the stained stucco covering the gables and bays was scabby and crumbling, the window frames rotting and the gutters sprouting an assortment of weeds. It had once had a view; now all that could be seen from its front windows was the cantilevered slant of the west stand of Bradfield Victoria’s vast stadium half a mile away. What had once been a quarter endowed with a certain grandeur had declined into a ghetto whose inhabitants were united only by their poverty. Skin tones ranged from the blue-black of sub-Saharan Africa to the skimmed-milk pallor of Eastern Europe. According to a survey carried out by Bradfield City Council, thirteen religions were practised and twenty-two native tongues spoken in the square mile to the west of the football ground.
Here, Yousef travelled under the radar of his own third-generation immigrant community. Here, nobody noticed or cared who else came and went from his first-floor hideaway. Here, Yousef Aziz was invisible.
The receptionist tried to hide her shock and failed. ‘Good morning, Mrs Hill,’ she gabbled on automatic. She glanced down at the calendar on her desk, as if she couldn’t believe she’d got it so wrong. ‘I thought you … we weren’t …’
‘Good, it keeps you on your toes, Bethany,’ Vanessa said as she swept past on her way to her office. The faces she passed on the way looked startled and guilty as they stammered out their greetings. She didn’t imagine for one moment they’d done anything to be guilty about. Her staff knew better than to try to put one over on her. But she liked that her unexpected arrival sent a ripple of anxiety through the office. It was a sign she was getting her money’s worth. Vanessa Hill wasn’t a touchy-feely employer. She had friends already; she didn’t need to make her employees her buddies. She was tough, but she thought she was fair. It was a message she tried to hammer home to her clients. Keep your distance, win their respect, and your HR problems would be minimal.
Pity it wasn’t that straightforward with kids, she thought as she dumped her laptop on the desk and hung up her jacket. When your staff didn’t cut the mustard, you could sack them and recruit someone better suited to the job. Kids, you were stuck with. And right from the start, Tony had failed to live up to expectations. When she’d fallen pregnant to a man who had disappeared like snow off a dyke at the news, her mother had told her to put the baby up for adoption. Vanessa had refused point blank. Now, she looked back in bewilderment and wondered why she had been so adamant.
It hadn’t been for sentimental reasons. She didn’t have a sentimental bone in her body. Another position she recommended to her clients. Had she really gone that far out on a limb just to spite her demanding, controlling mother? There had to be more to it than that, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember. It must have been the hormones, addling her brain. Whatever, she’d endured the neighbourhood spite and gossip that went with single parenthood back then. She’d changed jobs, moving right across town to where nobody knew her, and lied about her past, inventing a dead husband to avoid the stigma. And it wasn’t as if she’d had any illusions about basking in a hazy glow of motherhood. With her father dead and no prospect of a husband now, she was the breadwinner. She’d always known she’d be back at work as soon as was humanly possible, like some bloody Chinese peasant dropping one in the ditch then getting back to the paddy field. And for what?
Her mother had taken reluctant charge of the boy. She didn’t have much choice since it was her daughter’s pay packet that kept them all afloat. Vanessa remembered enough of her own childhood to know the regime she was condemning her son to. She tried not to think about what Tony’s days would have been like and she didn’t encourage him to talk about it. She had enough to contend with, running a busy personnel department, then branching out to set up her own business. She relished the challenge of work, but she didn’t have energy to spare for a whiny kid.
Credit to him, he got that pretty early. He learned to put up and shut up, and to do what he was told. When he forgot himself and bounced around her like a puppy, it only took a few sharp words to knock the stuffing out of him.
Even so, he’d held her back. No doubt about that. All those years ago, no bloke wanted to settle down with some other man’s kid. He was a handicap professionally too. When she was getting her own business established, she’d had to keep the travel to a minimum because her mother kicked off if she was left overnight too often with the boy. Vanessa had missed chances, failed to build fast enough on the contacts she was making and played catch-up too bloody many times thanks to Tony.
And there had been no pay-off. Other women’s kids got married and provided grand-kids. Photos on the desk, anecdotes in the meeting breaks, family holidays in the sun. Ice-breakers, all of them. Confidence-builders. The bricks and mortar of professional relationships that generated business and earned money. Tony’s continuing failures meant Vanessa had to work that much harder.
Well, it was payback time now and no mistake. Things couldn’t have worked out better if she’d planned it. He was stuck in hospital, groggy with drugs and sleep. No hiding place. She could get access to him whenever she wanted and pick her moment. All she had to do was make sure she avoided the girlfriend.
Her PA slipped in and wordlessly delivered the coffee that always arrived within minutes of her settling behind her desk. Vanessa opened up her computer and allowed herself a grim little smile. Fancy Tony landing a woman with looks and brains. Carol Jordan wasn’t the sort of catch Vanessa expected of her son. If she’d imagined him with anyone, it would have been some mousy slip of a girl who worshipped the ground he walked on. Well, girlfriend or no girlfriend, she was going to have her way.
Elinor raised her hand to knock then paused. Was she about to commit career suicide? You could argue that, if she was right, it didn’t matter whether she spoke up or not. Because if she was right, Robbie Bishop was going to die anyway. Nothing could alter that. But if she was right and she didn’t speak up, someone else could die. Whether accident or intent lay behind whatever had happened to him, it could happen to someone else.
The thought of having another death on her conscience swung it for Elinor. Better to make an arse of herself in a good cause than have to deal with that. She rapped on the door and waited for Denby’s distracted, ‘Yes, yes, come in.’ He looked up impatiently from a stack of case notes. ‘Dr Blessing,’ he said. ‘Any change?’
‘In Robbie Bishop?’
Denby pulled a half-smile. ‘Who else? We claim to treat all our patients equally, but it’s not exactly easy when we have to run the gauntlet of football fans whenever we enter or leave the hospital.’ He swung round in his chair and looked through the window to the car park below. ‘Even more of them now than when I came back in after lunch.’ He turned back as Elinor began to speak. ‘Do you suppose they think being there can influence the outcome?’ He sounded more bemused than cynical.
‘I expect it depends whether they believe in the power of prayer. I did see a pair of them huddled in a doorway saying the rosary.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t appear to be helping Mr Bishop – he seems to be deteriorating steadily. The fluid on his lungs is building up. I’d say respiratory distress is getting worse. There’s no question of him coming off the ventilator.’
Denby bit his lip. ‘No response to the AZT, then?’
Elinor shook her head. ‘Nothing discernible so far.’
Denby sighed and nodded. ‘Damned if I know what’s going on here. Oh, well. So it goes sometimes. Thanks for keeping me posted, Dr Blessing.’ His eyes returned to the files on his desk in dismissal.
‘There was one thing?’
He looked up, eyebrows raised. He appeared to be genuinely interested in what she had to say. ‘To do with Mr Bishop?’
She nodded. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but have you considered ricin poisoning?’
‘Ricin?’ Denby looked almost offended. ‘How on earth would a premiership footballer be exposed to ricin?’
Elinor battled on. ‘I’ve no idea. But you’re a terrific diagnostician and when you couldn’t come up with anything, I thought it must be something a bit off the wall. And I thought, maybe poisoning. So I checked it out on the online database and all his symptoms match ricin poisoning