Deadly Intent (Anna Travis Mysteries)

by Lynda La Plante

  “It was a VW—a pale green one.”

  Anna noticed the file on the car and its insurance; she also saw that it was after eight-fifteen. “Connie, do you mind if I take these boxes? They’ll be returned to you as soon as I have looked over them.”

  Connie shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Anna asked if she could check through Frank’s clothes to see if there was anything to indicate who he was working for. Connie said she’d been through them and there was nothing.

  “Did he take clothes away with him?”

  “Yeah, took ’em in a suitcase.”

  “I am so sorry, Connie, really I am. You seem to be a lovely girl and Frank must have felt very fortunate in knowing you.”

  “Yeah, he was ever so good to me. He was always buying me little presents. Last thing I ever heard from him was he sent me flowers on my birthday.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two months ago. I kept the card; they come from Interflora.”

  Anna asked to see the card, jotting the florist’s name down in her notebook. The message was affectionate: it said he would be home soon and he loved her. Anna passed the card back. She didn’t like doing it, but nevertheless she asked if Connie had ever heard Frank mention a woman called Julia.

  Connie immediately became wary. “Why you askin’ that?”

  “Just that we think he may have been working with a woman called Julia.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She lives in Wimbledon.”

  “Wimbledon?”

  “Yes. Did Frank ever mention her to you?”

  “No! Is she connected to him? I mean, is she something to do with his death?”

  “Possibly. I can’t really say any more.”

  “I mean, are you saying he was with this woman?”

  “Working for her, yes.”

  “Well, you gotta know what he was doin’ then!”

  “Not quite. He was driving for her—that’s all we really know.”

  “How did he die, then?”

  Anna really didn’t want to get into this, but she could feel Connie becoming more and more tense in her desperation to know.

  “I gotta right to know. I mean, if he was involved with another woman, I have to know.”

  “He just worked for her and her children.”

  “Oh, she got kids, then?”

  Anna could not bring herself to tell Connie that Frank had married Julia.

  “When is his funeral?”

  “I don’t know. His body has not yet been released.”

  Connie chewed her nails, and looked angrily at Anna. “I don’t have no rights or nothing, do I? But he loved me, and I loved him, and something isn’t right ’bout this. I mean, who is this woman? Why was he not tellin’ me about it, if she only lived in fucking Wimbledon? He said to me he was gonna have to go abroad. Why couldn’t he stay here with me?”

  “I really don’t know, Connie, but when I do know more, I will contact you, I promise.” Anna looked at her watch and said that she would have to leave. Connie helped her take the boxes down to her car and put them in the boot. As Anna drove away, Connie was standing on the pavement, still chewing at her nails.

  Anna now had to drive across London to Pete’s for dinner. It was the last thing she needed; she had so much paperwork to sift through from Connie, as well as Donny Petrozzo’s diary. By the time she had run a comb through her hair and put on some lip gloss in the car, it was nine-fifteen.

  Pete lived on a tree-lined street in Hampstead, behind the cinema. Anna was surprised that it was such a pretty house; she had somehow thought he would live in a flat closer to his work over in Lambeth. She rang the doorbell, feeling guilty that she had come empty-handed.

  Pete opened the door and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I had just about given up on you!”

  The front door opened straight into a large room with a kitchen-diner at the back. It was well furnished, with big white easy sofas and a massive plasma TV beside banks of DVDs, surrounded by pine bookshelves. The floor was stripped pine; even the kitchen had pine tops and a rustic pine table, with a bowl of fresh flowers.

  “This is very nice,” she said as he helped her off with her coat.

  “I might have ‘pined-out’ a bit,” he said, laughing.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Two years. This was three rooms and a little closet hall, so I knocked them all into one room. There’s just a bedroom and bathroom upstairs, and a small box room I use as an office.”

  Anna joined him in the kitchen area, where he passed her a large, long-stemmed wineglass of chilled Pinot Grigio.

  “Cheers,” he said, tapping her glass. “I’ve managed to drink half the bottle waiting for you.”

  “I’m sorry. Something came up.”

  “Always does. Anyway, sit down. I’m going to serve up straightaway—I am starving.”

  “Me too. I don’t think I had any lunch.”

  First, Peter dished up a salad with nuts, chopped apple, and sliced orange, with warmed fresh bread. Then he looked into the oven. “It’s lasagne, done a bit to a crisp.”

  Anna tucked into her salad. “I love it when the cheese is crispy on top.”

  “It is, very much so.” He sat down opposite her.

  Anna beamed. “This is delicious; you are obviously a good cook.”

  He cocked his head to one side and laughed. “It’s just a salad.”

  “That may be, but the dressing…and the fresh bread!”

  Again he laughed as he watched her lathering butter onto the bread. “We have a good bakery down the street—it’s a very cosmopolitan little enclave round here.”

  Anna chewed and licked her lips. He had said “we.” “Do you live with someone?”

  “That was a slip of the tongue. I used to live with someone—my wife, actually.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Was. We are in the process of divorcing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s very amicable. Fortunately, we don’t have children, so there’s no hurt on either side—just working out who gets what. You can sort of tell, by the sparse furnishings. Ellen has moved to Surrey, close to her work; she is a mathematician and teaches at Kingston College. What about you? Where do you live?”

  Anna had him laughing a lot with her description of her new flat, the noise from the bridge, the foghorns, the unpacked boxes, and her interaction with Mr. Burk, the so-called security manager. As she talked, he refilled her glass, and cleared the salad plates away to bring out the lasagne. He had a lovely warm giggle that was infectious; she was becoming more and more relaxed, and pleased she had turned up.

  As he served the main course, he asked if she was living with anyone. She went into details about selling her old flat and making a new move to get rid of memories. She was grateful that she didn’t have to explain about the “memories” instead, their conversation wound to discussing the case.

  “We had an interesting turn-up. Well, we didn’t—old Ewan Fielding did over in the path lab. I stopped by there earlier and he had just come across it.”

  “Come across what?”

  Pete explained how perplexed Fielding had been about the cause of death with Donny Petrozzo, so had really put in the hours. Eventually, he had asked his assistants to do an inch-by-inch check of the body. “They were coming up with nothing—basically, Fielding said he had just stopped breathing—but then, he checked inside Petrozzo’s mouth and found a pinprick under his tongue. Someone had injected him. He’s been running tests trying to find out with what.”

  “Any luck yet?”

  “Not when I was there, but he called me later. You know how straitlaced he is. He actually sounded excited, but he stressed that he wasn’t a hundred percent sure.”

  “What was it?”

  “A minute trace of a drug called Fentanyl. It had been quite brutally injected and left a slight residue on the two front lower teeth.”

 
“What is Fentanyl?” Anna asked, clearing her plate.

  Pete got up to proffer a second helping, which she accepted; he took another bottle of wine from the fridge.

  “It’s a very powerful opiate, incredibly potent. If you consider that morphine is given in dosages of milligrams, Fentanyl is prescribed in micrograms—that’s how strong it is. Very fast-acting, it’s used a lot in the USA for emergency surgery. It’s a strong painkiller, but it’s out of the system very quickly. For example, a hit from heroin would last maybe an hour or so; with this drug, the high hits fast and you get total relief for about a minute or so.”

  Anna put down her fork. “So Donny Petrozzo was injected with it?”

  “Yes—well, possibly—and probably with enough to kill him. I’d say he was held down and injected, then wrapped up in the bin liners.”

  “And shoved into the back of the Mitsubishi.”

  Peter collected the plates and started to make some coffee.

  “What else do you know about this drug?” Anna asked.

  “Only what I’ve told you. Do you take sugar?”

  “Nope, and I’ll have it black as I have to drive home.”

  Pete wasn’t looking at her as he finished stacking the dishwasher. “You could stay here.”

  Anna flushed. She said it too quickly. “No, no—I’ll go home.”

  “Okay, up to you.” He still had his back to her.

  “Fentanyl,” she repeated.

  “Yep, but don’t quote me. You know Fielding—he’s now doing a full toxicology report, so it won’t be passed on until he’s totally sure, and that’ll take eight to ten weeks.”

  “But why did he say it to you if he wasn’t positive?”

  “He wasn’t; it was just a possibility. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” The coffee grinder went into action, so they couldn’t really continue the conversation until it was finished.

  “Do you know if they got anything from the Mitsubishi?”

  “I think there was a residue of blood, a very small swipe on the side of the front driving seat, but it’s not been tested yet.”

  “Was it wiped clean apart from that?”

  “Yeah, but they may have something from the glove compartment; apparently there was a map inside which they want to test.”

  Anna had opened the glove compartment and looked over the map. She hoped she hadn’t smudged any possible prints. “I was wearing gloves,” she said, and he turned to her. “I opened it up and looked at the map. There was also a torn piece of notepaper.”

  “Naughty! You know how fragile prints are to get off paper.”

  “Sorry. At that time, we didn’t know there was a body in the back.”

  “Coffee, and some nice chocolates,” he said, placing a cup down.

  They sat opposite each other again. This time, there was an awkward pause.

  “You can stay here, you know,” he said again. “That’s a very comfortable sofa.”

  “No, I should get back—it’s been a long day.”

  “For both of us.”

  “Yes, but I’ve really enjoyed this evening.”

  “Good.”

  “Maybe I could cook dinner for you at my place?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Anna sipped her coffee. “I’m not sure when. I don’t think we have any weekend leave—maybe next week sometime?”

  Pete looked at her, his head to one side. “Whenever.” He picked up his coffee cup and gestured for them to go into the lounge area, saying it was more comfortable. Anna hesitated, wondering if he was going to slide onto the sofa next to her and make a pass.

  He didn’t. He sat in one of the easy chairs. “What’s your take on this?” he said.

  “My take? You mean, as a whole on the case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m unsure. It’s very much a jigsaw puzzle at the moment, with a lot of missing pieces.”

  “Like what?”

  She suddenly felt very tired, and didn’t really want to get into explaining herself or discussing the case. “Just things that don’t add up,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  She sighed. “Well, for one, my biggest issue is: what was Frank Brandon doing in that squat?”

  “Scoring for someone?”

  “Maybe.”

  “When you’re hooked, you’ll go to any dump to score, be it in Chalk Farm or wherever, so it doesn’t surprise me that he was visiting the squat. People take big risks.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

  “To be honest, Pete, I’m whacked out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, it’s just having to deal with Donny Petrozzo’s mentally disturbed widow, interviewing the guys who were scoring from the drug squat, talking to the girl who hoped to marry Frank Brandon…it takes its toll.” Anna finished her coffee. It was almost eleven o’clock.

  “I’m sure it does.” He stood up, and smiled. “You should go.”

  She nodded and reached for her briefcase. “Thank you for tonight.”

  “My pleasure, and Anna—I’ll wait for you to call me, okay?” He kissed her cheek and walked her to her car. “Good night.”

  She smiled and put the key into the ignition, starting up the engine. He stood, watching her drive away, before he went inside to roll a big fat joint.

  By the time Anna was ready for bed, it was after midnight. Sleep didn’t come easily; she kept on listing in her mind the many loopholes and loose ends of the case, then thought about the evening, and about Pete Jenkins.

  She really liked him, she decided, and couldn’t quite understand why she was so reticent about showing it. He was such a different creature to James Langton—and, she was certain, far nicer—but even the comparisons meant her last thoughts before she fell asleep were of Langton. He was a hard act to follow. After all these months, he still had a stranglehold over her emotions. She knew that she was still in love with him, no matter what he had done.

  8

  Anna had only enough time to check over a few of Frank Brandon’s papers before leaving for work. His bank statements were interesting: judging by the amount of money in there, Frank and Connie would have had more than enough to get married and make a down payment on a property. But where did that leave his marriage to Julia? Anna made notes as she read, underlining the fact that Frank began working for Donny Petrozzo, but did not own a suitable car. She wanted to cross-reference with Donny’s diary, as Frank drove Donny’s Mercedes for the clients. She would check through the registration numbers taken from Jeremy Webster’s list, though she doubted it would be among them. She had barely started cross-referencing Frank’s papers with Donny’s diary before it was time for her to leave.

  Anna’s flat was strewn with packing cases and boxes, but at least her shower was hot, and the garage doors opened and closed without any problems. She was at the station by eight-thirty, ready for the briefing session with Cunningham. Before it began, she went to check out with the officers a few of her queries. She got one hit straightaway.

  One of the cars listed by Jeremy Webster as being parked in the forecourt of the estate was registered to a Miss Ella Douglas. As the car, according to Webster, had not been parked there on the night of the murder, they had not pressed to get the details. One quick phone call to Ella told Anna that Donny had insured the car for her to drive his wife to her various doctors; he had registered it at Ella’s address. This was a step forward. It meant that Donny Petrozzo could have been to the drug squat in that car.

  Anna returned to her office and put in a call to Pete to see if there were any new details on the fingerprints taken from the squat, and whether Donny Petrozzo’s were among them. She spoke to one of his assistants. As with the car license plates, it was a slow process of elimination and match. Anna reminded the assistant that they had identified Donny Petrozzo by his fingerprints and that, as they were on record, they could easily check with the data bank. Sh
e was told that they had thirty prints being tested. Anna was frustrated by the delays, but knew that forensics had their work cut out for them.

  Another step forward was that the swipe from the Mitsubishi had now been verified as the same blood type as the blood found on the bullet. Anna marked this detail up on the incident board. There was now a mass of data, with red arrows, linking the evidence gathered to date.

  Anna was joined by Gordon, who had not found evidence of a marriage certificate issued to Julia Kendal in the UK. He had found out birth dates of her two children from the registration. No father was listed on the birth certificates. Was the marriage to Frank Brandon a sham, as seemed likely now? Why the wedding photographs, then?

  There was still no postmortem report back from the lab for Donny Petrozzo, as they were waiting for the toxicology report. Nor was there any reference to the drug, Fentanyl, that Pete had mentioned as a possible cause of death. The surveillance report on Julia Brandon offered up no suspicious outings or visitors; however, they had by now gained access to her finances—despite the interference from her accountant, who had tried to block them at every level. Julia Brandon was a lot wealthier than they had first believed.

  The lists of different accounts and deposit facilities presented them with a maze of names and offshore companies. She had access to big money; however, she was unable to withdraw it without notifications. Some accounts were in her daughters’ names, but most were off-the-shelf companies. The ballpark amount, and this was still being assessed, was in the region of fifteen million pounds. Added to these investments was her ownership of properties, including one on the Isle of Wight.

  Anna sat with the officers who had been assigned the job of digging. They were flabbergasted by the complicated paper trail. Where had this money come from originally? At the moment, they had no idea. What they did have details of, however, was how the money moved around. With the value of the dollar so low, a lot of monies were being moved into accounts in the USA. Then no sooner had the exchange taken place than the money was moved to another bank in another city.

  “It’s got to be drug money,” Anna said, and the others agreed.

  They had little on Julia Brandon’s previous financial situation, but they had traced a small account in the name of Julia Kendal in Oxford, where she had been born and brought up. Both her parents were deceased, but there was a sister living in a village just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. Honour Kendal was married to Damien Nolan, a professor of chemistry at Oxford. As far as they could ascertain, the Nolans were a respectable married couple. They had no children, nor did they have a property in their name, and money was tight. Academics were badly paid, and Honour did not have a full-time job.