Deadly Intent (48 page)

She looked confused.

"Langton didn't quite finish his oration this morning. James thinks that the reason Fitzpatrick brazened it out here is because the drugs are still missing."

"Shit!" Anna said. "So that's what he's after. Does he think they're at D'Anton's house?"

"Maybe. They haven't surfaced anywhere else. That's for you to find out."

By the time Anna got into the patrol car alongside Langton, he was resting his head back on the headrest. "You didn't give us your punch line," she said, smiling.

"I need to stop off at a chemist; pick up my prescription," was all he said in reply. He closed his eyes, as if all his speech making had exhausted him.

CHAPTER 22

Anna was surprised at how much work had been completed on D'Anton's house since she had last been there. The roof was finished, and the tarpaulin removed, though there was still a lot of evidence that work was in progress: a stack of wood in the small front garden, wheelbarrows, cement bags, and two big crates of tiles. The front door was open, with sheets of plastic leading along the hallway and into the kitchen. The noise of some kind of drill was deafening; there was no point in ringing the doorbell.

"Mrs. D'Anton? Mrs. D'Anton!" Anna called out loudly.

There was no reply, so they headed into the kitchen. Again, Anna was impressed at how much had been done: new kitchen cabinets, a new cooker, and the floor tiled in black and white. A fitted breakfast area replaced the old fireplace that had been there on her last visit. Anna passed Langton to look up the stairs, calling out again. Eventually, the sound of drilling stopped, and there was a heavy footfall on the bare wooden stairs.

"Is Mrs. D'Anton at home?" Anna inquired. It was the same builder she had seen on her last visit.

"Hang on," he said. She heard him crossing the landing above her on the wooden floorboards. "Sandra? Sandra!" he bellowed.

Anna began a slow move upward, as there was no reply. He shouted for Sandra again and then looked down to Anna, who was by now midway up the stairs. "She's not up here—isn't she down there?"

"No."

"Well, I don't know where she bloody is.
Sandra?"

"When did you last see her?" Anna got closer. "She said she wouldn't be long. Are you from the council? We've not

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been working late since the last time we had a complaint, but as it's just the two of us, we need to work all the hours we can."

"We're not from the council," said Langton, and showed his ID. "You had any other visitors this morning?"

"Bloody hell. You're not back again, are you?"

"I am Chief Superintendent James Langton and this is Detective Inspector Anna Travis."

"Shit—now what is it about?"

"Can we come up and talk to you?"

"Sure—mind the stairs, they're a bit dodgy. I dunno what's going on. Sandra said she would just go with them."

Langton had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Go with whom, where?" he asked quietly.

"The cops that were here earlier. They searched the entire bloody house. I dunno what they was looking for; Sandra was dealing with them."

It was about ten minutes before Langton got the description of the three officers who had arrived at eight that morning: two heavily built, and one very tall and well spoken, who did all the talking. Sandra was told it was in connection with her husband's death. They had searched every room and then asked if there was anywhere else that her husband might have kept items; she had said that they had a storage bay for their own furniture and some antiques that Julius had been trying to off-load. The three men were polite and totally believable as they asked if Sandra could accompany them to the storage facility. When shown the photograph of Alexander Fitzpatrick, the builder identified him, without hesitation, as being the well-spoken officer.

Langton got the address of the storage facility and walked out to their patrol car. He was silent as they headed toward New Maiden. Anna sat in the rear passenger seat; she hardly said a word, because she knew as well as Langton what they might find at the warehouse.

"Looking for the drugs," Langton suddenly said, hardly audible. He lapsed into a brooding silence as they headed from Chiswick down into Kew; then he told the driver to cut through Richmond Park, go

across Kingston Hill, then straight down Queens Road, turning left past Kingston Hospital.

Leaving the patrol car in the car park, they headed toward Brick House Storage Company. There was a security guard in a small hut beside the double doors into the storage facility. Langton showed his ID-he and Anna were led toward two huge doors, similar to a garage but three times the size.

"The one you want is over to the right; I'll take you through."

Langton thanked him, but said they would find it. He asked if anyone had recently been to open the storage and was told that it was possible, as the man had only come on duty at eleven; there was another security guard who handled the late shift, from seven in the evening until midmorning.

KT2 was, as he had indicated, along a lane of storage compartments; the last in the row. Langton had the key but, when he twisted the handle, the door was already open. "Doesn't bode well," he said softly.

As the gate swung up, all they could see were sofas, chairs, and tables stacked on top of one another, with many boxes piled in a neat, orderly fashion. They were each labeled—
kitchen equipment, crockery
, etc.—and only the plastic strips strewn around showed they had recently been opened. There were also some antiques and other furniture piled high: lamps and coffee tables, kitchen stools and beds. They had to squeeze down between the piles of stored items to see more and more straw, and bubble wrap, tossed to one side. Some boxes were open, left on their side.

"She's not here," Langton said as he kicked aside the mass of old newspapers that must have wrapped china or glassware. He took out his mobile and called Sandra's house as Anna walked back to the entrance and made her way down the first aisle again. Branching off it, not seen at first, was another area, which looked different: there were visible spaces, as if something had been stored and removed. There were scrapings, where a crate could have been moved aside.

"She's not arrived home yet," he said, calling to Anna from the end of the aisle.

"Something was stored here and taken out," she said, indicating the

spaces. She spotted a hair slide and turned, holding it up for Langton to see, but he was standing by a large cardboard crate. He squatted, resting back on his heels. Taking a pen from his pocket, he inched out a torn, folded piece of white paper from between the two crates.

Anna continued searching but, finding nothing, she turned and edged around the other side. Her foot crunched on something and she quickly lifted it. It was a single earring; not a clip-on, but a beaded drop. Anna held the earring in the palm of her hand and moved farther around the crates; then she stopped. Wedged between the crates was a body. Sandra was literally rammed in between them, her body almost crushed.

"I've found her," she said.

Langton appeared behind her, and said not to touch anything; then he turned away to make a call on his mobile. Anna joined him as he ordered an ambulance.

"She's dead," Anna said quietly.

"Get out to that security guy. We need to talk to the other man who was on duty before him."

Anna left him making more calls to the station, asking for the necessary backup. By the time he joined her outside, she had already made contact with Harry Framer, the night security guard. Langton handed her the scrap of paper. It was a cargo invoice for supplies of medical drugs destined for delivery, but to where, she couldn't tell, as it had been torn off. There was a part stamp from Gatwick Airport customs, dated six months ago, but the signature of who had taken the order was missing.

"That's how he must have been shipping his supplies in; we can run
check on it at the airport," Langton said, then turned to look back at the massive warehouse.

Mrs. D'Anton had a broken neck, and substantial bruises to her face
nd throat. Two of her nails were broken; it looked as if she had put up
fight. By the time her body was being eased out and checked over, both Anna and Langton had talked to Harry Framer. He was badly shaken, seeing the uniformed officers cordoning off the entrance to the Warehouse. He said that around nine, just as he was about to get some breakfast, a Range Rover had pulled up. He described the two thickset

men who approached him; they were accompanied by Mrs. D'Anton, who did not, as far as he could remember, appear nervous in any way, but chatted to him as he opened the main doors of the hangar. He couldn't recall if he had even heard the two men speak. The third man had remained inside the Range Rover until the doors were opened; when he got out, he went straight to the hangar. He was tall, well over six feet, and wore a long draped coat. When shown the photograph of Alexander Fitzpatrick, Framer said it was the same man.

"So take me through exactly what happened."

"Well, they went inside. Mrs. D'Anton had her keys. Like I said, it was around breakfast time, so I went to the cafe up the road, got a coffee and a bacon sandwich, and came back. I said to the tall man that he couldn't stay parked up outside; he said that they were just leaving. The two guys came out; one was carrying a box, and stashed it in the back of the Range Rover. The tall man was already sitting inside."

"So Mrs. D'Anton wasn't with them?"

"I didn't see her, but I reckoned maybe she'd left. I watched them drive out, then went into the security office and ate my breakfast." Framer was sweating with nerves and kept on repeating that he didn't see anything suspicious.

"This box, how big was it?"

Framer said it was maybe two feet by two, miming the size with his hands; not big, and it didn't look too heavy. He didn't know if there were other boxes already stashed in the Range Rover. Langton asked when he had last seen Julius D'Anton. Framer said he had never actually met him, just his wife. The other security guard, when asked the same question, said that, as far as he could recall, although D'Anton used to pay regular visits, he hadn't seen him for about five or six months.

Langton gestured for Anna to follow as he headed back to their car. "You know what's not making sense? The way she's been beaten up: neck broken, face in bad shape. If you match this killing with the others we're lining up against Fitzpatrick, it's not got the same MO. If they were picking up just one box, that I suspect to be Fentanyl, then why not kill her in the same way as Rushton, as Donny Petrozzo? She put

up a fight, but there were three of them; they could have held her down and injected her."

"Well, you just said it—there were three of them. Maybe this kill was down to the two heavies."

Langton nodded. He was now feeling very uneasy about the two missing children. Both men, he and Anna knew, were involved in taking the sisters to and from the nursery school.

"I think we should move in on Honour and Damien Nolan. If they don't know where the children are, then like you, I'm really concerned," Anna said.

They drove in silence for a while, then Langton muttered, "He bloody did it again—showed up at D'Anton's, fake ID, and fucking searched the house before he came here. They said when he was in the incident room, the only person he seemed interested in was D'Anton; placed a chair directly in front of his data."

"That's how he got the address," Anna said flatly.

"I keep thinking back on that last case we did together.The children, the baby we found buried in the pigsty."

"So why are we waiting to pick them up?"

Langton stared out of the side window as they headed down the motorway toward Gatwick; she could see his drawn face reflected in the wing mirror. "They can't make a move without us knowing. I'm not ready for them yet."

Anna said nothing. Finding the body of Julius D'Anton's wife had really affected her. Langton had not had any interaction with her, so the missing shipment of "medical supplies" preoccupied him more than anything else.

Gatwick customs were very edgy about their inquiry. They produced documents that were all, as far as they were concerned, totally legitimate. The shipment of Fentanyl had been sent via a well-known pharmaceutical company that had shipped many times before to the UK. The documents were checked over and stamped at the customs warehouse; they Were subsequently collected by an official, with counterdocumentation, to ensure delivery was made to the various hospitals across London.

Langton retained his composure, requesting copies of every single paper concerning the shipment. He sat in the patrol car, flicking through them; then passed the papers to Anna. "I would put my life savings on these being very good forgeries; those clowns wouldn't know shit from a shovel." Anna read over the vast folder of shipment agreements and collections. To her, they did look authentic, even down to the cases being opened and double-checked. Even the collection papers were seemingly very orderly; yet, like Langton, she had to assume they were forged.

"He sends this stuff right out in the open and not one person questioned it. Oh—the collection was made by a white van with a medical supplier's logo! Big fucking deal; somebody did their bloody research." He shook his head. "That somebody had to be in the UK for a long time to get this organized. We'll have to check back to the U.S. side, but I doubt it'll be much help, as this end was so tight."

"What do you think it's worth?" Anna asked.

Langton shrugged. "Street value, I'd say we're looking at millions. Thing is"—he tapped the dashboard with his finger—-"he would have to have a big network of dealers over here prepared to buy it. I don't for a second think it was those no-hopers we've arrested from the Chalk Farm squat." He sighed, and then turned to face her, swiveling around in the front seat. "You know what I think?"