Careless Love

11

‘As you all know,’ Banks began, standing before the whiteboards on Wednesday morning, ‘things have changed a lot since our last meeting. First of all, I’d like to welcome the officers from West Yorkshire who have joined us on this inquiry.’ Banks paused for a moment while the detectives nodded or waved to make themselves known. ‘You’ve all been allocated your roles and responsibilities, and I know some of you are double-hatting, but none of that should stop you from doing your main job: crime investigator on this team. We don’t want any tunnel vision here. All input is welcome. Not just welcome, but expected. And I won’t say we have all the technical resources of the various experts and specialists constantly at our fingertips, but the experts are here and available, and they will be working with us. There’ll be time for introductions later. What I’d like to start with is a summary of what we’ve got so far and what we need to know. When we’ve finished here, there’ll be actions and TIES aplenty, so make sure you grab a good spot in the queue or you’ll never make it to the Queen’s Arms before closing time.’

A polite ripple of laughter went around the room.

Banks turned to the whiteboards, one of which had a number of points listed beside colour photographs of Adrienne Munro, Laurence Hadfield and Sarah Chen. ‘On Monday,’ he went on, ‘DCI Blackstone from the West Yorkshire Homicide and Major Inquiry team brought to my attention the murder of a Leeds University student called Sarah Chen, found dead of serious head wounds in a ruined bothy in open country north of Leeds. The interesting thing about Sarah’s murder as far as we’re concerned is that she had a slip of paper in her room with Adrienne Munro’s name on it. As yet, we can make no other connection between Adrienne and Sarah, except that both were second-year university students, and both were dressed for a party or a night on the town when they were found dead in remote rural locations.

‘In a further development, as a result of information from a case DI Cabbot was working on with DC Masterson here in North Yorkshire, a Pandora charm was found by our search team in the bathroom of a house owned by Laurence Hadfield, an international financier who was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Tetchley Moor last week. Adrienne Munro was wearing a Pandora bracelet when her body was found.

‘On the instructions of DS Cabbot, the CSIs returned to make a thorough search of Hadfield’s drains and found hair samples that match Adrienne Munro’s, which would place her even more certainly at Hadfield’s house — in his bathroom — recently. I know that a hair match isn’t the most reliable form of identification, but it’ll have to be enough to be going on with. We’ll have DNA on the hair samples soon, I’m assured, as enough of them had follicles attached.

‘Pathology indicates that both Laurence Hadfield and Adrienne Munro died within a short time of each other. As yet, we don’t know the exact time of Sarah Chen’s death, since the post-mortem won’t be carried out until this afternoon. Estimates at the scene, though, indicate she had been dead about a week when she was found, which could put her in the same time bracket.

‘Last night, DC Masterson and I contacted the Exhibits Officer and checked the bracelet Adrienne had been wearing. We were able to ascertain that there was one charm missing. We then re-interviewed Colin Fairfax, Adrienne’s ex-boyfriend, who told us that he had bought her a Pandora charm for her birthday. It was quite distinctive, and expensive, a treble clef of silver encrusted with cubic zircons.

‘So we now have definite links between Sarah and Adrienne, and Adrienne and Laurence Hadfield. Also in the picture somewhere is a surgeon, Anthony Randall, a friend of Hadfield’s, who phoned the deceased three times on the day we think Hadfield disappeared. Mr Randall has offered no reasonable explanation for the frequency or content of these calls. The last one, close to eleven thirty in the evening, went through to voicemail, but Randall left no message. We think Hadfield was dead by then. But we still have no idea how he got to Tetchley Moor. When DI Cabbot and DC Masterson arrived at Hadfield’s house last Friday, they found his mobile on his study desk. According to his cleaning lady, he would normally not go anywhere without it. This also applies to Adrienne Munro, who left her mobile in her bedsit. Sarah Chen was carrying nothing on her person when her body was found, and there was no mobile in her room, though her housemates say she had one. Is everyone with me so far?’

Most of those present nodded; a few made sounds of assent. Many still looked puzzled.

‘Good,’ said Banks, ‘because it only gets more complicated. Along with Adrienne Munro’s name on the slip of paper in Sarah’s room, there was what appeared to be a mobile telephone number. It wasn’t Adrienne’s, and so far it doesn’t appear to belong to anyone else. Naturally, we’re assuming it’s a pay-as-you-go phone, a “burner”, as the American cop shows would have it. We have no idea why Adrienne would have a second mobile phone, if indeed she had, as none was found either on her person or in her bedsit. Needless to say, we need more information on this mobile.

‘Drugs are certainly a possibility. Both dead girls were known to have been at least casual users, though there is no evidence of hard drug use. Nor do our drugs squads have them on their radar. So if it is drugs, they’re relatively new to the scene. I know I said we have no evidence that Adrienne Munro was murdered, but she didn’t get into that car by herself, and there was no sign of her possessions at the scene. The phones we do have — Adrienne’s and Laurence Hadfield’s personal mobiles — have only innocuous numbers, texts and emails on them, as far as we can gather so far. Just friends and family, doctor, dentist and so on, as you’d expect. Hadfield’s phone, of course, needs extensive investigation, as it was also used for his business purposes, which could be connected with his death.

‘There is also a mysterious presence in all this known simply as “Mia”. DS Jackman talked to Sarah Chen’s housemates last night and found out that this Mia had befriended Sarah in the student pub close to the beginning of term and then disappeared from the scene completely. The same happened in the Adrienne Munro case. According to the descriptions DS Jackman elicited, we’re sure it’s the same woman. We have a sketch artist working on this, and we hope to have something ready by end of play today. Any questions?’

A stunned silence greeted Banks’s summary of the investigation, but eventually a detective from West Yorkshire shyly raised her arm.

‘Yes?’ Banks said.

‘DC Musgrave, West Yorkshire, sir. Do I understand correctly that the three deaths are linked?’

‘We have links between Sarah and Adrienne — the name and phone number — and between Adrienne and Hadfield — the Pandora charm. We have no specific link between Sarah Chen and Laurence Hadfield. We can also link Randall to Hadfield, but not to either of the girls. Yet.’

‘Has Laurence Hadfield ever been involved in the drug trade?’ someone else asked.

‘Not as far as we know,’ said Banks. ‘I realise there are too many gaps in our knowledge. That’s what I want us to work on. We can start by finding out what the phone number meant, what Anthony Randall talked about to Laurence Hadfield and what their relationship was, why Sarah Chen had Adrienne Munro’s name. We’d also like to know how the Pandora charm ended up in Hadfield’s bathroom.’

‘Do we know who wrote the note with the name and phone number?’ another West Yorkshire detective asked.

‘That’s an interesting point,’ Banks answered. ‘The short answer is no, we don’t. But we have checked, and our handwriting expert has determined through comparison that it wasn’t written by Adrienne Munro, Laurence Hadfield or Sarah Chen.’

‘Mia, perhaps?’

‘Possibly.’

‘There’s been cases of students hooking up with older men for sex and companionship in exchange for money,’ said DC Musgrave again. ‘For the older men, I mean, the sex...’

Banks smiled. ‘I think I know what you mean, DC Musgrave. Sugar daddies.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And it’s a good point. It’s a line of inquiry we’re not going to overlook, along with Hadfield’s business interests. Both girls were dressed up a bit more than your usual student, even for a Saturday night. And the dresses they were wearing weren’t cheap. Adrienne Munro concocted a story about a scholarship to explain her improved financial situation this year, but all the large recent deposits in her bank account were made in cash. Sarah Chen told her housemates she had received an insurance payout on her father’s death, along with money left to her in his will. He died over two years ago, so that seems unlikely, but we’re checking into it. There may be a very good reason for all this, and if it isn’t drug-related, it could involve sex for cash. On the other hand, neither girl had been interfered with in any way, and neither had had sex recently, according to the pathologists, though Sarah Chen’s post-mortem might tell a different story. Perhaps they’d been acting as escorts only, something of that nature. Hadfield was a wealthy businessman, so he could no doubt afford a pretty girl or two to hang on his arms if he had clients he wanted to impress, even with a hands-off embargo. Anything else?’

Nobody said anything.

‘OK,’ said Banks. ‘Check in with the incident room as often as you can. We’ll be constantly updating HOLMES. Any leads you come across, contact DCI Blackstone or me if you can get hold of us. But use your initiative. Better to get something done and moving than sit around on your arse because I was out of the station at the time. What do they say? “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.” Even from me. Now off you go. Pick up your actions on the way, and let’s see some progress before the day’s out.’

The offices Zelda worked in occupied two floors of a building on Cambridge Circus. The upper floor consisted of work spaces for the six people, though it was rare that they were all occupied at the same time, and the lower floor was given over entirely to archives and records. The decor was typical institutional drab, coats of jaundiced gloss so dense you could see your reflection on the walls. The heaters never worked properly, and the most modern elements of the space were its security system and computer software.

Through the tall sash windows she could look down on the Circus in all its glory, the crowds massing by crossings, traffic nudging and edging for advantage, horns blaring, the lumbering buses disgorging their hordes, and at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, the huge HARRY POTTER poster had been outside the Palace Theatre for as long as she had been working there. It always gave her a thrill to look out, not least because it was the Circus, and it was indelibly associated with John le Carré, one of her favourite writers, and George Smiley, one of her favourite fictional characters.

Nobody really knew what anyone else was working on. It wasn’t the kind of office where one shared confidences. Perhaps Hawkins, the supervisor, knew, but sometimes Zelda wasn’t even too sure about him; Hawkins had his own agenda as well his own office, glassed off and soundproofed, in a corner of the room. He liked to give the impression that he was an ordinary bloke, despite the public-school education (a very minor public school, he always stressed) and a first in Medieval History at Cambridge. He wore M&S suits rather than Hugo Boss or Paul Smith, and his glasses were always slipping down over his nose, giving the impression that his mind was on some abstruse problem of Byzantine military history, but he didn’t miss a trick. He wouldn’t have survived in his job as long as he had if he did.

Of course, Zelda’s job wasn’t entirely the way she had described it to Raymond or Banks, though recognising people from photos and surveillance was certainly a large part of it. The rest she couldn’t talk about, partly for reasons of secrecy and partly because it would change their ideas about her. But she had been honest in offering to help as regards Phil Keane, and she thought she could do it with minimum trouble.

‘Just going to check something in the archives,’ she said to the man she knew only as Teddy at the next desk. He nodded without looking up. She picked up a batch of photographs from her desk to carry with her. There was nothing unusual in visiting the archives. Quite often a new image recalled an old one, and it helped create a new juxtaposition that had to be checked and verified.

If one of Hawkins’s beady eyes followed her as she walked past his office, Zelda was aware of it only in passing and never gave it a second thought.

Banks marched through the double doors that linked the police station to the scientific support department and made his way down the corridor to Jazz Singh’s office. The department was mostly open plan, and such ‘offices’ as there were consisted of rows of glassed-in cubicles along the walls. Jazz’s was no exception. Banks tapped on the glass and Jazz beckoned him inside. There was hardly enough space for the two of them, but he managed to shoehorn himself into the second chair opposite her. He had to leave the door open in order to do so.

Jazz sat behind a pile of papers, which threatened to obscure her diminutive form if she slouched down in her seat in the slightest. The bookcases that lined three walls were full to overflowing with scientific texts. All around them was a sense of urgent activity, people coming and going, yet a strange hush presided over it all. Voices were muffled, footsteps inaudible.

‘One luxury I have managed to acquire since I’ve been here,’ said Jazz with a smile, ‘is an electric kettle and a teapot. Fancy a cup of lapsang?’

‘Excellent,’ said Banks.

The kettle boiled in no time and Jazz poured the water on the leaves and set the pot aside to let it steep. ‘I suppose you’ll be anxious to know the results?’ she said.

‘You’ve compared the hair samples for DNA?’

Jazz shook her head. ‘One thing at time. I’m on it. Tomorrow? OK?’

‘OK. But you’re not going to disappoint me on the sleeping pills, are you?’

‘I do hope not. And I must say, it’s a rather interesting and unexpected result.’

‘Do tell.’

‘Ever heard of methaqualone?’

Banks cast his mind back and found the word caused little reverberations in his memory, but he couldn’t quite grasp them. ‘I have,’ he said, ‘but please enlighten me.’

‘Someone of your generation might remember it better as Mandrax,’ said Jazz.

‘Enough of that my generation stuff,’ Banks protested. ‘As a matter of fact, I do remember Mandrax. It was very popular in the sixties and seventies.’

Jazz nodded. ‘It was patented in the US in 1962 and produced in tablet form. Over there it was sold under the brand name Quaalude.’

Banks nodded. ‘Ludes,’ he said. ‘Bowie mentioned them in a song on Aladdin Sane. We called them “mandies”. There were mandies and moggies, if I remember correctly.’

Jazz raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes. Mogadon. A nitrazepam. I see you do know all about sixties drugs, then?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Well, Mandrax were marketed primarily as sleeping tablets, but also as sedatives and muscle relaxants. For a time, they were thought to be a sort of wonder drug — controlled anxiety, high-blood pressure and so on. In the early days they were believed to be purely beneficial and non-addictive.’

‘They were popular with the hippies,’ Banks said.

‘Yes. Mandrax soon became a recreational drug and was found to be extremely addictive and dangerous, especially when consumed with alcohol and other drugs. It builds up quite a physical tolerance. You end up needing more for the same effect.’

‘People said it enhanced sex.’

‘Oh,’ said Jazz mischievously. ‘And did it?’

‘How would I know?’

‘You never even tried it?’

‘Once.’ Banks sighed. ‘I fell asleep.’

Jazz laughed. ‘Well, I suppose that proves it did what it said on the bottle.’

‘Right.’ Banks remembered the evening in 1971 or ’72 with Emily. One of her flatmates had given her a couple of mandies to try, and she and Banks had taken the plunge. He remembered a wonderful sensation of relaxation and how his senses seemed heightened when he and Emily touched. But beyond that it was a blank. They both awoke some hours later with stiff necks and wove their way up to bed. So much for experimenting with drugs.

‘Anyway,’ Jazz went on. ‘It was discontinued in the eighties and is now mostly manufactured in illegal drug labs around the world. Apparently, it’s big in South Africa.’

‘What about here?’

‘Not so much. I mean, it’s not one of the ones you come across regularly. In fact, this is the first time I’ve encountered it, which is probably why it took me so long to identify it. That and the fact that it’s not the only job I have on. Anyway, it’s not something you’d normally test for.’

‘So would you think it unlikely that Adrienne got it from a doctor? On prescription?’

‘I’d think it bloody impossible,’ said Jazz. ‘As far as I know the only sources are illegal, though there may be one or two corners of the world where it’s still manufactured and sold legally, but not in very large quantities, I shouldn’t imagine. No doctor in this country would prescribe it.’

‘What about dosage?’

‘It used to come in three hundred milligram tablets, but that was when it was made legally. Who knows these days? From what Dr Glendenning and I could estimate, Adrienne Munro had around three thousand milligrams in her system.’

‘Enough to cause death, then?’

‘Not necessarily. That would take somewhere up around eight thousand milligrams. But more than enough to cause coma when mixed with alcohol, which is apparently what happened.’

‘The whisky?’

‘Yes. And that’s basically how she died. The poor girl fell into a coma, and when her system reacted to the poisoning by vomiting, she was beyond waking up, even to save her own life, and she choked.’

Banks sat silently for a moment. Jazz poured the tea and he inhaled the smoky fragrance of the lapsang. She handed him a cup and he took a sip. ‘Nice,’ he said.

‘You need the occasional treat in this job.’

‘Any idea where Adrienne might have got hold of this Mandrax?’

‘You’ll have to check with your drugs squad, but I haven’t heard anything about it doing the rounds these days. It’s not the new “in” drug or anything like that. As I said, they stopped making it here years ago.’

‘So where and how would someone get hold of it?’

‘There are illegal labs all over the world — Mexico, Colombia, Belize, Peru. Even Lebanon and South Korea. Oddly enough, some of it is probably produced for fundraising purposes by combatants in the current Syrian Civil War. They do the same with heroin, opium, morphine, amphetamines, cannabis, hashish and other drugs, so why not mandies?’

‘That doesn’t really help us much, does it?’ said Banks. ‘Adrienne could have got it from anywhere. No doubt there are people around the campus with enough connections.’

There was also Laurence Hadfield’s doctor friend, Anthony Randall.

‘Sorry,’ said Jazz. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’

Banks smiled. ‘No chance. Sorry. Just thinking out loud.’

‘But why assume that Adrienne got her hands on it herself? Surely someone could have given it to her?’

‘It’s true that she wasn’t known as a drug-taker, not by anyone. Oh, she took E occasionally, but that’s all, according to everyone we’ve talked to. It seems the whole world does that.’

‘Yes, and in my discussions with Dr Glendenning he mentioned that there were no obvious signs of drug use in the post-mortem — other than the Mandrax, of course — and there were none of the tell-tale signs of methaqualone addiction, either — rotten teeth, yellowish hands, gaunt appearance, swollen abdomen. There are other things we couldn’t know about, like drowsiness, loss of appetite, unnatural sleeping patterns.’

‘Nobody we talked to mentioned any of those things in connection with Adrienne, either.’

‘So we can assume it was a one-off, not the result of an addiction.’

‘Again it comes back to suicide,’ Banks said. ‘A bright girl like Adrienne must have known the dangers of what she was doing, consuming that many pills and washing them down with Scotch.’

‘Well, then. Either you’re right about the suicide, or someone forced her to take the stuff.’

‘The doc said there were no signs of forced feeding, like bruising, or a funnel or tube or anything like that.’

‘There are other ways of forcing people to do something they don’t want,’ said Jazz. ‘Physical threats, or threats to her family, friends?’

‘I take your point. I just don’t see what happened as a reliable murder method. If you want to kill someone — especially if you dump the body in such a way that it’s found fairly quickly — would you honestly sit there and force her to take pills washed down with whisky? And why would you just happen to have enough mandies on you? Not exactly the easiest of drugs to get hold of, so you’ve given me to understand.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Jazz said. ‘At least it’s bloodless. It’s quite possible that the killer didn’t want to have to deal with the sort of bloodstains you’d get from using a knife or a blunt object. And guns aren’t that easy to get hold of.’

‘But it screams of premeditation. Say it was an angry boyfriend or someone like that, done in the heat of the moment. Wouldn’t he be far more likely to just strangle her if he didn’t want to deal with bloodstains, rather than go to all that trouble? And would he even be thinking about bloodstains if he was so angry and out of control?’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t an angry boyfriend, then,’ Jazz suggested. ‘Perhaps you’re right and it was a cold, premeditated murder. I did come across something in my research that you might also find interesting.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Remember I mentioned earlier that mandies are still popular in South Africa? One of the articles talked of a massive cache of powdered methaqualone disappearing underground there during the last days of the National Party, when apartheid ended.’

‘But that was in the early nineties,’ said Banks. ‘Over twenty years ago.’

‘That’s right.’

‘When you say “massive”...?’

‘About a ton.’

‘Bugger me! Sorry. But a ton?’

‘I agree. It is rather a lot.’

‘Enough that it might still be in use today?’

‘Possibly. If it’s being kept under the right conditions. Nobody ever found it.’

‘So we’re after a South African killer?’

‘Or someone who visited that part of the world recently.’

Laurence Hadfield, again. The Pandora charm, and now the Mandrax. Banks finished his tea. ‘Thanks, Jazz,’ he said. ‘As usual, you’ve raised more questions than you’ve answered, but I’m very grateful.’