62
3 weeks ago
His hands shook. Like huge rugged mountain ranges being shaken from the core of the ground beneath. But that’s what was happening. His core was shaken. His very belief system. The system he trusted had failed and they needed to know that. Isaac had been a hard-working man all his life, but he couldn’t figure any other way to get their attention. Em would have done. Em had the smarts, the brains, but Em wasn’t here and that was the point.
The stone pestle and mortar from Connie’s kitchen worked in those mountainous hands, grinding up tablets until they were powder. He was careful, delicate almost, that he didn’t spill any. There wasn’t much to waste and he had a message he needed to deliver; it could take time. He had to get their attention and when he had their attention, he had to be sure it was maintained. He wanted them to be worried, to look at the drugs and assess how they worked. If it wasn’t an ideal drug, then they needed to change it for another. Isaac wondered again if it was a cheaper option. Had Em died to keep costs down?
How much would the pharmaceutical companies put the cost of his message once he’d finished delivering it? Would it even be enough for them or would it be another drop in the ocean, like Emma? He hoped that it would be the negative press that would swing it for him, because the message itself probably wouldn’t faze the companies. He had to make a splash. He had to make this showy.
63
The newspaper was thrown across my desk.
Fourth Person Poisoned
Another person has been poisoned and is currently in hospital after ingesting food bought while shopping in the local area.
I read the article in the Today with Catherine Walker stood over me, scowling.
‘This continuing press coverage is killing us, Hannah.’
‘It’s not good, Ma’am.’ I had to confess, though I had of course contributed to the article and she wasn’t mentioning that. We needed to be seen to be speaking to the public, reassuring them and the best way of doing that was through the media and our own website, but more people read the local news than the social media of the police. Catherine was upset that there was constant coverage though, but as long as the killer continued to poison then the paper would continue to print.
‘Not good?! They’re actually going to be blaming us next. We need real results. I know you’ve had a rough six months.’ She paused, I waited.
‘You were stabbed,’ she continued. ‘I know it takes time to recover from an injury and at the same time your past investigation is being looked at by the IPCC. You haven’t been in charge of a major investigation since ...’
Where the hell was she going with this? ‘Ma’am, what is it you need?’ My patience with her was running out.
‘Your team is screwing up.’
Really? I crossed my arms.
‘Just look at Ross. He completely screwed that job up. And it was on your watch, Hannah. I’d hate to see it happen, but the reality is, you could lose your position at the end of the IPCC investigation. The pressure is going to be piled on as this investigation drags on unresolved and people continue to die. I’m wondering if you’re still capable of leading a team, with everything you’re dealing with.’
I straightened my back. ‘Ma’am; yes, Sally kept a huge secret last year and she paid for it dearly. We all paid for it. But the organisation has a responsibility to Ross. We need to make sure he is attending his mandatory counselling. But,’ I gave her a pointed look, ‘I think the best place for him, the place where he can be properly monitored by people who know the situation, is here with me as his supervisor and yes, I am his supervisor. I am more than capable of leading the team through this. This is no ordinary homicide investigation. We’re dealing with product contamination. It’s not something that comes through any force’s door on a regular basis. I believe we can deal with this just fine.
‘We have a lead on this one they have written about. Ross and Martin are talking to Dawn Barry now to obtain the details we need to progress it. Everyone is waiting for those details to act on them.’
Her face went a shade darker.
‘Ross?’
‘Yes, Ross.’
‘Why has he been tasked with such a serious and clearly, potentially evidential task? After what I’ve just said? Have you lost your mind? You have your choice of detectives and officers with great records out there in the incident room and you send Ross.’ Catherine’s voice raised an octave.
‘Ross is perfectly capable of taking this statement, of getting this information from Dawn. In fact, his statements are of an excellent evidential standard. And I’ve sent Martin with him anyway. Ross needs to get out of the incident room and get some air.’
‘He can get some air in the car park, Hannah. He does not need to get air with a witness who is our only surviving victim of the county’s first major product contamination case.’ Her hands clenched and I took a breath in and pulled my shoulders back.
‘He made us look like imbeciles. Do I need to remind you of that?’
I exhaled. ‘No Ma’am, you don’t. But I believe that Ross has learnt from that experience and he is in need of the support of the service, not hostility and anger,’ I lifted myself higher, ‘he has been grieving for his colleague and has been struggling and we need to be seen to be supporting him, not hounding him out and bullying him because he was affected by what happened. How would that look? At a grievance procedure, say?’
Her mouth parted and her hands splayed.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Hannah.’
She walked out. I looked down at the newspaper on my desk.
So did I.
64
I brewed myself a green tea, made a black coffee, then picked up the half eaten pack of chocolate digestives I kept in my desk drawer and walked down the corridor to Evie’s office. I pushed my way in with my bum as my hands were full and as I turned round Evie was already looking at me, a smile on her face, lifting her glasses up onto her head and leaving them nesting in her curls.
‘I see you take advice well and have brought biscuits with you as well as drinks,’ she said.
‘You are definitely the one person I listen to, Evie.’ I handed her the coffee, put the biscuits on the desk and sat on the spare chair inhaling the green tea vapours winding their way up out of my mug.
‘Ah, so on that point, who is it you are not listening to?’
‘You’re so wise.’
‘That’s why you come here.’ She grinned at me and leaned towards the biscuit packet, pulling one out and stuffing half in her mouth. I have seen her eat a whole biscuit in one before but she obviously wanted to be able to speak today. I picked the next digestive out of the packet.
‘I’ve had a run in with Catherine and needed a tea break. Where better to do that than with my best friend?’
‘Ah, um,’ Evie mumbled through the biscuit, waving a finger at me.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ I replied, smiling at her before taking a bite of my own biscuit. This was why I came in here. I knew she would make me smile.
She swallowed hard. ‘Sweetening me up with biscuits and sweet talk, it must have been bad.’
‘It was. The article in the Today started her off, then we got into the Ross situation and how I’m managing the investigation.’
‘She didn’t send the bad news through Grey?’
‘Nope, I was lucky enough to get it all from the horse’s mouth today. Grey is probably getting his own version right now.’
‘Oh dear. Poor Grey. I’m not sure he can cope with Catherine on the rampage.’ The rest of the biscuit went in her mouth.
‘Neither do I. Though I think part of the reason she is rampaging is because she is stressing over the pending result of Sally’s inquest. Grey is even more fretful than usual for exactly the same reason.’ I washed down the biscuit with my tea.
Evie swallowed again. ‘And you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. How are you with the inquest still hanging over your h
ead, what’s the effect on you?’
I paused. Put my cup down. It was a good question.
‘I don’t know.’
Evie looked at me.
‘Really Evie, I don’t. This job has had my full attention. It isn’t giving me time to think too much. Having to deal with the stress of Catherine and Grey is enough of a knock-on effect for me without me adding my own stuff to the mix.’ I picked my cup back up and drank.
‘Don’t hide behind those excuses too long, Hannah. More harm will come of it than good and I don’t want to see the outcome of that.’
65
I looked at the faces of the team on this manhunt. A dedicated team and I was proud of them. Even Ross who was trying hard to do what was needed without moaning about the shit job he’d been given. Martin continued to be his shoulder to lean on, or tried to. He was there for him. Always chatting, talking about the job, about life, how it continued for him, his wife, and his dogs. I often overheard them as they sat doing something mundane where they could talk and work at the same time. I could see what Martin was doing. He was a great guy, a great detective, not easily spooked or excited and I didn’t ever want to lose him from my team. I knew there were plenty of other departments out there he could apply for but I hoped he was settled enough to stay here for some time at least.
Things were happening quickly and we all needed to be up to speed on it all. I’d taken three painkillers as my arm was killing me and I didn’t think two would even take the edge off. I needed my thoughts to be focused on the job at hand, not on the deep throbbing ache that pulled my mind away from whatever it was dealing with.
‘We have a lot of information to get through, so listen up. You might want to get your incident books out and take some notes.’ The room rustled in one seamless movement as green incident books were pulled onto the tops of desks and onto knees where room wouldn’t allow for desk space.
‘Several things have happened and have come to light as we’ve been working,’ I continued, ‘so it’s going to be a long night as we tackle what we’ve got. When we’ve finished in here you need to make the calls home that are necessary. OT is already authorised. I hope it’s not going to be a problem for anyone.’ It wasn’t a question. On an investigation like this people expected to work long hours and rarely was I asked for time off before a job was finished. Sick children or spouses were the usual exceptions to a working rule.
‘We’ve had another public order incident. More shoppers trashing foodstuffs because they couldn’t figure out if it had been tampered with or not and the staff member there at the time was unable to calm them down sufficiently. Luckily no one was seriously hurt but there were arrests for public order offences. This time in Beeston, so following this briefing I have to head straight into another briefing to deal with that side of it. We need to be supporting divisions that are dealing with the fallout of this; after all, we’re the ones who have not yet got a handle on who this is or what their motive is. Going into meetings like that is not something I enjoy doing, so we need to get a grasp on this and now, please.’ I was actually giving them the toned-down version of how I felt about going into the next briefing. Not enjoying doing it was a massive understatement. I think if someone gave me a spoon and asked me to gouge my eyes out with it I would probably consider it, if it would get me out of what was coming next.
‘Why Beeston in particular? Finlay seems like an age ago now?’ a voice from the back of the room asked.
‘I don’t know. I imagine they’re worried this problem will come back to them as it is moving about and has no discernible pattern. It’s not helped by the hysterics from the Today. That’s something else we need to deal with.’
‘As far as we’re concerned,’ I continued, ‘and I’ll update you after this next briefing, we are doing everything we can to keep the public safe. The hospital staff are keeping in touch with the CRCE, the Centre for Radiation, Chemicals and Environmental Hazards for anyone not conversant with the acronym, to keep on top of the public safety issue. There is nothing to be done to protect them that we aren’t already doing. We could consider a public televised piece on what to check for – tampered food etc., but I’ll discuss that at the next meeting with Claire, Catherine and Grey, and feed it back down.’
Pens scribbled away in notepads as heads bent over in concentration.
‘Regarding the property seized from Dawn Barry’s address. The CSU have found the item that contained the poison that made her sick and identified the poison as an off-the-shelf rat poison, which matches up with what the hospital identified from the tox screen.’
Heads flipped upwards. All mutterings stopped and phones that were being texted from were quickly slid into pockets.
I tucked my hair behind my ear. ‘It was in the carton of ice cream she ate. There was a small puncture mark in the tub, which is how the offender got it inside without notice. It was pushed up as close to the lid and under as he or she could get it. Dawn is recovering slowly. Her body was badly affected by the poison. She went into convulsions and was also jaundiced, which indicates a problem with her liver. She’s in good hands and should make a full recovery. Rat poison, however, isn’t what we’ve been dealing with up to now. I made a phone call to the National Crime Agency and spoke to one of their profilers and from what she was saying, this is likely to be a copycat and not the original poisoner.’ There was a collective groan from the room. ‘But we still need to identify and arrest them before they continue their spree.’ I paused and looked around. This was going to be a long explanation. I looked behind me, gauged the distance, walked backwards to a desk, and perched myself on it.
‘Karen, the profiler, says that this offender is likely to have committed the offence because of the high level of publicity that has surrounded the murders. Copycats desire the media attention that is being directed at the original crime. It’s usually a male and though this is probably publicity driven, it does not mean he would not have offended in some way without the trigger of the press frenzy. Look at the world we live in, everyone is obsessed with how many people are looking at them, how many followers and friends they have. Locally this is the biggest thing to happen in a while, especially as we’ve lowered the rate of gun crime in the county.’
‘So, are we looking at someone who hates their mummy?’
‘Is that a serious question?’
‘Erm.’ A scratch of a balding head, one of the seconded staff. ‘Yeah, I suppose it is; this psychology stuff isn’t much of my thing.’
‘No, then. They’d be targeting women specifically and doing it from the get go rather than copying someone else.’
‘But, he’s craving attention?’
‘Yes. The attention that’s building daily because of these murders has built up in his mind and he wants a piece of it for himself.’
There was a mixture of nodding and shaking of heads as the strangeness of this statement sank in.
‘Martin, tell us what Dawn said when you saw her please.’
‘Well, she’s been lucky to survive. There was a pretty high dose of rat poison in the ice cream and in her system. It’s causing all sorts of problems for her. She didn’t taste it because she was drunk when she ate it. According to the experts, this guy really wanted to kill.’
More head shaking.
‘Dawn said she only bought the ice cream the day before she ate it as she loves her ice cream and tends to get through a lot of it, which is why she can be so specific. She bought it from the shop round the corner from her home address.’
His look told me he’d finished.
‘Good, thanks.’ I looked at the rest of the room again. ‘Ross, I’d like you to go to the shop to pick up the CCTV for as far back as it goes, speak to the store owner and any and all of the store workers to see if they saw anyone suspicious around the ice cream freezer.’
I turned to Martin, who was working on looking at finding links between the victims.
‘What have you got?’ I asked.
> ‘Unfortunately, I still can’t find a link between any of the victims. I looked through all the relatives’ statements and there was nothing there. I then looked through the victims’ bank accounts and I couldn’t find anything there either. They didn’t go to the same takeaways, restaurants, gym clubs, or hairdressers. There is nothing to link two of them, never mind all of them. It’s harder with Finlay McDonnell but I did take a lot of information from his parents’ statements and the extra information that has come in slowly from their FLO. Nothing. It’s so frustrating.’
‘Okay, keep looking, there has to be a crossover somewhere. Also, I heard back from Curvet after they did an inventory check and they don’t have any missing stock, so the digoxin is not coming from them.’ Another dead end.
‘Aaron has the rest of the actions for everyone else, so let’s get going, we have a hell of a lot to do. This isn’t even the original enquiry work!’
66
By the time I got back from my meeting with Youens I was stressed and wanted to run to the kitchen to find that spoon for my eyes. The amount of times I’d had to admit I didn’t know something to him made me feel like I didn’t have a handle on the case and it annoyed me as much as it had very obviously annoyed him. He’d said the investigation was toxic to his area and infecting his residents and turning them into monsters. Because of course they were never predisposed to this behaviour before our offender started his business of randomly poisoning people.
We needed to get a grip on this and get a grip now before more bodies dropped on either of us.
Ross was already back with the CCTV collection and was sitting in the CCTV viewing room going through it. I spoke to Martin who was stretching his legs around the incident room.
‘So, the owner of the shop is a woman in her late fifties. Doesn’t understand how any of her products could have been tampered with. She hasn’t seen anything but she was more than happy to hand over all her CCTV discs as she doesn’t want to get a reputation for being one of the stores where there is dodgy food. She asked Ross if she should be closing the store or anything. He didn’t know and called me, and to be honest, boss, I don’t really know. Has our offender put this stuff in more than one tub, or even in more than one product?’ he asked, looking a little more pensive than I was used to seeing him, his hands in his pockets as he stood in front of me, shoulders slumped forward.
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 36