‘What about the photographs, the surveillance? If you knew he was up to his old tricks and from the photographs out in the open . . .’
‘First off he moved from selling the skunk himself to using his heavies for dealing, collecting payment for him, breaking a few arms and issuing threats if the punters didn’t pay up for their bag of shit. To be honest, with the government changing its mind two years ago and upping cannabis from Class C to B it looks like he decided to switch.’
‘Switch?’
‘Prison sentences for Class B are longer. Maybe he decided he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb so he started dealing Cat A drugs – heroin, cocaine and crack. He was under covert surveillance because the Drug Squad wanted to discover who the supplier was, and who was backing him financially because he didn’t just focus on this area, he was moving from coast to coast. He also bought this.’
Out came a photograph of a high-powered speedboat. And again it was passed to Anna and then Paul.
‘Paid for in cash from a local boat-builder, but the little bastard disappeared. That’s still moored and no one has been near it.’
The waitress cleared Paul’s soup bowl and returned with their main order. They remained silent until she left them to eat, saying in an expressionless voice, ‘Enjoy your dinner.’
Anna was really hungry and tucked in straight away. Williams topped up their wine again and carved up his steak.
‘This is delicious.’ Anna grinned.
‘Good food – that’s why we use this place. Come high season though, it’s packed with families and a load of screaming kids.’
For a while they were silent as they concentrated on eating before Anna said to Williams that she was a little bit confused. It appeared that the Drug Squad still did not have the names of the contacts that Sammy was now using to score the Category A drugs, but had decided to arrest him regardless.
Williams nodded and suggested they finish their meals before he showed them the reason.
‘I don’t think either Paul or I are squeamish enough to be put off our food, especially not after having only a sandwich on the train,’ Anna offered.
Williams forked a large mouthful of steak into his mouth before yet again delving into his briefcase. He took out a brown manila envelope and opened it.
‘Reported missing by her mother late last summer. She was washed up on the rocks aged sixteen – heroin overdose.’
Anna looked at the mortuary shot of the dead girl. Her wet hair plastered to her bloated face, her body covered in wounds from the jagged rocks. She passed it to Paul. However, Williams hadn’t finished. He followed it with a second photograph of an equally young girl, her body found in a rented caravan. It was a heroin overdose and the needle still protruded from her arm.
‘She doesn’t look as if she was a regular user. She’s not underweight and I don’t see many track marks. She was fifteen years old.’
Williams produced yet another mortuary photograph of a young boy. His naked body showed the white skin on his buttocks and genitals, but the rest of his skin was a deep brown.
‘Seventeen year old. All of them were here in Cornwall for the holidays. The boy worked the deckchairs on the beach. None of them were residents, but had been introduced to heroin whilst they were here. Nor did any of them have any previous drug-related arrests. They were simply kids from good families who became embroiled in the beach traffic scoring drugs.’
‘Did you get direct evidence linking any of these victims to Sammy Marsh?’
‘Just the first girl. She was in the photograph I showed you with the two other bikini-clad girls hanging around Sammy’s jeep. Drug Squad joined forces with me and we did a lot of the legwork identifying them all. It was decided to pick up Sammy before he could sell any more of the gear, and he must have got wind of it because he disappeared.’
‘But what evidence did the Drug Squad have that these kids scored from him?’
‘We made an arrest of a young guy working at a bar. He’d ended up in hospital suffering from an overdose, but he survived, and we were able to get the remainder of the wrap he had bought. It was heroin, but it had been mixed with Christ only knows what. There were traces of ketamine and morphine, and it was very high quality and lethal, especially to someone who had never used before, so the first fix could kill.’
‘So he gave up Sammy’s name?’ Paul asked. Unlike Anna he had found that the photographs of the victims had turned his stomach. He had hardly touched his food.
‘Eventually he did, after a lot of persuasion as he was scared rigid that he would get beaten up by the heavies. Especially one bastard, Errol Dante, who acted like an enforcer.’
‘We interviewed him,’ Anna said sharply.
‘Well, he did a runner before we could nab him, but apparently he’d stolen drugs from Sammy and . . .’
‘Moved in with his girlfriend. He was dealing on the estate in Brixton where he lived and got busted for that. He and his girlfriend think that someone tipped off the London Drug Squad.’
‘That would be Sammy, yet Errol is still refusing to give us any assistance,’ Williams said grimly.
‘Nor to help us,’ Anna added.
‘I’d say he was scared Sammy would cut off his legs.’ Williams replaced the photographs and ate some more of his steak before he continued.
‘We have a statement from a woman who lived in a caravan next to where Errol stayed with his girlfriend. She called the local police because of the row that was going on inside the caravan, saying she was certain she’d heard a gunshot. By the time they arrived, the place had been totally trashed, windows broken and every stick of furniture smashed. She was able to identify Errol Dante as the one living in the caravan and she described Sammy. She said he was first outside the trailer, banging on the door and screaming, then he eventually kicked the door open and went inside. She said he was hysterical and his face was twisted as if he was having some kind of fit, eyes bulging and so agitated that it looked as if he was frothing at the mouth.’
‘How long after that did Sammy disappear?’
‘Few days. He was sighted a couple of times, but then nothing. We know Errol went back to London, but all we had on him was that he’d trashed a caravan owned by Sammy. Previously he had been sleeping on Sammy’s floor in his flat – at least, that’s what we were told.’
He replaced the statement into the envelope and once again closed his briefcase. He finished his steak and glanced at Paul’s half-eaten sea-food platter.
‘Something wrong with that?’
‘No, but the soup was very filling.’
Williams laughed and could see that Anna had now taken some bread and was cleaning around her plate with it.
‘You want a dessert?’ Williams asked, but they both declined.
Williams insisted he drive them back to their B&B in his unmarked patrol car when they left the pub. He had also insisted he pay for dinner. It was ten o’clock and Anna felt that although they had by now learned a lot of details about Sammy Marsh, they had no leads to Alan Rawlins. In fact, she felt that they had hardly touched on the reason why she and Paul were in Cornwall.
‘I know it’s late,’ she said to Williams, ‘but would you mind talking to me a bit more, maybe have coffee somewhere? It’s just that we’ve been allocated so little time here and I don’t want to waste it.’
Williams agreed to take them to the station, where he claimed the coffee was acceptable as the team had all clubbed together to get an espresso machine. As he drove he went into great lengths about the coffee machine, which could also make cappuccinos. Paul was in the back of the car with Williams’s seat pressed so far back there was no leg room on one side, leaving him hunched against the passenger side. Unlike Anna, he felt exhausted. Thankfully it was not too long a drive.
The station was situated in a residential area, close to the railway station. As they pulled up, the car park was empty and it seemed to be very quiet. Even though it was dark, Anna could see that the building looked rather modern, but quite small in comparison to the station she had come from back in London.
Once inside, the station was as Harry Took had described, very empty apart from a couple of officers. The local uniformed police were located on the first floor, the Drug Squad were in a different building, and although the
