Robshaw drummed his fingers on the desk and after a few seconds pinned me with his best managerial stare in an attempt to regain the initiative. "Pardon me asking this, Inspector," he said, "but how do I know that this tin came from this store? As you have realised, all prices are indicated at the shelf; we don't use stickers on individual items."
Which saves you money, I thought, and makes it almost impossible for the shopper to check the bill when they get home. I said: "The victim says it came from here and we found a drawer full of your bags at his home."
"But no receipt?"
"No."
He let go with his forearm volley: "So you've no proof?"
I retaliated with a backhand smash. It's my speciality stroke. "He thought he was dying of Ebola. Why would he lie?"
"Good question," he admitted. Forty-thirty to the forces of law and order.
"So what does the code tell you?"
"Right. When I type in the numbers, or a checkout assistant scans it, the terminal is immediately connected to the stock record entry for that particular item." He rotated his flat-screen monitor so we could see the figures. "It identifies the product, retrieves the price and subtracts one unit from the stockholding. Each record entry has a maximum and minimum stock level specified and if necessary an order is automatically initiated. Batch numbers and sell-by dates are also stored, as shown on the base of the tin. That's about it."
"Can you confirm that this batch came to you?"
He turned the screen back to face himself. "Um, yes. 'Fraid so."
"Thank you. So what date did it arrive?"
"Let's have a look. Here we are… July 10."
"This year?"
"Yes."
Dave coughed and said: "Only ten days ago. Maybe we should look at those videotapes after all."
"I think you'd better," I told him. Turning back to Robshaw I said: "I thought, these days, that you could tell who bought what."
"Not from this program. If a customer holds our loyalty card, certain selected items are recorded and we can use this information to identify their tastes. That's the theory, but for Grainger's stores the system is in its infancy."
Dave said: "Would pineapple slices 'appen to be a selected item?"
"No. It tends to be more specialised lines, such as wine or our cordon bleu ready meals. Then we can target our mailshots and special offers more accurately."
"Thanks for explaining that," I said, making a mental note not to ever buy another ready meal. I didn't want some spotty supermarket analyst dissecting my eating habits. "So, have you sacked anybody in, ooh, the last two months?"
"No. I've never sacked anybody ever, I'm proud to say," he replied. "It's part of the Grainger's ethos that everybody can be usefully employed. It's a question of training and finding an employee's potential. We don't sack people, we redeploy and redevelop them."
"Have you redeployed or redeveloped anybody in the last two months?"
He thought about it before answering. "We do it constantly, but most of them go along with it, accept the need. There was one girl…"
"Go on."
"She was all fingers and thumbs. Kept dropping things on the shop floor. We moved her into the warehouse where she could do less damage, but she handed in her notice after a week."
We asked him for her name and after a phone call he gave it to us.
"So you don't know of anybody who might hold a grudge against the company?"
"No, not at all. Sir Morton might have made a few enemies along the way, but none I know of. Has he been told about all this?"
"Not yet. How often do you see him?"
"We have a monthly meeting but we see his wife more often. She likes to play the secret shopper, sneaking in heavily disguised but all the staff recognise her. There's a daughter-in-law too, who does the same thing, but we're not so sure about her."
We sat in silence for a few seconds until he said: "We'll have to withdraw them all, won't we? And recall them. Oh God, we need this, we really need this," and buried his head in his hands.
"Has anything like it happened here before?" I asked.
Robshaw shuffled in his leather executive chair and ran a finger under the collar of his shirt. That was the question he hoped we wouldn't ask. He picked up the phone again and asked someone to bring in the complaints book.
"What do you fancy for lunch?" Dave asked as we climbed into his car in the supermarket car park.
"We could have bought something here," I replied.
"And risk being poisoned? No thanks."
"OK. Bacon sandwich in the canteen. The poison in them is slow-acting." I pulled the door shut and reached for the seat belt.
"What did you reckon to him?" Dave said.
"Robshaw? He was helpful, once he realised we weren't after his blood. Not exactly managerial material, I'd've thought, but he'd done well for himself. Credit where it's due."
"He's a twat," Dave stated.
Robshaw's helpfulness extended to furnishing us with a list of the other ten stores in the group, with names and phone numbers, plus Sir Morton Grainger's home number. Not classified information but it saved us about an hour's work.
The complaints book revealed that two weeks earlier a customer had returned some peaches that» had turned mouldy in the tin, and ten days before that someone had brought back a tin of blue baked beans. These had been sent to the group's laboratory and found to be contaminated with a harmless food dye. Both customers were placated and the incidents brushed over without involving the local health inspector. There was no investigation into how the tins were breached and they hadn't been saved.
"So what did you think of Sharon?" Dave asked. It was Sharon who delivered the compaints book when Robshaw asked for it. "Personal service," he'd said with a smile as she passed it to him. She was severely dressed in a dark suit which went well with her bobbed hair and dark-rimmed spectacles, but the skirt was short and the heels high and she chose her perfume carefully.
"She's… um, sexy, if you like that sort of thing." She'd sashayed to the door as she left the office and cast a glance backwards as she closed it to confirm that we were looking.
"And we do, don't we?"
"Notarf!"
I was still thinking about Sharon when Dave said: "So what were you saying?"
"About what?" I rubbed the side of my face. "That flippin' fan's given me neuralgia."
"You were telling me about Miss X."
"Miss X? You mean Rosie. She's called Rosie. Rosie Barraclough."
"So where did you really meet her?"
"At the geology class. She was the teacher."
"I'd forgotten about that. How's it going?"
"Fine. Last week was the last one."
"Was it any good?"
"Yes. It was interesting. I enjoyed it."
"Particularly with Rosie in charge."
"Um, yes, she did add to the enjoyment." The 4X4 in front of us had two stickers on the back window: one for the Liberty and Livelihood jamboree and the other urging us to Buy British Beef. It was a Mitsubishi Shogun.
"So what 'appened."
"Nothing. Last Wednesday was the final night and I invited her to the pub for a drink. We arranged to go to Mr Ho's on Saturday, but when I rang her she'd changed her mind."
"Because you were a policeman, you said."
"Mmm. I'd told someone in the class that I was a graphic designer, and she overheard me. When I told her I was really a cop she went all quiet, as if I'd deceived her."
"I usually say that I'm a cattle inseminator. That keeps 'em quiet. So what are you doing about it?"