by Joe McNally
As we discussed the best place for me to go, I realized it wasn’t where I was that was screwing me up, it was the fact that I was doing nothing.
‘Heard from Miller today?’ I asked Mac.
‘Not yet.’
‘So you don’t know if he saw these ARNI people at Scotland Yard?’
‘I’m assuming he did.’
‘They’re taking the piss, Mac, you realize that? Miller and Kavanagh and your man, Inspector Sanders. We give them leads, they promise to keep us informed, and then we get nothing.’
It didn’t take long to persuade him I was right. He had connections at Scotland Yard, and I talked Mac into arranging a meeting for me with one of the ARNI people.
‘Give me half an hour, I’ll ring you back,’ he said.
43
The ARNI man’s name was Kevin Sollis. I was to meet him at ten next morning. Intent on avoiding any midnight visitors, I set off for London that evening.
Sollis, one of two guys on the ARNI unit, was friendly looking, thirtyish, with a big square face, light brown hair, thick moustache, skin pitted ruggedly but evenly, like orange rind. He wore a checked lumberjack shirt loose over khaki army-type fatigues with loads of pockets, the bottoms tucked into high Timberland boots – a regular backwoodsman who’d been born in the wrong country. He was very helpful, didn’t seem at all miffed about me being a ‘layman’, and he had a general demeanour of quiet patience and inner calm that Kavanagh and Miller could have learnt from.
He’d spent some time with Miller the previous day and said he was happy to give me the same info and advice he’d dished out to him.
First, he gave me a potted history of the Animal Rights Movement in Britain. Set up in the mid-seventies, they operated in individual cells with no overall structure. They raided Animal Research establishments, farms, pet shops, butchers, burger bars, department stores, and fox-hunting yards.
They carried out rescues or arson attacks, their main tactic being economic sabotage of any business they thought was involved in animal abuse.
Of late they’d started branching into ‘consumer terrorism’, threatening to contaminate food and drink manufactured by companies whose policies they disapproved of. The police reckoned around two thousand activists were operational in the UK.
To combat them, ARNI had been set up in 1984, and officers from the unit had made a number of arrests, securing convictions and jail sentences in some cases.
Only a handful of activists had been convicted of individual acts of personal violence, and Sollis had concentrated on those in drawing up a list of possible suspects for Miller.
He had pinpointed the four most likely and graded them on an educated guess basis as to which we should aim for first.
I said, ‘Only four? I thought there’d be a few.’
He smiled, teeth hidden under the big moustache. ‘It’s a funny game, you know. Most of the people involved realize they’ve got, if not the support of the general public, then a grudging sort of sympathy. As long as they stick to raiding research labs, burning down furriers and disrupting fox-hunts, then they know they’ll be looked on as crusading outlaws. Once they get involved in violence, it’s a different story.’
I argued that the movement, by its very nature, must attract fanatics, but Sollis said they’re quickly weeded out.
‘Then where do they go, the weeds?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? A few are just violent for the sake of it and find somewhere else to practise it…gangs, football terraces, pub fights.’
‘But the true Animal Rights fanatic, maybe one who’s tired of what he sees as peaceful protest, might well blow a gasket and go on a spree like this?’ I asked.
‘Every chance.’
‘So, if the movement itself is eager to keep a non-violent image, there’s a possibility someone there would blow the whistle on this guy if they knew who he was?’
Sollis said, ‘Your real problem would be getting them to admit any association with him.’
‘But if I could convince them he was definitely on an Animal Rights kick?’
He smiled his slow smile. ‘It’s worth trying.’
I asked what Miller’s thoughts had been on this list. Sollis said he’d just taken the names, along with a note of their last known whereabouts, and headed north saying he’d be in touch.
‘A dedicated detective.’ I said sarcastically.
Sollis shrugged, refusing to rise to it. ‘Some like using different methods.’
I left it at that.
The Animal Rights Movement had no recognized leader, but Sollis told me my best bet for information was a guy all the other AR people looked up to.
He’d just been released after serving five years for arson and was living in a London flat provided by a sympathiser. He was known simply as Buck, a name he’d adopted in memory of the ill-used fictional dog hero in The Call of the Wild.
Buck’s flat was in North London, halfway down a shabby backstreet. I pressed the bell. A minute later the door was opened by a thin, pallid man in a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He was barefoot, his toes long and pale, fair hair cropped short, a day’s beard on his narrow jaw and wearing glasses so thick that each blue eye seemed to fill the lens. He blinked, almost startling me. I said, ‘I’m looking for Buck.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Eddie Malloy.’
‘What do you want with Buck?’
I was trying to place the accent but couldn’t.
I said, ‘I need his help.’
Buck stared a while longer, blinked again then led me inside.
He sat on the edge of a square table, sharing the space with a big blue typewriter and piles of letters, half of them unopened. Smoking roll-ups and drinking strong black coffee from a panda-badged mug, he talked about Animal Rights with the controlled passion of a fanatic tutored by a PR man, a mixture of persuasive reasoning and colourful sound bites: ‘Vivisection labs and factory farms are the concentration camps of the Human Reich.’
When I steered him round to what I wanted to discuss he said, ‘Everyone involved in horse racing is a fucking moron.’
I said, ‘Well all these morons are building themselves a nice fund of sympathy in the public eye because this bloke is going around knocking them off. He must be setting your cause back years.’
He stopped halfway through a slug of coffee and said, ‘Don’t try and con me with that shit, man.’
I shrugged, ‘Nothing to do with conning you, it’s a simple fact. Racing folk are involved in sport, they’re not vivisectionists or factory farmers, they’re innocent people trying to make a living and this guy is murdering them.’
He loosed off then about whipping and making horses jump fences, and I listened without interrupting too many times, but I kept driving him back to the point because he knew I was right. I mentioned the names Sollis had given me and Buck smoked a while and thought.
He said, ‘I’d have to make a phone call. You want to come back?’
‘If it’s privacy you want, I’ll wait outside.’
‘Okay, gimme five minutes.’
After a few minutes, he opened the door and said, ‘Reid moved to the Shetlands a few months ago, he’s either studying seals or working on the rigs, depending what story you believe. Craven’s hanging around with some of the so-called New Age Travellers, last heard of in Dorset about three weeks ago.’
‘Where in Dorset?’
‘Dunno.’
‘What about the other two?’
His magnified eyes stared at me blankly, saying he thought he’d done enough. ‘No information,’ he said.
‘You haven’t got it or won’t give it?’
‘Haven’t got it.’
We exchanged mistrusting glances for a few seconds. ‘I’d appreciate a call if you do find out anything about them.’
He took my number without comment, a hint of sourness creeping in; regret, maybe, that he’d helped me. I left. He didn’t say goodbye.
He said, ‘Maybe we should get Kavanagh to do it.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t. Listen, Mac, Kavanagh doesn’t give a toss; the guy is a bad policeman. So is Miller. He took the same list as I’ve got and buggered off without giving it any more thought. If Kavanagh finds out about Craven, he’ll either ignore it completely or go barging in among those travellers like Geronimo attacking a wagon train. They’re sure to point him toward Craven then, aren’t they?’
He gave in with a sigh but no further argument. ‘Okay, Eddie, I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve spoken to the Dorset people.’
While waiting, I studied again the briefing sheet Sollis had given me on Craven, and the picture. Very dark, blue-black hair long and thick, heavy eyebrows over deep-set dark eyes, leathery complexion and, in this picture anyway, a moody scowl.
Thirty-three, divorced, convictions for violence going back sixteen years, twelve of which he’d spent in jail for murdering a man who’d kicked his dog (the judge had allowed for a certain degree of provocation).
Most of Craven’s troubles could be blamed, it seemed, on his terrible temper. He could take offence at the mildest comment and lash out immediately with whatever was to hand, which, given his taste for drink, was often a beer glass.
He had a soft spot for animals, stemming from his childhood in Cornwall where he was raised on a farm, often trading pocket money or payment for work in exchange for the life of a lamb or pig, despite his father’s mockery.
At seventeen he’d joined a hunt saboteurs group but was banished by them after frenziedly attacking a huntsman who’d been left behind when his horse went lame. It had taken five of Craven’s fellow saboteurs to drag him off the unconscious rider.
When told by his ‘colleagues’ he was no longer welcome, he’d set about them too, putting three in hospital.
Jailed for murder just as Animal Rights Groups were setting up their economic sabotage operations, Craven had supported them from his cell in the form of a stream of letters to newspapers, few of which were printed.
He looked a sound bet from a violence point of view, but there seemed to be no Bible connection, and the only link with horses was that first incident at the hunt. Why would he have latched on to racing?
Mac got the information I needed and I headed for Dorset.
In the small village of Castle Combe, it wasn’t hard to discover the pub favoured by the travellers. It was even easier to unearth where Craven was. At the cost of a few pints of beer and a story from me about trying to contact Craven with regard to a legacy left to him by a recently dead animal rights sympathiser, I found out he was no longer at the camp.
He’d been travelling with the convoy in an old estate car since the previous autumn, but hadn’t wintered well. After spending the cold months with a worsening hacking cough and spitting gobs of phlegm ‘the size of fried eggs’, Craven had been admitted, six weeks ago, to a Bristol hospital, suffering from tuberculosis.
It was too late to get to Bristol and see Craven. I booked in at a small hotel, phoned Sollis and Mac, and told them I planned to visit Craven next day. I tried Lisa’s number. We hadn’t spoken for three days. It rang out. My answer-phone at the Lodge had a remote playback and I’d agreed with Lisa we could leave messages for each other if there was anything important. I’d given her the access code. I called it, hoping to hear her voice, even if there was nothing to report. The tape was empty.
44
I was Craven’s only visitor. He sat propped up on pillows, wheezing gently, looking much less threatening than in his photograph. The thick dark hair was stringy and grey-streaked, the cheeks sunken, the eyes dull. His thin lips were clogged at the corners with white sticky matter. A shallow enamel bowl curved to fit the chin lay on his bedside table, its bottom coated with red-speckled phlegm. Beside the bowl were two get-well cards.
I sat down and introduced myself as a journalist, but I could see from the start he didn’t buy it. I told him I was working on the jockey murders and had got on to the Animal Rights angle and that there’d be a few quid in it for him if he could give me an inside story.
He said nothing. I might as well have been talking to his pillows. He lay staring at me as though he pitied me, shaking his head slowly at what I said. When for the third time I asked if he thought any Animal Rights supporter could be capable of these murders, he spoke: ‘Fuck off, you prick,’ he said weakly, his eyes finally showing an edge of hardness.
I stood and lifted the cards from his table. He frowned and wheezed as I opened them. One was from Mary and urged him to get better for the summer. The second said, ‘Get fit and come out fighting!’ It was from Buck.
I headed for the car knowing Buck had put me away and wondering how significant it was. In saying Craven was with the travellers in the West Country, he’d given me sufficient information, if I was smart enough, to track Craven down to his hospital bed.
Why hadn’t he simply said he didn’t know where he was? Why hadn’t he told me Craven was in the Shetlands along with the other guy, what was his name? Reid. Was he just trying to keep me off Reid’s tail? Was Reid our man?
I stopped at a payphone in the reception area and dug the cop’s card out: Kevin Sollis. I rang and persuaded him to join me for a drink around ten o’clock. It was eightish now; I could get to London for ten. He said to meet him at The Yard.
Sollis, still wearing his backwoods gear, waited outside on the pavement idly throwing soft kicks at a lamppost and whistling quietly. The same lazy smile was there under his moustache as he reached to shake my hand. ‘You like real ale?’ he asked.
‘Don’t think I’ve ever tried it.’
‘Want to?’
‘Sure.’
He turned me with a hand on my shoulder. ‘There’s a good place about five minutes’ walk away.’
‘Fine.’
We ambled companionably down the wet street, Sollis telling me lovingly about the qualities of real ale, stopping occasionally to expand on a point, never once asking why I’d invited him out. By the time we reached the pub he’d made me feel I’d been his friend for years.
I guessed he had a gift for doing that with everyone. A few more of his kind in the police force in exchange for the Kavanaghs and Millers would improve its image.
Comfortably settled in a smoky corner of a busy bar, I told him I thought Buck had conned me and that he might be hiding the real killer. ‘What would be the chances of a phone tap?’ I asked.
He turned, raising an eyebrow, ‘On Buck?’
I nodded.
‘Got one,’ he said and sipped beer.
‘Now?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Who monitors it?’
‘We tape everything and play it back each morning.’
I felt the sudden tension of expectation. ‘So who did he call to get the info he gave me on Craven?’
‘Nobody. He was just bluffing you.’
‘But there must be something. He must make some calls?’
‘Oh, he makes calls and he gets calls but it’s all domestic stuff. He knows we’re listening in.’
‘So what’s the point of tapping the line?’
Sollis shrugged. Reaching for his glass he said, ‘Procedure, I suppose.’
‘Sounds a bit daft to me.’
He shrugged again, happy to accept my judgement. I said, ‘He must make calls from elsewhere, I mean he must have some contact with these other Animal Rights people.’
Sollis said, ‘I’m sure he does. He’ll get a call asking him to ring back and he goes out and rings from a call-box.’
‘So why don’t you bug the call-box?’
‘He always uses a different one. Anyway, we’d have trouble getting clearance for that. Buck’s been squeaky clean since he came out.’
A woman sat down at the piano in the corner and tried to start a sing-along. Sollis looked ac
ross at her and smiled. I said to him, ‘Why didn’t you tell me on Wednesday about the phone tap?’
‘You were enthusiastic. I didn’t think Buck would give you anything, but I couldn’t be certain.’
I looked at him. ‘I was thinking of trying again tomorrow,’ I said, ‘confronting him with the fact that he knew Craven was in hospital.’
Sollis drank and shook his head. ‘Pointless. He’d just laugh at you.’
‘So what do I do next?’
‘We can try to locate the other three on your list.’
‘How long is that likely to take?’
‘No way of saying but we can start in the morning.’
I sighed and nodded slowly, downcast. Sollis punched my shoulder gently and smiled. ‘Cheer up. It’s not the end of the world.’ He started singing along with the pianist, as tuneless as he was jolly.
I went to the payphone to call Lisa. No answer; I was beginning to worry. Meeting Craven and Buck had given me a taste of what some of the extremists were like, and I’d always been uneasy about Lisa’s blithe intention to infiltrate an Animal Rights group.
I called the Lodge and pictured the phone ringing out in an empty house. The answer-phone clicked on and I entered the playback code.
Lisa’s voice was there telling me she was just checking in. No real news, though she had joined an Animal Rights Group which she said, so far, was ‘the bore of the year’. I smiled.
After Lisa, another female voice played back, a stranger. Identifying herself as a Mrs Pritchard she carefully gave her contact details, saying she had some urgent information on Claude Beckman.
45
Next morning, Sunday, I returned Mrs Pritchard’s call. She was nowhere near as keen as she’d seemed on the answer-phone, saying that she wasn’t sure it mattered much anymore. Eventually she agreed to see me at her house near Finsbury Park around ten-thirty.
On my way to North London a newspaper banner caught my eye. I stopped and bought three papers. Inspector Sanders had released the Animal Rights ‘line of inquiry’, saying he felt confident the public would respond positively with any information.