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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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‘That happens?' asked Daniel, shocked.
‘All the time. There are a lot more ways of getting this wrong than getting it right. And it matters. More than buying the wrong car or even the wrong house. You don't just stand to lose money on the wrong horse – it can kill you. You buy through me and it'll cost you more but you'll end up with an animal that's suitable for the job you want it to do. Long term it'll save you money. And you'll have a lot more fun with it.'
Daniel thought it was probably good advice though there wasn't a cat in hell's chance he'd ever have a use for it. Paddy's riding school pony came up to his hip and was rarely caught with both eyes open, and even it made him nervous. But then, he was a mathematician. If you could plot all the world's pleasures on a graph, horses with their mad brains, lightning reactions and iron-clad extremities would come at one end and numbers weaving pretty patterns on a page at the other.
He said, ‘What happened to Alison's father?'
The woman must have decided to answer his questions. ‘I told you: we had a run of bad luck. We thought we were going to the wall. Only while I was working my butt off and calling in every favour I was owed, and asking people who didn't owe me a thing to let me owe them for a bit, Stanley was drowning his sorrows. First he drowned them in whisky, then he walked down
our back field and drowned them in the water jump.'
Daniel recognised that her flippancy was a defence against the brutal reality. ‘Suicide?'
She shrugged. ‘He might just have stumbled around until he fell in and been too drunk to climb out again so the police called it an accidental death. Ally didn't believe that either. She didn't want to believe that it was Stanley's own actions which led to his death and the business going into free fall. She still believes he'd have fought for it – for her – to his last breath.'
‘But you didn't agree.'
She considered for a moment. ‘Well, I knew Stanley Barker better than his daughter did. We were business partners for ten years; for some of that time we were partners in every sense. He was a good man, a kind man, but he wasn't a strong man. And then, he was a lot older than me. I think he couldn't face losing the business and having to start over.'
Her eyes shadowed with the memory. After three months it had begun to settle into the background, to lose its edge and inch towards history. Having to explain these events brought them back into the forefront of her mind. ‘It takes a lot of work, a lot of energy, a lot of self-belief to build something from scratch. In your thirties, even in your forties, you know it'll be worth it – you have time to get where you want to be and then sit back and enjoy it. When you're pushing sixty the figures stack up differently. I think he was too tired and disspirited to do it all again, and too ashamed to take the easy way and go bankrupt. Maybe it was an accident, but it's my belief that he sat on the log over the water and drank himself insensible, knowing there was every chance he'd never wake up.'
There was a thread of anger underlying her voice that Daniel wasn't sure she was aware of. They'd been partners, they'd faced hard times, and he'd left her to deal with it alone. And she'd succeeded: she'd saved the business. But it would have been easier, less traumatic, to have done it together. She hadn't forgiven him for running out on her.
They had reached The Promenade. Daniel indicated the netting-shed on the beach. ‘This is where I live.'
Mary Walbrook stopped the Land Rover and regarded the
stubby black tower rising out of the shingle shore. ‘Of course it is.'
‘Will you come in for a coffee?'
She shook her head. ‘I'd better get back. I've a shipment due in from France this afternoon. I need to be there when they arrive.'
‘Thanks for the lift. And …'
‘Mm?'
‘If Alison's feeling better next time you see her, wish her well for me.'
‘Will she know your name?'
‘No,' he said.
‘Will she remember you at all?'
Daniel smiled. ‘Probably not. Do it anyway.'
All he had to do was leave it alone. It was none of his business: everyone was agreed on that. He'd had a reasonable explanation of Alison Barker's state of mind from someone close enough to her to know. He'd been told the police had investigated her allegations and found nothing to suggest she was genuinely in danger.
At that point a wise man would have backed away gracefully, maybe sent some flowers and a Get Well card, been sorry for her unhappiness but glad it wasn't his fault. Perhaps he would have taken some guilty comfort from knowing he wasn't the most screwed-up person on the south coast after all, but after that he would have forgotten her.
Daniel wanted to help her. He asked Brodie what she thought.
‘I think you're insane,' she said frankly.
‘No, really,' he said with a ghost of a smile. ‘Don't be polite, tell me what you really think.'
Brodie gave a little snort that was half exasperation, half affection. ‘Look, Daniel – I know what's going on here. I know where this is leading. You're going to do what you always do. You're going to get involved in somebody's troubles – offer her a shoulder to cry on and an ear to rabbit into – and you're going to get dumped on. Again. There's a reason why some people have no friends and no luck – they're bad news. They are the authors of their own misfortune. They can't – won't, even –
be
helped. I don't doubt that people who know Alison Barker better than you do and owe her more tried to sort her out and failed and had to give up long before you came along.
‘But you always think you can do better, don't you? That other people didn't try hard enough, or tried too hard, or didn't go about it the right way. Your way. You always have to get involved. Hasn't it struck you by now that you're not a very good judge of character?'
Usually when Brodie subjected him to one of her tirades it meant she was worried about him. He tried not to take it personally. Plus, he couldn't actually argue with anything she'd
said. ‘I'm not planning to adopt her. I just want to make sure she's OK.'
‘But she isn't OK. We know that. We knew it before you talked to Mary Walbrook. She's – let's be kind here and call it unstable. Now, maybe she's unstable because of things that have happened to her, and maybe things have happened to her because she's unstable, but either way it isn't the services of a maths teacher that she needs right now! If she wouldn't let her friends help her, what makes you think she'll let you?'
Daniel considered for a moment. ‘A man gets thrown into prison for a crime he didn't commit. He writes to everyone he knows, asking for help. His doctor writes back enclosing a prescription for Valium. His priest sends him a prayer. His MP says he'll vote for the next Criminal Justice Bill.
‘Someone else he wrote to turns up at the prison and yells at the guards until they throw him in the same cell as his friend. Who is, as you can imagine, pretty disgusted. “A lot of help you are,” he shouts. “Now there's two of us in here!” His friend gives him a wink. “But I've been in here before,” he says. “I know the way out.”'
Brodie went on looking at him, still waiting for a punchline she could understand.
Daniel sighed. He knew he shouldn't tell anecdotes: he was no better at them than at slang. He explained in words of few syllables. ‘I know Alison Barker isn't making much sense right now. I know she's exhausted every friendship she ever had. I know she thinks the whole world's against her and every random misfortune is part of a global conspiracy. I know she took enough Scram to kill a donkey, and that probably wasn't a mistake.
‘But Brodie, that place where she is – I've been there. Someone helped me out, and I want to help Alison. Not because I owe it to her but because I can. Please help me.'
Most people don't know how to say please. Either they whine or they make a demand of it. When Daniel asked a favour he did so with a kind of quiet dignity that made you feel like a rat for refusing. So mostly he got what he asked for. Not only from her, Brodie had noticed, but from other people as well. Even
Deacon, though he might spit and storm first, tended to end up doing as Daniel asked. It was no wonder, she reflected, that the big man resented him so.
She gave a gusty, ungracious sigh. ‘What do you want me to do?'
He hadn't expected her to acquiesce so quickly, didn't have an answer ready. ‘I suppose the most important thing is to rule out the possibility that she's right – that her father was murdered and she's in danger too. Mary said the police dismissed her claims. But did they look into them thoroughly or just decide she was hysterical?'
‘You mean, is she completely off her head or just mildly paranoid,' Brodie paraphrased.
If she was going to help him, Daniel could forgive her the odd unkindness. ‘I suppose. Until I know that, how can I help her?'
‘How indeed?' She sniffed. ‘Leave it with me, I'll see what I can find out.'
 
There's no point sleeping with a detective superintendent if you can't get access to the Police National Computer when you need it. She asked Deacon what he knew about Alison Barker.
But all he knew or cared was that she'd taken Scram and was in no condition to tell him where she'd got it.
‘You know she thinks her father was murdered.'
He reared his thick body up on one elbow to look at her. ‘He was a horse dealer. He fell in a pond.'
‘His daughter thinks he was pushed.'
‘Still? I thought she'd probably come to terms with it by now. That's – what? – a couple of months ago?'
‘Three. You're sure it was an accident? Or, at least, that nobody else was involved?'
‘There was no evidence to suggest anyone was with him when he died. His partner found him in the morning and called us. The PM showed he'd been drinking heavily. It may have been an accident, it may have been suicide. I do know he wasn't murdered by the man Alison Barker blamed. He was driving a lorry in Europe at the time. His tachometer was a pretty good witness for the defence.'
‘OK, so the girl's paranoid. But Daniel's concerned. If you could just reassure him that there's nothing to worry about …'
‘Oh –
Daniel's
concerned, is he?' Everything about Deacon – the craggy face, the heavy body, the gruff and venomous voice – was built for sarcasm. ‘You should have said sooner. Of course I'll drop what I'm doing to make enquiries about some druggy girl who's so scared someone's trying to kill her she thinks she'll save them the trouble! It's not like I've got anything better to do. Anything at all urgent.'
‘You think it was a suicide attempt?'
‘Actually, I doubt if it was,' he conceded. ‘Suicides don't usually go for a walk while they're waiting for a drug to take effect. They try to avoid being found while there's still time to save them.'
‘What if she wanted to be found?'
‘The cry-for-help thing? It's possible,' said Deacon. ‘Maybe insisting her father was murdered was the same sort of thing. She wanted someone to pay her some attention.'
Almost against her wishes Brodie found herself empathising with the troubled girl. ‘The poor kid's had a packet to deal with in a short period of time. Before she lost her father she lost just about everything else.' Then annoyance tacked up the corner of her mouth. ‘It doesn't say much for society, does it, that a girl her age can be so alone this is the only way she can get someone to listen to her.'
‘It's working, though,' growled Deacon. ‘She's not even awake yet but she's got Daniel's attention. That's as much being listened to as would last most people a lifetime.'
Brodie grinned. Although it gave her problems from time to time, the antipathy between the two men in her life was an endless source of amusement. Except it wasn't exactly antipathy, more a total and mutual lack of understanding. Jack Deacon could understand the deep, dark workings of violent minds; Daniel Hood could understand people whose own mothers had given up on them; they just couldn't understand one another. The harder they tried – and they
had
tried, for her sake – the wider the gulf yawned between them.
‘I know. Well, look at it this way – better she wastes his time
than yours. So for everybody's sake, especially mine, can I tell him that she really hasn't any reason to be afraid? That you're convinced the murder only occurred in her imagination?'
‘Yes,' said Deacon. ‘Look, people get drunk and have fatal accidents every day of the week. Not all in Dimmock, thank God, but you know what I mean. There were no suspicious circumstances. His business had been failing for months. He'd sold everything he owned – horses, house, everything – and it wasn't enough. He didn't know where else to turn. So he turned to drink, and maybe to thoughts of suicide.
‘If Daniel's looking for a worthy cause, maybe Alison Barker qualifies. She might even benefit from his undivided attention. But he needs to be careful, because this girl could be a disaster looking for someone to happen to. If she isn't actually suicidal she's certainly reckless. She's accused a plainly innocent man of murder, she's run out in front of a moving vehicle and now she's taken a lethal dose of Scram. To me, that sounds like someone out of control. Now, maybe Daniel can get her feet back on the floor. But he needs to be careful that she doesn't draw him into her fantasy world instead.'
 
Detective Sergeant Voss believed passionately in the place of women in the modern police service. He didn't think they should be kept for domestic abuse and child protection cases: he thought they should be represented in every department. Particularly CID. Since the arrival of Detective Constable Jill Meadows he was no longer the only person on the top floor of Battle Alley who could work the computers.
On Friday morning she was the only detective working in the squad room. Voss walked the full length of it to ask if she was making any progress with the task he'd given her.
Her fellow constables had freed her a desk beside the coffee machine. At first it gave them an excuse to keep wandering past her. Later, when the novelty had worn off, they thought she could bring them top-ups. That didn't last long either. Even Huxley, who was slowest on the uptake, got the message after he'd had to go home to change his shirt three days running. Meanwhile his colleagues had run a sweepstake on whether he'd
still be optimistically calling for a strong one with three sugars while he waited for his skingrafts to take.
‘Any luck fleshing out the background on the Barker case?'
Jill Meadows liked Charlie Voss. Everybody liked Charlie Voss: he was a gentleman in an age, and indeed a profession, not noted for them. Even Detective Superintendent Deacon seemed to have a soft spot for him. When he wanted to shout at Voss, quite often he closed the door first.
‘Luck,' she said with a smile, ‘had nothing to do with it.' She printed off a couple of tightly-packed pages.
When he'd read them Voss knocked on Deacon's door. Correctly interpreting the snarled
‘Now
what?' as an invitation, he went inside.
‘Jill's put together a history on the Barkers, father and daughter.'
Almost against his better judgement, Deacon had been spurred into taking a fresh look at the death of Stanley Barker. He had no reason to suspect foul play, but that didn't mean there wasn't a crime for him to investigate. Alison Barker had bought a dangerous drug and somebody else had sold it to her, almost certainly on the streets of Dimmock. That made it his business. In all likelihood knowing more about her wouldn't help him to find out where she'd got her Scram, but he wouldn't be sure until he'd tried.
‘Anything we didn't know and should have done?'
Knowing he was busy, Voss tried to keep it short. But it wouldn't make sense if he edited too ruthlessly. ‘You have to go back about five months. Stanley was the senior partner in a business buying and selling horses, with a yard in Peyton Parvo. They had a run of bad luck – a couple of horses died in transit, the yard was hit by a virus – anyway, word got around that they were unreliable and they lost a lot of clients. The business started going under.
‘Up to that point Alison Barker had led every little girl's dream-life. But with the business failing her own horses had to be sold. Everything went. The Barkers' house, Mary Walbrook's cottage – everything. They used the equity to pay off their debts, but there wasn't much left. Miss Walbrook moved into a flat
above the stables but Stanley and Alison had nowhere to go when the sale of their house completed. They paid off their debts but it cost them everything they had.'
‘And Stanley hadn't much relish for starting again,' mused Deacon.
‘Apparently not.'
‘Except Alison didn't think it was suicide. She thought it was murder. And said so, loudly and frequently, to anyone who'd listen. Us first, then everyone else. Her friends, casual acquaintances, then shopkeepers and people she met in the street. She couldn't bear the truth.

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