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.’
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?’