Val McDermid - Beneath the Bleeding

‘Of course he was at training sessions. Thursday night, I don’t know what he did.’ Aljinovic spread his big goalkeeper’s hands. ‘I am goalkeeper, not Robbie’s keeper. But on Friday night, we shared the hotel room. We all had dinner together, like usual. Steak and potatoes and salad and a glass of red wine. Fruit salad and ice cream. We always have the same thing, me and Robbie. Actually, most of the guys. We went upstairs about nine o’clock. Robbie took a bath and I called my wife. We watched the Sky football channel together until about ten, then we went to sleep.’

‘Did Robbie have anything out of the mini-bar?’ Kevin asked.

Aljinovic chuckled. ‘You don’t know much about football, do you? They don’t give us keys for the minibar. We’re supposed to stay pure. This is why we are in a hotel and not at home. They can control what we eat and drink and they can keep us away from women.’

Chris returned his smile. ‘I thought that was a myth, keeping your strength up before a match by avoiding sex.’

‘It’s not the sex, it’s the sleep,’ Aljinovic said. ‘They like us to have good sleep before a game.’

‘Did Robbie have any food or drink with him? Bottled water, whatever?’

‘No. There is always plenty of water in the room.’ He frowned. ‘You have reminded me. Friday evening, Robbie said he was very thirsty. He said he felt as if he was coming down with a cold or something. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, just that he wasn’t feeling great. And of course in the morning, he thought he had flu. I was worried in case I might catch it. This feeling like flu, is this the poison? Or is he sick too?’

‘It’s the poison.’ Kevin looked directly into his eyes. ‘Did Robbie take cocaine on Friday evening?’

Aljinovic reared backwards, an expression of affront on his face. ‘Of course not. No. Who told you that? Robbie didn’t use drugs. Why are you asking this?’

‘It’s possible he inhaled the poison. If it was mixed in with cocaine or amphetamine, Robbie might not have noticed,’ Chris said.

‘No. This is not possible. Not possible at all. I will not believe this about him.’

‘You said earlier that you’re a goalkeeper, not Robbie’s keeper. How can you be so sure he never uses drugs?’ Kevin said, his voice mild but his eyes intent.

‘We have talked about it. About drugs in sports. And for fun. Robbie and me, we think the same. It’s a fool’s game. You cheat yourself, you cheat the fans, you cheat your club. We both know people who use drugs and we both despise them.’ He spoke vehemently. ‘Whoever poisoned Robbie, they didn’t do it with drugs.’

By the time Carol arrived at Robbie Bishop’s flat, Detective Constable Sam Evans had already made a start on the search. The footballer’s home was a penthouse complete with roof terrace in the heart of the city. The building had been a department store; the main living area was bright with daylight that poured in through metal-framed Art Deco windows. Sam was going through the desk drawers, caught in a shaft of sunlight that made his coffee-coloured skin glow. He looked up as Carol walked in, giving her a rueful shake of the head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not so far.’

‘What kind of nothing?’ She snapped a pair of latex gloves over her hands.

‘Neatly filed bills, bank statements, credit card statements. He pays his bills on time, he pays his credit cards off every month. He’s got an account with a bookie, gambles a few hundred a month on the ponies. Nothing that stands out. I haven’t looked at the computer yet, I thought I’d leave that for Stacey.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. You think she knows what football is?’ Carol said, crossing to look out of the window. A hawk’s-eye view of the city centre; people going about their business, trams criss-crossing, fountains playing, Big Issue sellers cajoling, shoppers dawdling by windows full of promises. None of them thinking about poisoning a premiership footballer with ricin, not today. Tomorrow or the day after, when Robbie Bishop finally died, it would be different. But not today. Not yet. She turned back. ‘What have you done so far?’

‘Just the desk.’

Carol nodded. She looked around. Sam had been right to start at the desk. There weren’t many other search options. The dining area, all glass and steel, had nothing to hide. There were a couple of groups of scarlet leather sofas, one centred on a huge plasma screen home cinema system complete with PlayStation, the other set around a low glass coffee table whose leading edge looked like a breaking wave. A wall of shelves housed a vast collection of DVDs and CDs. Someone would have to go through every one, but she’d leave that to the crime scene team. She walked over to the media collection. The CDs were mostly by people she’d never heard of. The names she did recognize were dance and hip-hop; she assumed the rest were similar in flavour.

The DVDs were roughly arranged – football on two shelves in the middle, popular action and comedy movies beneath them, TV comedy and drama above them. PlayStation and PC computer games filled the bottom shelf. The top one, appropriately, held the porn. Carol skimmed the titles, deciding Robbie’s taste in porn was as unadventurous as his taste in film and drama. Unless there was a secret stash somewhere, it appeared that Robbie’s sexual inclinations were not the sort to get him killed.

Carol wandered through to the bedroom, smiling wryly at the sight of a bed that must have been seven feet wide. The rumpled dark blue silk sheets were piled with fake furs, and a dozen pillows were scattered around. Another plasma TV dominated the wall opposite the bed, and the other walls displayed paintings of nudes that the vendor had almost certainly described as ‘artistic’.

A walk-in wardrobe ran the whole length of one wall. There was an empty section. Carol wondered if that had been where his fiancée had hung her clothes, or if he’d just been having a clear-out. At the far end were two rectangular baskets, one labelled ‘laundry’, the other ‘dry cleaning’. Both were almost full. Presumably, someone else took care of them. Luckily, they hadn’t been in since Robbie had been taken ill.

The top layer of the laundry basket consisted of a pair of Armani jeans, Calvin Klein trunks and an extravagantly striped Paul Smith shirt. Carol picked up the jeans and went through the pockets. At first, she thought they were empty, but as her fingers probed, they encountered a screw of paper rammed right down into the seam of the front right-hand pocket. She pulled it out and gently teased the creases and folds apart.

It was the corner of a page of lined paper, apparently torn from a notebook. Written in black ink was, ‘www.bestdays.co. uk’. Carol took it through to the living area and asked Sam for an evidence bag. ‘What you got, boss?’ he asked, handing one over.

Carol dropped the paper in the bag, sealing and dating it. ‘A url. Probably nothing. Take it back for Stacey, please. You find anything?’

Sam shook his head. ‘I tell you, he looks a pretty boring bastard to me.’

Carol went back through to the bedroom. Bedside tables held few surprises – condoms, breath mints, tissues, a blister pack of Nurofen, a pinkie-sized butt plug and a tube of KY. Carol was pretty sure that, these days, that counted as vanilla. Interestingly, the book tucked into the drawer on the left was Michael Crick’s critical biography of Manchester United’s boss, Alex Ferguson. Though Carol was far from knowledgeable about football, even she knew that in a world of celebrity soccer hagiographies this was an interesting choice.

Nothing in the ensuite bathroom gave Carol a moment’s pause. Sighing, she returned to Sam. ‘It’s almost spooky,’ she said. ‘There’s so little personality here.’