limelight, does he?’ Tony said, waving her towards the bedside chair.
‘My way or the highway,’ Carol said, abandoning her defence of the door and throwing herself into the chair. ‘Like just about every consultant I’ve ever dealt with.’
‘You should meet Mrs Chakrabarti. At least she lets you bask in the misapprehension that she’s taking notice of what you say. So, you’ve got the poisoned chalice, have you?’
‘Oh yes. CID took the call and as soon as they realized what they were looking at, they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. I’m not looking forward to the next few days. But enough of me and my troubles.’ Carol made a visible effort to shrug off her problems. ‘How are you?’
Tony smiled. ‘It’s me, Carol. You don’t have to pretend you’ve got room in your head for anything other than Robbie Bishop. And as for me, if you really want to know, I’ll feel a lot better as soon as you stop treating me like an invalid. It’s my knee that’s messed up, not my brain. You can run this past me, same as you would any other murder lacking an obvious motive.’
‘Are you sure? You don’t look like you’re firing on all cylinders, to be honest.’
‘I’m not, clearly. My concentration isn’t great, which makes reading anything complex impossible.’ He made a dismissive gesture towards the books he’d asked her to bring in. ‘But I’m off the intravenous morphine and my brain is returning to what passes for normal. When I’m awake, I’d rather be puzzling over this than watching daytime TV. So, what can you tell me?’
‘Depressingly little.’ Carol ran through what she and her team had established so far.
‘So, to sum up,’ Tony said. ‘We don’t know of anybody who hated him enough to kill him, he was probably poisoned in a nightclub crammed with people and we don’t know where the ricin came from.’
‘That’s about it, yeah. I did find a scrunched-up bit of paper in the pocket of the last pair of jeans he wore. It had a url on it that I’ve not had a chance to check out yet: www.bestdays.co.uk.’
‘We could look at it now.’ Tony offered, pressing the button to raise the bed and wincing as a fresh pain asserted itself. He flipped open the laptop and waited impatiently for it to emerge from hibernation.
‘You in pain?’ Carol asked.
‘A bit,’ he admitted.
‘Can’t they give you something for it?’
‘I’m trying to keep the painkillers to a minimum,’ Tony admitted. ‘I don’t like the way they make me feel. I’d rather have my wits about me.’
‘That’s just stupid,’ Carol said firmly. ‘There’s nothing helpful about pain.’ Without asking permission, she pressed the nurse call button.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorting you out.’ She pulled her chair round so she could see the screen.
Tony typed in the url. It took them to a page with the banner heading, ‘The Best Days of Our Lives.’ For only £5 annual membership, the site promised it would provide the best service in the UK for reuniting old school friends and workmates. A brief exploration revealed that by registering with the site, people could check out their old contacts and get back in touch via emails which would be forwarded by the website administration. ‘Why would Robbie Bishop be interested in contacting old school mates?’ Tony said. ‘I’d have thought they’d be falling over themselves to get back in touch with him.’
Carol shrugged. ‘Maybe he wanted to look up an old flame who dumped him? He was footloose and fancy free after the end of his engagement.’
‘I don’t see it. He was good looking, rich and talented. Everywhere he went, women threw themselves at him. And apparently, he was quite happy to catch some of them. He was engaged to a very cool trophy babe. If he was still carrying a torch for somebody who dumped him when he was fifteen, he wouldn’t be behaving like that. And he’d have done something about it before now.’ He shook his head. ‘No, the psychology’s all wrong for that. Do we know for sure it’s Robbie’s handwriting?’
‘We don’t. It’s with forensics now. You think somebody gave it to him?’
‘He told Phil Campsie he was having a drink with someone from school. Maybe whoever he was drinking with suggested he should check out the site, look up some old mates. Robbie’s not interested but he doesn’t want to seem rude so he shoves it in his pocket and forgets all about it.’
‘Could be. It makes sense.’
Tony opened a window and typed in, ‘Harriestown High School, Bradfield.’
‘You know where he went to school?’ Carol sounded suspicious.
‘I follow football, Carol. I know where he grew up. His mum and dad still live in the same house, in Harriestown. He offered to buy them a new place, but they wanted to stay where they belonged.’
‘You don’t learn stuff like that from following football.’
Tony had the grace to look shame-faced. ‘So I surf the gossip from time to time. It doesn’t make me a bad person. Look at that.’ He pointed to the screen. There was a photograph of Harriestown High School, boxy sixties concrete and glass flanking the old Victorian brick core. Beneath a brief history of the school there was a section entitled ‘Famous Alumni’. A couple of MPs, two rock bands who had made a small dent in the charts during the Britpop era, a mid-list crime writer, a minor soap star, a fashion designer and Robbie Bishop. A couple of clicks and he’d brought up the names of Harriestown High School former pupils who had overlapped Robbie Bishop’s years in the school. ‘Whoever gave him the url, chances are the name is here.’
Carol groaned. ‘I suppose it does whittle down the list a little. Rather than checking out every single person who was at school with Robbie, now we only have to go through the ones who are paid-up members of the Best Days of Our Lives.’
‘At least now you’re looking for a needle in a sewing box rather than a haystack.’
‘You think that makes it easier? That’s the trouble with not having an obvious motive. You don’t know where to start.’
Tony winced. ‘And that’s what I’m for, right? The one who narrows things down when “Who benefits?” doesn’t cut the mustard.’
Carol grinned. ‘Something like that. And on that cheerful note, I’m going to leave you to it. I’m off to London to talk to Robbie’s ex.’
‘The lovely Bindie Blyth, would that be?’
‘I see what you mean about surfing the gossip. You’re absolutely right. And before I can take off, I need to sort out some bodies to acquire as much city-centre CCTV footage as we can get our hands on. And then the poor sods have to go through it all.’
‘Rather them than me. What’s the coverage like around Amatis?’
Carol rolled her eyes. ‘It ranges from overkill to nothing at all. The front of the club is well covered, and so are the routes to the nearest multi-storeys. But there’s a side exit near the VIP area. It opens on to an alley that runs down the side of the building. From there, you’re into the warren of Temple Fields back streets. And in spite of our best efforts, far too much of that is still CCTV-free.’ There was a moment’s silence while they both remembered past cases that had revolved around Temple Fields, an area that managed to combine the red-light district, the gay village, designer apartments in converted warehouses and a honeycomb of small businesses. Temple Fields was the cusp of cool and crap, where edgy met enterprising for denizens who spanned the spectrum from criminal to righteous.
‘It’s still the only part of town where anything can happen,’ Tony said, his voice almost dreamy. ‘Good and bad.’
Carol snorted derisively. ‘I’ll have to take your word for the good.’
‘We