Malice On The Moors

by Graham Thomas

  Stumpy's expression darkened. “Yeah, well, we know whose side they were on, don't we?”

  “You were breaking the law,” Powell pointed out.

  “I told you before what I think of the frigging law.”

  Powell ignored this. “Why don't you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “They rounded up my crew and left me behind with Dinsdale and the local inspector—Braughton, his name is. When there were no witnesses, Dinsdale knocked me down.” He glared at Powell. “Braughton just stood there.” He paused. “Then Dinsdale pointed his shotgun at me and fired.”

  “He must have been a terrible shot,” Powell remarked sardonically.

  “Very frigging funny.” Stumpy was indignant now.

  “How was I to know that it wasn't loaded? Psychological abuse, I call it.”

  “You and your associates were charged with criminal trespass, and you subsequently brought charges against both Dinsdale and the North Yorkshire police related to these alleged abuses.”

  “Yeah, that's right.”

  Time to take the upper hand, Powell decided. “You described the August twelfth protest as setting the stage for the next phase of your campaign against Dinsdale. What did you have in mind?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  Stumpy sighed irritably. “If he didn't change his mind, I'd turn up the pressure and go public when the time was right.”

  “He didn't change his mind though, did he, Stumpy?”

  “Like I said, I had a contingency plan.”

  “Did your plan include killing him?”

  Stumpy leapt to his feet. “What a load of arse!” he shouted. “I'm calling my frigging lawyer!”

  Powell stood up and faced him, a bland expression on his face. “That is your right, of course,” he said. “For the time being, I don't have any further questions, but I may need to talk to you again.”

  There was a telephone in the entrance hall of the student residence. Powell placed a call to Chloe Aldershot, Stumpy's girlfriend—or was she an ex-girlfriend?—but there was no answer. He rang for a taxi.

  After arriving back in the city center, he soon located a large, attractive pub opposite the city wall. He ordered a pint of Theakston's Old Peculiar and a ploughman's to see him through. Sitting at a table near the window, he reflected on his interview with Stumpy. The environmental activist came across as a highly motivated young man who was fanatically dedicated to his cause. His track record in blocking environmentally questionable developments through direct action was impressive. The question was, how far was he willing to go?

  While Powell could never countenance breaking the law, he saw a place for dissidents like Stumpy, if only to keep the Merrimans of the world honest, or at least on their toes. As a policeman, he had subjected himself to considerable soul-searching on the question of civil disobedience. If the cause was sufficiently just or noble, one should theoretically be able to act ethically by flouting the law, if that is what was required to redress the perceived wrong. The problem is, there are as many points of view on any given issue as there are people, and nowadays it seems that just about everyone feels aggrieved by someone or something. The chaos that would ensue if every person who felt hard done by took the law into their own hands didn't bear thinking about. There were times, however, when Powell wondered if his desire for stability and order was largely a reaction to the turmoil in his own life.

  He stared into his glass, searching the dark bitter for inspiration. His mental meanderings had not entirely diverted his attention from the fact that something about Stumpy Macfarlane was bothering him. He frowned. It was as if the thought were being sucked under the surface of his consciousness by the whirlpool of impressions swirling around in his head. It had something to do with Chloe Aldershot, he was certain of that. He glanced out the window. A van was pulling into the car park. Suddenly, it struck him.

  CHAPTER 15

  That night in the transport cafe just outside of York on his way to Brackendale, there had been a young couple sitting in the booth next to him. Powell hadn't recognized the man at the time—the closely cropped orange hair was so unlike his trademark beard and dreadlocks—but it was Stumpy, all right. And he was prepared to bet his pension that the woman with him had been Chloe Aldershot. He remembered that neither of them had looked very happy at the time, and he couldn't help wondering why. He drained the last of his pint. Perhaps Ms. Aldershot would be able to enlighten him on that score.

  Outside the pub, he tried her number again, but there was still no answer. He checked the time—he had a few hours to kill before it was time to meet Sir Reggie's train. He drew a deep breath. The city seemed to sparkle in the afternoon sun. A stroll along the ancient city wall and then a shufty round the Minster seemed like just the ticket. As he crossed the street, he wondered idly how Sarah Evans was getting on with her list.

  The three o'clock train from King's Cross pulled into York at two past five. Powell need not have been concerned about locating his colleague in the throng of travelers returning home from London. When Powell arrived to collect him, the large untidy pathologist was standing in the middle of the platform like an immovable boulder, around which the stream of passengers eddied and flowed. Sir Reggie spotted him and bulldozed his way over.

  “Hello, Reggie.”

  Sir Reggie almost looked glad to see him. “Powell, you have no idea what a close scrape it was.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My wife's a member of the Hampstead Amateur Players,” he explained ruefully. “She's laid on a buffet dinner for the lot of them at our place tonight, to be followed by a dress rehearsal of their latest production—” his large red face grew a shade paler “—The Sound of bloody Music, if you can believe it!”

  Powell did his best to imagine a cast of matronly ladies and well-padded gentlemen as the von Trapp children.

  “And that's not the worst of it,” Sir Reggie continued in a flat voice. He paused dramatically. “My wife is playing the role of Maria. For the past few weeks the house has been alive with the sound of screeching. I hardly get a moment's peace.”

  Powell bit his tongue. “Er, I see.”

  “That's neither here nor there now,” the pathologist said gruffly. “But I'm so bloody grateful, I'm going to treat you to one of your damn curries tonight.” He fixed Powell with a penetrating glare. “I hope you realize what a sacrifice I'm making—tomorrow I'll be dragging myself all galley-arsed over the moors. Now let's go somewhere where we can chew the fat.”

  “An intriguing possibility,” Sir Reggie admitted, using the back of his hand to wipe a trickle of red wine from his chin. “The thing is, one wouldn't necessarily be looking for signs of homicidal poisoning in a case like this. After all, the chap was bitten by a venomous snake, that much is clear. Harvey's a good man. If I'd been doing the postmortem myself, I'd not likely have gone much further than he did. It is true, however, that an adder bite is not a very likely candidate for the cause of death, even considering that your chap was prone to allergies. Hand over those crisps, would you?”

  Powell complied. “I keep wondering if the snake is some sort of red herring,” he muttered.

  Sir Reggie crunched away noisily. “I'll ignore your mixing metaphors for the moment. But you're not seriously suggesting that someone poisoned Dinsdale, then rounded up an adder and ordered it to bite him?”

  Powell shook his head in exasperation. “I don't know whether I'm coming or going on this case. I just know that something is not bloody right.”

  “In any case,” Sir Reggie said, “on your list we've got everything from a rodenticide containing sodium cyanide to insecticides that act by poisoning the nervous system. I've had a chat with Harvey about the case and he's having a comprehensive GC-MS screening, as well as some additional analysis, done on the contents of the victim's flask and on the blood, urine, and liver samples retained at postmortem. We should have the results in a couple days. If t
here's anything there, we'll find it.” He tilted his wineglass significantly.

  “I'll get you another.” Powell went up to the bar and soon returned with a glass of wine and a pint.

  The pathologist sniffed loudly at the glass. “Passable plonk,” he pronounced. “Now then, where was I? Oh, yes—the problem, as I see it, is timing. As far as we know, the victim was in good form at lunchtime?”

  Powell nodded.

  “Most insecticides—the organophosphates, for instance—would take several hours to act. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Dinsdale was given something at lunch. After that he is ensconced in his shooting butt, and some thirty minutes later he's discovered by his gamekeeper in a coma. Is that the sequence of events?”

  “As far as we know.”

  “Right. An hour for lunch, perhaps a little longer. Let's say an hour on the moor—half an hour to get settled, then half an hour alone. So we need something that would act within a couple of hours and—”

  “Why couldn't a poison have been administered hours or even days earlier?”

  Sir Reggie cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “That's possible, of course. But it would be damn tricky to time the thing so that the victim would be stricken when he was alone in the shooting butt, assuming that was the idea.”

  “That's been bothering me, as well,” Powell said. “If it hadn't been for the fog, Dinsdale might have been discovered earlier and perhaps saved. How could the murderer—if that's what we're dealing with—have predicted the weather?” he asked rhetorically.

  “Then there's the matter of taste and odor,” Sir Reggie added. “It would be difficult to disguise the presence of most insecticides in a flask of whisky.”

  “Hmm. Is there anything else that fits the bill, then?”

  “Cyanide is a possibility, I suppose. It acts by paralyzing the vital functions. Death from prussic acid can occur in a matter of seconds. Cyanide salts—like the sodium cyanide we're dealing with here—take longer to act, relying on the gastric juices in the stomach to break them down and release hydrocyanic acid.”

  “I should have thought you could detect cyanide poisoning at postmortem.”

  “Not necessarily. The pathologist had no reason to suspect it in this case. There was, after all, a smoking gun—or at least a hissing snake. Ha ha!”

  Powell flashed the obligatory smile.

  “There are, in actual fact, few visible signs of cyanide poisoning,” Sir Reggie continued, “although the skin may show an irregular cherry red discoloration similar to the effect of carbon monoxide poisoning. But you also see the same thing on bodies that have been exposed to cold temperatures. From lying about on a grouse moor, for instance.”

  Powell was not satisfied. “But what about the characteristic smell of bitter almonds?”

  “The odor you are referring to may be detected at the mouth or in the chest and abdominal cavities. However, it's estimated that at least twenty percent of the population are unable to register the smell.” Sir Reggie absently ran his hand through his mop of white hair as if to straighten it, but to no effect.

  Powell wondered if Sir Reggie was to some extent covering for Dr. Harvey. “It would seem from what you're saying that cyanide is the most likely candidate, then.”

  The pathologist smiled ghoulishly. “There is one other rather intriguing possibility: fluoroacetamide. It's another rodenticide. It hasn't been approved for use in the UK for a number of years now, but it's not that surprising to find some of it still lying around. Fluorobane, the formulation on your list, is a granular bait, three percent active ingredient in a cereal base. A little water is added to make a delectable slurry, something like porridge.”

  “Difficult to mask in a flask of whisky,” Powell commented.

  Sir Reggie grunted. “A bit lumpy, I should imagine. But the thing is, fluoroacetamide is extremely toxic and damned difficult to detect. The symptoms, which start after thirty minutes or so, are fairly nonspecific: vomiting, convulsions, and, eventually, cardiorespiratory failure. And the acute lethal dose is so small—a few hundred milligrams, perhaps—that one would be hard-pressed to detect its presence in the tissues. An ideal poison in every respect,” he concluded.

  Powell frowned, recalling his conversation with Harry Settle. “According to the gamekeeper, you don't even need a license or permit to use these things.”

  Sir Reggie shook his head. “That's not strictly true. Before nineteen-eighty-six, pesticides were approved in this country under various voluntary schemes. However, under the current Control of Pesticides Regulations, professional products can only be used by persons with a certificate of competence recognized by Ministers. Unless, that is, one was born prior to nineteen-sixty-four and is using the product on one's own or one's employer's land.”

  “That's interesting,” Powell said offhandedly. Sir Reggie, bless his heart, had obviously been doing his homework. “How much of this Fluorobane would you need?”

  “Three hundred milligrams of fluoroacetamide would be enough. It comes in hundred-gram sachets, so let's see … At three percent by weight of active ingredient you'd want to use ten grams of the bait—a couple of good spoonfuls would do the trick.” The pathologist leaned back in his chair and eyed Powell speculatively. “You realize, of course, that there is a much simpler explanation for all of this: The poor bugger had the bad luck to get bitten by an adder and died as a result of complications related to some constitutional weakness, aggravated perhaps by the depressant effect of alcohol. It's not beyond the realm of possibility. That business about the pesticide shed could be just a coincidence.”

  Powell thought about this for a moment. “Simpler but less satisfying,” he said eventually. “I have a feeling about this one, Reggie. Somebody murdered Dinsdale, I'm convinced of it. Whoever did it is extremely clever and thinks he got away with it.” He looked at the pathologist, his eyes feverishly bright. “I don't know how or why it was done, but I'm bloody well going to find out.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning dawned ambiguously gray and Powell attempted once again to contact Chloe Aldershot without success. He then rang Sarah Evans before they left for the rail station and arranged to have her pick them up in Malton. An hour later, they were all driving together back to Brackendale.

  Powell asked Sarah how she had made out with her list. Although she'd been acting rather subdued after being introduced to Sir Reggie, he had the impression that she was fairly bursting with news.

  “I managed to track down our missing farmer, Albert Turner. He got home yesterday morning, rather the worse for the wear and tear. He'd been off drinking with his mates in Goathland apparently. His wife called me in the afternoon to tell me—after she'd had a chance to deal with him, I expect. I drove up to their farm to interview him and—”

  Sir Reggie began to snore loudly in the backseat.

  Powell grinned. “Don't mind him—he had a late night.”

  “Right.” She looked relieved. “Anyway, we had a very interesting chat. It seems that he's on the verge of losing his farm. According to Mr. Turner, the price of sheep is down and the costs keep going up. He claims that the estate raising his rent this year was the last straw.”

  “I got much the same story from Katie Elger,” Powell observed.

  “Not surprisingly, Turner seems to be using his financial troubles as an excuse for his drinking. The thing is …” Sarah paused significantly. “I got the impression that he blamed Dickie Dinsdale for his problems—in a personal way, I mean.”

  Powell sighed. “Why am I not surprised? What did he have to say about the events of the farmers' shoot?”

  She shrugged. “Same as the others. Claims he didn't hear or see a thing.”

  “Did you manage to track down that other chap and his son?”

  “Brian Whyte. Same story. He and his son, Tony—” She stopped and wrinkled her nose. She glanced at Powell.

  A look of alarm crossed his face as he turned to watch Sir Reggie snorting and rumb
ling in the backseat. He quickly rolled down the window. “We, er, went out for Indian last night,” he said sheepishly.

  They looked at each other and began to laugh at the same time.

  “Well, at least we know he's human,” she quipped.

  Powell reached for his cigarettes. “You won't mind if I smoke, then?”

  “I assume that's a rhetorical question.”

  Powell lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Carry on with your report, Evans.”

  “Right. Basically, the accounts of what happened that afternoon are all consistent. Not one of them appears to have noted anything out of the ordinary while they waited in their shooting butts for the fog to lift. I've talked with the other beaters, as well, and it's the same story.”

  “What we have, then,” Powell mused aloud, “is a scenario where any one of the fifteen individuals involved in the shoot—let's exclude Dinsdale for the moment— could have been wandering about all over the moor doing as they bloody well pleased without being seen for at least half an hour. Does that about sum it up?”

  Sarah hesitated. “I suppose.”

  “And furthermore, most of them are probably glad to see Dinsdale dead.”

  “That's a bit unfair, isn't it?”

  “Is it? By the way, did you get a chance to talk to Francesca, the maid?”

  She shook her head. “She's next on my list.”

  “Anything more on Felicity?”

  “It seems she does have a bit of a reputation for, er, playing the field. But the word is she's got a steady now.”

  “Really?”

  “You'll never guess who it is.”

  “Please tell me, Evans.”

  “Mick Curtis.”

  This caught Powell's attention. “It looks like our Mick's an ambitious lad,” he said slowly.

  “Perhaps they're in love,” Sarah rejoined.

  Powell looked at her. “Do you have anything else?” She was a bit taken aback by her superior's cool formality. “Yes, sir. You wanted to know what was on the lunch menu for the farmers' shoot. Mrs. Settle's veal-and-ham pie with peach crumble for afters.”