‘A lot more impressive than Bog Bodies?’
‘You can say that again. We’re getting absolutely nowhere. It’s like those two people are aliens – we have no data on them at all. Bill, Sergeant Larcombe, is driving the Plymouth lab crazy trying to get them to hurry the isotope analysis up so we can narrow the search a bit more.’
Neil winked at him over the rim of his glass. ‘The lovely Laura has been working her magic on your behalf. You should have the results by Wednesday.’
Dan stared at him open-mouthed. ‘My day is getting better and better. Thank her for me, Neil.’ He drank a bit more beer. ‘Not asked her out yet?’
‘Oh, man. I can’t. What if she turns me down? What if I end up being her boss next term? Or, worse, she ends up being mine?’ Neil scrubbed at his eyes with long fingers. ‘No, too much to lose. We get on really well, and I want to keep it like that.’
‘I didn’t realise she was up for Professor Ballard’s job as well as you.’
‘And two others.’ He shrugged. ‘No point worrying about it. She’s very junior. I think she applied just to make some sort of point, as the rest of us are blokes. If neither of us gets it, then I might pluck up courage to ask her out.’ He finished his pint. ‘Another one?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Dan. ‘I’m off to my bed.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for this evening, Neil; I’m actually feeling a bit more positive.’
‘Glad to be of service, Detective Inspector,’ said Neil, and gathered up the empty glasses to return to the barmaid.
They shook hands at the door of the pub before heading off in different directions. Dan took a deep breath and looked up at stars in a blue-black sky. At least it wasn’t raining.
18
The long, narrow corridor to the pathology department at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital was being repainted. Dan squeezed past a ladder and avoided a youth in overalls painting the ceiling. Bill Larcombe waited for him outside the P-M theatre, a spare set of scrubs, bootees and gloves in his arms.
‘Morning, Bill. Is Doc Fox here yet?’ He pulled the scrubs on, covered his feet and held onto the gloves.
‘No, sir. The poor kid’s in there already, though, and they’re prepping him now.’
‘Not much for you to do today, but just be here to keep an eye on the procedure for me.’
‘I hear Lee Bateson will be brought out of his coma today.’
‘Yes, if you go back to the station after the P-M, I’ll go over to Bramble Ward and see if he’s conscious.’ Dan turned at the sound of huffing coming towards him.
Campbell Fox barrelled down the corridor, realised he couldn’t get past the ladder, and rattled it until the unnerved youth clambered down and moved it out of his way.
Dan raised his eyebrows. Fox was always an intimidating figure, but covered in pale green scrubs and wearing a mask, he was the stuff of children’s nightmares. ‘Morning Doctor Fox,’ he said.
Fox nodded. ‘Morning Inspector, Morning, Bill. Look at this wall. Why repaint the place when it’s the same shitty colour?’ He shook his head in resigned disbelief. ‘Let’s have a look at this wee laddie, shall we?’ He pushed open the door with his shoulder and they followed him.
Dan took up his usual position in the corner, where he could see everything, but not be in anyone’s way. Three technicians waited by the bench. Bill took up his place near them. The boy lay, naked and very white on the slab in the middle of the room.
Fox tutted at the positioning of the arc lights and moved them about until he was satisfied. He was in a particularly bad mood this morning, thought Dan. He understood why. The press were hanging around outside the hospital, waiting for a glimpse of grieving parents or police uniforms. He’d had a few shouted comments himself, of the, ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you, Inspector?’ ‘Do you have any leads at all, yet?’, ‘Will there be more deaths?’ variety. He’d not answered. That way lay madness. To answer one question, even to refute a blatant slander, was to invite more and more of the same. Best to ignore them all.
Fox switched on the voice recorder and began his dissection of Ryan Carr’s body. After the initial Y-shaped cut along the torso he peeled back the skin. The boy had been long and skinny, so there were no layers of fat to push out of the way as he removed liver, lungs and heart. He sent a section of the liver off straightaway to the lab for analysis. ‘We will have the results of the liver biopsy later today for Lee Bateson,’ he said to Dan, ‘and tomorrow for young Master Carr here.’ He removed the spleen and placed it in another dish. Technicians weighed and measured at the bench. The room was silent apart from Fox’s bass rumbling as he continued the examination. Fox sliced a section from the boy’s heart and put it with the liver and a kidney for analysis.
The brain looked fine, but Dan thought there might be damage from the drug. He puffed out a long breath through his nose. The post-mortem itself didn’t affect him so badly these days, but it was a punch to the gut seeing this young lad lying there. Snuffed out for a momentary high. Dan fully expected to be told that the combination of a large quantity of alcohol and the drug meeting in his system had set up a fatal collapse of his heart. He was desperate to know what the boys had taken. But he wasn’t a doctor, so he stood quietly and let the rest of the morning wash over him.
* * *
Bramble Ward managed to look cheerful even in the gloom of a showery afternoon. In the HDU, the curtains around Lee Bateson’s bed had been pulled back to reveal Kelly and Gary, each with a little girl on their laps, and Lee, eyes open, lying propped on pillows. Easy does it. He approached the bed smiling. ‘Afternoon. It’s great to see you up and looking better, Lee.’
Lee turned his head and looked blankly at Dan. In the Carly Braithwaite case, Ian Gould had handled the interview with Lee, not Dan. Dan stood at the end of the bed and introduced himself. A frisson of fear flitted across the boy’s face. ‘It’s okay, Lee. You’re not in trouble with me. Your mum and dad may need to give you a good talking to, though.’
Gary Bateson stood and shifted his daughter off his lap and onto the chair. He shook Dan’s hand and took him to the end of the ward. ‘I’ve had a few calls, Mr Hellier. There’s a new dealer, over Countess Wear way. Lee swears he doesn’t know who the bloke is, but I’m not so sure. I think he’s just too scared to tell me.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t say that I wouldn’t kill the bastard if I found out his name, so you’d better get there first, eh?’ His laugh was nervous.
Dan stared at him. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Mr Bateson. I understand how you feel, but this has to be a police operation to stand up in court.’ He caught Gary Bateson’s eye. ‘We won’t let you down. We want this joker as much as you do.’
‘Do you? I bet you don’t have kids, do you?’ He nodded as Dan’s eyes slipped away. ‘Thought not. You don’t know how much it hurts when someone hurts your kid, even if he is a nightmare like Lee.’ He rubbed tired eyes.
‘The information you’ve given me is really useful, Mr Bateson. Do you mind if I ask him a few questions myself?’
Gary Bateson walked back towards the bed. ‘Kells, take the girls for a walk and get them something to eat, eh? Give Lee and the Inspector time for a chat.’
‘Don’t make him too tired,’ said Kelly. She kissed Lee on the forehead. ‘Back soon, sweetheart.’ She walked down the ward with a child on each hand.
Dan pulled his chair close to the top of the bed and put his head close to Lee’s. ‘Lee, look at me. I won’t keep you long, but you have to tell me the truth. Do you get that?’
‘Yeah.’ Lee nodded and swallowed, eyes wary.
‘I know you got the drugs somewhere near Countess Wear. Who sold you the stuff?’
Lee glared at his step-father. ‘You said you wouldn’t tell him.’
‘You said you were staying over at Ryan’s. Tell the inspector what he needs to know, Lee.’
‘Or what? You gonna beat it out of me?’ Lee coughed with the exertion of cheeking his step-father. Dan passed him a tissue. It
came away from the boy’s mouth streaked with pink saliva.
‘Do you see that, Lee? That pink stain on the tissue?’ Dan said.
Lee looked at it. ‘Yeah, so what?’
‘That’s blood, coming off your lungs. From the drugs you took. Permanent damage to your lungs and your liver. So consider that for a moment. Now, what did you think you’d bought?’
Lee swallowed a smart retort and rested his head back on the pillow. He closed his eyes. ‘MCat. It’s like E but better. It’s legal,’ he said quickly.
Dan shook his head. ‘Not since early this year, Lee, whatever your mates may have told you. Thanks for that info, though, the doctors can treat you more effectively now I can tell them what you took.’
‘But it wasn’t MCat, was it?’ Lee cried. ‘It was horrible, it didn’t feel good. I…’ He closed his eyes again, close to tears.
Gary Bateson leant across the bed and grabbed Lee’s hand. ‘I know we’ve had our differences, Lee. Christ knows I’ve tried with you, but look, I see you as my son. I love you just as much as the girls. And I want whoever did this to you put behind bars.’
Lee snatched his hand back. ‘No point trying to get round me. I can’t tell you. Alright? I just can’t.’ He coughed again, tears rimming his raw lower eyelids.
‘There’s no need for you to be frightened, Lee,’ said Dan. ‘We can have him caught and off the streets in a couple of days if you give us his name now.’ He played his master card. ‘Do it for Ryan, Lee.’
Gary Bateson whispered, ‘No,’ but it was too late.
‘Ryan? Is he alright? I… remember trying to get him a drink, but then…’ He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
‘We haven’t told him about Ryan. Doc said not to, just yet.’ Bateson sat back in the chair.
‘Sorry,’ said Dan. ‘But that’s the way to get him to tell, when he understands what this guy actually did.’
A nurse stopped by the end of the bed. ‘He’s sleeping. Why don’t you give him a bit of peace, the pair of you? Harassing the lad like that.’
‘Two minutes, sister, and I’ll be gone.’
‘Hmm, make sure you are,’ she said and responded to a call from the main ward.
‘Yeah, it’s called emotional blackmail where I’m from, Inspector. But I’ll do it.’ He rose and indicated with his head that Dan should follow. ‘I’m gonna take Kelly and the girls home, now. Then I’ll come back for a couple of hours later. I’ll get a name, don’t you worry. Little bugger is a nightmare to live with, but he’s a good kid underneath. And I told Kelly I’d look after him like my own.’ He compressed his lips into a flat line. ‘Never thought it would be like this, though.’
‘He gives you a hard time, doesn’t he? Well, don’t push him so hard he refuses to speak at all; but you have my number as soon as he talks.’ He offered Bateson his hand. ‘I appreciate the help you’re giving me, Mr Bateson.’
‘No worries. I want this guy caught as much as you do. More.’
Dan passed the information about the drug onto the doctor looking after Lee and to Campbell Fox’s team. He also left a message for Neil Pargeter. If the chemicals that were being stolen from the lab were appropriate for making MCat, they were onto a real lead. He didn’t feel happy about relying on Gary Bateson for the dealer’s name, but he hadn’t got a spare officer to sit in a hospital all day on the off-chance the boy might talk. The ward was as secure as it could be, with intercom access and locks on all doors, so he went back to the station to write up his notes.
19
Focussing on the notes for both cases gave Dan an hour’s relief from thoughts about his lack of progress. He wandered down to the canteen for a sandwich and a bag of cheese and onion crisps and ate them at his desk, getting greasy fingermarks all over the keyboard. By four pm he had typed up a report for Oliver and was feeling more positive.
The afternoon briefing brought a subdued team into the room. DCS Oliver came in last, clutching what smelt like a mug of peppermint tea to her chest. Dan perched on the corner of the desk and looked at his notes. ‘Right. Ryan Carr case first. I have a possible lead to the source of the drugs.’ He allowed himself a small smile at the whoop from Sam Knowles.
‘Who is it, sir?’ asked Lizzie.
‘Neil Pargeter has noticed chemicals which can be used to make MCat, or Mephedrone, as we should be calling it,’ he got up and wrote the name of the drug next to Ryan Carr’s name, ‘are being stolen from the lab at the university. It may have nothing to do with our case, but it’s worth investigating.’
‘But do we have a name? Someone we could question?’ asked Sally.
‘Not yet, Pargeter will watch and get evidence, then contact us. It’s a big place; the thief could be from any level, from student to professor. He’ll get in touch as soon as he has a suspect.’
‘Nothing I can tell the press, then,’ said Oliver, frowning into her notebook.
‘No, ma’am, not yet. I’m working with Darren Carr and Gary Bateson to establish a set of names we can question regarding drugs sales. Sam, you got anything to add?’
Sam stood and took a felt-tipped pen. ‘This is our latest list from informants and the Drugs Advice Centre, and our latest arrests.’ He wrote eight names on the board. ‘Two are inside at the moment; the others are at various stages in their dealing careers.’ He underlined two names. ‘In the area of the city we are interested in, Wayne Ridout and Jade Wells seem to manage it between them.’
Dan clutched the edge of the table to stop his hands from shaking. There, second on the list of dealers, was Alison, his sister. She’d been arrested under her married name, Smith. It was coming to haunt him, he knew that. How long could he expect to keep her a secret on his own patch? ‘Sam,’ he said. ‘Good work. Maybe you should rub off the two that are inside and reduce the list?’
Sam cleared Alison’s name and one other from the board, and Dan loosened his rigid shoulders.
‘Of course, there may be others we don’t know about,’ said Sam. ‘Users who are new to dealing, say, or people moving territory.’
Ben Bennett interrupted. ‘In a university town, you get new dealers coming in all the time, and then getting beaten badly and going on their sweet way.’ He gestured at the list. ‘That lot are our regulars. If someone at the university is using chemicals to make drugs, that’s someone new on the block, not one of these clowns.’
‘Ben’s right,’ added Sally, ‘but we need to interview them all the same. Maybe they know where the MCat is coming from. Maybe they’ll help us if we get the competition off the street.’
Dan nodded at her. ‘Sally, take Sam and interview Ridout and Wells tomorrow. I wouldn’t bother going too early,’ he said, ‘I doubt they’re early risers.’
He consulted his notes. ‘Post-mortem on Ryan Carr was this morning. Biopsy and organ analyses expected tomorrow, and Lee Bateson’s liver biopsy should come through later today. Doctor Fox agrees that most likely cause of death is trauma caused by excessive consumption of alcohol and the ingestion of a massive dose of mephedrone. The combination would wreak havoc on heart and liver. Poor kid wouldn’t have known what hit him.
‘So we have two leads to follow up: the theft from the lab and the local dealers. I’m hoping we get a statement from Lee Bateson, even if it takes me all day. Difficult to push him, he’s terrified. Not a bad start, though.’ He studied the board. ‘Let’s see if we can get a name for this dealer before Friday. Ideally I’d like to stake out the area near Countess Wear where the boys bought the drugs. If I can find out where that is,’ he added, ‘it’s a big estate.’
‘We should do it on Friday night, sir,’ said Sam. ‘Get one of the PCs to follow in Lee’s footsteps, see if the dealer is there again.’
‘Exactly, Sam. Good thinking. We’ll sort that out nearer the time, assuming we have a clue where to go.’ The boy was coming out of himself, beginning to think like a policeman. Dan smiled across at Sally.
‘Next, Bog Bodies. Neil assures m
e that the lab down at Plymouth will have the isotope analysis ready for tomorrow.’ He grinned at Bill Larcombe. ‘Good work, Sergeant, you appear to have harassed them into submission.’
Bill Larcombe grinned back. ‘It was my pleasure, sir.’
‘So, what else we got? Lizzie?’
‘Well, I have to say that a flower is one of the most common tattoos for women in the whole world.’ Lizzie sighed. ‘I checked out all the local places and couldn’t find anyone who could tell me anything. Well, I should say they were less than helpful as soon as I showed them my badge.’
‘To be expected. It was a long shot, anyway. Sally?’
‘Inspector Hellier and I interviewed a couple of people who claimed to know the dead people, and had a very nice time in Topsham with a taxidermist.’ She grinned. ‘I don’t think DI Hellier was impressed at sharing his chair with a stuffed cat. However, she gave us the name Brian, a supplier who disappeared off her radar about eight years ago, so I’ve started cross-checking the list of possibles. Otherwise, I’m afraid we are still getting nowhere with identification of the bodies.’
‘Until tomorrow, Sally, until tomorrow.’ Dan looked at his small team, and included DCS Oliver in his glance. ‘If we get a location for the Bog Bodies from the results of the isotope analysis, we could finally start moving on the case, which would be great. In the meantime, we need to be ready to jump on the Carr case as soon as we get a name for the dealer. You’ll need to be on your toes. So I suggest we all have an early night, and get yourselves back in for eight tomorrow morning.’
Oliver followed him back into his office. He turned, leant his backside against his desk and folded his arms. ‘Everything okay, ma’am?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘It’s slow, but I wanted to say that I can see you are making some progress, and if you need to do a stakeout on Friday night, I’ll fund it.’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘Will you need firearm support?’
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