Langton nodded as he unbuttoned his navy pinstriped jacket. He took it off and hung it over the back of a chair, then loosened his tie before turning to Cunningham with his hand out. She passed him a file. Langton coughed, and opened it. “We now have a toxicology report. Donny Petrozzo was killed by a massive overdose, as was Julius D’Anton. The same drug killed both victims, linking them directly: Fentanyl. For those of you who don’t know, it is a very potent, fast-acting, opiate pain medicine, mostly used in hospital emergency wards and not, thank Christ, as yet on the streets. Fentanyl is used by the microgram, it’s that potent; unlike morphine, which is used in milligrams. So you understand what we are dealing with!” He grinned.
“Cocaine gives you a high for maybe an hour, heroin ditto; Fentanyl gives you no more than five to ten minutes but, because it’s so strong, addicts are starting to play around with it. The U.S. have begun to get feedback on the use of this drug: addicts are mixing it with low-grade morphine and, in a number of cases, scopolamine, which is used for motion sickness. Fentanyl is also being mixed with heroin and OxyContin, a painkiller. Its nickname is Polo, the mint with a hole, but in this case, the hole is an almighty high!”
The room was silent, listening intently to his commanding manner and his low gruff voice.
“We have a number of reports from the States that three warehouses containing packages of Fentanyl have been raided. We are in the process, with the FBI Drug Unit, of looking into the drug surfacing over here. We are also checking out if there are any known thefts of Fentanyl from hospitals.”
He gestured with his hands to indicate the size of a package. “One this size—because it takes only a microgram to get a high that is very dangerous as it is guaranteed to lift the roof off your brains—is worth millions.”
A murmur lifted slightly as the team took on board what he was saying. He waited for them to settle.
“If this is coming into the UK, it is a frightening new development. It is short-acting and comes out of the system quickly; take too much, and it will kill you just as fast as the high.”
Langton then turned to Anna. His eyes seemed to bore into hers. “DI Travis, you’ve been doing some very intuitive detective work. I’m impressed. DCI Cunningham and I would like to go over the details; I’ve asked Detective Sergeant Sam Power to join us.”
He asked Cunningham which would be the most suitable office to use. She gestured toward her own.
“Good. I’d like some coffee, and to get on with it as soon as possible.”
Anna had not said one word. AO she could think of was being thankful she had dressed well that morning. Langton looked even more spruce than she remembered. There was no hint of a limp from his injuries; on the contrary, he bristled with energy and vitality, unlike Cunningham. He strode to the door, as he saw Sam Power hovering. Anna picked up her briefcase and put her notebook inside.
She went into her own office to give her hair a quick comb and straightened her jacket. She checked her makeup, putting on some lip gloss, then wiping it off in case Langton noticed she had done so!
As she made her way to Cunningham’s office, she caught Langton talking to—or talking at—Phil Markham. It sounded like he was lecturing him on not being so tight-arsed.
Phil was sweating. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t reckon this Fitzpatrick guy was in the frame. It was a long shot—”
“He might not be, but something stinks in that farmhouse besides the horseshit. And you shouldn’t ever dismiss anything that DI Travis comes up with. She has more brains in her little finger than this entire team put together! If she’s right, you’ve all lost valuable time. Fitzpatrick was an evil sod who’d knife his own mother to get what he wanted; maybe even his kids.”
“If they are his.”
“Yeah, if We’ve got a fucking nightmare on our hands and we shouldn’t be wasting time putting another officer down. No matter what you think or what you feel, just learn to button it!”
“Yes, sir.”
Langton pulled at his tie. “I want this boat Dare Devil checked over. I also want any updated photographs of Fitzpatrick.” Then Langton walked off, leaving Phil ready to explode.
He looked at Pamela. “He wants an updated photo of this bastard Fitzpatrick; where am I gonna get that from? He’s only been on the wanted list for fifteen years. If the U.S. don’t have one, where the fuck are we going to get one from?”
Pamela pointed at the incident board of aliases used by Fitzpatrick and suggested they try to track them down via passport and immigration. If Fitzpatrick had, as suspected, entered the UK in the past few years using these aliases, they might have a recent photograph. She also suggested that Fitzpatrick might have had plastic surgery to disguise his looks; living in Florida, it would have been easy to accomplish.
“Terrific! Now we don’t have any idea what the bastard looks like!““Can’t change his height, though; six feet four,” Pamela said, smiling.
Closeted in Cunningham’s office, Langton was certain that Anna had stumbled on a situation bigger by far than they realized. The murder of Frank Brandon, he believed, was part and parcel of the atrocious intention of someone, perhaps Fitzpatrick, preparing to import quantities of Fentanyl into the UK. A kilo of the drug, worth millions, would be very easy to move through customs.
He sat listening to Anna run through the reasons why she had begun to believe Fitzpatrick could be in England. She spoke quietly, head bowed, as she recalled all the events to date, occasionally referring to her notebook. She did not, at any time, gloss over the suppositions and the doubts that even she had, but listed the loose tentacles. Her doubts were the same as Phil’s: although the amount of money to be made from the sale of Fentanyl would obviously be substantial, was it enough to draw Fitzpatrick back into the world of drug trafficking? There had been no sighting of him for over fifteen years. Anna did not have any evidence, but she did say—very firmly—that she really felt a key to their inquiry lay with Honour and Damien Nolan and Julia Brandon. However, to date, she had not been able to get Julia to talk—and she had not had the backing from Cunningham to press for warrants to search the farm.
Langton turned to stare at the downcast Cunningham, who sat on a chair by the wall with her arms folded.
“I didn’t mean that to sound as if I was in any way querying DCI Cunningham’s investigation—the new developments only really arose today and over the last weekend—but I do think we need to search both sisters’ premises.”
“So this Julia situation, with regard to the four million—you only found out today?”
“Yes.”
“Take me through the Frank Brandon marriage again.”
Anna repeated all she knew about his marriage to Julia, the girlfriend he was supposed to marry, and what she had seen in the Windmill car park that morning in Wimbledon.
“You think she is scared of something or someone?”
“Why hire Frank as a bodyguard if she didn’t need protection? These two goons looked like ex-army.”
“Maybe she just wanted to fuck him,” Langton said.
“You haven’t met her,” she snapped back.
Cunningham glanced at Anna, surprised at the way she had spoken to Langton, but he didn’t seem in any way fazed, far from it: he laughed. “I’ll take your word for it, then.”
Sam Power had remained silent throughout the entire interaction. Now he got up and leaned against the wall. “I’ve got my team digging up anything we can get for you, but it is a lot of supposition. I’m not that confident that DI Travis is correct about Fitzpatrick. If it pans out, and we get a sighting or any concrete evidence, we will have to work together.”
Langton glanced at him and then back to Anna. “What we need is fingerprints; don’t tell me a guy is up for trial without there being a single set of his prints retained on record.”
Sam shook his head. “It was before the database. Even if there were, they’d not be on file twenty-odd years later.”
” ‘Course they
would; he skipped bail, didn’t he?”
Anna coughed. “I’ve already made inquiries and, to date, we have no prints on Fitzpatrick.”
Langton clapped his hands as if to draw everyone’s attention back to him. “Okay, let’s not waste time. You move on that, Sam; in the meantime, we should structure surveillance on the farm and on Julia Brandon—perhaps this time not making it that obvious! We also need to get more details on Fentanyl and the thefts in the U.S. Right now you have four dead men and no suspect! So we are really going to have to put pressure on, all round.”
He stood up and turned to Cunningham, thanking her for coming in, as he knew she had personal issues. Cunningham assured him that, as from that evening, she would not require any further time off.
“Can I see you in your office?” he said to Anna. She gave a small nod.
“Right. Tomorrow, we’ll outline how we proceed in more detail.
Thank you both.” He nodded to Sam and back to Anna; it was a cue for them to leave.
Sam and Anna walked along the corridor. When they got to her office, he stopped and said, “Look, I’m sorry if I appeared dismissive about your investigation when you came to see me this morning.”
“That’s okay.”
“It isn’t. Now with Langton breathing down Cunningham’s neck, he’ll also be coming on to my lads. It’s not going to be easy: Drug Squad and murder teams like to work their own cases.”
Anna opened her office door, eager for Sam to go. “Sam, we have four dead men. If the lead to their murder is drugs, then it’s obvious we have to work as closely as possible.”
“Yeah, I know—but we will want to control the surveillance.”
“That’s not my decision. I think tomorrow we’ll all have our work cut out for us by Langton. The sooner it’s set up, the better; I also think you need to go over all the old cases of busts at the Chalk Farm estate. Maybe the same guys could be involved.”
“I agree. No doubt I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night,” she said, entering her office. She was relieved when he walked on down the corridor. She closed her door and not until she was alone did she feel as if she needed something to calm her nerves. She had not shown a single sign of how much tension she had felt with Langton, but now it was obvious: her hands were shaking.
No sooner had she sat at her desk than her door banged open and Langton walked in, carrying two beakers of coffee. “Thought you might need this,” he said, placing her beaker on her desk and sitting down. “Cunningham’s partner’s having to undergo chemo. She’s all over the place—I doubt she’s going to be steady enough to run this inquiry.”
“Will you be taking over?” Anna asked with trepidation.
“No, but I’ll be overseeing it. I’ve got Christ knows how many other cases.This happens to be quite an extraordinary one, I’ll agree, but nevertheless, DCI Cunningham stays put. From what I’ve gathered, you’ve been slogging away regardless.”
“That’s not true. I’ve always referred my findings—”
“Bollocks. You think I don’t know? You’ve been at it again, Anna, going off solo. This has to stop, do you understand me? From now on, you are going to have to work with the team.”
“I have been!”
“Anna, I listened to you and Phil Markham having a go at each other. You work together or you don’t work at all.”
“Fine.”
He shook his head and sipped his coffee. He put it down on her desk and leaned back in the chair. “Okay. Give me your take on how these dead men link, not by what you’ve got on the incident board—I can see the obvious connections between them, there’s enough arrows to make it look like a kid’s coloring chart. Give me what you believe might have taken place.”
It was as if they had never been lovers. It helped her calm down. “Okay, and this is still sort of fermenting …”
“I’m listening.”
Anna took out her notebook and picked up a pencil. “Petrozzo was at one time on trial for burglary. His trial coincided with that of Alexander Fitzpatrick, back in the late seventies. It is very possible that he may not have known him, but he could have. Fitzpatrick is, from his old photographs, someone you’d remember; he cuts quite a strong figure, at six feet four …”
Anna continued, describing the possible scenario that Donny recognized Fitzpatrick; he might even have been the passenger Donny had to collect. “If his arrival was to prepare for dealing in Fentanyl, he would require contacts. He would not likely use Donny, since he was a smalltime dealer—but it’s possible. Donny was supplying cocaine to a lot of city slickers. Donny also used Stanley Leymore to buy his cars from, one of them a Mitsubishi. Did Fitzpatrick require a car? If so, there could be another link. Fitzpatrick gets the jeep and either goes to visit Julia, or even the farm in Oxford, as he makes preparations to deal. At some stage, Donny introduces Frank to Julia. Did Frank pick up Fitzpatrick to take him back to Heathrow? It’s possible. Julia, at the same time, released four million pounds from her inheritance; was this to pay Fitzpatrick?
She hires Frank Brandon to protect her, or protect her money. She marries him in a quick ceremony at a register office on the Isle of Man and Frank moves in to live at her new property in Wimbledon. This would also coincide with Julia trying to release more funds, but is persuaded not to by her business adviser. Who needed that cash?”
Langton gave a long sigh then gestured for her to continue.
“I’ve always thought that Frank Brandon’s murder was not because he was scoring drugs, but because there was something inside the squat. Was it Fentanyl? We know Donny Petrozzo scored cocaine from there. What if Fitzpatrick used Donny to collect for him? Fitzpatrick was very unlikely to risk bringing it in himself. Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick holes up at the farmhouse with Julia’s sister and her husband waiting for the delivery.”
“Which never arrives?”
“Right, because Donny misguidedly reckoned he could pull a fast one. He might not have even known what he was carrying. As you said, this is not a well-known street drug.”
“So, Donny Petrozzo collects the package and, instead of delivering it to Fitzpatrick, he takes it to the lowlife drug squat that he has been using to score from?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“So Fitzpatrick has to go to the squat to get it back.”
“Yes.”
“Using Frank Brandon as a driver?”
“Yes.”
“This is all supposition, Anna.”
Anna tossed down her pencil. “Look—you wanted to hear what I thought.”
“Okay, okay—don’t get tetchy. Go on, I’m all ears.”
Anna sighed, but continued. “Frank had told his girlfriend, Connie, that he was onto a very big earner. Whether it was Donny who killed Frank, we don’t know; we do have his prints from the squat, so we know he had been there at some time. We also know that the same gun used to kill Frank was also used to kill Stanley Leymore, the car dealer.”
Langton nodded.
“Both Donny and the antique dealer Julius D’Anton were killed by an overdose of Fentanyl. At this time, Frank is driving the Mitsubishi— he parked it in a garage near to Julia’s house in Wimbledon. What if he used the jeep to drive Fitzpatrick to the drug squat? I don’t know—I’m just making this up now as 1 go along, but we have no trace of the man who was with Frank. All we know is, whoever it was, was injured and had to be covered in Frank’s blood.”
Langton puffed out his cheeks, and ruffled his hair.
“We now find the dead Donny stashed in the back of the Mitsubishi. Next, we discover our car dealer shot with the same weapon that killed Frank. Then, we have the junkie antique dealer, Julius D’Anton: another big coincidence, since he was at Oxford with Fitzpatrick. who I think was hiding out at Honey Farm. Again, like Donny, could we have someone who recognized Fitzpatrick, and this gets him killed? I’d say our man has got his hands on the Fentanyl. Both men died from a lethal injection of it. I think that b
y now Fitzpatrick has to have it.”
There was a long pause.“Mmm.” Langton looked at his shoes.
“I know it all sounds far-fetched.” Anna closed her notebook.
“You can say that again.”
“It all hinges on whether or not I have the right man in Alexander Fitzpatrick. We don’t know if he is the father ofjulia’s two children. Nor do we know if he was also Anthony Collingwood, but I think he was.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me.” Langton yawned.
“Julia admitted that her ex-partner was called Anthony Collingwood.”
Langton nodded. “Right, right—one of the aliases used by Fitzpatrick, I’m with you.” He drained his coffee and crumpled the beaker, tossing it into the waste bin. “Well, we have a lot to iron out.”
Her phone rang: it was Pete asking if they were on for dinner. She told him that she would call him back directly.
Langton was standing, straightening his tie. “I was sorry to hear about Frank. Sad way to go out; he was a nice bloke.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be in first thing in the morning. In the meantime, I’ll mull over
235
everything you’ve told me.” He walked to the door and had his hand on the handle to open it, when he turned.“How’s things with you?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” He stared at her, then cocked his head to one side and smiled. “Good night.” He closed the door quietly behind him.
She sat, listening to his footsteps receding down the corridor. This was the first interaction she’d had with Langton since she had pieced together what part he had played in the death of the suspected killer on their last case. Langton, she knew, had played his hand so carefully that she was the only person who knew just what lengths he was prepared to go to. It was revenge for what had been done to him; to have been sliced almost in two by a machete would make anyone want retribution. He had perverted the law to gain his own justice.
It was an act of madness, but one she knew he did not regret. She had walked away from their relationship, accusing him of betraying everything he stood for, and yet she had been unable to walk away from him personally. He had remained in her thoughts and heart ever since and, try as she might, she was unable to free herself from wanting him. It made her feel depressed and angry that he still had such a hold over her emotions.
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