The kill call bcadf-9

by Stephen Booth

  Jackdaws shouted and chattered in the trees as they stood by the car and looked at Long Acres. Large, muddy puddles lay between them and the house.

  ‘Come on, Gavin,’ said Fry.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  Naomi Widdowson had blonde hair tied back in a ragged ponytail. Dyed blonde, of course. Fry couldn’t often be fooled about that, but even someone like Gavin Murfin must have been able to see those roots. Naomi struck Fry as a bit hard-faced, her skin a bit too weathered. That was probably due to spending too much time outdoors.

  ‘Mrs Widdowson, is it?’ said Fry, showing her ID.

  ‘Miss. What do you lot want? I don’t like you being here.’

  Fry tried to ignore the belligerent reception. It was something you got used to after a while, even from people you were trying to help. She looked around the yard, with the stone house to one side and the stables on the other, a row of horses’ heads peering out at her from around their hay racks.

  ‘Nice place. Do you live here alone?’

  ‘No. It’s my mum’s house really. My boyfriend Ade helps me with the horses. And there’s my little brother, Rick. But you knew that, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. That’s why I asked.’

  ‘It isn’t Rick you’re looking for, then?’

  ‘No — you, Miss Widdowson. We had your name from Dermot Walsh, of Trading Standards. You were interviewed some time ago as part of their investigation into fraudulent trading in horses.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Naomi, with a shrug.

  ‘You can’t have forgotten it.’

  ‘No. She was a mare that a woman had on loan from me. When the passport scheme came in, this person forged my consent on the application and got a passport for my horse, in her name. And then she sold the mare on. In foal, too. But it’s all over and done with. Someone got a rap on the knuckles. And then they were free to go off to rob some other poor sod.’

  ‘You weren’t satisfied with the outcome?’

  Naomi laughed bitterly. ‘That doesn’t even deserve an answer. There are still a lot of con merchants out there,’ she said.

  ‘Speaking of which — did you ever come across Mr Patrick Rawson?’

  ‘No,’ said Naomi.

  ‘You never met him?’

  ‘No. But he’s one that people talk about a lot.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘Horse people. Whenever a few of us get together, at a meeting or an auction, or something. His is a name that comes up. There used to be a piece on a website, warning against him. But he got a lawyer to make us take it down. Threatened to sue for slander.’

  ‘Libel,’ said Fry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That would be libel, not slander. A published form of defamation.’

  ‘Oh, thank you for the legal nit-picking. How is trying to protect other people from a con man a crime? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘It depends how it’s done,’ said Fry.

  Naomi sneered. ‘You lot are bloody useless. You and those Trading Standards people. You never did anything to Rawson. He got away scot free.’

  Fry tried to stay calm. ‘We’re trying to help, you know.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? It’s not the first time we’ve had trouble, and I don’t suppose it will be the last. Sometimes, it makes you feel like giving up.’

  ‘You still have horses, though.’

  Naomi’s face softened when she looked at the heads hanging over the loose-box doors.

  ‘Yes, three. We had a bit of luck, actually. We bought a nice piebald filly, about thirteen hands. Halter broken and completely adorable. The owners said they were having to sell Bonny because they’d lost their land to flooding. We paid twelve hundred pounds for her.’

  Murfin whistled quietly. But Fry still wasn’t surprised. These horse people were so far out of her orbit that nothing they did was going to make sense. She might as well just accept it.

  ‘Where did you buy him?’ asked Fry.

  Naomi looked at her contemptuously. ‘I just said she was a filly.’

  ‘Oh. She, then?’

  ‘At Derby. We got her at the horse sales.’

  Fry looked along the line of loose boxes. She remembered Gavin Murfin doing that in Sutton Coldfield. Here, she wasn’t sure what it was supposed to tell her, except that horses ate hay, which she thought she probably knew already.

  ‘I see you have one empty stall.’

  ‘We had a nice old gelding, but he got bad with arthritis. I really cried when he was PTS.’

  ‘PTS?’

  The woman sneered again. Fry was getting tired of that expression now.

  ‘Put to sleep,’ said Naomi.

  ‘Oh, you mean killed.’

  Her face froze. ‘We have our horses put to sleep humanely, when it has to be done at all.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you don’t do it humanely, Miss Widdowson. But, let’s face it — whatever way you do it, they’re still dead, not asleep.’

  Somewhere, a tune started up. A loud, irritating noise, high-pitched and tinny. It was a familiar tune, but it seemed to be coming from one of the stables, and it took Fry a moment to recognize it. Then the noise stopped just before the zap of laser guns came in. The Star Wars theme. It conjured up images of Han Solo and that big, hairy Wookiee — what was his name?

  ‘Yes, that’s my brother,’ said Naomi, as a heavily muscled young man peered over the half-door, clutching his mobile phone to his ear. ‘That’s Rick.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Fry.

  Rick Widdowson merely nodded, and went back to whatever he’d been doing in the depths of the stable. Perhaps it was uncharitable to think that he’d only been keeping his head down until it became clear he wasn’t the subject of the visit.

  Murfin had walked over towards the horses and was clicking his tongue at them. The animals stared at him as if he was mad. He clearly wasn’t carrying anything edible. Or was he?

  ‘What are their names?’ he called.

  Fry winced. It was the way you’d ask a doting mother the names of her triplets. These were just animals, after all, weren’t they? Yet Naomi Widdowson didn’t bat an eyelid.

  ‘That’s Bonny at the end. Baby is the one in the middle. And the gelding is called Monty.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Taking the cue that Murfin had given her, Fry looked at Naomi again.

  ‘Does the name Rosie mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I mean a horse, not a person.’

  ‘Still no.’

  ‘What about the horse that was fraudulently traded?’

  Naomi shook her head empathically. ‘She was called Star. What is this about, anyway? Is there a reason for you being here, or did the police just have some time to spare in between harassing motorists?’

  Fry smiled. ‘How would you describe Patrick Rawson? Was he a plausible sort of man? What did he look like?’

  Naomi opened her mouth, then shut it again. She glowered at Fry, angry now. ‘I told you, I never met him. What sort of trick are you trying to pull?’

  ‘Are you a member of the Eden Valley Hunt?’

  ‘Me? Are you kidding?’

  ‘Could you tell me where you were on Tuesday morning, then?’ asked Fry.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It was a simple question.’

  ‘If it’s any of your business, I was here, on my own. I work part-time at the Devonshire Hotel in Edendale, but Tuesday was my day off this week.’

  She said it in the tone of somebody accustomed to being asked for an alibi. If you told the police you were on your own at the time, then nobody could be asked to back up your story and get the details wrong. It was difficult to prove a negative.

  ‘And I think I’ve heard enough now,’ said Naomi. ‘If that’s all you have to say, I’d like you to go.’

  Fry turned to leave. Then she stopped, as if to ask one more question.

  ‘Widdowson is quite an unusual name. Are you related to th
e huntsman of the Eden Valley Hunt?’

  ‘John? He’s my cousin.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What?’ said Naomi. ‘Is that a crime as well?’

  Murfin sniffed dismissively as they got back to the car. ‘If you ask me, that woman has spent far too much time talking to her horses, and not enough time learning how to make conversation with other human beings.’

  ‘She was certainly a bit lacking in social graces,’ said Fry.

  ‘She smelled, too,’ said Murfin bluntly.

  ‘I’ve got so used to that smell in the last few days that I didn’t really notice, Gavin.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget to check the soles of your shoes before you go back into the office.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Fry, recalling her interview with Superintendent Branagh. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘And did you notice her fingernails?’

  That was something Fry had noticed. Black, every one of them. That was due to too much mucking out, or too much time spent running her fingers lovingly through the coats of horses.

  ‘Gavin, did we ever get results from forensics on the prints from that gate on Longstone Moor?’

  ‘No, we didn’t. I’ll give the lab a nudge.’

  ‘Yes, with a cattle prod.’

  26

  Meanwhile, Cooper had found himself working backwards and forwards between calls to the horse owners on his list, and the conversation going on around him in the office. They were two worlds, existing alongside each other in the same place. The voices of strangers in his ear, speaking of their anger and loss. And the background sound of his colleagues in the CID team, familiar and somehow prosaic, just doing their day to day job.

  ‘… I thought those wretched horse passports we all had to buy at great expense were supposed to stop this sort of thing. Mind you, have you seen some of those passports? Mine looks like an A4 school project. It would only take a photocopier and a cheap binding machine, and a small child could forge one.’

  ‘Did you know the penalty for not having a horse passport is a maximum five thousand pounds fine, or imprisonment for up to three months, or both?’ said Becky Hurst.

  ‘Prison? For not having the right bit of paperwork for your horse?’

  ‘You offend the bureaucrats at your peril.’

  ‘God, I’m beginning to think Matt and Claire were right about easy targets,’ said Cooper, dialling his next call.

  ‘What, Ben?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘… I guarantee, if the gypsies have your horse and you don’t have a passport for it, the police will not take it off the gypsies. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. So off to Appleby they go. I tell people to get the feet post-coded if they breed their own.’

  ‘What’s a flesh mark?’ asked Luke Irvine, in between calls of his own.

  ‘A patch of pink skin on the horse’s face. It’s hairless in summer, so it shows up as a distinctive mark.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘… I suppose she’s gone for pet food, or glue.’

  ‘And what the heck’s a Prophet’s Thumb?’

  ‘A small indentation on the neck. Like a thumb mark in putty.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘ If you ask me, that wasn’t really the purpose of horse passports. They were actually for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, and the vets. To make sure medicines like Bute don’t have to be withdrawn from market.’

  ‘ Why? ’

  ‘ They haven’t been tested to see how long they take to withdraw. So the only way of being certain they don’t enter the human food chain is by not slaughtering any horses that have been treated with them. It’s overkill, almost certainly. But that’s the way our authorities like to do it in this country.’

  Then Cooper found one case where a horse had been sent out on loan, but was slaughtered without the owner’s knowledge. How on earth could that happen? He was about to find out.

  ‘ Yes, Starlight was a fourteen-year-old gelding. He’d been with us for about six years, but he was suffering from arthritis, and I decided he’d have to be retired. I browsed some of the local papers, and I came across an advert. It said something like: Wanted. Horse or pony as a companion. Need not be sound. Small fee paid. Knowledgeable home.’

  ‘ Do you still have a copy of the advert? ’

  ‘ Yes, I’ll find it for you.’

  ‘ So you contacted the advertiser? ’

  ‘ Yes, and arranged to visit her farm to see the facilities. To be honest, I was quite impressed with the set-up. Her idea was that Starlight would be a companion to an in-foal Arab mare she had. I saw the mare, and she was in beautiful condition. The stables were better than mine, and the paddocks were bigger. It didn’t occur to me that I could have anything to worry about. I delivered Starlight on the understanding that he’d be there for a two-month trial period. From the start, I thought it had been made clear that this was a loan arrangement and didn’t involve a change of ownership. I got on well with the woman, and we agreed not to bother with a fee. We kept in touch. I fact, I phoned her a couple of weeks before… well, before it all went wrong. She told me Starlight was fine.’

  ‘ How did you know something was wrong? ’

  ‘ I was reading that same newspaper, and I saw a “for sale” advert for the Arab mare. Since Starlight was supposed to be the mare’s companion, alarm bells started to ring. I went straight to the farm, but there was no sign of Starlight. I reported him stolen to the police. They didn’t seem very interested when I explained the circumstances. But it was theft, wasn’t it? ’

  From the sound of her voice, Cooper could tell that the tears had begun falling as soon as she started talking, and she made no attempt to disguise her distress over the fate of her animal.

  ‘ I kept going back to the farm until I found the woman in, and confronted her. I know I should have got a proper loan agreement drawn up from the start. I realize that now. But she seemed so nice, and the place was just perfect. I only wanted the best for Starlight. It was theft, pure and simple. The destruction of someone else’s property for financial gain. I’m right, aren’t I? I can’t believe that anyone could be so evil. There are just no words to describe what she did. It’s barbaric. If she didn’t want him any more, she could have called me and I would have gladly taken him home.’

  When Fry got back to the office, Cooper broke his calls off to give her the details of his last victim.

  ‘I’ve just phoned the local police in Staffordshire about this one,’ he said. ‘The woman who took the horse was called Annette Wood, and she never denied that she sent Starlight to the abattoir. But she claimed the horse wasn’t on loan to her but was hers to do with as she saw fit. Without any evidence to the contrary, it came down to a question of one person’s word against another’s. And you know how hopeless that is in court.’

  ‘What about the abattoir?’ asked Fry.

  ‘They confirmed that a skewbald gelding arrived in a batch of horses delivered to them a week before Christmas. They were brought in by a man who said he was Annette Wood’s brother-in-law.’

  ‘Patrick Rawson?’

  ‘Correct. They’d dealt with him before, so they had no reason to be particularly suspicious. In fact, they claimed ignorance in the whole matter. All the police could establish was that the abattoir gave Rawson between four and five hundred pounds for each horse. The correct paperwork was filled out and, as far as the abattoir knew, the horses were signed over by their owner or the owner’s agent. They cooperated with the investigation. There’s no allegation against the abattoir, and no suggestion that the horses were maltreated at any stage.’

  ‘And no charge against Rawson?’

  ‘The problem was establishing a chain of events. Without that, it wasn’t even possible to consider pressing charges. Of course, it was mad not to have had a proper loan agreement in writing from the start. It should have specified whose authority was needed before the horse could be destroyed. A verbal agreement is
worthless in evidence.’

  ‘So Rawson did the deal.’

  ‘That was his speciality — dealing. He would buy and sell, always to his own advantage. He worked with the abattoirs all the time, places like Hawleys.’

  So that was at least one woman who had been taken advantage of. All she’d wanted was a good retirement home for her beloved horse in the last years of his life. How many more owners were there who’d had similar experiences? The list of people who had reason to hate Patrick Rawson was growing rapidly.

  ‘Couldn’t uniforms help with some of this?’ asked Murfin.

  ‘They’re more used to looking for stolen cars.’

  ‘In some ways, finding a missing horse ought to be a lot easier than locating a stolen car,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Look at this — each horse now has its own passport containing a full description — silhouettes from front, back and both sides, showing the colour and all the animal’s markings. Whether it has a stripe, a blaze or star. Exact placing of whorls and feathers. Its microchip number, freeze brand, its height, age, the colour of its hooves. That should help, surely? You don’t get that level of description for any car.’

  ‘And you can’t exactly give a horse a re-spray and change its number plates.’

  ‘Also, it’s possible to consult NED for information on the identity of horses in the UK.’

  ‘NED? For goodness sake.’

  ‘The National Equine Database. You can get microchip numbers and freeze brand information.’

  ‘We’d have to find someone who knows the difference between a skewbald and a piebald.’

  Fry was gathering her phone and car keys, pulling on her jacket.

  ‘Where are you going, Diane?’

  ‘I’ve still got a call to do on my own list. One of Patrick Rawson’s business contacts: Senior Brothers in Lowbridge.’