Chimera (12 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Michael Dekker lived in one of the biggest houses that Kate had ever seen. It was beautiful; an isolated Georgian stone mansion surrounded on all four sides by carefully tended and landscaped gardens – grounds, really,
garden
was too reductive a term for something this size. Nestled at the bottom of a hollow, surrounded on all sides by steep green hills and patches of woodland, it didn’t seem like a family home at all, but more like something the National Trust might acquire. Kate almost expected to find a ticket booth and a coach car park beyond the high walls that surrounded the house.

Michael Dekker apparently lived in this enormous place alone. Was he married? Kate realised she didn’t know anything about him, apart from the fact that he was a philanthropist, whose patronage was particularly aimed at addiction charities, and that he’d had a semi-famous son who’d died young.

A woman answered the door, dressed in a smart black dress. Clearly the housekeeper, she was small, young, with sallow skin and black hair tied back in a neat ponytail. Smiling and silent, she examined Kate’s identification carefully and bobbed her head in acknowledgement before ushering Kate through the house, through a variety of enormous, beautifully furnished and appointed rooms, before showing her into a vast orangery that ran half the length of the house.

Michael Dekker was sitting in a white wickerwork chair, staring out through the windows of the orangery at the marvellous view beyond, a panoramic vista of rolling hills, forests and the glittering silver thread of a distant river running through it. Would you ever get tired of that view? Kate wondered. She doubted it. She decided to make that her first question.

“What’s that? Oh, no, not at all. Well, you can’t blame me, can you, Detective Sergeant? It’s sublime.” Dekker indicated another wickerwork chair opposite and Kate seated herself. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“I’d love a cup of tea, thanks.”

Dekker nodded and raised his eyebrows at his housekeeper, who stood waiting patiently at the entrance to the orangery. She bobbed her head again in understanding and left.

“Now, what can I do for you, DS Redman?” There was a faint hint of a South African accent in Dekker’s voice. He was a big man, barrel-chested and bald-headed, with thrusting shoulders and rather pale blue eyes.

“Well, firstly, thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Mr. Dekker. I appreciate you must be a very busy man.”

“Well, that’s true. But I hope I can help.”

Kate tore her gaze from the view with difficulty and shifted in her chair to face Dekker. “I wanted to talk to someone who knew Trixie Arlen, particularly someone who knew her back in – well, in her heyday; I suppose you could call it that. Back in the nineties.”

Dekker rubbed his chin. His pale eyes regarded Kate thoughtfully. “Well, I don’t know if I can say I knew Trixie well, DS Redman—”

“Call me Kate.”

“Very well. Kate. I have known her – I mean, I knew her for years, but I wouldn’t have said I ever knew her
well
.”

“Well, anything you might be able to tell me could help.”

There was a tinkle of china at the entrance to the orangery. The housekeeper had brought an entire tray of tea things: a silver teapot, delicate china cups and a milk jug, a sugar bowl with silver tongs. There was even a plate of expensive-looking biscuits. Again, Kate had the odd impression that she was in a National Trust tearoom, rather than a family home. Perhaps it wasn’t a family home, though. She asked Dekker if he’d lived here long.

“Oh, yes. For over twenty years now. My son grew up here.”

Dekker’s hand trembled a little as he poured the tea. Kate quickly gave her condolences.

“Thank you,” said Dekker, emotions under control again. “It’s a long time ago now but it still – catches me, I suppose you could say. A child shouldn’t die before his parents.”

“No, I agree,” said Kate, fervently. “Do you have any other children?”

“No. David was my only son. My wife died a few years ago.” Dekker passed Kate her teacup and looked around him at all the luxury and splendour. “This place is too big for me, really. I rattle around in here like a…like a bad penny.” He gave a short laugh. “I got to know Trixie through David, you know. They were an item for a short while.”

“Yes, so I understand.”

“She was a very sweet girl, you know. Very lively and vivacious. She and David were very fond of each other for a while, but it didn’t last. Perhaps those kind of relationships never do.”

“Those kind of relationships?” queried Kate.

Dekker chuckled. “‘Showbiz relationships’, I suppose you’d call them. Celebrities. David was becoming quite famous for his music when he and Trixie got together. She was the more famous one though, I suppose. At that time. Everyone knew her at that time.”

“Why did they split up?”

Dekker shrugged. “I don’t think there was any particular reason. They drifted apart, or realised they weren’t right for one another, perhaps. David never told me anything specific.”

“So there wasn’t any – animosity?” asked Kate. She’d almost finished her tea. It was so good she wondered whether she could ask for another cup.

“More tea?” asked Dekker, clearly reading her mind. “Animosity? Oh no. They remained friendly. They were friends right up until David…until David died.” Dekker’s eyes filmed over and he blinked rapidly several times. “My wife wanted Trixie to read at his funeral.”

“And did she?” Kate held out her cup for a refill.

“No. No, not in the end.” Dekker dextrously topped up Kate’s cup. “I think we both – we all thought that it wouldn’t have been a good idea after all. She was devastated by his death – Trixie was, I mean. She said she wouldn’t have been able to do it without having hysterics or something. We didn’t want to push her.”

Kate sipped her fresh tea appreciatively. “I saw you at Trixie’s funeral. Do you know her husband well?”

“No. No, not at all. I think that was the first time I’d ever spoken to him. I hadn’t really had any contact with Trixie for years, you know. I went to the funeral more out of respect for her memory than anything else. We’d pretty much lost contact over the years. It was a surprise to me to find out that she lived so close. I only realised she’d moved from London when I saw her out and about in the spring this year.”

“Did you renew your friendship?”

Dekker shook his head. “No. I think I had thoughts about looking her up and going to see her again properly, but I think – well, I decided that there wouldn’t be much point. We were never real friends, you know. We didn’t have much in common. David was the only real link between us.”

Kate nodded. “I understand. When you knew Trixie back in the nineties, did you – were you aware that she was ever involved with drugs?” Dekker’s face flickered and Kate knew that this would probably be a painful subject for him, given his son’s death but she had to ask. “I’m sorry, but it could be important.”

“That’s fine,” said Dekker heavily. “I understand. In answer, I don’t know. I don’t remember ever seeing her take drugs or even talk about them but then, that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t involved in some way.”

“Did Trixie meet her first husband after her relationship with your son ended?”

Dekker proffered the tea pot again and Kate shook her head with some regret. “Ivo Wright? Yes, Trixie and David and Ivo all knew each other. David and Ivo being musicians, they moved in the same circles. I’m not sure exactly when Trixie and Ivo became a couple but they didn’t get married until after David died, I’m pretty sure of that.”

Kate carefully placed her empty cup back on the tea tray. She thought once again of how much tragedy Trixie Arlen had experienced in her relatively short life. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that she’d turned to heroin again – if indeed she had and hadn’t had it forcibly injected. Wasn’t morphine supposed to be the most effective pain killer? Perhaps I ought to try it, she thought to herself, trying to make an internal joke but instead feeling bleaker than ever.

“Thanks very much, Mr. Dekker, you’ve been very helpful,” said Kate, as she said her goodbyes. In truth, there wasn’t much in what he’d told her but she felt sorry for him. He was clearly dreadfully lonely.

“Please do come back if you need to ask me anything else,” said Dekker, confirming Kate’s previous thought.

“I will indeed. Thank you.”

The neat little housekeeper showed Kate to the door and bobbed her head again in response to Kate’s thanks. The door shut behind her softly as Kate was halfway down the flight of steps that led to the gravelled driveway. Before she drove away, Kate stood for a moment, looking up at the beautiful façade of the house. A solitary late flower drooped on the stem of the climbing rose that garlanded the front entrance. There was a flicker of movement in one of the windows on the ground floor but the visibility was too limited for Kate to make out who it was. She got into her car and fumbled for the radio, needing to hear something cheerful. All of a sudden, she felt incredibly sad.
I need Mark, I need him to forgive me
. She turned the key in the ignition, blinking hard, and turned the car in a slow circle, leaving Michael Dekker’s beautiful, empty, melancholy house behind.

Chapter Sixteen

She was almost back in Abbeyford when her phone rang; the thing never rang when there was a convenient place to pull over. Cursing, Kate drove on until she found a lay-by and pulled the car in, grabbing for the phone just as it fell silent.

She recognised the number – it was the main number of the pathology labs. With a stab of guilt, she realised Doctor Telling had been trying to get hold of her for several days. Quickly, she redialled the number and was directed through to the doctor’s office.

“I’m so sorry for taking so long to call you back,” Kate confessed, once she’d introduced herself. “Unforgivable, Kirsten, sorry.”

Doctor Telling sounded, for her, rather terse. Kate couldn’t exactly blame her. “Yes, I really did need to speak to you quite urgently, Kate. When you didn’t call me I contacted DI Olbeck, because what I had to tell you couldn’t really wait.”

Shit. That was all Kate needed; Olbeck on her case professionally as well as socially. “I’m really, really sorry. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

Doctor Telling wasn’t being terse, Kate realised; she was worried. A little finger of apprehension poked her in the stomach. “We’ve been running some further tests on the samples of Trixie Arlen’s blood and also the drug that you found in her bedroom,” said Doctor Telling.

“Yes?” prompted Kate.

“As you know, the results of the first post mortem were inconclusive,” Doctor Telling continued. “We were waiting for the results of the more detailed toxicity tests before we could confirm the definitive cause of death. We’ve now received those results.”

“Yes,” said Kate. That sense of unease was growing.

Doctor Telling’s soft voice was not made for drama but what she said next made Kate gasp. “It wasn’t the heroin that killed her.”

“It
wasn’t
?”

“No. There were significant quantities of heroin detected in her blood but we found another chemical composition which was almost certainly the cause of death.”

“What chemical?” asked Kate, feeling suddenly cold.

Doctor Telling hesitated. “It’s unusual. So unusual that I actually had to consult a colleague who’s more of a specialist in biochemistry. He believes it’s a derivative of a legal anaesthetic called Sulatenil.”

“Right,” said Kate, none the wiser. “So what exactly are you telling me? Trixie was injecting herself with something other than heroin? Or taking heroin and this other drug as well?”

“No. Not at all. The heroin that Trixie was using had been mixed with this Sulatenil. Sulatenil causes significant respiratory depression and can cause sudden respiratory arrest in high enough doses. The proportion of Sulatenil in this batch of heroin was very high. Trixie would have died almost instantly after injecting herself.”

“I see,” said Kate. “Is it – it’s not normal to have this Sula-whatsit mixed in with a street drug then?”

Doctor Telling hesitated again. “I’m not a drugs expert, Kate. All I can advise is that I’ve never come across it before.”

“Right,” said Kate. “We’ll have to look into it. I’ve got a few people I can consult.”

“Yes, I think you should. If I might make a suggestion, I think we should also be testing the blood samples from the other overdose victims we’ve been examining this past month, to see if there’s a connection.”

“Yes. Yes, please do,” said Kate. That finger of unease had become a fist, pressing hard into her stomach. “If there’s a batch of contaminated heroin out there, then God knows how many more people might be affected.”

“Yes, I know,” said Doctor Telling. “Hence the urgency of my call.”

Kate winced, but silently. She deserved that. “Thanks so much, Kirsten,” she said, humbly. “If I heard right, you’ve already advised Mark – I mean, DI Olbeck – of this?”

“Yes, just before I spoke to you.”

That meant Anderton would know already. Kate didn’t need to call him. Her misery over Olbeck had been so acute she’d almost forgotten her meltdown over Anderton and his new woman. The remembrance caused her a little jab of pain, but that was almost immediately swept aside by the rising sense of urgency. What the hell should she do first, given this news? How many other people were out there, preparing their injections, heating the powder over a flame, drawing up the lethal liquid into the syringe? How many more had actually done so and were now lying undiscovered, cold and still? Kate actually shuddered. She thanked Doctor Telling once more, told her to call her the second they had the results from the tests they were going to run on the other victims, and then said goodbye. She thought for a moment, fighting the urge to put her head in her hands. Her heart was actually thudding. She grabbed up her phone and called Stuart, praying that he’d answer the phone.

“Kate! Hello, sweetheart, what gives? Have I forgotten lunch?”

“No, nothing like that. Stuart, you’ve taken plenty of drug awareness courses, haven’t you? I know you did undercover with a few drug rings.”

Stuart sounded amused. “Blimey, that’s going back a few years. But yeah, I did. What do you want to know?”

“When dealers cut their drugs, what do they normally use?”

The amusement had faded from Stuart’s voice. “This sounds serious.”

“It could be. Please, Stuart, I need to know. They normally use, I don’t know, icing sugar or something? I don’t know, tell me!”

“All right, all right, keep your hair on. Now, what’s this all about?”

“I can’t go into that at the moment.” Kate hated reminding Stuart that he was no longer a police officer but sometimes he needed a little refresher. “All right, specifically, would a heroin dealer cut his drugs using a really strong anaesthetic?”

There was a silence on the end of the phone. Then Stuart said, slowly, “Not usually. The dealers need to cut the smack with something that mimics it in looks and effects. Something that would be water-soluble as well. They might use something that would exacerbate the effects if they could get away with it. Then the punters would think they were getting top-quality gear and come back for more, whereas actually the dealers making even more money by watering down the actual heroin. What’s the anaesthetic?”

“I can’t remember the actual name,” Kate lied. “But we think it’s a derivative of a legal anaesthetic.”

She could hear Stuart breathing on the other end of the line. “That’s really strange, actually,” he said in a quiet tone. “Anything like that is going to be expensive. Why would you use an expensive substance to cut another expensive substance, when the whole point is to make more profit?”

“That’s what I thought,” said Kate. She wondered if Stuart could hear the faint tremor in her voice.

Stuart cleared his throat. “There have been a few cases where heroin has been contaminated with anthrax spores. Several people died last year, do you remember?”

Kate didn’t but she made an agreeing noise. “Yes, but anthrax – that would be a natural contamination, wouldn’t it? I mean, someone hasn’t deliberately introduced anthrax to a batch of heroin?”

“Oh, no, not at all. The spores might get in through the supply chain at some point but it would be accidental, not deliberate.”

“And the victims wouldn’t die – well – instantly, would they?” asked Kate. “They would get sick but it would take some time to actually die of anthrax. Is that right?”

“Oh yeah. It could take weeks.”

“So in fact, it’s nothing like what we’ve got here then,” said Kate, with an edge to her tone.

“Sorry,” said Stuart, sounding a little sheepish. “That was the only quick comparison I could come up with. Yes, you’re right, Kate. This is something different.”

“So what do you think now?”

Stuart hesitated. “I can’t say for certain but it may be that this batch of heroin going round has been deliberately contaminated with a lethal substance.”

In the silence that followed, Kate could hear Stuart’s breathing again, a little faster this time, echoed by the fast beats of her own heart. “Oh, God,” she said in a low voice.

“Yeah.”

There was another silence and then Kate roused herself from the depths of her anxiety. “Thanks, Stuart. Thanks for your help. I’ve got to go.”

“No worries. Go and do the right thing.”

“I will. And Stuart—”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t even think of leaking this to the press. I mean it. If you do, I will literally never speak to you again. Ever.”

Stuart snorted. “You need the press to be
on
this! You need to get the word out. Otherwise you’re going to be knee-deep in dead junkies before the week’s out—”

“I
mean
it. We need to work out a media campaign, you
know
that.”

Stuart relented. “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry. You’ve got my word.”

“Thanks. You’re a star,” said Kate. “I need to go now but seriously – thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Keep me posted, yeah?”

“Will do.”

After she’d said goodbye, Kate brought Olbeck’s number up in her phone. Her thumb hovered above the button, on the verge of pressing it. Then she shook her head and put it away in her bag, clipping her seatbelt back on and flooring the accelerator, leaving the layby with a thin wail of skidding tires.