The Kill Call

by Stephen Booth

  Murfin laughed as he banged the filing cabinet shut. ‘Not Trading Standards.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. They’re a bit hard to get angry with, aren’t they? I was thinking more of one of Mr Rawson’s customers, someone who got stung when a deal went wrong. Or someone else in the same business, perhaps.’

  ‘Dermot Walsh said that Rawson blamed jealous rivals when they first brought a case against him.’

  ‘So he did. We should give Walsh a ring when we get back to the office, and ask him if Rawson mentioned any rivals in particular.’

  ‘Right. You’re thinking there might have been some kind of feud?’

  ‘Yes, a feud that Patrick Rawson lost.’

  ‘If that’s so – and since Rawson seems to have come up to Derbyshire to meet him – the rival could well be someone local to us.’

  ‘So he could, Gavin. So he could.’

  Fry checked the desk for hidden drawers, ran a hand along a book shelf. Telephone directories, a road atlas, the Official Form Book 2009, with cover picture of jockeys straining hard for the wining post. Diaries, but filled only with dates of birthdays and dental appointments. She found the most recent diary and turned to the current week. Derby horse market was marked on Saturday, and the name of the Birch Hall Country Hotel on Monday night. But no names, no times of meetings he might have arranged. This really was a man who had learned not to put anything in writing.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ she said in disgust. ‘Absolutely nothing of any use to us, Gavin.’

  ‘Where to next, then?’ said Murfin.

  ‘We need to talk to Rawson’s partner. Let’s go and see Michael Clay.’

  Michael Clay’s home was further into the city, Birmingham proper. Well, after a fashion. Great Barr was a suburb on the outer edge of Brum, an ocean of pre-war red-brick semis bordering on Walsall and West Bromwich. The Clay home was easier to find than Rawson’s, though. No need for a sat-nav here.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Clay isn’t at home.’

  The door had been answered by a woman of about her own age, so tightly buttoned up in a woollen jacket that she appeared to have almost no shape. Her dark hair was pushed untidily behind her ears, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead, as if she’d been caught in some physical exertion. Moving furniture, or beating the carpets. Something she could take her feelings out on, judging from that sour expression.

  ‘And you are …?’ asked Fry.

  ‘His daughter. Erin Lacey.’

  The woman carried on looking at Fry blankly. Then she began to take a step back, as if to close the door firmly on an insurance salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness. Fry held up a hand.

  ‘Does your father have an office address, Mrs Lacey?’

  ‘Well, he has an office in a business centre in Kingstanding. But he’s not there, either. He’s gone away for a few days.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He went up to Derbyshire.’

  ‘But that’s where we spoke to him yesterday. I thought he would have been back home today.’

  Mrs Lacey threw out her hands helplessly. ‘I’m sorry. If you had an appointment, he must have forgotten.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly an appointment,’ said Fry. ‘But he did give me the impression he would be available. I need to talk to him about the death of his business partner, Patrick Rawson.’

  ‘Oh, of course. How dreadful.’ Her brow crinkled. But to Fry the frown seemed to suggest a concern at whether she’d left a piece of furniture in the wrong place, rather than sadness at the death of Mr Rawson. ‘All I know is that my father is away. I’m looking after the house for a while.’

  ‘What about Mrs Clay? Your mother?’

  ‘She died, five years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  The woman seemed a little nervous. Fry would have loved to get inside the house to have a look around, but she had no warrant, no justification. Michael Clay wasn’t a suspect, or even a material witness.

  ‘I presume you can give us a contact number for him, though,’ she said. ‘A mobile? Mr Clay must have a mobile number we can reach him on?’

  She raised an eyebrow, as the woman hesitated. ‘I’ll write it down for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Fry took the number and exchanged it for her card. ‘When your father returns, or if he gets in touch in the meantime, please ask him to contact us as soon as possible.’

  ‘Is there trouble?’

  ‘Not for Mr Clay. We just want to speak to him.’

  ‘I’ll tell him’ she said, already closing the door.

  Fry could see her shape moving behind the glass, long after they had walked down the drive to their car.

  Standing on the pavement, she made a point of phoning the number she’d been given in full sight of the windows of the Clay house. She got a voicemail message, a man’s voice claiming to be Michael Clay, but not available at the moment. At least it was a genuine number.

  ‘Mr Clay, this is Detective Sergeant Fry of Derbyshire Police. We spoke yesterday. I’d be grateful if you could give me a call at your earliest convenience.’

  ‘Not at home, then,’ said Murfin, when she finished the call.

  Fry glanced at the house again. ‘I wonder …’

  ‘What are you wondering?’

  ‘I’m thinking about what Dermot Walsh said this morning, about Patrick Rawson using someone to take the fall if things went wrong. And I’m wondering whether Mr Clay discovered what his role was in Patrick Rawson’s scheme of things.’

  19

  The barrel of the gun was held to the horse’s forehead. There was just a brief moment when the only sounds were the nervous scuffling of the horse’s hooves on the tiled floor, and the distant background of pop music, something bright and bouncy, probably Abba. Then a high-pitched crack echoed off the walls.

  As Cooper watched, the horse’s legs folded underneath it, collapsing as if someone had dropped the strings on a puppet. Its body hit the floor, and its head dropped lifelessly. As the animal rolled on to its side, the front legs went rigid, but the hind legs continued to kick furiously – that primal flight instinct still powering the muscles for long seconds after the brain had ceased working.

  When the kicking had stopped, the operator put his gun down and began to secure the straps of a winch. A moment later, the dead mare was hoisted off the floor on two chains, its back legs high in the air, its head hanging downwards, swinging loose. A spiral of blood squirted on to the tiles.

  ‘My God, it’s like watching a snuff movie.’ DI Hitchens stood behind Cooper, watching over his shoulder. ‘Does this happen every day?’

  ‘Well, every week, at least,’ said Cooper.

  They were watching a film that seemed to have been made secretly by an animal rights group. Somehow, they had managed to get a camera into the slaughterhouse in Yorkshire on the day they killed horses. The quality of the picture was poor, and the sound even worse. Also, the film had been shot from an odd angle. Cooper guessed at a small, hidden camera of some kind. Maybe even a mobile phone, though most people were wise to that now. It would need to have been left on a shelf or ledge high in a corner of the killing room, to get that angle.

  ‘Where is this place?’ asked Hitchens.

  ‘C.J. Hawley and Sons. It’s somewhere in West Yorkshire. North of Sheffield, anyway. I rang them a few minutes ago. They didn’t used to take horses for slaughter, but there are only three other abattoirs in the equine business, and all of those are located further south. So Hawleys took up the spare demand. They slaughter horses one day a week now.’

  ‘It looks as though the animal rights people were on to them pretty quick.’

  ‘I suppose it looks bad when you watch like this,’ said Cooper. ‘It makes the whole thing look seedy and surreptitious. But the abattoir isn’t doing anything illegal. They’re inspected and supervised, just like any other operation.’

  ‘So they’re clean?’

  ‘The protestors woul
d probably argue a moral case.’

  ‘Morality is beyond our remit,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘Hold on, sir. There’s a bit here I want to listen to.’

  The dead horse was disappearing through a doorway, being moved on some kind of overhead gantry. The carcass swung awkwardly as it entered the next room, its head bumping against a metal step. A caption to the film claimed that the horse looked pregnant, which it did. The slaughterman followed it, sliding the door shut behind him. That would be the butchering room, and it was probably as well that the camera wasn’t able to follow.

  After a few seconds, another crack could clearly be heard from behind the closed door. Cooper sat up straight. Surely the horse had been dead? It couldn’t have recovered consciousness after the butchering had begun. But the caption didn’t question that. Instead, it asked: ‘Listen carefully for a second shot. Was it directed at an unborn foal?’

  More horses followed into the killing room. A large grey, a small black pony. The slaughterman was good. He shot each animal one-handed, smack in the middle of the forehead, and each one dropped instantly, dead but for the spasmodic twitching of their legs. The man even took time to chat to the horse handler as he manoeuvred a horse into the killing position: ‘Did you watch the racing yesterday?’

  The strangest thing was the sound of Radio Two playing somewhere in the background. At one point, a door out of camera range must have been opened, releasing a louder blast of Abba. ‘Money, Money, Money’ or ‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme’. He half expected the slaughterman to burst into song himself, maybe to do a little dance in his white apron and cap. His work was almost choreographed, so it wouldn’t have been totally unfitting.

  The link to the film had been sent to him in an email. The sender’s address was one of the free web-based email accounts, which could be set up without providing a postal address or a phone number, or even a real name. If you wanted to make sure you stayed anonymous, you could create an account specifically for sending one email. Then you sent it on a public access terminal in a library or internet café, and closed your account. He could attempt to get the sender traced, but it was probably futile.

  He couldn’t figure out why some of the footage had sound, but other sections didn’t – even though they were obviously shot from the same place. At one point, a door partially blocked the view of the camera, resulting in a glimpse only of a horse’s back legs thrashing on the floor, until they gradually came to a halt.

  Cooper had grown up on a farm. He knew that animals had to be killed, for all kinds of reasons. As far as he was concerned, there should be no problem with that, so long as it was done properly. Quickly, efficiently and humanely. Those were the key words. He knew that most slaughtermen took pride in doing their job well, so that an animal didn’t suffer unnecessarily. But it was a thankless role, one that the public at large would rather pretend didn’t exist. That essential stage between the cute animal skipping around a field and the joint of lamb on a supermarket shelf was best left unexplored. What you didn’t know, didn’t hurt.

  ‘C.J. Hawley and Sons,’ said Hitchens. ‘Do we know anything else about them?’

  ‘Only that theirs was one of the numbers on Patrick Rawson’s calls list,’ said Cooper.

  The rest of the film showed footage of a sick or injured horse lying in a yard outside the abattoir. Its head rolled, and it tried to sit up a couple of times, but gave up. Meanwhile, a man could be seen walking backwards and forwards past it, talking on a mobile phone. Eventually, he came back with a gun and shot the horse in the head. He was in ordinary casual clothes, a blue check shirt and a pair of worn denim jeans, and it was difficult to say whether this was the same man who’d been filmed in the killing room.

  The caption pointed out that a sick or injured horse was supposed to be killed straight away, and suggested that the animal had been left to lie in the yard because it had arrived at the slaughterhouse outside normal operating hours when the butchering line wasn’t running. Legislation said that for meat to be deemed fit for human consumption, an animal must be bled immediately after being shot or stunned. Therefore, it had to wait to be killed until the butchering line was ready. Yet the law also said that a seriously injured animal should be despatched without delay.

  ‘Even if that’s true,’ said Hitchens, when Cooper pointed it out, ‘it’s a matter for the licensing authorities. The RSPCA, maybe. Not us.’

  ‘It’s relevant to us if it suggests a motive,’ said Cooper.

  ‘The man in the film …?’

  ‘Yes. The one in the yard with the injured horse. I’m pretty sure that was Patrick Rawson himself.’

  Minutes after her return from Sutton Coldfield, Fry found herself sitting in the DI’s office, warily eyeing a stack of papers he was extracting from a file. If Hitchens wanted to share something with her, it probably wasn’t good news.

  ‘No live investigations or outstanding offences for Patrick Rawson?’ he said vaguely.

  ‘None, sir. But that doesn’t rule out the involvement of angry customers from earlier offences. Someone whose name might be on Dermot Walsh’s list.’

  ‘Good point. We’ll have to speak to them all.’

  ‘Given time, that might be possible. At the moment, I’m more concerned by the fact that I can’t contact the partner, Michael Clay. Without him, we can’t even start to analyse Mr Rawson’s business affairs properly.’

  ‘Yes, I heard. But he’ll turn up, won’t he?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Hitchens frowned and looked up. ‘Diane, have you ever heard of a disease called trichinosis?’

  ‘What? No, I haven’t. But it doesn’t sound like something I’d want to be diagnosed with.’

  ‘You’re exactly right. Trichinosis is a parasitic disease caused by a nematode worm, whatever that is. I don’t like the sound of it, personally. Trichinella spiralis.’

  ‘Symptoms?’

  ‘Initially, swelling of the eyes, diarrhoea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Also fatigue, fever, headaches, shivering, coughing, aching joints, muscle pains. In severe infections, there may be heart and breathing problems, or difficulty co-ordinating movements. In extreme cases, death can occur.’ Hitchens laughed drily. ‘I like that – “death can occur”. That should be our motto.’

  ‘You don’t look as though you have any of those,’ said Fry. ‘But I suppose it’s difficult for me to tell unless you stand up and walk about a bit.’

  Hitchens didn’t seem to be listening as he ran his eye over a sheet filled with dense paragraphs of text.

  ‘Trichinosis is actually quite rare in this country,’ he said. ‘Or it used to be.’

  Fry felt a small shiver of unease. She wasn’t a hypochondriac by any means, but even so, she didn’t like the idea of this disease. What was that about a nematode worm? Just the name of it sounded disgusting.

  ‘Are you saying we’ve got an epidemic, sir? Is this thing contagious?’

  ‘Not exactly. Well, you don’t catch it from other human beings.’

  Reluctantly, Fry found her thoughts flicking back to the previous day. The smell of horses, the wet plop of something unspeakable hitting her shoes.

  ‘I’m liking the sound of it even less now.’

  ‘The infection is caused by eating raw or under-cooked meat, usually pork,’ said Hitchens. ‘The experts say cases have increased in recent years, generally blamed on Eastern Europe and the movement of migrant workers within the EU. There was a major outbreak in France, with more than four hundred people affected – traced to meat imported from Yugoslavia. Another case in Ireland, pork sausages brought in by Polish nationals. And the last outbreak of trichinosis here in the UK was in 1999 – eight Yugoslav immigrants. That was caused by salami from Serbia.’

  Fry began to relax. ‘Luckily, I’m not a big fan of pork. But I can’t see the relevance of this to us, sir.’

  ‘Well … there’s been another outbreak here in the Midlands. The first in the UK for ten years. It’s not widespre
ad, and they don’t want to cause panic. But the source of the infection might be relevant.’

  ‘It’s an Environmental Health job, surely? Them, or DEFRA. If somebody is selling infected pork meat they have the statutory powers to close businesses down and prosecute. They don’t need us.’

  ‘No, of course not. But some conscientious EHO must have been reading the bulletins. They made a connection to one of our current enquiries.’

  ‘Which current enquiry?’

  ‘Well, you put it together …’ Hitchens slid the file across the desk to her. ‘Historically, most outbreaks of trichinosis are caused by infected pork meat, but this one is different. The common factor among these victims is that they’ve been eating undercooked horse meat.’

  Fry felt her stomach turn over. You didn’t have to be a fan of horses to have doubts about eating one. Very big doubts.

  ‘Horse meat? Isn’t that illegal here?’

  ‘Ah now, there you’re wrong,’ said Hitchens. ‘It isn’t illegal, just culturally unacceptable. I hear it’s very popular among our friends in France and Italy, and no doubt other countries.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘The problem,’ said Hitchens, ‘seems to be how this horse meat is sourced in the first place.’

  ‘What?’

  Hitchens sighed. ‘This Rawson case gets more and more complicated. But let DC Cooper show you the film he was sent. The allegation seems to be that Patrick Rawson was obtaining horses to be sold for slaughter. When I say “obtaining”, we have to be open to the idea that some of the horses were stolen, or obtained by deception, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes, given his history. But, by slaughtered, you mean …?’

  ‘For human consumption.’

  ‘Oh, god.’

  ‘While you were in Sutton Coldfield,’ said Hitchens, ‘DC Irvine and DC Hurst came up with background on some of the contacts whose numbers were in Mr Rawson’s phone book. One of those is a company we might be interested in: R & G Enterprises. They have a small distribution centre on an enterprise park near Buxton.’