A Question of Pedigree

by Frank Edwards

  Despite the pressure of time, despite the need to get at Royston, Grant was drawn to the action in the ring. He became, inexplicably, violently partisan on Trevor’s behalf. ‘Why is it always thus?’ he asked himself as the drama began. ‘I’m always pro Oxford, yet never seen a boat race, and hardly ever visited the town. Silly!’ Yet, drawn he was. Not so drawn, however, as not to get his first question in and strive to listen to what was said in reply. He trusted Simon Yale to listen with greater care. After all, he was inured to this stuff by his experiences under his father’s wing.

  “Tell me, Mr Haig, about Mr Graveney. You seem to know of his death. I’ll not hide anything. He was killed. Here. This morning. By, we feel sure, someone in the Hall, among the entrants. There could be a link, we suspect, with his work for you. What did he write, how often did he write, and what effect do you think his articles had? That’ll do for starters”, and he turned his eyes, if not his entire attention, to the eager Gyp, straining now on the collar held by the equally athletic Trevor Haig, both looking fixedly ahead. Yale, too, was watching the pair. This was the one event he had always enjoyed in his father’s showing days. Could do so, for his Dad never entered.

  “Labradors are too clever for this game, Simon,” he used to say. “They think the course an avoidable nuisance. Different thing getting round obstacles when looking for a fallen duck.”

  Simon’s opinion then, never expressed to his revered pater, was that in truth Labradors were just too lazy. Too self-centred. Lovely things, and they liked crashing about and splashing through water. If getting to a shot bird was the price to pay for another hippopotamus-like wallow, they accepted it. There would be a warm hearth to lie on when they got back home, though that, also, had its price in a quite unnecessary rubbing down and dowsing off of all that lovely mud.

  “Plenty of mud that stuck,” was the unbeknown follow-up answer that Haig gave, as all three saw the two contestants set off. Conversation was then suspended. Grant hardly heard the remark. The dog was away. At a pace. A near demonic pace. Internally driven, externally controlled. The dog was as alert to his master as the master was to the challenges as each came up at a rush. Over the fence, make the first correct turn, through the tunnel, up the first seesaw ramp and STOP! There, on the down-swung side, feet just clear of the red penalty area. Then on, another fence – Grant began to be confused at the sequence of turns, stops and starts, and realised why the owners had walked and waved as they had – through the hoop, up the ladder, along the box, down again, jump again, turn again, over again, with a slalom to add to the eye-spinning course, and two exhilarated beings arrived at full gallop to the finishing line. Royston was beside himself.

  “Did you see that?” he unnecessarily asked. “Did you? They’ve got something to beat, they have. Good boy! Good dog!”

  Grant feared that his questions had been lost, and that the interview would end before starting, as the proud father raced off to congratulate his son, but Haig was made of more dutiful stuff. He came back to the point.

  “As I say, Inspector. Some mud stuck.”

  “It was mud, then, that he wrote?” Haig looked at Simon.

  “Now then! No aspersions. Ours is a good mag. No. What I meant was that, with all his experience, and there wasn’t much he hadn’t come across after all his years in the game, and with the jobs and committees he’s been associated with, well, he wrote with knowledge. From a positive personal viewpoint you might say. Didn’t pull his punches. Wrote it as he saw it.”

  “Been a contributor for long? Always used the same pseudonym?” Grant asked.

  “With us for about ten years. Called himself ‘Varro’. Some ancient geezer who wrote eighty odd books. Only one and a bit remain. ‘Seems par for a journalist’ he would laugh. Ambrose used to make most editions. Not much recently. Some. He gave the issue a bit of ginger. Not everybody liked that. Not at all.”

  Grant looked for Yale to continue.

  “Were his comments usually personal? Or more general in nature?”

  “Usually he wrote about the general view. Whether he thought the Kennel Club was lax with its registration policy, for instance. Or if he thought one of the Shows in particular was badly organised in some way. Below par, as he would put it. He didn’t hide his disgust at some of the facilities, and he was no great friend of the way some judges went about their business either.”

  This was not what Grant wanted to hear. He had, by now, guessed most of that.

  “I’m concerned with more personal attacks he may have made. Criticisms of individuals and their doings. Pointing to a particular malpractice for instance. That sort of article.”

  “Was he on to scams, Royyo?” put in Wiseton. “Had he got sniff of something in the wind today, do you think?”

  “Anything in mind?” Haig was defensive. Grant pursued the point.

  “Something about this show, today, could be of importance. We haven’t seen any of his articles, and we can’t get at them that fast. If someone he attacked or accused is here then maybe that’s the one we want to talk to. Fast.”

  “If only to eliminate him from our enquiries,” put in Yale.

  “Or her.” Grant had Mrs Goldey in mind.

  “Precisely.”

  “Could as well be a her,” agreed Haig. “Touchy things some of these women. Quick to take offence, if you get my meaning.”

  “Be sure someone’s got Ambrose’s meaning about something,” chimed in Brian, keen to bolster his and Janice’s motive theory. “Still a bit taken aback, myself. I never knew he had it in him. Pleasant old cove he always seemed to be. Strict on the rules, mind, I know that.”

  “He could be right bitchy,” was Royston’s reply. “Not, I don’t mind admitting, that it bothered us much. As I say, added a bit of ginger, a bit of spice, to the mag. Specially in a dullish month. You should have read them, should read, ‘cos I can get you his back numbers if you want. If it’s important as you say. Read ‘em, ‘cos they are pretty biting at times.”

  “Any like that recently?” Yale pressed. Haig gave some thought to this.

  “He wasn’t keen on this idea of putting up pretend dogs from shows. Like what Anna Goldey’s doing. All too much of a sham, he wrote. Yes. Quite sharp he was there, and that wasn’t long ago. Well, couldn’t have been. He didn’t know about the plan until not long before this Show. Now I remember. It’s coming back to me. I was a bit surprised when he sent the piece in. Thought he’d hung his pen up instead of someone out to dry,” and he laughed at his own clever turn of phrase.

  Grant rewarded him with an acknowledging smile. “Anyone else? Anyone, as Wiseton suggests, who was onto some other fiddle or, in Graveney’s eyes, illegal action? Anyone?”

  Again a pause. A littler longer. More profound in its accompanying sighs.

  “’Spose as it was printed there’s no harm in the telling. In the public domain as they say. Yes. That was it. I was the more surprised at getting the anti-Goldey piece for we’d had another from him not that long before. I really did think that would be his last and that he’d retired from writing. Not that we asked him to. Not that he said, either. Just that he had stopped. But this TV and film dogs thing got his goat, so to speak, and so did this other thing. The earlier one.”

  “Which was?” Yale pressed in support of his chief.

  “Something to do with overseas competitors. Something he reckoned was fishy. Honest, can’t remember exactly. We get articles all the time. Don’t expect to keep them in mind long after we’ve gone to press. Yet there was this earlier one. I say earlier, but not long before the Goldey one. So could be to do with this Show. Hey! Yes! Brian’s your man! I do recall now. To do with ETTs. Something about bastardising the breed or some such. Brian could tell you.”

  Brian put on his ‘alert’ face.

  “If he’d read the article,” commented Grant. The face fell. “Pity he isn’t one of your subscribers.”

  “We’ve got a promotion going at the moment,” put in salesman
Haig. “Good deal. Maybe you’d like to make him a present of our six-month introductory offer at special Show rates. A ‘thank you’ for finding me. Might bring him into the fold for ever.”

  “Might,” said Brian, “now there’s no chance of Ambrose attacking me.”

  “It wasn’t all attacks. He was good, I tell you. Knew a lot. Got to the meat of things.”

  “Reading or not, I can guess what he might have been on about,” the ex-Corporal took up the lead. “Mini Manchesters. Foreigners bringing them in all the time. He didn’t like that, being a proper ETT man. Could well be that. But who? You can’t remember any name?”

  Royston demonstrated a set of facial gymnastics to show that he was doing his best, but had to admit defeat.

  “To be honest, Bri, I can’t even remember for sure. Foreigners, yes. I’m certain of that, but which ones escape me.”

  The two policemen, aided by their sidekick, did their best to dig out something, anything, more, but as the tensions and the noise in the ring before them steadily reached a climax, and as Royston Haig was desperate to see if Trevor’s Gyp’s fast first round would win the day, they realised that for the moment they had hit a dead end. Knowing that Haig was going no further than back to his stand, and also that the clock was anything but going backwards, Grant gave a hardly-heard thanks to the mag man as that proud father bent all attention to the last dog about to run. As Dad was joined by his son, biting lips and nails in equal intensity, Grant, though now drawn himself to the tense final stages of the agility competition, with reluctance but clear as to the necessity, led his small party away.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Saturday, getting on for 3.30pm

  Three minds churning, working on three separate aspects of what they had managed to gather from Haig. Chief Superintendent Grant, despite his desire to see normal service, standard procedure, established felt, somewhat to his surprise, that he was less anxious than he had been whether a CID team would or would not arrive. The smell of the chase was in his nostrils. With little firm foundation for it, he found himself growing in confidence that he, they, could crack this case before one arrived. If it ever did! His mood swung on the instant. This, as he dared the dangerous game of self-analysis, he put down to an elixir of tensions. First, the case itself was getting to him. There they were, in the presence of the killer, and as hamstrung as any bobby hunting a chance assassin. Second, the show atmosphere. He was inspired by the concentrated application of competing dogs. Two stimuli that were sending an unbidden, yet surging, optimism through his veins. Surely, there was something Haig had let drop that could put him on his way? Before the day ended? Once the dog owners had departed, the hope of finding Graveney’s killer quickly would have gone out of the door with them. This he was increasingly determined to prevent.

  Yale, meanwhile, was trying to tie together loose ends. No more, as yet, than unconnected impressions. Such as Brian’s speculation about the champagne and the congratulations card taken together with the Anna Goldey story as reported to him by Ms Gibbons, and what he had gathered from the morning interviews. There was, they had, something, somewhere, in common. Something he had seen, or heard, or been told. Dammit! What he needed was a quiet few minutes to read over Anna’s notes, supposing she hadn’t edited them!

  For Brian, two things worried him. First was that niggling recollection of something – he couldn’t quite say ‘odd’, yet striking – he had noted on the way in from the car park that morning. Other than his barked shins. The second was the news of the other article Ambrose had written. The one about Toy Manchesters. Royyo had seemed certain about that. This raised a personal concern. His friend X3 fitted that category. The breed of dog and an overseas entrant although, he consoled himself, not showing today. That cheered him. Whatever it was had been behind the article, in view of the dramatic outcome, it had been concerned with this show.

  Manager Trott, too, was in contemplative mood. No good manager, whatever the pressure, should fail to find time to re-assess the ongoing position. This he was now doing as, under another sort of pressure, the two girls in the office were printing and duplicating the short statement that Grant had left with him. They made it clear they were being exploited. He made clear it was a burden he shared with them. ‘But duty, duty must be done; The rule applies to everyone’ he almost sang in his best Gilbert and Sullivan voice. Simon would have joined in with gusto. In practice, Trott used his most cajoling tone. Even the dictatorial powers he possessed were not infinite. The task well in hand, and the keepers of the gate cum broadsheet deliverers briefed and, annoyingly, already in the office hindering more than helping the final stages of production, Trott contemplated. He gazed out over the satisfying crowds.

  Things were not out of hand. The Superintendent had been correct. There was little sign of the murder news gaining widespread circulation. No sign of panic, or of morbid interest in the police goings-on. Thanks to his actions in large part, and the well-led loyalty of his staff. The fine banners of his designing waved over the, surely, yet another record attendance, all handled without a major complaint of any sort so far. He looked at them, billowing out proudly as the body heat rose, with pleasure. They played a good part in atmosphering – he liked the sound of that word – the milling masses. Now was the time for another construct. To keep the people happy, and to make them linger longer. Often, whether a show had been a success or not depended on how readily the stallholders signed up for next year’s gathering. That was down to profit. Profit came from buyers. The longer punters stayed the more they spent. Holding the fly-ball semis and final at the end of the afternoon contributed well to this. He could be proud of having helped engineer that arrangement. People liked fly-ball. They had seen it on telly. Had Althea Gibbons gone? Could he get her team to stay and film it? Surely they would do that? Certain to if he were to ask them. Unless, a sad thought, she had rushed off to get the police story onto the screen. He must check on that without delay. He was, if nothing else, a hands-on manager.

  Before leaving his office to catch, if possible, the TV crew, he paid a last morale-boosting visit to the office. Girls and boys were in cahoots. All would be done and in place by quarter to. ‘Not to worry, guv.’ ‘Guv’ did worry, but avoided showing it in the presence of junior staff. With a word of grateful encouragement, and internal relief, he left Grant’s task to them. Then, as he was about to set off to hunt the Gibbons woman, another splendid idea struck him. Keeping the people here meant keeping the people interested. Grant’s missive gave him the inspiration. Manager Trott went towards his PA microphone and prepared, in a clear and authoritative voice, to address his clientele.

  As they closed on the benches, of which by now Yale was heartily weary, his eyes scanned them for sight of Janice Mulholland. On top of all his other, maybe, indiscretions, what if she had upped sticks and driven off? He had told her not to, but what if? Had he been too friendly there? She could have leaned over from the one row to the other as easily, more easily, than most. Why? To jab Ambrose in the neck? Not only was that near enough inconceivable, but they now reckoned the killer had struck outside. Yet she, like others, had been there or there-abouts when the syringe went in. Was she in her place? He was much relieved to see that she was. He didn’t want to spend the next six months suspended, full pay or not, while under investigation by the police complaints department or whatever. He had a career to get on with. He hoped. In Fraud.

  Nearing the lines of still-stuck dogs and their owners Grant stopped, turned aside taking Yale by the arm, and letting Wiseton go on ahead. He spoke to Simon as one re-visiting an idea.

  “I said you should look at this business from the point of view of the Fraud Squad. Had any more thoughts along those lines? This champagne Charlie act would fit nicely into your world of corporate greed.”

  Simon had, off and on, since the Super had floated the idea, played with the conceit of treating a murder in this way, if only to remind himself of where his future lay. He recalled his traini
ng.

  “Some. The fundamental problem is that we have, most of us, a low-level awareness of how widespread fraud is. How it works through the system. A lot of the time we take a relaxed attitude to it.”

  “Like Wiseton. He didn’t seem too put out that whoever it was came ready to celebrate might have been on the fiddle. Took it as how the cookie crumbles, as the Yanks used to say in my young days.”

  Yale was sure that they did.

  “We are told over and over again, in Fraud, that awareness of fraud is often at its lowest in one’s own workplace. This is one, for dog breeders. To compound lack of awareness, despite the money and the time they give to it, most of them are amateurs. At best, small time. Largely a hobby. While only too happy to gossip and hint at fiddles and biases, they themselves are not involved and would not talk about any of it to outsiders. They’d close ranks if we tried to press them. Last thing they want is to be known for accusing a colleague of being a fraudster or a judge a cheat.”

  “A wall of silence? Though it might directly affect them?”

  “Something like that.”

  “How do we crack it? How can we bring the walls of Jericho tumbling down? Got a magic trumpet about you?”

  “I’d be so lucky! Main trouble is that, however hard the dog world authorities try, it’s just about impossible to create and enforce regulations which are infallible whilst, at the same time, allowing for the light, friendly touch. To break down the wall, as you put it, we need greater awareness of the possibility of fraud, as well as better reporting.”

  “Aha! Let’s go through your notes again, then. We should have time now. Then chase up anyone who shows any knowledge of what Ambrose Graveney may have campaigned against. He doesn’t seem to have been shy of coming forward with accusations.”

  “He was an exception. It’ll be hard to get anyone to deliver the dirt on a colleague. Even if it’s no more than agreeing with Ambrose. Not because they are involved themselves, as I say. Just don’t want to be. This ties in with another feature of a fraud case. In a workplace, if the fiddler is a senior – for senior, in this setting, say long-time show chum – there is still less willingness to blow the whistle. Couldn’t see Haig and Wiseton ‘telling’ on each other, could you?”