Rat Poison

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘It’s sad though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so, but it’s in their genes – the whole boiling lot are descended from tinkers and horse thieves who were bothering Somerset over a hundred years ago. One of them was the last man to be hanged at a crossroads, nationally. The attitude seems to be that it’s what they do. How else do you get money when the social security scams have all been found out? When they start thieving, handling stolen goods and threatening people it’s my job to lock them up.’

  Carrick was still distinctly put out, a bit adrift even, by the loss of his assistant but here was the usual pragmatic policeman talking: I had an idea Patrick would have the same attitude. Clem was in Matthew’s class at school.

  Where the Hugginses lived was like a small colony: caravans, huts and trailers of various sizes clustered around what had once been a council house on a corner site with a large garden. None-too-clean washing was hanging out on several lines which were tied to trees or leaning poles. A couple of dogs, snarling and barking at us, were tied up too; mostly, Carrick told me afterwards, on account of the likelihood that they would kill one another otherwise.

  ‘I’m going to ask whoever’s here if they know anything about this shoot-out too,’ the DCI was saying. ‘They may not as it’s not quite their scene. But the grapevine might be alive and well in this rats’ nest.’

  ‘And give the impression that cooperation will result in you taking a more favourable attitude to their menfolk’s present difficulties?’ I ventured.

  ‘Yes, something like that.’

  ‘And will you?’

  He paused in walking up what could not really be described as a path that meandered between general rubbish towards the house and gave me a straight look.

  That had to be a ‘no’ then.

  Already this venture of mine into coalface policing was proving to be an eye-opener. Previously my involvement with preserving Her Majesty’s peace and law enforcement, MI5 and SOCA, had been concerned with what I can only describe as the ‘exotic’ variety where I had been dealing with mostly sophisticated and clever criminals, albeit ruthless and vicious ones, who were often also wealthy and influential people in their spare time. Here was ‘subsistence’ crime, those brazenly and illegally fighting for survival.

  ‘The whole place reeks of poverty,’ I muttered, glimpsing the worried faces of a couple of women as they peeped fleetingly from caravan windows.

  ‘It’s deliberate,’ Carrick said with relish. ‘So social services don’t get an inkling of how much money they’ve really got stashed away.’

  He picked up a stone from the path and rapped on the battered front door with it, sending the dogs into a frenzy. I expected the knock to be ignored but, moments later, the door was flung open by an enormously fat, middle-aged woman. She looked us up and down in utter disgust.

  ‘Come for the little kids this time, have yer?’ she bawled at Carrick.

  ‘No, I’d like to talk to you about the turf war we’ve had in the city.’

  Her eyes screwed up in amazement. ‘And what the bloody ’ell d’you reckon I know about that?’

  ‘Your sons Ricky and Riley seem to know something about it.’

  I busied myself taking a notebook and pen from my bag, not looking in Carrick’s direction. He had said nothing about this to me. Was it true? I had an idea it was not.

  ‘My sons are too clever to get involved in anything like that,’ the woman protested.

  No, sorry ducky, too stupid.

  ‘I’d like you to give me the names of their friends.’

  Slowly, she shook her head. ‘I don’t know who their friends are.’

  ‘Did they knock around with Adam Trelonic?’

  ‘Him! The one what got done in? I should say not! He owed my husband a packet of money. Sold a car for him and kept all the dosh.’

  ‘A stolen car?’ Carrick asked silkily.

  The ensuing silence was broken by a baby starting to cry somewhere within.

  ‘May we come in?’ Carrick asked.

  ‘No, I’m busy.’

  ‘I can get another warrant and search the place again.’

  ‘Look, we don’t get involved with the big gangs and have guns and stuff like that. You know we don’t. Go away and stop pesterin’ me. You’ve got all the blokes in custody for one daft reason or another so why the ’ell don’t you ask them?’ She began to close the door.

  Carrick put his foot against it. ‘I have and—’

  She cut him short with a salvo of obscenities designed to blast him right off her doorstep.

  ‘Would you like me to have a word with Mrs Huggins while you talk to some of the others?’ I suggested brightly to Carrick when she paused for breath and before she could deliver the second volley I was convinced she was composing.

  A whistling kettle started to shriek and the woman swore and waddled away. I gave Carrick the thumbs-up, went inside and shut the door on him. The baby’s cries went up several notches to screaming level, only oddly muffled now and I discovered it in a pram in a mind-blowingly untidy front room. The child had pulled a blanket over its face which I duly whipped off. A snotty, pig-faced little being in dire need of a nappy change glared up at me.

  The kettle was silenced.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ said Mrs Huggins when she reappeared and I had explained.

  ‘Your grandchild?’ I queried.

  ‘Yes, she’s Maxine’s, our eldest. God knows who the father is. Maxine works at the meat-packing place at Trowbridge now. I told her I was damned if she was paying me to look after this child full time by staying on the game and she’d better get a decent job. I mean, she’ll be thirty next month; fifteen years a tart. She disgusts me actually.’ She stared at me. ‘You’re not his usual helper. God, his snooty Scottish way of looking at you as though you’re something he’s just trodden in really gets up my nose.’

  ‘No, DS Outhwaite’s broken her leg.’

  Mrs Huggins chuckled. ‘That’s one less for a bit then.’

  ‘Look, I know the police must really make your life a misery sometimes but some perfectly innocent passers-by were murdered during this gang war in Bath. They just went round shooting people for the fun of it. If you know anything or have heard anything, please tell me.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, my family don’t get mixed up in big crime.’

  ‘I believe you. But they must hear gossip. In the pubs, places like that . . .’

  ‘No one knows who these folk are. No one wants to know. These mobsters are almost all outsiders. Foreigners, some of ’em. Them what sneak over hidin’ in lorries.’

  ‘We thought it was people from outside trying to take over from the local gangs. Three of the dead men were from Bristol. But as for the others . . .’

  ‘The local mob hired ’em in, didn’t they?’ Mrs Huggins said triumphantly, as though speaking to an idiot.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because—’ She shut her mouth tightly and then turned away from me.

  ‘Because?’ I whispered.

  She was silent for around a quarter of a minute and then said, ‘Someone was goin’ round pubs quietly offerin’ . . . work.’

  ‘Hiring gunmen?’

  ‘Them an’ heavies.’

  ‘He asked your husband if he wanted a job?’

  ‘No, a mate of ’is.’

  ‘From round here then.’

  ‘Frome. I’m not sayin’ no more. I’ve said too much already.’

  ‘Can’t you give me the friend’s name?’

  ‘Derek someone. Now go away and leave me alone. My boys ’ad nothin’ to do with it.’

  I made my way towards the door.

  ‘D’you want a kitten?’ she called after me. ‘They’ll only get drowned and I hate that.’

  Pirate, our very, very old cat, had recently failed to wake from sleep and had been buried, with tears all round, in the garden. Which one of the three playing with a ragged piece of string under a hedge did I want?
The ginger, the tortoiseshell or the fluffy black and white one? Which two to condemn to an early and not at all merciful death?

  The tortie was a must, exactly the same colour as Pirate had been. But . . .

  ‘What have you got there?’ Carrick asked when he got back to the car, eyeing my battered cardboard box.

  ‘D’you mind dropping me off at home for a few minutes?’ I asked winningly. ‘It’s not really out of our way and we could have coffee.’

  ‘Oh . . . all right.’

  ‘Did you learn anything at the caravans?’

  ‘No,’ he answered shortly.

  Three flea-ridden, gummy-eyed kittens?

  ‘A mate of Carlton Huggins called Derek who lives in Frome?’ Carrick mused, frowning. ‘That must be Derek Jessop. A real rough ’un. He works at a quarry not all that far from here so I think I’ll go and have a word with him.’ Pensively stirring his mug of coffee he went into a reverie, no doubt planning interrogation tactics. Plus still grieving the more than temporary loss of his assistant.

  Elspeth had taken immediate charge of the kittens, saying that she knew exactly the right home for at least one, and then disappeared off to the vet with them. Always discreet, she had not questioned why I was accompanying Carrick. Patrick and I have never told his parents of my close involvement with his job but I know Elspeth has a good idea that, for some of the time, we work together.

  After making a routine call in connection with another case we drove to the quarry where we discovered that Derek Jessop had not turned up for work for a while.

  ‘But we were thinking of giving him the boot anyway,’ said the covered-in-white-dust man in charge. ‘So I’m not too bothered.’

  ‘For what reason are you sacking him?’ Carrick wanted to know.

  ‘Bad timekeeping, turning up still canned from the night before. You can’t have that with dangerous machinery around. He’s a troublemaker too – none of the other men like him.’

  ‘So I assume there’s no point in my asking them if they know anything about his private life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. But ask away, they’ll be having their lunch break in five minutes or so.’

  We were told nothing of value, other than in one man’s view there was a shortage of soap in Jessop’s house as he smelt so bad. The only useful information was his address, given to us by the foreman and different to the one Carrick had in his records so presumably the man had moved house. This was close to Radstock in a little hamlet by the name of Spinner’s Grave. There is a very old story that someone, no doubt on a dark and stormy night, had been murdered there and buried under the threshold of the pub. Patrick, who seemingly has been in every hostelry west of Chatham, once commented that the beer they serve, whatever the brew, tastes as though there’s a corpse in it.

  It was a dreary village with a few terraces of grey little cottages, a couple of larger houses, a filling station, a small modern estate and the pub. No one who had any money had ever lived here and probably never would unless someone took a bulldozer to the place and started afresh. Set high up on a ridge of hills with far-reaching views to the Mendips and beyond the location was magnificent, if breezy. Today, with a northwester blowing from the direction of the Bristol Channel, it was decidedly chilly.

  We parked and made our way along the village street, which was mainly deserted with only a little light traffic. Carrick was still quiet, dour even; perhaps this was his normal working persona. It was obvious that he was a very hands-on policeman, preferring to be out and part of the investigation, not just sitting behind a desk issuing orders. Although he has worked with Patrick and me on assignments I had never seen this side of him before: the everyday, Monday to Friday man. I went on to wonder if his moroseness was due to the fact that he was missing Lynn Outhwaite more than I had thought. Or was he still smarting from the broadside he had received from the Huggins woman? Whatever the reason he needed shaking out of it.

  ‘I’m not quite sure what my role is,’ I murmured.

  He broke off from trying to read the carved in stone, time-worn names on the individual terraces of cottages to give me a quick glance. ‘Just to make a few notes and undertake any little jobs I ask you to do.’

  ‘That’s what Lynn does then.’

  ‘No, not really but—’

  I interrupted with, ‘Or would you really like to get your money’s worth and have me work the way I do for SOCA?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Yes, I know but normally not that much. The jobs you’ve helped us with have tended to be at the go-in-there-and-grab-them stage, not normal routine.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still not relevant to what we’re doing now.’

  ‘So you don’t want me to say the kind of things I would if I was working with Patrick right now, use what my Dad used to call my cat’s whiskers?’

  Patrick thinks of me as his oracle, voluntarily consulted or not. I read recently that crime writers should never, ever have their detectives using intuition to solve crimes as it’s cheating and very bad practice. In real life, however . . .

  ‘No . . . but, thank you.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said lightly.

  We carried on walking, Carrick frowning at his piece of paper with the address written on it. Then he stopped dead. ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘You have two missing wounded gangsters. I’ve just been told that someone was going round pubs recruiting potential mobsters and Jessop could have been one of those approached. He’s not reported for work for a while. Are we just going to knock politely on his door?’

  ‘He’s never been known to carry firearms,’ Carrick said dismissively.

  ‘Fine,’ I said again.

  We arrived at our destination. All the curtains at the front were drawn and this, plus the sodden bags of rubbish in the concreted-over front garden gave every impression that the house had been unoccupied for months. In such a situation as this Patrick and I would have immediately gone down the side way to the back door with a view to taking by surprise any possible occupants who were trying to lie low.

  Carrick pressed the bell-push and, on hearing nothing, rapped on the frosted glass panel with his knuckles. We waited but nothing happened.

  ‘Let’s go round the back,’ I suggested in a whisper.

  He gave no sign of having heard me but then did indeed move towards the narrow passage that ran down the side of the house. It was difficult to squeeze past the rusting bikes, rotting vehicle tyres and other rubbish without dislodging anything by getting it hooked up on our clothing, but we eventually arrived at a small area at the rear also utilized as a junk yard. A rear door was slightly ajar.

  I knew that he was about to bellow through the opening and announce the arrival of the strong arm of the law. My cat and all its whiskers were screaming caution.

  ‘Be careful!’ I exhorted quietly. ‘We don’t know who the hell’s in there.’

  Ye gods, Patrick would have pushed the door back as silently as possible and then—

  ‘Police!’ Carrick shouted, following this up with battering of his fist on the door. It swung open a little more to reveal one corner of a dingy kitchen.

  Moments later there was the thump of running feet within and a man burst into view. I registered the fact that he was carrying a gun at around the same second that he fired it at almost point-blank range. I flung myself to one side, tripped and fell flat, landing on a large cardboard box as he dashed by me.

  ‘Stop!’ I heard Carrick shout, seeing him out of the corner of my eye picking himself up.

  The man did stop in his headlong flight, then turned and took aim.

  There was no time to utter a warning.

  THREE

  For some reason I had noticed the twisted grin on his face as he prepared to shoot the DCI. This was now a grimace of pain but he did not seem to be in any immediate danger of dying. I retrieved the gun from where it had been dropped, aware that Carrick had found his mobile, then entered the kit
chen far enough to grab a grubby tea towel. With it I made a rough tourniquet to help stop the bleeding in the man’s leg. I was not feeling at all pleased with myself as he was already injured, blood seeping through a smelly makeshift dressing on his upper arm. But what else could I have done?

  Carrick, sensibly, and having called up reinforcements and an ambulance, stayed right where he was. Checking the tourniquet and keeping a weather eye on my patient – whose face was wearing a snarl for me alone now – for signs of imminent collapse brought on by shock or a heart attack, I felt Carrick’s gaze on me but he made no comment just then.

  ‘Were you alone in the house, Jessop?’ he enquired.

  Jessop, short, very thin, supporting himself on one elbow, found the energy to spit in his direction.

  ‘Who else was hurt?’ I asked him. ‘Run out of slobber?’ I continued when he remained silent. ‘Just think, if his wound’s as bad as yours appears to be, judging by the way it stinks, he might end up having something off too. So at least you could—’

  ‘What?’ Jessop gasped. ‘Have my arm off? No, surely not! For God’s sake—’

  I interrupted him with, ‘Unless you smell that bad normally. Someone at the quarry said you were a stranger to soap and water so with a bit of luck it might only be your hand or some fingers that have to be amputated.’

  By this time Jessop had gone seriously pale, staring up at me with bloodshot eyes.

  ‘So do your chum a favour,’ I cajoled. ‘You’ll probably save his life. We know he’s not in hospital so just think of him lying somewhere like you with the gangrene creeping through him, bits of him slowly turning black . . .’

  ‘It’s my brother, Billy,’ Jessop choked out after a short silence.

  ‘But he’s never been in real trouble!’ Carrick exclaimed.

  ‘He needed the bloody money as well, didn’t he?’ Jessop yelled at him.

  ‘Where is he?’ I asked.

  ‘At his girlfriend’s place.’ He flopped down on to his back and when he spoke it was in a whisper, barely audible. ‘Oh, God. God. D’you really think I might have to have my arm off?’