Requiem for a Dealer (9 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Requiem for a Dealer
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‘And the other?'
‘That she's still trying to make trouble for Windham. Again, she doesn't have to prove anything. She slings enough mud around, sooner or later some of it will stick. I don't know if she has good reason to hate the guy or not, but we know she does – out of all proportion, if you ask me. Maybe he isn't the world's best transporter of horses, but their remedy was taking their custom elsewhere. Or suing him, if they really thought he'd ruined their business. I couldn't figure out why she was quite as bitter as she obviously was.'
‘Maybe they have some history,' speculated Brodie. ‘Personal history.'
Deacon thought about it. ‘Actually, that's possible. She always calls him Johnny. Which is curiously cosy if they're mortal enemies.'
‘It shouldn't be too hard to find out,' said Brodie. ‘It's a small world, the horse-owning fraternity. If Windham and Alison Barker were ever a number, you could find out with a couple of phone calls.'
Deacon sniffed disparagingly. ‘If this is a personal vendetta I don't propose to get involved. My only interest in Alison Barker is how she got hold of the garbage that nearly killed her. She's
made it pretty clear she's not going to tell me and I can't afford to waste much more time pressing her. If I can track down how it's being produced – how the catalyst is coming into the country, who's turning out the tablets and where the factory is – I may get the whole distribution network including whoever supplied Alison Barker. At which point I shall want another talk with her. Until then, let her think she's pulled the wool over my eyes. People have thought it before. Some of them are knitting mailbags now.'
Brodie laughed. ‘Do they still do that?'
‘I doubt it,' growled Deacon. ‘I think they spend their time being psychoanalysed and doing degrees in Information Technology.'
The next day Daniel brought sandwiches to Brodie's office. But he still got left with washing the coffee mugs.
She told him what Deacon's investigation had discovered. Daniel was plainly surprised. ‘You really think she made all this up?'
‘I doubt if she thinks of it that way. It's quite possible she believes it herself,' said Brodie. ‘Look, her whole life's been turned upside down in the past six months. It's no wonder she hardly knows what she's doing.'
Daniel shook his head slowly. ‘It's just, that's not how she comes across. At least, not to me.'
‘And you're such an expert on young women,' Brodie said slyly.
He grinned, unoffended. ‘OK, maybe I'm better on the theory than the practice, but I've taught a lot of girls not much younger than this one and I got pretty good at reading them. I don't see her as either a liar or a neurotic. I can imagine she's difficult to get on with. She's very strong-minded, determined to the point of obstinacy. And she may be wrong. I can imagine her taking a view on something and refusing to amend it in the light of subsequent developments. If she decided this man killed her father, wild horses wouldn't persuade her she was wrong. But why would she think it in the first place unless she had a reason?'
Brodie tried out her own theory on him. ‘Perhaps she had a reason to mistrust him before any of this happened.'
Daniel's mild grey eyes were astute. ‘You mean, perhaps they meant something to one another once and he let her down. And after that she laid everything that went wrong with her life at his door.'
‘What do you think? Possible?'
‘Maybe. Losing her father left her both bereft and intensely angry: I can imagine her trying to displace all that emotion onto someone. But the drugs are different. If she bought them or was given them and took them willingly, she knows Windham wasn't responsible and she's lying when she claims he was. Not wrong, not deluded – lying.'
Brodie gave an elegant shrug. ‘Not everyone takes your zealous view of truth. Most people are prepared to be economical with it when it suits them.'
‘Putting a slant on the facts is one thing. Accusing an innocent man of trying to kill you is very much another!'
‘If he hurt her and she's paying him back, it may seem like justice by other means.'
Daniel watched her. ‘Would you do that?'
‘If I did, I wouldn't tell you!'
‘Seriously.'
She considered. ‘No. If someone hurt me enough I'd want revenge, and at some point I'd probably take it. But lie to the police about him? It's too likely to backfire.'
‘That's the only reason?' He sounded disappointed.
Brodie laughed. ‘I've told you, Daniel, don't look to me for high moral standards. I'm a pragmatist. And for a pragmatist, that is not a sensible way to proceed. I'd look for something with a much higher benefit-to-cost ratio. Of course, Alison might feel differently. You may not be an expert – and just for the record, men never are,
especially
those who claim to be – but even you must know that all women do not think and act the same way.'
He shook his head. ‘You and Alison
might
think and act the same way. You have a lot in common.'
Brodie's dark eyes widened indignantly. ‘You said she was difficult, obstinate and self-deluding!'
Being unfair to people was another kind of lying: Daniel took pains to avoid doing it. ‘Two out of three ain't bad.'
A week after they died the bodies of the Hanson brothers had given up all the information they could. The funeral was held on Tuesday.
DS Voss made sure he was there: to show his respects, and also to see who else was there. He spoke to all the teenagers present, and found a lot of them had been at the party in the Woodgreen Estate. Now, reeling from watching two of their number shovelled under ground, was a good time to get their cooperation – to get them to talk about things of which yesterday or tomorrow they would have feigned ignorance. He asked them about the drugs scene in their particular age-group and circle. Who was taking, who was buying, who was selling. And he showed them a photograph of Alison Barker.
By close of play he had some answers for Detective Superintendent Deacon, though they weren't particularly helpful. None of the youngsters he'd spoken to had seen or even heard of Scram before the elder Hanson boy produced them from his pocket and handed them round. Treating them, he'd said. Try this, he'd said, it's new. It's the best ever. After this, he'd said, you'll never take anything else.
‘So they couldn't give you a description of who was peddling the stuff?'
Voss shook his head. ‘I expect it was one of the usual suspects - the guys who always peddle drugs to kids at parties. If we found him he wouldn't tell us who supplied them. It's more than his life is worth, he'd rather do the time. Anyway, it's not the dealers we need. All right, nice bonus, wouldn't say no, but what we need to stop these deaths are the people who're manufacturing Scram. We need the factory.'
‘Horsefeathers,' said Deacon pensively.
Voss had long ago decided that taking offence at his governor's casual rudeness would be a full-time occupation. ‘Well, if you know a better way …'
Deacon breathed heavily at him. ‘That's what Forensics call it. Pay attention, Charlie Voss – you told me that! Horsefeathers: the German tranquillizer. That's the long thin neck where we
could take the head clean off. It's the vital component, it's hard to get hold of, it only comes from one source and it has to be smuggled into the country. If we find out how they're doing it we close them down like that.' His fingers were a bit thick for snapping: he had to try twice, which rather spoilt the effect.
‘Nobody's going to share information like that with a bunch of teenagers.' Voss blew out a disconsolate sigh that lifted his front hair. ‘One more thing. None of them remembered seeing Alison Barker.'
Deacon was unimpressed. ‘There were a couple of hundred kids in that clubhouse – what are the chances you'd ask one who saw Alison?'
‘That's kind of the point,' said Voss, ‘they were kids. Average age about sixteen. A girl of twenty-two
would
stand out.'
‘Maybe,' conceded Deacon. ‘So maybe she wasn't at the party. But she got Scram somewhere. Maybe she knows someone on the inside – someone who's involved in producing this stuff.'
And he gave her some tabs without telling her what constitutes a safe dose? And she waited until she was alone before experimenting?'
‘It doesn't sound too likely, does it? Oh God,' Deacon growled, ‘I'm going to have to interview her again, aren't I?'
‘Or I could,' suggested Voss.
Deacon eyed him suspiciously. ‘Are you going to bully her? Are you going to stand over her and shout a lot, and convince her the only way she's going to get rid of you is by telling you what you want to hear?'
Voss was a good policeman who was also a decent human being. He looked both startled and shocked. ‘Of course I'm not!'
‘Didn't think so.' Deacon sniffed. ‘Better do it myself, then.'
 
‘Nothing?' Either Alison Barker was genuinely taken aback or she'd anticipated this moment and prepared an expression for it. ‘There was nothing in the food except food?'
‘Nothing,' said Deacon. ‘Forensics knew what they were looking for and they looked carefully: they wouldn't miss it.'
‘I was so
sure
…' Alison was still in hospital but out of bed and dressed now, waiting for the word to go home. A certain pallor
was all that remained from her brush with death.
‘Do you remember what you ate that evening?'
She tried to. ‘I didn't cook. A cheese sandwich, I think, and a packet soup. Later I had a cup of tea and a biscuit.'
‘Any alcohol?'
‘A can of cider out of the fridge.'
All of which accorded with the analysis of what was pumped from her stomach. Except that somewhere along the line she'd taken four tablets of Scram as well.
‘A new can?' asked Deacon.
She didn't understand, answered with a puzzled frown.
‘I'm asking if you opened the can before you drank from it,' Deacon explained patiently, ‘or if it was already open.'
Alison tried to remember. It was several days ago now, it was a minor detail, and a lot had happened to her since. But she knew that it mattered. ‘It was open. I'd had some at lunchtime and sealed the can with clingfilm. It was a bit flat but it was OK.' Her gaze steadied on him. ‘Except that it wasn't, was it? That's where it was – dissolved in the cider.'
‘It's possible,' said Deacon diplomatically. ‘To drug your drink, though, someone would have had to get into your house and there are no signs of a break-in. It's much more likely you came by it outside. Did you go out that evening? Before you were taken ill, I mean.'
Alison wasn't interested in an alternative theory. ‘If it was in the can, Forensics should have found traces.'
Deacon checked back his notes to confirm what he was saying. ‘My Scenes of Crime Officer didn't find a cider can.'
‘For pity's sake!' she exploded in exasperation. ‘I didn't put an empty can back in the fridge! Didn't he check the rubbish?'
‘He checked both the kitchen bin and the wheelie-bin in the yard. There was no cider can.'
Her expression flickered as she thought about challenging that, realised it would be foolish and moved on. A little hollow note of shock sounded in her voice. ‘He's been back. He went back to the house after he thought I was dead and removed the evidence.'
Deacon resisted the urge to break his pencil. ‘You think he
broke in not once but twice, still without doing any damage?'
‘I think if he managed it once he could do it again, yes,' she retorted sharply.
‘By
he
you mean Johnny Windham,' said Deacon.
‘Damn right I do.'
If they were back to this they might as well confront it and deal with it. ‘Did he know where you were living? Have you seen him since you moved there? The person whose house it is' – he checked his notes again – ‘Bella Goss, is she a friend of Windham's? Might she have given him a key?'
Alison was shaking her head. ‘Bella doesn't know anyone in the horse world. I've known her since school. She's the only friend I have I didn't meet through the business.' There was no mistaking the bitterness in her voice. ‘Perhaps that's why now she's the only friend I have.'
‘OK.' Deacon put down his notebook and looked at her levelly. ‘So you're still insisting that the only way you could have taken these drugs is if a man who all the records show was abroad at the time traced you to a house that you don't own, that's owned by someone he doesn't know, and forced an entry in order to doctor your food – and broke in
again
in order to tidy up after himself so well that neither my Scenes of Crime Officer nor the Forensic Science Laboratory could find any sign that he was ever there. Is that what you're saying, Miss Barker?'
She wasn't blind to the weakness of her story. ‘Sounds likely, doesn't it? But yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying. I can't think of any other way I could have taken drugs without knowing it.'
‘And you're adamant that you didn't take them knowingly.'
‘Yes,' she said, ‘I am. Look, Superintendent – if it wasn't Windham then two different people killed my father and tried to kill me. That's even more bizarre.'
Deacon went on regarding her for a moment longer before responding. ‘Miss Barker, I don't know what happened to you. I'm trying to work it out, because if someone is trying to kill you I don't want him to succeed. But it occurs to me there's one possible alternative. Do you want to hear what it is?'
With a spread hand she invited him to continue.
‘A lot's gone wrong with your life in the last six months. Your family business failed. You had to sell a bunch of horses you were obviously attached to, and that left you without a proper job. You had to sell your house, and then your father died. A person would need a heart of stone not to succumb to depression after that lot.'
She looked away quickly, suggesting he'd scored. Deacon nodded. ‘You got through it somehow, but I think it took more of a toll on you than you realise. I think you're suffering from depression now. I think you were depressed on Tuesday night – deeply depressed, sick of the whole sorry business – and you went out looking for something to cheer you up.
‘You're not a big drinker, are you? One can of cider in the fridge and you didn't finish that at a sitting. So if you needed a boost, maybe you thought you'd try tablets. Maybe you'd never tried them before, but the way you were feeling there'd never be a better time.'
He was watching her closely, waiting for the flicker of an eyelid, the intake of breath, that would indicate he was hitting close to home. It didn't come, not yet. He pressed on.
‘You found someone who was dealing, and you didn't know what to ask for so you took what he had. It happened to be Scram, and it happened to be stronger than either you or he realised. Once you'd got the stuff you couldn't wait to take it and stop feeling the way you did that night. I don't think you ever got home. I think you took those tablets in the street, and within minutes the world was spinning. And that's the only reason you're alive, Miss Barker. You collapsed in the street instead of behind a closed door.'
He wasn't sure what he was expecting. Not arms round his neck, a flood of tears and a tremulous apology: he didn't think Alison Barker was the dissolving-in-tears type. But if that was anything like the truth he'd offered her a way out. She could retreat from her accusations against Windham under the cover of emotional confusion, and rather than be charged with wasting police time expect nothing but sympathy. It would be interesting to see if she took it or not.
For a moment she seemed to consider it. But it involved too
much of a retreat: she shook her head. ‘I'm sorry, Superintendent. If I had a satisfactory explanation I'd give it to you. I haven't. But you haven't either.'
Deacon was watching her through narrowed eyes. ‘I will have,' he said grimly ‘If I keep looking into this I will get to the bottom of what happened, and who did what to who, and then I'll charge everyone who's committed an offence. Is that what you want, Miss Barker? Do you want me to investigate what happened to you?'
With barely a hesitation she said, ‘Yes.'
 
The John Farrells were back home so Paddy was staying with her father the next night. She'd been looking forward to it for a week. So had he. So had Brodie. But Deacon had most of all.
Deacon's house was a small stone building under the shelter of the Firestone Cliffs that had been built in Georgian times as Dimmock's jail. It still had some of the original ironwork. Dimmock wasn't a very big town then so it wasn't a very big jail: by the time a kitchen and bathroom had been installed, and the guardhouse turned into a living-room, there were only enough cells remaining to adapt as one large bedroom and one small one.
In the large one, in the large oak bed, under the enormous feather duvet, at one o‘clock in the morning, Brodie – who should have had her mind on other things – said pensively, ‘I keep coming back to the horses.'
Deacon stopped what he was doing as if shot with a gun. ‘What?'
‘Horses,' she repeated, gratified by his interest. ‘I mean, Dimmock isn't Newmarket. It isn't even Exmoor. When did you last have a conversation about horses with anyone? And yet they keep cropping up.'
With a restraint remarkable in the circumstances, Deacon put his best moves on hold while he dealt with this unwelcome distraction. ‘Because that's the business Barker & Walbrook were in. If they'd been taxidermists the recurring theme would have been tiger-skin rugs; as they were horse dealers it's horses. Alison Barker rode them because she was Stanley Barker's
daughter. Johnny Windham transports them because that's how Alison knows him. Everyone Alison knows does something with horses. She told me that herself.'
‘What about the tranquillizer?'

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