Deadly Intent (Anna Travis Mysteries)

by Lynda La Plante

  At the briefing, Cunningham seemed her usual lackluster self. Arms folded, propped on the end of a desk, she asked the team to give an update. Anna sat through all their findings silent, waiting for her turn.

  “DI Travis, you got anything new for us?”

  Anna stood up and went to the incident board. “As you can see, I’ve added some of the information that I have been working on. There’s nothing that really stands out, other than the possible links—but again, it could all be coincidental.”

  “Like what?”

  Anna took a deep breath. “Okay, this is just surmising, as I have to do some cross-checking with Donny Petrozzo’s diary and with some items I got from Frank Brandon’s fiancée…”

  This created a murmur, because no one had heard about any fiancée.

  Anna pointed to the board, where she had written up Connie’s details. “She was very distressed, obviously. What is interesting is that Frank told her that he had some big job on. However, he didn’t want her to know what it was; he said only that the job was one that would pay a substantial amount—enough for them to marry and buy a place.”

  “Did you find out anything about this job?” Cunningham interjected.

  “No. All I know is that it was connected to Donny Petrozzo, whom Frank worked for. Frank owned a VW Golf, which we need to trace; it was not a car to chauffeur clients in. We have him working for Donny up until about six months ago. This takes us back to Julia Brandon. When did they first meet? When, or how, did he start to work for her? We have no UK marriage license. We know he lived at her home in Wimbledon, but it’s possible he just slept in the spare bedroom. However, she claims to be his wife; her accountant even arranged a big life insurance policy.” Anna referred to her notes. “We need to verify if the money does go to Julia, or whether Frank arranged for his girlfriend to be taken care of, if anything happened to him. If he did, then he was obviously aware of the job being risky.” As they had nothing yet from surveillance, Anna suggested that Julia be brought in for further questioning.

  Anna held the floor as she talked about Julia Brandon’s megabucks, and why it didn’t quite add up. Cunningham was staring at her. Anna licked her lips, turning over a page in her notebook. “Okay, this is what I’m spinning. If Julia’s ex-partner, as we have discussed—or I have, with the chief—could possibly be Alexander Fitzpatrick, then her money is from drug dealing going back twenty or thirty years.”

  There was another murmur around the team: they were not privy to who Fitzpatrick was. Anna gave a brief rundown of his drug-trafficking career, and then continued. “Fitzpatrick has remained on the Most Wanted lists since then, but what if he has returned? Could he be the man seen in the Mitsubishi? Whoever it was got clipped by a bullet. We now have a match from the bullet and from the jeep. He might even be quite badly wounded—we don’t know—but the main query is, if this was the kingpin drug dealer, why return? If he is the money behind Julia, then he could easily live a life of luxury and remain undetected. We also, to date, have no verification as to who exactly owned the Mitsubishi.”

  Cunningham stood up, then sat back down, folding her arms. “Why, if you think he’s here, would he want to score from a shithole drug dive?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to score. Maybe there was something inside that drug squat that he wanted.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Our big loose end is we still do not know who was inside that squat. We’ve been tracing all the owners of the vehicles, and the prints, but they’re small fry. We don’t have any that would give us a possible reason.” Anna could feel the room tense, the officers listening and making notes for themselves.

  She crossed back to the incident board. “The link is, I believe, Donny Petrozzo. We know he was a smalltime drug dealer, so he would maybe know the guys dealing in the squat.” She hesitated; this was all supposition. “What if Donny knew Alexander Fitzpatrick? For us to get confirmation of this, we’ll have to go way back into his background and records. In one of Donny’s pickups at the various airports, did he collect Fitzpatrick? He would only be in this country for something big, or emotional—which brings me back to Julia Brandon.”

  “Wait a minute.” Cunningham shook her head. “Would someone like Fitzpatrick use a lowlife like Donny Petrozzo? I don’t think so. I’m really not going along with the suggestion that a man wanted on every country’s lists is going to drop into the UK and then hire a smalltime guy like Petrozzo.”

  “Maybe he had no option,” said Phil Markham.

  Anna felt the team was backing her theory, but Cunningham wasn’t. She certainly made as much clear when she called the briefing to a halt, requesting Julia Brandon be brought in that afternoon. She gave out assignments to various officers to run a final check on all the license plates; she would put the pressure on the labs to come up with something they could work on. She wanted Frank Brandon’s VW traced and she wanted to know who owned the Mitsubishi that Donny Petrozzo’s body was found in—the same jeep as seen at the drug squat. They seemed to be treading water; she gave them a short sharp lecture to all pull their socks up and to return to base for another briefing that evening.

  Anna went back to her poky office, and decided to use the rest of the morning to check out Donny’s diary.

  Phil Markham knocked and entered, closing the door. “She’s weird, you know. Why sit on everything you just said?”

  “Maybe because it’s just supposition?”

  “But what if it isn’t? We know Donny dealt in cocaine and grass to anyone that wanted it. He had to score, so it would make sense that he used that drug squat.”

  “We’ve not put him in there yet, though,” Anna replied. “We do have his car license number plate, listed by Jeremy Webster, but not on the night of the murder.”

  “That fucking lab is really dragging its heels. I’ve been on to them and so has the rest of the team.”

  “Yeah, well, they are a bit snowed under.”

  “You can say that for the autopsy report as well. Donny Petrozzo was found how many days ago—and they still can’t give us anything. The only big move we got was you finding that bullet, and Petrozzo’s body. Surely we should know by now who owns the Mitsubishi?”

  “They say it’s got stolen license plates.”

  “Right. We’re running around like headless chickens.”

  Anna leaned back in her chair. “I think Julia Brandon has the answers to a lot. I mean, look how much money she’s got. No way does she match up with Frank.”

  “Cunningham’s got me checking out A and E’s at the local hospitals for anyone coming in with a bullet wound.”

  “You may get lucky.”

  “I doubt it. If you’ve got a load of cash, you go to a private doc in Harley Street.” He put on a posh, upper-crust voice. “Out shooting; just got clipped instead of the ruddy pheasant.”

  Anna laughed.

  “You want a drink at lunchtime?”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m on the visit later to Julia Brandon’s sister. I’ve got to schlep all the way out to Oxfordshire but I’m quite looking forward to it.”

  “Another time, then.”

  “Okay.”

  Phil grinned and winked. “Good work, Travis. You’re keeping us all on our toes.”

  Phil left and Anna went back to Donny Petrozzo’s diary. Donny listed pickups, drops, deliveries, and functions; she started to see some kind of code by certain names. There were black dots—nothing else, just dots—which coincided with times he drove Paul Wrexler and Mark Taylor. Both, she knew, scored from Donny. The dots were also alongside entries for various other names; then sometimes a square with a dot inside. She plowed on, page after page, until she reached eight months ago and saw the name and initials of Frank Brandon.

  FB was used about four times a week for long-distance drives and airports, hauls that Donny obviously didn’t want to be bothered with. Then, eight months ago, Donny had four Heathrow airport trips in one day. FB
took two and he took the other two. Beside the last one, Donny had done something that he hadn’t on any other page: put a red ring around Flight 002 BA Miami. The red ring was deep, as if he had pressed the pen into the paper hard.

  Before Anna could continue reading, someone tapped on her door and DC Pamela Meadows popped her head around it. “We have a possible connection for you regarding Donny Petrozzo and Alexander Fitzpatrick.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. It’s not like they were buddies or anything like that, and maybe they never even met, but previous to his other charges, Petrozzo was sentenced for burglary at the Old Bailey in 1979.”

  “Go on?”

  “Well, Alexander Fitzpatrick was being tried in court one, for drug trafficking after a massive raid: twenty million quid’s worth.”

  “You’re kidding me!”

  “No. Fitzpatrick jumped bail and has been on the run ever since. Petrozzo served a few years and then went straight for seven years, before he was picked up again for fencing stolen property and got an eighteen-month sentence—”

  Anna interrupted. “Wouldn’t Fitzpatrick have had to give a blood test?”

  “I don’t think so. I can check, but there is nothing on record about that. Back in 1979, they were not even aware of DNA; it was before the Holmes database. But, like I said, it is a possibility that Donny would have crossed paths with Fitzpatrick. Added to that, there was a lot of press and photographs. He was called the ‘Hippy Drug Baron.’”

  Anna nodded her thanks and Pamela left her office. She opened up the Web site again to look at the pictures of Alexander Fitzpatrick. Would someone be able to recognize him after such a length of time? She stared at the photographs and then closed her eyes, trying to imagine what he would look like now: hair white or gray, thinner, older. The size of him would be a giveaway—six feet four.

  Cunningham tapped on her window and peered between the blinds. “Interview room two. Julia Brandon’s here with a solicitor.”

  Anna opened her office door.

  “She’s got Simon Fagan with her. You know who he is?”

  “No.”

  “Top-notch, hard-nosed solicitor from the most expensive firm in London. He’s a real bastard, so we won’t get much joy, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try. Okay, let’s go.”

  The interview room was bare and the green walls gave a chill to the atmosphere, as did the single lightbulb hanging over the table. The only furniture was a Formica-topped table and four chairs. The tape recorder and video camera were on a shelf, ready for use.

  Simon Fagan was a tall, elegant man, with dark receding hair and a small toothbrush mustache. He had dark, liquid brown eyes, expressionless; his face was tanned, but his hands were not. Anna suspected he was probably a morning gym-and-sunbed client!

  Cunningham introduced Anna and gave a brittle smile to Julia, who looked stunning in a light fawn leather suit with a cashmere sweater. Her hair was loose, swinging in a silky sheet that she constantly brushed aside with her manicured hands. She was wearing her large square-cut diamond ring, with a diamond eternity ring, and her Cartier watch was the new diamond-cluster style with a thin black strap. She wore little makeup but her full lips were a pale coral shade of gloss. She was a very beautiful woman, more so today than before.

  “Shall we get down to why you have, to my mind, been harassing my client, who, as you must be more than aware, is still deeply distressed by the death of her husband,” Fagan began.

  Cunningham pressed her back against the hard chair, but did not fold her arms. “By all means, Mr. Fagan. As you are obviously aware, we are simply asking Mrs. Brandon to assist us in our inquiries into the murder of her husband.”

  Fagan nodded but remained silent.

  “Firstly, we have been unable to discover a marriage license issued between your client and the victim.”

  Fagan clicked open his briefcase and took out a brown manila envelope. He withdrew a license issued on the Isle of Man and passed it across to Cunningham. The latter showed not by a flicker that this had taken the wind out of her sails. She calmly checked over the document and then passed it to Anna, who glanced down at the date and recorded it in her notebook. It was dated eight months ago.

  Fagan again held a pause that was as cold as the room.

  “Do you own a black Mitsubishi jeep, registration—”

  Before Cunningham could finish, Fagan interrupted her and said that Mrs. Brandon owned a Mercedes convertible and a Range Rover. He produced more documents from his shiny briefcase; it was as if he enjoyed snapping it open and closed.

  “Mrs. Brandon, have you ever seen this vehicle parked on or near to your property?” Cunningham passed her a photograph of the Mitsubishi.

  “No.”

  “Your late husband owned a pale green VW Golf. Have you seen that vehicle recently?”

  “No. I wasn’t aware that he owned one.”

  “But you must have seen this Mercedes-Benz?”

  Again a photograph was passed to Julia; she glanced at it and then shrugged. “I may have seen one of these, but not parked at my house.”

  “Your husband used this car.”

  “Perhaps that was before I knew him,” she said softly.

  “Have you ever seen this man?” It was a photograph of Donny Petrozzo.

  “No. No, I haven’t.”

  “Do you rent a garage in Wimbledon?”

  “I told you about that garage!” Julia said irritably. “Yes, I rented it, not for myself, but for Frank. I never even went there. I park my own cars at the house. They are inside the garage at the moment, as Mr. Fagan drove me here.”

  Cunningham leaned forward. “Could you tell me how you met Frank Brandon?”

  “I advertised for a chauffeur and he answered the advert.”

  “Could you give me details of this advertisement, and when and where you placed it?”

  Julia sighed and said that it had been in the local paper and in The Times. She could not recall the exact date, but felt sure that if they inquired with the papers, they would be able to give more details. She did not have a receipt for payment of the advert. She then went on to say that she had subsequently employed Frank to act as her driver and bodyguard.

  When asked why she required a bodyguard, Fagan held up his hand. “It is quite obvious. My client is a very wealthy woman with two small children.”

  “Had there been any threats against you?” Cunningham pointedly looked at Julia, who shrugged.

  “No, but as Mr. Fagan said, I am a very wealthy woman and I have a great deal of jewelry and antiques, so I required more than just a driver, in case anything untoward happened.”

  “Why was there such a substantial life insurance policy taken out for Mr. Brandon?”

  Fagan held up his hand. “Mrs. Brandon has already answered this question; in reality, she did not instigate it. Her accountant and business adviser suggested that it be taken care of. I believe it was Mr. Rushton who suggested the amount. My client just pays the premiums.” He snapped open his briefcase again and showed them the documents for the life insurance policy.

  Cunningham passed them straight to Anna, who skim-read them to see if Connie was named anywhere, should anything “untoward” happen to her boyfriend. Julia was the sole beneficiary.

  “So at what point did your relationship with Mr. Brandon turn from a professional one to—”

  Fagan was jumping in again. “It is obvious, as you can see by the date on the policy; it was arranged after the marriage, as by then Mr. Brandon was living with my client and the possibility of something untoward occurring would affect him.”

  “But you had had no threats. There is no police report that you had been burgled, or your children threatened. Isn’t that correct, Mrs. Brandon?”

  “Frank was worried when he knew how much jewelry I kept in the house. It was, as I have said, simply looking out for anything that could possibly happen.”

  “I see.” Cunningham was edgy, her foot tap-tap
ping against the side of the table. “Well, something untoward did happen: your husband was murdered.”

  There was another cold pause.

  “Could you just take me through what happened on the day of the murder, Mrs. Brandon?”

  “I already have. Frank got up very early, as he said he had some business to attend to. As I have also told you, he continued to work as a chauffeur whilst married to me. I didn’t like it, and he obviously didn’t need to do it, as I have substantial monies of my own, but he wanted to retain his independence. He left before I got up and before the girls went to school. I didn’t hear from him during the day. I wasn’t too concerned, as on occasion he had worked, driving long distances, and often didn’t come home until very late. On those occasions, he would sleep in the spare room rather than wake me. I never saw him again.”

  Anna watched her. There was no sign of emotion. Julia was composed and calm—in fact, almost bored. Fagan was drumming his fingers on the table, as if he was impatient to leave.

  “I don’t think you are being very truthful with us, Mrs. Brandon. I think you had a marriage of convenience; that Mr. Brandon did not share your marital bed, but lived in the spare room of your property. You have declined to say why you required a bodyguard, but if there is a reason, you should be honest with us.”

  “My client has told you the truth,” Fagan interjected.

  “So we are to believe that, when Mr. Brandon was interviewed for the job, you took him on and then within three weeks married him? Is that really what happened?”

  “Yes. We fell in love and Emily and Kathy adored him. To you it may seem fast—perhaps it was—but there is nothing illegal about falling in love.”