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
