Kill Call (34 page)

In light traffic, Cooper made the Pentagon roundabout in a few minutes, and turned off past a Mercedes dealer, following signs into the Meadows industrial estate. Beyond a large car park stood a range of single-storey brick buildings with flat roofs – a plant centre, an equestrian supplies company, two firms of auctioneers, and the Meadows pub. The market was somewhere behind these buildings, occupying a stretch of ground between the railway sidings and the gravel pits.

‘Is this what I was called in for?’ said Gavin Murfin grumpily.

‘You were rostered on call, Gavin,’ said Cooper.

‘I know, but blimey – a horse auction?’

‘Diane has gone to the house herself. But the mother says they’ll be here. Don’t worry, we’ll get back-up if we need it.’

Chequers Road was a strange place for a cattle market. It stood in the middle of this industrial estate, surrounded by

car showrooms. Horse owners had to reach it by battling through the Saturday traffic jams. Outside the Meadows pub, someone had put up posters warning of GM crop trials taking place in a secret location in Derbyshire. There was no date on the posters, but they were starting to fray at the edges. Cooper was pretty sure those trials had been abandoned a couple of years ago. Too much of a risk, even for the bravest farmer.

‘It’s a bit public for an arrest,’ said Murfin, as they entered the market itself, mingling with the crowds of buyers and sellers.

‘If we see them, we’ll wait until they’re back in the car park,’ said Cooper.

‘OK.’

Cooper walked along a line of tubular steel pens, glancing at the details attached to the front of each one: 15.2hh seven-year-old bay gelding Welsh cross, owner gone to college and has no time to ride. Labels with red numbers were gummed to the hindquarters of the horses. Some of the smaller ponies were dwarfed by the cattle pens. He reached through the bars to touch a soft nose, sensing the animal’s apprehension.

The typical cattle-mart smell of animal dung had begun to fill the air. Handfuls of horse hair lay in clumps on the concrete floors, combed out by owners wanting their animals to look their best in the sale ring. Some of the horses stood resignedly in a corner of a pen, others were clearly nervous, swinging restlessly from side to side as far as their halters would let them, scraping their hooves on the concrete as they shied away from potential buyers. An elegant yearling colt was tugging at his halter and whinnying.

‘No sign of them.’

In the pig building, an auctioneer in a white coat was selling saddles and tack, standing on a metal walkway over the pens. Another had begun to work his way through the farm implements lined up outside. Stalls were selling horse vitamins, hoof picks and blankets. From the back of a lorry, a youth was unloading nets of stock-feed carrots.

‘There’s plenty of intelligence on the Widdowsons in the system,’ said Cooper, ‘not to mention a few convictions for Rick Widdowson, Naomi’s brother.’

‘And they should be here?’

‘According to their mother.’

But the first market worker they spoke to just shook his head. ‘The Widdowsons? No, not today. They’re practically gippos, aren’t they? You’re more likely to see them at Appleby horse fair.’

The second person they asked was no more help than the first.

‘No. But if I do see them, I’ll act normal, shall I?’

‘Yes, that might be helpful, sir,’ said Cooper.

Fry was standing outside Long Acres Farm, listening to the mocking chatter of the jackdaws. A liveried police vehicle was drawn across the entrance to prevent anyone leaving, though she feared it might be too late.

Only the elderly mother was in the house, a cantankerous old woman in carpet slippers who could barely move across the room on her sticks. But a white Fiat was parked in the yard, which the PNC confirmed was registered to Naomi Widdowson. And beyond it, under the cover of a Dutch barn, was an old blue Land Rover belonging to the brother, Rick Widdowson.

Rick had quite a record. A series of minor assaults and convictions for criminal damage dating back to his early teens, and later public order offences and petty thefts that had barely let him stay out of prison. If the jails weren’t so full, he might not have had such luck, with a sheet of previous like that. As it was, Rick Widdowson was currently on probation, with a set of conditions. No wonder Naomi had assumed that the police had come looking for her brother.

Fry looked at the stables, with two horses’ heads hanging over the loose-box doors to see what was going on. And she corrected herself. In the circumstances, Naomi couldn’t possibly have assumed automatically that they’d come for Rick. It must have been a ploy on her part, a diversion to give an impression of her own innocence. Interesting that she’d drawn attention to her own brother to protect herself.

‘Are we going to search the outside premises, Sergeant?’ asked one of the uniformed officers from the response team.

‘Not until we have a few more bodies,’ said Fry. ‘There are too many outbuildings. Too many nooks and crannies. The three of us couldn’t possibly cover it.’

‘We might be here a while. It’s Saturday.’

‘I know.’

Fry wondered how Cooper and Murfin were getting on at the horse market. Last she’d heard, they were just waiting, as she was.

Then she looked at the stables again. She was trying to remember the details of her visit here yesterday with Gavin Murfin. She had a clear picture of Murfin standing in front of the loose boxes, clicking his tongue like an idiot, and asking the names of the horses. ‘That’s Bonny at the end. Baby is the one in the middle. And the gelding is called Monty.’

Bonny, Baby, Monty. But there were only two heads watching her, with no sign of the gelding. Where was the third horse?

After half an hour, Ben Cooper and Gavin Murfin were still sitting in their car at the cattle market in Derby. People passed them clutching bags of carrots, bits of leather tack and hoof oil.

‘Hello, do we know them?’

Cooper jerked his head around at Murfin’s question, thinking he must be missing something. But he saw only a couple of women in denim jeans and body warmers who had stopped to stare at them.

‘You’re going to miss the Rams today, Gavin,’ said Cooper, relaxing again. ‘Aren’t they playing at home?’

‘I don’t care any more,’ said Murfin. ‘I’d rather support Nottingham Forest.’

‘Really? But you were always such a big Derby County fan.’

‘Until last season.’

‘Relegation from the Premiership? Or the new American owners?’

‘Both. And the team has been crap, too. Since the Americans came in, everyone calls them the Derby Doughnuts – because there’s always a hole through the middle.’

‘Is that what’s making you restless?’ said Cooper. ‘You haven’t been yourself for days.’

Murfin pulled a face. ‘Jean has made me go on a diet.’

Now that he thought about it, Cooper hadn’t seen Murfin snacking anything like so much as he used to. It must be the reason for Murfin’s strange behaviour all week.

‘And how do you feel?’ asked Cooper.

‘Terrible. I’ve got no energy. Nothing seems to matter any more. I really don’t want to go into the office on Monday.’

‘I suppose you could phone in sick.’

‘I’ve used up all my sick days. I’d have to phone in dead.’

Cooper dialled Fry’s number. ‘They’re still not here, Diane,’ he said. ‘We’ve been all round the cattle market. No sign of them. How long do you want us to wait?’

‘I think the mother has pulled a fast one on us,’ said Fry. ‘Head back and meet me at Long Acres Farm, soon as you can.’

If this had been Watersaw House, there would have been stable girls around to give Fry information, instead of just one bad-tempered old woman glaring at her from a side window of the house. And there might not have been quite so many muddy puddles for her to negotiate as she crossed the yard towards the stables, avoiding the drainage channel where dirty water swirled among little dams of straw.

She recalled thinking that Naomi Widdowson spent too much time outdoors, that her skin was weathered, her fingernails black. Fry had to remind herself sometimes that the people she dealt with often did things she would never consider doing herself. She’d met more than a few of them already in the present enquiry. Eating those huge, purple steaks of horse meat, dressing up to pursue the artificial scent of a fox – it took all sorts.

Fry looked around the yard, with the stone house to one side and the stables on the other, the horses peering out at her from around their hay racks. Bonny and Baby, but no sign of Monty. She could picture the three of them practically mugging Gavin Murfin for some kind of tidbit. It was obviously what they had come to expect from visitors. So what could be of more interest to a horse than a stranger walking up to their stables?

Stepping carefully, Fry came nearer to the end loose box and edged along the wall. The top half of the door stood open, like all the others. If it hadn’t, she would have noticed something out of place sooner. She could hear faint stirrings from inside now, the sounds of an animal breathing noisily and pawing at the straw.

That was when Fry made her mistake. She flicked up the latch and flung the door open, bursting into the stable, her mouth open to start shouting the commands. For a second, she heard the two uniformed officers running towards her. But then the whole of her world was suddenly taken up by the huge, rearing animal in front of her, its eyes rolling in alarm, its nostrils flaring, its steel-shod hooves lashing out at the intruder. How could she have forgotten how big these animals were, how easily the impact of a steel shoe could crush a man’s skull?

Frantically, Fry tried to dive clear of the flying hooves. The last two things she remembered for a while were the thud of those hooves hitting the concrete wall, and the overpowering smell of wet horse.

Cooper and Murfin were on the A6 approaching Bakewell. As they passed Haddon Hall, still closed to visitors for the winter, they were held up at the turning to the huge car park for the agricultural business centre. Bakewell was always busy on a Saturday, no matter what the time of year.

Cooper tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as a coach manoeuvred off Haddon Road, splashing through the water that sometimes closed the access to the car park completely in bad weather.

‘It’s frustrating not knowing what’s going on,’ he said.

‘Me, I never know what’s going on,’ said Murfin. ‘It’s the best way to be.’

They were already in the centre of the small town, waiting for traffic to clear on the roundabout in front of the Rutland Arms, when they got the first indication of what was happening at Long Acres Farm.

‘We’ve got Naomi Widdowson in custody,’ Fry told Cooper when she called.

‘Great. What about –’

‘Her brother Rick? No, he got away.’

She sounded so disgusted that Cooper didn’t ask her how it had happened. If it was her own fault somehow, she would be blaming herself enough by now.

‘He made it to his Land Rover while we were dealing with his sister,’ said Fry. ‘There was a horse that proved a bit of a distraction.’

‘Didn’t you have the entrance sealed off?’ asked Cooper, though he knew it was too obvious.

Fry sighed. ‘Yes, of course. But there was another way out: a track across the fields. His Land Rover made it, but there was no way we could follow.’

‘Which way is he heading?’

‘He should come out near the stone mill. Who knows which direction he’ll take when he gets back on the road, though. Too many tracks and unmade roads in this area.’

Cooper mentally pictured the map. ‘We’re not far away. We’ll take a chance and head up through Great Longstone on to the Longstone Edge road.’

‘Thanks, Ben. I’ll catch up with you somewhere.’

Her voice sounded a little shaky. No way to conceal that, except by not saying very much. Cooper wondered what had frightened her.

‘Diane, are you –?’

‘Just don’t,’ said Fry. ‘Just don’t ask me if I’m all right.’

With his foot down on the Toyota’s accelerator, Cooper left Bakewell behind on the A6 and turned up the hill in Ashford in the Water. He slowed through Great Longstone, watching for Rick Widdowson’s blue Land Rover as they passed the two pubs, the White Lion and the Crispin, but in Great Longstone, you were more likely to see a well-known former cabinet minister walking his equally well-known dog.

Moor Lane took them up to the Edge. It was quiet up here today. Saturday was the day for shopping in Bakewell, and tomorrow would be the time for enjoying the view. A sharp left-hand bend marked the point where the haulage road from High Rake and Black Harry Lane both met the public road.

Cooper stopped the car for a moment, surveying the landscape for a cloud of dust, or a flock of sheep scattering across a field. The Toyota had four-wheel drive, but he was reluctant to find himself drawn in to a pursuit across open country.

‘What’s that up ahead in the road?’ said Murfin, pointing straight on.

Cooper let in the clutch again, and drove on slowly.

‘It’s a dead sheep.’

‘And look, in the ditch – a blue Land Rover.’

They were on the edge of the last surviving stretch of genuine moorland on Longstone Moor. To the east, Cooper could see the glint of the flash, the water-filled quarry workings, edged by a screen of trees. To the west, the moor itself was a sea of heather, black in the rain, a dark ocean stirred fitfully by the wind.

He drew the car into the side of the road, and parked on the rough grass verge. They peered into the Land Rover to make sure Rick Widdowson wasn’t lying injured inside it. But the driver’s door stood open, and it was clear what had happened.

As Cooper straightened up, he saw Fry’s black Peugeot coming the other way. She pulled a face at the sight of the dead sheep lying bloodied in the middle of the carriageway.

‘Better help me drag this out of the way, Gavin,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s a bit of a hazard.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Murfin. ‘What a great day this is turning into.’

Fry got out of her car and pulled up the collar of her coat as the wind across the moor caught her hair.