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Zac arrived at work early before 8 a.m. He said good morning to Mark the security guard who grunted some sort of curt greeting in return. He gave Zac an extremely unfriendly glare as he passed by. Must have been a rough night for him thought Zac. He had to admit he wouldn’t fancy working nights on security. Although he’d been at work quite late recently there was a difference between that and working through the dead of night. He sprinted up the stairs two at a time to the office area and strode along to his desk. He was one of the first to arrive. He took a photocopy of a recent research paper and wandered over to Nick’s desk and lingered perusing the assembled paperwork.
There weren’t many people around so he could linger rather longer by Nick’s desk. The data he’d put on Nick’s desk last week had gone. He looked under the desk, there was nothing on the floor. The cleaners weren’t allowed to wipe or dust the desks so it couldn’t have been them who had moved the papers. Then Zac’s eyes fixed on the baseball hat, that definitely had not been there on Friday. It looked very like the one Nick was wearing on the night of the assault. Well, that was double proof then, Nick had somehow managed to get into work at the weekend and retrieve his data. So Nick was now definitely on to him. It might be time to escalate his plan.
**
At 9 a.m. Nick was still soundly asleep. Polly had been into the bedroom to speak to him but he was still dead to the world, the tranquillisers still working their magic. Polly was quietly relieved. As long as Nick was asleep she was getting a break. It was only delaying the inevitable but she just needed some respite. She’d phoned her parents who’d been shocked at the latest developments. They were both still working so it was difficult for them to come straight over but her mother said that if things still seemed no better when Nick awoke she would try to arrange some time off work and drive over to Polly that evening. She hated to burden her parents but she was in such a fragile state with the assault last week and now these psychotic episodes had occurred. Her mother told her to keep texting to update them. She was glad she’d phoned them, just hearing her mother’s voice had given her a bit of comfort. She made herself a coffee and after a quick shower crept into the bedroom to collect her clean clothes, hoping that she didn’t wake Nick.
**
Detective Sergeant Andy Walters was at work at the usual time eagerly awaiting a call from the IT expert responsible for the library services. He made a start on tackling his backlog of paperwork from last week but it was difficult to concentrate. He knew that it might be late in the day or not even today when he got some information. Constantly checking the time was making the morning progress more slowly. He looked at the incident log for the weekend. There had been another couple of drugs arrests in the town centre. This time outside a different nightclub, but it was the same drug, angel dust. The samples had been sent for analysis to see whether they could establish they were from the same batch seized the other night. It was now more than likely that a new dealer had started a business in Persford and it now seemed that Wayne Roberts had been right, a drug factory had been set up right here.
**
Brett positively bounced into work on Monday morning. He’d not felt so happy and contented for a long time. He stopped by Piers office just to say thanks again for the barbecue at the weekend and how much he’d enjoyed it.
‘Well, glad you enjoyed it,’ said Piers, ‘couldn’t help noticing you spent quite a lot of time with our neighbour Annabelle,’ and he beamed at Brett.
Brett actually felt himself blushing slightly.
‘Oh, yes, well we just had a little chat, she’s a lovely lady,’ he added appearing rather flustered. He rubbed his hand over his hair, which was a sign he was feeling rather embarrassed.
‘She is indeed a lovely person, her bastard of a husband treated her very badly but she’s over that now, I hope. It knocked her confidence for a while but I’m glad she agreed to come along. Do you think you might see her again?’
‘Well, actually she’d invited me to a social event with colleagues from her firm of solicitors, in a couple of weeks,’ replied Brett.
‘Well, that’s great. Now, are we getting that press release prepared on compound 896 then?’
‘Yes, it’s coming along, obviously, we need to know the results of a couple of studies first but Bob seems to have it all under control.’
‘Excellent, fingers crossed and all that. I’m sure if we can release some good news on another compound it will make the share price fly and that’s good news for all of us!’
‘Of course, fingers crossed, as you say.’
‘OK, thanks for dropping by and give my regards to Annabelle when you next speak to her.’
‘Certainly will,’ replied Brett, taking his cue to leave and heading back to his own office.
**
At around 11 a.m., Polly heard some movement in the bedroom and went in to speak to Nick. She’d phoned work and explained that she couldn’t come in at least for the morning as Nick had been ill in the night, and seemed to have relapsed somewhat from his recovery. They were understanding and said that she must take all day off if she felt she needed to be with him.
‘Oh, morning Nick, would you like some tea?’
‘Yes, tea, that would be great, I feel so awful and groggy,’ replied Nick, flopping back onto the pillows and holding his head.
‘You weren’t very well in the night, do you remember anything?’
‘Bits of it but it’s very blurry and confusing. I remember feeling as if I was looking down on things, not really here. It was terrifying, like an out of body experience. I’ve never had anything like that before.’
‘No and I’ve never seen you like that before,’ added Polly sitting down on the bed holding Nick’s hand. ‘It was so frightening, I had to phone the doctor. He had to give you those sleeping tablets, you were so distressed.’
‘Well I just feel tired now, I’m back in the real world, I just feel sedated,’ and he yawned.
‘I’ll get you some tea, then. Anything to eat?’
‘No not at the moment, I feel a bit sick actually. I can smell sick in here as well.’
‘That’s from the carpet, you were sick all over it. I’ve done my best and will have another go at it but we may have to get it professionally cleaned. But it doesn’t matter, you couldn’t help being ill,’ and she patted his hand and went off to make the tea.
Nick lay back in bed thinking about Sunday evening and the visit to BioQex with Mark which Polly knew nothing about. Was it possible that he’d inhaled or absorbed some of that PCP? That would explain the incident at night, he certainly felt very unusual. Perhaps that combined with the painkillers he’d washed down had affected his system really badly. Once he was feeling a bit more awake he was going to contact the police. He needed to get his head in order otherwise he wasn’t going to be able to explain it coherently. If he was spaced out they’d most likely think he was the drug user.
After returning by taxi last evening he’d had time to examine the data sheets and they fitted for PCP exactly. They were in an envelope in the wardrobe along with a summary of the synthesis he’d written down from his research and other details. The samples were in an old shoe box on the shelf in the wardrobe. He was going to phone the police and tell them he knew who the illicit chemist was, he had a full package of evidence. Zac, you are going down for a long time for this he thought.
**
Andy Walters had consumed multiple cups of coffee to help him work through his tedious paperwork. The effect of the coffee and waiting for the phone call was making him extremely jittery. At about 11.30 a.m. his phone rang showing an unknown number. He snatched at it and answered.
‘Oh, hello, this is Clive Alnwick, I’m the IT manager responsible for Persford library, you spoke to my colleague Jim Barford last week.’
‘Mr Alnwick, hello, DS Andy Walters. Thanks for getting back to me.’
‘Well I’ve been able to spend some time on your request and I’ve some news for you.’
‘That’s great, thank you,’ Andy was so excited he could hardly speak. He was twirling a pen round and round to try to combat the stress.
‘We’ve found some searches related to street drugs and PCP in particular that started about two weeks ago. Until then in the last three months there was hardly any activity related to this subject, well one isolated case, but as I said starting two weeks ago and then on a couple of subsequent occasions there were several periods of time, I mean blocks of an hour or more spent searching for sites which look like syntheses of PCP, phencyclidine.’
Andy was silently cheering, thank you, thank you, he was offering to the heavens. This was it, the breakthrough they wanted. His hunch had been right all along. The chemist had used the terminals in the library thinking it conferred anonymity.
‘Thank you so much for your efforts in this, any chance we know the name of the person searching?’ asked Andy eagerly.
‘I was just about to say, only one library account was used for all the searches, in the name of Nick Thomas, address Flat 5, Marlowe Court, Edge End Road, Persford.’
Andy scribbled the name and address down furiously.
‘Thank you so much, Mr Alnwick, this helps enormously, thank you, thank you,’
‘Happy to help, anything else just give me a call, you got my direct number?’
‘Yes, it’s here on my phone, bye for now and thank you!’
Andy punched the air with excitement. He rushed off to speak to the Superintendent simultaneously phoning the drug squad. This was better than he could have hoped for. They needed to speak to Mr Thomas as a matter of urgency. They also needed to get a warrant and sniffer dogs arranged. This piece of information could not be underestimated.
