"Like Lady Barnet," I said.
"Who?"
"Lady Isobel Barnet," Shirley replied for me. "Something similar happened to her, a long time ago. Mum wasn't the first and she won't be the last."
We had another drink and decided that was enough. Dave went to the loo and I followed him. There was one person already in there, shaking the drops off. When he'd gone, without washing his hands, I pushed open the doors to the two cubicles with my toe to prove they were empty.
"You realise," I said, "that this makes you a suspect. You have a motive."
"Yeah, I know. Me and a few hundred others."
"Jeez, you're right."
Shirley was waiting in the car for us. "Dave says you've had a postcard from Sophie," she said, brightly.
"That's right, last Thursday, I think it was. Said she was having a good time and that I'd like it in Cap Ferrat because everybody was old."
Shirley laughed. "Good old Sophie, tactful as ever."
"It wouldn't hurt her to send a card home," Dave grumbled. "If she doesn't send you one on your birthday she's in big trouble."
"She's young," Shirley explained. "She's probably in love. Leave her alone."
"Huh!" he snorted.
When I was at art school I remember my dad coming out with a maxim that was prevalent at the time: send your sons to university but keep your daughters away. I'd a feeling that Dave had heard the same maxim.
L
Chapter Five
Thursday I gave a talk to a mixed bunch of police officers attending a conference on major crimes at the staff college in Bramshill, Hampshire. I drove down for the day and on the car radio I heard that there'd been another case of contaminated food in Heckley and the police were investigating.
"Tut tut, whatever next?" I said to myself. Staff college had booked me over a year ago, so I'd had plenty of time to prepare my lecture. There were delegates there from all over the UK and Thursday was serial killer day. A forensic psychologist explained how his techniques could narrow down the field and indicate which way an enquiry should progress; my job was to demonstrate how this should not be allowed to hijack the investigation. Forensic, in my book, means "for use in a court of law." Drawing dots on a map is very interesting, but forensic it is not. At lunch I sat with an inspector from Newcastle, a chief inspector from Exeter and a captain in the RCMP who had wandered into the wrong dining room. We had a back-slapping time and came away with his card in our pockets and invitations to visit, any time we wanted.
The lecture room was still empty when I returned, prior to my session. Several of the delegates had left their morning newspapers on the desks, and I saw that the botulism scare had made the front pages of them all, with the warfarin story being resurrected to reinforce the impact. We were between wars, so all the familiar faces of TV and tabloid journalism had donned their designer parkas and headed north again, smelling a story. An outbreak of one deadly disease is unfortunate, two outbreaks in the same small town smacks of outside forces at work. They named the usual bogeymen and railed about the lack of readiness of the authorities. At the very least a madman was on the loose, and somebody would die soon if he wasn't caught. If they discovered that the officer leading the enquiry was swanning it at the staff college they'd have a field day. No doubt HQ would hold a press conference, probably at that very moment, and the nation would be reassured that coincidences do happen and the outbreaks had been contained. Meanwhile, purely as a precaution, if anybody did happen to have a tin of pineapple or corned beef on their shelves they should place it in a bucket of water and surround it with sandbags. Alternatively, they could return it to their nearest branch of Grainger's.
"How did it go?" Dave asked, next morning, when I came down from Gilbert's prayer meeting.
"How did what go?"
"The talk, Dumbo."
"Oh," I said, dismissively, "you know how it is. Boring speakers, nobody interested in what you say. Complete waste of time."
"So you won't be going to any more?"
"We-ell, you know how I hate to disappoint people. According to Gilbert I missed all the fun."
"Big-hearted Charlie. Yeah, you got out of it quite nicely. It's kids' stuff this morning compared to yesterday. It was like the fall of Saigon in the car park. There was even a TV crew from France. No doubt a few more of our delicacies will be taken off their shelves."
"No doubt. Did you find anything else?"
"Not much. Two more tins of corned beef found at the Huddersfield store and a tin of peaches at Oldfield."
"All with puncture holes?"
"That's right. They're at Weatherton now."
"Well done. It's worth a try but dozens of people could have handled them."
"Nuh uh. Not necessarily so. They're loaded on to the shelves twelve at a time in a cardboard tray, and up to then all the handling has been mechanical. The person whose delicate fingers punctured the tin could be the first one to touch it. We're in with a chance."
"Hey, that's brilliant. Meanwhile, it wouldn't hurt to cherchez lafemme. I've a feeling that's what this is all a" bout. Let's start by bringing Mrs Sharon Brown down to size." I found the number for Heckley Grainger's and dialled it. "Could I speak to Mrs Brown, please?"
"Sorry, but Mrs Brown is off work for a few days."
"Oh. When will she be back?"
"Tuesday. Can I put you through to her secretary?"
"No, it's a personal call. I'll ring her on Tuesday." I replaced the receiver and turned to Dave, saying: "She has a secretary."
"Might be worth having a word with her."
"True. I'll put Pete on to it, preferably away from the office. He can charm the ducks off the water."
We weren't following leads or pursuing a clearly defined course of action. We were, frankly, floundering. The culprit might be a nutcase loner, living in a tower block, or a bitter housewife with a grudge, or it might be an insider conducting a personal vendetta. We'd re-situated CCTV cameras to cover the first two possibilities, and for the third one all we could do was gather information about the principle characters, listen to gossip and go where it led. That way, when the break came, we'd be prepared.
Dave said: "Pete doesn't charm them off the water, he talks them off it."
"But he gets them talking back, too. Much better than I can."
"If they can get a quack in. He's done a chart for you."
"Good. I like charts. Charts make it look as if we're doing something. Where is he?"
"Probably in the briefing room. He's taken a shine to the new probationer. I'll fetch the chart."
It was a map, and he'd done a good job. All the findings were marked on it, colour coded to indicate peaches, pineapple or corned beef, with different shapes for punctured tins, the coloured dye and the warfarin.
"Well, this should impress the ACC," I said. "I'm not sure if it will progress the investigation, but the ACC will have an orgasm." I spanned the spaces between incidents with my fingers, making mental adjustments for distance, numbers of cases and degree of seriousness, remembering the talk I'd heard the day before and adding a few touches of my own.
"He lives there," I declared, stabbing a finger at the centre of gravity of the case. "I've done a course on this and it never fails."
"Let's have a look," Dave said. He considered the location for a few seconds before adding: "Well that should make it easy. According to your course he lives in Heckley nick."
Have a day off and the paperwork accrues. Nobody does it for you and the problems don't go away. The troops had plenty to be on with so I listened to what they had to say, made a few suggestions and sent them on their way. We'd opened an incident room at the nick for the Grainger's job and I pinned Pete's chart on the wall next to the map with the twenty-mile radius that I'd drawn. His contribution looked more professional so I unpinned my map and stuffed it in a drawer. I'd ask Pete to add the radius to his map.