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stuff.
    “It’s going to cost a fortune to process this lot,” I complained. Current charge to put something throughthe lab was £340 minimum, and Gilbert would not be pleased.
    Dave bent over our loot, sniffing at everything. “Any ideas what rat poison smells like?” he asked.
    “No. We should have asked the doctor. Let’s look in his garage – that might be where it’s kept.”
    There was a Citroen C3 in there, plus enough half-empty tins of emulsion in shades of beige to decorate the set of Desert Song. He had a few DIY tools, nothing excessive, and an assortment of chemicals for dealing with garden pests, but no mysterious crystals in an unmarked jam jar. He kept everything in those plastic containers that stack on top of each other. I found an empty one and commandeered it for the samples. We cast appraising eyes over the car and wandered out into the garden.
    He’d done a lot of work in it. There was a kerb around the lawn that was painted white, as was the wall dividing him from his neighbour. The borders were neat and weed-free, but well-stocked with plants, many of which were in full bloom. I’m not good at plants, but these looked the sorts that need a lot of attention. Dave knocked on the neighbour’s door, but nobody was home.
    “Just a sec,” Dave said, back in the kitchen as I started to place the samples in the box. He opened a drawer , decided it was the wrong one and tried another. This time he took a teaspoon from it and reached for the tin of pineapple.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    He dipped the spoon into the juice and transferred it to his mouth. A second later he was spittingfuriously into the sink. I turned the cold tap on and told him to wash his mouth out. When he’d finished coughing and retching I said: “Don’t you like pineapple ?”
    “That’s it,” he declared, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief and nodding towards the tin. “That’s where t’poison is.”
    “Well done,” I told him. “I reckon you just saved Gilbert’s budget a couple of grand. And if you start bleeding from all your bodily orifices we’ll know it isn’t Ebola.”
     
    He took me back to the station and then went off to the Home Office lab at Wetherton with all the goodies we’d collected. I caught up with the morning’s happenings and lunched on a chunky KitKat and a mug of tea. Carl Johnson’s wife, who rejoiced in the name of Davina, was in when I rang her number, so I arranged to see her in thirty minutes and went to the bathroom to comb my hair – maybe Sparky hadn’t been lying about the Miss Ferodo thing.
    Funny thing was I still wasn’t sure after I met her. She lived in a first-floor flat in a converted Victorian terrace on the edge of the town centre, only five minutes from the nick. She was about five-two in height with dazzling blonde hair that would have mended a fuse in an emergency. She had her hair lacquer delivered by tanker, like central heating oil, and I could have imagined her lining up with other hopefuls in the Skegness Pier Ballroom, a few years earlier. I could have, but I tried not to.
    “Mrs Johnson?” I asked, offering my warrant cardfor inspection as she opened the door. She nodded up at me and stepped to one side to let me through.
    Rented accommodation, fully furnished. Cheap furniture that a succession of tenants hadn’t given a toss about. Dingy curtains; cigarette burns on everything; electricity meter just inside the door, spinning like a windmill. I’d have killed to leave a place like that.
    “Are you sure he’s alright?” she asked, after gesturing for me to sit down. I’d told her that Carl was in hospital when I telephoned, but didn’t say he’d been at the centre of the Ebola panic.
    “According to the doctor he’ll be fine, but it was touch and go until they discovered what was wrong with him.”
    “And what is wrong with him?”
    “He’d eaten something that disagreed with him.”
    “What? Like food