‘She brought the champagne bottle with her and she was swinging it around. I understand that my interactions with her need to be looked into, but that’s the last ridiculous accusation I’m responding to, DC Lyle. If you want to question me as a suspect in the death of Tania Wetlock, then you read me my rights and we’ll do this properly.’
From where Jack stood, he could see more sweat glistening on Lyle’s forehead as he swallowed nervously. He knew he’d got carried away and overstepped the mark.
Jack tried to control his rising temper. ‘I didn’t like Tania, but she was a kid. She could have changed. If it was foul play, I want to help you.’
‘My apologies, DS Warr.’ The play acting was over. Lyle had snapped out of the role of the interviewer trying to outwit the suspect and now started to sound like an actual policeman. ‘The volume and variety of drugs found in the deceased’s bedroom suggests...’ Lyle raised his brows and shook his head. ‘I don’t know what it suggests. Medical. As well as street. Nembutal, chloral hydrate, demerol, various barbiturates such as amytal. Cannabis and cocaine. Some of the bottles had her name on them, some had no labels. We don’t know if this was a suicide, accidental or otherwise, but we suspect that a third party was at least aiding her addiction. With your fingerprints in her bedroom, we had to consider... I mean... you could quite easily have access to prescribed medication.’
‘Maggie? You think I could have got the unlabelled prescription drugs from Maggie? Have you met my wife? She would never jeopardise her job, even for me. Surely your first port of call with that train of thought would be Tania’s father.’
DC Lyle shook his head. ‘He’s not being as cooperative as you. For now, we’re treating him as the grieving parent, while also seeking court orders to access his office, his home, and even his hospital locker.’ He then held out his hand for Jack to shake. ‘I may need to see you again, DS Warr. Please don’t... my apologies, but I have to say these words out loud to you... please don’t attempt to leave the country.’
Lyle made his parting line sound like it had not come from him, which of course it hadn’t. It had come from much higher up. Meaning that Jack was still very much on their radar.
By 3 p.m., Jack was sitting in The Red Dragon eating a family-sized slice of microwaved frozen lasagne accompanied by some chunks of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion. Dave was no chef, but the portions of food served here catered for a healthy appetite. It was a coppers’ pub, with fast food and cheap beer. As Jack drained his pint glass, his mobile phone lay on the table in front of him, chattering away on speaker as Laura told him all about her evening with Josh. She was clearly in lust, but Josh was a great guy as far as Jack could make out. Dave leant on the bar in an otherwise empty pub with a deeply confused frown on his face. It was only when Laura started talking about the case, that Jack took her off speaker.
‘Josh was telling me that the low-hanging-fruit guy they arrested at the Jenkins’ property is starting to open up. He’s a long-time drug user, which is exactly the sort of person this gang uses. He admitted driving the Range Rover they had nicked; he was given cocaine as payment, and told they might need him again. Anyway, Josh has offered him rehab followed by relocation. His alternative is to be let back on the street, which he knows would be a death sentence. He’s scared rigid they might find out he’s been arrested and will rat on them.’
Jack smiled at Laura’s use of the word ‘rat’, instead of ‘grass’ or ‘inform’. She really had been spending too much time with Josh.
Laura continued: ‘Josh is now liaising with the Dutch police about... oh God, bloody Anik! if he tells me one more time that his Dutch policeman is now helping the Drug Squad, I’ll bloody kill him. Lieutenant Garritt Visser, he’s called. Josh says he’s good. Between them, they’ve isolated both ends of a small but well-established supply route. They’re currently identifying weak links and picking them off one by one. Nobody that low down the pecking order has any idea who Mr Big is but — and this is interesting, Jack — a couple of the weak links arrested at the Dutch end were recruited in Leeds.’
‘Listen, I’ve got to go, Laura, thanks for keeping me up to speed, I’ll be in touch.’
Foxy was waiting for Jack in the reception area of the mortuary. He was impeccably dressed for a man who’d just spent his day opening up Tania Wetlock. As soon as he saw Jack enter, he joined him and they took a taxi to have a late lunch and a good bottle of red at La Famiglia. The idea of eating again made Jack feel sick, but he needed to know what the post-mortem had revealed.
Jack picked at a steamed sea bass, whilst Foxy tucked into a huge plate of spaghetti bolognese and joked that Maggie had clearly got Jack on a diet already, before switching to discussing the post-mortem.
‘She’d ingested enough drugs to kill an elephant. Some of the capsules were still whole, so I can tell you that she took or was given barbiturates amongst other things. Toxicology has got the contents of her bedside cabinet to confirm that the drug on the label of each bottle conforms to what’s inside.’
A beautiful teenage waiter, wearing immaculate make-up, and with his shoulder-length blond hair scraped back by an Alice band, appeared behind Foxy to fill the empty glass in front of him. But Foxy didn’t pause the conversation.
‘And I’ve given them urine, blood and stomach contents. Plus slices of kidney and liver to take a look at. When I cut through the stomach wall, I could smell booze.’
The young waiter hurried back to the kitchen, with his hand over his mouth.
‘There was a considerable amount of congestion and haemorrhaging to the stomach lining,’ Foxy continued, ‘again suggesting an overdose of barbiturates. Such a shame. She’d done a bloody good job of hiding the damage she’d done to herself — cheek and breast implants, lip and eye fillers, teeth all capped. She didn’t even have needle marks.’ Foxy dabbed his mouth and chin with a napkin, then sighed. ‘But you can’t hide the damage on the inside. She’d been abusing drugs and alcohol for a good seven or eight years and — considering that she was only 17 — my guess is that she had help. Kids don’t know how to get their hands on the stuff she had in her possession.’
‘You said she had no needle marks,’ Jack said. ‘So, here’s a question for the lunch table, Foxy: did you examine her colon?’ Foxy gave Jack a puzzled look. ‘Drug enemas might be the preferred method of someone she knows,’ Jack explained.
Foxy nodded. ‘It’s certainly a highly effective way of getting drugs, usually benzodiazepines, into the bloodstream quickly.’ Foxy drained his wine glass and moved onto his third, as Jack still nursed his first. ‘Not that Tania needed to do that, because she seemed not to have sporadic fixes like a junky, more like one long, continuous maintenance dose. But I’ll certainly check for you.’ He stood and thanked Jack for lunch. ‘Right, got to dash. Toxicology reports on our first two ladies are with Laura.’
Jack sat back in his chair and sipped at the remains of his wine. After eating a gigantic lasagne followed by steamed sea bass, and drinking a pint followed by a glass of red wine, he felt uncomfortably full. He asked the waiter to bring the bill while he dialled a number.
‘Laura, Foxy says you’ve got the tox report on AJ and JC.’ Because Jack was seated in a public place, he didn’t use the full names of their two victims. Laura didn’t have long as she was heading into a briefing. She confirmed that Jessica Chi had heroin in her system and Avril Jenkins had cannabis, demerol and MDMA in hers.
Jack immediately recalled the video Mal had shown him, and the replica rubber MDMA tablet. When the masked men carried Avril upstairs, had they drugged her? Demerol and cannabis were no doubt part of her normal routine, but MDMA?