Requiem for a Dealer (13 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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She gave a sad little smile. ‘He was going downhill even faster than the business. He was drinking way too much. I don't mean bad hangovers: I mean alcoholic poisoning. I tried to shield Ally from the worst of it, but maybe that was a mistake. What finally happened to him didn't surprise me in the least, but it knocked her sideways. Five days earlier she'd caught Stanley and Windham arguing in the yard. By all accounts it got personal and it got nasty. When Stanley died, Alison was convinced that was why. Not suicide, not an accident – murder. But no one else thought so.'
Which accorded pretty much with the picture Deacon had put together. He drew a mental line under it and nodded. ‘Actually, Miss Walbrook, there was something else I wanted to ask you. Do you know a man called Dieter Townes?'
‘Townes.' The name seemed to mean something to her; after a moment she got it. ‘He runs that little riding school at Cheyne Warren.'
‘Appletree Farm. That's right.'
‘Whatever can the police want with a man who gives riding lessons to under-tens? Oh – unless …'
‘No, nothing like that,' Deacon said quickly. ‘Only, it's an unusual name. Is he German, do you know?'
‘I think his mother is,' said Mary. ‘The way I heard it, his father was stationed in West Germany while he was in the army and he married a local girl.'
‘So he may have family there,' said Deacon. ‘Cousins and so on.'
‘I've no idea,' said Mary Wolbrook coolly.
‘How long have you known him?'
‘I wouldn't say I
do
know him. I've met him a time or two. We have some acquaintances in common. That's all.'
‘You've never done business with him?'
Mary laughed out loud. ‘I'm sorry, Superintendent, I don't mean to be rude. But the horses we handle have nothing in common with the animated hearth-rugs he uses. They're the same species. But you'd need to be an expert to know that.'
She hadn't told him much, but it gave him somewhere to start with Townes. Maybe the man had nothing whatever to do with the tranquillizer those wags at Forensics called Horsefeathers. But if he still had family in Germany, and if he did any visiting, and if it turned out his cousins had horses too, it was time Deacon gave Dieter Townes the opportunity to convince him of his innocence.
He and Meadows were back in the car, ready to leave, when a spit of stones and the squeal of dodgy suspension announced the arrival of a clapped-out hatchback of a type rarely encountered since the introduction of the MOT. It skidded to a halt and Alison Barker stumbled out, flushed with anger.
If she saw that Mary had visitors she didn't care. Distress twisted her mouth in awkward and ugly ways and her voice was thick. ‘I saw him in the lane. What was he doing here? Tell me you sent him away. Mary, tell me you sent him away!' Her hands gripped the older woman's arms, shaking her.
Mary Walbrook broke her friend's grasp and her voice was firm. ‘I wanted to tell you before you found out. But as you see, we've only just sorted it out. I was going to call you tonight.'
‘Sorted what out?' But Deacon could see that she knew. She just couldn't believe it. Her whole body was rigid with shock.
‘Ally, I have a lot of horses to be collected and delivered. Johnny did a good job for us for years, and now he's made me a very good offer. I can't afford to turn it down.'
‘He tried to kill me!' The howl of anguish ripped straight from her heart.
Mary shook her head. ‘I know you believe that, Ally, but it isn't true. And I wish I could afford to take your part, right or wrong, but I can't. I need this deal. I've told him I'll take it.'
Alison Barker backed up a couple of steps. Her body bent like a bow with the bitter force of her fury. ‘I own part of this business. I won't let you do it. My father threw that man off the yard, and Johnny killed him because of it. Now he's tried to kill me too. And all that matters to you is saving a bit of money! I won't have it. Dad started this business, he was the senior partner. I'm his heir. You need my approval to make any kind of arrangement with Johnny Windham. And guess what? You're not going to get it.'
‘I'm sorry, Ally,' Mary Walbrook said quietly, you're mistaken. I don't need your approval. The decision has already been made.'
The sense of betrayal is an emotion, an abstract, easy to describe but impossible to depict. Except that it was made manifest in Alison Barker's eyes. For the record, it looks like broken crystal. For a moment she couldn't find a voice to express it. When she did, all she could manage before she ran back to her ancient car and drove away was: ‘It's the worst decision of your entire life. And it could be the last.'
Driving back from Peyton Parvo Deacon and Meadows considered, separately and together, what they'd heard. Specifically, whether it constituted a threat; and if so, whether it had been the sort of empty threat that angry people terminate conversations with, or the sort that subsequent inquiries hold to have been sufficiently significant and credible that a responsible officer would have acted on it.
Deacon didn't do his job with one eye on posterity – if he made mistakes they were honest ones and he was ready to answer for them. But the reality is, if something goes badly wrong somebody's head is going to roll. If something goes disastrously wrong – and it would count if one woman threatened another in front of two police officers, they decided it was just girl talk, and someone ended up dead – one of the privileges of rank is to be first to the chopping-block.
‘I'm not sure it was a threat at all,' ventured Meadows. ‘I think it was a warning. Alison Barker thinks Johnny Windham is a dangerous man who tried to shut her up by drugging her food. Now she finds out her friend is doing business with him again. She's alarmed – frightened for Mary's safety.'
Deacon wasn't entirely convinced. ‘I thought she was more angry than alarmed. She thought Mary was letting her down.'
Jill Meadows had heard that too. ‘Do you think Mary Walbrook is in any danger? From either of them?'
Deacon considered.
‘She
didn't think so, did she? She didn't ask us for help of any kind. I don't think we have reasonable grounds to arrest Alison, and I don't think Mary would want us to even if we offered.'
‘So what do we do about it, sir?'
‘We
remember
it, constable,' Deacon said pontifically. ‘That's what we do.'
From Peyton Parvo they headed across the Three Downs to Cheyne Warren. Meadows was thinking. ‘There's something I don't understand, sir.'
‘Only one thing?' Deacon was impressed. ‘Perhaps you should be the superintendent.'
Detective Constable Meadows fully intended to be but thought it wiser not to say so. ‘Sorry – not the case. Why is it Chain Down' – she spelled it out – ‘but Cheyne Warren?'
‘For the same reason it's Mennor Down but Manor Farm, and actually both of them were named after the standing stone – the menhir – on the top. For the same reason that gorge' – he pointed out of the driver's window, to where the roadside verge disappeared in forty metres of drop onto chalk boulders – ‘is Ship Coomb. You don't really think they ever got ships up that little stream? Somebody lost some sheep down it once. But the rubes down here were illiterate until they punched through the road from London.'
‘The Roman road?'
‘The M23,' said Deacon sourly.
When he saw Dieter Townes' ponies Deacon understood Mary Walbrook's amusement. There wasn't one of them worth the trouble of importing. If he'd bought them at all it was from a rag-and-bone man. He might have been paid to take them away.
Then he remembered that one of these ponies – and even if it was the prettiest that wasn't saying much – was the dearest thing to Paddy Farrell's heart after her mother and Howard the stuffed dragon. She'd have been riding it this morning; half a dozen other little girls would be on it during the course of the day. Every one of these placid little beasts was the means of separating middle-class families from their hard-earned wealth. At that thought both the ponies and their owner went up in his estimation.
Townes was teaching when they arrived. Deacon called him over, and the flash of his warrant card made Townes first frown and then call over a teenager who was working in the corner of the yard. ‘Keep an eye on this lot for me. Get them doing Round The World. Anyone who falls off gets put back on. Anyone who falls off twice gets 10p and put back on.'
The girl ran a critical eye over his class. ‘They'll make more money out of you than you do out of them.'
‘Just do it.' He walked back to where Deacon and Meadows were waiting. ‘Sorry about that, but I can't just abandon them. What's this about?'
It was always a balancing act, deciding how much to say. Of course, if Townes was involved in smuggling drugs in from Europe he knew what it was about, and if he wasn't, telling him wouldn't matter. ‘We're talking to people involved in the horse trade in this area about the possibility that illegal substances are being smuggled across the Channel in horse transporters.'
Townes wasn't a fool: he didn't throw his hands up in horror at the very idea. He gave it some thought. ‘It wouldn't be difficult. For obvious reasons, a horse lorry is a big, sturdy vehicle. A lot of them are built with double floors as a safety measure. It wouldn't be rocket science to create a cavity between those floors big enough to smuggle in almost anything you wanted. And to find out you'd need to do a proper search – unload the horses, remove the partitions, muck out the box, hose the floor, lift the rubber matting and then start looking for a way into the floor itself. What I'm saying is, you couldn't tell anything by just looking and tapping with a screwdriver.' When he realised he had more of their undivided attention than was strictly desirable he shut up.
‘My goodness, Mr Townes,' said Deacon, ‘you
have
given this some thought.'
Townes forced an embarrassed little chuckle. ‘Not really. It's kind of obvious. Anyone who's travelled across borders with a horse-box knows that Customs would rather search a coachload of deaf pensioners than start on a trailer with two ponies in it. If that mattered to you, it would be worth bearing in mind.'
Deacon let his gaze travel back to the sand school, where half a dozen small children were engaged in an exercise that, deliberately or otherwise, had resulted in several of them sitting back-to-front. The ponies either hadn't noticed or didn't care. ‘Find yourself crossing a lot of borders, do you, Mr Townes?'
‘With that lot, no,' said Townes. ‘But I worked as a groom in a number of competition yards and we spent half of every year travelling round Europe. If you want to know if I ever smuggled anything myself, the answer is no. The fact remains, it wouldn't be difficult.'
‘No,' nodded Deacon. ‘Where did you get to, then?'
‘All round,' said Townes. ‘France, Belgium, Holland, Spain,
Germany …'
‘Ah. Visiting the family.'
Townes had thought the questioning was essentially over, they were making conversation now. He blinked as he realised his mistake. ‘That's right, my mother's from Germany. I have cousins in Hamburg. And yes, when we took the eventers to Luneburg Heath I paid them a visit. About eight years ago, and I haven't seen them since. Superintendent Deacon, I don't see how this is going to help you.'
‘Are your cousins into horses too, Mr Townes?'
‘No,' he said levelly. ‘One is an accountant, one works in a brewery, two are academics at the university.'
‘Veterinary science?' hazarded Deacon, who saw what was always a thin lead withering by the moment.
‘Media studies and archaeology,' said Dieter Townes.
Deacon made himself smile. ‘Well, thank you for your insights. I'm sure we'll find them very helpful. If we should need another word with you …?'
‘I'll be here. I always am.'
 
She'd said an hour. When two had passed and Alison still wasn't back Daniel put his books away and walked up Fisher Hill to The Ginnell.
He was expecting to find her there, with a suitcase open on the bed, debating what to bring and what to leave, unaware how much time had passed and how uneasy he had become. Instead he found the house empty and no sign of an old banger outside.
All Daniel's instincts were telling him something was wrong. Even so, before he did anything he made himself stop and think. There were a lot more likely explanations than that she'd been abducted in broad daylight. She might be on her way down to the shore right now, just not the way he'd come because she'd parked the car facing up the hill. If he walked home he might find she'd got there first, was sitting on his steps like an orphan because she hadn't got a key.
By then, though, she'd have been adrift for two and a half hours. Twelve days after what she claimed was an attempt on her life, would she have left him to worry for that long, when all she
had to do if she'd been delayed was pick up the phone? If she knew his number. Daniel couldn't remember if he'd given it to her or not.
He turned round and headed home. If she was there, or there was a message on his phone, well and good; if not he was going to have to call the police. The chance that Alison was in trouble outweighed the risk of making a fool of himself
In the event, Brodie walked out of Shack Lane as he hurried past. With Paddy at her father's for tea she'd taken the opportunity to do a couple of hours' work. So intent was he on getting home that Daniel didn't even see her: she had to call his name, with some asperity, before he stopped.
‘Not talking to me, Daniel?'
They hadn't parted on the best of terms, but in fact he was desperately glad to see her. He explained the situation in a few sentences.
To her credit, whatever her feelings about Alison Barker and however irritated she was with Daniel, Brodie put that aside while they dealt with the crisis. ‘I'll get the car. We'll check your house, and if she's not there I'll call Jack.'
She wasn't there. Daniel's heart plummeted. But while Brodie was dialling a decrepit car pulled up behind Brodie's. Daniel touched her arm.
Immediately Brodie's annoyance, her sense that something valuable to her had been stolen by this girl, returned. She was all set to give Alison a piece of her mind as soon as she came inside. But she didn't come inside. She didn't get out of the car. They could see her bent over the wheel, not moving. With a sudden surge of fear they hurried down the iron steps and up the shingle together.
Alison was uninjured. But she was crying as if she'd never stop.
Daniel wanted to touch her and didn't dare, afraid she might shatter like crystal. Brodie had no such reservations. She ducked down beside the weeping girl and put her arms around her, and guided her out of the car and down to the netting-shed. Feeling rather foolish – thieves aren't
that
desperate, even in Dimmock – Daniel locked the car and followed.
Brodie didn't even try to get any sense out of her until Alison was installed in an armchair with a mug of hot sweet tea pressed into her trembling hands. Then she said, ‘Tell us what happened.'
In all honesty, what had happened barely explained the state she'd worked herself into. She had done as she'd told Daniel she intended: walked up to the house on The Ginnell. On the kitchen table she'd found a message from Mary Walbrook saying she'd popped by and found the house empty, and would Alison call to say where she was staying and that she was all right.
‘I was going to phone. Then I thought, the car's out there, I'll drive out to the yard then she'll know I'm OK.' She packed what she was taking down to Daniel's, then headed for Peyton Parvo.
Half a mile from the yard, on a road that went almost nowhere else, she met one of Windham Transport's lorries with Johnny Windham at the wheel.
‘I thought … I thought … I don't know what I thought! I
thought
she was my friend. I thought if Johhny offered her the same deal he offered my father she'd throw him out. I didn't think she'd be willing to forget everything that had happened for the sake of some cheap transport! But I was wrong.'
‘And you were upset,' said Brodie softly.
‘Upset?'
The girl's voice soared. ‘Mrs Farrell, I know you don't believe me. I know Superintendent Deacon doesn't believe me, and I'm not sure Daniel does. But Johnny Windham is a killer, and he's talked Mary into hiring him again. What's in it for her is cheap transport. What's in it for him is her standing up and saying that no, what happened to Barker & Walbrook – what happened to my father – wasn't his fault. The people we know will understand what it means when they see him delivering to our yard again. They'll understand it means Mary's backing him, not me.'
Daniel tried to find a little consolation for her. ‘I suppose it was a business decision. She'll have had to make some difficult ones to keep the yard going. She probably felt this was another occasion when she just had to bite the bullet and do it.'
Alison pushed away the mug – most people don't actually
like
hot sweet tea – and put both hands to her face. But she wasn't
crying any more. She was trying to say this without sounding hysterical in the hope of finally convincing someone who mattered. Daniel was sweet to believe her, but she had come to realise that Daniel had problems with his own credibility. She desperately needed a big gun to back her up.
‘I'm not talking about yard politics here. I'm not angry because Mary's taking his side not mine. Well, I am, but that's not what this is about. It's about the fact that Johnny Windham thinks he's entitled to remove any obstacles in his way by any means that suit him. I'm afraid for her. I'm afraid that once the novelty of cheap transport has worn off she'll remember what kind of a man he is and want nothing more to do with him, and he won't let her walk away.'

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