expectations and telling the truth. Chris?’ Carol turned to the sergeant. ‘How did you guys get on at Amatis?’
Chris shook her head. The bar staff who were on duty on Thursday remember seeing Robbie in the vodka bar, but they were too busy to pay attention to the company he was keeping. Same with the punters. I think we can probably rule out a stunning blonde. They would have noticed that, I suspect. Paula did notice one thing…’ Chris tipped a nod to Paula and took a sheet of paper out of a folder. ‘There’s CCTV covering the bar area. Unfortunately for our purposes, it’s there to keep an eye on the staff, not the punters. It’s the management’s way of making sure all the cash ends up in the till and that nobody is dealing drugs from behind the bar. So it’s not pointed at the customers. However, we did get this.’ She moved to the whiteboard and pinned up a grainy enlargement. ‘This is Robbie,’ she said, pointing to a hand on the very edge of the photo. ‘We know it’s him because of the Celtic ring tattoo on his middle finger. And next to him, we can see someone else.’ A couple of inches from Robbie’s fingertips was half a hand, a wrist and a section of forearm. ‘Male,’ she said, her expression a mixture of disgust and triumph. ‘A few more degrees of angle on the camera and we’d have him. As it is, all we know is that it is a him and that he doesn’t have a tattoo on the right half of his right hand, wrist or lower arm.’ She stepped away from the board and sat down again. ‘So at least Stacey can tell the website people we’re only interested in the blokes.’
‘Can we, though? Can we be sure this is the person he was referring to?’ Sam butted in.
‘Sure as we can be. We’ve been through all the footage and we’ve not been able to put anybody else alongside Robbie. Someone talking to him from behind wouldn’t have been able to get at his drink. See, it’s too close to Robbie for anyone to tamper with it except the person facing him at the bar.’
‘OK.’ Sam subsided. ‘Point taken.’
‘Thanks, Chris. Anybody else got anything?’
‘I’ve got the results from the street CCTV,’ Paula said. ‘I got the graveyard-shift CID to work it through the night. Robbie definitely didn’t leave by the front door, which is a massive pain in the arse because that area’s saturated with cameras. He must have left by the side door, the so-called VIP exit. There’s no coverage there-the club wants to keep on the good side of its so-called celebrity patrons. This way, there’s no temptation for the club’s security staff to flog stuff to the gossip mags. If there are no pix of C-list TV reality-show arseholes shagging some drunken fan up against the wall, they’re not going to be exposed in print. So goes the theory.
‘The back lane behind the club opens out into Goss Street, the effective border of Temple Fields…’ Paula paused for a moment, lips pursed, eyes narrowed. And of course, Temple Fields has pretty sketchy coverage. Too many of the businesses there are reliant on the streetlife for them to want CCTV, so they always oppose the council when they want to put more cameras up. So we don’t have any footage of Robbie entering Goss Street. What we do have, however, is a very brief clip from one of the cameras on Campion Way. I’ve just put it up on the network, you’ll all be able to see it on your screens. But here it is for now.’ She pulled a laptop towards her and tapped the mouse pad. The interactive whiteboard to the side of Carol immediately sprang to life, an obscure picture appearing, an abstract chiaroscuro of dark and light created by the streetlights on Campion Way. ‘This is pretty raw,’ Paula said. ‘We should be able to get it cleaned up a bit. But I don’t know how helpful it’s going to be.’
The camera was looking down the street, angled to pick up car number plates as kerb crawlers idled down Campion Way. At first, nothing moved. Then two figures emerged from a cross street, paused at the kerb, waiting for a night bus to pass, then walked briskly across the road and disappeared down the other arm of the side street. Knowing Robbie Bishop was the target made it possible to distinguish the walker closest to the camera as the footballer. But the person beyond him was nothing but a darker smudge, except for one brief moment at the kerbside when a blur of white appeared at Robbie’s shoulder.
‘And the killer is Caspar the friendly fucking ghost,’ Kevin said. At least we know he’s white. Almost makes you think he knew the camera was there.’
‘I think he did know,’ Paula said. ‘I think it’s very instructive that this is the only CCTV camera shot we have of Robbie and his probable killer. Even with the scant coverage there is in Temple Fields, it’s impossible to get from one side to the other without being picked up at least once on camera.’ She tapped again on the mouse pad. This time, a map of Temple Fields appeared, with Amatis and the CCTV cameras highlighted. Paula tapped again. This time, a scarlet line zigzagged through the streets, avoiding all but the Campion Way camera. ‘By taking this route, they were only picked up from the side. And for less than a minute. Any other route and they’d have been filmed head-on. Look at the way they must have come. You don’t make all those twists and turns by chance. And I don’t think it was Robbie who was avoiding the cameras.’
They all stared at the map for a long moment. ‘Well spotted, Paula,’ Carol said. ‘I think we can safely say that we are looking for somebody local. Somebody who attended Harriestown High School and who has intimate knowledge of Temple Fields. With all respect, Kevin, this is looking more like one of your fellow former pupils than the Russian mafia. Unless of course they’re using local talent. So let’s keep our minds open. Paula, do we know how they left Temple Fields?’
‘It’s a blank, chief. There are plenty of smart flats in that part of town these days. Or they might have got into a car. We’ve no way of knowing. All we can say for sure is that they don’t show up on foot on any of the main drags on that side of Temple Fields.’
‘OK. Let’s see if we can get any more commercial CCTV footage of the area. Are we any further forward on where he might have got the ricin?’
Kevin consulted his notebook. ‘I spoke to a lecturer in the pharmacology department at the university. He says it’s easy to make. All you need are some castor beans, lye and acetone and a few basic bits of kitchen equipment-a glass jar, coffee filter, tweezers, that level of stuff.’
‘Where do you get castor beans?’ Chris asked.
‘They’re common anywhere south of the Alps. You can buy them online without any trouble. Basically, if any of us wanted to make enough ricin to wipe out the people in this building, we could do it by a week on Wednesday. I don’t think there’s any mileage in trying to trace the components,’ Kevin said wearily.
It was hard not to let despondency seep into the briefing. Carol told herself they had made some progress, even if it did feel insignificant. Every investigation had stages where it felt bogged down. Soon the forensic and pathology results would begin to trickle in. Please God, that might give them a crack they could lever open into a break.
Red-hot worms covered in barbed hooks tore through his flesh. Stoicism abandoned, Tony screamed. The pain subsided into a pulsing stab, an electric eel inside his thigh. The breath escaped from him in tight little groans. ‘Everybody says having the drains out is the worst,’ the middle-aged nurse said cosily.
‘Ungh,’ Tony grunted. ‘Not wrong.’ Sweat beaded his face and neck. His whole body stiffened as he felt the twinge of a movement in the second drain. ‘Just a minute. Gimme a minute,’ he gasped.
‘Better out than in,’ the nurse said and carried on regardless.
