Deadly Intent (Anna Travis Mysteries)

by Lynda La Plante

“I hold my hand up,” said Phil.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Langton said moodily.

  “Well, when he was brought in, I was the one that had the most conversation with him.”

  “Okay, what exactly was that?”

  Phil explained how Fitzpatrick had said their case crossed over with his supposed fraud investigation. He had asked about the suspects and then about the progress to date.

  “When he was asking about the suspects, did he focus on anyone particularly?”

  “No, not really. He walked up and down, and made a joke about how we were collecting bodies like acorns.”

  Langton asked him to think again: was there anyone out of the dead men that he spent more time on? Phil shook his head.

  It was Gordon who interrupted. He said that, while Phil went to fetch Cunningham, Fitzpatrick had spent a while longer looking over the board. Langton looked at Gordon, asking him what he felt Fitzpatrick was looking at when Phil left the room.

  “Well, sir, he just sort of did a slow walk, looking at all the photographs; he then got a chair and sat down.”

  “Where did he sit?”

  Gordon took a chair and turned it to face the incident board. “Here.”

  Langton sat in the chair. It was positioned directly in front of the photograph of Julius D’Anton. He remained silent for a while, thinking, staring at the dead man’s face. He then gave a signal for the financial experts to continue working. Their machines spurted back into life, spewing out more pages.

  Anna went into her office and spread out all the different photographs they had of Fitzpatrick. She was so focused that she physically jumped when Langton walked in. “Morning!” she said, flustered. “I’ve been looking over—”

  “Yes, yes—I can see that.”

  “He’s had extensive plastic surgery. Whether or not it was a wig he was wearing, I couldn’t say, but if so, it was a good one. This is the picture of the man seen at the supposed wedding of Julia and Frank, but his gray hair is thinning and worn in a ponytail. Also, in this picture and in all the others we have off his Web site, he had a mole on his right cheek which could have been removed.”

  Langton tapped the photograph of Fitzpatrick with the two little girls.

  “This was taken six months ago, maybe more?”

  “Yes, but I am sure it is him; he’s put his hand up to stop the au pair taking any more pictures.”

  “And what do you think that gives us?”

  “Well, not a lot—but if he had all this plastic surgery, he must have left England and then returned with the new face. We might get lucky with immigration.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.” Langton sat down and rubbed at his knee.

  “What gave it away to you?” she asked.

  Langton looked at his worn suede shoes. “His shoes.”

  “His shoes?”

  “Yeah. He sat like this in Cunningham’s office.” He crossed his legs, resting his right leg across his left knee, and tapped his shoe. “I had a clear look at his shoe; since when have you known any Met officer to wear handmade Lobb shoes?”

  “Lobb?” She’d never heard of them.

  “They’re a very prestigious shoemaker in Regent Street. They make a mold of the feet that’ll cost you about two grand; they retain it and you order your new shoes, whenever required, and they deliver them.”

  “They delivered them to him?”

  Langton nodded. Due to the quality, they were not something reordered every six months. The last delivery of dark tan, lace-up shoes with hand-stitched soles was over two years ago. The address they had been delivered to was a substantial property in St. John’s Wood.

  Anna leaned back, shaking her head. Again, the audacity of Fitzpatrick was beyond belief. This was the property that he and Julia Brandon had lived in, so openly he was even ordering handmade shoes to be delivered there. “The shoe prints we found at the drug site…” she said.

  Langton shrugged. “Well, I don’t have laser eyes, but I’d say what he was wearing fits the description. When we find him—haw, haw—we can see if they match.”

  Cunningham tapped and entered. “Need you in the incident room, James.”

  “Great. This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

  The financial experts stood with their faxes and adding-machine rolls and began to list on a large sheet of paper the different countries where they had, so far, tracked the transfers of bulk sums of money. They had a list of names of the holders of the accounts: Julia Brandon, Julia Collingwood, Julia Nolan, Julia Henson. They pinned up a vast map of the world and, using a red marker pen, showed the movement of the money between London, Geneva, the Cayman Islands, Florida, Germany, and Argentina. Next, they listed the sums of money, showing how there had been a virtual circle of transferrals. The second list of names was suspicious, because they were aliases of David Rushton; on each transfer for Julia, in all her various names, he cut a slice for himself and fed it back to an account in New York.

  “So he was dipping his fingers in the honey pot?” Langton said.

  Their FT expert was a dome-headed man in a pin-striped suit. “Yes, he siphoned off around four million.”

  The next list of names none of them recognized. With another red marker, they showed on the map that, as money was transferred into Julia’s accounts, it was diverted into bank accounts held by these unknown names in the Bahamas, Miami, the Philippines, and, lastly, India. Like a landslide, all the monies were gradually being poured into the last three accounts.

  “How much?” Langton asked.

  “Well, with the missing amount taken by David Rushton, I’d say there’s about eight million in English pounds. Remember, each transfer is affected by the exchange rate; with the dollar, it gained, but then dropped back when it was withdrawn from the Caymans.” He turned over a clean white sheet. “The account in the Bahamas was emptied two days ago and the Miami account was transferred to this one in the Philippines.”

  “So all the money you say is now in the Philippines?”

  “Correct, but I couldn’t tell you how long for; they were the least cooperative.”

  Langton asked how fast this had all taken place, and was told most of it had been moving within the last forty-eight hours; therefore, as they spoke, it could be on the move again. While the financial people packed up, with instructions to monitor the Philippines account, the team were quiet, waiting for Langton’s response.

  “I was wrong,” he told them all. “Fitzpatrick has to think he’s got the dough; in fact, when he came here he knew it—so why did he come here?”

  Langton still sat in Fitzpatrick’s chair. He asked himself, was it the act of a desperate man? Or one with such an ego, he just wished to make them a laughingstock? He dismissed the latter as being too far-fetched; there had to be something he needed. He stood up and, with his back to the team, paced along the incident-room board past the victims’ photographs: Frank Brandon, Donny Petrozzo, Stanley Leymore, David Rushton. Julia Brandon’s picture was not, as yet, up.

  He stood in front of Julius D’Anton’s picture. “Right, if our man visits Rushton and gets him to rework the money transfers—say, back to him in the Philippines—he’s served his purpose, so he kills him.” Langton’s voice was quite hard to hear; he spoke quietly as he thought it through. “Julia Brandon had already attempted to cheat him, using Rushton; she had become a thorn in his side. So he gets rid of her.” Langton sat down again in the same chair, staring at Julius D’Anton’s picture. “We know somewhere he has two children, two henchmen, and the au pair, but we have no trace on them—nothing coming in from any port—so they could all still be hiding out in the UK.” Langton repeated twice, almost to himself: “Why take the risk of coming into the incident room? He had the money, why didn’t he just get out?”

  “Maybe he already has,” Phil said.

  “No, no. Eight million, or whatever he thinks he’s got his hands on, isn’t enough. Remember, a man on the run needs a hell of a wedge to kee
p him safe. It’s payout time every bloody minute; to cover his tracks will cost. So what did he come here for?”

  Langton turned to Anna and asked her to run by him the entire scenario that involved Julius D’Anton.

  Anna opened her notebook. She detailed the sighting of Julius D’Anton driving the Mitsubishi, trying to collect the antique table with a wad of cash; his broken-down van, traced to the garage in Shipston on Stour; the discovery of his body, floating in the Thames; the postmortem, detailing that death was due to an overdose of Fentanyl. “As with Donny Petrozzo.”

  Langton stopped her. “Forget Donny Petrozzo; just focus on D’Anton.”

  “Well, he had been at Balliol at the same time as Fitzpatrick, so we thought that, when he crashed his van, he might have walked up to the farmhouse, seen Fitzpatrick there, and recognized him; that’s how he got access to the Mitsubishi, and enough money to go back to buy the table.”

  “Go on.” Langton wafted his hand.

  “His widow at first said that he hadn’t returned that weekend, but she later retracted her statement, saying she had not actually been at home, so it was possible that he had returned. She said that she was having an affair with the builder, and was away the entire weekend with him.”

  “What about the property?”

  “Well, the D’Antons had only just bought it and were renovating it. They made their living doing up property to sell, though D’Anton continued to deal in antiques. His widow also admitted that he was still using drugs; he spent time in rehab but was, invariably, clean for only a short while before he started using again.”

  “Where was his body found?” Langton asked, rubbing his head.

  “Just by the weir in Teddington. It was estimated that he had been in the water for at least two or three days, but death was down to an overdose of Fentanyl, as with Donny Petrozzo.”

  “Just keep off fucking Petrozzo, I said, and stick to D’Anton!”

  “That’s about it.”

  Langton pursed his lips, and said that it was all supposition.

  “We do know the Mitsubishi was at the farmhouse,” Anna said quietly. “We have had soil and horse-manure samples tested.”

  He sat in brooding silence; nobody liked to interrupt. After a few moments, he stood up and tapped D’Anton’s picture. “He, I think, is the key. He and his wife buy houses, sell up, move on. Hard to find an address, right?”

  No one could fathom out where Langton was going with his queries; he seemed unsure himself. “There are no coincidences! All that ‘he maybe recognized Fitzpatrick’—well, not one of us did, did we! So take that out of the equation. Look at his character: D’Anton, junkie, did time for drug dealing, wife stands by him, in and out of rehab—a real loser. There he is, with an eye for antiques, and a table that the dealer himself said he had wrongly underpriced—everyone with me so far?”

  Anna sat on the edge of her chair, tense, listening; finding her old admiration for him flooding back. You could almost see the wheels turning in his brain as he attempted to knit together a scenario that made sense. He gave long pauses, rubbing at his temple, and then he smiled. “So much for clapping my hands and catching at a fly,” he said. Then he stood up and tapped D’Anton’s photograph. “Okay, try this for size. Our junkie antique guy can’t get the table because he’s been turned down, but he learns that the table came from a cottage. Like a good cheap-creep dealer, he pays a visit. He discovers that the old lady has already sold up anything of value, so he asks about any other properties close by. Right so far, Travis?”

  “Yes, we interviewed the old lady in question. She remembered directing D’Anton to Honey Farm.”

  “D’Anton drives his van into a ditch, and can’t reverse out, so he walks to the farmhouse. He needs to get someone to haul him out.” Langton turned over the sheets of paper the financial team had used. He drew the farmhouse and the narrow lane leading to it in childish and rather inept strokes. “According to our surveillance team, the couple stay very much at home. They don’t use the front entrance, but the rear—correct, Travis?”

  “Yes, the bell doesn’t work.”

  Langton nodded. “Julius D’Anton—no money, pissed off; no deal with the table, pissed off—gets to the farmhouse. No answer. What if, parked in their yard, is the Mitsubishi? Not only parked but, maybe with the keys in the ignition?” He looked at everyone.

  Anna coughed. If her theory was supposition, this was surely just as much so.

  “D’Anton opens it, looks inside. What if there are drugs or a stash of money in the glove compartment? I’m not talking big money, maybe a couple of grand; could have been in a wallet, whatever. He needs something to go back and sort his van out. Nobody around, so he just gets in and drives off. D’Anton gets to the village; tries to buy the table, pays over money, but it won’t fit in the back of the jeep. He drives on; even arranges for his van to be shifted by the locals. Guess what? Honour is serving in the shop! Honour, who fucking knows that jeep, but does not know D’Anton. I am assuming Fitzpatrick was the one who drove it to the farmhouse. Did she call, to ask Fitzpatrick if he had let this creep drive it?”

  Langton patted his pockets, really needing a smoke, but then controlled himself; instead, he began to twist the pen round and round. He asked Travis to give details of the vehicles known to have been used at the farm: there was only the old Range Rover. If the Range Rover had been used to follow the Mitsubishi on the motorway, it would have had a hard time keeping up. There was now a time gap, he believed, due to the fact that whoever was following D’Anton lost him. “Hard man to track down, if he moved addresses. This time gap is vital.”

  On the board, he marked up:

  Donny Petrozzo knew D’Anton

  Donny Petrozzo was involved with Frank Brandon

  Frank Brandon had come into contact with Alexander Fitzpatrick, but knew him only as Anthony Collingwood; Frank had been offered a deal that it was hard to walk away from: a lot of money, enough to marry and buy a house

  Langton drew links between each man, and circled D’Anton’s name.

  “We now have this junkie wheeling around in a stolen jeep. He’s found a stash of money in the glove compartment—remember, this was the same jeep that Frank Brandon drove to the squat.” He drew another link over to where he then wrote drug squat, underlined it, and tossed the marker pen aside. Langton then continued, covering the night Frank Brandon was shot dead, and the fact that whoever was with him was wounded but escaped and drove to Honey Farm.

  “Now, what if—and it’s a big if—what if Julius D’Anton did contact Petrozzo, because he had something big to sell?” Langton looked around the room. “The box of Fentanyl was still in the back of the Mitsubishi. I don’t think he knew what the hell he’d got.”

  There was a unanimous gasp; suddenly everything started to make sense.

  “Julius D’Anton may not have been murdered; he could have tested the stuff out and killed himself. We all know it’s fucking lethal. If he was dead as a dodo in the jeep, Donny could have tossed him into the river, driven the Mitsubishi back to the garage in Wimbledon—and bingo, walks straight into the hypodermic needle, courtesy of Fitzpatrick.” It was not a curtain down, but it felt like it. Anna wanted to applaud him because, as theories went, it was a bloody good one.

  They were all given their day’s investigation by the duty manager, working alongside Cunningham. She said to Anna, “You are with Langton; he wants to reinterview D’Anton’s wife.”

  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.

  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 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?”