Primal Cut (3 page)

‘Will do. What do you know about Woollard?’

Underwood sat back in his chair. ‘He is a different animal altogether. I checked his file after our initial conversations. He was arrested at a cockfight outside Cambridge in 1992. He got a warning and a fine. There was no suggestion that he had either organised the event or that he owned either of the birds. Next time he crossed our radar screen was for drunk driving last year. He’s divorced which doesn’t surprise me. We heard rumours that he beat up on his missus but she wouldn’t support an investigation.’

Bevan nodded. ‘We first heard about him in connection with a different case. We were looking at a syndicate based in Ireland that was exporting horses illegally to the UK. In 2001, the RSPCA had
complaints that Woollard was mistreating his horses. Tying them up, not feeding them properly. Problem was that whenever they turned up, there was no sign of anything. It’s like he knew they were coming.’

‘There is a diabolical cunning about the bloke, that’s for sure,’ Underwood nodded. ‘He acts the dumb innocent but he’s bloody clued up about his rights. Why did the RSPCA contact you?’

‘Two reasons. Firstly, they are constrained legally. They have limited powers under legislation. My group has a bit more latitude. Secondly, one of their inspectors visited his farm randomly six months ago. There was no one about. She had a snoop in his barn and found a big square of carpet on the floor. She thought she could see blood on the carpet but before she could check it out, Woollard turned up. He was abusive, pushed her around a bit, scared the shit out of her by the sounds of it. She claims he shoved her up against a wall and stuffed his hand down the front of her trousers. Nothing came of it though. Anyway, I made a connection between the Irish syndicate and Woollard. Once I started looking, I saw that he isn’t just into maltreating horses.’

‘Why is the carpet significant?’

‘Experienced dog fighters sometimes use carpet in their fighting rings. It gives the dogs extra grip
so that they can inflict more damage on the opponent. It makes it a more exciting spectacle.’

‘And you can throw the carpet away after a fight,’ Underwood added. ‘Dispose of the blood evidence.’

‘Absolutely,’ Bevan agreed. ‘Except it seems on this occasion Woollard got sloppy. That’s when we got involved.’

‘Have you got enough for us to go in with a warrant and strip the place?’ Underwood asked.

‘Not yet. These photos don’t prove anything. I couldn’t get any closer because of his sodding great Rottweiler shouting the place down.’

Underwood thought for a moment, then looked again at the picture of Keith Gwynne. ‘He’s the weak link. Gwynne is small time and not that intelligent. He is not a proper crook. We could pull him in and put the frighteners on him.’

‘We’d have nothing concrete to work with. As soon as we let him out he’d be on the phone to Woollard and we’d have no chance of a result.’ Bevan thought for a second. ‘What other pies does Gwynne have his fingers in?’

Underwood shrugged. ‘You name it. He does up old cars and flogs them. He used to drive around in a beaten up 1950s ambulance. Like I said, he’s a chancer.’

‘You said he was a gypsy?’

‘That’s right.’

Bevan scratched his head. ‘Does he have ponies? Most of them do.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Let’s check. If he does, I might have a way to get closer to him. I might need you to let me have a couple of plods for the day though.’

‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Now we’ve put this Braun character away, there should be some uniforms about who’d fancy hassling a pikey.’

‘Good. I will drive up to Balehurst and have a look around. I’ll try to become a familiar face.’

‘Fine. I’ll sort you two uniformed officers. How much can I tell them?’

‘Bare minimum.’

‘Understood.’

Bevan got up from the table and shook Underwood’s hand. ‘I appreciate your help, John.’

‘To be honest, Mike, I’m happy to be involved. They don’t give me anything substantial to work with these days.’

‘The famous Inspector Dexter?’

‘I’m flapping in her slipstream.’

‘I’ve heard a bit about her. She was at the Met before? A bit of a ball breaker.’

Underwood smiled at the description, imagining Dexter’s volcanic reaction if she had heard Bevan’s comment. ‘A victim of her own success,’ he observed.

‘I’ll tread carefully,’ Bevan winked at Underwood as he left the room.

Underwood suddenly felt bad for bantering about Dexter. She was too obvious a target for his frustration. That his protégée had outstripped him was disconcerting but, like Twain’s self-made man, he had no one but himself to blame for his own lack of success. He looked out of the window at the scrappy station garden: a pool of light in the darkness.

The birds had gone.

Alison Dexter’s interview with Suzy James was screened on the BBC local news that night. Kelsi Hensy started with surprise as the image of her new football recruit appeared in front of her. She stopped eating her tea and listened much more carefully to the news than was her custom. Dexter looked uneasy in front of the camera, she thought; pretty though. Kelsi watched intently as the camera trailed Dexter’s footsteps to her car. The screen then filled with the grim visage of Henry Braun whose large yellow teeth certainly weren’t pretty.

‘This is a miscarriage of justice,’ Henry Braun snarled into the camera. ‘My brother has been the
victim
of a witch-hunt by New Bolden CID. The behaviour of Inspector Dexter and her team has been a disgrace. They are arrogant bullies. An innocent man has been convicted today.’

In a different part of Cambridgeshire, in his squalid room piled high with newspapers and smelling of dog food, George Norlington watched the news too.

At 11.15 a.m. the following morning, Nicholas Braun was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for three rapes and a string of indecent assaults. In the back of the crowded courtroom, Dexter clenched her right hand in triumph. The sentence had justified her efforts. After a moment’s thought, she felt a terrible twist of guilt. Twelve years would mean little to Braun’s victims: the women whose lives he had ruined. Dexter wondered how she had become so de-sensitised. Previously, she might have blamed her own brutal, lonely upbringing but over time had become bored with self-pity. Perhaps the job itself was hammering her emotions out of shape. She remembered how it had almost
destroyed John Underwood. Maybe now her own personality was being re-fashioned. Dexter was uncertain of what she was changing into. The idea disturbed her.

She drove back to New Bolden police station in a curious mental state, for once forgetting her plans for the day. Her mind was focused on Kelsi Hensy and on the confusion of emotions that she engendered. Dexter was sliding. She had always tried to channel emotion, to dam it and draw intellectual energy from its controlled flow. And yet, that strategy had not worked: she was alone. Her appetite for information was her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. She needed it like some addictive drug. All her decisions were based on a cold evaluation of information. Dexter decided that she needed to know more about Kelsi Hensy.

Returning to New Bolden CID, Dexter nodded at John Underwood through the glass wall that separated their offices. She found the transparency intrusive and angled her computer screen away from Underwood’s gaze. She logged in and, after a moment’s delay while her system rebooted, accessed the Cambridgeshire police online records. Within a couple of minutes she had ascertained that no one called Kelsi Hensy possessed a criminal record.

Ashamed of herself, but driven on, Dexter tried an alternative but more obvious source of
information. She ran an Internet search using ‘Kelsi Hensy’ as a search descriptor.

It produced twenty-seven search results. Dexter scanned through the list, her eyes eventually coming to rest on a headline from a computer trade magazine: ‘ComBold appoints new Head of Communications’. Dexter double-clicked on the article and read carefully as it appeared on her screen.

‘Cambridgeshire-based Internet security firm ComBold have appointed Kelsi Hensy, 34, as Director of Communications. This is an internal appointment. Ms Hensy previously worked in a junior capacity within the Communications Department.’

Dexter scrolled down the page. There was a small photograph of Kelsi Hensy sitting in her new office at ComBold next to her contact details. Dexter wrote them down on her blotter. There was a knock at her door; without looking up she quickly closed down her Internet connection and Kelsi Hensy’s smiling face disappeared from her screen. When she looked up, Underwood was already in her office.

‘Good result today then,’ he ventured.

‘Very. Good riddance to that toerag,’ Dexter smiled back.

Underwood sensed guilt. Dexter never smiled.
He decided to let it go. ‘I met with Mike Bevan yesterday.’

‘Is he making progress?’

‘Of sorts. He’s asked for some resources.’

‘Fine.’

Now Underwood was convinced that something was wrong. Dexter was fiercely protective of her departmental resources and yet she hadn’t even queried his statement. He had been observing Dexter’s personal life from a distance. He liked to think of it as taking an invisible responsibility for her. The bitter truth was he had nothing else to fill his dark imagination. Something had clearly upset her: he would endeavour to find out more.

To his surprise, Alan Moran found that he was still alive. He was aware of the cold first, his right side felt like stone. Then he remembered the pain. He was standing in the dark; leaning against what felt like a refrigerator wall. His unusual circumstances disorientated him. He tried to move but found that the pressure around his neck was being caused by
some
kind of leather strap – like a collar.

His eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. A rope led from his collar upwards, disappearing into blackness. His hands were tied behind him. Alan resisted the urge to panic. He was ex-army. He tried to keep a cool head. His memories of the previous evening were scattered in the jumble of his semi-conscious brain. The nightclub had shut at two. He’d had a quick drink with a few of the other bouncers then walked down Church Road to the junction with Leyton High Road. He’d turned left up towards Midland Road Station. He remembered going under the rail bridge and smelling the stale piss of Leyton’s tramps; he recalled the sound of a car door slamming. He had crossed the High Road and headed towards his flat in Abbots Park Road. There the trail of memories ended.

He wondered if he had offended someone important. Smashed up some little wanker outside the club without realising his importance. The East End had changed beyond recognition in his lifetime but there were still some toes you didn’t tread on. Had he battered some relative of the Cowans’? Or the Moules’? Was this payback time? Alan strained against his bindings.

Suddenly, a terrible high-pitched screaming started outside the room. The noise intensified and
was
punctuated by the sound of a fist crashing against a steel door. Then Alan heard another voice: a man, remonstrative, half-threatening. The screaming suddenly stopped. A bolt slid back on the refrigerator door. The room was suddenly filled with electric light.

Ray Garrod ran straight up to Moran, jumping up and down in excitement.

‘Give me the pen, Bollamew. Lemmee do the pen. You promised me.’

Alan Moran looked at the huge figure of Bartholomew Garrod standing in the doorway.

‘Listen, mate,’ he gasped against his collar, ‘there’s been some misunderstanding.’

Bartholomew stepped towards him. In close up, Alan half-recognised the huge, rutted face as it stared impassively back at him.

‘I don’t know who you work for but I’ve done nothing.’ Alan now saw that he was in a huge refrigerator. Sides of beef and pork hung in neat lines next to him. There were sausages, chops and steaks on shelves around him.

Bartholomew Garrod didn’t say anything. He handed his brother a permanent marker pen, taking care to remove the cap because he knew it posed problems for Ray. Scarcely able to contain his excitement, Ray Garrod grabbed Alan’s head with his left hand. With his right he drew two diagonal
lines
across Alan’s forehead. They intersected directly in the centre. Bartholomew watched his brother’s careful artwork. Moran’s crossed forehead now reminded him of the Scottish flag.

‘What are you doing?’ Moran spluttered in surprise and fear. He had done a tour in Northern Ireland. He had heard stories about what IRA snatch squads had done to Squaddies. He didn’t want to lose an eye or his kneecaps or his bollocks.

Bartholomew Garrod brought up the poleaxe that he held in his right hand. It had a steel head fixed on a wooden shaft. The steel had been sharpened to a point. Bartholomew rested the point of the axe head on the intersection made by the lines on Moran’s forehead.

‘This won’t hurt much. There are no nerves in your brain.’

With that, he drove the sharpened axe head straight through Moran’s forehead. He held it in position for a few seconds, maybe ten, until the body eventually relaxed. Ray Garrod clapped happily as blood plopped gratifyingly onto the stone floor.

‘That was an old-fashioned “stunning”, Ray. We used a poleaxe but they have bolt guns for that now.’ Bartholomew felt the impressive muscle bulk of Alan Moran’s twitching body.

‘A bolt gun?’

‘That’s right. They make a hole with the gun. But sometimes they have to pith it.’

‘Pith it?’

‘Yep. They feed a metal stick into the hole and scratch up the brains a bit. To make sure the animal is dead.’ Bartholomew looked around for one of his meat knives. ‘Now we have to bleed it you see. Blood has bad stuff in it so we drain that out then the meat will keep longer.’

Bartholomew Garrod made a vicious incision across the front of Moran’s neck below his collar. The body was hanging forward in its harness and it began to haemorrhage impressively. Bartholomew slid a steel bucket under the blood flow to collect it.