‘Isn’t it just?’ Bailey agreed. He walked over to the tubs and bent down. When he stood up again, he was holding two tapered pieces of wood in his hand. ‘And then there’s these,’ he continued. ‘They’re what you call “bite sticks”.’
‘And what are they used for?’
‘You can match up all kinds of dogs against each other – and the promoters often do. But the true “connoisseurs” claim that there’s no fight like a fight between two Staffordshire pit-bull terriers – and Staffies have really powerful jaws.’
‘So?’
‘So sometimes one of the dogs gets its teeth deeply imbedded in the flesh of its opponent, and won’t let go. Well, there’s no “entertainment” in watching two dogs just standing there, is there – even if one of the dogs is suffering horribly. So they use the bite stick to prise his jaws apart and pull him off.’
‘How long does one of these fights go on for?’
‘Until one of the dogs is judged to be beaten. That can take hours – and I mean literally hours.’
‘And when the fight’s over?’
‘Are you sure you want all the details?’ Bailey asked.
‘Yes.’
‘It all depends on the condition of the dogs. If the winner’s not too badly injured, then he might just live to fight another day, providing, of course, that he manages to survive his injuries without any proper medical care. If he is badly injured, then he’s killed.’
‘What about the dog that loses?’
‘The very fact that he’s lost usually means he’ll never be of any use again. So they’re almost always killed.’ Bailey paused. ‘The lucky ones are shot.’
‘And the others?’ Paniatowski asked, though she didn’t really want to. ‘The ones that aren’t so lucky?’
‘Listen, you don’t really need to . . .’
‘Yes, I bloody do!’
‘If a dog loses, it’s seen as a reflection on the poor animal’s owner. He becomes a figure of ridicule to everybody else in the room. He didn’t exactly love his dog before the fight, but he absolutely hates it now. So he doesn’t just kill it – he makes it suffer for letting him down first. And he usually does that in front of all the other men who’ve been watching the fight. Sometimes he hacks it to death, sometimes he hangs it. Nobody there objects. Well, it’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it?’
‘What kind of people are these?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘They are two kinds of animals involved in a dog fight,’ Bailey said grimly. ‘There are the ones fighting in the pit and the ones sitting in the seats watching it. And it’s the spectators who are the real animals.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
The chunky security guard waited until the MGA had pulled up in front of the Ashton Court gatekeeper’s lodge, and then opened the side gate and ambled over to the car as if he had all the time in the world.
Paniatowski, drumming her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, watched his progress, and tagged him immediately as a slightly upgraded nightclub bouncer who confused swagger with intelligence.
The guard reached the car, removed his sunglasses, and leant casually against the bonnet.
‘I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ve got strict instructions that nobody’s to be admitted unless I’ve been notified in advance,’ he said, chomping down on his chewing gum. ‘In other words, sweetheart, you can’t come in.’
‘Guess again,’ Paniatowski said, holding out the search warrant and her own warrant card.
The guard gave them no more than a cursory glance. ‘Nobody’s told me about this,’ he muttered.
‘Oh, haven’t they?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Maybe that’s because they didn’t think that you needed to be consulted.’
The guard shook his head uncertainly from side to side. ‘I think we’d better wait until your boss arrives.’
‘I am the boss, you moron, as you’d have seen for yourself if you’d bothered to look at my warrant card properly.’
‘There’s no need to take that attitude,’ the guard said, tensing.
‘Look, I’m having a bad day,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘And that’s not an apology – it’s a warning. I’m going to count to ten, and if the gates aren’t open by the time I’ve finished, I’ll arrest you for obstruction, and anything else I think I might be able to make stick.’
‘Do you mind if I call through to the house, and tell Sir William you’ve arrived?’ asked the guard, much more conciliatory now.
‘Yes, I do bloody mind!’ Paniatowski exploded. ‘I want my visit to come as a complete surprise to that bastard Langley – and, if doesn’t, I’ll have your guts for garters.’
‘You really are in a bit of a bad mood, aren’t you?’ the security guard asked wonderingly.
‘So would you be, if you’d just come from where I have,’ Paniatowski told him.
As the guard walked back to the lodge – at a much more energetic pace this time – she revved her engine, and the moment the gates were open she shot forth from a racing start.
She’d knocked the mental stuffing out of the thug at the gate, she thought – but that was nothing to what she was planning to do to his boss.
Sir William Langley was in his study when he heard the sound of the car coming up the driveway towards the house – and immediately felt the taste of fear gushing into his mouth.
He was being irrational, he told himself angrily. He had six highly trained (and very expensive) guards patrolling the grounds of Ashton Court, and if the person driving the car had been thought by them to present any danger, they would never have let him get that far.
‘Calm down!’ he ordered his racing pulse and galloping heart. ‘For God’s sake, calm down!’
He looked around his study, and immediately started to feel better.
It was such a soothing room, he thought. It had so much obvious class.
His eyes swept along row after row of leather-bound books, all of them with the brown spines and golden lettering which chimed in perfectly with the rest of the colour scheme.
He let his gaze fall for a few seconds on the large oak table at far end of the study, which he had chosen instead of a desk because, he had been told, gentlemen always preferred tables.
A half-turn, and he was looking at the monumental fireplace he had bought from a derelict castle in Scotland, and the skin of a tiger in front of it, and which visitors always believed – erroneously, as it happened – had been shot by one of his ancestors.
The noise of the car’s engine had died away, and Sir William assumed that whoever the driver was, he was probably being dealt with by one of his employees. But now there was a new distraction – the sound of two people walking rapidly down the passageway.
‘I’ve told the staff, time and time again, not to run,’ Sir William thought crossly. ‘In the best houses, the servants wouldn’t run even if the whole bally building was on fire.’
The study door flew violently open, and suddenly Monika Paniatowski was in the room, with a red-faced maid at heels.
‘I . . . I told her you were busy, sir,’ the maid wailed across at him. ‘I said you weren’t seeing anybody. But she just barged past me.’
Langley frowned at the unwelcome intruder.
‘Really, this is too much, Chief Inspector,’ he said haughtily. ‘I’m all for cooperating with the authorities, but if you wished to see me, it would surely have been no more than common courtesy to ring and make an app—’
‘Shut up!’ Paniatowski said.
Sir William flushed, hardly able to believe what he’d just heard. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Paniatowski swung round to face the maid
‘Unless you want to be arrested, you’d better leave now,’ she advised.
The maid hesitated for the briefest of moments, then took her at her word – and fled.
‘This really is most unwarranted, and I shall certainly be lodging a personal complaint with your chief constable,’ Langley said.
‘Will you no
w?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘And will you be telling him about Moors’ Edge Farm, as well?’
A hint of panic entered Langley’s eyes for a second, and then was gone.
‘Moors’ Edge Farm?’ he said. ‘Where’s that?’
‘As its name suggests, it’s a farm on the edge of the moors.’
‘I assumed that to be the case, but . . .’
‘Where’s all the outrage gone?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t . . .’
‘A minute ago you were furious that I’d had the audacity to tell you to shut up. Thirty seconds ago you were threatening me with the chief constable. I’m surprised that you’ve calmed down so quickly. Or maybe I’m not. Maybe that’s what fear does to a man like you.’
‘I assure you, I’m not in the least concerned,’ Langley told her, with a creditable degree of conviction, ‘and I have no idea why you should even have mentioned this farm.’
‘I mentioned it because you own it.’
‘I most certainly do not.’
‘Not on paper,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘At least, not at first sight. It’s actually the property of United Holdings . . .’
‘Well, there you are, then. I have nothing to do with any such company.’
‘. . . which is a subsidiary of United Holdings (International), which, in turn, belongs to Enterprises Incorporated.’
How had she made the link, Langley wondered miserably. How had she – a mere policewoman – managed to wade through the acres of legal gobbledegook, navigate the scores of dummy companies set up by the best minds in the business, and arrive where she had?
‘And who owns Enterprises Incorporated?’ Paniatowski concluded triumphantly. ‘Why, you do!’
‘Perhaps you’re right, and I do own this farm of yours,’ Langley conceded. ‘But I own a great deal of property, both here and abroad, most of which I’ve never even seen.’
‘You’ve seen this,’ Paniatowski said firmly.
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Langley demanded, going onto the attack.
‘Yes – and that’s only for starters,’ Paniatowski countered.
‘But that’s outrageous! If you repeated it elsewhere, I could sue you for libel – and I would.’
‘You could sue me for slander,’ Paniatowski corrected him. ‘But only if I couldn’t prove it – and I can prove it!’
Of course she could prove it, he thought. It would take her no time at all to track down the builders and security consultants who’d done the work on Moors’ End Farm – and they would lead her directly back to him.
‘I . . . I need to sit down,’ Langley said shakily.
‘Good idea,’ Paniatowski agreed. She walked over to the expensive leather sofa and gently patted the arm with her hand. ‘This looks very comfortable – and you might as well grab a bit of comfort while you still can.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
Paniatowski stepped aside, and Langley slumped down onto the sofa.
‘Dog fighting is a sport, just like any other,’ he said weakly, now it was clear the game was up. ‘It’s been patronized by the aristocracy – and even the monarchy. The dogs enjoy it, too.’
‘Enjoy it?’ Paniatowski repeated.
‘Fighting comes naturally to them. It’s what they’re born for.’
‘It’s barbaric and it’s illegal. And you’re going to jail for it.’
Langley’s lower lip quivered. ‘I’m more than willing to pay the fine. I don’t care how much it is.’
‘You’re . . . going . . . to . . . jail,’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘The only question is, how long are you going to be inside? That will partly depend on what I say at your trial. And what I say at your trial will depend on how much you cooperate with me now.’
‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’
Paniatowski nodded. ‘Good. Begin by telling me how it all got started.’
‘I suppose it started with the hunt,’ Langley said. ‘No, it began even before that, with the Golf Club.’
‘What the bloody hell has any of that got to do with dog fighting?’ Paniatowski demanded.
‘Please, let me tell it my own way, so you can see what tremendous pressure I’ve been under,’ Langley begged.
‘So that you can make excuses for yourself as you go along, more like,’ Paniatowski thought.
But why not let him tell it his own way? If she gave him enough rope, he would probably reveal more than he’d ever have done under direct interrogation. Besides, when she explained what a grovelling wreck he’d been in open court, it would only add to his humiliation.
‘Go ahead,’ she said.
‘My difficulty has always been that some of the people who matter in this town knew me before I was rich, so they’ll never really accept me for what I’ve become – what I’ve grown into,’ Langley said. ‘Oh, they’re nice enough to me at the Golf and Country Club. They even co-opt me on to their charitable committees, if I promise to make a big enough donation. But they don’t like me. They don’t respect me.’
‘I find that very hard to believe,’ Paniatowski said.
‘And for quite some time, so did I. If I got the occasional hint of it, I managed to persuade myself that I was only imagining things. And then, one day, I overheard one of the other members, who I’d always thought of as one of my closest friends, refer to me as Bumptious Billy.’
‘Shocking!’ Paniatowski said.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Langley agreed. ‘I told myself it didn’t really matter. They were just townies – no more than jumped-up members of the bourgeoisie. My true friends, I now realized, were my country friends – the people who are the real backbone of England.’
‘The landed gentry, like yourself,’ Paniatowski suggested, and could hardly believe her eyes when Langley nodded.
‘I had been riding with the Lea Vale Hunt for some time when it was suggested to me that if I financed the new stable block I was virtually guaranteed to be elected as its next master.’
‘And, naturally, you were delighted,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Of course I was. Who wouldn’t want to be the master of the hunt. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as they were supposed to. There was a small dissident element on the committee, and while most of the members wanted to elect me as master, they were forced to accept a compromise candidate. It was a big blow, and I don’t mind admitting it – and that was when I started developing an interest in dog fighting.’
It is the day after the hunt has appointed its new master. Edward Dunston – accountant and dog-fight aficionado – is amusing himself by sitting at the bar in the Golf Club and watching Sir William Langley, all alone, at a table near the window, getting quietly and desperately drunk. And then it occurs to him that there is perhaps more to be gained out of this situation than the mere sport of observing another man’s misery – that if he plays it cunningly, he can solve one of his own little problems.
He gets up and walks over to Langley’s table.
‘Mind if I join you, Sir William?’ he asks.
Langley looks at him through bleary eyes. ‘No, I . . . sit down.’
‘I was sorry to hear that the hunt elected someone else as its master,’ Dunston says, taking the seat opposite him. ‘You must be pretty cut up about it.’
‘Not at all,’ Langley replies, unconvincingly. ‘I was the popular candidate, of course . . .’
‘Of course.’
‘. . . but I was more than willing to step aside for the good of the hunt.’
‘Bloody liar!’ Dunston thinks.
‘Well, I think the hunt’s made a big mistake and will live to regret it,’ he says aloud. ‘But you can’t entirely blame the members.’
‘You can’t?’
‘Certainly not. Ensuring that the right man’s slotted into the right job is always a tricky business, and, more often than not, people get it wrong.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘In fact, it’s
because we’re so aware of that particular difficulty that my own little group is taking so long over selecting a leader.’
‘Your own little group?’ Langley asks, with some signs of interest. ‘And what little group might that be?’
‘We’re planning to establish a dog-fighting club.’
‘But isn’t that illegal?’ Langley exclaims.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Dunston says, glancing across at the barman. ‘Yes, strictly speaking, I suppose it is illegal. But that says more about how our rights as Englishmen have been eroded than it does about anything else. Dog fighting is as much a part of the English tradition as fox hunting.’
‘I suppose it is,’ Langley says thoughtfully.
‘Anyway, we have most of the elements in place to start the club, but what we’re lacking is a master.’
‘Do dog-fighting clubs have a master?’ Langley asks.
‘Of course they do,’ Dunston lies. ‘As I said, they’re as traditional as hunts. And let me tell you, the master of a dog fight is accorded just as much respect as the master of a hunt – if not more. That’s why it’s so important to elect the right man.’ He paused for a second time. ‘Perhaps you can help us out here. Could you – with your wide range of contacts – think of anyone who might fill the role?’
‘Didn’t you find it strange that while he was asking your advice on who to appoint, Dunston couldn’t see that the solution to his problem was sitting right there opposite him?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Not really,’ Langley said dismissively. ‘The man’s a bookkeeper. He’s got a good head for figures, but he’s rather lacking in imagination. At any rate, when I proposed myself, he was delighted. He said he already had a property in mind for the venue – Moors’ Edge Farm – and that now things could finally get moving.’
‘And you bought the farm with your own money?’
‘Well, yes, as the Master, it seemed only appropriate that I should do so.’ Langley paused for a moment. ‘But you do get the point, don’t you?’
‘What point?’
‘The whole thing was Edward Dunston’s idea, so if anyone’s going to be punished for it, it should be him.’
The man was beneath contempt, Paniatowski thought.
The Ring of Death Page 24