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

by David J Gatward

  ‘Who the hell did this? Who’s responsible? Who is it? Are they local? They have to be!’

  Harry moved to stand next to the vet.

  ‘Well, we’ve got one of them at least,’ he said, the puppy in his arms sound asleep. ‘Already under arrest and on his way to Harrogate for an unpleasant few hours of terrible food, no sleep, and a lot of difficult questions that I’m pretty sure he won’t be able to answer. Not with all this here in front of us. And the fact that we have a statement from someone who saw him here.’

  ‘I’ll do a report on everything I find,’ Andy said. ‘Whatever I can do to help put them away, I will.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ said Harry.

  Andy pulled off his biking leathers and walked deeper into the building, Harry following. ‘You think this is all part of the dogfighting thing?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘This is something else,’ he said. ‘Could be connected, but none of these are the kind of dogs you’d throw in a ring, are they? They’re all Labradors for a start.’

  ‘Certainly looks like it,’ said Andy, scratching the head of the puppy Harry was holding. ‘Hard to know where to start, you know? They all look in a bad way. And the conditions! Who keeps animals like this? What the hell is wrong with people?’

  ‘Wish I knew,’ Harry said. ‘Would make my job a lot easier, that’s for sure.’

  Andy climbed over into the first pen. Seven small furry bodies rushed over to him, tails wagging. Their mother, however, didn’t have the energy, and just laid there. It was to her Andy went first, kneeling beside her.

  ‘You’ve no idea how angry this makes me,’ he said, as he checked the dog over, then gave her a couple of injections.

  ‘Oh, I think I do,’ said Harry. ‘Trust me on that.’

  ‘I’m going to need help with this,’ Andy said. ‘I need someone to call the surgery. There’s a twenty-four-hour emergency call service. Whoever answers, tell them what we’ve got and they’ll do the rest.’

  ‘I’ll do that now,’ Matt said.

  Andy stood up as Matt headed off to make the call.

  ‘There’s just so many of them!’ he said, scratching his head. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. The filth, it’s horrendous!’

  Harry told Andy about the bin over by the door.

  ‘I’m going to call someone at the RSPCA,’ Andy said. ‘I’ve not got the facilities to house this many animals. To be honest, I’m not sure they have either. But they’ll be able to help, I’m sure.’

  As the vet moved on to the next pen, his phone to his ear, Harry’s own phone buzzed in his pocket. With some struggle, and not wanting to wake up the puppy he was carrying, he finally managed to pull it from his pocket and answer.

  ‘Grimm,’ he said.

  ‘Harry?’

  Harry recognised the voice immediately, but it sounded strained.

  ‘Liz? Is that you? What’s up? Are you back in Hawes?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me, I mean, it’s Liz. I… I’m…’

  The PCSO’s voice was choked and Harry heard pain in it.

  ‘Liz? What’s wrong? What’s happened? Are you okay?’

  For a moment, all Harry could hear was breathing.

  ‘Liz? Liz, damn it, answer me!’

  ‘I’m… I’m still out at the barn,’ Liz replied, her voice quiet, like it was bruised.

  ‘What? Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘I… I think someone attacked me. No, I mean I know someone did. Jeez, my head…’

  ‘Attacked you? What do you mean? Who attacked you? How?’

  Matt, his own call over, was now next to Harry.

  ‘What’s happened? Is that Liz? Is she okay?’

  Harry hushed the detective sergeant with a hot stare, trying to focus on what Liz was saying, which so far wasn’t that much.’

  ‘I was at the barn,’ Liz said. ‘I popped back in, just to have one last look at the owl, but when I left, something crashed into the back of my head. Knocked me out cold.’

  ‘And you’re still there? At the barn?’

  ‘Yes,’ Liz said. ‘I came round a couple of minutes ago. I’m okay, I think. Massive headache though. I’ll head back to Hawes now.’

  ‘No, you absolutely will not!’ Harry snapped back. ‘You’ll be staying right where you are until I get there, you hear?’

  ‘But what about Mrs Peacock?’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about her,’ Harry said. ‘Her husband is now under arrest and on his way to Harrogate. I’ll have Matt let Jen and Jim know what’s happened and they can sort her out.’

  Matt gave a silent nod, acknowledging the instruction.

  ‘But I’m fine,’ Liz said. ‘Honestly, I’m okay.’

  ‘You’re not fine! At all! And don’t even go thinking that you can get on that bike of yours. You stay put. Have you got something to keep you warm while I make my way over?’

  ‘I’ve got a jacket,’ Liz said.

  ‘Well, get yourself back in that barn,’ Harry said. ‘Stay out of the wind. I don’t want you getting cold and going into shock.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Someone just twatted you on the bonce hard enough to knock you out!’ Harry replied. ‘So, you’ll be doing exactly as you’re ordered to from now on, understood?’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts,’ Harry said, cutting Liz off. ‘Whoever did it, they’ll be long gone by now. You must’ve disturbed them. I want to see why, find out what the hell they were doing there at all that was so important they needed you out of the equation while they did it. So, don’t you bloody well move until I get there!’

  Harry gave Liz no opportunity to respond, killing the call immediately.

  ‘Matt?’

  ‘I heard enough,’ Matt said. ‘You go. I’ll stay.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Andy asked, peering out at Harry from another pen.

  ‘One of my officers has just been attacked over in Snaizeholme,’ Harry said. ‘I’m going to them right now. I’ll leave Detective Sergeant Dinsdale here with you, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Is that to do with all this?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘As of this moment, I don’t know what’s to do with what, and I know that makes no sense at all, but that’s where I am.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ Matt said. ‘You get over to Liz and make sure she’s okay.’

  Harry gave a nod and made to walk off, down the track, back to his vehicle.

  ‘Er, boss?’

  Harry turned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve, er, well, you’ve got a passenger there with you, haven’t you?’

  Harry looked down to see the puppy lying in his arms still somehow fast asleep. Then it shuffled itself around a bit and managed to twist its body enough to flip it upside down, baring its stomach.

  ‘So, you’re a she then, are you?’ Harry said, and gave the dog’s stomach a scratch. It was soft and warm and Harry was struck then, not just by the innocence of the creature he was carrying, but its helplessness, too.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want to hand it over? Then you can get going.’

  Harry stroked the dog’s stomach once more.

  ‘She’s coming with me,’ he said, and turned on his heels and walked off into the dark.

  When he arrived at his vehicle, Harry rested the puppy on the driver’s seat as he hunched off his jacket and scrunched it up on the passenger seat. He then transferred the animal over to the makeshift bed, climbed in himself and set off through the dark.

  As he drove, Harry found himself reaching over to stroke the dog, to give it a scratch, or to just rest his large, rough hand on its side like a protective blanket. The dog responded with faint snuffles and snores, tucking itself deeper into his jacket.

  Arriving at Snaizeholme, Harry headed down the track, past the motorbike Liz had ridden out on, and down towards the barn. As he drew up outside the building, Liz
appeared in the door.

  Harry was out of his vehicle and over to her in a heartbeat.

  ‘You never said you were bleeding! Why? Why the bloody hell didn’t you say? You need an ambulance, Liz! Look at you!’

  She had some colour to her face, so that was something, Harry thought, but there was dried blood on her forehead and down the left side of her face, and it didn’t half make her look worse for wear.

  ‘It’s just a small cut, that’s all,’ Liz said. ‘Look…’

  She pointed to a cut on the side of her head, just in her hair.

  ‘Must’ve hit something when I fell after getting hit.’

  ‘Hit? You were smashed across the skull and knocked unconscious!’ Harry said. ‘You’ll have a concussion. You need checking over!’

  ‘Well, we can do that when we get back to Hawes,’ Liz said, brushing herself down as though nothing had happened at all. ‘What are we going to do about the bike?’

  ‘The bike? How is that even important?’ Harry was doing his utmost to stay calm but it really wasn’t working. He was, in pretty much every way possible, baying for the blood of whoever was responsible. ‘We’ll pick it up in the morning. What matters right now is you.’

  ‘I’m all right, Harry,’ Liz said. ‘Honest, I am. And I had company, so it’s not been all bad.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Harry asked, his eyes darting around, wondering then if Liz’s attacker was still around.

  ‘Well, for a start, that owl was here when I arrived.’ Liz said. ‘Doesn’t seem to mind people at all. It was gone when I woke up. Since then, I’ve heard it around the place, hooting and being all owl-ish. Sounds a little creepy at first, an owl on the dark moors when you’re alone, but after a while? It’s kind of nice. And there’s been a few squirrels. How can you not feel okay when one of those cute little buggers runs past?’

  Harry ducked inside the barn. He flashed his torch up into the rafters and right enough, the owl was gone. He was about to head back outside to deal with Liz, when he spotted something.

  ‘Liz? Was this here when you arrived?’

  ‘Was what where?’

  ‘The ladder,’ Harry said.

  Liz came into the barn behind Harry.

  ‘What ladder?’

  Harry pointed at the floor.

  ‘I noticed it outside the first time I was over here,’ he explained. ‘And now it’s here.’

  ‘Well, no, it wasn’t there before,’ Liz said. ‘I’d remember.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  The expression Liz gave Harry was more than enough to convince him that yes, she was sure, and it was probably best to not question it.

  ‘I know I’ve been knocked on the head, but my brain didn’t plop out of my ears and onto the floor in the process, you know.’

  Harry walked over to the ladder for a closer look. As he did so he noticed marks in the dirt on the floor showing where it had been stood up against the wall.

  ‘Where was the owl when you were in here?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Up there,’ Liz said.

  ‘Interesting,’ Harry said, then manoeuvred the ladder to where the marks were on the floor. Leaning it against the wall, it came to rest exactly where Liz had just pointed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Answer me this, Liz,’ Harry said. ‘Why would someone come out here in the first place?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, let me put it this way, then, why would someone come out to this barn, knock you unconscious, then use this ladder to climb up to where not just you, but I and the pathologist all saw an owl?’

  Liz scrunched her face up.

  ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Egg stealing? There’s money in that, isn’t there? Maybe it was that?’

  Harry, though, wasn’t listening. He was already halfway up the ladder.

  ‘Be careful,’ Liz said.

  ‘Careful’s my middle name.’

  ‘I very much doubt that,’ Liz sighed.

  When he reached the top of the ladder, Harry didn’t look down. He’d been a rare thing in the Paras; someone who hadn’t been best pleased about heights, which was a bit of an issue, seeing as being a Para was linked clearly in their very name to jumping out of planes with a parachute. But that had been the funny thing about getting his wings; jumping from a plane had always seemed just too ridiculous to be scared of. The height out of the back of a plane just didn’t look real. But standing at the top of a ladder, though? Well, that was different. Harry was certain it was more dangerous, what with the fact that he wasn’t wearing a parachute.

  ‘You okay up there?’ Liz called out.

  ‘Fine and dandy,’ Harry said, then he turned to look at where he remembered the owl had been. The wooden beam was old and worn, he noticed, but what struck him as odd was how there was just no evidence of a bird ever having been there at all. No feathers, no mess, nothing. And that was confusing the hell out of him right up to the moment that he spotted some thin wire nailed into the wood.

  ‘Well, now, isn’t that interesting,’ Harry muttered.

  ‘What is it?’

  Harry looked down, ignoring how the floor of the barn seemed to twist and lurch up at him just a little.

  ‘Well, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but that owl? I’m not entirely sure that’s what it was exactly.’

  ‘Oh, it was definitely an owl,’ Liz said. ‘What else could it have been?’

  Harry didn’t answer, but leaned in for a closer look instead. He saw scuff marks around the wire, which made him wonder if there was a chance of finding some fingerprints.

  ‘I’m coming down,’ Harry said, then backed himself down the ladder.

  When he got to the bottom he immediately spotted some feathers on the floor, which he picked up and placed in an evidence bag. But as he did so, he spotted something else in the dirt and picked it up.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Liz said.

  ‘I think,’ Harry explained, looking at the small object resting in the palm of his hand, ‘that there was more to that owl than any of us thought.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In the way that I think it was stuffed and placed up there for a reason, that being to keep an eye on things down here.’

  Liz shook her head. ‘Wait, you mean like it was a microphone or something?’

  Harry showed Liz what he’d found in the dirt on the floor. It was an SD card.

  ‘Or a camera,’ he said. ‘I think whoever attacked you came back for this. You probably disturbed them and in their rush to get out, they dropped the very thing they’d come back here for.’

  Harry then told Liz about the scuff marks and the wire.

  ‘I’ll have Sowerby come out and check it over for us. But right now, there’s someone I need to speak to.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone we all know who’s rather partial to stuffed animals…’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Having sent out a message to everyone on the team to let them know what had happened to Liz and that she was okay, and to also tell them what he’d found out at the barn in Snaizeholme, Harry was now nursing a mug of tea and trying to work out how best to start the interview of Mr Eric Haygarth. So, while he thought on, he finished the large slice of fruit cake that Matt had brought in from Cockett’s earlier in the day. That there had been any left was in itself a miracle. He wasn’t having cheese with it because, although he’d grown to just about enjoy the combination, he still wasn’t sure that cheese and cake went with tea.

  He was joined in the interview room by Jen, who was sitting patiently waiting for things to begin. Jadyn was in the process of transporting Mr Peacock to Harrogate where Gordy was then going to take over, once she’d gone through the details and photos of the puppy farm Harry had already sent through.

  There would be more to follow as well, from the vet, his surgery team who had turned up, and the RSPCA, as well as Matt, who was working as a liais
on between the police and everyone else.

  Jim was on with making sure that Mrs Peacock was okay and staying somewhere else with friends or family and was then going to pop over to Mr and Mrs Hogg to check up on how they were doing after the burglary.

  Harry had dropped Liz off at home and called a doctor out to check her over. The worst part of which, hadn’t been trying to ignore her increasingly vocal protests, but the fact that he’d left the little sleepy black puppy he’d taken with him in her care. Liz, on the other hand, had been over the moon.

  ‘Right,’ Harry said, his tea finished at last, ‘shall we get this party started, then?’

  ‘Party? How is this a party?’ Eric asked. ‘I shouldn’t even be here, should I? I’ve not done nowt!’

  Harry reached forward and started the recording device in the centre of the table. He then stated the date and time and who was in the room.

  ‘So, Eric,’ he began, ‘perhaps you’d like to tell us where you were two nights ago.’

  ‘I’m not answering that!’ Eric said. ‘You think I did it, don’t you? So, anything I say, well, it’s only going to make it worse, isn’t it?’

  Harry glanced across to Jen.

  ‘I don’t think I accused him of anything, did I?’

  Jen shook her head. ‘Not a sausage.’

  Harry looked back at Eric.

  ‘Which begs the question, doesn’t it, Eric, as to what it is that you think we think you’ve done.’

  Eric folded his arms.

  ‘Now you’re just trying to be clever.’

  ‘I promise you, I’m not,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve not accused you of a single crime. Not yet anyway. All I’ve asked is for you to tell me what you were doing two nights ago.’

  ‘No, you asked me where I was two nights ago. That’s different.’

  ‘Well, you’re listening, so that’s good,’ Harry said. ‘So, why don’t you start by answering my first question.’

  ‘I was at home,’ Eric said. ‘And that’s no lie.’

  ‘For the whole night?’ Jen asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where you home for the whole night?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eric said, and gave a short nod. ‘Yes, I was. At home. All night.’