‘My husband and I have a room on the ground floor, but you are the only guests. Do you know what time you want breakfast?’
‘Seven-thirty please, Mrs Morgan,’ Anna said, pocketing the key.
‘Will that be a full cooked breakfast or a continental?’
‘Cooked for me,’ Paul said immediately.
Anna asked for just coffee and toast.
‘Have a nice evening.’ Mrs Morgan smiled and then asked if they would like a newspaper.
‘Thank you, but we’ll leave straight after breakfast.’
‘I’ve got you both down for two nights,’ the woman said, her smile fading.
‘Could we discuss this at breakfast?’ Anna was eager to leave.
Mrs Morgan didn’t seem that pleased, watching as they left, closing the door after them. It always annoyed her when guests changed their bookings, but luckily it was early in the season. If it hadn’t been she would have told them straight away that they would have to pay for the two nights booked.
The pub was, as Harry Took had said, just a short walk, but it was colder than either of them had expected and the wind was really sharp.
‘Christ, it’s bloody cold, isn’t it?’ Paul complained, hunching up inside his denim jacket. Anna didn’t reply, but she wished she’d brought a heavier coat. She was wearing her usual white shirt and black suit, and having had only a sandwich on the train, she felt really hungry.
The Bear pub was large with a big car park to the rear and a number of chairs and tables on a deck. The umbrellas were closed as the wind was really whipping up.
Inside, the place was spacious with a main bar, lines of stools and a snooker table to one side. A notice directed them towards a dining room with a big painted neon arrow. There appeared to be only a few local customers drinking, and a large plasma television screen was showing a football match, while two barmen were cleaning glasses and serving up sandwiches and hot dogs to a group of teenagers.
As Anna and Paul made their way to the dining room, all eyes were on them, not antagonistically, more simply out of interest.
The dining room was lined with booths, and four tables with bright red tablecloths were arranged down the centre of the room. Two waitresses were serving a few customers, but apart from them it was empty. Anna and Paul stood in the doorway, waiting to be seated.
‘You see him?’ Paul asked, looking around.
‘Even if I did, I wouldn’t know what he looks like.’
Nobody came to direct them to a table to be seated, although again they were of obvious interest to the diners, who avidly scrutinised them. Then a tall sandy-haired man stood up at the far end of the room and signalled for them to join him before disappearing back into the booth.
As they approached, Ed Williams eased himself out. He was at least six foot four, broad-shouldered, handsome in a rough way, and his thick sandy hair looked as if it was a crew cut growing out. He was wearing a brown tweed suit with a checked shirt and thick tie.
‘DCI Travis?’
‘Yes.’ Anna shook his hand and introduced Paul. They all then slid into the booth. The table was low, making it difficult for someone of Williams’s size to move in and out with ease. He sat opposite them, with his legs taking up so much of the space that he was almost sideways on.
He had a briefcase open on the table and an uncorked bottle of red wine. He had also moved the cutlery aside to be able to take out files and notebooks, but now he quickly replaced everything and snapped the case closed.
A waitress appeared with menus, passing them to Anna and Paul, but not to Williams. He said that he knew the menu backwards and asked if they would like wine. Without really waiting for either to say yes or no he poured for each of them.
‘Cheers.’
The same waitress returned and asked if they would like to know the specials for the evening, and reeled off some Italian pasta, a risotto and sea-food platter, announcing the price of each dish before walking off again. Anna kept herself hidden by the menu, trying to assess Ed Williams as Paul said he was going for the sea-food platter with a chicken and sweetcorn soup to start. Williams nodded for the waitress to take their order, looking to Anna first.
‘The risotto please, no starter.’
Paul gave his order and then Williams asked for his usual: a steak with salad and French fries.
‘Am I the only one having a starter?’ Paul said, embarrassed.
Back came the waitress with a red plastic basket of hot bread covered with a napkin, and a small dish of butter.
Williams offered the bread to Anna, but she shook her head. Paul took a big crispy hot chunk and slathered it with butter. Anna watched as Williams followed suit.
‘You should try this,’ he told her. ‘They bake it on the premises and the butter is garlic and herb.’
‘No, thank you.’
Anna wondered if it was par for the course that officers in Cornwall all had food on their minds.
‘This is really gorgeous and the butter is mindblowing,’ Paul said, slathering on even more.
‘Go on, try some.’ Williams offered Anna the plastic basket again.
‘No, thank you.’
He dropped the basket back onto the red paper tablecloth.
‘I’ve got a car arranged for you,’ he told them. ‘If you want a driver at all times it’s up to you, but I thought maybe you’d like to take off and see—’
‘We’re not here to see the sights,’ she said briskly, not meaning to sound like a school marm.
‘I didn’t think that you were, but sometimes it’s good to get the feel of the place, and you’ve got a lot of areas to cover.’
He had very pale blue eyes and she picked up immediately that he hadn’t liked her interruption.
‘I’ve run off some maps for you. Focus on the main surfing beaches, hang-outs of the surfers, plus their rentals, hotels, hostels and B and Bs. The property you have enquired about is quite a drive from here.’
‘We’ve been told that it is occupied.’
Williams nodded. He drank some wine.
‘I had a covert look over it. There’s a young guy living there who’s about twenty-five and who drives an MG. We ran the licence plates and it’s owned by a local garage so it’s rented to the people at the house – a Mrs Chapman. There have been a couple of women seen going in: one young woman with grocery shopping and the other one a lot older. They are not locals, but we do have a local woman doing cleaning there twice a week.’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’
‘No. My instructions were to not give any indication that we were interested. She also works for another tenant in a property close by, so it is very easy to question her.’
‘Could the guy be Alan Rawlins?’ Paul asked.
‘Well, I’ve seen the email pictures you’ve sent, so decide for yourself.’
He opened his briefcase and took out an envelope, removing some surveillance photographs which he passed to Anna. She looked through them and then shook her head, handing them to Paul for confirmation.
‘Not him.’
‘No.’
‘Because it’s early in the season, a lot of the hang-outs for regular surfers are closed,’ Williams informed them. ‘The all-year-rounders are still present and we’ve had some high waves this year that attracts them. We’ve also had storm warnings, a backlash of the hurricane, which also attracts the real hard professional surfers. They’re all wetsuited up, obviously, but compared to the high season it’s pretty quiet.’
The waitress served Paul his soup in a brown pottery pot with a lid with baked croutons on a separate plate. Williams asked for another bottle of the Beaujolais while he finished the first one, topping up their glasses.
‘I have also arranged for a helicopter to give you an overview of the beaches and areas where your guy would hang out. It’ll be at the airport at nine tomorrow morning.’
‘Helicopter?’ Anna repeated, unable to cover her concern.
‘It’s not going t
o dent anyone’s budget. It’s a training scheme we have organised with the Drug Squad officers, using dogs, which lets them get used to being up in the air for when there’s a raid. Also, some of the canine team have been training their dogs to get used to the sounds and . . .’ Williams came to a halt and lowered his voice. ‘The reason I’m interested in giving you as much help as possible is because of Sammy Marsh.’
‘Have you had any information about or sighting of him?’
‘Nope, not so much as a whisper. He’s a real piece of scum. He’s been dealing for years. If we catch him and lock him up, he comes out with more contacts than before he went in. He was always a smalltime operator dealing mostly in weed and ecstasy tablets. He’d move from beach to beach selling to the young kids. I think – in fact, I know – he had access to a farm where they were growing the weed. The plants were inside an old barn with very sophisticated heating, hydroponic lighting and a drainage system, producing top-grade weed. It was busted four or five years ago.’
Again he withdrew photographs and passed them to Anna.
‘The skunk as they call it was moving out on a bloody conveyor belt, being sent all over England. I know he was part of it, but he slipped out of the net and surfaced again a year later. This is Sammy.’ He got out a mugshot for them to look at. Then another. ‘This is also Sammy.’
Paul leaned closer to Anna to see the photographs. ‘Looks like Johnny Depp.’
‘Take a look at this one.’
Sammy Marsh was adept at changing his appearance. Williams kept on passing over one print after another, surveillance shots and mugshots. The man’s hair went from shoulder-length to braids, to cut short, to a pigtail with thin moustache and a small goatee beard. Some pictures even showed his hair dyed blonde.
‘Right little chameleon, isn’t he? He’s only about five foot eight, always very slender, and in the summer he gets tanned. He wears top designer gear and drives flashy cars.’
More photographs showed how many cars Sammy had owned and driven: a Mercedes, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, beach buggy and various motor bikes. In most of them he was smiling, posing with two or more gorgeous bikini-clad girls. In one of the prints, Sammy could be seen with a group of equally tanned and handsome men, their surfboards stuck into the back seat of a Land Rover.
‘Is one of these men Alan? Paul, what do you think?’
Paul shook his head and passed the photo back to Williams.
‘Sammy’s flat is still owned by him, isn’t it?’ Anna asked.
‘Yes. Well, he rented a number of places, but he actually only owns one. Looks like he left in one hell of a hurry because there was food in the fridge, wet clothes in the washing machine and no sight of him for six months.’
‘Any movement in his bank accounts?’
Williams laughed. ‘Sammy will no doubt have accounts in God knows how many banks or countries, but he primarily dealt in cash. If he was to bank his earnings from drugs he’d have to prove how he was making enough to buy all those flash motors, never mind his flat. He also had heavies watching out for him, but even they have disappeared.’
Williams gathered up the photographs, put them in his briefcase and then took out a single sheet of paper.
‘Here’s a list of the names he used. He’d often keep his Christian name, but it’s sometimes Sammy Miles, Sammy Myers, Sammy Lines . . . we found four passpor ts in his flat all with different names – brilliant forgeries and they must have cost a packet.’
Anna sat back, watching Williams getting more tense and angry.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.
‘That’s what I am here for, Detective Travis.’
‘Sammy, you have said, was smalltime, had numerous arrests for drug-dealing; he serves short sentences, then gets released and goes straight back to doing exactly what he had been doing before his imprisonment, right?’
‘Correct. But he was mostly charged with possession. He was never caught with either money from drugs or actually dealing.’
‘What about the photographs, the surveillance? If you knew he was up to his old tricks and from the photographs out in the open . . .’
‘First off he moved from selling the skunk himself to using his heavies for dealing, collecting payment for him, breaking a few arms and issuing threats if the punters didn’t pay up for their bag of shit. To be honest, with the government changing its mind two years ago and upping cannabis from Class C to B it looks like he decided to switch.’
‘Switch?’
‘Prison sentences for Class B are longer. Maybe he decided he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb so he started dealing Cat A drugs – heroin, cocaine and crack. He was under covert surveillance because the Drug Squad wanted to discover who the supplier was, and who was backing him financially because he didn’t just focus on this area, he was moving from coast to coast. He also bought this.’
Out came a photograph of a high-powered speedboat. And again it was passed to Anna and then Paul.
‘Paid for in cash from a local boat-builder, but the little bastard disappeared. That’s still moored and no one has been near it.’
The waitress cleared Paul’s soup bowl and returned with their main order. They remained silent until she left them to eat, saying in an expressionless voice, ‘Enjoy your dinner.’
Anna was really hungry and tucked in straight away. Williams topped up their wine again and carved up his steak.
‘This is delicious.’ Anna grinned.
‘Good food – that’s why we use this place. Come high season though, it’s packed with families and a load of screaming kids.’
For a while they were silent as they concentrated on eating before Anna said to Williams that she was a little bit confused. It appeared that the Drug Squad still did not have the names of the contacts that Sammy was now using to score the Category A drugs, but had decided to arrest him regardless.
Williams nodded and suggested they finish their meals before he showed them the reason.
‘I don’t think either Paul or I are squeamish enough to be put off our food, especially not after having only a sandwich on the train,’ Anna offered.
Williams forked a large mouthful of steak into his mouth before yet again delving into his briefcase. He took out a brown manila envelope and opened it.
‘Reported missing by her mother late last summer. She was washed up on the rocks aged sixteen – heroin overdose.’
Anna looked at the mortuary shot of the dead girl. Her wet hair plastered to her bloated face, her body covered in wounds from the jagged rocks. She passed it to Paul. However, Williams hadn’t finished. He followed it with a second photograph of an equally young girl, her body found in a rented caravan. It was a heroin overdose and the needle still protruded from her arm.
‘She doesn’t look as if she was a regular user. She’s not underweight and I don’t see many track marks. She was fifteen years old.’
Williams produced yet another mortuary photograph of a young boy. His naked body showed the white skin on his buttocks and genitals, but the rest of his skin was a deep brown.
‘Seventeen year old. All of them were here in Cornwall for the holidays. The boy worked the deckchairs on the beach. None of them were residents, but had been introduced to heroin whilst they were here. Nor did any of them have any previous drug-related arrests. They were simply kids from good families who became embroiled in the beach traffic scoring drugs.’
‘Did you get direct evidence linking any of these victims to Sammy Marsh?’
‘Just the first girl. She was in the photograph I showed you with the two other bikini-clad girls hanging around Sammy’s jeep. Drug Squad joined forces with me and we did a lot of the legwork identifying them all. It was decided to pick up Sammy before he could sell any more of the gear, and he must have got wind of it because he disappeared.’
‘But what evidence did the Drug Squad have that these kids scored from him?’
‘We made an arrest of a young guy working at
a bar. He’d ended up in hospital suffering from an overdose, but he survived, and we were able to get the remainder of the wrap he had bought. It was heroin, but it had been mixed with Christ only knows what. There were traces of ketamine and morphine, and it was very high quality and lethal, especially to someone who had never used before, so the first fix could kill.’
‘So he gave up Sammy’s name?’ Paul asked. Unlike Anna he had found that the photographs of the victims had turned his stomach. He had hardly touched his food.
‘Eventually he did, after a lot of persuasion as he was scared rigid that he would get beaten up by the heavies. Especially one bastard, Errol Dante, who acted like an enforcer.’
‘We interviewed him,’ Anna said sharply.
‘Well, he did a runner before we could nab him, but apparently he’d stolen drugs from Sammy and . . .’
‘Moved in with his girlfriend. He was dealing on the estate in Brixton where he lived and got busted for that. He and his girlfriend think that someone tipped off the London Drug Squad.’
‘That would be Sammy, yet Errol is still refusing to give us any assistance,’ Williams said grimly.
‘Nor to help us,’ Anna added.
‘I’d say he was scared Sammy would cut off his legs.’ Williams replaced the photographs and ate some more of his steak before he continued.
‘We have a statement from a woman who lived in a caravan next to where Errol stayed with his girlfriend. She called the local police because of the row that was going on inside the caravan, saying she was certain she’d heard a gunshot. By the time they arrived, the place had been totally trashed, windows broken and every stick of furniture smashed. She was able to identify Errol Dante as the one living in the caravan and she described Sammy. She said he was first outside the trailer, banging on the door and screaming, then he eventually kicked the door open and went inside. She said he was hysterical and his face was twisted as if he was having some kind of fit, eyes bulging and so agitated that it looked as if he was frothing at the mouth.’
‘How long after that did Sammy disappear?’
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