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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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Her chin cupped in one hand, Brodie regarded the girl without speaking for some moments. Finally she said, ‘Can we put our cards on the table here, Alison? Say what we think?' Ally nodded. ‘Then, there are a lot of things about your story that don't make any sense. But things that make no sense happen every day, and a lot of them I could just about believe with a following wind. Do you know what I can't believe? That Johnny Windham – that
anyone
– would want to kill either you or your father over a business dispute.
‘All right, your father blamed him for the damage to some horses, and Windham blamed your father for costing him some customers. It's the sort of thing that happens every day – you lose one customer over a disagreement, you gain another who's just fallen out with
his
last supplier. You don't go back a week later and push him in a pond, and you certainly don't go back three months later and try to murder his daughter!'
The girl shrugged. Sitting there in his living room, hunched over as if expecting blows, Daniel was conscious of how very slight she was. He knew she was strong too, she had to be, but maybe a lot of her strength was mental rather than physical. Nobody is as strong as a horse. Maybe she was good at pretending to be strong, the way he was good at pretending to be brave. If the pretence was good enough, no one challenged it. You yourself knew it was a sham, but if you never let on maybe no one would guess.
‘I can't help that,' Ally said quietly. She had her fingers laced together, gripping tightly. ‘I've told you everything that happened, as it happened. Of course no one believes me. I wouldn't believe it myself if I didn't know this man and what he's capable of.'
‘Mary knows him too,' Brodie pointed out. ‘And she lost almost as much as you did. But she doesn't blame Windham. Not for your business difficulties and not for your father's death.'
‘But then, I know him better than Mary does.'
Brodie noted that without pursuing it. ‘There's something missing. That argument: are you sure it was about the horses? They couldn't have fallen out over something else?'
‘They didn't have anything else in common.'
‘Tell me what happened. What they said to one another.'
Even remembering was a pain to Alison Barker. Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘I'd never seen my Dad so angry. He kept saying, “I used to have a reputation round here. People respected me.” I didn't know whether he was going to hit Johnny or have a stroke first. I thought Johnny was going to knock him down. I think they
would
have come to blows if I hadn't come round the corner at the critical moment. Then they backed off like a couple of scrapping dogs, snarling insults and threats at one another. Dad said if he caught Johnny on the place again he'd call the police, and Johnny said “Don't think this is over” and “You're going to pay for this”. Then he got in his lorry and drove away, and five days later my father was dead. So tell me: what would
you
have thought?'
Sorry for her as he was, Daniel still couldn't see it. ‘I think I'd have thought he was sick and tired of all the problems crowding in on him, and that he picked a dangerous spot to go on a blinder.'
‘OK,' said Brodie, still trying to shape this into a narrative she could believe in. ‘Stanley and Windham had a blazing row and ended up trading threats. There's nothing terribly unusual about that in the business world. Believe me: I know. Sometimes it takes mediation to sort out who owes who what, sometimes it takes solicitors. But it's a hell of a way from the threat of fisticuffs
to cold-blooded murder. People don't kill one another over things like that.'
Actually that wasn't strictly true. There are really only two reasons people get murdered. One is anger, the other is money. People do die in business disputes, only such murders tend to be either crude and obvious or clever and unsuspected. This fitted neither template.
‘You weren't there,' insisted Ally.
But Brodie had got to the bottom of a lot of mysteries she hadn't actually witnessed. It was partly intuition, partly her analytical brain, partly the sort of thought processes that make people good at crosswords, and partly that she knew the comparatively small number of ways that people behaved and was good at judging what they would and wouldn't do in a given set of circumstances. ‘Just suppose,' she said slowly, ‘that what they were arguing about wasn't just some horses that got sick in transit.'
For once Daniel, who could read her mind like a book, let her down. He frowned. ‘What then?'
She scowled disappointedly at him. ‘Suppose they were arguing about how Windham was using Barker & Walbrook's horses as a cover for drug running?'
‘I don't think Townes is involved,' said Deacon.
‘Despite the German connection?'
Because it was Sunday he and his sergeant were talking shop in The Belted Galloway instead of the CID offices on the top floor of Battle Alley. In the labyrinth of Deacon's mind this counted as “Having Sunday Off”. Each man had half a pint of weak shandy in front of him.
‘Coincidence,' said Deacon. ‘Everyone's parents come from somewhere.'
‘My grandmother's Irish,' volunteered Charlie Voss.
Deacon had always taken his red hair as a personal affront. ‘Why am I not surprised?'
‘If Townes isn't, does that mean Windham is?'
‘I don't think it works quite like that. But he does keep popping up, doesn't he? Just when you think you've laid him to rest – the guy had a bit of bad luck, not even so much with the horses as with that damned hysterical girl – up he pops again. And now he's back working for Barker & Walbrook.'
‘I suppose that's Walbrook & Barker now,' ruminated Voss.
‘That's certainly how Mary Walbrook sees it. It seems fair enough,' said Deacon, ‘I doubt there'd still be a business without her grabbing hold of it and refusing to let go.'
‘She buys a lot of horses on the continent,' said Voss. ‘Whoever carries them will be constantly crossing the Channel. If Windham
is
up to no good, her business would give him a cast-iron reason to bring a big vehicle full of neurotic animals through Dover as often as he needed to. He could be carrying more than horses.'
Deacon had been thinking along the same lines. He thought that meant Charlie Voss was reading his mind, never considered the possibility that he'd learned to read Voss's. ‘Get the registration numbers of his lorries and check with Customs if they've given any of them a shakedown recently. Ask them if they had a reason or was it just his turn. Ask them …'
These two men had worked closely together for three years now. They spent hours a day in one another's company. The
relationship was a lot like a marriage, and had already lasted longer than some. They knew one another pretty well.
Deacon knew that while Charlie Voss might not make a song and dance about it, he was an astute, intuitive and hard-working police officer who was customarily one, if not two, steps ahead of the game. He knew what it meant that Voss wasn't nodding and reaching for a phone, was just waiting quietly for him to finish. ‘You've already done it, haven't you?'
Voss nodded apologetically. ‘They've had both his lorries in for a check in the last two months, one a down-to-the-chassis job. They didn't find anything.'
‘Did they expect to?'
‘No.' Voss didn't sound totally confident of that. ‘Well, yes and no. The way it was put to me, they had no reason to suspect him – no tip-offs, no intelligence – they just felt a shade uneasy about him. Just enough to keep an eye on his comings and goings. They hoped to find something but weren't surprised when they didn't.'
‘And they emptied that particular lorry and stripped it right down?'
‘No false floor, no secret panels, no hidden storage inside the diesel tank. They're as sure as they can be that if he'd been carrying anything apart from horses they'd have found it.'
Deacon gave a glum scowl. ‘Maybe he just wasn't carrying anything that day.'
‘If there'd been any secret compartments, even empty ones, they'd have found them too. I suppose the driver could always fill his Thermos, but that's not why you take a six-horse transporter to Europe. Easier and safer just to hire a few mules.'
‘And he'd been in Germany?'
‘He always seems to visit Germany. Well, a lot of good horses are bred there, and a lot of them come here. There's nothing suspicious about him doing regular runs to Germany.'
‘There's not much suspicious about him at all, is there?' said Deacon lugubriously. ‘Let's be honest: we wouldn't be looking at him at all if it wasn't for that crazy girl.'
‘That crazy girl who nearly died of a Scram overdose,' Voss reminded him.
‘There is that. But we only have her word for it that she didn't feel like a pick-me-up and buy it from a street-dealer. We'd never have looked at Windham if she hadn't accused him of trying to kill her. But she's levelled accusations at him before, and they were investigated and dismissed as a mixture of grief and malice.'
‘Yes,' agreed Voss. ‘You don't think we should have investigated Stanley Barker's death a bit more thoroughly?'
Deacon thought he was probably right. There had seemed no reason to treat the incident as suspicious at the time – except for his daughter's protestations, and no one is at their most logical when there's been a death in the family. They had taken what she had to say with rather more than a pinch of salt. That wasn't an unreasonable decision, but it meant Deacon couldn't now look back on the matter of Stanley Barker's midnight swim and state with confidence that nothing had been missed. ‘We're going to have to do it again, aren't we?'
‘If only for our own peace of mind.'
‘Peace of mind be damned,' grunted Deacon. ‘If she was right all along, we missed a murder and left a killer at large to try to kill again. This is not a matter of dotting i's and crossing t's. It's what we're paid for.'
‘And we earn every penny of it,' Voss said stoutly. ‘We're bloody good at what we do, just not quite infallible.'
Deacon speared him with a disapproving eye. ‘Have you never heard it said, Charlie Voss, that pride is a sin?'
‘I've always thought that lack of pride was a greater one.'
Deacon went on regarding him: not so much with disfavour now, almost – this was worrying – with affection. If he'd realised he was doing it he'd have stopped immediately. Voss recognised the look and said nothing. He'd taken enough stick from his governor in the early months, he thought he'd earned a bit of respect by now.
‘OK,' said Deacon. ‘Let's suppose, just for the moment, that Stanley Barker's death wasn't as clear-cut as we thought, was neither accident nor suicide. He didn't fall, he didn't jump – he was pushed.' The words verged on the flippant but his tone was utterly serious. ‘If Windham was using his lorries to smuggle in
drugs, or components for drugs, losing Barker's business would have been a blow to him. Hence the argument that Alison overheard. If he came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to talk Barker round, maybe he thought he'd find it easier to charm Mary Walbrook. She was his partner – with Barker out of the way she'd make the decisions. You could call that a motive for murder.'
‘Anything to do with drugs is motive enough for murder,' Voss agreed grimly. ‘Because of the sheer amount of money involved. But this happened three months ago. Why are we only seeing Scram appearing now?'
Deacon took a slow draught of his shandy. He thought it was a girl's drink, but since he rarely considered himself off-duty he seldom took enough alcohol to affect his performance. ‘Partly because it took time to set up. To establish the factory, secure supplies of the catalyst and perfect the means of sneaking it past Customs. And partly because, when Barker & Walbrook went to the wall, Windham Transport damned near followed. He lost a lot of business, is only now starting to pick it up again. Maybe he couldn't get enough horses to justify keep going to Germany. Maybe there seemed no point putting the stuff on the street until he could be sure of getting regular supplies.'
Voss was slowly nodding. ‘Well, he seems to be doing regular business now. And he'll do more if he's carrying for Mary Walbrook again. Also, if he was responsible for Barker's death he'd have had to put everything on hold while it was being looked into. He'd have wanted the dust to settle before he starting taking any chances again.'
‘You keep saying he,' said Deacon. ‘But this can't be a one-man operation.'
Voss hadn't thought about that. Now he did he saw Deacon was right. ‘It takes someone to get hold of the catalyst – a vet, maybe, or someone working at the pharmaceutical plant. Someone to smuggle it in – say Windham. And someone to turn out the pills. Three of them.'
‘Two would be better,' mused Deacon. ‘With two of you, if something goes wrong you both know who's to blame. With three, you never know for certain. The vet would be familiar
with pharmaceuticals. Maybe he provided the instructions and Windham knocks the things up when he's at home.'
Voss chuckled. ‘You make it sound like a flat-pack sideboard.'
Deacon glowered at him. ‘Less levity, more detecting, Charlie Voss. What do you think – is it time I interviewed this man?'
‘Brodie went to see him a few days ago,' said Voss helpfully.
As soon as it was out he knew it was a mistake. Voss had heard it from Daniel: it didn't occur to him that Brodie might not have told Deacon. What
did
they talk about on their long evenings in? Somehow Voss couldn't imagine Deacon passing them the same way he and Helen Choi passed theirs.
‘She did what?' The restraint in the superintendent's voice was like the inertia that stops avalanches falling on Swiss villages, right up to the moment that they do.
It was too late for anything but the truth. ‘She made up some story about wanting to import a pony from Germany. To establish whether Windham Transport is a genuine business or just a front.'
It was a valid question: Deacon wished he'd thought to ask it. But what he wished above all else was that Brodie Farrell would stop behaving as if what he did for a living was some kind of a game – anyone could have a go, a talented amateur could always beat a jaded professional, first to collect three
Spot The Blagger
cards wins a
Get Out Of The Morgue Free
token.
‘And?'
‘He wanted her custom. Offered her a good deal – which was rather awkward since she didn't actually have a pony. So she put him off. But she had no doubt that he's open for business.'
Deacon was pondering. ‘Does that necessarily mean transporting horses is his
only
business?'
‘If you've found a way of packing drugs into your vehicle that a good sniffer dog can't crack, I suppose it doesn't matter
what
you're carrying as well as long as you're carrying enough to justify your journeys. So the more business you get, the better. It would be worth undercutting your competitors to be sure you always had horses to move in the right part of the world.'
‘It would, wouldn't it? Do you know, I still think I want a word with Mr Windham.' Deacon curled his upper lip.
‘Actually, I want a word with Brodie too.'
‘I have to talk to Jack about this,' said Brodie. Through the windows of her eyes her mind was racing visibly. ‘He's been worried sick about the arrival of this new drug from Germany. Scram – the thing Alison took.'
‘I didn't take it,' said Ally through clenched teeth.
‘Whatever,' said Brodie dismissively. ‘He's been trying to find how it's coming in. I wonder if he's thought of a horse-transporter.'
‘I dare say he has,' ventured Daniel. ‘I don't expect HM Customs & Excise have failed to notice the smuggling potential of a large lorry with a live cargo.'
‘No.' A shade reluctantly, Brodie had to concede the point. Anything she could think of – probably anything Deacon could think of – the likelihood was that Customs had thought of months before, and the smugglers a month before that. But there was a body of coincidence building up that she could no more ignore than Deacon could, hammering out the same arguments with Voss half a mile away in The Belted Galloway. ‘So he's being cleverer than that. How? What could he be doing that would be cleverer than hiding drugs in the bodywork of a horse lorry?'
‘Having nothing to do with drugs at all,' said Daniel firmly.
‘Well yes,' agreed Brodie, ‘and that may still be the answer. But somebody's bringing this stuff in, they seem to have some connection to this area, they seem to have contacts in Germany and also with the veterinary trade. It might not be Windham, but it could be. It would explain some things.'
Alison didn't much like Brodie Farrell. She wasn't alone in that. Women tended to find her a bit too competitive, a bit too successful for comfort. She was outspoken and she didn't much care what people thought of her, and she didn't even try to hide the fact. On top of that she was what men called
a looker –
not pretty, no one had ever thought of her as pretty, she went straight from gawky adolescence to stunning – and were drawn as wasps to a honey-trap. Women didn't like that about her either.
What Alison didn't like most was how Brodie became the centre of attention in any gathering she joined. It happened
automatically, didn't seem to be an effect she planned or worked for; she didn't seem to be terribly aware of it at all. But Alison was, and it annoyed her more than she could have explained without sounding childish. All that had sustained her these last months, hovering on the brink of the abyss, was a sense of drama. She knew a day would come when she would be proved right and the doubters wrong. There was a certain satisfaction in that, even if she wasn't there to enjoy it.

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