Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

Well, she still had twenty minutes to spare before boarding, and there were some shops airside. No Boots the Chemist at a small regional airport like Robin Hood, but at least there was a World News. All the essentials for the happy traveller.

Keeping an ear out for announcements, Fry browsed the small range of pharmaceutical products on offer. She picked up a packet of Lemsip and some Paracetamol, then noticed the Sudafed. She wasn’t congested, not yet. But that was the worst symptom of a bad cold, and you couldn’t be too careful.

Out of habit, she turned each packet over to read the ingredients and contra-indications. She wasn’t a hypochondriac, but if she ever had an allergic reaction, she wanted to know exactly what she was allergic to.

Her eyes were drawn to the active ingredient in Sudafed. Pseudoephedrine. That word had been bothering her since she’d gone over the chemist’s report earlier in the day. There had been traces of the chemical found at Pity Wood Farm, scattered through the outbuildings and even in the soil surrounding them.

What else had there been on the list? Hydrogen peroxide, dilute hydrochloric acid, drain cleaner, iodine, anti-freeze, rubbing alcohol. And pseudoephedrine. A lot of pseudoephedrine. There was something she was missing, a loose end nagging at her here.

The first call came over the PA system for boarding Ryanair flight FR-1969. It was time to go. Fry grimaced, irritated by another detail that she wasn’t going to be able to pin down.

Fumbling for her money, she took one last look at the ingredients on her purchases. Sudafed, Paracetamol and Lemsip. Well, that should sort out her cold, all right. In fact, you could get really high on that lot.

‘Oh, my God.’

Fry froze at the counter, causing the assistant to stare at her as if she was mad. Then Fry turned and barged aside a queue of customers in her hurry to get out of the shop. She dragged her phone out of her bag as she ran and dialled a number. It was lucky she had it on speed dial, because her fingers were shaking with urgency. She tried to steady her voice, aware of her heart pounding in her chest and her breathing ragged with the surge of excitement and fear.

DI Hitchens came on the phone just as the final call for boarding was made and the last few passengers began to trickle through the gate for Dublin.

‘Sir, it’s DS Fry. Listen — I don’t have much time. We need to get everyone clear of Pity Wood Farm immediately. Yes, all of them. I suggest we establish a safe perimeter and pull everything back. We’ve got to get them out of that place — now !’

Meth, speed, crystal, ice, glass, crank, tweak, yaba. Cooper knew it would have taken him longer than Fry to put the pieces together, but he might have managed it, given time. Everyone had heard the reports of an incident a few months ago, not many miles from here.

‘Muriatic acid, iodine tincture, hydrogen peroxide. It’s quite a list. Oh, God. And there was all that other stuff lying around,’ he said. ‘Plastic Coke bottles, tubing, aluminium foil, mason jars. There were even some coffee filters.’

DI Hitchens nodded. ‘They weren’t just rubbish, as we all thought. They were the tools of the trade. Someone has been operating a crystal meth lab at Pity Wood Farm.’

‘It must have been the first of its kind in this area.’

‘But not the last, of course,’ said Hitchens with a sigh. ‘They’re much more professional operations now. This lot at Rakedale seem as though they might just have downloaded the instructions from the internet or something. It’s a wonder they didn’t have any major accidents.’

All the officers and civilian staff who’d been at Pity Wood Farm during the last few days had been ordered to present themselves for health checks this afternoon. While Cooper waited for his turn, he read the intelligence reports that had been copied and distributed throughout the department since Fry’s conclusions had been confirmed.

And the reports made disturbing reading. He hadn’t felt ill before, but Cooper was more than ready to be sick by the time he’d finished.

Meth, speed, crystal, ice, glass, crank, tweak, yaba. Call it whatever you liked, methamphetamine was highly addictive, producing a high that could last from twelve hours to a few days. The latest assessments warned that it had the potential to rival crack cocaine as the most dangerous drug in the country.

Only this year, methamphetamine had been upgraded from a Class B substance to Class A, which meant that anyone caught dealing it could receive a life sentence, and even possession got you seven years. On the street, it was generally found as an odourless, white, bitter-tasting powder, though it could also turn up in the form of pills, capsules and large crystals. Frequently snorted, but also used orally, smoked, and injected.

Methamphetamine was being manufactured in Britain as well as imported by a Filipino criminal network. It had begun to spread throughout the UK and was thought to be available in almost every city, according to the intelligence. It was increasingly popular among clubbers, and had started to enter mainstream drug use within the last few years. Hence, a rising demand that created a lucrative industry for unscrupulous entrepreneurs with access to the right sort of location.

Cooper watched Gavin Murfin dragging his heels towards the door as he was summoned to see the doctor. He wasn’t sure what order they were being called in. Reverse alphabetical, maybe. Or the oldest first. He’d have a while to wait yet, anyway.

‘Good luck, Gavin,’ he called.

‘Yeah, thanks.’

The right sort of location. That was the heart of the matter. Cooper had speculated about the laundering of red diesel going on somewhere like Pity Wood Farm, but crystal meth production required a remote location, too. Clandestine labs were often run in rural places because noxious smells could dissipate unnoticed.

The advice said that one of the more obvious signs of a methamphetamine production lab in operation was an odour similar to that of cat urine. Well, yes — the smell had been obvious. But he’d been too stupid to think of anything apart from the presence of cats.

Cooper’s blood ran cold when he read the next paragraph. Meth labs also gave off other noxious fumes, such as phosphine gas, mercury vapours, lead, solvent fumes such as chloroform, iodine vapours and white phosphorus.

The back of his throat constricted at the thought. Cooper wondered about the fate of the forensics teams who had been digging up the yard for several days, sifting through the rubbish and searching the contents of the kitchen. He thought about Liz, and prayed she was safe.

And then there was the toxic waste. For every pound of meth manufactured, five or six pounds of toxic waste were produced, and it was usually disposed of in the yard or surrounding area. The toxic waste and fumes produced can seep into ground water as well as run off into fields. Anyone living near where meth manufacturing had occurred could suffer serious illnesses related to chemical toxicity. Chemicals permeated into the water, ground, carpeting, walls in the home, and into the air.

And the really bad news for Aaron Goodwin, the Manchester solicitor, was that once a home had been exposed to the toxic chemicals from methamphetamine production, it had to be condemned, and the clean-up costs were tremendous. Mr Goodwin would need deeper pockets than he’d imagined, if he was ever going to be able to live his rural dream, with horses in the paddock and a swimming pool in the yard.

So what about the workers? Users of methamphetamine put themselves at enough of a risk, but tweaking crystal meth was as dangerous as manufacturing it in the first place. Makeshift laboratories put their operators at risk of death or injury from explosions and the poisonous fumes produced during the cooking process.