Fatal Connection (5 page)

Speeding southward in the car, Troy said, ‘I wish we’d got a DNA sample from Jon Drago Five when we were at TERF – to see if it matches the hair.’

‘We don’t have a reason to make him a suspect,’ Lexi replied. ‘Matching a vague description isn’t enough. Hundreds of other male outers would do that.’

‘I know. But he works with mercury.’

‘Still not a good enough excuse to grab his DNA.’

All police officers wore life-loggers to record everything they did and said. The recordings were
used to make sure that every investigation had been carried out correctly. The devices also prevented most attacks on police officers, because the crooks knew that their actions would be captured on video and transmitted to the nearest police computer.

‘But if we turn up anything shifty about him …’ Troy left the sentence hanging in mid-air.

‘We’ll see. But remember Caroline Seventeen said she’d vetted him.’

‘We’ve got bigger and better databases. And you’re more thorough.’

Lexi laughed. ‘Yeah. More methodical.’

Troy said, ‘Caroline probably vetted him for scientific competence and honesty. We’re vetting him for poisoning. Has he got any friends – or, more importantly, enemies – who’ve been ill? Does he have a police record? Does he run a black market in mercury? Do all TERF’s checks and balances add up, or has someone fiddled the figures?’

‘No matter how thorough and methodical I am, I don’t think I’m going to get all the answers in a car that’s going in the exact opposite direction from where he lives,’ Lexi replied. ‘I’ll get onto Tight End Crime Central and see if they can spare us a local to dig around.’

‘That figures.’

‘We’ve got a list of TERF’s workers and clients as well. Loads of leads in there.’

‘That’s one thing we’re not short of. Things to investigate.’

They spent the rest of the journey researching the people and organizations on Caroline Seventeen’s list of contacts. That included Jon Drago Five.

‘Here’s something,’ Lexi said. ‘Well, not very much, but a company called Switcher – they make electronic switches – buys some of TERF’s mercury and they’re based in Pickling. Not far from Keaton Hathaway.’

Troy nodded. ‘Onto the spreadsheet with them.’ He took a breath and then said, ‘Jon Drago Five doesn’t work at weekends. I don’t know where he was on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of last month.’

‘His numbers add up, though,’ Lexi replied. ‘I’ve been through TERF’s records. The amount of mercury they’ve reclaimed over the years is the same as the amount they’ve sold plus the stock they say they’re holding right now.’

‘So, if someone’s hijacking a bit, they’re cooking the books as well.’

‘Yeah. It’d be somebody with access to the company’s computer and all its logs. Or maybe
they’ve got less mercury on site than they think – because some’s been nicked.’

After a few more minutes, Lexi exclaimed, ‘Hey. Listen to this.’ Her life-logger piped rock music into the car and, for a while, her head nodded in rhythm. ‘Mmm. Not bad.’

‘What is it?’ Troy asked.

‘A group called Mercury Splash.’

‘Choosing a name like that doesn’t make them guilty of poisoning.’

‘The drummer’s good, though, isn’t he?’

Suspicious, Troy said, ‘What are you getting at?’

‘I know what Jon Drago Five does at weekends. He packs up his drum kit and tours with Mercury Splash.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Unusual for an outer to play music.’

‘Some say the drums aren’t a musical instrument. Anyway, even outers can keep time. The rest of the group are majors.’

‘So, where have Mercury Splash been gigging for the last few weekends?’

‘Thought you’d never ask. Quite a few places. I’ve downloaded a list. The ones we’re interested in are Pickling and Shepford.’

Troy nodded. ‘Yesterday, Jon Five told us he hadn’t been to Pickling for a while.’

‘That’s right. But, to be fair, he was talking about not making any deliveries there.’

‘Still, it’s a bit strange he didn’t mention it.’

‘Musicians!’ Lexi muttered. ‘They never know what town they’re in when they’re on tour.’

Troy laughed. ‘Playing a gig or two each weekend isn’t what I’d call a tour. Anyway, you’ve got a definite link to Pickling and Shepford. That’s a possible link to Keaton Hathaway and Miley Quist. And Miley’s dad said she went to a music festival. But …’ He hesitated and shook his head. ‘Would you call yourself Mercury Splash if you were about to kill people with mercury?’

‘Maybe the name of the group came first. Then changing it would look even more suspicious.’ She checked her life-logger again. ‘They played Shepford Music Festival a couple of weekends back.’

‘What about the Pickling gig? Did your forensic team find a ticket for it at Keaton Hathaway’s place?’

‘No. Not one of the items they logged.’

Troy called Alyssa Bending’s husband and asked if Alyssa had been to see a group called Mercury Splash. Mr Bending couldn’t be sure, but he doubted
it. The band was more likely to appeal to his children than to his wife.

Troy ended the call and sighed. ‘This connection is looking south of certain, but I’ll ask Richard Featherstone’s mates if he’s the sort to go and see Mercury Splash.’

‘Good idea.’

What was left of the morning was clear and bright. From the large window of the clubhouse at Hoops Golf Course, Troy could just see the south coast. The eyesight of an outer was not as sharp as a major’s, so Lexi couldn’t make out the sea. To her, the end of the land, the sea and the clouds on the horizon merged into an indistinct grey.

Standing in front of three of Richard’s golfing friends, Troy asked, ‘Have you heard of the group, Mercury Splash?’

Only one responded. ‘Yes. Do I get a prize?’

The others laughed.

‘Would Richard have liked them?’

‘Possibly. He was a bit crazy like that. Acting younger than his age.’

‘So, he might have gone to one of their concerts?’

‘Possibly,’ the same friend repeated.

Troy scanned all their faces. ‘But you don’t know for sure.’

‘No.’

‘Okay. Where was he on the weekend of the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of April?’

‘He said he was going on a fishing expedition.’

‘At sea or in a river?’

‘Could have been either. He did both.’

‘With …?’

‘Solo.’

‘Where?’

‘He didn’t say. Anyway, knowing Richard, he’d probably change his mind twice before he got there. He was a bit unreliable like that. Shooting off all over the place.’

‘Oh?’

‘He’d got restless feet.’

‘It wasn’t to do with furniture making, then?’

‘Sometimes. He went to art and craft shows. That sort of thing. But he was always after a thrill, finding a new challenge.’

‘And he did all this on his own?’

His friends exchanged a smile. ‘He didn’t take us, that’s for sure.’

‘Are you saying he met up with someone else?’

Another hesitation. ‘If he did, he never told us.’

Troy changed the topic. ‘Have any of you been unwell in the last week?’

All three shook their heads. ‘Nothing that kept us off the greens.’

This time, the car sped northward, straight past Shepford, on its way to Pickling. Receiving a message from Tight End Crime Central, Lexi groaned.

‘What is it?’

‘Exactly what we already know. Listen.
Jon Drago Five is the drummer in a criminal group called Mercury Splash. We’ve listened to the music and concluded that he and his fellow musicians should be locked up immediately and permanently.’

Troy cringed. ‘That’s all we need. Police officers with a sense of humour.’

‘Sort of sense of humour. I’m not exactly rolling around uncontrollably.’

‘No. Nor me. Have our funny friends dug up anything else yet?’

‘He doesn’t have a police record. Not a known trouble-maker. They’re still working on it.’

‘Good.’

Lexi updated Jon Five’s entry on her spreadsheet and then summarized it aloud for her partner’s sake. ‘Jon Drago Five. Works with mercury. Easy access to mercury if he fiddles the figures. Drummer with Mercury Splash. He’s been to Pickling where, in Keaton Hathaway’s flat, we found a hair belonging to someone who’s been exposed to mercury. The hair matches Jon Drago Five’s for length and colour. He works in the Tight End area where one of our victims – Alyssa Bending – went before she got sick. With his group, he’s been to Shepford where another one of our victims lives – Miley Quist. She may well have gone to his gig. No obvious connection to Richard Featherstone.’

‘No obvious motive either,’ Troy muttered.

‘But is all that enough to commandeer a sample of his DNA?’ Answering her own question, Lexi said, ‘Borderline.’

Eager to advance the investigation, Troy said, ‘I reckon I could justify it.’

‘I’ll send it through to our funny friends up north and see if they’ll do it.’

Troy nodded.

‘Talking of justify,’ Lexi added, ‘that’s the name of the insect farm where Keaton Hathaway worked. The one we’re about to visit.’

‘Justify?’

‘Yeah. Short for
Just Insects For You
– or Just-i-f-y.’

Troy pulled a face. ‘What is it about this case? The Doom Merchant, Mercury Splash, and now insect breeders dreaming up a rib-tickling name.’

‘We’re bugged by comedians,’ Lexi replied with a smirk.

Troy squirmed in his seat. ‘Don’t you start.’

Justify was housed in a low but large wooden structure, built in a field to the west of Pickling. The owner, Yasmin Nadya One, seemed eager to show her visitors around. First, she took them into a warm and humid room, as big as a warehouse, where she grew twenty million mealworms in white plastic trays placed in a vast array of racks.

‘If you put them in wooden boxes,’ Yasmin said, ‘they’ll just eat their way through the wood.’

Troy peered into a tray and grimaced. The worms formed a wriggling mass around some pieces of potato.

Yasmin smiled at Troy’s expression. ‘They’re great. Not a pretty sight, perhaps, but very versatile.’ She put her hand into the tangle of live worms and stirred them around. ‘If you throw in some apple, they come out tasting of apple.’

Despite the stifling conditions, Troy shivered.

As an outer who loved her food, Lexi looked to be in heaven.

‘We’re very careful with feed,’ Yasmin told them. ‘If you let them feed on waste, poisons can build up in their bodies. Then they’d be useless for human consumption.’

‘Have you ever had a problem with mercury pollution?’ Troy asked.

‘No. We only use the best quality feed. No contamination whatsoever.’

‘It’s hot in here.’

‘That’s how the worms like it.’

‘Do you have mercury thermometers?’

‘No. It’s all controlled electronically these days.’

‘Any other sources of mercury?’

‘No, not that I’m aware of.’

Talking to Lexi, Troy said, ‘When you tell me that outers keep the fly population down, it’s not true. You’re making as many insects as you eat. You’re not just eating the nuisances out there.’ He nodded towards the exit.

‘You don’t want to eat what’s flying and crawling around all over the place. You don’t know where it’s been.’

Yasmin laughed. ‘She’s right. It’s like I just said. The ones outside might be tainted. Plenty of people do eat them, but there’s a risk. They might have been feasting on excrement. You wouldn’t really fancy popping that into your mouth, would you?’

‘I’ll stick with sausage and chocolate.’

‘But they contain insects as well. The law permits up to sixty insect fragments in one hundred grams of chocolate. And, as for sausages, you don’t know what …’

Troy put up his hand to stop Yasmin. ‘Lexi goes on and on about that – three times a day.’

Yasmin grinned. ‘Come on. I’ll show you the crickets in the next part of the building.’

Almost as soon as he walked through the door, Troy felt a scrunching noise under his foot.

Yasmin One shrugged. ‘You’ve stepped on a cricket making its bid for freedom. I won’t miss it much. I’ve got thirty million more in here.’

A loud high-pitched chirping filled the massive room. Large white pens were stacked from floor to ceiling. Peeping inside one of them, Troy and Lexi
saw thousands of brown insects crawling madly all over each other.

‘I grow them on cardboard egg boxes. They hatch and live there for six weeks or so, stuffing themselves with pure grain, before I harvest them. They’re gassed, washed in hot water and ground or baked at the processing unit.’

‘This is the operation that Keaton Hathaway managed?’ asked Troy, raising his voice above the crickets’ shrill.

‘Yes. I’m really sorry to lose him.’

‘And you’re sure your crickets haven’t ever poisoned any of your customers – or your workers?’

‘I wouldn’t still be in business if they had,’ Yasmin replied. ‘I’d be shut down at the first hint of contamination – or if anyone complained.’

‘What did you think of Keaton?’

‘He was a nice man, slightly awkward with people. But …’

‘What?’

‘He was a major. He didn’t share our passion for insects.’

‘Slightly awkward,’ Troy repeated. ‘In what way?’

Yasmin shrugged. ‘I got the feeling he was happier with rocks and fossils than he was with living people. Or living insects for that matter. I don’t think it was
because he was a major in a workplace dominated by outers. I’m sure that didn’t bother him. It’s just that he preferred dead things.’

‘Did you keep track of where he went, chasing rocks and fossils?’

She smiled. ‘Impossible. Anyway, he kept himself to himself. It would have felt like an intrusion to ask him what he was up to. But I bet he would have opened up if anyone around here shared his interests. But geology isn’t our thing.’ She shrugged again. ‘We’re all mad keen on biology and entomology instead.’

‘Well, how about his latest – his last – trip?’

She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Did he get on okay with the other men who work here? How about an outer with silvery hair, brown eyes, maybe taller than usual?’

Yasmin thought for a moment. ‘That doesn’t match anyone here but, yes, he was fine with everyone – in his own way. There was certainly no hostility. I like a happy, harmonious business and that’s what I’ve got.’

‘What about music? Do you know if he was into it?’

‘As I said, he kept himself to himself.’

‘So, you didn’t hear him mention a group called Mercury Splash?’

‘No.’

Troy nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘Do you want to see the rest of the farm? Ants, termites, scorpions …’

Troy put up both hands. ‘I think we’ve seen enough and asked you all we needed to.’

The two detectives made their way back to Justify’s car park. With a sigh, Lexi did not hide her disappointment that they’d refused to finish the farm tour. Troy did his best to hide his relief.