‘No,’ he said. ‘Do you look like him?’
Lev eyed him curiously. ‘I will one day,’ he said. ‘But I’m still too little. I just look like me now.’
‘And a very handsome me you are too,’ Tony said.
‘What did you do to your leg? Did somebody blow you up too? Somebody blew up my dad.’
‘No, nobody blew me up,’ Tony said. ‘A man hit me with an axe.’
‘Wow,’ Lev said. ‘That’s pretty cool. Did it hurt?’
‘It still does.’ He’d almost caught up with Paula and Rachel. ‘But it’s getting better.’
Lev reached up and grabbed his hand. ‘Then will you kill the man who hit you with the axe?’
Tony shook his head. ‘No. What I’ll do is try to help him not to do it again. I’m a kind of doctor, Lev. I try to make people feel better inside. If you feel bad inside, there are people like me you can talk to. Don’t be afraid to ask. Your mum will help you find the right one, won’t you, Rachel?’
Rachel swallowed hard, her eyes brimming. ‘Of course I will. Say goodbye now, Lev.’
Somehow, they got out without anybody cracking up. ‘Fuck,’ Paula said as they walked back to the car. ‘That was no fun at all. And no use at all either. She’s got a point, you know. Why would Aziz have any idea that Diamond was in that precise part of the stand? And even if he did, according to what Mrs Diamond said, there’s not a shred of motive.’
‘So it seems,’ Tony said. ‘And I could be totally wrong.’ He dragged himself a few steps nearer the car. ‘On the other hand, I might just be right. And I’d have thought you lot would have been gagging to take my side on this one.’
‘Why?’ Paula stopped and waited for him.
‘Because, if I am right, then CTC will have to piss off home with their tails between their legs.’
Paula grinned, her eyes dancing. ‘When you put it like that…Let’s see if we can find some evidence, Dr Hill.’
Kevin smiled at the phone. ‘That’s right. Aziz. Yousef Aziz. The rental would probably start from the beginning of this week…Yes, I’ll hold.’ He twiddled his pen between his fingers, trying to move it from one side of his hand to the other without dropping it. The voice on the other end spoke to him. ‘OK, fine, thanks for trying.’ He crossed another name off the list and prepared to dial another holiday home rental in Northern Ontario. Of the sites Yousef Aziz had visited, he’d now managed to contact eight out of seventeen. None of them had rented a property to Yousef Aziz. None of them remembered speaking to him or receiving an email from him.
Just as he was about to dial the next number, Carol stopped at his desk. She held out a box of cakes. ‘There you go, Kevin, help yourself. I thought we all needed a bit of sugar to get us through the afternoon.’
He looked at the cakes, wondering. ‘Can I ask where you got them from?’ he asked.
‘The baker’s shop in the precinct,’ Carol said. ‘The one we usually get our cakes from. Why?’
Kevin looked embarrassed. ‘It’s just that…Well, Tony left me a voicemail and told me not to eat anything that could have been tampered with.’
‘He did what?’ Carol’s annoyance was unmistakable beneath the incredulity. ‘Did he say why he thought that?’
Kevin shook his head. ‘He said he’d talk to me later. But I’ve not heard from him since.’
‘I sent Paula out with him. Have you seen her?’
‘She said she was going to hit the bricks in Temple Fields this afternoon with our pictures of Jack Anderson, see if she could get any leads. I’ve not spoken to her since she went out this morning.’
Carol took a deep breath. He could see she was simmering. ‘And what are you doing?’
‘Following up on the rental places that Aziz looked at on his computer.’
‘OK. You stick with that.’ Carol walked back to her own office and closed the door behind her. She called Paula’s mobile. When the call connected, she said, ‘Paula, were you with Tony when he called Kevin this morning?’
‘Yes, I was.’ Paula sounded cautious.
‘Can you tell me why he took it upon himself to warn one of my officers about being poisoned without telling me?’
A short pause, then Paula said, ‘He knew you were in a meeting and he thought it was urgent.’
‘And why does he think someone might want to poison Kevin?’
The short answer is, because Kevin went to Harriestown High and he drives a Ferrari.’
Carol gently massaged her closed eyelids and wished the newborn pain in her head would go as quickly as it had arrived. ‘And does the long answer make any more sense than that?’ she said.
‘When I interviewed Steve Mottishead yesterday, he said Anderson had made a wish list when he was at school. Like Michael Heseltine wanting to be Prime Minister?’
‘Go on.’
‘He remembered a few things off the list. Having a house on Dunelm Drive. Making a million by thirty. Driving a Ferrari. When I told Tony about the list, he reckoned that was what connected the victims, as well as being former pupils of Harriestown High. And then he remembered Kevin’s car. So he made the call.’
‘And you didn’t think that was a little sudden? A little quick off the mark?’
A long silence. ‘We both thought, better safe than sorry, Chief.’
