‘It won’t be if we can prove he dealt the heroin,’ replied Brock.
‘We have witnesses and we also have his fingerprints on the hypodermic needle,’ Williams told her. ‘By the time we got all the evidence together he had disappeared before we could arrest him.’
‘Do you have any idea who Sammy was purchasing the drugs from?’ Anna asked.
‘Not yet,’ Brock admitted.
‘Have you had any sighting of Alan Rawlins over recent weeks?’
‘No, but we have some surveillance shots. Your guy was caught with him on numerous occasions.’
‘How long ago?’
Ted Brock gestured to the incident board which showed that the last sighting of Alan Rawlins was seven months ago.
‘We’ve been trying to get him identified. When DCI Williams passed on your enquiries to us and the photograph of him, we thought we’d got a major breakthrough, but that was until we knew he had also disappeared. All we’ve come up with is that Rawlins went under various names and was a known associate of Sammy.’
Williams took over, pointing out the amounts of money they had calculated Sammy was splashing out.
‘The pair of them were flush with cash.’
Anna came to stand beside Williams.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘We know that Alan Rawlins was getting big money from the sale of vintage cars, and the cash was accumulated over a long period – not necessarily from the sale of drugs.’
‘Unless he was financing Sammy.’ Ted Brock drew a red arrow between the two suspects.
Anna shook her head. ‘Not enough. Could I see the surveillance photographs, please?’
Ted Brock passed them to her and she sat with Paul thumbing through them. They were black and white and obviously taken over a quite lengthy period. There were shots of Alan Rawlins heading into Sammy’s block of flats. Another was of him standing at the dock as Sammy was taking off the tarpaulin from his speedboat. Rawlins was wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Two further pictures showed him in the passenger seat of Sammy’s Ferrari, again wearing dark glasses and the same baseball cap. They had included an enlargement of the same picture and ringed in a red felt-tipped pen was Alan Rawlins’s head. It was definitely him, Anna was certain of it. The date was two days before Mrs Flowers had said he called on her.
Anna looked up as Ted Brock listed the known hang-outs for his team to revisit and a slew of names of people that he wanted questioned again.
‘This guy Alan Rawlins could well be connected to the drug-dealing, so we spread the net.’
Anna began to feel as if the carpet was being tugged from beneath her feet. She raised her hand and Brock looked over.
‘You mind if I give a few details about the reason I’m here, because if you do trace him, I want him.’
She stood up.
‘I am here on a murder enquiry that could also involve your man Sammy Marsh.’
She spoke quickly and in brief explained her enquiry to date, describing their inability to get DNA evidence to identify if the blood belonged to Alan Rawlins or whether it was someone else who had been murdered in his London flat. The questions came thick and fast: why had she been unable to acquire the DNA to match with Rawlins, why had Tina Brooks not been arrested, and why had it taken her investigation so long to establish that Rawlins was in Cornwall and involved with Sammy Marsh? She answered every point, but found their manner antagonistic and sarcastic.
‘We have only recently discovered that Rawlins used the names of his friends, Daniel Matthews and Julian Vickers, and we also found no passport and no evidence that he had property in Cornwall. This has taken a lot of time, and we did send an email days ago asking why Sammy Marsh’s DNA wasn’t put on the national database when your force first arrested him.’
‘His mouth swab was rejected due to an administrative error,’ Ted Brock snapped.
‘What you really mean is whoever took the swab didn’t seal it or fill the form out correctly,’ Anna retorted equally sharply. ‘We have a head hair and semen stains from Alan Rawlins’s bedsheet, perhaps you might also get evidence from Sammy Marsh’s bedroom. If he is the victim we can get our Forensic Department to do a comparison. Both men were homosexual and it’s possible the two of them were partners sexually as well as financially. I don’t like the edgy feeling I am getting from all of you that insinuates my team has not been on top of our case – which began, in case you are not aware of it, as one of a reported missing person.’
‘I’d say with blood swamping the guy’s bedroom you would have an f’ing strong clue it was a murder.’
Anna was about to have another terse interaction with Ted Brock when Williams stepped in.
‘That’s enough. We’re wasting time.’
‘But for chrissakes sakes, how can that woman Tina Brooks
‘We’ve no body,’ Anna said angrily.
‘Well, we’ve got three bodies – of young teenagers. I think we have to take priority if we find this guy Alan Rawlins.’
‘If!’ Anna exclaimed, red-faced. But before she could say any more, Williams’s phone rang. It was the pilot, informing them that the helicopter was standing by and if they wanted to use it, now was the time to do so, as if the weather got any worse they wouldn’t be allowed to lift off.
Anna hurried across to speak to Paul, who had been out of the incident room for most of the arguments.
‘You take off with them. I’m going to do some work here. Nice of you to back me up!’
‘Come on! I left because I got a call from our guys. Helen’s run a check on the Chapman family and they’re clean. The husband has no record and is, as she told us, working for a shipyard. The boyfriend also has no record. The estate agents have given details of a bank deposit transfer to the Cayman Islands. The rent goes direct to the bank – it’s for two and a half thousand a month . . .’
Unseen by either of them, Williams had overheard.
‘Checking up, are you? I could have told you that. We’re trying to get more information regarding the Cayman Island deposit, but it looks like your suspect was taking flight.’ He began to hand over fleece jackets and woollen hats for the helicopter flight.
‘I won’t need them,’ Anna said. ‘I meant to tell you, I hate flying especially in a helicopter so I’ll take up your offer of a car and do some driving around here.’
Williams gave her a long steady gaze and then shrugged. ‘Up to you.’
‘How long will you be?’
‘Hour or so, so we’ll meet up back here. And maybe hang onto the fleece as it’s cold out there.’
As the Drug Squad moved out with Williams and Paul, Anna took a closer look at their incident board. She noticed Harry Took helping himself to more of the coffee and pastries.
‘Could I have you just for a second, Harry?’
‘Sure,’ he said, spitting crumbs out of his mouth as he joined her.
Anna pointed to the names of a couple of hotels. ‘Why these particular hotels?’
Harry explained that Sammy Marsh had frequented one in Falmouth known for its restaurant, and they had also traced an ex-boyfriend there, who worked as a waiter.
‘Is he still working there?’
‘I don’t know. The other one is a small hotel in the Rose peninsula area near Padstow. It’s open all year round, has mostly elderly clients and overlooks a small cove. The body of victim one was washed up there.’
‘You get anything from them?’
‘No, just that we’d missed Sammy by a few days.’
‘Do you know if Alan Rawlins ever used either of these hotels?’
‘Nope, but then we’ve only just got all the information on him.’
Anna jotted down the locations and took a seat at an empty desk to study a map of the area. She checked the time, deciding that finding the hotels would be her starting-point. Picking up the fleece jacket, she was about to head out when Harry asked if she needed him to drive.
‘No thanks, but I need the keys to the vehicle DCI Williams has arranged for me.’
Harry brought her the keys and said the car was parked outside in the station car park.
‘You take care. Some of the roads are very narrow.’
