them out of that place —
28
Meth, speed, crystal, ice, glass, crank, tweak, yaba. Cooper knew it would have taken him longer than Fry to put the pieces together, but he might have managed it, given time. Everyone had heard the reports of an incident a few months ago, not many miles from here.
‘Muriatic acid, iodine tincture, hydrogen peroxide. It’s quite a list. Oh, God. And there was all that other stuff lying around,’ he said. ‘Plastic Coke bottles, tubing, aluminium foil, mason jars. There were even some coffee filters.’
DI Hitchens nodded. ‘They weren’t just rubbish, as we all thought. They were the tools of the trade. Someone has been operating a crystal meth lab at Pity Wood Farm.’
‘It must have been the first of its kind in this area.’
‘But not the last, of course,’ said Hitchens with a sigh. ‘They’re much more professional operations now. This lot at Rakedale seem as though they might just have downloaded the instructions from the internet or something. It’s a wonder they didn’t have any major accidents.’
All the officers and civilian staff who’d been at Pity Wood Farm during the last few days had been ordered to present themselves for health checks this afternoon. While Cooper waited for his turn, he read the intelligence reports that had been copied and distributed throughout the department since Fry’s conclusions had been confirmed.
And the reports made disturbing reading. He hadn’t felt ill before, but Cooper was more than ready to be sick by the time he’d finished.
Meth, speed, crystal, ice, glass, crank, tweak, yaba. Call it whatever you liked, methamphetamine was highly addictive, producing a high that could last from twelve hours to a few days. The latest assessments warned that it had the potential to rival crack cocaine as the most dangerous drug in the country.
Only this year, methamphetamine had been upgraded from a Class B substance to Class A, which meant that anyone caught dealing it could receive a life sentence, and even possession got you seven years. On the street, it was generally found as an odourless, white, bitter-tasting powder, though it could also turn up in the form of pills, capsules and large crystals. Frequently snorted, but also used orally, smoked, and injected.
Methamphetamine was being manufactured in Britain as well as imported by a Filipino criminal network. It had begun to spread throughout the UK and was thought to be available in almost every city, according to the intelligence. It was increasingly popular among clubbers, and had started to enter mainstream drug use within the last few years. Hence, a rising demand that created a lucrative industry for unscrupulous entrepreneurs with access to the right sort of location.
Cooper watched Gavin Murfin dragging his heels towards the door as he was summoned to see the doctor. He wasn’t sure what order they were being called in. Reverse alphabetical, maybe. Or the oldest first. He’d have a while to wait yet, anyway.
‘Good luck, Gavin,’ he called.
‘Yeah, thanks.’
The right sort of location. That was the heart of the matter. Cooper had speculated about the laundering of red diesel going on somewhere like Pity Wood Farm, but crystal meth production required a remote location, too. Clandestine labs were often run in rural places because noxious smells could dissipate unnoticed.
The advice said that one of the more obvious signs of a methamphetamine production lab in operation was an odour similar to that of cat urine. Well, yes — the smell had been obvious. But he’d been too stupid to think of anything apart from the presence of cats.
Cooper’s blood ran cold when he read the next paragraph. Meth labs also gave off other noxious fumes, such as phosphine gas, mercury vapours, lead, solvent fumes such as chloroform, iodine vapours and white phosphorus.
The back of his throat constricted at the thought. Cooper wondered about the fate of the forensics teams who had been digging up the yard for several days, sifting through the rubbish and searching the contents of the kitchen. He thought about Liz, and prayed she was safe.
And then there was the toxic waste. For every pound of meth manufactured, five or six pounds of toxic waste were produced, and it was usually disposed of in the yard or surrounding area. The toxic waste and fumes produced can seep into ground water as well as run off into fields. Anyone living near where meth manufacturing had occurred could suffer serious illnesses related to chemical toxicity. Chemicals permeated into the water, ground, carpeting, walls in the home, and into the air.
And the really bad news for Aaron Goodwin, the Manchester solicitor, was that once a home had been exposed to the toxic chemicals from methamphetamine production, it had to be condemned, and the clean-up costs were tremendous. Mr Goodwin would need deeper pockets than he’d imagined, if he was ever going to be able to live his rural dream, with horses in the paddock and a swimming pool in the yard.
So what about the workers? Users of methamphetamine put themselves at enough of a risk, but tweaking crystal meth was as dangerous as manufacturing it in the first place. Makeshift laboratories put their operators at risk of death or injury from explosions and the poisonous fumes produced during the cooking process.
The list of ingredients was totally horrifying. The chemicals used to make methamphetamine included iodine, drain cleaner, paint thinner, battery acid, anti-freeze, and cat litter. Some of those substances were akin to nerve agents. And not forgetting one of the vital elements in the recipe — pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient from several over-the-counter cold remedies.
Today, specialists were being sent in to Pity Wood Farm wearing protective clothing and breathing apparatus. Officers in white coveralls, green gloves and overshoes, carrying oxygen tanks had replaced the SOCOs and the anthropology team, not to mention the CID officers protected by nothing more than a pair of latex gloves. Warnings had been set up that the site was extremely hazardous. Exposure to some of the volatile toxic chemicals that had been found could have carcinogenic effects.
And DI Hitchens was right — like everything else, the instructions for methamphetamine production were readily available on the internet.
The meth factory at Pity Wood had already closed before the drug had been re-classified to a Class A substance. Not that the threat of a life sentence was much of a deterrent to the people who ran meth factories. They relied on not getting caught, and the amount of money they could make justified the risks — especially as the risk was mostly to other people, ignorant workers who just did as they were told. And, of course, they hadn’t been caught. Not yet.
Cooper looked up and saw Hitchens pacing the room. Instead of retreating to his own office, the DI was fretting about every member of his team who might have been exposed to risk.
‘The women buried at Pity Wood Farm, sir?’ said Cooper. ‘Nadezda Halak, and the other woman who died — how might they fit into the scenario?’
‘If their bodies had been found sooner, Ben, toxicology might have established whether they were crystal meth users. But at the moment, we can’t say one way or the other.’
‘They were most likely working there, don’t you think? Producing the methamphetamine.’
‘Slave labour of some kind, yes. The gangs who run these operations are ruthless.’
‘Are we talking about the same people who shot Tom Farnham, do you think, sir?’ asked Cooper.
‘Well, Ben, when these people have a dispute they don’t go to court. They have their own ways of sorting things out.’
Cooper turned to the last page of the intelligence bulletin, which was headed ‘Common Side Effects’. Again, his brain could hardly take them all in. Diarrhoea, nausea, loss of appetite, insomnia, tremors, irritability, weight loss, depression. The list was endless. Why would you risk doing all these different kinds of damage to your body? An overdose could cause brain damage, hallucinations, paranoia, kidney damage and something called formication, described as the sensation of your flesh crawling with insects.
But Cooper’s eyes were drawn to the most peculiar symptom of chronic methamphetamine use of them all. The report referred to a dry mouth, excessive thirst triggering frequent consumption of high-sugar drinks, tooth
