and formaldehyde. I first saw it in Amsterdam. Now it’s widely used everywhere.”
She tilted the bottle and discharged two drops of fluid onto the scraping.
We waited.
“No reaction,” said Eileen. “Good.”
She pulled out another small bottle, this one not from the cool storage. “This is a Mandelin reagent.” She did the same as before by placing two drops on the scraping.
This time the reagents rapidly turned dirty orangey-brown.
“Just as I thought,” Eileen said. “It’s Ketamine.”
Beadsworth nodded. He understood.
“What’s Ketamine?” I said, looking around. I didn’t want to sound stupid but I had to ask.
She said, “Ketamine is an anaesthetic used primarily by veterinarians. It’s a central nervous system depressant. Taken in higher doses Ketamine causes hallucinations and delirium. Numbness in the extremities is also common. So when you said the drug is supposed to numb, right away I thought of Ketamine, but I wasn’t sure. In liquid form it can be injected into the muscle and the effect can usually be felt within four minutes. If swallowed, the effects come from ten to twenty minutes, but only in higher concentrations. So it would be more viable to keep it in liquid form. Lets look at the second tablet.”
She placed more scrapings on a clean ceramic tile and again discharged two drops of the Marquis reagent. The reaction was green.
She looked at us with one raised eyebrow. “The color dyes of the tablets are an indicator of what’s in them. This contains caffeine and Ketamine. Caffeine being the prominent substance in the tablet.”
“Caffeine?” I said. “The stuff in coffee?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Caffeine is a stimulant.”
“I get it,” I said, as if I had just discovered the cure for cancer. “Ketamine knocks you out and caffeine brings you back in.”
“In simple terms, yes.”
I smiled at Beadsworth.
Eileen said, “Now for the last tablet. I can already tell you what’s in it.” She performed the same procedure using the Marquis and the reaction was blackish brown. “This tablet contains many substances, with Ketamine being the primary. My guess, the secondary substances would be caffeine and methamphetamines. These tests that I have performed only indicate the most prominent substance in the tablets. The Marquis test was made specifically for Ecstasy. So if there
“Uh?” I said.
“The most accurate drug testing method available. It will tell us accurately what substances are in the tablets and how much.”
Beadsworth touched his beard as if in deep thought. “What I don’t understand is, this isn’t something new or innovative.”
“That’s what I thought too. We’ve had hundreds of pills or tablets that contain these kinds of ingredients. I’ve even had pills brought in that are sold as Ecstasy with just caffeine, sugar, and flu medications in them.”
“A perfect cure for the common cold,” I laughed. But neither of them laughed back.
“The only way it could be unique is if the delivery is as fast as it states,” she said.
“But you said that is not possible,” Beadsworth said.
“That’s right.” She pulled out the form Beadsworth had submitted. She adjusted her glasses and then glanced over it, reading it again. “I can’t see this doing what it says. It’s like any other tablet out there.”
Beadsworth nodded and his eyes narrowed in contemplation.
Eileen said, “I’ll provide you with a Certificate of Analyst when I thoroughly process the tablets.”
We thanked her and left.
The sign, BUBBLE T SHOP, had just been placed out in the front. From inside Martin stared out to the street across. He had leased the shop for six months. The plan was to set up several Nex labs all over Toronto. Instead of one large manufacturing plant, they would have several mini labs.
The costs were large, of course, but the logic was that if one lab got raided the others would keep up production. With a product like Nex the costs were nothing compared to the profits. All that was needed was demand. Once demand was established, supply was no problem.
Martin was on the phone now. The cops standing across the street had made him a little edgy. Many things made him edgy.
For one, he was now unsure if the desired Nex could actually be produced. He was, in fact, becoming unsure of the whole scheme. There were too many factors he could not avoid. One: how potent Nex could be. Two: whether they could be the sole providers of Nex when it came out. Others would make generic versions of it. Three: whether Ms. Zee could handle such a massive operation. But how could he complain, with the kind of money he was being offered? Lawyers are a dime a dozen and this was good money.
He shut the phone and closed his eyes. He had been arguing with Ms. Zee about moving the store elsewhere. The cops were too close. Their focus was on the building across the way, but in the end it’d divert to them. He’d advised they relocate as soon as possible. But Ms. Zee thought otherwise. The cops would not look under their noses. They were expecting Nex to be produced in a large building, not underneath a retail store.
Then Martin thought of their informant in the police force.
Driving back from DAS I was excited. This was just another regular, made-in-the-basement type of drug. Aldrich was getting all worked up about nothing. I turned to Beadsworth but saw that he didn’t share my enthusiasm.
“Cheer up,” I said. “This isn’t as bad as we thought, is it?”
Beadsworth didn’t answer.
I tapped the steering wheel with my fingers. “We can cruise through this investigation,” I said. I was looking forward to wrapping this case up. I was also looking forward to Aldrich’s commitment that once we had completed this investigation I would be transferred to the intelligence unit. I would fit in nicely in the intelligence unit.
I smiled, the widest smile possible.
“This isn’t right,” I heard Beadsworth say.
His comments snapped me out of my happy thoughts. “How is it not right?” I said.
“This could mean many things,” he started. “One, this is a decoy. Provide us with different versions of the drug, hoping that we will get off track. Two, the desired drug has already been produced.”
I thought about it and it kind of made sense.
I hadn’t known Beadsworth long enough, but now I could count on him to ruin my happiness.
ELEVEN
Next morning I was ready to leave the house when I got a call from Ronald Garnett.
“Rupert, I’m going to tag along with you,” he said. This wasn’t a request, it was an order. “Pick me up from headquarters.”
I was ready to make some excuse, like I was taking the subway, but thought against it.
“Yes, sir,” was all I could say.
