by John Dean
‘Me’ said the man. ‘I’m Joe Lane and I would like an explanation as to why—’
‘And I,’ said Harris, ‘would like an explanation as to why you and your little pal are wandering around near a crime scene with firearms.’
‘We’re after the dog,’ said the other man, a spotty character in his early thirties.
‘Dog? What dog?’
‘The mad dog,’ said Lane. ‘We reckoned there might be a reward for shooting it. Reckoned them sheep farmers would pay up.’
‘If the farmers wanted the bloody thing shooting they would do it themselves, and take you with it.’ Harris stared at the men. ‘Besides, who are you to go out on something that cockamamie?’
‘We’re big game hunters,’ said Lane proudly. ‘We heard a radio report about the dog and reckoned you could use our expertise. We’re staying in that little town. Levton something.’
‘Big game hunters?’ said Harris, glancing at his sergeant. ‘In Levton Bridge?’
Gallagher laughed but Lane seemed offended by their attitude.
‘We just happen to be professionals and you need professionals in these kind of situations,’ he said tartly. ‘We’re expert trackers, been doing it for years. There’s a big market for the right animal, you know. We’ve hunted all over the world.’
‘All over the world?’
‘Oh, aye, South America, Canada, Africa – shot everything that moves in Africa, we have, antelope, lion, even bagged a gorilla once,’ said Lane proudly. ‘Big bastard he was.’
‘A gorilla?’ said Harris sharply.
‘Like I said, mate, folks will pay top dollar for the right animal. The Yanks they love it – having an animal head stuck over their mantelpiece. They pretend they were the ones as shot it.’
‘And where exactly did you shoot the gorilla?’ asked the inspector.
‘Congo. Mind, it was called Zaire then. Shot it for a retired American businessman. Some geezer from Tulsa. Least that’s what the bloke who hired us reckoned. Most we’d ever been paid for an animal.’
Harris shook his head, trying to control the distaste he was feeling and battling against the rising temptation to knock the man to the floor. Overriding it, though, was the mention of Zaire.
‘And who was this bloke?’ he asked. ‘This middle man in Zaire?’
Lane suddenly turned cautious, his suspicion aroused by the inspector’s interest in the subject.
‘I don’t remember,’ he said, not meeting the detective’s gaze. ‘It were a few years ago.’
‘Pity,’ said Harris, glancing at the firearms inspector, ‘because we were wondering if there is anything we can charge you with after your little jaunt this afternoon. I mean, do you know much it costs to scramble an armed response team? Got to get our money’s worth somehow. It’s all budgets, these days, eh Andy?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said the firearms inspector, latching on to the inspector’s train of thought as he lifted up Lane’s rifle, ‘and I can’t help noticing that this has been modified a little. In fact, I reckon it might turn out to be illegal if we got it down to the workshop, Jack.’
Lane looked worried.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe I do remember. Some bloke called Garratt. Paul Garratt.’
Harris looked disappointed.
‘Not David Bowes then?’ he asked.
Both hunters looked at him with blank expressions on their faces.
‘Ah, well,’ sighed Harris, ‘it was worth a go. I don’t suppose the name Meredith means anything to you either?’
‘Sorry, mate,’ said Lane.
‘The same for James Thornycroft then, I imagine?’ said Gallagher.
‘Oh, aye, we know him.’
‘You do?’ The sergeant looked at the DCI in astonishment.
‘Yeah, he was a vet. Worked for a charity in Zaire. Rescued monkeys or something. Run by an old geezer called Rylance.’
The detectives gazed at him.
‘Mind, we never met him,’ said Lane hurriedly, further alarmed by their interest. ‘We kept out of their way – old man Rylance did not exactly like our sort.’
‘I wonder why,’ murmured Harris.
‘When he heard that we’d bagged the gorilla, he went berserk, apparently,’ said Lane, glancing at his friend, who nodded. ‘Started offering cash for anyone who could find us, didn’t he? He was a good one for taking the law into his own hands was Donald Rylance. Folks said he was one of the good guys but they were all as bad as each other, if you ask me. Jungle law, that’s what it was out there, jungle law. We got out of the country p.d.q, I can tell you. We ain’t seen any of them for years.’
‘I don’t suppose you know where we can find this Rylance chap, do you?’ asked Gallagher.
‘Six feet under, mate,’ said Lane. ‘Got himself murdered a couple of years back.’
‘Know who did it?’
Lane shrugged.
‘You got a licence for that thing?’ asked Harris, glancing at his rifle.
Lane sighed.
‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘I get the message. You didn’t get this from me but the police reckoned it was this Garratt bloke did it. Mind, it’s not as if it’s a secret or anything like that. Everyone knows it.’
‘And where is this Garratt now?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t want to, neither,’ shrugged Lane. ‘We don’t want dragging into whatever he is up to. You don’t cross Paul Garratt unless you have to. We only worked with him because the money was good. Last time we saw him was after we did that gorilla.’
‘What’d he look like?’ asked the inspector.
‘Why so interested?’ asked Lane, still uneasy.
‘Just idle curiosity.’
‘I’m not sure about this,’ said Lane, glancing at his partner. ‘I really am not sure. Like I said, you don’t mess with Paul G—’
‘Listen,’ said Harris, ‘I’ll do you a deal: you tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you go without any further action – as long as you promise to get in your car and sod off out of my patch once we’ve finished.’
The two hunters exchanged glances.
‘Look, I really don’t know about this,’ said Lane. ‘I mean….’
‘Just ask yourself this then, do you really want to spend the night in my nick?’
Lane looked at the inspector’s muscular frame and close cropped hair and shook his head.
‘If I do tell you,’ he said, ‘you got to promise me that Garratt won’t find out.’
‘Somehow I think we will have other things to discuss than you when we catch up with him,’ said Harris. ‘So what does he look like?’
‘I reckon he’s your age. Brown hair, ’bout average height. Oh, and a scar.’ Lane ran his finger along his neck. ‘Just here.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘It’s all here,’ said Matty Gallagher, quickly scanning the contents of the web page that he had called up on the computer on his desk. ‘Joe Lane wasn’t lying about any of it.’
Jack Harris and Alison Butterfield crossed the room to peer over the sergeant’s shoulder. It was shortly before eight that evening and they had convened in the CID room at Levton Bridge, over a sandwich and a cup of tea. Also present were three detective constables, two men and a young woman, and Gillian Roberts, who was sitting at a corner desk, reading through a file.
‘This Rylance bloke was at his house in the suburbs of Kinshasa,’ said Gallagher, leaning forward to read the news item, running his forefinger over the words. ‘June 2007 it was. Someone went in one night and shot him dead. Police ruled out robbery because nothing was stolen. This says they reckon he might have known his killer.’
‘Doesn’t say it was Garratt, though,’ said Harris.
Gallagher did another search.
‘But this does,’ he said, pointing to the screen. ‘This is BBC News three days later.’
Police name suspect in hunt for murder of conservationist, the headline said.
Gallagher turned round in his seat t
o look up at the inspector.
‘You still thinking David Bowes might be Garratt?’ he asked.
‘Not sure,’ said Harris. ‘What would a man like that be doing up here?’
‘Maybe he was after Thornycroft,’ said Gallagher. ‘Something spilling over from their time in Africa.’
‘I’d happily put a bullet in him,’ nodded Butterfield, adding quickly on noticing their expression. ‘Sorry, figure of speech.’
‘Hey,’ said Gallagher, scrolling down the page, ‘they’ve got a picture of Garratt.’
This time, everyone else in the room crowded round to stare over his shoulder at the screen, gazing in fascinated silence at the grainy image of the man with brown hair and a scar running down the right side of his neck. The image looked as if it was taken from a larger picture. The caption confirmed it was Paul Garratt.
‘I reckon that’s David Bowes,’ said Harris, ‘and if he is still in our area, we have to get to him fast. God knows what else he’ll do if he’s brought some kind of feud here.’
‘Yeah, but about what?’ said Gillian Roberts. ‘And where does Trevor Meredith fit into it?’
‘Maybe this will tell us,’ said Gallagher, who had been doing another search, this time on the website set up by Rylance’s animal charity. ‘Ah, that’s a blow – looks like it has closed down. The site hasn’t been updated for the best part of two years.’
‘Yeah,’ said Butterfield, pointing to a small box to the side of the screen ‘The charity was disbanded after Donald Rylance died.’
‘Is there anything about Thornycroft?’ asked Harris.
‘Way ahead of you, guv,’ said Gallagher, clicking on a section entitled ‘The Donald Rylance Story’. He took a bite of sandwich while he waited for the page to load then glared at the screen. ‘Jesus, it’s getting worse. When is Curtis going to do something about it, guv?’
‘I’ll let you ask him.’
‘Ah, no,’ said Gallagher, who had been relieved to hear, when the sergeant arrived back at the station, that the superintendent had gone home. ‘No, it probably isn’t the best time.’
The sergeant gave another ‘tssk’ of frustration then leaned forward as the page eventually opened and a photograph slowly emerged showing an elegant white-suited, white-haired man with a goatee beard, sitting on a veranda sipping a cocktail. They could make out trees in the background.
‘That must be Rylance,’ said Harris.
‘Yeah, it is,’ said Gallagher, pointing to the caption. ‘Looks like his charity had some sort of reserve in the jungle and that’s where this was taken. There’s another picture down below it. Looks like it was taken at the same place.’
The sergeant scrolled down to reveal an image depicting a group of men beaming at the camera. Rylance sat in the middle of the front row, walking cane in hand, flanked by beaming African volunteers. On the end of the back row stood three white men. One of them was Paul Garratt, the detectives recognizing the picture as the source of the image used on the news website following the murder.
‘Well, well, well, look who it is,’ said Harris, pointing to the man standing beside him.
‘James Thornycroft,’ said Butterfield. ‘I’d know that supercilious smile anywhere.’
‘And that,’ said Jack Harris quietly, as he leaned over to peer at the third person, ‘beard or not, is Trevor Meredith.’
‘Yeah,’ said Gallagher, ‘but this says that he is called Robert Dunsmore. Maybe he shaved the beard off so that no one would recognize him.’
‘Does it say when the picture was taken?’ asked Butterfield.
Gallagher read the small print of the caption.
‘Eleven years ago,’ he said.
‘Which explains why we couldn’t find anything about Trevor Meredith before he turned up here,’ said Harris, patting his sergeant on the back. ‘Like you said, Matty lad, he was a non-person.’
‘It definitely looks like we are on the right track,’ nodded the sergeant.
‘Agreed,’ said Harris as the other officers returned to their desks, ‘but we should not ignore everything else. Gillian, have the background checks on the sanctuary thrown anything interesting up?’
‘All the staff are clean, none of them has so much as a parking ticket,’ said the DI, flicking through the file she had been reading.
‘What about this rumour of the place closing down? I seem to remember several letters about it in the local rag.’
‘Yeah, but a rumour is all it seems to have been, guv. The sanctuary denied it at the time, put out a statement to the newspaper. I left a message for Barry Ramsden to ring me back but he has not done so yet. We’ll know more when he does. Not sure if it is important, mind.’
‘You’re probably right,’ said the inspector glancing up at the clock on the wall and reaching for his jacket, which he had slung over the back of one of the chairs. ‘Come on then, show time.’
The DI nodded and stood up.
‘Matty lad,’ said Harris, glancing at the sergeant’s computer screen as he headed for the door, ‘can you print me out a copy of that picture of our friend David Bowes?’
‘Coming right up,’ nodded Gallagher. ‘What do you want me to do while you’re out?’
‘Can you drop in on Gaynor Thornycroft at hospital on your way home? I reckon she might know more than she is letting on.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Come on, guys,’ said Harris irritably as he held up the computer print-out showing David Bowes’ face. ‘One of you must know something about him.’
The inspector was standing in the poorly lit bar, which he had ordered closed to customers: a uniformed officer was standing guard at the front door. The only people allowed in were the men sitting nervously in front of Harris and Roberts now. All had been summoned to the meeting an hour before and those who had proved reluctant to attend had been threatened with a police van being sent to pick them up, lights flashing and sirens blaring. None of them wanted that: they all knew how fast word of such incidents spread in Levton Bridge. Even though all were now here, they still sat saying nothing and resentfully watching the inspector as he paced the room. Perched on a stool at the bar, and wondering if it would be unprofessional to order a G and T, Gillian Roberts watched the inspector’s performance as well, but with amusement: it always reminded her of a caged tiger for some reason. She had seen him do it with villains enough times to know that the men in the room would be panicking.
At a table on one side of the room were Dennis Soames and Len Radley, the latter deliberately sitting a little apart from Charlie Myles: it was the first time the two men had met since their brawl in the market place the night before. On the other side, and sitting alone, was the trainee accountant, a skinny bespectacled man, and at the next table, the shopkeeper, a large man with a shock of black hair, and two local farm labourers in their twenties. The pub landlord, a ruddy-faced man in his fifties, stood behind the bar, glaring balefully at the inspector but only when he was sure Harris was not looking. Eventually, the landlord could contain himself no longer.
‘How long is this going to take?’ he said, glancing up at the clock on the wall. ‘I’m losing money, Jack.’
‘That’s DCI Harris to you, Eddie,’ said the inspector curtly. ‘And it will take as long as it takes. I’m happy to stay here all night if that is what is needed.’
The landlord sighed but said nothing. As Jack Harris walked slowly past each man, fixing them with a stern glare in turn, Gillian Roberts glanced down and double-checked the list provided by Dennis Soames in the canteen the night before: apart from Trevor Meredith, James Thornycroft and David Bowes, the known members of the poker ring were all there. She looked up and tried to read the men’s faces, to see who, if any, was concealing something, but all she could read was fear. Poor poker players they would make, she thought. Mind, it was understandable, Jack Harris did that to people: like the DCI had always said, administer the odd slap from time to time and you could run any small town in the world
. What would Philip Curtis say if he realized the half of how Jack Harris really got things done in Levton Bridge, thought Roberts? She smiled at the thought.
‘Well,’ said Harris, glaring at the men. ‘I am waiting. What was Bowes like?’
No one said anything.
‘Let’s start with an easier one then,’ said the inspector, holding the picture up a little higher. ‘Can you confirm that this is definitely him?’
He turned to the landlord.
‘Come on, Eddie,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly a difficult question.’
The landlord nodded ever so slightly.
‘I’ll take that as yes,’ said the inspector. ‘If a grudging one. What was he like?’
‘I never really noticed.’
Harris turned to Roberts.
‘I was only saying to the detective inspector earlier today,’ he said, ‘that the licensing magistrates would take a pretty dim view of stoppy-back poker games being held at a pub in their area. In fact, am I not right in saying that they closed down the Mitre at Eppleton for something similar a few months back?’
‘Yes, they did,’ nodded Roberts. ‘Nasty business. The landlord lost his job, of course. Last I heard he was on the dole. Him, his wife and two small children living in a horrible little bedsit down in Roxham. Doesn’t bear thinking about. What’s more—’
‘OK, OK,’ said the landlord, ‘I get the message, but I really can’t tell you much. He was just a normal bloke who liked his poker.’
‘So whose idea was it?’
More blank faces.
‘Come on, gentlemen,’ sighed Harris. ‘I really – genuinely – do not want to get heavy over this. After all, we have turned a blind eye to things that just about every one of you does from time to time. Take Len, for instance, by rights I should have banged him up for trying to take my head off last night.’
Without realizing it, Radley reached up and rubbed his swollen nose, which was now sporting a livid bruise.