Beneath the Bleeding (35 page)

‘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 that 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.’

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.’

Carol was surprised. ‘You do? I don’t.’

‘You should. They do.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She struggled with the thought of David and Johnny doing anything as domestic as watching TV.

Tony nodded vigorously. They do, you know. That’s how they find out how far they can go.’

‘You’re trying to tell me that MI5 and CTC make their operational decisions based on a TV series?’ Carol tapped the side of her head with her forefinger. ‘Too many drugs, Tony.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you,’ he said earnestly. ‘Because they have people working for them who understand the psychology of sanction.’

‘The psychology of sanction?’ Carol’s repetition was laced with disbelief.

‘This is how it works. When they’re watching a show like
Spooks,
even sophisticated viewers suspend enough disbelief for the drama to work. And once that disbelief has been suspended, even a little, the viewer is conditioned to believe the real world is just like that. So it gives permission to those mad bastards in Five to push just that little bit further at the edges of the envelope.’ Tony spoke quickly, his hands gesturing.

Carol looked dubious. ‘You’re saying that what they see on the TV makes the punters accept more extreme behaviour from law enforcement?’

‘Yes. To greater and lesser degrees, depending on their credulity, obviously.’ He registered Carol’s scepticism. ‘OK, here’s an example. I don’t think there’s ever been an accredited case of an MI5 agent having their face shoved into a deep-fat fryer. But once you’ve shown that on a show with as much credibility as
Spooks,
even if it’s the bad guys who are doing it, you’ve created a constituency of opinion who will say, when an MI5 agent actually does shove someone’s face into a deep-fat fryer, “Well, he had to do it, didn’t he? Or they’d have done it to him.” The psychology of sanction.’

‘If you’re right, then why does anyone protest against torture? Why don’t we all just go, “Oh well, we’ve seen how well it works in the movies, let’s just go along with it”?’ Carol leaned on her fists on the edge of his bed as she spoke, her tumbled blonde hair falling into her eyes.

‘Carol, you might not have noticed, but there’s a significant number of people out there who do say just that. Look at the opposition in the US when the Senate decided to outlaw torture just the other year. People believe in its efficacy precisely because they’ve seen it in the movies. And some of those believers are in positions of power. The reason we don’t all fall for it is that we’re not all equally credulous. Some of us are much more critical of what we see and read than others. But you
can
fool some of the people all of the time. And when spooks and cops go bad, that’s what they rely on.’

She frowned. ‘You scare me sometimes, you know that?’

She could see the pain in his face. She didn’t think it was anything to do with his knee. ‘Yes, I know that. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. In my experience, when something scares you, it makes you all the more determined to beat it.’

Carol turned away, as usual made uncomfortable by his praise. ‘So you don’t think this is some kind of concerted action against the Vics?’

‘No. Because Danny Wade doesn’t fit.’

Carol sighed in exasperation. ‘Bloody Danny Wade. You and Paula between you, you could argue the hind leg off a donkey.’

Tony smiled. ‘I’ve never understood that expression.
Why would anyone want to argue the hind leg off a donkey? And why a donkey, as opposed to a pig or an armadillo?’ He held up his hands to protect himself as Carol batted at him with a folded newspaper she’d snatched up. ‘OK, OK. But you know we’re right about Danny being connected.’

‘Whatever,’ she sighed, tossing the paper back on his table. ‘What I do know is that I’m going to need more than your psychological theories about targets to persuade anybody that this is not terrorism.’ She headed for the door. ‘I’ll try and swing by later. Good luck with the physio.’

‘Thanks. Oh, and, Carol? Somebody really should find out where Tom Cross went to school.’

Within minutes of Carol’s departure, the physiotherapist arrived, greeting Tony with a knowing wink. ‘Helping the police with their inquiries, were you?’ she said archly, handing him his elbow crutches. ‘I hope she hasn’t worn you out.’

‘DCI Jordan was running things at Victoria Park yesterday,’ he said in a tone that discouraged discussion. ‘I work with the police. She came round to run some things past me. And she was so exhausted she fell asleep in the chair.’ Tony knew he was being petty, but he couldn’t help himself. Whenever Carol was in the picture, he became over-sensitive to any personal references. It didn’t matter if it was his mother or a physiotherapist he was never going to see again after he left the hospital. He was always driven to set the record straight. Well, straight in technical terms, at least. The emotional context beneath the surface was nobody’s business but his.

Half an hour later, he was back in his room, tired but not exhausted as he’d been on previous days. ‘You’re doing incredibly well. You might want to get dressed today,’ the physio said. ‘See what it feels like to spend a bit of time in the chair, a bit of time moving around. Walk up and down the hall every hour or so’.

He turned the TV volume back up, keeping half an eye on it while he battled with his clothes. The news all revolved around the explosion at Victoria Park. Everything from football experts talking about the impact on the game; structural engineers speculating on the cost and the time involved in rebuilding the Vestey Stand; Martin Flanagan expressing his anger that Robbie Bishop’s farewell should have been so desecrated; friends and family of the dead talking about their loved ones; and Yousef Aziz’s brother Sanjar protesting that his brother was no fundamentalist. As Sanjar spoke against the backdrop of CTC officers removing cartons of stuff from his family home, Tony stopped wrestling with his sock and directed all of his attention to the TV.

He did not subscribe to the view that it was possible to tell the mind’s construction in the face, but years of watching people lie to him and to themselves had given him a reference library of expression and gesture that he could draw on to make his judgements about a person’s truthfulness. What he saw in Sanjar Aziz was a blazing conviction that, whatever had motivated his brother to blow a hole in Victoria Park stadium, it had not been religious fundamentalism. The CTC were stripping his home to the bricks and he wasn’t protesting about that. What was clearly
driving him to distraction was having to repeat again and again what he knew to be true-his brother was not a militant Muslim. The TV interviewer wasn’t particularly interested in exploring alternative explanations for the bombing, however. All he wanted was for Sanjar to prostrate himself in apology. It was clear that wasn’t going to happen.

Tony’s attention drifted as the reporter returned them to the studio for yet another heavy-handed analysis of the consequences of the bombing for Bradfield Victoria’s season. Fan though he was, it exasperated him that this was even on the news agenda when thirty-five people were dead. What he really wanted to know was what Sanjar Aziz had to say beyond his denials. Tony had seen his frustration and couldn’t help wondering what lay behind it.

He struggled with his sock again, but failed to get it on. ‘Bugger,’ he said, reaching for the nurse call button. To hell with independence. He wanted to hear what Sanjar Aziz had to say, and he didn’t care if it cost him his independence. It was time to get off his backside and do something useful.

Carol gave her team the once over. Already they all looked as if they’d had insufficient sleep and too much coffee. Any murder inquiry provoked a kind of intensity that drove physical needs to the margins. If it went on too long, people fell apart. And so did their personal lives. She’d seen it happen too often. But there didn’t seem to be any easy way to avoid it. Officers felt impelled to work at this pitch because of the unique nature of the crime and what it meant to them as human beings. It wasn’t about emotional
involvement, she thought. It was about confronting one’s own mortality. Working a murder case as hard as was humanly possible was a kind of sacrifice to the gods, a symbolic way of protecting themselves and their loved ones.

They all paid close attention as Paula reported her conversation with Elinor Blessing, making a point of the mention of the mysterious Jake or Jack. When she reached the end of her notes, Paula looked up and said, ‘I got to thinking. Our three poison victims, they all originate from Bradfield. We know Robbie Bishop and Danny Wade both grew up in Harriestown and went to school there. I wondered if that was a connection worth pursuing. So after I left the hospital, I came back here and logged on to Best Days. Tom Cross wasn’t a member, but there are a couple of dozen people his age who are. They’ve got a section called “Photographs and Memories”, and that’s where I found this.’

She produced a print-out and handed it round. ‘Someone called Sandy Hall posted this. “Does anybody else remember the time Tom Cross locked Weasel Russell in the chemistry supply cupboard then fed laughing gas through the keyhole? Funny to think he ended up a senior policeman.” And Eddie Brant replies, “I saw Tom Cross a few months ago at a rugby club dinner. I’d have known him anywhere. He’s still larger than life, full of stories. He’s retired now. He had a big win on the pools a few years back so he’s very comfortably off, he said.” So I think we can safely say that, like Danny and Robbie, Tom Cross was a former pupil of Harriestown High.’

‘You could just have asked me,’ Kevin said. ‘I went to the Double Aitch too.’

Paula looked surprised. ‘I wish I’d known,’ she said, It would have saved me a bit of time. Anyway, at least we know now that it’s a link. I don’t know what it means, or if it means anything at all, but it’s definitely something they all had in common.’

‘There’s something else they had in common,’ Kevin said. ‘They were all rich. Robbie from football, Danny from the lottery and Popeye from the football pools. Some people thought he must be on the take, to afford a house on Dunelm Drive. But he wasn’t. He just got lucky.’

‘Interesting point, Kevin. And good work, Paula,’ Carol said.

‘Do you think we should be warning former pupils of Harriestown High who have gone on to make a mint?’ Chris said.

Carol looked startled. ‘I don’t think we’ve got nearly enough to be setting the cat among the pigeons like that. Can you imagine the panic that would set in if we did that? No, we need to have a much clearer idea of what’s going on here. I’m going to see Mrs Cross this morning. Let’s see what comes out of that. Paula, can you speak to Mr and Mrs Bishop, see if Robbie knew Tom Cross? And Sam, the same thing with Danny’s family. Kevin, the phone records have just come in for Aziz’s mobile. I want you to pursue that. Also, since you’ve got the connections, get hold of the head teacher at Harriestown High and see if the school had fostered some connection between the three of them. Like you said, they were all rich. Maybe the school had been hitting them up for donations?
Maybe the head had invited them over for drinks? Check it out. And Chris, I want you to take the phone over to CTC. Apologize profusely for us getting our wires crossed and thinking we’d told them about the phone. Smile a lot. See what they’ve got. And guys? I want you all to keep an open mind on the bombing. I spoke to Tony last night and he has one or two ideas that seemed pretty off the wall to me. But he’s been right before in unlikely circumstances, so let’s make sure we don’t jump to conclusions based on preconceptions and prejudice. Let the evidence do the work. And speaking of evidence, how are you getting on, Stacey?’

‘Some interesting bits and pieces…Chris asked me to check out hopefully.co.uk to see if Aziz had saved his login details on the laptop. We got lucky. The login was on the machine. But he’d booked nothing else.’ Stacey paused. She did like to keep them dangling, Carol thought, noticing the expressions of her team. And how they hated it. ‘However,’ Stacey continued, ‘I was able to dredge up a list of things on the site he’d been looking at. And what attracted the Bradfield bomber were rental cottages in Northern Ontario. I have a list.’