"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 keep 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?"