got to plough through everybody on the Best Days website who knew him.’

‘Right. So this is not about revenge for adolescent humiliation. Unless the revenge element is about success…’ Tony’s voice tailed off and he frowned. ‘I need to think about that some more. But we do know he must know something about chemistry or pharmacology. I mean, he’s not just making ricin, he’s making ricin suppositories. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

Carol leaned into the carrier bag she’d brought with her and produced a screw-top bottle of Australian
shiraz. ‘I’d start with the internet. That’s where we learn everything new these days, isn’t it? Are you allowed some of this?’

‘Probably not, but don’t let that stop you. There’s a couple of plastic tumblers in the bathroom.’

When Carol returned with two substantial doses of red wine, he said, ‘And speaking of the internet…’

‘Mmm?’ Carol savoured her drink. She’d sneaked a couple of glasses after the post mortem, but apart from that, this was her first of the day, a small achievement in itself.

‘I don’t think this is the first time he’s done this. There’s too much assurance here for a beginner.’

He could see the scepticism on her face. ‘You see serial killers everywhere, Tony. What possible evidence do you have for saying that? Apart from not liking the fact that this killer is either very good or very lucky.’

‘I don’t believe in lucky. Lucky is what we call it when our intuition leads us in the right direction. And intuition is a product of observation and experience. Did you know there’s been some recent research that suggests we make better decisions when we trust our gut reactions than when we weigh up the pros and cons of a situation?’

Carol grinned. ‘I see Captain Tangent is reasserting himself. You didn’t answer the question, Tony. What evidence do you have for saying he’s done this before?’

‘Like I said, Carol: the internet. Source of all bollocks and a bit of wisdom too. Since we spoke last night, I’ve been on the prowl. And I found something very interesting.’ He reached for his laptop, tapped the mouse pad and turned the machine to face Carol. As
she skimmed the short local paper story on screen, he said, ‘Danny Wade. Twenty-seven years old. He died two weeks ago at his luxury home on the outskirts of Sheffield. He was poisoned by deadly nightshade. Belladonna, the beautiful lady. Supposedly in a fruit pie prepared by his Polish housekeeper. The fruit pie works, you see, because belladonna berries are notoriously sweet. And there’s a belladonna bush by the patio. You need to find out if that was container-grown, by the way. It’s possible the killer brought it with him. The housekeeper denies making any fruit pie even though the remains of a pie containing deadly nightshade berries was found in the fridge. And the night he died was her night off. She was staying with her boyfriend in Rotherham, like she did every Wednesday and Saturday. They opened the inquest then adjourned it pending further inquiries.’

‘I don’t understand why you think this–’ pointing at the screen ‘–is anything to do with Robbie Bishop,’ Carol said. ‘It seems to be straightforward. The housekeeper made a mistake with the berries, and now she’s lying about it. Tragic accident. That’s what the story says.’

‘But what if she’s not lying? If she’s telling the truth, it’s the second instance of a man in his twenties being the victim of a very bizarre poisoning.’ Tony tried to turn so he could face Carol more directly, but it wasn’t possible. ‘Move that chair so I can see you properly,’ he said impatiently. ‘Please.’

Slightly surprised, Carol did as he asked. ‘OK, now you can see me. This is just supposition, Tony.’

‘It’s always supposition till the evidence is nailed down. Supposition is what I do. We call it profiling.
People other than me speak of it as if it’s a science, but it’s supposition based on experience and probability and instinct. More art than science a lot of the time, if we’re honest. Even the algorithms that the geographic profilers use, they’re based around probabilities, not certainties.’

‘So show me something that outweighs the probability of an immigrant housekeeper lying about accidentally killing her boss,’ Carol said. He could see she was humouring him, that she thought his sharp edge blunted by pain and drugs and strange sleep patterns.

‘Danny Wade wasn’t local to where he was killed. He moved to Dore on the western edge of Sheffield a couple of years ago because he was sick and tired of being pestered where he was living. In Bradfield. The reason he couldn’t get any peace and quiet there was that three years ago, he won the lottery. Big time. He got just over five million. He’d worked for Virgin Trains as a conductor. He was unmarried. The two things he cared about were model railways and his dogs, a pair of Lakeland terriers. He was a bit of a loner. Until he won the money. Then suddenly they all came out of the woodwork. Old school friends after a handout. Former workmates acting like he owed them. Distant relatives suddenly remembering that blood’s supposed to be thicker than water. And it all got a bit too much for Danny.’

‘Still, at least he had the money,’ Carol said. ‘It can buy you a lot of peace and quiet, five million.’

‘So Danny found out. He upped sticks and bought himself a lovely house on the edge of the moors. High walls, electric gates. Lots of space for model railway layouts. Didn’t tell anyone where he’d gone, not even
his mum and dad. Nobody to bother him except for Jana Jankowicz who is by all accounts a very nice young woman with a fiancé who is working as an electrician on a building site in Rotherham.’

Carol shook her head in disbelief. ‘Where did you dig all this up? This is tons more background than there is in the local paper.’

Tony looked pleased with himself. ‘I spoke to the reporter. Stories like this, they’ve always got more in their notebook than they get on the page. She gave me Jana’s mobile number. So I called her. And, according to the lovely Jana, Danny was happy as a pig with his dogs and his railways and his three meals a day. But here’s the thing. I already found out Danny was a pupil at Harriestown High. Two years ahead of Robbie Bishop. And although Jana’s English wasn’t up to deep and meaningful conversations, she did understand enough to tell me that Danny had come back from the local pub a few nights before his death, saying he’d met somebody he was at school with.’ He grinned, a dog with two tails. ‘What do you think of that?’

Carol shook her head. ‘I think you’re stir crazy.’

He threw his arms out in a gesture of frustration. ‘There are connections, Carol. Murder at arm’s length by weird poisons. Both victims went to the same school. Both rich men. And both met up with an old school friend before they died.’

Carol filled up her glass and took a swig of her wine. Her body language was as combative as her words. ‘Come on, Tony. Danny’s death wasn’t murder. As far as I can see, nobody except you thinks it was anything other than a tragic accident. I don’t know much about poisons, but I do know that if you slip somebody deadly
nightshade in the pub, they’re going to be dead that night, not a few days later. And Danny wasn’t in the same year as Robbie. Think back to your schooldays. You hang with the kids in your own year. Older kids don’t want to have anything to do with you, and only losers hang out with kids younger than them. So anybody who was a school friend of Robbie’s probably wasn’t going to be a friend of Danny’s. I mean, it doesn’t sound like they had much in common.’ Carol let her hands fall open as if she were weighing two items against each other. ‘Let’s see. Ace footballer. Model railway geek. Hmm. Let me think.’ She pointed at the newspaper story on the laptop screen. ‘Look at Danny. He’s not good looking. He’s not athletic. What could he have in common with Robbie Bishop?’

Tony looked crestfallen. They both became very rich from humble beginnings,’ he tried.

‘And much good it did them. Better to be lucky than rich when rich ends up dead before you’re out of your twenties.’ Carol slugged back the rest of her wine. ‘Nice thought, Tony. Very interesting. But I think you’re snatching at ghosts. And I need to go home and try to get a decent night’s sleep.’ She stood up and pulled her coat on, then leaned across to give him an awkward hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ll try to come in tomorrow. See what else you can come up with to entertain me, OK?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. He’d learned a long time ago that disappointment was often the spur to his best work.

Jonty Singh looked like a big rumpled bear propped up in the corner of the balti restaurant in the centre
of Dudley, incongruous against the traditionally kitsch decor. When Sam had tracked him down, DC Singh had suggested they meet for a meal in his local. Since he was doing Sam the favour, there really was no argument. ‘I’ll be the big bugger up the back in a brown pinstripe suit and no turban,’ he’d said. Sam didn’t anticipate any problem recognizing him and he was right. As soon as he walked into the Shishya Balti, he spotted Singh, talking animatedly to a waiter. He hadn’t lied about his size; he was crammed into the corner chair at a table for four and even sitting, he towered over the table. He had a thick mop of shiny black hair, big brown eyes, a fleshy nose and a prominent chin. It wasn’t a face you’d forget in a hurry.

Sam weaved through the crowded restaurant. Half a dozen steps in, the big man broke off his conversation and homed in on the stranger in town. The waiter slipped away and Sam approached. As he drew near, Singh pushed himself to his feet. A couple of inches over six feet, he was an imposing sight. ‘Sam Evans?’ he said, his voice a much lighter tenor than his frame implied. He reached out and shook Sam’s hand in a two-handed grip. ‘I’m Jonty Singh, pleased to meet you. How’re you doing?’ Even in those few words, the unmistakable Black Country accent grated on Sam’s ear.