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She gave Bryant the nod and moved away while her colleague thanked the man for his time.
She gathered all her hope to pray that Keats was calling her with the toxicology reports.
‘Stone,’ she answered.
‘Belle Vale.’
‘Another one?’
‘This one’s worse.’
‘He’s dead?’ she asked.
‘Not yet – paramedics are working on him now.’
‘Worse how?’
‘You’ll see for yourself when you get here,’ he said before ending the call.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘What the hell is fentanyl?’ Stacey asked as Penn typed it into Google.
The toxicology reports had literally just landed in his inbox. Moira at the lab had rushed it through cos she had a thing for curly hair, she’d said.
The email had distracted him from being able to prove for certain where both Rufus Fox and Curtis Jones had been at 8a.m. yesterday morning.
Rufus claimed to have arrived at the veterinary practice early to prepare for a major surgery on a Doberman. Unfortunately, none of the nurses could verify the alibi, as they hadn’t arrived until just before 9a.m.
Curtis claimed to have been out jogging until 7.45a.m. when he’d returned home to shower and prepare for work, even though his shift hadn’t started until midday. Unfortunately, Curtis didn’t use anything like a Fitbit that would have enabled them to track his route. Unable to prove them right or wrong, he was happy to pass that information back to the boss later and move on to trying to discover the origin of the drug used to kill the man.
He knew he’d heard the name fentanyl but normally in connection with American politics.
He read aloud from the screen so that Stacey was learning at the same time he was.
‘“Fentanyl’s growth from its original design as an effective surgical pain-management tool to a leading cause of overdose death has happened quickly. It’s a synthetic opioid created in laboratories in the 1960s as a potent pain reliever for very specific circumstances. It’s fifty times more potent than heroin”… Jesus,’ he said and whistled. ‘The last bit was from me.’
‘Keep reading to yourself, then give me the edited version,’ Stacey instructed.
He did as she asked and learned it was good for surgery – injectable for use in operating theatres.
He skimmed the information about it being easy to synthesise from a couple of precursor molecules available from Pakistan, India or China. But his attention was fully restored on learning it was simple to order over the dark web and easy to ship due to its potency. Very small amounts could go a long way. Just two milligrams could be fatal depending on a person’s body size, tolerance and usage. The onset of action could be as little as sixty seconds, and it had a duration of thirty to sixty minutes.
The most common drugs substituted with fentanyl were oxycodone or Xanax tablets, and a small side article informed Penn that San Francisco appeared to be drowning in the stuff.
‘Not a highly volatile compound so doesn’t turn to vapour,’ he read, meaning that although Keats had taken every precaution at the post-mortem of Eric Gould, they had all been safe.
Reading on, he could easily understand how Keats had made the mistake of presuming the man dead. The main signs of a fentanyl overdose included severe respiratory depression, extreme decrease in the level of consciousness, floppy arms and legs, inability to speak, unresponsiveness. There had been more than one reported case where the victims had been pronounced dead due to their limp bodies and almost undetectable pulse.
His thoughts turned back to Rufus Fox and Curtis Jones. A quick internet search told him that most hospitals stocked fentanyl. A further search confirmed that it was also used by most vets.
As hard as he’d tried, he was still unable to rule out Teresa’s father or her ex-boyfriend.
TWENTY-SIX
Belle Vale was the name of a road and area in Cradley, Halesowen and had once been called Cradley’s beautiful valley. Evidence of that plaudit had long since been destroyed by the foundries and forges that had replaced the many watermills along the stream that led into the River Stour.
Bryant headed past Clancey Way, a development of more than eighty homes built on the site of G. Clancey’s foundry over ten years earlier, and joined the other vehicles parked in the Corngreaves Nature Reserve car park.
