Requiem for a Dealer

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Well?’

  It was getting to be a long time since Billy Mills had looked like the cutting edge of criminal investigation. He was the wrong side of middle age, he was rotund, and when he got down and dirty with a bit of almost invisible evidence, sometimes he had trouble getting up again. But he was very good at his job.

  He shrugged heavy shoulders. ‘It all looked pretty normal to me. There were no obvious signs of tampering.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there were,’ said Deacon shortly. ‘If someone had drugged her food he wouldn’t want her to notice while she was preparing it.’

  ‘Still, she wouldn’t know what to look for, and I do. If someone was messing around in her cupboards he had a good tidy-up afterwards.’

  Disappointed, Deacon nodded. ‘OK, Billy, thanks. I suppose Forensics might turn something up?’

  SOCO wasn’t a big a fan of the Forensic Science department. He considered that they took a lot of the credit that rightly belonged to him. ‘You never know your luck,’ he said doubtfully.

  Chapter Eight

  Sunday morning was the sun at the centre of the Farrell family system, the fixed point around which everything else revolved. Working hours, meal-times, shopping and housework – all these were moveable feasts which could be made to fit in with one another according to shifting priorities. But Sunday morning was when Paddy Farrell went riding, and hell hath no fury like a six-year-old girl deprived of her weekly fix of ponies.

  Sometimes Brodie took her, sometimes John and his new wife Julia did. This weekend the John Farrells were visiting Julia’s parents, so Brodie pulled Appletree Farm duty. It was no hardship to her. Admittedly, she spent some of the hour-long lesson with her hands over her eyes, and about once a month she had to spread a blanket over the seats before heading home because the child had fallen off in a puddle. But set against that was the heart-choking pleasure of watching the person who mattered most to her in the world doing the thing that mattered most to her in the world.

  Paddy on top of a pony, bouncing round inexpertly and hanging onto the mane with both hands, was the human equivalent of the Cheshire cat – a smile wearing a child. Brodie felt privileged to be part of that. If her business ever took such a dive that it couldn’t fund the weekly riding lesson she would reinvent it as a knocking-shop. Luckily enough she wouldn’t even need a new shingle: that discreet slate beside the front door with the legend Looking For Something?would serve her just as well in her new career.

  So Sunday morning came and, as with every Sunday, Paddy was ready for her eleven o’clock lesson by nine-thirty and sitting on the stairs in the hall with her hard hat on by ten. It was a fifteen-minute drive to Cheyne Warren – twenty if they bought ice creams on the way. But by twenty-past ten Brodie could feel her child’s longing like a magnet pulling her towards the front door. She gave in with a sigh, left what she was doing and headed out to the car, Paddy cavorting joyfully around her like a springer spaniel.

  Which is how they came to be at Appletree Farm while Dieter Townes was still getting his ponies ready.

  Brodie had met him before, when she first went to enquire about lessons, and had exchanged a wave with him across the yard on a number of occasions since. But she hadn’t sat and chatted to him while he brushed mud off half a dozen ponies of assorted sizes, colours and degrees of shagginess, and she found herself enjoying his company.

  At ease in his natural habitat, freed of the need to impress a new customer, he seemed younger than she remembered: a couple of years her junior, she guessed, maybe thirty or thirty-one. He was as tall as her, strongly built and athletic, the muscles of his arms prominent where he pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up out of his way. It served to remind her that his was a very physical job: not just riding horses but working with them eight or ten hours a day. Brodie had gone to pick up a bale of hay once, for Paddy to use as a mounting block. She’d been surprised at the weight of the thing. Even the child-sized saddle she used was heavier than seemed necessary, and an uncooperative Shetland pony is stronger than the strongest man. It all helped keep him in shape.

  A shocked little quiver ran through Brodie when she caught herself thinking that. But what the hell: a person’s thoughts are her own, she has nothing to apologise for unless she acts on them when she shouldn’t. And all she was doing, and all she intended to do, was sit on a bench chatting to the man while he worked, and occasionally passing him a tool from his extensive and arcane collection.

  ‘Can I have the hoof-pick next?’ He had a pleasant, even-tempered voice, without any inflection that would hint at his background. ‘Er – that’s the curry-comb.’

  Brodie tried again, came up with a sweat-scraper. In an agony of embarrassment, Paddy reached into the box on the bench beside her and passed her the required item.

  ‘I suppose you were born knowing this stuff,’ said Brodie.

  ‘Not really,’ said Townes. ‘My father was a soldier, my mother’s a teacher. Neither of them had any interest in horses. I don’t know where I got the idea from but I always knew I wanted to ride. Like Paddy.’ He smiled at the little girl, who blushed with pleasure. ‘By the time I was twelve I knew I wanted to do this for a living.’

  ‘How long have you had this place?’

  ‘About four years. Before that I worked in other people’s yards.’

  ‘Teaching?’

  ‘Teaching, grooming, schooling, competing – anything I got the chance to do. The scary thing about horses is not how big they are or how fast they can travel: it’s how much there is to learn about them. How easy it is to do the wrong thing. How much it can matter.’

  It wasn’t that she wanted further information on Alison Barker, more that she was enjoying talking to him. Even though she was committed elsewhere, Brodie didn’t begrudge herself a little pleasant conversation with an attractive man. Deacon was many things, some of them quite admirable, but he was nobody’s idea of a conversationalist. ‘Someone was telling me much the same thing the other day. They’d been having all sorts of problems transporting their horses.’

  Townes nodded. ‘Body-brush, please. No, that’s the dandy-brush. That’s the water-brush. That’s the curry-comb again.’ Finally he got what he was waiting for. ‘Everybody has a horror story about travelling. Trailers coming unhitched. Horses going through the floor. Horses having panic attacks and kicking the box to pieces. You just have to remember how many horses travel how many miles in any given year, which puts it in perspective.’

  ‘They almost lost their business over it,’ said Brodie, still chatting for its own sake. ‘People started thinking they were jinxed.’

  ‘You’re talking about Barker & Walbrook.’ Townes released the feathered fetlock he was holding and straightened up. ‘Who were you speaking to?’ He wasn’t closing the subject. He was just smart enough to know that if she had an agenda he needed to know what was on it before he answered any more of her questions.

  ‘I met Alison Barker the other day,’ Brodie said, which was true if somewhat disingenuous. ‘She seems to have had a terrible time. And she blames the transport firm.’

  ‘I know she does,’ said Townes quietly. ‘Like you say, she’s had a terrible time. She may not be the best judge of whose fault it was.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Brodie, nodding agreeably. ‘You know Alison, then?’

  ‘Sure. This is a small world: we all enter the same competitions. I saw Alison at all the shows, until her horses had to go.’

  ‘That must have been a wrench.’

  It was in his eyes as he looked at her that he thought she had no idea, that she was just making sympathetic noises. ‘Of course it was a wrench. They might be worth money – well, some of them are – but they’re not just possessions. They’re people. They’re people that you’ve worked closely with, that you’ve taught and learned from, that you’ve trusted your life to. If the point comes that you can’t afford to feed them you have to sell them, and you know that you’ve no further say i
n what happens to them for the rest of their lives. You hope you’ve found them a good home, but you can’t know how long they’ll be there or where they’ll go next. You hope their next owners will understand that it isn’t badness but an atavistic fear that makes them behave stupidly sometimes.’

  Brodie wasn’t really an animal person. She’d never had a dog. Deacon had a cat called Dempsey that was the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, that expected food but had no truck with stroking, making it less a pet than a garbage disposal unit. These ponies were probably the animals she’d got closest to, and she remained deeply wary of them. But there was one thing she had noticed about animals: often they brought out the best in people. Men of Dieter Townes’ age, young men with their way to make in the world, aren’t famous for acknowledging responsibilities beyond what the law and the needs of their immediate family place on them. But clearly he had an emotional investment in his animals that went beyond expecting a fair day’s work for a fair day’s oats. He respected them and wanted to do right by them.

  ‘My ex wrote me a reference that said pretty much the same thing,’ she murmured, straight-faced.

  The joke redeemed her in Townes’ eyes. He grinned. ‘Then all you need is a vet’s certificate and we’ll take you to the sales.’

  If Alison Barker felt the same way about her horses that Dieter Townes did about his, selling them must have been the last resort, after every other option had failed. She had to feel bitter. Bitter enough to want to hurt the man she blamed. But perhaps also bitter enough to blame someone who was not in fact responsible. Brodie was still on the fence.

  ‘What about Windham Transport?’ she asked. ‘Had Alison a point, do you think?’

  Townes shrugged. ‘I’ve never used them myself so I can’t really comment.’

  ‘It’s a small world,’ she reminded him. ‘What’s the feeling in the business? Are they to be trusted?’

  He’d gone back to his brushing. But he stopped again for a moment to regard her over the piebald apple-shaped bottom of Paddy’s favourite pony. ‘Apart from Alison, I’ve never heard anyone say they aren’t. Yes, they’ve had problems. Anyone in that line of work has. Hell, anyone who works with horses has. I don’t think Windham’s have had any more problems than any comparable firm. Barker & Walbrook were just unlucky to keep drawing the short stick.’

  ‘So if you had to hire a carrier,’ Brodie pressed him, ‘you’d be happy enough using Windham?’

  ‘Yes. He’s experienced, he’s local, and as far as I know his overall track record is good enough. I know he’s careful who he employs, and that counts for a lot when it comes to handling horses.’

  Brodie was curious. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I asked him for a job once. He didn’t think I knew enough.’ Again the easy grin. ‘Can’t fault him for that.’

  ‘Bet you’d get the job now,’ said Brodie supportively.

  ‘I’d like to think so. But actually, I pretty much like the one I’ve got.’

  In another few minutes the ponies were clean and saddled, and half a dozen children, from Paddy’s age to around eleven, were springing or struggling on top. Brodie stood at the rail and watched them trotting round the sand school, and tried not to look away when Paddy and the piebald Ursula essayed their first jump.

  Brodie and Deacon went out for supper the following evening. By then he had results from Forensics that backed up Billy Mills’ gut instinct. There were no traces of Scram in any of the food samples taken from the house where Alison was staying. He was ready to dismiss Alison as a hysteric, and in no way persuaded to do otherwise by Daniel being inclined to believe her version of events.

  Brodie was used to sitting on the fence between them. Sometimes it was a nice bit of post-and-rail, and sometimes it was barbed wire.

  ‘There’s no physical evidence to support anything she says,’ said Deacon. ‘All these things that she says have happened – I just don’t believe somebody’s trying to wipe out her family, and he’s so good at it we can’t find any trace of him even when we look.’

  ‘What about Windham?’ asked Brodie. ‘Was he abroad again this week?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he was,’ said Deacon. ‘Which doesn’t actually prove much, one way or the other. If someone did sprinkle pixie-dust on Alison Barker’s food, it didn’t have to be the same day she became ill. It could have been days earlier. Depending on what food was involved, it could have been weeks.’

  She eyed him impishly. ‘So it is just about possible.’

  He glared at her. ‘It’s possible. So is winning the lottery – every couple of weeks somebody beats odds of fourteen million to one. I can’t spend time and public money investigating fourteen million potential crimes in the hope of catching one criminal.’

  Brodie considered. ‘Could Alison be right about what’s happening and wrong about who’s doing it?’

  ‘Whoever’s doing it left nothing for us to find in her kitchen. And these days, with modern forensic techniques, that’s an achievement in itself. We used to say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but these days it almost is.’

  ‘Then how did the Scram get into her bloodstream?’

  ‘The same way it gets into everybody’s,’ he shrugged. ‘She bought some tabs and took them. She just isn’t admitting it.’

  ‘Why not? What does she have to gain by lying? Or what does she think she has to gain?’

  Deacon pondered. ‘One of two things; possibly both of them. She’s blowing a smoke screen, possibly to protect herself, possibly to protect her supplier. She doesn’t have to prove she was poisoned, only create a reasonable suspicion in people’s minds that she might have been. If she took those tablets willingly she committed a criminal offence, which I can hold over her until she sees the wisdom of letting her dealer take the rap. But if she insists they were slipped into her food or drink, she’s a victim until I can prove otherwise. Come to think about it, it’s not a bad defence.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘That she’s still trying to make trouble for Windham. Again, she doesn’t have to prove anything. She slings enough mud around, sooner or later some of it will stick. I don’t know if she has good reason to hate the guy or not, but we know she does – out of all proportion, if you ask me. Maybe he isn’t the world’s best transporter of horses, but their remedy was taking their custom elsewhere. Or suing him, if they really thought he’d ruined their business. I couldn’t figure out why she was quite as bitter as she obviously was.’

  ‘Maybe they have some history,’ speculated Brodie. ‘Personal history.’

  Deacon thought about it. ‘Actually, that’s possible. She always calls him Johnny. Which is curiously cosy if they’re mortal enemies.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to find out,’ said Brodie. ‘It’s a small world, the horse-owning fraternity. If Windham and Alison Barker were ever a number, you could find out with a couple of phone calls.’

  Deacon sniffed disparagingly. ‘If this is a personal vendetta I don’t propose to get involved. My only interest in Alison Barker is how she got hold of the garbage that nearly killed her. She’s made it pretty clear she’s not going to tell me and I can’t afford to waste much more time pressing her. If I can track down how it’s being produced – how the catalyst is coming into the country, who’s turning out the tablets and where the factory is – I may get the whole distribution network including whoever supplied Alison Barker. At which point I shall want another talk with her. Until then, let her think she’s pulled the wool over my eyes. People have thought it before. Some of them are knitting mailbags now.’

  Brodie laughed. ‘Do they still do that?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ growled Deacon. ‘I think they spend their time being psychoanalysed and doing degrees in Information Technology.’

  The next day Daniel brought sandwiches to Brodie’s office. But he still got left with washing the coffee mugs.

  She told him what Deacon’s investigation had di
scovered. Daniel was plainly surprised. ‘You really think she made all this up?’

  ‘I doubt if she thinks of it that way. It’s quite possible she believes it herself,’ said Brodie. ‘Look, her whole life’s been turned upside down in the past six months. It’s no wonder she hardly knows what she’s doing.’

  Daniel shook his head slowly. ‘It’s just, that’s not how she comes across. At least, not to me.’

  ‘And you’re such an expert on young women,’ Brodie said slyly.

  He grinned, unoffended. ‘OK, maybe I’m better on the theory than the practice, but I’ve taught a lot of girls not much younger than this one and I got pretty good at reading them. I don’t see her as either a liar or a neurotic. I can imagine she’s difficult to get on with. She’s very strong-minded, determined to the point of obstinacy. And she may be wrong. I can imagine her taking a view on something and refusing to amend it in the light of subsequent developments. If she decided this man killed her father, wild horses wouldn’t persuade her she was wrong. But why would she think it in the first place unless she had a reason?’

  Brodie tried out her own theory on him. ‘Perhaps she had a reason to mistrust him before any of this happened.’

  Daniel’s mild grey eyes were astute. ‘You mean, perhaps they meant something to one another once and he let her down. And after that she laid everything that went wrong with her life at his door.’

  ‘What do you think? Possible?’

  ‘Maybe. Losing her father left her both bereft and intensely angry: I can imagine her trying to displace all that emotion onto someone. But the drugs are different. If she bought them or was given them and took them willingly, she knows Windham wasn’t responsible and she’s lying when she claims he was. Not wrong, not deluded – lying.’

  Brodie gave an elegant shrug. ‘Not everyone takes your zealous view of truth. Most people are prepared to be economical with it when it suits them.’