Dancing With the Virgins (24 page)

17

The old cattle market was close to Edendale railway station. The overgrown tracks that ran alongside the
market were where the cattle waggons had once been
unloaded, in the days when animals were moved by
train. These days, they came in by trailer and by huge cattle transporters that brought half of Edendale town
centre to a halt on market days as they attempted to negotiate the narrow corners
.

The days of Pilkington & Son, Livestock Auctioneers,
were numbered anyway. And not just because of their
inconvenient location or the lengthening list of Euro
pean Union regulations that became ever more difficult
to comply with. The number of cattle markets was
dwindling fast, even in rural counties like Derbyshire. And three years ago, the futuristic white sails of a new
agricultural business centre that the farmers called 'Nine Nipples' had appeared fifteen miles away at
Bakewell, part of a £12 million regeneration project. It
had a vast parking area, modern penning, three sale
rings, meeting rooms, an IT centre and conference facilities. Since it opened, Pilkington & Son had merely been
counting the days
.

As a result, a bare minimum of maintenance had been
done on the buildings in Edendale during the past ten
years. There were gaps in the roof and missing sections
of corrugated iron in the walls, rusty gates falling off
their hinges, and pens whose steel bars had been bent
out of shape by vandals. At night, youths rode their
motorbikes through the aisles like rodeo cowboys. On
the street side, the windows were full of jagged holes
where the panes had been used for target practice
.

Outside, the open-air pens were surrounded by parked Land Rovers, muddy livestock trailers and
transporters slewed on to the pavements. Ben Cooper
and Todd Weenink had difficulty finding a space for
their car, and ended up parking across the front bumper
of a wagon owned by a haulier from Lincolnshire
.

The main building held cattle, and two smaller ones
across the road were for pigs and sheep. Many of the
sheep pens were empty, but there were some Derbyshire Gritstone ewes crammed together between
wooden hurdles. A man was trying to drive a group of
piglets up a strawed ramp into a lorry with nothing but
a wooden board and a mouthful of curses. Once in
the lorry, the pigs clattered and squealed hysterically,
before emerging back down the ramp as the man dodged and screamed, rapidly losing his temper
.

A patrol car was blocking one of the side roads, with
its hazard lights on and the stripes on its rear glowing
bright red. A uniformed officer ran back to speak to them.

‘
It's bloody chaos here,' he said. 'No wonder Traffic
have hysterics every time it's market day.'

‘
Where's the van?' said Cooper.

‘
Over there.' He pointed to one of the cobbled areas
crammed with vehicles of all kinds. 'It's right at the back, so I'd say it won't be leaving for a while.'

‘
Have you got the details?'

‘
This is the registration.' The officer passed him a page from his notebook. 'It's registered to a Mr Keith Teasdale. An Edendale address, as you can see.'

‘
Thanks a lot.'

‘
We've been told to hang around for a bit, in case you need us.'

‘
OK. But don't make yourselves too obvious. Hide your baboon's bum, for a start.'

‘
We'll try. There's just nowhere to park. The town centre bobby is here, too, by the way. They expect to see him on market day, so he's no problem.
’

Cooper and Weenink wound their way through the
parked vehicles. They passed a fifty-foot-long trans
porter that already had two decks of calves loaded. A
lorry that had been washed and scrubbed inside drove
off with dirty water pouring out under the hinges of the tailgate. A farmer was trying to negotiate a cattle trailer into a space that was obviously too small
.

When they found the Transit van, it was blocked in
at the back of the parking area, with its bonnet against
the wall and no way of reversing out past the trailer behind it.

‘
I suppose it
was
white once,' said Cooper, drawing
his finger through the grime on the back doors. Weenink had walked round the front, squeezing his
bulk between the van and the wing mirror of a Daihatsu
Fourtrak next to it.

‘
Has it got a rusty wheel arch?' asked Cooper.

‘
Two of them. Also a rusty passenger door and rusty
sills all the way along this side. And look at all this crap
hanging out of the side door.
’

Cooper peered along the van. Strands of yellow straw
stuck out from under the bottom of the side-loading door like a badly trimmed fringe of hair.

‘
It reminds me of a particularly hairy blonde I knew
once,' said Weenink. 'She was a real goer. But stripped
down to her knickers, she looked like Wurzel Gum-midge.'

‘
Let's go and find Mr Keith Teasdale,' said Cooper
.

A police constable and an RSPCA inspector stood
chatting by the door, their uniforms almost identical
but for the policeman's helmet. The RSPCA man looked
like a farmer himself and nodded amicably at the cus
tomers walking past. Above their heads were posters
advertising fertilizers and animal feeds
.

Inside the building, market workers were channelling
cattle through a complicated network of steel pens
towards the sale ring. As Cooper and Weenink entered,
a group of bullocks turned on each other and engaged
in a shoving match in the passageway. Side by side,
two of the animals completely filled the passage, and
their flanks were squeezed against the five-foot high steel bars of the pens on either side. Yipping and
shouting, the attendants flicked their backs with sticks
until they went in the right direction. Then steel gates were shut along the passageways with a series of loud
clangs
.

At the back was the sale ring itself, surrounded by
tiers of wooden benches like a miniature amphitheatre.
Rows of farmers lined the benches, while others pressed
against the steel tubular sides of the ring, their boots
resting on a wooden platform like men propping up
the bar at their local pub. Above them, the low girders
supporting the roof of the mart were covered with roost
ing starlings
.

In the ring were four men, booted and overalled, with sticks in their hands to keep the beasts moving
through. The exits and entrances were just wide enough
for men to squeeze through, but too narrow for animals
desperate to escape from the claustrophobic confines
of the ring and the circles of watching, predatory
eyes
.

Cooper stopped to examine the next lot coming in. They were store cattle, down from the hill farms, des
tined to go to arable land in the east for fattening and
breeding. Some were spattered with mud and faeces;
others had rear hooves that had grown into long, curved
toes like Persian slippers, and they hobbled as they moved
.

Some of the beasts went to press their faces against
the steel sides of the ring to gaze back towards the
holding pens until the men drove them away, making
them parade for the buyers to see the way they moved.
Then the animals would panic and skid on their own
excrement on a concrete surface perfunctorily scattered
with sawdust. The larger cattle made the men slip behind wooden barriers in front of the auctioneer's podium to escape injury
.

As Cooper watched, one animal refused to be directed
to the exit gate, and it ended up in the ring with the
next beast. They circled and barged each other in con
fusion as the men set about them.

‘
Jesus, Ben, I think I'm going off beef all of a sudden,'
said Weenink
.

Cooper saw one or two farmers he recognized. Bridge End Farm was his brother's business, but he had been
to enough auctions and farm sales with Matt to be
familiar with some of the names and faces. There were
a few who seemed to turn up wherever farmers got
together. These events were their social life, as well as
their livelihood
.

The first farmer shook his head when asked about
Keith Teasdale. The second did the same. Cooper con
tinued to work his way through the crowd, followed
by Weenink. The auctioneer was Abel Pilkington him
self, and his voice never stopped. He rattled out his litany: 'Forty, forty, forty. Five. Forty-five, forty-five.
Fifty where? Fifty, fifty, fifty. Am I missing anyone?' It
became a continuous, semi-audible stream of figures,
amplified and distorted by the microphone. It was
impossible to see anyone bidding, but Pilkington had
each beast sold in a matter of seconds and the next one
on its way in.

‘
Aye, that's Teasdale over there,' said an old farmer
at last. 'He's working in the ring, see.
’

The man at the entrance gate to the sale ring looked
either tired or bored. There were bags under his eyes
and he moved with less energy than the others, though
he was younger than some. He was a dark, thin man
with heavy black stubble and a Mexican-style mous
tache and a shifty look in his eye. His entire skill lay in
the timing of the opening of the gate. He barely used
his stick unless an animal threatened to pin him against
the side of the ring
.

Cooper was beginning to feel light-headed with claus
trophobia and the intensity of the noise. Most of the audience seemed to be shouting and chattering con
stantly to each other all around the ring, ignoring the
auctioneer, while weighing up the animals from the
corners of their eyes. There was a continuous bellowing
of animals waiting to be driven into the ring or mar
shalled back into their pens. Gates clanged and cattle
transporters started up outside. At times, the auctioneer
could barely be heard above the din
.

The sun came out and shone through the Perspex
roof. The heat in the ring rose several degrees as it hit
the dirty floor and sweaty bodies.

‘
How do we get him out of there?' said Weenink. 'I'm
not going in that ring. Not without body armour and a riot shield.
’

Cooper tapped one of the attendants on the shoulder
and showed him his warrant card.

‘
We need to speak to Keith Teasdale. Tell him we'll see him in the car park, where his van is.
’

They stood and watched as the man exchanged a few
words with Teasdale. The bullocks in the ring circled,
sniffing at the hands of the spectators. Even three feet
away, Cooper could feel the blast of the breath from the animals' nostrils. One lumbered too close to the
buyers, and they stood back, pulling their arms in to
avoid getting them trapped against the steel bars. One
bullock released a stream of green diarrhoea that hit
the concrete and splashed an old farmer's trousers. He
seemed not to notice
.

Teasdale looked up at the detectives when the other
man pointed. His face was expressionless, but he
nodded briefly. Cooper and Weenink were glad to get
out into the open air. While they waited, they read the
signs on the outside wall of the office, which advertised
farm sales. Farmers seemed to be selling off every
thing — their stock, their equipment, their land, their
homes
.

Back at the ring, the next lots were going in. Two-
week-old calves that could barely walk were being sold
for the price of a couple of pints of beer
.

*

DCI Tailby turned over the interview reports from the
officers who had dragged themselves round a series of
pubs in the back streets of Edendale. He suspected there
would be some expense claims following the reports soon.

‘
So it looks as though Sugden's alibis will stand up,'
he said.

‘
I'm afraid so,' said DI Hitchens.

‘
Typical. Motive, but no opportunity.'

‘
A bit like fish and no chips.'

‘
If you say so, Paul.'

‘
Do you want the latest news on Martin Stafford?' asked Hitchens.

‘
Fire away.' When Hitchens and Fry had entered his office, Tailby had been sneaking a crafty smoke of his
pipe, to ease the ache in his head from staring at the
computer screen. He waved his hand at the cloud of smoke to see the DI better.

‘
We've been following a bit of a long trail,' said Hitchens. 'Diane has the details.'

‘
Martin Stafford left Jenny Weston four years ago,' said Fry. 'And while the divorce was going on, he left
his job too. He moved from the
Derby Evening Telegraph
to the
Leicester Mercury.
But he was there only eighteen
months, then had a spell on a small weekly in Cheshire.
I tracked one of the reporters down there. She said he
drank too much, had affairs in office hours, boasted
about his talents as a journalist but never bothered to
put them to use. He generally seemed to give the impression he was too good for the place.'

‘
I can't say I'm warming to him yet. I don't suppose
he lasted any longer at the Cheshire paper?'

‘
Less,' said Fry. 'Twelve months. He had a couple of blazing rows with the editor, then announced one day
that he was going freelance.'

‘
Damn. End of employment trail, then.'

‘
His last employers have an address in Macclesfield,
so I asked Cheshire to chase him up. But there's a Punjabi family living there now. Mail still arrives for Stafford, but they just throw it away.'

‘
What about the electoral register?'

‘
He's still registered at the Macclesfield address. The
register is taken in October, of course.'

‘
Is that it, then?'

‘
Not quite, sir. I reckoned if he had been trying to set himself up as a freelancer, he ought to have tried some
of the bigger papers in the region for work. So I checked
with a few, just in case any of them had him on their
books. The Features Editor at the
Sheffield Star
was very
helpful and dug out a proposal letter from Martin Staf
ford from a few months back. The address was a flat
in Congleton. That's as fresh as we'll get. And it's not
too far away.'

‘
Phone number?'

‘
Got it, but we haven't tried it yet,' said Fry.
'You think he's still there?
’

DI Hitchens took over. 'I think if he's getting no work
as a freelance, he'll either have moved to another area,
found some other kind of job entirely, or ended up on the dole. My money's on the second or third. Because
he hasn't gone far from the district at any time, has he?
’

Tailby looked pleased. 'I think you're probably right.
Have we been in touch with Cheshire again?'

‘
I asked them to keep a discreet eye on the flat and
see if anybody answering Stafford's description was
around,' said Hitchens. 'We faxed them his picture from
Jenny's wedding photo.'

‘
And?
’

Hitchens smiled. He looked particularly satisfied with
himself, as if he were the first man to bring good news all year. 'Stafford arrived home fifteen minutes ago,' he
said
.

The DCI regarded him with a mixture of emotions
flickering across his face. Fry could see that Hitchens
really got under his skin sometimes. But it was undoubtedly good news.

‘
How long will it take you to get to Congleton?' asked
Tailby.
'Not long. If we drive fast.
’

‘
Drive fast then.
’

Keith Teasdale smelled as though he had spent all his
life in close contact with cattle. But in the market car park, it was Ben Cooper and Todd Weenink who were
out of place, with their alien smell of clean cars and offices.

‘
What's wrong with the van, then?' said Teasdale. 'It's got its MoT, look. It's taxed and insured. What's the problem?
’

Cooper explained what they wanted to know, and watched to see whether Teasdale relaxed. But he remained defensive.

‘
Can't I drive where I want to? Without some nosey
old biddy reporting me?
’

Teasdale had brought his stick with him. He tapped
it on the side of the Transit as he spoke, loosening some
flakes of rust that dropped off the wheel arch.

‘
I'm sure we could find something wrong with it, if we looked,' said Weenink.

‘
We need some help, that's all,' said Cooper. 'If you
were in the area, we need to eliminate you. If it wasn't
you, we keep looking. It's quite simple.
’

Teasdale looked at his boots and scratched the heavy
black stubble on his cheeks. The gesture was intended
to suggest that he was thinking.

‘
I get around a lot,' he said. 'I do little jobs for people.
Farmers mostly.'

‘
What sort of jobs?'

‘
Anything I can get. There's only a couple of days
’

work here. The rest of the time I do a bit of fencing or
ratting. That sort of stuff.'

‘
Ratting?' said Weenink.

‘
I clear rats out of barns and grain sheds.'

‘
You use terriers, I suppose?' said Cooper.

‘
That's right. Lot of rats around this time of year.
They start looking for somewhere warm and dry to live
when the fields are harvested and the weather turns
colder.'

‘
Is Warren Leach at Ringham Edge Farm one of your
customers?'

‘
I know Leach.'

‘
Were you there on Sunday?'

‘
I was up that way.' Teasdale hesitated. 'I was think
ing of calling in at Ringham Edge, but I didn't.
’

‘
Why not?'

‘
I ran into the lad who worked for him. Gary Dawson.
Gary used to help Warren Leach with the milking and
stuff, but he said he'd just walked out on him. He said
Warren was in a terrible temper all the time these days.
So I decided not to go up to Ringham Edge. He can be
an awkward bugger at the best of times, Warren. In a
temper, he's nasty. I can do without that.'

‘
And what about Totley? Do you know it?' asked Cooper.

‘
I know it.'

‘
Not many farmers up there. Not much ratting to do.'

‘
I do all sorts of jobs.
’

Weenink was peering through the back windows of
the van. They were painted over, but some of the paint
had flaked off on the inside, and there were a few small
gaps where the glass was clear.

‘
What's the going rate for scrap metal then, these days?' he asked.

‘
Hey,' said Teasdale, whose attention had been on Cooper. 'What are you doing there?'

‘
Scrap, eh?' said Cooper. 'The lady at Totley was right,
then.'

‘
It's legal,' said Teasdale sullenly
.

Cooper nodded. 'It depends how you go about it,' he
said. And Teasdale scowled at him.

‘
Are you sure you weren't at Ringham Edge Farm?'
asked Weenink.

‘
It would be helpful all round if we could eliminate you,' said Cooper
.

Teasdale kicked the nearest tyre of his van. A few lumps of mud fell out of the tread. 'All right. Gary
Dawson told me it'd be a waste of time, but I went up
there anyway. I need the money I get from jobs like that. They pay me next to nothing here, and it won't
last forever. You have to take the work where you can
find it.'

‘
That's a bit more like it,' said Cooper. 'Now we know
where we are. What time was this?'

‘
About half past two, maybe.'

‘
And were you at the farm long?'

‘
Five minutes. Just long enough for Leach to give me
a mouthful of abuse. I wasn't standing for that, so I
cleared off. I know things are bad up there, but there's
no excuse for that, is there?'