Blood Sport: A Yorkshire Murder Mystery (DCI Harry Grimm Crime Thrillers 7)

by David J Gatward

  ‘None that I can remember,’ Jan said. ‘We just came home to find him missing.’

  ‘I’m just not seeing how a guard dog gets stolen,’ Jim said.

  ‘Well, you see, the problem with Haystacks—that was his name on account of him being massive,’ Jan said. ‘The problem was, well, you see… he was a bit rubbish.’

  ‘How do you mean, rubbish?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Oh, he looked the part alright,’ Jan said. ‘Massive paws, huge jaws and teeth, and he’d make a proper racket, too, if you came up to him.’

  ‘Doesn’t exactly sound rubbish,’ Jim said. ‘Sounds terrifying.’

  ‘But then he’d just roll on his back and beg for a tummy rub!’ Jan said. ‘Honestly, he was just a big softy. A really lovely dog. All bark and no bollocks, as my husband would say.’

  Jim laughed at that.

  ‘You don’t think he escaped, then?’

  ‘This place is all done out to stop dogs escaping,’ Jan said. ‘And Haystacks wasn’t one for going anywhere under his own initiative. Liked the easy life. Good living. Someone came in, took him, and left. It’s the only explanation. There’s a lot of money in stolen dogs, you know. And puppy farms. It’s awful.’

  ‘Haystacks was chipped though?’

  ‘A chip can be cut out,’ Jan said.

  ‘You said you had another? Where was it that night?’

  ‘Sick,’ Jan said. ‘Had to leave it in its run.’

  ‘Anything serious?’

  ‘Threw up everywhere,’ Jan said. ‘Probably ate something it shouldn’t have. As dogs do.’

  ‘Is your husband around at all?’ Jim asked. ‘It would be useful to talk to him as well.’

  Jan’s smile took on a nervousness as she shook her head.

  ‘No, he’s out,’ she said. ‘You’re fine, I mean he’ll be back very soon. You don’t have to rush off, do you? I can answer any questions, I’m sure, until he gets home.’

  Jim looked at his notebook, reading what he’d written down after Harry had briefly called him earlier.

  ‘I believe you sold a dog to a Mr Arthur Black,’ he said. ‘A gamekeeper over in Redmire.’

  ‘I’ll have to check our records,’ Jan said.

  ‘It wasn’t a Springer Spaniel though,’ Jim said. ‘It was a cross, I think.’

  Jan stood up and walked over to a window that overlooked the drive, then was back to her seat.

  ‘We only breed Springers,’ she said. ‘You must be mistaken.’

  ‘No, I’m definitely not,’ Jim said. ‘The owner told us he bought it from you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember now,’ Jan said. ‘Sorry, I was a little confused. We of course only breed Springers, but yes, there was a little accident a couple of years ago now, when Haystacks got one of our prize bitches pregnant.’

  ‘And you sold the pups?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jan said. ‘We couldn’t keep them. And obviously, we couldn’t sell them for what we’d get for the purebreds, could we? But they were still worth something. Lovely looking things they were, too.’

  Jim checked his notes. As leads went, this was turning out to not be one at all. One stolen dog and some pups. That was it. He’d hoped for more. If he were honest, he’d hoped to find something that would have him making an arrest, really show Grimm that he could get on with the job in hand, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Well, I’d best be off,’ Jim said, cake and tea now finished.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything else?’ Jan asked.

  ‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Jim said. ‘Honestly. Good cake though.’

  Jim stood and made to head to the door.

  ‘Please, I’m sure there are some other questions you need to ask, yes?’ Jan said. ‘I’ll fetch you another tea. How’s that sound?’

  ‘Very kind,’ Jim said, and as he went to say goodbye and head for the front door, he heard a vehicle pull up outside.

  ‘That’ll be him,’ Jan said, and Jim noticed she was rubbing her arm again, only this time a little more vigorously. ‘My husband. Thank you for staying. You’ve no idea…’

  The front door opened and in walked a man wearing a scowl borrowed from a rock face. It was a craggy thing, with deep-set eyes, which turned to stare at Jim.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘Mr Peacock, I’m PCSO James Metcalf,’ Jim began, but the man strode over and cut him off with a stare and a fat finger jabbed in his chest.

  ‘Did I ask who you were? No. I didn’t. I don’t need to, do I? I can see who you are. I asked what the hell do you want, so why don’t you answer that instead?’

  Mr Peacock’s accent was, like Jan’s, almost without an accent, but one thing it did have was anger, the kind that never really goes away, like it was fuelled constantly from something deeply unpleasant inside its owner. A furnace of barely controlled fury.

  ‘I just needed to ask a few questions about the dog you reported stolen,’ Jim said, keeping his voice calm.

  Mr Peacock snapped around to growl at Jan.

  ‘That was months ago! Why’s he really here?’

  ‘It’s about the dog, about Haystacks,’ Jan said, and Jim saw her back away a little from her husband. ‘He rang earlier, asked to come over.’

  ‘And you just said yes, did you? Didn’t think of checking with me?’

  ‘You weren’t here.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Mr Peacock said. ‘And if I’m not here, you shouldn’t be inviting anyone around, should you? And don’t answer that. You don’t need to. The answer’s No.’

  ‘Mr Peacock,’ Jim said, ‘it would be useful if you could answer a few of my questions as well. It won’t take long, I’m sure. DCI Grimm requested that I…’

  Mr Peacock snapped away from his wife and loomed over Jim.

  ‘DCI what now?’

  ‘Grimm,’ Jim said.

  ‘Was I speaking to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jim said. ‘You asked—’

  ‘I asked nothing,’ Mr Peacock cut back, then looked at Jan. ‘DCI Grimm, is it? That’s who you were calling?’

  ‘The police, this police officer, he called me,’ she said, and Jim noticed a desperate edge to her voice. ‘I didn’t call them. Why would I?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Mr Peacock said, moving closer to his wife. ‘Why would you?’ Then he turned to face Jim and added, ‘Why haven’t you buggered off yet?’

  Jan tugged at her husband’s shirt.

  ‘You can’t talk to the police like that! You can’t!’

  ‘Police? Ha!’ Mr Peacock laughed. ‘He’s not real police, are you, mate? No, you’re just a PCSO. A plastic copper is what he is, isn’t that right?’

  Jim was stuck for a response.

  Mr Peacock laughed again, then turned around and opened the front door.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, using his other hand to firmly guide Jim out of the house. ‘Do yourself a favour and fuck off quietly now and run back to your DCI like a good little PCSO.’

  Then, with a firm shove, Jim was outside and the door was slammed shut.

  Jim waited for a moment, trying to work out what had just happened and what he should do next. He listened, expecting to hear a row, but there was no sound from the other side of the door.

  Raising his hand to knock on the door, Jim nearly toppled backwards when the door was yanked open and Mr Peacock stepped in to fill the space.

  ‘Are you fucking deaf, mate, is that it?’

  Jim was rapidly going off Mr Peacock and for the life of him couldn’t think of a reason to explain why Jan, with her enormous hair and fantastic baking, was with him in the first place.

  ‘I just need to ask you a few questions,’ Jim said, sounding to himself like a broken record.

  ‘Oh, right, is that all?’ Mr Peacock said. ‘Some questions, is that it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ Jim replied.

  Mr Peacock grinned. ‘You should’ve said so! Well, why don’t you just step a bit closer, then, so we
can have a proper chat?’

  ‘That would be great,’ Jim said.

  ‘Come on then,’ Mr Peacock said, and invited Jim back into the house with a wave of his hand.

  Jim stepped forward, and as he was about to move into the house once again, Mr Peacock stepped back and heaved the door directly into him. Before Jim could react, the door crashed into his face, knocking him backwards and onto the ground. He looked up to see the door open once again.

  ‘You alright there, mate?’ Mr Peacock said. ‘Sorry about that. Wind must’ve caught it, isn’t that right, Love?’

  Jim saw Jan peer around the side of her husband. She mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ Then said, ‘Yes, the wind. It must’ve been. It’s happened to me before, hasn’t it? Quite a few times, actually.’

  Climbing to his feet, Jim noticed that as Jan had spoken she hadn’t been looking at her husband at all. Instead, she had been staring at him, especially when she’d said quite a few times.

  With one last stare at Mr Peacock, Jim turned around and headed back to his vehicle.

  Back in Hawes, Jim parked up and headed into the office at the community centre. Matt was in one of their cars in the car park and offered a wave, which Jim returned. In the office, he found Liz, who had popped in to grab something from the fridge.

  ‘Matt remembered he had a couple of sausage rolls in here,’ she said. ‘And we’re both a bit peckish.’

  ‘You’ve not found that Eric bloke yet, then?’

  Liz shook her head.

  ‘No sign yet. Seems like the kind of person who, if he doesn’t want to be found, won’t be. But we’ve not given up.’ She went to leave, but then turned back and said, ‘You look a little miffed. It doesn’t suit you. Something happen?’

  ‘Mr Peacock happened,’ Jim said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Slammed a door in my face, claimed it was the wind.’

  ‘You mean he assaulted a police officer?’ Liz said.

  ‘No,’ Jim said. ‘Not a police officer. A plastic copper. So it doesn’t count, does it?’

  ‘Plastic what now?’ Liz asked.

  Jim slumped down into a chair.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Ignore me.’

  A few minutes later, and with Liz back outside and off with Matt to try and track down Eric Haygarth, Jim thought back to his encounter with Jan and her husband. Jan had been jumpy from the moment he’d arrived, and there was that rubbing of her arm. Then there was the way she’d stared at him when she’d spoken about the door slamming into her supposedly because of the wind. As for her husband, well, he was like an advert for hostility, wasn’t he? Something clearly wasn’t right.

  Then something else floated to the top of Jim’s mind. When Jan had told him about being out the night that the dog was stolen, she’d started by saying how they were both out, but then she had only talked about herself being at the pub for a drink and a meal. A treat she’d called it, hadn’t she? So, where had her husband been that night?

  Whether or not it had anything to do with the case they were investigating, Jim didn’t know. But what he did know was that he’d be speaking to Grimm about it. And although that on its own made him smile, what really made him grin was the thought of Harry meeting Mr Peacock face to face. That, Jim thought, would be something he’d be tempted to sell tickets to.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Harry walked out of the barn with Andrew Bell, who was carrying a large, battered black leather bag, to where the motorbike was parked.

  ‘How long have you been riding?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Ever since I was a kid,’ Andy replied. ‘Gets under your skin, I think. Can’t stop myself. You?’

  ‘Never tried it,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t trust myself.’

  The bike was a fair size and Harry was amazed that it was possible to ride the thing at any speed. It just looked too large and too heavy.

  ‘They make a lot of sense for the surgery in a place like the dales,’ Andrew said. ‘And you’d be amazed how much kit we can carry in those paniers they have.’

  ‘No, I can see that,’ Harry said. ‘We’ve got one ourselves. Not as posh as this, but we have it for the same reason.’

  ‘Is this about the necropsy?’ Andy asked. ‘I gave all the details on that to a couple of your officers yesterday morning.’

  ‘That you did,’ Grimm said. ‘I’ve not had a chance to catch up with them on that yet, as we’ve been rather caught up in what’s happened since.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too good.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Harry said. ‘The owner of the dog you examined? He was attacked last night in his own home.’

  ‘Seriously? That’s awful. Why?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

  Andrew frowned and stretched, and Harry heard bones pop.

  ‘That poor dog had been fairly torn apart,’ he said. ‘And the toxicology report certainly came up with a few interesting things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘There was a fair cocktail of stuff in its veins,’ Andy explained. ‘None of the substances are illegal, because they all have legitimate uses, but I was quite surprised by it all so I did a little bit of digging.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘I phoned around to a few friends in the business, as it were,’ said Andrew. ‘And Toby’s worked at the races as a vet, so he recognised it for what it all was. He was due to be out here today but had to head off on another job. Ours is a busy life in the dales, you know.’

  ‘Toby?’

  ‘One of our vets,’ Andrew said. ‘Came over from Darlington a couple of years ago. He was with me yesterday. Helped out with the necropsy, met your two officers.’

  ‘So, what was it all, then?’ Harry asked, having already heard the rundown from Jim earlier, but wanting to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

  ‘Everything that dog had in its veins, all those drugs? They’re commonly found in connection with illegal dogfighting.’

  ‘And you’re sure about that?’

  ‘I’m a vet,’ Andy said. ‘I know vet stuff. And Toby confirmed it too, having dealt with some dodgy types at the races before. There’s a lot of stuff coming over from the world of sport into dog fighting, you see, which is quite interesting.’

  ‘Interesting is one way to describe it,’ Harry agreed. ‘Though I reckon terrifying is more accurate.’

  ‘It’s not cheap though,’ Andy continued.

  ‘Well, there’s good money to be made in a dog fight,’ Harry said, shaking his head. ‘And if people are going to win big, then they’re usually happy to invest.’

  As they’d been chatting, the vet had got changed out of his mucky gear from helping the cow give birth and into his biking leathers, then had a quick check through his case. Harry saw all kinds of medical equipment in the vet’s bag, bandages and dressings, drugs and syringes, and a small, battered wooden case with the words ‘Humane Killer’ scratched into the lid.

  ‘‘Always have to make sure I’ve got everything,’ he said. ‘Can’t be leaving any of this stuff lying around.’

  ‘Humane Killer?’ Harry asked.

  ‘It’s a pistol,’ Andy said, lifting out the wooden case and opening it to show Harry. ‘Single shot. Most vets have them. Fully licensed, obviously. It’s a last resort, really, but I’d rather have it than not, just in case.’

  ‘You carry it around with you, then?’

  ‘Good God, no!’ Andy said. ‘It’s kept secure back at the surgery, signed in and out. I just had a job to do on the way over. Never pleasant, but sometimes, there’s just nothing you can do, so…’

  Harry gave an understanding nod as Andy finished getting changed.

  ‘But you didn’t come out here just to ask me about the report on the dog, did you?’ Andy asked.

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘I’m sure you understand that as part of this investigation, we need to check up on various details, bits of information that co
me to light.’

  Andy’s shoulders seemed to sag a little.

  ‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘My history has caught up with me, right?’

  ‘You could say that, yes.’ Harry nodded. ‘And you’ll understand my concern. A vet who back in his younger days set up a cockfight? That’s set a few alarm bells ringing, for sure.’

  ‘It was hens,’ Andy said, correcting Harry. ‘Not cocks. And that’s the bit you need to remember.’

  ‘Why’s that, then?’

  ‘Because that was all me! I swapped them, didn’t I!’

  ‘Not sure that I understand.’

  For a moment, Andy seemed to check every scratch on his motorbike helmet.

  ‘Not everyone in farming is good at husbandry,’ he said. ‘Or even gives a damn about the animals in their care. You know, I’ve seen people kick dogs, drive tractors into bulls, set illegal traps, just ignore the pain their animals are in. It’s sickening. No ethics at all. Makes you wonder why they’re in it at all if they hate it that much, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And yet you set up a cockfight,’ Harry said. ‘And for money, too, if I’m right.’

  The vet walked a few steps away, then turned back to face Harry.

  ‘I knew that if I didn’t get involved, animals would get hurt. I had to stop that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Like I said, I switched the cocks for hens,’ Andy said. ‘I knew everyone would be too drunk to notice, to begin with, and when they finally did, it was too late. I did it to teach them a lesson.’

  ‘A lesson?’ Harry repeated. ‘How?’

  ‘Make a fool of them all, you see? Cocks will fight because they’re territorial. Hens though, they will have a flap at each other, but generally, they’ll just mooch around, pecking the ground. So, in went the hens, and a minute or two later, everyone’s laughing.’

  ‘What happened to the hens?’

  ‘They were fine,’ Andy said. ‘I took them back home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘They were my hens. I had a hen coop in the garden as a teenager. Used to sell the eggs for a bit of pocket money.’

  ‘There were three of you who set the fight up though, weren’t there?’ Harry said.

  ‘I didn’t actually set anything up,’ Andrew said. ‘I volunteered to get involved so that I could do what I did.’