Limestone Cowboy by Stuart Pawson Page A

quite grasped the rules of perspective , or, I suspected, of going to the toilet. Charming, I suppose. Any dad would be proud to put his children’s first scribblings on the wall. Nothing wrong with that. But Robshaw had had them framed, complete with non-reflective glass and card mounts, which I thought over the top. Alongside them was a photograph of the man himself, dressed in tennis whites and holding a trophy the size of a cement mixer. Another frame, silver this time, stood on his desk, its back to me, which no doubt held a picture of the aforementioned child. I decided to serve him a big one.
    “It was very worrying for him,” I said. “And for the staff at the hospital. The symptoms were similar to those for the Ebola virus, and for several hours the hospital was quarantined.” Pow! Fifteen love to me.
    At the word Ebola he jerked upright as if a smallelectric shock had passed through his chair and his mouth fell open.
    “Ebola?”
    We stayed silent.
    “You mean… the outbreak at the General… that’s what this is about?”
    “’Fraid so.”
    “Oh my God.”
    “How long do you keep your security camera tapes, Mr Robshaw?” I asked.
    “A week.”
    “Would there happen to be one looking at the tinned fruit shelves?”
    “No. Sorry.”
    I turned to Dave. “Any point in watching them?” I asked.
    He shook his head, knowing that he’d be the one who had to do the watching. “No.”
    “The pineapple had been tampered with, Mr Robshaw,” I said. “Somebody had made a determined effort to contaminate it.” Dave produced the label from the offending tin and laid it in front of him and I went on: “We soaked the label off. There’s a bar code on it so can you explain what that tells us, please?”
    He relaxed when he realised that the offence had been beyond his control and typed the bar code numbers into his computer terminal. The new tin was similar to the one we’d taken from Carl Johnson’s fridge, and Robshaw soon confirmed that the price of 432 grams of Del Monte pineapple rings had not changed for six weeks. The offending tin was still with forensics , but Dave had made a note of the numbers printedon the bottom and these were a couple of digits different from those on the new tin.
    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 automaticallyinitiated. 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 10th.”
    “This year?”
    “Yes.”
    Dave coughed and