Val McDermid - Beneath the Bleeding

‘And Robbie said he was feeling ill?’

Flanagan sniffed. ‘He came over to my table. I was with Jason Graham, my assistant, and Dave Kermode, the physio, and Robbie said he was feeling out of sorts. Tight chest, sweaty, feverish. And his joints were aching, like he was coming down with the flu, you know. I told him to finish his breakfast and go to his room. I said I’d get the team doctor to come and take a look at him. He said he wasn’t hungry, so he’d just go upstairs and get his head down for a bit.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, so I can’t.’

‘So Friday night, he definitely wasn’t out on the town?’

‘No way. He shares with Pavel Aljinovic.’ He turned to face Paula and slid down the wall into a crouch. ‘The goalkeeper, you know. They’ve shared since Pavel came to Bradfield two seasons back. Robbie always says Pavel’s a boring bastard, keeps him honest.’ A sad smile tugged at his mouth. ‘There’s some I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them, you know, but Pavel’s not one of them. Robbie’s right, Pavel is a boring bastard. He’d never have tried to sneak out for a night on the randan. And he wouldn’t have let Robbie do it either.’

‘I’m a bit at sea here,’ Paula said. ‘I don’t really have much of a sense of what Robbie’s typical routine was. Maybe you could run me through it? Say, from Thursday morning?’ Paula wasn’t sure how long the symptoms of ricin poisoning took to develop, but she reckoned going back to Thursday would cover the moment of its administration.

‘We had a UEFA cup match on Wednesday night, so they had Thursday morning off, you know. Robbie came in to see the physio, he’d taken a knock on the ankle and it was a bit swollen. Nothing serious, but they all take their physical condition seriously. It’s their living, you know. Anyway, he was done by half past ten. I assume he went home. He’s got a flat down in the Millennium Quarter, just off Bellwether Square. He turned up for training on Thursday afternoon. We just did a light session, you know. Concentrating on skills more than tactics. We were done by half past four. And I’ve no idea what he did after that.’

‘You don’t have any sense of how he spent his free time?’ Just like a son to you , Paula thought ironically. Robbie Bishop might be twenty-six years old, but if he was anything like most footballers she’d read about in the tabloids, he probably had arrested development. The lifestyle of a sixteen-year-old granted unlimited pocket money and access to beautiful women. The last person who would know what he was up to was anyone in a parental role.

Flanagan shrugged. ‘They’re not children, you know. And I’m not like some managers. I don’t barge into their homes and turn off their stereos and kick their girlfriends out. There are rules about not going out the night before a game. But apart from that, they do their own thing.’ He shook his head again. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘And what was Robbie’s thing?’

‘There’s a fitness centre where he lives. They’ve got a full-sized pool down in the basement. He likes to swim, relax in the sauna, that kind of thing. He’s good pals with Phil Campsie, he’s got a bit of land up on the edge of the moors. They go fishing and shooting together.’ Flanagan pushed himself upright and recommenced his restless pacing. ‘That’s about all I can tell you.’

‘What about girlfriends? Was Robbie seeing anybody special?’

Flanagan shook his head. ‘Not that I knew about. He was engaged for a while. Bindie Blyth, the Radio One DJ. But they called it a day about three months ago.’

Paula’s interest quickened. ‘Who called it a day? Robbie, or Bindie?’

‘I don’t know anything about that. But he didn’t seem to be that bothered, you know.’ He leaned his forehead against the window again. ‘What’s all this got to do with somebody poisoning Robbie, anyway? It’s not his team-mates or his ex who’d be doing that kind of thing.’

‘We have to look at all the possibilities, Mr Flanagan. So, since Bindie, he’s been what? Playing the field?’ Paula winced at her unintentional pun. Please let him not think I’m taking the pis s .

‘I suppose.’ He turned back, rubbing his temples with his fingers. ‘You’d have to ask the lads. Phil and Pavel, they’d likely know.’ He looked longingly at the door that led to the ICU. ‘I wish they’d let me see him, you know. To say goodbye, at least. I can’t believe it.’

‘What about Friday? Do you know what he did then?’

‘We were at the training ground on Friday.’ Flanagan paused for a moment. ‘Come to think of it, he was a bit lacklustre. Head down, a bit slow off the ball. As if he was kind of dozy. I didn’t think anything of it, you know. They all have their off days and, frankly, you’d rather they had them on a training session than a match. He wasn’t off it enough for me to do anything about it, though. And then when he said he had the flu on Saturday, I put it down to that.’

Paula nodded. ‘Anyone would have done the same. Now, I have to ask you this. Is there anyone you can think of who has a grudge against Robbie? Has he had any hate mail? Any problems with stalkers?’

Flanagan winced and shook his head. ‘You don’t get to where he is without pissing off one or two people along the way. You know? Like, there’s always been a bit of needle between him and Nils Petersen, the Man United centre-back. But that’s football. It’s not real life. I mean, if he ran into Petersen in a bar, they’d likely indulge in a bit of argy-bargy, but that’d be the size of it. It wouldn’t come to blows, never mind poisoning.’ He threw his hands into the air. ‘It’s insane. It’s like something in a bad film. There’s nothing more I can tell you, because none of it makes sense.’ He gestured towards the door with his thumb. ‘That lad in there is dying and it’s a tragedy. That’s all I know.’

Paula sensed she’d reached the end of Flanagan’s capacity for answers. They’d probably have to talk to him again, but for now she thought there wasn’t likely to be much more he could tell her. She stood up. ‘I hope you get to say goodbye, Mr Flanagan. Thank you for talking to me.’

He nodded, too distracted now to care what she had to say. Paula walked away, thinking about death and second chances. She’d been given her life back, complete with its load of survivor guilt. But thanks to Tony Hill, she was starting to understand that she had to make that gift mean something. Robbie Bishop was as good a place to start as any.

Not all of Robbie Bishop’s fans were outside Bradfield Cross. Those who lived in Ratcliffe had decided against the cross-town journey and settled for bringing their bunches of supermarket flowers and their children’s paintings to Bradfield Victoria’s training ground. They were propped along the chain-link fence that kept the punters away from the stars. Detective Sergeant Kevin Matthews couldn’t help a faint shudder of distaste as he waited for the gate security to call through and confirm their permission to enter the ground. He couldn’t be doing with these public outpourings of synthetic emotion. He wouldn’t mind betting that none of those who had made their pilgrimage to the Ratcliffe ground had ever exchanged more than a few words along the lines of, ‘And who shall I sign it to?’ with Robbie Bishop. It wasn’t so long since Kevin had had to mourn for real, and he resented the cheapness of their gestures. In his view, if the pilgrims lavished those emotions on the living – their kids, partners and parents – the world would be a better place.

‘Tacky,’ Chris Devine said from the passenger seat as if reading his mind.

‘This is nothing to what there’ll be in a couple of days, after he’s actually died,’ Kevin said as the guard waved them through, pointing to the parking area near the long, low building that impeded the view of the field from the street. He slowed as they passed the Ferraris and Porsches of the players. ‘Nice motors,’ he said approvingly.