Limestone Cowboy

by Stuart Pawson

  “He’s not a suspect any more. The toxicology results were quite conclusive, but it was quite a relief when they came back. Mind you, the ones with red faces might have preferred a full scale outbreak.”

  He obviously wasn’t one of them. “So what was it?” I asked.

  “Warfarin. We pumped him full of vitamin K and gave him a blood transfusion and he’s now well on the way to recovery.”

  “What did it do to him?”

  “It causes haemorrhaging, internally and externally. He’d summoned an ambulance because he was having breathing difficulties and then started passing blood. Lives alone, apparently. When he was admitted he was haemorrhaging from his nose and eyes and generally feeling out of sorts. What was happening inside we don’t know, but we’ll keep him in for a day or two, see how he fares.”

  “Sounds nasty,” I said.

  “It was.”

  “Rat poison?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But sometimes used medicinally.”

  “Yes. It’s an anti-clotting agent.”

  “Had he been prescribed it?”

  “He says not.”

  We’d reached the corridor where the victim’s private room was situated, and slowed to a halt outside it. “Could the toxicology report differentiate between the two possible sources?” I asked.

  “No, not at the level of testing we have available.”

  “If it was rat poison, what’s the fatal dose?”

  “Impossible to say. If the recipient has high blood pressure any dose could be dangerous. Prescribed dose is usually between three and nine milligrams. To be sure of killing someone it would have to be massive.”

  “How big is massive?”

  “Don’t quote me, Inspector, but I imagine, oh, thirty milligrams could be rather dodgy for most people. That’s what? A couple of tablespoonfuls. It’s anybody’s guess.”

  “Would he have died without medical intervention?”

  “No doubt about it.”

  “Right. Thanks for your help, Doc. What’s he called?”

  “Carl Johnson.”

  Mr Johnson was sitting up in bed, a drip in his arm supplying him with whatever he needed most. He was gaunt and swarthy, with a bony shoulder poking from the one-size-fits-all hospital pyjamas.

  “This is Inspector Priest and I’m DS Sparkington,” Dave told him, and the patient reached out with his free arm to shake hands. We found two chairs and sat down beside him.

  We asked him to tell us what happened and he started to relate all the gory details, but he had difficulty speaking so I decided that the abbreviated version would do. I poured him a beaker of water and said: “Have you been told what you were poisoned with?”

  “Thanks.” He took a sip, then: “Warfarin. Rat poison.”

  “But you’re not on warfarin tablets?”

  “No. It was her who did it, I’m sure of it.”

  “Your ex-wife?”

  “Estranged. We’re only separated.”

  “Why would she want to poison you?”

  “To get her hands on everything, that’s why.”

  “So you think it was an attempt to murder you, not just make you ill?”

  “’Course it was an attempt to murder me.”

  “Any ideas how you took the poison?”

  “No. Something I ate, I expect.”

  “What was your last meal?”

  “Curry. Chicken Madras.”

  “That would disguise the taste of the warfarin. Was it from a takeaway?”

  It was. He gave us his house keys and permission to scavenge in his rubbish bins. Dave made a note of his wife’s new address and the name of the suspect takeaway.

  “My money’s on Miss Ferodo,” he stated as we drove across town.

  “Nah,” I said. “Mine’s on the takeaway.”

  “How come?”

  “Sabotage. Local fish and chip shop fighting back, and fighting dirty.” Some cops deal with multi-billion frauds and drug cartels and barons of industry with their fingers in the pie, in Heckley we have takeaway wars.

  Johnson’s semi on the Barratt estate had all the hallmarks of a home where the woman has walked out: two days’ washing up in the sink; dirty towels over the radiator; windows that cut out the light and a smell of stale food permeating everywhere. Otherwise it was pleasant. The furniture was good quality and the decor was freshly applied. Too many ornaments, as usual, and a big wedding photograph standing on the widescreen TV.

  Why did he keep that? I wondered. A young version of Carl Johnson stood proudly next to a bubbly blonde, a grey topper clutched in his hand. I picked up the remote control for the television and flicked round the channels. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Were there really, in homes all over the country, people sad enough to be watching that tripe? “Go for a walk!” I wanted to scream at them. “Read a book! Or just look at the sky and wonder at the clouds. Anything but watch this drivel.”

  “Bad news,” Dave announced as he came into the room. “His bin’s been emptied. Hey, I like this.”

  “When it’s widescreen,” I said, “is the picture just stretched or is there a bit extra stuck on each side?”

  “It’s stretched. Haven’t you seen football on one? The goals look about thirty feet wide.”

  “No.” I pressed the off button and the picture faded. “Let’s have a look in the kitchen, then.”

  The curry tray was in a bucket under the sink, with enough sauce left clinging to the edges for our highly-trained scientists to analyse. We placed it in a plastic bag and labelled it. Beneath the tray we found two empty Foster’s cans, so they went into bags, too, along with a mackerel in honey mustard tin and the remnants of a pizza.

  Inside the fridge part of his fridge-freezer there was a half-empty tin of Del Monte pineapple rings, my favourites. He hadn’t mentioned them but perhaps he’d had a pudding. Something sweet like that goes down well with ice cream after a hot curry. I placed it on the draining board next to the other stuff.

  “It’s going to cost a fortune to process this lot,” I complained. Current charge to put something through the lab was £340 minimum, and Gilbert would not be pleased.

  Dave bent over our loot, sniffing at everything. “Any ideas what rat poison smells like?” he asked.

  “No. We should have asked the doctor. Let’s look in his garage – that might be where it’s kept.”

  There was a Citroen C3 in there, plus enough half-empty tins of emulsion in shades of beige to decorate the set of Desert Song. He had a few DIY tools, nothing excessive, and an assortment of chemicals for dealing with garden pests, but no mysterious crystals in an unmarked jam jar. He kept everything in those plastic containers that stack on top of each other. I found an empty one and commandeered it for the samples. We cast appraising eyes over the car and wandered out into the garden.

  He’d done a lot of work in it. There was a kerb around the lawn that was painted white, as was the wall dividing him from his neighbour. The borders were neat and weed-free, but well-stocked with plants, many of which were in full bloom. I’m not good at plants, but these looked the sorts that need a lot of attention. Dave knocked on the neighbour’s door, but nobody was home.

  “Just a sec,” Dave said, back in the kitchen as I started to place the samples in the box. He opened a drawer, decided it was the wrong one and tried another. This time he took a teaspoon from it and reached for the tin of pineapple.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He dipped the spoon into the juice and transferred it to his mouth. A second later he was spitting furiously into the sink. I turned the cold tap on and told him to wash his mouth out. When he’d finished coughing and retching I said: “Don’t you like pineapple?”

  “That’s it,” he declared, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief and nodding towards the tin. “That’s where t’poison is.”

  “Well done,” I told him. “I reckon you just saved Gilbert’s budget a couple of grand. And if you start
bleeding from all your bodily orifices we’ll know it isn’t Ebola.”

  He took me back to the station and then went off to the Home Office lab at Wetherton with all the goodies we’d collected. I caught up with the morning’s happenings and lunched on a chunky KitKat and a mug of tea. Carl Johnson’s wife, who rejoiced in the name of Davina, was in when I rang her number, so I arranged to see her in thirty minutes and went to the bathroom to comb my hair – maybe Sparky hadn’t been lying about the Miss Ferodo thing.

  Funny thing was I still wasn’t sure after I met her. She lived in a first-floor flat in a converted Victorian terrace on the edge of the town centre, only five minutes from the nick. She was about five-two in height with dazzling blonde hair that would have mended a fuse in an emergency. She had her hair lacquer delivered by tanker, like central heating oil, and I could have imagined her lining up with other hopefuls in the Skegness Pier Ballroom, a few years earlier. I could have, but I tried not to.

  “Mrs Johnson?” I asked, offering my warrant card for inspection as she opened the door. She nodded up at me and stepped to one side to let me through.

  Rented accommodation, fully furnished. Cheap furniture that a succession of tenants hadn’t given a toss about. Dingy curtains; cigarette burns on everything; electricity meter just inside the door, spinning like a windmill. I’d have killed to leave a place like that.

  “Are you sure he’s alright?” she asked, after gesturing for me to sit down. I’d told her that Carl was in hospital when I telephoned, but didn’t say he’d been at the centre of the Ebola panic.

  “According to the doctor he’ll be fine, but it was touch and go until they discovered what was wrong with him.”

  “And what is wrong with him?”

  “He’d eaten something that disagreed with him.”

  “What? Like food poisoning?”

  “Something like that. Can I ask how long you’ve been separated?”

  “Just coming up to six weeks, but what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Mr Johnson thinks you may have tampered with his food.”

  She stared at me for a beat, then jumped to her feet and paced the room. “That’s typical!” she declared. “Bloody typical. Everything that goes wrong it’s me. He’s paranoid, Inspector, bloody paranoid, believe me.” She started to say something else, stumbled over the words, then said: “Poison, was it? Poison? Any ideas what?”

  I shook my head.

  “No? Well I’ll tell you how he got it. He did it to himself, that’s what. He’s pathetic, feels sorry for himself since he lost his job.” She walked over to the window, looked out then turned back to face me. “I’m sorry, I never asked if you wanted a coffee.”

  “No, I’m fine. When did you last see him?”

  “The week after I left him. I’d given him this address, trying to be civilised about it, but he came round every night, promising me the world. It took a week for him to get the message that I wanted shot of him for good.”

  “Was he on any sort of medication?”

  “Medication?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Not from the doctor, but he spent a fortune in health shops. He was into every latest fad there was.”

  “Any ideas what he was taking?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “What did he do when he worked?”

  “He was a sorter at the Post Office.”

  “And why did he lose his job?”

  “The cuts, due to mechanical sorting, or something, but he had a record of bad time-keeping, so they were probably glad to let him go.”

  “And do you do anything?”

  “Yes. I work at Yakuma Electronics, attaching things called FETs to printed circuit boards. It takes me forty-five seconds to do one, and my target is five hundred in a shift.”

  “Good grief. Aren’t you working today?”

  “Six this morning until two. I just came in as you rang.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve upset your routine – you’re probably starving. I might want to see you again – will you be working the same hours next week?”

  “No. Two till ten next week.”

  “I’ve done a few of those myself, Mrs Johnson, so you have my sympathy.”

  “It pays the rent. I haven’t had a penny out of him.”

  Chapter Three

  For most people Friday night is the best night of the week, but lately I’d been finding it a bore. The big case was behind us and settling back into routine was difficult. A high-profile murder opens doors for you, gives you power to cut corners and bypass procedures. When you ask for something to be done, it gets done. You live and breathe the case for twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week, and then it’s over. Handshakes all round, have a booze-up with the lads, and it’s back to normal duties. Somebody was stealing knickers off washing lines and we might have had an attempted murder by poison. Or maybe it was self-inflicted. Burglary was hovering slightly below its normal level and car theft was slightly down, too. The Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) was pleased with the figures and when he is happy Gilbert is happy, so we have an easy life.

  But I miss the excitement. Filling in forms and finding the correct path through the ever-moving maze of regulations that beset the most routine, black-and-white investigation is not my idea of being a cop. It used to be fun. Now, you can find yourself on a fizzer if you don’t put sugar in the accused’s complimentary cup of tea. You are depriving him of his human rights and subjecting him to unnecessary hardship.

  End of moaning – I wouldn’t want to do anything else. I hung my jacket in the hall and went through into the kitchen, picking up the mail on the way. I was about to put it all in the bin when the postcard fell from between a World of Reading brochure (any three books on the occult for 99p) and a reminder from BUPA that I wasn’t getting any younger. The card showed a yacht marina and a sea front, but as I’d never been to Cap Ferrat I didn’t recognise the place. The message read:

  Dear Uncle Charles,

  Having a great time here in Cap Ferrat. Lots of old people but it’s really nice. You’d like it.

  Love

  Sophie.

  The world was ganging up on me, reminding me of my mortality, but I didn’t mind. I smiled, pleased that she’d thought of me, and leaned the card against the telephone.

  The beef in red wine that I’d bought earlier in Marks and Spencers needed twenty-five minutes in the oven; the vegetables only five minutes in the microwave. I set the oven to 190, switched it on and retrieved Rosie’s telephone number from my pocket diary. She answered her phone just as I was beginning to wonder if she was in.

  “Hello, Rosie,” I said. “It’s Charlie Priest, as in Roman Catholic.”

  “Oh, hello Charlie. How are you?”

  “Fine. Top of the world. And you?”

  “Not bad.”

  Hardly the enthusiastic response I’d been hoping for, but I plunged onwards: “Are we still on for tomorrow night? Mr Ho at the Bamboo Curtain is a friend of mine and I can guarantee something special.”

  “Um, no, Charlie. I’m sorry but I can’t make it.”

  “Oh, that’s a disappointment,” I told her. “I’d been really looking forward to seeing you. Shall we make it some other time?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well I can’t make up your mind for you.”

  “I know. I apologise for being so wet. I have something to sort out, Charlie. I come with baggage. I’m sorry but maybe we should just leave it.”

  “At our age, Rosie, we’d’ve had sad lives if we didn’t have any baggage. The secret is to keep it hidden, most of the time. Mine’s in the loft, with a dustsheet over it. I don’t look at it very often.”

  “You’re lucky – mine won’t go away.”

  “Maybe you should talk about it.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s leave it, but the offer’s still open. Write my number down in case you change your mind.”


  I placed Sophie’s card back in prime position, leaning against the phone, and returned to the kitchen. The little red light on the oven was still illuminated so I switched it off. I put the steak in red wine and the vegetables back in the fridge and made myself a mug of tea. I couldn’t believe that the hesitant, apologetic woman I’d just spoken to was the same confident, humorous teacher of geology that I’d come to know, if only slightly, over the last twelve Wednesday evenings. Perhaps she’d given me the Misses Eakins’ number as a huge joke, or maybe there are two Rosie Barracloughs hiding inside that trim figure. I don’t know, I’m only a cop.

  “It’s a report of a post mortem that the RSPCA have done on a dog.”

  “A dog?” I reached forward and took the proffered sheet from Mr Wood’s hand.

  “That’s right.”

  “The RSPCA?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why has the RSPCA done a post mortem on a dog?”

  “Well, Charlie, presumably because they wanted to know how it died. That’s the usual reason for having a PM.”

  I scanned the two sheets of A4, not understanding most of the terminology but the gist of it coming through loud and clear. The poor creature had died an unpleasant death. I skipped the gory bits and jumped to the conclusions. It didn’t mention dogfighting but the stated that the wounds had been caused by more than one other animal, and there were signs of human intervention: namely the crude stitching of some earlier injuries.

  “There are some vicious bastards about,” I said, handing the report to Gareth Adey.

  “Hanging’s too good for them, if you ask me,” Gilbert stated. He’s a Labrador man.

  Gareth placed the report back on Gilbert’s desk, saying: “I’ll ask the community liaison officer to ask around. It could be gypsies, travellers. There’s a new bunch of them down on the Triangle.”

  “For God’s sake don’t upset them, Gareth, or they’ll start quoting Europe at us. I’ve spoken to the local RSPCA inspector and he thinks it’s more organised than they’re capable of.”

  I said: “He’s underestimating the travellers if he thinks they’re not organised. Halifax prosecuted a gang a couple of years ago for badger baiting and they found maps with badger sets marked on them that went back for a hundred years. They hand them down, along with the caravan and the Royal Doulton crockery.”