Made To Be Broken (10 page)

The briefing room was heaving, even though it was only eight a.m. The airwave radio set, was on Aaron’s desk and tuned in to the local area. It was quiet. From experience I knew it would scream into life later and Aaron would hand it off to someone else to manage because he couldn’t stand the constant noise on his desk. It distracted him, made him grumpy and bad-tempered.

I was pleased to see Catherine had drafted in extra staff, though this much chatter in the room was going to stress Aaron out. He was already sitting at his desk with his earplugs in.

There were many familiar faces that I had seen in my years working over the force area, but there were also some unfamiliar ones. We had the full HOLMES 2 team setup, which included manager, receiver, reader, indexer and inputter, as well as our own intelligence unit and Evie as our analyst on a permanent basis for the length of the investigation. I imagined the new death had given Catherine cause to rise early and organise it all.

I thanked everyone for coming in early and at short notice. Aaron took out his earplugs as the noise died down. ‘As you may know, we’ve had several deaths that have been caused by digoxin toxicity.’

‘Lady Westholme, Ma’am?’

Catherine, who was standing at the side making sure her organisational skills had gone to plan, gave the interrupter at the back a glare. Whether she understood the Agatha Christie reference or not, she obviously didn’t care, though I imagined she didn’t get it. I saw her more as a literary fiction kind of reader.

I nodded my understanding and continued talking about Angela Evans and how this had exploded without warning.

‘We are working this under the operation name Veridical. We have no links between the victims so far, so I want a large part of the investigation team to work on that, to do the victim work. Find out if any of them link back to each other in any way. If they have mutual acquaintances between them. Check bank and credit card bills, locations of such, schools, jobs, subscriptions to clubs, magazines, online spaces. Speak to everyone they know and liaise with their FLOs so that you always have the support of the families as you do this. I don’t want it to look as though we are being intrusive on the victim when all we are doing is trying to hunt down a common denominator and find a killer before he finds himself any more victims to house FLOs with. If you’ve come over from another force area EMSOU, thank you. If you’re here from another division on temporary secondment, see DS Aaron Stone who will partner you up with someone and point you in the direction of Theresa, the HOLMES inputter, for actions.’

Aaron nodded as I pointed him out and a bunch of eager faces looked towards him. Ah, the uniform secondments. Usually a good bunch to have because they were always thrilled to be seconded to a homicide investigation and got on with their work really quickly and for some reason they loved to be wearing a suit to work. I think it was the novelty. Personally, I liked the days when I wore a uniform. You never had to think about what you were going to wear in a morning and never had to worry if your arse looked big in anything because it was known that it was going to look big in the awful uniform work trousers, but they were practical and robust for running about, throwing yourself about in and cleaning up in the washing machine.

‘As well as tying the victims to each other we need to progress the separate digoxin investigation. It looks as though we have a killer using digoxin as their weapon of choice and the most likely way of administering it is by product contamination. So far the victims have been spread out so we have a list of patients within Nottingham who are being prescribed digoxin and we need staff to research the names, see if any of the patients are known for violent offences, for making threats against people for any reason, and we also need staff to knock on doors, see how the patients are doing, make sure they are still taking their medication in as much as a police officer can make that kind of assessment.’

The room was silent. We had our work cut out for us.

1 month ago

The medicine was in the cupboard. Isaac thought he would move it before Connie saw it was gone. And also before she noticed them lined up and started crying again. For what they represented. The bottles of medicines that were to keep Em alive. The sole purpose of it being there in the cupboard. Chemicals in tablet format, created to keep her alive.

Failed.

Em would never take another again.

Isaac shook as he collected the bottles. Picking each bottle up delicately so as not to wake Connie, he wrapped his fingers around to dull the rattle of the residual tablets in their cool plastic casing. He pushed each bottle deep into his coat pocket and looked at the void in the cupboard where Em’s lifeline used to be.

The deep ache inside him threatened to erupt like an all-consuming monster, its claws ready to tear him apart from the inside out, his heart, emotion and tears, his lungs, the very breath torn savagely from him, the eruption leaving just the monster with no heart, no breath, nothing to care for.

The monster erupting would be angry beyond anything Isaac could imagine and vicious with it and that, he didn’t want Connie to see. He took what breath he could pull in and breathed as hard as he could and as deep as he could, into his lungs that hurt so much. He reached from his pocket, where his hand still rested, closed the door of the cupboard and took one last deep breath. The anger needed a release valve, but not at Connie’s expense. He knew what he had to do. He knew where the blame lay for this.

With another breath, much calmer and quieter now, Isaac walked out of the kitchen, picked up his car keys and headed out towards his allotment on Bessell Lane. His sanctuary.

A place he was safe and a place Connie was safe from.

The building that housed Curvet was large and bold, with clean lines and lots of glass. You could have been forgiven for thinking you were walking into a futuristic hotel, if it weren’t for the high level of security we’d had to pass through just to get through the front door. And that was as far as we’d made it so far.

This place was more secure than the police station, but with billions of pounds worth of secrets inside, it didn’t really surprise me. Up until this point I’d only ever really heard about pharmaceutical companies, yet here we were, Aaron and me, standing inside the pristine glass jar that was Curvet Pharmaceutical. The nearest company to us that produced digoxin, they were based on the outskirts of Derby. Away from other factories and workers, to keep themselves safe. There were a hell of a lot of drugs here that people would want to get their hands on. I wanted to talk to someone about their security protocols and also about any disgruntled employees they might have.

Above the reception desk hung a giant curved television screen preaching the gospel that was Curvet. What it could do for you. How it could heal you. How it supported the community it worked beside. How it was campaigning to shape the younger generation and how it was helping Third World countries with the medicines they produced. Watching their message, I could easily believe all the world’s problems could be helped by Curvet.

But, if this were true, then why were we not seeing more evidence of it? Aaron was patiently waiting for our meeting to start, not even watching the show that was being shown above the head of the well turned-out receptionist.

‘Can I get either of you a drink?’ he asked, as if reading my thoughts.

‘Thank you. I’d love a tea, green if you have it.’

‘Of course. And you, officer?’ he asked of Aaron.

‘No, thank you. Can you tell us how long we’ll be waiting?’

‘A few minutes, I’m afraid. Mr Treadway took a call before you arrived, so you might want to have a seat.’

I ushered Aaron to the leather seating and dropped into the sofa that was more comfortable than the one I had at home.

Fifteen minutes later, we were five flights up and in the largest office I have ever been in. Treadway was a slim man who took his own health seriously from the look of him. I didn’t imagine it looked good if you ran a place like this and were the unhealthiest person here. The office space took up a good quarter of the side of the building. All the glass made it feel like we were sat outside. We were in the middle of an unusual run of hot sunny days and the air conditioning felt blissful against my face as I kept my suit jacket on.

‘How can I help?’ he asked.

I let him know about the digoxin deaths and asked if there was anything in his accident at work book that would cover something like this, to which he showed suitable horror. Treadway stated he had read about people dying but hadn’t realised it could be linked to his factory.

‘We can’t say for sure that it is; we’re only making enquiries at this point. You’re the closest pharmaceutical company to Notts that manufactures digoxin so it’s only wise that we come to speak to you.’

‘Of course.’

‘Can you show us your accident at work book?’ Aaron asked. ‘To see if there are any individuals who may have a grievance against the company.’ He clarified.

‘Yes. Yes.’ He walked over to his desk and spoke into his intercom asking the person at the other end to bring it in to us. Then he came and sat back down.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Anything I can do. This is horrific. As well as the deaths being utterly appalling, you can imagine what this will do to us if it gets out that we are linked to it, so on a purely business level, we have to clear this up as fast as we can.’

Aaron grunted. I looked at him and willed him to stop. Craig Treadway smiled at him. ‘I know, it sounds callous, but we have that reputation anyway, so we may as well admit to it, embrace it and get on with it. That way we deal with it and resolve the issue.’

‘We appreciate it.’ I glared at Aaron and hoped he could contain his thoughts today. ‘What about other potential disgruntled employees, have you had to fire anyone within the timeframe we are working with?’

‘I can check, but hiring and firing isn’t something I have anything to do with, unless of course the firing is to do with a major breach that needs to be brought to my attention, and we haven’t had one of those. The same goes for accidents at work. I’m not saying we haven’t had any. We haven’t had any of the level I would get to know about, but whether there are any in the book that I wouldn’t need to be informed of, is another matter.’

Treadway made eye contact with me.

‘It’s only the serious stuff that makes it to my office I’m afraid. Which is the stuff you’d want to know anyway, I suppose?’

‘Exactly. And talking about stuff you would know about, are there any instances of drugs mistakenly being labelled incorrectly and going out as something else? Could that be something we could be looking at?’

The door opened and a young woman walked in with a large black book in her hands. Aaron reached out to take it from her. She froze and looked to Treadway.

‘It’s okay, Amy.’

She handed the book to Aaron, who started flicking through the pages. Treadway studied me a moment, considering his answer to my last question. Aaron flicking, eyes moving, but his head side on, alert to where the conversation was going.

After a moment that had yawned in front of us, the silence thundering in my ears, Treadway had compiled his answer and spoke. ‘The word mistakenly would indicate that we wouldn’t know about it if it had happened, because there would have been a mistake and not a work in progress, so, no, at this point, I’d say not.’ His gaze was steady. ‘What I will say though, because I want to help, is that we will do an inventory of all our stock and make sure all our numbers are as they should be.’

I nodded.

‘Does that sound satisfactory to you, DI Robbins?’

‘Thank you, that would be really helpful.’ Aaron carried on flicking pages. ‘So, you don’t think anyone has been fired but we can check up on it.’ I confirmed what he’d told me earlier. ‘How happy do you think your employees are, Mr Treadway? Are they likely to be disgruntled and still be at work?’

‘Ha, that’s the big question. How many places of employment can we ask that question of?’

That was a scary thought, many people hated their jobs, and passionately, which meant, inside this building, right here, right now, could be our killer.

Treadway was correct in that there had been no job losses in the time frame we were interested in. He had a very efficient HR department. There had been a retirement within the last month but the man in question had worked at the company for his entire working life. Forty-five years. It wasn’t often you found that any more. Gareth Rice had been a model employee and had retired to a cottage in Devon with his husband, Bernard. He’d worked in the offices, not on the factory floor. They’d had a good send off, from Curvet and from his family and friends as they made the move, we were told. They were a well-liked couple that spent their spare time walking. They loved the outdoors, hence their move to the coast.

We’d make a request to Devon and Cornwall to check on the couple to cover our bases, but I couldn’t see Gareth Rice as a lead we needed to spend time looking into. If Curvet had any place in this investigation, it was either with a disgruntled employee still in their employ or someone else with a grievance against them.

‘Do you get any hate mail?’ I asked of Chris, the HR woman we were now talking to, again sitting in an immaculately clean office. They must use an army of cleaners to keep this place glistening to this level.

‘Oh yes. Animal rights groups have a particular soft spot tucked away for us in the hatred box of their heart.’

‘How often do you receive mail?’

‘A couple of times a month, and it’s pretty graphic. You wouldn’t believe how graphic it is and how sordid their minds are.’ She shuddered. ‘It’s not as though we test on animals here. All we are is a production and distribution centre, but that’s still enough for some to hold us in contempt. I can’t sleep at night after reading some of the stuff they send, so I don’t know how they manage to create it.’

‘Do you still have it?’

‘Yes. We keep it all. The groups are also why this place is the fortress it is. Otherwise you wouldn’t get staff working here. They wouldn’t feel safe. Cars get attacked. It gets really scary when the groups go on a spree.’

‘And these sprees, do they happen often?’

‘Not so much now, they used to a lot more often, but it has tailed off in recent years. They like to target the places where they know the animals are, we’re more for those who can’t be bothered to travel.’

‘Anything recently?’

‘Not in the last couple of months, no.’

‘But,’ Aaron joined in, ‘as Mr Treadway already mentioned, this wouldn’t be good publicity for the company if it got out that Curvet was linked in any way to the spate of poisonings, would it?’

Chris shook her head, ponytail swishing behind her. ‘No, it wouldn’t look good for the company at all. The stocks would take a real dive.’