‘Remember Colin Day?’
She referred to a local case – her first in Cumbria – when a man who controlled the narrative in local government and media turned out to be a money-laundering, people-trafficking murderer.
‘Big Pharma is a thousand times more powerful than him. And they have way more money,’ she said.
Kelly had seen the amounts of cash flowing through Colin Day’s bank accounts and she shuddered to think of how amulti-billion-pound corporation could skew a narrative across media platforms. A seed had been planted in her mind, and she couldn’t ignore it.
‘Have you got any evidence?’ he asked her.
She shook her head.
‘I guess we’ll know more once I perform the postmortem tomorrow.’
Kelly nodded.
She resumed the documentary.
‘Let’s finish this episode,’ Ted said.
They fell silent as the murderer on screen closed in on his victim from a reconstruction. In hindsight, it was always so easy to warn a woman in danger to avoid certain hazards, particular pitfalls and lapses of judgement, but the whole point of programmes like this was to strike fear into women, not make society stop killing them. In Kelly’s head, it wasn’t the woman who walked alone, or took a risk, or failed to predict danger in her life who was at fault; it was those around her who failed to do anything about it.
Chapter 15
At 2 a.m. Kelly couldn’t sleep. She’d shared almost a bottle of malbec with Ted and the true crime programme whirred in her mind as if she was on some kind of macabre roller coaster heading straight for doom. She’d ridden on plenty of funfair rides in her youth, and some more recently with Johnny at the fair in Kendal when they’d taken Lizzie. They’d shot pellets to win a fluffy penguin, they’d hooked plastic ducks to win a goldfish, which still swam in its bowl in the kitchen. And they’d taken Lizzie on the teacups, a ride so slow and tame that Kelly and Johnny had laughed at the absurdity. The throw-your-head-back laughs that people allow themselves when they exist in a moment of time and forget their worries.
She’d tried to turn over her pillow to the cool side. She’d sipped water and been to the loo. Nothing worked. The images of dead people remained steadfastly inside her brain. Stubborn like a nasty stain.
Eventually she gave up and her wide eyes stared at the curtains, where a tiny crack allowed the moon to taunt her further. She threw the covers off and reached for her phone. The blue light hurt her eyes so she switched to dark mode.
The information (little of it trustworthy or verified) that could be raked up in an internet search was chillingly bewildering to a police officer like Kelly. In the short years spanning her career, since starting out in Bethnal Green nick in 2006, she’d seen a beast emerge that was now uncontainable.
But it had its advantages.
She googled Jamie Robbins and settled in for the read.
Like so many people who underestimated the horrors of global connections, Jamie Robbins’ life was easy to find.
Jamie’s professional profile at Hampton-Dent had been updated to acknowledge his passing, but there was nothing about his cause of death. Nothing about suicide or accident, or homicide.Died 15 July, 2025.It was final and brutal. If Wiki said it then there was no going back.
Jamie Robbins had been raised in UK care homes. His was a rags-to-riches story. One of those feel-good memoirs to teach the younger generation not to scrounge. ‘If he can do it, anyone can!’ Jamie was the young Richard Branson of wellbeing. His game was supplements. His name was attached to some of the most famous food substitutes on the market and his personal wealth was valued at seventeen million pounds. Not bad for a twenty-nine-year-old orphan from the wrong side of the tracks. As she dug further, she got sidetracked with peripheral data. Paul Burlington, his partner, for example, was twenty-eight years old, and had a similar upbringing. The two young hotshots had been taken on by Hampton-Dent via their internship for kids from underprivileged backgrounds. Kelly raised a weary and cynical eye at the forced philanthropy of these big companies. Instead, she wondered what the company received in return, what control they held over these gifted kids who came from nothing.
The answer was always money.
Profit, growth, control.
Powerful people could get anything they wanted.
Her wider search of Hampton-Dent threw up more fascination for Kelly as somebody who never mixed in such circles. She’d only seen it, like most people, from afar, when they announced a scientific breakthrough, or a huge philanthropic vaccine programme for some developing country.
Hampton-Dent had been founded after the Wall Street Crash by two savvy New Yorkers who’d bet on the crash and made a killing. Waldo Dent inherited from his father and so a billionairewas born. The current CEO was his great-granddaughter, Tilda Dent, and Kelly examined her photo. It reminded her of those niche graduation books where the subject sat slightly to the side and attempted their best smile. Except if they turned out to be serial killers, then their college profile pictures turned out to be unusual, moody, or disagreeable in some way. Tilda’s was an image of a classic homecoming queen, as Kelly imagined one. Big smile, excellent skin, and blonde shiny hair. She looked the picture of American wealth and status.
She found Hank Hampton’s bio elsewhere on the website. The Hamptons had bought out Whalley Holdings in 1958 and they’d merged with the Dents in 1971. The company owned 10 per cent of the world’s food suppliers and 15 per cent of farmland in the USA, as well as 12 per cent of the pharmaceutical industry.
Jamie Robbins had some power behind him and it begged the question why such a huge corporation would choose a small Lake District setting like Rydal Water for a conference attended by two of their most senior executives.
Then Kelly googledYouthBlastand a brightly coloured image of a plastic sachet filled her screen; above it was the FairGro logo. It was clever marketing. It looked fresh, vibrant and youthful. She wondered how much the design and marketing team had been paid for coming up with it. As a brand it gained permission to trade last year. The FDA in the USA and the Food Standards Agency in the UK passed the supplement for general consumption eight months ago. But she couldn’t find any testing in the public domain previous to 2023.
There was an article on the benefits of the supplement written by Doctor Sandy Cooper. There were few links beyond that.
