by Jo Bannister
‘Er – me,’ said Daniel, raising a finger as if asking to be excused. ‘I didn’t know it was a secret.’
‘It isn’t,’ glowered Brodie. ‘I was planning on putting an announcement in The Sentinel.’
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Daniel.
Deacon squinted at the ceiling. ‘I think I liked it better when you two weren’t talking. Daniel, shut up. Brodie, tell me about Windham – what you said, what he said.’
So she did.
‘Did you think he had anything to hide?’
‘At the time, no, I didn’t. Talking about it since, I’m not sure. He wanted to fetch my pony from Germany, that’s for sure. But it could be that what he really wanted was an excuse to make another run.’
‘Because he has something to bring in that’s even more profitable than transporting horses,’ said Deacon.
‘That’s what we were thinking, yes.’
‘Customs couldn’t find anything.’
‘If Customs could find everything that was smuggled in we wouldn’t have a drugs problem.’
‘Mules,’ said Daniel pensively.
Brodie frowned at him. ‘What?’
‘People who carry drugs through Customs. Not the drug-runners themselves – people they’ve hired. Poor people and stupid people. They hide small quantities inside their trainers and their children’s toys and souvenirs for their mothers, and sometimes inside themselves, and some of them get caught but most of them get through, and at the other end all the small quantities are put together to make quite a large quantity. And that’s what the drug-runners call them. Mules.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Deacon. ‘So?’
‘I was just wondering if there was anyway of using a horse as a mule. They’re a capacious animal. If a human mule can carry a commercially significant quantity of drugs in his digestive system, how much more could you pack into a horse?’
Brodie’s eyes flared wide with understanding, then flicked to Alison. ‘You’re the expert here. Is he talking nonsense?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the girl, nonplussed. ‘I just don’t know.’
Deacon was struggling with the practicalities. ‘How do you persuade a horse to swallow a condom full of drugs? And how do you stop it throwing up at deeply inconvenient moments?’
‘They don’t throw up,’ said Ally. ‘They can’t – they haven’t the mechanism. Anything that goes down their throats will come out the opposite end.’
‘When?’ asked Brodie.
Ally shrugged. ‘I’ve never put a stopwatch on it.’
‘Within the next three days, anyway.’
‘Oh yes. Horses are the perfect vegetarian – they eat nothing but roughage. It goes straight through them, and doesn’t look that different when it comes out the other end.’ She looked puzzled. ‘Why three days?’
‘Because Windham reckons to keep everything he brings in from Europe in his own yard for three days. Till a vet passes them fit to go to their new homes, he said. But maybe that isn’t the only reason.’
‘OK,’ said Deacon tersely. ‘So this is a serious possibility? Miss Barker, you know more about horses than the rest of us put together. Could you get them to swallow a package on demand?’
She gave it some thought. ‘I don’t know if I could, but I think it could be done. Ostlers used to shove medicine down horses’ throats with something they called a balling iron. These days we tube them – pass a plastic tube up a nostril and down into the stomach. And yes, anything that can go down that tube will go into the stomach. Or for something a bit bulkier than that, a bit of sedative might relax the muscles enough to put it straight down the throat. I don’t think it would pose a massive problem to a vet.’
‘But where would you find a vet willing to risk his licence to help a drug-smuggler?’ asked Daniel.
‘The same place you’d find one willing to divert quantities of a large animal tranquillizer from clinical trials to a Scram factory,’ said Brodie. ‘We knew there was likely to be a vet involved somewhere. Once the money’s big enough there’s always someone ready to risk his reputation.’
‘Slow down,’ growled Deacon, ‘I want to get this straight in my head. So somewhere in Germany a vet is fiddling his paperwork so that he’s ending up with a surplus of the tranquillizer he’s supposed to be trialling. And someone in England, probably in or around Dimmock, has the facilities to combine that drug with a bunch of other commoner chemicals in order to produce the next big thing on the party scene. All they need is a way to get the German tranquillizer past Customs in Dover.’
Brodie took up the hypothesis. ‘And somebody looked at a horse and saw a barrel on legs. He knew a lot of them came to England, and he wondered what Daniel did: could you get packets of drugs into a horse’s digestive system?’
Ally too was getting the hang of this new sport, beach volleyball with theories. She threw a punch of her own as one sailed past her. ‘Only instead of just having me to ask, this guy had a vet – a large animal vet at that – on the payroll. So he asked him, and it turned out the answer was yes. All they needed was a form of packaging that would go either up a horse’s nose or down its throat, and the patience to wait for it to reappear.’
‘And a steady supply of horses being brought from Europe,’ added Brodie.
‘Do you suppose there are drugs in all the horses he brings in?’ asked Daniel.
Deacon shook his head. ‘Why take the risk when one horse can carry enough to keep the south coast party scene popping for a month? One horse per load would be plenty. He finds an excuse to have his vet look at the selected animal …’
‘If anyone asked he could say it looked a bit colicky,’ offered Ally.
‘OK,’ said Deacon, ‘so while he’s ostensibly checking it out he whacks a bit of sedative into it and shoves the chemical, packed into something like a rubber sausage, into its gut. Then all Windham has to do is make sure it reaches his yard before nature takes its course.’
‘Every so often,’ Daniel said quietly, ‘someone who’s carrying drugs inside them dies when a package ruptures.’
Shock further hollowed Alison’s thin cheeks. ‘That’s what happened to our horses?’
‘Maybe. If someone dies on an aeroplane they conduct an autopsy. If a horse dies in transit, I imagine they call the knackers. It was only because it happened a number of times that people began to wonder if it was more than just bad luck.’
‘And Dad guessed what he was doing,’ whispered Ally.
Deacon nodded pensively. ‘The other possibility, I’m afraid …’
Daniel shook his yellow head in warning. ‘Don’t even go there.’
Deacon didn’t understand. Then he saw Brodie soothing what was clearly going to be a black eye, and he did. ‘Ah. No.’
‘And now he’s working for Mary! We have to warn her,’ Ally said urgently. ‘Before it all happens again.’
‘No,’ said Deacon sharply. ‘I mean it, Miss Barker – nothing we’ve said leaves this room until I say it can.’
‘But she’s in danger! If we can guess what he’s up to, if Dad did, she will too. Maybe not at once but soon enough. Then he’ll have to shut her up too.’
‘I promise you,’ said Deacon, ‘I won’t let Mary Walbrook come to any harm. But the problem with this is not going to be catching those involved, it’s going to be proving it. We need a chain of evidence. We need a horse with the drugs still in it, that got into it while it was in Windham’s hands.’
Brodie rather liked the idea of a sting. ‘What would you need?’
Deacon thought for a moment. ‘First and foremost I’d need a horse. One that’s currently in Germany and can be shipped here through Dover. I’d need to be able to prove it was clean when Windham collected it – witness statements from reliable parties saying the animal was in their care for a week beforehand and ate nothing but hay and oats.’
‘So when it arrives in Dover and you have it seized,’ said Daniel, ‘and someone with a peg on his nose goes through
its droppings and finds these rubber sausages stuffed with chemicals, only his mother will believe Johnny Windham didn’t put them there.’
Deacon nodded. ‘So now I have to find a suitable horse – quickly, because Miss Barker is worried about Miss Walbrook, and discreetly because if Windham gets suspicious he’ll carry the horse, all right, he just won’t put anything in it.’ He blew out his cheeks in a gusty sigh. He thought he had a mountain to climb.
Brodie was trying hard to keep a straight face. ‘What you need, Jack, is a reputable finding agent. Speak to her nicely, promise to meet her expenses, and if you’re very lucky she’ll do it for you and Johnny Windham will never suspect that you’re involved.’
Deacon frowned. ‘What are you telling me? You know of a suitable horse?’
‘Well – yes and no. Right now there is no horse, but Windham thinks there is. Give me twenty-four hours and I’ll give you your mule.’
‘How?’
‘Jack, trust me – this is what I do. I have a buyer, I have the transport waiting, I can even tell you the animal’s name.’
‘Who’s the buyer?’ asked Deacon.
‘What animal?’ asked Ally.
Brodie flashed her most winning smile at Daniel. ‘He is. And it’s a pony called The Saracen’s Daughter.’
Chapter Sixteen
She started with Dieter Townes first thing the next morning. She gave him fifteen minutes’ notice, phoning ahead to tell him to stay in the yard because she needed him to help with her inquiries. To her that sounded sufficiently official to command obedience without actually containing a claim to be something she was not. Only on the drive to Cheyne Warren did it occur to her that it was a bit like sticking a note through someone’s door saying Fly – all is discovered. At least if she found him at the stables it suggested he had nothing much in his life to be ashamed of.
He was mucking out when Brodie got there. He looked up at the sound of her car, and neither hurried anxiously to meet her nor stood quaking, just waited calmly for her to come over. ‘And just what are these inquiries you need my help with, Mrs Farrell?’ he asked coolly.
She flashed him her most engaging smile. ‘Sorry about that, Mr Townes. I hope I didn’t alarm you. But it is important, and it’s important to be discreet – it may end up being a police matter. You won’t be involved in that, but I do need some technical advice.’
‘Try me.’
‘I need a pony,’ she said. Though she paused, he realised it wasn’t that simple and kept waiting. ‘I need it to be in Germany now but available to ship to England immediately. I need it to be an Exmoor pony, and I need to be able to pass it off as a daughter of a stallion called The Saracen. Where do I start looking?’
Townes gave it some thought, then shook his head. ‘I don’t think you can do it. It used to be possible to pass one horse off as another if you really wanted to but now they’ve all got passports that record their breeding. We might find you an Exmoor mare in Germany but I can’t see how you’d get away with lying about her sire.’ He eyed her disapprovingly. ‘Or why you’d want to, for that matter.’
‘I can’t tell you any more,’ said Brodie, ‘except that I’m working with the police on this and it’s not going to backfire on either of us. Especially if I can’t make it work. I couldn’t find a pony of unknown breeding and fib?’
‘You could find any number of ponies of unknown breeding, and that’s what it would say on their passports. But none of them will be Exmoors. There just aren’t that many true Exmoors around, and their breeding should be a matter of record. Why does it have to be an Exmoor?’
‘Because I said it was,’ she confessed ruefully. ‘It was just a story – I never thought I’d have to produce the damn pony.’
‘You’ve told someone you know of an Exmoor mare by The Saracen, and it’s in Germany but you can acquire it for them.’ It was an accurate enough assessment: Brodie nodded. ‘And you don’t, and you can’t, and you’re trying to lie your way out of trouble. Mrs Farrell, I can see exactly how this would end up as a police matter.’
She understood his misgivings, wished she could allay them. But she was worried that an incautious word might find its way to Windham Transport. ‘Would talking to Detective Superintendent Deacon set your mind at rest?’
She fully expected him to say “No, of course not”, that he trusted her. He said, ‘Yes.’
It was a brief and guarded phone call, but after it Townes set himself to helping her. ‘Is it the animal that’s important? Or the bloodline?’
Brodie wasn’t sure what he was asking. ‘I need a pony, that’s all. But I cited this particular bloodline when I was describing it. If I produce something different, somebody might get suspicious and what we’re trying to achieve by all this will go down the tubes.’
‘There might be a way to use any pony mare you can get your hands on and it wouldn’t matter what it said on her passport. Because it wouldn’t be her bloodline that was significant but that of the foal she was carrying.’
Brodie was confused. ‘But surely the foal will have the same bloodline as its mother. If I can’t find an Exmoor to pass off as The Saracen’s Daughter, how can I pass off the foal as The Saracen’s grandchild?’
‘Surrogacy,’ said Dieter Townes, and gave her a lesson in the economics of horse-breeding. ‘A mare carries a foal for eleven months. She may breed every year, she may not. When she’s pregnant she’s not doing much else, which is a problem if she’s a competition mare. And a foal which is the progeny of both a mare and a stallion which have proved themselves in competition is worth much more than the foal of untried parents.
‘What the owners of top mares do is harvest their eggs and transplant the resultant embryos into surrogate mothers – mares which have no genetic connection with the foal they’re going to deliver. The benefits are that the best mares can now, like the best stallions, produce many more offspring than nature intended, with minimal risk to themselves and minimal disruption to their athletic careers.’
He kept looking at her until Brodie indicated that she was with him so far. ‘OK. Suppose you’d managed to find The Saracen’s Daughter, but her owner wasn’t willing to part with her. What he might sell you is an embryo of hers implanted in a healthy but unremarkable pony mare. She’d carry it to term and deliver it as normal, and never know it wasn’t hers; but genetically it would be the offspring of The Saracen’s Daughter and whatever Exmoor stallion had been chosen to sire it.’
Already Brodie could see the advantages, both for breeders and for her. ‘So all we need is a healthy pony mare? We don’t need it to say anything in particular on its passport?’
‘Exactly,’ said Townes. ‘Whoever this is that you don’t want to get suspicious, you tell him that you weren’t able to purchase The Saracen’s Daughter but you have an embryo of hers in a surrogate mare and she’s the one you’re bringing back from Germany. What do you think? In all the circumstances – which you know and I don’t – would that be a plausible tale?’
Brodie thought all round it before she answered. But she couldn’t see a problem. The paperwork would refer to the pony she bought – any bog-standard pony mare that she could pick up cheap in Germany. The main thing was to have a credible story. So far as she could make out, Townes had provided her with exactly that.
‘Do you know, Mr Townes,’ she said, ‘I do believe it would.’
An evening spent on the Internet and she had most of what she was going to need to make this work. She found a dealer near Essen who could provide her with a fit pony mare ready to travel. Her breeding wasn’t entirely clear but there was probably a bit of Haflinger in her somewhere. She was eight years old and called Gretl.
The dealer, whose name was Mannheim, was prepared to isolate the pony immediately and vouch for everything that would be fed or otherwise administered to her for a week before Windham came for her. A member of Dimmock CID would fly over three days before Gretl’s departure to ensure the continuity of evidence that
would take the case to court. Brodie didn’t go into the reasons for these unusual measures or why the English police were interested in a German pony, and beyond seeking her assurance that Gretl would be unharmed Herr Mannheim didn’t ask questions.
Before any of these arrangements were made she asked if Mannheim had had any dealings with Windham Transport, and he said he hadn’t.
Brodie organised for a vet to take a barium X-ray of the pony before her journey started. With that, the statement from the man feeding it and the testimony of a British police officer who’d had it under observation throughout the relevant period, Brodie believed a court would accept that any substance present in the pony’s guts on arrival at Dover must have been put there by or with the connivance of the carrier. From her days in a solicitor’s office she knew that courts would sometimes tie themselves in knots rather than accept the patently obvious, but she thought those three bits of evidence together would make it hard for the most cautious of jurors to do anything but believe.
The only thing she had to leave to chance was whether Windham would select Gretl as a mule. He might have six or eight animals on the lorry, of which probably only one would be used. All she could do was make the little mare as attractive a target as possible.
Once her plans were laid she phoned Johnny Windham. She told him the story of the surrogacy, and provided him with Gretl’s details and Mannheim’s number so that final arrangements could be made.
‘He tells me she’s an easy pony to handle. I suppose, to be a surrogate she’d have to be. She’s obliging with the vet so she shouldn’t give you any problems. She’s rather bigger than an Exmoor, he said – about 140 centimetres, which probably makes more sense to you than it did to me, and built like a tank. She’s not a valuable pony herself but she’ll do my client’s job for him.’ Which was true enough.
She asked when Windham could collect the pony and when she could expect delivery.
Windham consulted his diary. ‘Essen? That’s about four hundred kilometres to Calais. I’ll have a lorry in the area next week. If she’s confirmed in foal and ready to leave, why don’t I pick her up on Tuesday morning? We’ll be on our way home by then, I’ll have her at my yard that night. I’ll keep her for the usual three days, just to make sure she isn’t incubating anything nasty, and deliver her on Saturday. Where will you be keeping her?’