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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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‘Mary was here?' Alison nodded fractionally. ‘She is a friend. She's been a good friend to me, and I've been bloody ungrateful. Will you call her for me? I know the number.'
‘Of course I will. I'll go find a phone now, if you like.'
The girl looked puzzled again. ‘Find one?'
He got this from Brodie too. ‘I know. It's just, I try not to clutter my life up with things I don't need.'
She thought she understood. ‘I'll pay you for the phone-call, as soon as I find my clothes.'
She wasn't being sarcastic: she thought it might matter to him. Daniel wasn't going to take offence where none was intended. ‘There's no rush. Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back.'
‘Funny guy,' she growled. But there was the hint of a smile in it.
Deacon heard that Alison Barker was awake soon after Daniel did. His first thought was to send Voss to interview her, perhaps accompanied by Jill Meadows because – so he'd heard – women were good at these things. At reassuring the frightened and encouraging the reluctant. At probing deeper by pushing gently than by shoving hard. At not losing their tempers when obstructions were put in their way. Deacon had heard these things about women often enough to believe they were probably true, although – the woman he knew best being Brodie Farrell – he couldn't vouch for them from personal experience.
But then he thought that perhaps the gentle touch wasn't what was called for here. Alison Barker wasn't in any real sense a victim, except of her own foolishness. She had taken a drug so new that virtually nothing was known about its effect, let alone its side-effects. Presumably she had done so in a spirit of adventure. Well, she could look on this interview in the same light. He took his coat and headed for the car park.
Staff Nurse French saw him coming and fell into step with him. ‘You won't have to stay too long. She's still very disorientated. You may find she simply doesn't remember what you need her to. She almost died. Nobody's brain comes out of a coma in the same condition it went in.'
Deacon gave her a crocodilian smirk. A lot of people have trouble remembering things when I first talk to them. You'd be surprised how much better they do with a little help.'
Sharon French had been a nurse for twelve years: she saw scarier things than Jack Deacon every day. She said without rancour, ‘You want to use thumbscrews, you wait till she's off my ward.'
He tried to look hurt. ‘Staff Nurse French, you know we don't do things like that.'
He'd forgotten she worked with Charlie Voss's fiancée. ‘Where was it you lost that monkey wrench again, Superintendent?'
He dropped his chin onto his chest and gave his tie a secret smile. ‘Let's put it this way. The vaseline must have worked or
he'd have needed your help to get it out.'
The nurse left him at the entrance to the ward. Over her shoulder as she went she said, ‘Daniel's about somewhere.'
It was a bit like having mice in the attic. At first it drives you mad and you try everything to put a stop to it. But when the poison and the traps and the swearing fail, left with nothing else you start coming to terms with it. The noise doesn't annoy you any less but it doesn't distress you in the same way. Daniel Hood was the mouse in Deacon's attic. He no longer felt his whole body clench at the sound of Daniel's name, but the way his life overlapped with Deacon's in so many varied and unexpected areas was a constant irritation.
‘Never mind,' he said with restraint.
Anyone who knew this girl a week ago would have been shocked at the sight of her, her face white and strained, her slender body, that in health looked only fit and toned, so diminished by illness that it barely lifted the sheet off the bed. But when Deacon last saw her she was teetering on the edge of the abyss, and he was surprised how much better she looked today.
He told her who he was, then he told her what he wanted to know. ‘Where did you get the pills, Miss Barker?'
She couldn't have sat up without the support of the pillows and her voice was wafer-thin. But it seemed her mind was clear enough to understand the question, and even to evade it. ‘I didn't.'
Deacon breathed heavily at her. ‘We don't really have to do this, do we? Pretend that you've no idea what I'm talking about until I produce the blood-work and we discuss it like intelligent people? I know what you took. I want to know where you got it.'
Some people you can bully, some you can't. If he'd thought about it rather longer Deacon would have realised he was unlikely to intimidate a girl who threw half-ton horses at five-foot fences for fun. Even lying half-prone in the bed, Alison Barker managed to glare back at him. ‘Superintendent Deacon, watch my lips. I didn't take any drugs. I know – I've been told – they got into me somehow, but I didn't take them. I didn't buy them, I don't know where they came from and I don't know how
they got into my system.'
Deacon sighed. He pulled out the chair recently vacated by Daniel and sat down. ‘Miss Barker, are we back to this “There's a murderer on the loose business?”
She was no stranger to scepticism. She'd seen the look that was on Deacon's face now too often to go on being surprised. On the faces of friends and of professionals – people whose job it was to listen, to understand and to help. Some of them policemen. She bared her teeth in a smile that would have been fierce if it hadn't been so frail. ‘That's right. He killed my father and now he's tried to kill me.'
‘That's what you said when you ran into Daniel's car,' Deacon pointed out, not unreasonably.
Alison nodded. ‘I was wrong about that.'
‘Perhaps you're wrong about this.'
‘You mean, perhaps I spent money I don't have on drugs I don't want and took them without noticing?'
One thing was clear: she hadn't much in the way of brain damage. ‘Then how do you explain it?' asked Deacon.
‘My food was spiked. It's the only way.'
‘Who by?' Deacon hadn't a lot of time for grammar.
‘Johnny Windham.'
‘The livestock transporter?'
Alison hadn't expected him to remember. She'd imagined that once the file was stamped
No further action recommended,
everyone who'd handled it would forget. She nodded.
‘You've seen him recently?'
Alison shook her head without lifting it off the pillow. ‘He knows better than to let me see him. He must have broken into the house when I wasn't there.'
Deacon wondered if she had any idea how foolish she sounded. ‘Miss Barker, when you accused Mr Windham of murdering your father we had a good look at him. We found out exactly where he was the night of the accident. He was in Germany, collecting a lorry-load of horses. He'd been there for thirty-six hours and he stayed there another day. There is no way he could have been involved in your father's death. Which makes it kind of silly to keep accusing him.'
‘You don't know him. I do. I know what he's capable of.'
Deacon wasn't prepared to go down that road again. He was only here because he'd hoped she could help with his Scram inquiry. If she wasn't going to, his detective's instinct was to move on and leave her to the hospital psychiatrist. What stopped him was the outside chance that there was a grain of truth in what she was saying. That she was in danger. Also, Scram had got into her system somehow. Whether he liked it or not, what had happened to her was part of his investigation.
‘All right,' he said. ‘Tell me why you think Windham tried to kill you.'
For a moment she didn't answer. He felt her eyes assessing him. ‘Because you'll do something about it? Or because, once I've got it off my chest, we can talk about the drugs?'
Deacon suspected Alison Barker had a history of making it hard for people to help or even like her. ‘Because you seem to believe it, and I want to be sure you're a crank before I bin it.'
Alison gave a little snort with something like a chuckle in it. ‘At least that's honest.'
‘They say it's the best policy. Especially, I suppose, when you're a policeman.'
‘All right,' she said, ‘I'll tell you. But why should you believe me this time when you didn't three months ago?'
In fact Deacon hadn't interviewed her himself. Stanley Barker's death had never seriously looked like a crime. ‘Maybe I won't,' he agreed. ‘But I'm willing to listen, and you're not going anywhere …'
Dead on cue, the mouse in the attic started to scratch. Daniel came back from the phone. ‘Jack,' he said warily, keeping his distance.
‘Daniel,' growled Deacon.
‘Is this official? I can come back later …'
Deacon would have accepted his offer but Alison waved him to the end of her bed. ‘Superintendent Deacon wants to know why I think Johnny Windham wants me dead. I expect you do too.'
It took a moment to organise her thoughts. ‘Don't suppose I don't know how this sounds. People I've known most of my life
won't talk to me any more. They think my dad's death somehow turned my head. That's what Mary thinks.' She caught Daniel's eye with her own. ‘She told you as much, didn't she?'
He didn't answer. He didn't make a habit of betraying confidences.
Alison took his silence as consent. ‘Don't worry,' she said tiredly, ‘you're not telling me anything I don't already know. Mary's been a good friend to me, but I know she thinks I dreamt this up because I needed someone to blame for Dad's death. But then, she thinks he killed himself. I know better.'
‘What do you think happened?' asked Deacon, his voice wiped of expression.
‘I think he was murdered,' said Alison bluntly. ‘If you tell me there was no way Johnny could have done it himself, I believe you; but he was behind it. Dad stopped using him after the problems he caused us, and word got around. Windham Transport ended up in nearly as bad shape as us. He was reduced to local moves and ferrying people to shows and things – which was a come-down for someone who was used to spending half his time in Europe.' She couldn't resist a small, vindictive smile.
‘I heard them arguing about it a few days before Dad died. Johnny wanted to carry our horses again so people would think they'd resolved their differences and follow suit. He offered Dad a discount, to help with some of his losses and to bury the hatchet, but Dad wasn't interested, not at any price. He said he wouldn't let Johnny carry his horses for free, and if people thought that was because he didn't trust him that was fine by him.'
Her voice grew hard. ‘I heard him say that, Superintendent, and five days later my father was dead. I don't much believe in coincidence. I think when Johnny couldn't get Dad on-side again he settled for shutting him up instead.'
Daniel could see she was tiring herself. She took a moment to rest. ‘I know everyone else thinks it was suicide. But I know he wouldn't have killed himself. He wouldn't have left Mary and me knee-deep in debt.'
Deacon wasn't buying it. ‘Even if you were right, and there's no earthly reason to suppose you are, why would Windham want to
kill you?'
Her answer was disarmingly candid. ‘Because I have a big mouth. Just because I couldn't get him charged with murder didn't mean I was going to forget. I made sure everyone I met heard what had happened and whose fault it was. I lost my home and my horses, and Mary nearly lost the business, because Johnny Windham is a lazy, good-for-nothing cheapskate. And I lost my dad because he thought his poxy reputation mattered more than a good man's life.'
Deacon blinked. ‘You want to explain that?'
‘In this business, reputation is everything. If people buy a horse from us and it works out well, they talk and we get more business. But if they have trouble they don't just talk, they shout it from the rooftops. This is a word-of-mouth business: dissatisfied customers are bad for a dealer's reputation. Enough dissatisfied customers can wipe him out.'
‘That's what happened to Barker & Walbrook?'
‘We lost two horses in transit. We delivered another three that were sick and one of them died. All in the space of two months. After that the yard was like a ghost-town. Nobody was buying from us, nobody was selling to us. The average horse is in our care about a fortnight, some of them just a few days. If we can't keep them safe till their new owners take delivery we're doing something wrong. By the end of those two months, I wouldn't have used us either.'
‘Did you work out where the problem was?' asked Daniel.
‘Don't you listen?' snapped the girl. ‘We were using Windham Transport when we'd have been safer ferrying the horses around in clapped-out old beast-boxes. The guy's supposed to be a professional. It's supposed to be a professional operation – we were certainly paying professional prices. And he was delivering us sick and dying horses.'
‘What killed them?' asked Deacon, becoming interested despite himself
‘Different things. One was a twisted gut. One was a bad reaction to a sedative. Others were blamed on a virus.'
And these things shouldn't kill horses?'
‘These things kill horses every day, Superintendent. We'd lost
horses to every one of them before. What shouldn't have happened was so many incidents in so short a time, and every one of them involving Windham Transport. It had to be something he was doing, or not doing. He wasn't cleaning the lorry out properly between loads. He was setting off with horses that were already unwell and should have been put back in their boxes till the vet passed them fit. He wasn't feeding or watering them when he said he was, or else he was being rough and getting them upset. I don't know what he was doing, Superintendent Deacon!' she cried. ‘But I know he was doing something, and because of it our clients lost some good horses and we lost a lot of good clients.'

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