Beneath the Bleeding (6 page)

‘I know the senior nurse from way back. I told her how much easier her life would be if you were online. She seemed to think that a total breach of hospital regulations was a small price to pay. You’ve obviously made an impression already.’ Carol shrugged off her
coat and settled into the chair. ‘And not in a good way.’

‘Thanks for all of this. I really appreciate it. You’re a lot earlier than I expected.’

‘Privilege of rank. I suspect I’m going to have to show my warrant card next time I want to get in, though.’

‘Why’s that?’ Tony handed her the power cord for his laptop. ‘There’s a socket behind you, I think.’

Carol got up and stretched behind the chair to plug it in. ‘The Robbie Bishop fan club.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Have you not seen the news? Robbie Bishop’s here, in Bradfield Cross.’

Tony frowned. ‘Did he get injured in Saturday’s match, then? I’m so out of touch in here, I don’t even know if we won.’

‘One-nil to the Vics. But Robbie wasn’t playing. He supposedly had flu, but whatever it is, it got bad enough for him to be admitted here on Saturday. And I just heard on the radio that he’s been moved to the ICU.’

Tony whistled. ‘Well, it’s obviously not flu, then. Are they saying what the problem is?’

‘No. They’re just calling it a chest infection. But the fans are out in force. You can’t see the main entrance for a sea of canary yellow. Apparently they’ve had to bring in extra security to keep the more enterprising ones at bay. One woman even dressed up in a nurse’s uniform in a bid to get to his bedside. I’m sure she won’t be the last to try something like that. It’s a big problem, because you can’t close the hospital to the public. The patients and their families wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘I’m surprised he’s not in one of the private hospitals.’ Tony opened the bag of jelly beans and stirred them with his finger till he found his favourite buttered popcorn flavour.

‘Neither of the private hospitals in Bradfield has the facilities to deal with acute respiratory problems, according to your friendly senior nurse. They’re fine if you want a new hip or your tonsils out, but if you’re seriously ill, Bradfield Cross is where you want to be.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Tony said wryly.

‘You’re not ill,’ Carol said briskly. ‘You’re just a bit more damaged than usual.’

He pulled a half-smile. ‘Whatever. I’d still bet that Robbie Bishop will be walking out of here ahead of me.’

Sometimes being right was no pleasure at all, Elinor thought as she stared at the lab report. This was definitely one of those times. The test results were incontrovertible. Robbie Bishop had enough ricin in his system to kill him several times over.

Elinor paged Denby, asking him to meet her at the ICU. As she crossed the covered walkway that linked the labs to the main hospital, she couldn’t avoid the sight of Robbie Bishop’s fans, their patient vigil rendered pointless by the piece of paper she held in her hand. According to one of the women in admin who had been holding forth in the staff canteen that morning, the hospital had been inundated with offers of blood, kidneys and anything else that might be donated to help Robbie. But there was nothing anyone could give Robbie now that would alter the fate in prospect.

As she approached the ICU, she folded the report in half and shoved it in her pocket. She didn’t want any of the security staff to glimpse its contents as they checked her ID before allowing her into the unit. The tabloids had their spies everywhere; the least she
could do was to ensure Robbie’s last hours were as dignified as possible. She cleared security and crossed the reception area, spotting Martin Flanagan slumped against the end of a sofa. When he saw her, he jumped to his feet, eagerness and anxiety chasing the exhaustion temporarily from his face. ‘Any news?’ he asked, his flat Ulster accent lending the simple question an incidental air of aggression. ‘Mr Denby’s just gone in. Did he send for you?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Flanagan,’ Elinor said automatically. ‘There’s really nothing I can tell you right now.’

His face collapsed in on itself again, hope disappearing with her words. He dragged his fingers through his silver-streaked hair, a beseeching look on his face. ‘They won’t let me sit with him, you know. His mum and dad are here, they get to be with him. But not me. Not now he’s in there. I signed Robbie when he was just fourteen, you know. I brought him on. He’s the best player I’ve ever worked with and he’s got the heart of a lion.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, you know? Seeing him brought so low. He’s been like a son to me.’ He turned his face away from her.

‘We’re doing all we can,’ Elinor said. He nodded and dropped back on to the sofa like a sack of potatoes. It didn’t do to get emotionally involved, she knew that. But it was hard to see Flanagan’s pain and not feel connected.

Being in the ICU was one of life’s great levellers, she thought as she walked into the dim space with its bays crammed with equipment. Here, it didn’t matter whether you were a household name or a nobody. You got the same total commitment from the
staff, the same access to whatever means it took to keep you alive. And the same restrictions on visitors. Immediate family only, and they could and would be unceremoniously shunted to one side if necessary. Here, the needs of the patient were paramount, and here the medical staff ruled supreme, if only because the patients were in no fit state to question them.

Elinor headed straight for Robbie Bishop’s cubicle. As she drew near, she could see the couple sitting on the left of the bed. A man and woman in their middle years, they were both clearly in the grip of the tension that comes with abject fear. Their focus was fierce and aimed exclusively at the figure wired to the machines. For all the notice they were taking of Thomas Denby standing at the end of the bed, he might as well be invisible. Elinor wondered if they had grown so accustomed to seeing their son from afar that they were somehow transfixed by his proximity as well as his infirmity.

She paused on the fringes of the group, the dim lighting creating a chiaroscuro effect that made her feel as if she were spying on a diorama in a gallery. At the heart of it, Robbie Bishop, a pale mockery of his former glossy self. Hard to imagine now, that mastery of the beautiful game, those fluid breaks down the wing and the curving crosses that had created so many opportunities for Bradfield Victoria’s strikers. Impossible to equate the puffy, waxen face with the glowing good looks that had earned millions promoting everything from organic fruit and vegetables to deodorant. His familiar mop of light brown hair, expertly streaked to make him look like a surfer dude, was lank and dark now, grooming being lower on the priority list of
hospital staff than it was on that of premiership footballers. And Elinor was the one who was about to wrench the last shreds of hope from this dramatic tableau.

She took a step forward and cleared her throat tactfully. Only Denby registered her arrival; he turned, gave her a half-nod and ushered her away from the bedside towards the side office where the nurses were stationed. Denby smiled at the two nurses sitting in front of computer terminals and said, ‘Can you give us a minute, please?’

Neither looked particularly pleased at being shunted out of their own space, but they were conditioned to obey consultants. As the door closed behind them, Elinor pulled the test results from her pocket and handed them over. ‘It’s not good,’ she said.

Denby read the report, his face impassive. ‘No room for doubt there,’ he muttered.

‘So what do we do now?’

‘I tell his parents, you tell Mr Flanagan. And we do everything we can to make sure that Mr Bishop suffers as little as possible during his last hours.’ Denby was already turning, making for the door.

‘What about the police?’ Elinor said. ‘Surely we have to tell them now?’

Denby looked perplexed. ‘I suppose so. Why don’t you do that while I talk to Mr and Mrs Bishop?’ And he was gone.

Elinor sat at the desk and stared at the phone. Eventually she picked it up and asked the hospital switchboard to connect her to Bradfield police. The voice that answered sounded brisk and down-to-earth. ‘My name is Elinor Blessing and I’m a Senior House
Officer at Bradfield Cross Hospital,’ she began, heart sinking as she realized how improbable her news was going to sound.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I think I need to talk to a detective. I need to report a suspicious death. Well, when I say death, he’s actually still alive. But he’s going to be dead before too long.’ Elinor winced. Surely she could have put it better than that?

‘I’m sorry? Has something happened? An assault?’

‘No, nothing like that. Well, I suppose technically, yes, but not in the way you’re thinking. Look, I don’t want to waste time explaining this over and over again. Can you just put me through to someone in CID? Someone who deals with murder?’

Tuesdays, Yousef Aziz made a point of dropping in on his main middleman. Knowing what he knew, it was hard to motivate himself, but for the sake of his parents and his brothers, he forced himself to do more than simply go through the motions. He owed them that, at least. His family’s textile business had survived in the teeth of fierce competition because his father had understood the value of personal relationships in business. That had been the first thing he had taught his two elder sons when he had initiated them into First Fabrics. ‘Always take care of your customers and suppliers,’ he’d explained. ‘If you make them your friends, it makes it hard for them to dump you when times get tough. Because the first rule of business is that times will always get tough sooner or later.’

He’d been right. He’d weathered the collapse of the textile business in the North when cheap imports from
the Far East had all but obliterated British garment manufacturers. He’d hung on by the skin of his teeth, always keeping one step ahead, jacking up the quality of his merchandise when he couldn’t pare his costs any further, carving out new markets at the higher end of the game. And now it was all happening again. This time, the customers were driving the changes. Clothes were going for a song, fall-apart fashions available in chain stores for peanuts. Buy it cheap, wear it once, sling it. The new philosophy had infected a whole generation regardless of class. Girls whose mothers would have taken poison rather than enter a cut-price fashion store rubbed shoulders with teenage mothers on benefit in Matalan and TK Maxx. So Yousef and Sanjar were sticking to the tried-and-tested formula for survival.

And he hated it. Back when his father had started the business, he’d been dealing mostly with other Asians. But as First Fabrics had stabilized and established itself, they had to deal with all sorts. Jews, Cypriots, Chinese, Brits. And the one thing they all had in common was that they acted like 9/11 and 7/7 had given them the right to treat any Muslim with contempt and suspicion. All the misapprehensions and downright deliberate misunderstandings of Islam operated as the perfect excuse for racism. They knew it wasn’t acceptable to be openly racist any more, so they’d found another way to express their racism. All the stuff about women wearing the hijab. The complaints about them speaking Arabic or Urdu instead of English all the time. Fuck, had they never been to Wales? Go into a coffee bar there and suddenly it’s like nobody ever learned English.

What pissed off Yousef more than almost anything else was the way he was treated by people he’d known for years. He’d go into a factory or a warehouse where he’d been buying or selling for the seven years since he’d started working for his dad. And now, instead of the locals greeting him by name and having a laugh with him about the football or the cricket or whatever, their eyes slid away from him like he was slick with oil. Either that or they did that false, bright thing that made him feel patronized, like they were only being nice so they could preface their remarks in the pub with, ‘Of course, some of my best mates are Muslims…’

Today, though, he bit back his anger. It wasn’t like this was going to be for ever. As if to confirm the thought, his mobile rang just as he was pulling in to the car park behind Howard Edelstein’s factory. He recognized the ring tone and smiled, putting the phone to his ear. ‘How’s it going?’ the voice on the other end said.

‘All according to plan. It’s great to hear from you, I wasn’t expecting you to call this morning.’

‘Cancelled meeting. I thought I’d give you a quick bell, just to make sure everything was on track.’

‘You know you can rely on me,’ Yousef said. ‘When I say I’ll do something, it’s as good as done. Don’t worry about me bottling out.’

‘That’s the one thing I’m not worried about. You know we’re doing the right thing.’

‘I do. And I tell you, days like these make me glad we decided to do it this way.’

‘You having a bad one?’ The voice was sympathetic, warm.

‘The kind of arse-licking I hate. But I won’t be doing this for much longer.’

A chuckle at the other end of the phone. ‘That’s for sure. This time next week, the world will feel like a very different place.’

Before Yousef could respond, the familiar figure of Howard Edelstein himself loomed up beside his driver’s door, sketching a little wave and gesturing with his thumb towards the building. ‘I gotta go,’ Yousef said. ‘I’ll see you.’

‘Count on it.’

Yousef thumbed the phone shut, jumping out of the car with a smile on his face. Edelstein nodded at him, unsmiling. ‘Let’s get sorted, then,’ he said, leading the way indoors without waiting to see if Yousef was following.

This time next week,
Yousef thought.
This time next week, you bastard.

Carol stared at Thomas Denby, taking in the image. Prematurely silver hair swept back from his forehead, a single lock falling loose over one eyebrow. Greenish blue eyes, pink skin. A beautifully cut charcoal pinstripe suit, jacket thrown open to reveal a flamboyant scarlet lining. He could have sat for a portrait of the archetype of the successful young consultant. What he absolutely didn’t look like was someone whose idea of a good time was to wind up a senior police officer. ‘So let me get this straight. You’re reporting a murder that hasn’t happened yet?’ She wasn’t in the mood to be messed around, and keeping her waiting for the best part of fifteen minutes hadn’t been the best way to get things started.

Denby shook his head. ‘Murder is your word, not mine. What I am saying is that Robbie Bishop is going to die, probably within the next twenty-four hours. The reason he is going to die is that he has ricin in his system. There is no antidote. There’s nothing we can do for him except to limit his pain as much as possible.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘I know it sounds bizarre. Like some James Bond film. But yes, we’re sure. We’ve done the tests. He’s dying from ricin poisoning.’

‘Could it be suicide?’

Denby looked bemused. ‘I shouldn’t think so for a moment.’

‘But could it? In theory?’

He looked faintly annoyed. Carol thought he probably wasn’t accustomed to having his views questioned. He lined up his pen with the edge of the file in front of him. ‘I’ve been reading up on ricin since my SHO proposed it as the possible cause of Robbie Bishop’s symptoms. Ricin works by invading the cells of a person’s body and inhibiting the cells from synthesizing the proteins they need. Without the proteins, cells die. The respiratory system fails, the heart stops. I haven’t seen any suggestion in the literature that it’s ever been used for suicide. Against it, you’d have to say it’s far from readily available. You’d have to have some skills as a chemist to manufacture it, even supposing you could get your hands on the raw material. Either that or you’d have to have connections to a terrorist organization-they allegedly found it stockpiled in the Al-Quaeda caves in Afghanistan. The other
aspect militating against it is that it’s a long-drawn-out and very painful way to go. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose it as a means of suicide.’ He spread his hands and raised his shoulders to emphasize his point.

Carol made a note on her pad. ‘So we could also rule out accident, by the sounds of it?’

‘Unless Mr Bishop was in the habit of hanging around castor oil factories, I would say so,’ Denby said brusquely.

‘So how did it get into his system?’

‘He probably inhaled it. We’ve examined him thoroughly and we can’t find any puncture wounds.’ Denby leaned forward. ‘I don’t know if you remember the case of the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in the late seventies? He was assassinated with a pellet of ricin fired from a doctored umbrella. Once we knew ricin was involved here, I had our ICU team make a thorough examination of Mr Bishop’s skin. No sign of any foreign body being injected.’