‘It acts quite quickly. He said he’d had stomach cramps and a couple of incidents of diarrhoea at the football match. While he was still lucid, he said he’d started feeling bad after lunch. He’d had lamb kebabs with rice and a sauce with herbs, he said. You’ve got two possible sources of oleandrin right there. The lamb could have been marinated with oleander leaves, or sap. Then the twigs could have been used to kebab the lamb. Like the Napoleonic story.’ She shook her head. ‘Horrible. So insidious a way to kill someone. Such a breach of trust.’
‘Did he say where he’d had lunch?’
‘He said someone had cooked it for him. So I imagine it was at their house.’ Elinor rubbed the bridge of her nose as she struggled to remember what Tom Cross had said. ‘Was it Jack…? No, not Jack. Jake. That was it. Jake.’
Suddenly Paula was awake, her mind racing with connections. ‘You’re sure it was Jake and not Jack?’
Elinor looked uncertain, catching a corner of her lower lip with her teeth. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Jake. But I could be mistaken.’
Harriestown High, Paula thought. Jack Anderson. Robbie Bishop, Danny Wade and now maybe Tom Cross. Was that the link? Was that what drew them together? They couldn’t have known each other at school, not given the disparity in ages. But maybe there was some former pupil organization they all belonged to. Some charity event at the school that had brought them together. Some occasion where they’d all witnessed something they shouldn’t have? ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ she said softly.
‘Really?’
‘You have no idea,’ Paula said. Now she was wide awake. She knew there would be no sleep for her until she’d found out where Tom Cross had gone to school. She wasn’t sure where to look for that information at half past ten on a Saturday night, but she knew a woman who would.
Tony drifted slowly up into consciousness. In the space of a week, he’d grown so accustomed to the comings and goings of the nursing staff that the presence of another person in his room was no longer enough to wake him up. It took something more. Something like the suck and slither and pop of a cork leaving a bottle, followed by the soft glug of liquid into plastic. ‘Carol,’ he groaned as he put the pieces together. In the dim city light that seeped through the thin curtains, he could just make out her shape in the chair next to the bed. He fumbled for the bed control and eased himself upwards.
‘Shall I put the light on?’ she asked.
‘Pull the curtain back, let a bit more light in from outside.’
She uncurled from the chair and did as he’d suggested. On her way back, she poured him a glass. He sniffed appreciatively. ‘Lovely, lovely shiraz,’ he said. ‘Funny, I don’t think I would have listed decent wine among the things I would miss most if I was on a desert island. Just shows me how wrong I can be.’ He took another sip, felt himself rising inexorably into consciousness. This must have been a terrible day for you,’ he said.
‘You have no idea,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen things today I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Horrible injuries. Body parts strewn over a football stand. Blood and brains splattered on walls.’ She took a long swallow of her wine. ‘You think you’ve seen it all. You think there can’t be anything worse than the crime scenes you’ve already processed. And then this. Thirty-five dead in the bombing, plus one.’
‘The one being the bomber?’
‘No, the one being Tom Cross.’
He nearly slopped the wine from his cup in his surprise. ‘Popeye Cross? I don’t understand. He died in the bombing?’ His old nemesis’s name was the last one he’d expected to hear in connection with the Bradfield bombing.
‘No. The bombing apparently brought out the hero in him. He just got stuck right in. They say he saved lives out there. No, what did for him was poison. He’d been poisoned before he even got to the match.’
‘Poisoned? How? What with?’
‘I don’t know the details yet. Paula’s somewhere in the hospital getting the information from the doctor who picked up on it. A stroke of luck, really. Because of the bombing she got drafted into A&E, and because of Robbie Bishop, she was particularly receptive to the idea of poisoning.’
‘That makes three,’ he said. ‘And all from round here. Looks like you’ve got a serial poisoner on your patch.’
Carol glared at him. ‘Different poisons, different set-ups. Different delivery systems.’
‘Signature,’ Tony said. ‘Murder at a distance. Targeted administration. Time lag between ingestion and death. These are linked, Carol. You don’t get that many deliberate poisonings these days. They’ve been replaced by guns and divorce. Very Victorian, poisonings. Nasty, insidious, destructive of communities and families. But not very twenty-first century. Admit it, Carol, you’ve got a serial.’
‘I’ll wait for the evidence,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Meanwhile, Tom Cross’s death is the one murder I’m actually allowed to investigate.’ The anger was coming off her in waves. He could almost taste her fury, a dark bitterness laid over the jammy fruit of the wine.
Tony struggled to make sense of Carol’s words. ‘What do you mean, the only one you’re allowed to investigate?’
‘They’ve taken the bombing away from us,’ she said. This new Counter Terrorism Command. The misbegotten marriage of Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorism Branch. The northern arm is based in Manchester. Only now, they’re in Bradfield with their jackboots and their “no names, no pack drill”. Literally. They won’t give you their real names, they don’t wear any numbers. They say it’s to prevent reprisals. I say it’s to prevent any comeback. Paula calls them the Imperial Storm Troopers, and she’s not far off the mark. They’re scary, Tony. Very scary. I saw them in action in Scargill Street, and I tell you, I was ashamed to be a copper.’
‘And they’ve assumed operational command?’ he said, imagining what that must be like for someone with as much pride in herself and her team as Carol had.
‘Totally. We’re supposed to be at their beck and call if they want us to do anything.’ Carol gave a harsh laugh. ‘It’s like being in a police state, and the freaky thing is, I’m supposed to be one of them.’
‘And are you doing what you’re supposed to do?’ Tony asked, trying to keep his tone neutral.
