'That would disguise the taste of the warfarin. Was it from a takeaway?'
It was. He gave us his house keys and permission to scavenge in his rubbish bins. Dave made a note of his wife's new address and the name of the suspect takeaway.
'My money's on Miss Ferodo,' he stated as we drove across town.
'Nah,' I said. 'Mine's on the takeaway.'
'How come?'
'Sabotage. Local fish and chip shop fighting back, and fighting dirty.' Some cops deal with multi-billion frauds and drug cartels and barons of industry with their fingers in the pie, in Heckley we have takeaway wars.
Johnson's semi on the Barratt estate had all the hallmarks of a home where the woman has walked out: two days' washing up in the sink; dirty towels over the radiator; windows that cut out the light and a smell of stale food permeating everywhere. Otherwise it was pleasant. The furniture was good quality and the decor was freshly applied. Too many ornaments, as usual, and a big wedding photograph standing on the widescreen TV.
Why did he keep that? I wondered. A young version of Carl Johnson stood proudly next to a bubbly blonde, a grey topper clutched in his hand. I picked up the remote control for the television and flicked round the channels. I couldn't believe what I saw. Were there really, in homes all over the country, people sad enough to be watching that tripe? 'Go for a walk!' I wanted to scream at them. 'Read a book! Or just look at the sky and wonder at the clouds. Anything but watch this drivel.'
'Bad news,' Dave announced as he came into the room. 'His bin's been emptied. Hey, I like this.'
'When it's widescreen,' I said, 'is the picture just stretched or is there a bit extra stuck on each side?'
'It's stretched. Haven't you seen football on one? The goals look about thirty feet wide.'
'No.' I pressed the off button and the picture faded. 'Let's have a look in the kitchen, then.'
The curry tray was in a bucket under the sink, with enough sauce left clinging to the edges for our highly- trained scientists to analyse. We placed it in a plastic bag and labelled it. Beneath the tray we found two empty Foster's cans, so they went into bags, too, along with a mackerel in honey mustard tin and the remnants of a pizza.
Inside the fridge part of his fridge-freezer there was a half-empty tin of Del Monte pineapple rings, my favourites. He hadn't mentioned them but perhaps he'd had a pudding. Something sweet like that goes down well with ice cream after a hot curry. I placed it on the draining board next to the other stuff.
'It's going to cost a fortune to process this lot,' I complained. Current charge to put something through the lab was Ј340 minimum, and Gilbert would not be pleased.
Dave bent over our loot, sniffing at everything. 'Any ideas what rat poison smells like?' he asked.
'No. We should have asked the doctor. Let's look in his garage — that might be where it's kept.'
There was a Citroen C3 in there, plus enough half-empty tins of emulsion in shades of beige to decorate the set of Desert Song. He had a few DIY tools, nothing excessive, and an assortment of chemicals for dealing with garden pests, but no mysterious crystals in an unmarked jam jar. He kept everything in those plastic containers that stack on top of each other. I found an empty one and commandeered it for the samples. We cast appraising eyes over the car and wandered out into the garden.
He'd done a lot of work in it. There was a kerb around the lawn that was painted white, as was the wall dividing him from his neighbour. The borders were neat and weed-free, but well-stocked with plants, many of which were in full bloom. I'm not good at plants, but these looked the sorts that need a lot of attention. Dave knocked on the neighbour's door, but nobody was home.
'Just a sec,' Dave said, back in the kitchen as I started to place the samples in the box. He opened a drawer, decided it was the wrong one and tried another. This time he took a teaspoon from it and reached for the tin of pineapple.
'What are you doing?' I asked.
He dipped the spoon into the juice and transferred it to his mouth. A second later he was spitting furiously into the sink. I turned the cold tap on and told him to wash his mouth out. When he'd finished coughing and retching I said: 'Don't you like pineapple?'
'That's it,' he declared, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief and nodding towards the tin. 'That's where t'poison is.'
'Well done,' I told him. 'I reckon you just saved Gilbert's budget a couple of grand. And if you start bleeding from all your bodily orifices we'll know it isn't Ebola.'
He took me back to the station and then went off to the Home Office lab at Wetherton with all the goodies we'd collected. I caught up with the morning's happenings and lunched on a chunky KitKat and a mug of tea. Carl Johnson's wife, who rejoiced in the name of Davina, was in when I rang her number, so I arranged to see her in thirty minutes and went to the bathroom to comb my hair — maybe Sparky hadn't been lying about the Miss Ferodo thing.
Funny thing was I still wasn't sure after I met her. She lived in a first-floor flat in a converted Victorian terrace on the edge of the town centre, only five minutes from the nick. She was about five-two in height with dazzling blonde hair that would have mended a fuse in an emergency. She had her hair lacquer delivered by tanker, like central heating oil, and I could have imagined her lining up with other hopefuls in the Skegness Pier Ballroom, a few years earlier. I could have but I tried not to.
'Mrs Johnson?' I asked, offering my warrant card for inspection as she opened the door. She nodded up at me and stepped to one side to let me through.
Rented accommodation, fully furnished. Cheap furniture that a succession of tenants hadn't given a toss about. Dingy curtains; cigarette burns on everything; electricity meter just inside the door, spinning like a windmill. I'd have killed to leave a place like that.
'Are you sure he's alright?' she asked, after gesturing for me to sit down. I'd told her that Carl was in hospital when I telephoned, but didn't say he'd been at the centre of the Ebola panic.
'According to the doctor he'll be fine, but it was touch and go until they discovered what was wrong with him.'
'And what is wrong with him?'
'He'd eaten something that disagreed with him.'
'What? Like food poisoning?'
'Something like that. Can I ask how long you've been separated?'
'Just coming up to six weeks, but what's that got to do with it?'
'Mr Johnson thinks you may have tampered with his food.'
She stared at me for a beat, then jumped to her feet and paced the room. 'That's typical!' she declared. 'Bloody typical. Everything that goes wrong it's me. He's paranoid, Inspector, bloody paranoid, believe me.' She started to say something else, stumbled over the words, then said: 'Poison, was it? Poison? Any ideas what?'
I shook my head.
'No? Well I'll tell you how he got it. He did it to himself, that's what. He's pathetic, feels sorry for himself since he lost his job.' She walked over to the window, looked out then turned back to face me. 'I'm sorry, I never asked if you wanted a coffee.'
'No, I'm fine. When did you last see him?'
'The week after I left him. I'd given him this address, trying to be civilised about it, but he came round every night, promising me the world. It took a week for him to get the message that I wanted shot of him for good.'
'Was he on any sort of medication?'
'Medication?'
'Mmm.'
'Not from the doctor, but he spent a fortune in health shops. He was into every latest fad there was.'
'Any ideas what he was taking?'
'No, I'm sorry.'
'What did he do when he worked?'
'He was a sorter at the Post Office.'
'And why did he lose his job?'
'The cuts, due to mechanical sorting, or something, but he had a record of bad time-keeping, so they were probably glad to let him go.'
'And do you do anything?'
