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.’
Sam snorted. ‘Probably because he hasn’t got one. These football stars – they’re all stuck in their adolescence. They get picked up by the big clubs before they’ve had their first kiss, and the management system takes over from their mums. If they make the grade, they’re cash rich and common sense poor by the time they’re out of their teens. They’re wrapped in cotton wool and models’ thighs. Way more money than sense or experience. Bunch of Peter Pans with added testosterone.’
Carol grinned. ‘You sound bitter. Did you lose a girlfriend to one of them, or what?’
Sam returned her grin. ‘The women I like are too smart for footballers. No, I’m just bitter because I can’t afford a Bentley GTC Mulliner.’ Sam waved an invoice at her. ‘His new car. Delivery next month.’
Carol whistled. ‘I know men who would kill for one of those. But probably not using ricin.’ As she spoke, her phone rang. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said.
‘This is Dr Blessing. Mr Denby asked me to call you. Robbie Bishop’s taken a turn for the worse. We don’t think he’s got long. I don’t know if you want to be here?’
‘I’m on my way,’ Carol said. She closed her phone and sighed. ‘Looks like this is about to become a murder inquiry.’
They were waiting for Phil Campsie. Chris idly picked up a dumbbell and did a few forearm curls. ‘He’s the ugly one, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘The one who looks like a cross between a monkey and Mr Potato Head?’
‘Phil Campsie, you mean? Yeah, he’s ugly.’ Kevin stretched, yawning. His four-year-old daughter had recently lost the knack of sleeping through the night. His wife, not unreasonably, had pointed out that when Ruby had been breastfeeding, she had been the one who had had to deal with broken nights. Now it was Kevin’s turn to soothe his daughter back to sleep. It didn’t feel fair, not when he was going out to work and Stella was staying home. But it was hard to argue against without sounding like he didn’t love his daughter. ‘He’s very ugly,’ he said through the tail end of the yawn.
‘So it’s not just teenage girls who pair up according to looks.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Pretty one, ugly one. Symbiosis. The pretty one gets to look even better next to the ugly one, and the ugly one gets the pretty one’s cast-offs. Win-win.’
Kevin tutted. ‘That’s not very sisterly of you.’
Chris gave a derisive snort. ‘See, Kevin, you keep conflating lesbian and feminist. Try lesbian and pragmatist next time.’
He grinned. ‘I’ll try and remember. So, you think that’s what was going on with Robbie and Phil?’
‘To some degree. Of course, Phil is also rich and famous, which trumps ugly every time. But I bet it didn’t hurt, going out on the town with one of the most recognizable, handsome and eligible men in Europe. Not
