Limestone Cowboy

by Stuart Pawson

  “Well, spread the word. It’s a distasteful business and I’d like to see it stamped out.”

  “Will do,” I said. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Are you on with the poisoning?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Keep me informed, please. There is one other thing. It’s more in your court, Gareth, but you might have a few ideas, too, Charlie. The annual gala. To be honest, I’m a bit fed up of seeing the dogs jumping over walls and biting someone’s arm, and I suspect everyone else is, too. The purpose of our involvement is to win public approval, particularly that of the young public. We need a fresh approach, something that appeals to the kids. Have a think about it, will you?”

  We both nodded our understanding of the problem but I fled as Gareth started to voice a few of his ideas.

  “Gather round, kiddie-winks,” I said as I breezed into the CID office. “Uncle Charlie wants a word with you.”

  Chairs were turned, newspapers stuffed away, computer cursors clicked on Save.

  “Two things,” I said. “First of all we’ve had an outbreak of organised dogfighting. Keep your eyes and ears open, ask around, you know the form.”

  “It’s gyppos,” someone said.

  “Possibly. Have a word with any you know, they’re not all into it.”

  “Some were prosecuted in Halifax a couple of years ago.”

  “That’s right, but what happened to them?”

  “Fines and probation, but they were never seen again.”

  “That’s why they’re called travellers.”

  “OK,” I said, “the second thing is this: it’s Heckley gala on bank holiday Monday and, as usual, our uniformed branch will be putting on a display of their skills for the delectation and excitement of the public.”

  “Lucky public,” someone muttered.

  “Don’t knock it,” I said, “or they might ask us to do it. The point is, Mr Wood has realised, after all these years, that a slavering Alsatian pretending to bite someone’s arm off does not draw the crowds like it might have done in 1936. We need a new theme for the show; something that might engage the attention of our younger citizens and thereby point them on the path to righteousness.”

  “You mean something that will scare the shit out of the little bastards?”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  “I could organise a dog fight,” one of them suggested. “There’s this bloke I know, down at the pub…”

  “By younger citizens, ’ow young are we thinking?” Dave Sparkington asked.

  “Not sure. The younger the better, I suppose.”

  “OK. So how about all the woodentops dressing up as Teletubbies? That should bring ’em in.”

  “Most of them are the right shape already,” someone observed.

  “Teletubbies are old hat, it’s the Fimbles now,” one of my more intellectual DCs informed us, and that opened the floodgates. What had been a sensible, constructive conversation about ways of addressing a pressing social issue degenerated into mockery. I told them I’d pass their contributions to Mr Adey and dragged Sparky down to the car park.

  The press were waiting there, swapping stories, flicking their cigarette stubs towards the Super’s Rover, seeing who could land one on the roof. The hospital had gone into full defensive mode, issuing a statement saying that the Ebola scare was caused by a non-self-inflicted overdose of rat poison and they’d come flocking back like hyenas to a kill. They switched into professional mode as we emerged from the door and demanded to know how many deaths we’d covered up. I referred them to our press office, saying that a statement was being prepared. At one time I’d have exchanged banter with them, but nowadays anything off-the-cuff or irreverent would be videoed and shown on Look North.

  “What’s he called?” I asked as we pulled out of the station yard. We were on our way to interview the manager of Grainger’s supermarket, where the offending tin of pineapple came from.

  “Robshaw.”

  “Is he expecting us?”

  “Yeah, rang him first thing.”

  “I haven’t read the lab report. What does it say?”

  “It’s on t’back seat. The label had probably been soaked off and then replaced and stuck on with an insoluble glue, such as superglue. The remaining pineapple juice was a saturated solution of warfarin.”

  “So how did it get in there?”

  “While the label was off, two small holes – I think it says one point five millimetres – were drilled in the tin and the juice was probably extracted. After the poison was dissolved in it a syringe may ’ave been used to inject it back into the tin. The holes were then sealed with solder.”

  “Holes drilled, solder…” I said. “Someone with DIY experience.”

  “Yeah. The report says it would have been a fiddly job, getting the juice in and out.”

  “Is that what it said: a fiddly job?”

  “Um, no. Requiring patience and determination were the actual words. So what sort of a weekend did you ’ave. You’re still in a good mood, I notice.”

  “Quiet. Caught up with a few jobs that desperately needed doing. Hey! I had a postcard from Sophie.”

  “Huh. That’s more than we’ve ’ad. What did she say?”

  “Just that Cap Ferrat was full of old people and I’d be at home there. Really cheered me up.”

  “That sound like Sophie. What about Miss X? Did you see her?”

  “No. She let me down.”

  He glanced across at me. “What ’appened?”

  “Nothing. I rang her and she said she’d prefer to call the whole thing off.”

  “Is she in the force?”

  “No, just the opposite.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well… we were getting along swimmingly until I told her I was a cop. Then her attitude changed.”

  “So what does this one do for a living?”

  “She’s a geologist.”

  “A geologist? Where did you meet her?”

  “At a rock concert.”

  We’d arrived at Grainger’s and Dave steered into a space between a Toyota Yaris and a Skoda Fabia. I’m in the market for a new car so I’ve started noticing these things. I gathered up the paperwork from the back seat and we headed towards the automatic doors of the flagship store in Sir Morton Grainger’s ever-growing chain.

  We did a detour to the tinned fruit section where I picked up a tin of Del Monte pineapple rings and then introduced ourselves to the customer services manager. Within seconds we were being ushered into the cramped, paper strewn office of Mr Tim Robshaw, Store Manager, as his name badge confirmed.

  Handshakes all round, move papers off chairs, sit down. Expansive apologies for the mess. Would we like coffee?

  “Is it me you want to interview or one of my staff?” he asked with a grin when we were settled, opening his arms wide in an extravagant gesture to demonstrate that his entire domain was at our disposal.

  “You,” an unsmiling Dave told him.

  Robshaw was a big man, aged about thirty, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a company tie.

  “H-how is he?” he asked, after I’d told him about the tin of pineapple slices and Carl Johnson bleeding from all his bodily orifices. He’d developed a perspiration problem and his face slowly turned to the colour of a tramp’s vest as he saw litigation looming large, blighting his prospects of advancement in the Grainger empire. One of those oscillating fans stood on the windowsill and every twenty-two seconds I felt a blast of cool air on my left cheek.

  “He could be out today,” Dave said, “but it was touch and go.”

  There were three drawings on the wall, done by an infant who hadn’t quite grasped the rules of perspective, or, I suspected, of going to the toilet. Charming, I suppose. Any dad would be proud to put his children’s first scribblings on the wall. Nothing wrong with that. But Robshaw had had them framed, complete with non-reflective glass and card mounts, which I thought over
the top. Alongside them was a photograph of the man himself, dressed in tennis whites and holding a trophy the size of a cement mixer. Another frame, silver this time, stood on his desk, its back to me, which no doubt held a picture of the aforementioned child. I decided to serve him a big one.

  “It was very worrying for him,” I said. “And for the staff at the hospital. The symptoms were similar to those for the Ebola virus, and for several hours the hospital was quarantined.” Pow! Fifteen love to me.

  At the word Ebola he jerked upright as if a small electric shock had passed through his chair and his mouth fell open.

  “Ebola?”

  We stayed silent.

  “You mean… the outbreak at the General… that’s what this is about?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “How long do you keep your security camera tapes, Mr Robshaw?” I asked.

  “A week.”

  “Would there happen to be one looking at the tinned fruit shelves?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  I turned to Dave. “Any point in watching them?” I asked.

  He shook his head, knowing that he’d be the one who had to do the watching. “No.”

  “The pineapple had been tampered with, Mr Robshaw,” I said. “Somebody had made a determined effort to contaminate it.” Dave produced the label from the offending tin and laid it in front of him and I went on: “We soaked the label off. There’s a bar code on it so can you explain what that tells us, please?”

  He relaxed when he realised that the offence had been beyond his control and typed the bar code numbers into his computer terminal. The new tin was similar to the one we’d taken from Carl Johnson’s fridge, and Robshaw soon confirmed that the price of 432 grams of Del Monte pineapple rings had not changed for six weeks. The offending tin was still with forensics, but Dave had made a note of the numbers printed on the bottom and these were a couple of digits different from those on the new tin.

  Robshaw drummed his fingers on the desk and after a few seconds pinned me with his best managerial stare in an attempt to regain the initiative. “Pardon me asking this, Inspector,” he said, “but how do I know that this tin came from this store? As you have realised, all prices are indicated at the shelf; we don’t use stickers on individual items.”

  Which saves you money, I thought, and makes it almost impossible for the shopper to check the bill when they get home. I said: “The victim says it came from here and we found a drawer full of your bags at his home.”

  “But no receipt?”

  “No.”

  He let go with his forearm volley: “So you’ve no proof?”

  I retaliated with a backhand smash. It’s my speciality stroke. “He thought he was dying of Ebola. Why would he lie?”

  “Good question,” he admitted. Forty-thirty to the forces of law and order.

  “So what does the code tell you?”

  “Right. When I type in the numbers, or a checkout assistant scans it, the terminal is immediately connected to the stock record entry for that particular item.” He rotated his flat-screen monitor so we could see the figures. “It identifies the product, retrieves the price and subtracts one unit from the stockholding. Each record entry has a maximum and minimum stock level specified and if necessary an order is automatically initiated. Batch numbers and sell-by dates are also stored, as shown on the base of the tin. That’s about it.”

  “Can you confirm that this batch came to you?”

  He turned the screen back to face himself. “Um, yes. ’Fraid so.”

  “Thank you. So what date did it arrive?”

  “Let’s have a look. Here we are… July 10th.”

  “This year?”

  “Yes.”

  Dave coughed and said: “Only ten days ago. Maybe we should look at those videotapes after all.”

  “I think you’d better,” I told him. Turning back to Robshaw I said: “I thought, these days, that you could tell who bought what.”

  “Not from this program. If a customer holds our loyalty card, certain selected items are recorded and we can use this information to identify their tastes. That’s the theory, but for Grainger’s stores the system is in its infancy.”

  Dave said: “Would pineapple slices ’appen to be a selected item?”

  “No. It tends to be more specialised lines, such as wine or our cordon bleu ready meals. Then we can target our mailshots and special offers more accurately.”

  “Thanks for explaining that,” I said, making a mental note not to ever buy another ready meal. I didn’t want some spotty supermarket analyst dissecting my eating habits. “So, have you sacked anybody in, ooh, the last two months?”

  “No. I’ve never sacked anybody ever, I’m proud to say,” he replied. “It’s part of the Grainger’s ethos that everybody can be usefully employed. It’s a question of training and finding an employee’s potential. We don’t sack people, we redeploy and redevelop them.”

  “Have you redeployed or redeveloped anybody in the last two months?”

  He thought about it before answering. “We do it constantly, but most of them go along with it, accept the need. There was one girl…”

  “Go on.”

  “She was all fingers and thumbs. Kept dropping things on the shop floor. We moved her into the warehouse where she could do less damage, but she handed in her notice after a week.”

  We asked him for her name and after a phone call he gave it to us.

  “So you don’t know of anybody who might hold a grudge against the company?”

  “No, not at all. Sir Morton might have made a few enemies along the way, but none I know of. Has he been told about all this?”

  “Not yet. How often do you see him?”

  “We have a monthly meeting but we see his wife more often. She likes to play the secret shopper, sneaking in heavily disguised but all the staff recognise her. There’s a daughter-in-law too, who does the same thing, but we’re not so sure about her.”

  We sat in silence for a few seconds until he said: “We’ll have to withdraw them all, won’t we? And recall them. Oh God, we need this, we really need this,” and buried his head in his hands.

  “Has anything like it happened here before?” I asked.

  Robshaw shuffled in his leather executive chair and ran a finger under the collar of his shirt. That was the question he hoped we wouldn’t ask. He picked up the phone again and asked someone to bring in the complaints book.

  “What do you fancy for lunch?” Dave asked as we climbed into his car in the supermarket car park.

  “We could have bought something here,” I replied.

  “And risk being poisoned? No thanks.”

  “OK. Bacon sandwich in the canteen. The poison in them is slow-acting.” I pulled the door shut and reached for the seat belt.

  “What did you reckon to him?” Dave said.

  “Robshaw? He was helpful, once he realised we weren’t after his blood. Not exactly managerial material, I’d’ve thought, but he’d done well for himself. Credit where it’s due.”

  “He’s a twat,” Dave stated.

  Robshaw’s helpfulness extended to furnishing us with a list of the other ten stores in the group, with names and phone numbers, plus Sir Morton Grainger’s home number. Not classified information but it saved us about an hour’s work.

  The complaints book revealed that two weeks earlier a customer had returned some peaches that had turned mouldy in the tin, and ten days before that someone had brought back a tin of blue baked beans. These had been sent to the group’s laboratory and found to be contaminated with a harmless food dye. Both customers were placated and the incidents brushed over without involving the local health inspector. There was no investigation into how the tins were breached and they hadn’t been saved.

  “So what did you think of Sharon?” Dave asked. It was Sharon who delivered the compaints book when Robshaw asked for it. “Personal service,” he’d said with a smile as she passed it
to him. She was severely dressed in a dark suit which went well with her bobbed hair and dark-rimmed spectacles, but the skirt was short and the heels high and she chose her perfume carefully.

  “She’s… um, sexy, if you like that sort of thing.” She’d sashayed to the door as she left the office and cast a glance backwards as she closed it to confirm that we were looking.

  “And we do, don’t we?”

  “Not arf!”

  I was still thinking about Sharon when Dave said: “So what were you saying?”

  “About what?” I rubbed the side of my face. “That flippin’ fan’s given me neuralgia.”

  “You were telling me about Miss X.”

  “Miss X? You mean Rosie. She’s called Rosie. Rosie Barraclough.”

  “So where did you really meet her?”

  “At the geology class. She was the teacher.”

  “I’d forgotten about that. How’s it going?”

  “Fine. Last week was the last one.”

  “Was it any good?”

  “Yes. It was interesting. I enjoyed it.”

  “Particularly with Rosie in charge.”

  “Um, yes, she did add to the enjoyment.” The 4X4 in front of us had two stickers on the back window: one for the Liberty and Livelihood jamboree and the other urging us to Buy British Beef. It was a Mitsubishi Shogun.

  “So what ’appened.”

  “Nothing. Last Wednesday was the final night and I invited her to the pub for a drink. We arranged to go to Mr Ho’s on Saturday, but when I rang her she’d changed her mind.”

  “Because you were a policeman, you said.”

  “Mmm. I’d told someone in the class that I was a graphic designer, and she overheard me. When I told her I was really a cop she went all quiet, as if I’d deceived her.”

  “I usually say that I’m a cattle inseminator. That keeps ’em quiet. So what are you doing about it?”

  I looked across at him. “Doing about it? Nothing. What can I do about it?”

  “Charlie!” he gasped. “Won’t you ever learn. Women ’ave to be chased. You like her, don’t you?”