Primal Cut

by Ed O'Connor

  ‘I have been running an investigation,’ Underwood responded, his wounds bleeding inside. ‘I suspected Garrod would go for anyone that you were close to. She was the obvious person. I just wish I’d thought of it sooner.’

  There was so much Underwood wanted to tell her, to explain his misdemeanours. Restraint defeated self-interest.

  ‘We do have an investigation. One: we have been running PNC checks on the list of possible names that you drew up. It takes time to follow those up. Two: I have been rereading the “Primal Cut” file and I think there might be a family connection with Essex. It’s possible that Garrod might own a static caravan or a beach chalet under another name – possibly Shildon.’

  Dexter shook her head in disbelief. ‘And that’s it? Garrod is carving people up on our manor and your best idea is that he might own a fucking caravan in Essex! For Christ’s sake!’ Dexter slammed her clenched fist on her desk. ‘It’s not very promising, Sherlock.’

  Underwood felt anger rising through the cloud of his love for Alison Dexter.

  ‘And what exactly have you done?’ he asked bitterly. ‘You know more about this guy than anyone. I’ve read his file. You wrote it, Alison! What have you done? What tangible progress have you made?’

  She stared back at him.

  ‘I’ll remind you,’ Underwood continued. ‘None. You stormed into a witness interview with Gwynne and thereby almost certainly rendered that interview inadmissible. You seem to forget that Garrod is here for you. So what do you do? Arrange for protection, leave the area, set a trap? No. You start a relationship with a stranger and place her life in jeopardy. She is now dead. So don’t try your Metropolitan Police “what exactly have you done?” sarcasm on me. The only tangible contribution you have made to this case is lying on a metal table in the basement with her guts in a bag.’

  Dexter shook her head. ‘You are unbelievable. You are trying to make me feel guilty?’

  ‘If the cap fits,’ Underwood suggested.

  ‘Essex, you say?’ came the unexpected reply.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Underwood’s heart was racing with frustration.

  ‘You say there’s a connection with Essex?’

  ‘Possibly. Garrod won his dog at Clacton. His father was arrested drunk a few miles up the road in 1950. It’s tenuous but – as I said – I wondered if there might be some sort of family home in the area.’

  Dexter nodded, ‘I want you to go out there. Spend a few days in Essex. Trawl a few campsites.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘It’s your idea, isn’t it? I doubt Sauerwine or Harrison would come up with anything as fucking wafer thin as that.’

  ‘You just want me out of the way,’ Underwood responded.

  ‘Go to Essex, go to Butlins or Frinton or wherever you want to. Play out your little theory. Just get out of my sight.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’m going to do what you should have done already: figure out how Bartholomew Garrod is earning money and where he is living. I’m going to second a couple of Armed Response coppers from Huntingdon too. If I see you here before the end of the week, they’ll use you for target practice.’

  Underwood felt the sadness and the cancer in his blood weighing heavily on him. ‘I’m not your enemy. Far from it. You are very important to me.’

  Dexter heard the words and felt them sting. ‘Just go away, John. Just go away.’

  Outside rain stretched out in puddles on the grey stone of the station car park. It was a hard, dark little world. Loneliness is our enemy and our refuge. We are shadows on the acid water: distorted and unable to evaporate. One chance: one haemorrhage of days and every day an erosion of our ability to face the next. Thrashing in sinking mud we scramble and tear at each other: sinking together. Rain fell on the shadows of Cambridgeshire: loudly on some, softly on others. Underwood scarcely heard the rain as he left the main entrance of the station and headed for his car, unable to disentangle love from self-pity and frustration. To Alison Dexter, sitting head in hands in her lonely office, the rain battered at her window as blood pounded in the delicate vessels of her mind. She had always seen life as a maze: a progress through logical possibilities, building direction from alternatives, a learning game. Now she could see nowhere out of the nightmare world she had created for herself.

  43.

  Underwood did not drive east to Essex. He drove south to London.

  It was exhausting. In heavy rain he had struggled to see the road in front of him. It had been a depressing experience: a miserable drive to a miserable place. The Care Home was in Leytonstone: in the thrashing darkness it looked like some terrible asylum of the damned.

  ‘You look tired,’ said the man in room seven.

  ‘It’s a long drive.’

  ‘M11?’

  ‘Nightmare.’

  ‘I appreciate you coming down. I really do.’

  ‘It’s not a problem.’

  ‘You haven’t said anything?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘That’s good of you. Is she well?’

  Hesitation. ‘She’s been better. It’s been a terrible week.’

  ‘She’s not been hurt?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Pressure. It’s a tough job. Worse for a woman.’

  ‘Did you bring any pictures?’

  ‘One or two. It’s getting harder I’m afraid. She knows I’ve been following her.’

  The pictures were dark, shadowy, taken from a distance.

  A nurse brought up two cups of tea. They drank them in silence.

  44.

  Saturday, 19th October 2002

  For one of the few times in his life, Bartholomew Garrod felt embarrassed. The abattoir manager, Robert Sandway, had asked him to give a presentation to the Saturday shift meat cutters on butchery techniques and flesh types. Now as he stood in front of twenty of his work mates, in a small office next to the cutting floor, he felt his heart racing.

  ‘Right gentlemen,’ Sandway began, ‘first of all, thank you for staying late. I’ll make sure that you all get an extra hour of pay.’

  ‘Double time boss?’ a voice asked from the back of the room.

  ‘Time and a half, you cheeky sod. You’re not working are you?’ Sandway shot back with a smile. ‘Now as some of you know, old George here worked as a master butcher. He’s been cutting meat for thirty years, he knows his stuff and you lot should listen to him. We’ve been getting sloppy recently. As you know, I had to let Damian go for clumsiness on the cutting floor. We have to abide by very strict Health and Safety rules these days because of E. coli, BSE and all that. It’s also worth remembering that the margins in this business are very thin. We waste too much product. I’ve asked George here to talk to you about cutting techniques and about some of the by-products from the animals we cut.’

  Garrod tried to organise the information in his mind. He wondered how to condense thirty years’ experience into a few sentences. ‘Well you all know the basic beef cuts – sirloin, rump, chucks, brisket, sloat and so on – so I won’t go over them. Part of the problem here is the equipment we use. Modern knives and the electronic saws are just not the same quality as they used to be. The tempering is bad in some. Now, you hit a hard piece of bone and that knife could slide into organs and infect the meat. That’s what Damo was doing. He was sliding his knife into the stomachs of them cows. There are four sorts of shit in there that ruin the meat.’

  Sandway nodded. ‘Cutting knives are delicate instruments. But that makes the art of the cutter even more important these days. Accuracy is the key.’

  ‘Keep your knives razor sharp,’ Garrod added. ‘Bluntness encourages waste. Now I was always taught that you could tell a slovenly cutler from the amount in his fat drawer. You can also tell from the old meat ratios. You lot don’t use them no more – they’re a bit old-fashioned I suppose – but when I ran my own butchers those ratios were the difference between profit and loss.’

  ‘What are you talking about, George?
’ asked Vince Grub, a young cutter with chronic acne. ‘I cut the basic cuts: primals, whatever. I just do what I’ve been taught.’

  Garrod found the ignorance disturbing. His experience on the cutting floor where hundreds of animals were sliced up each day had been a frustration. The meat men at Smithfield would have been horrified by the wastage in this abattoir. He had worked out some statistics earlier that afternoon to prove his point. ‘I’ve been watching the way we cut pig meat. I reckon that on leg cuts alone we could be losing five to ten per cent of the good meat. Multiply that out by the number of pigs we cut here and you are talking thousands of pounds in wastage.’

  Sandway was nodding his agreement. ‘Absolutely. Good practice is the key here. This is about money as well as Health and Safety. Watch George cutting. Learn from him. Don’t be snotty about it. We have to be professional. This is a business. We don’t have a God-given right to exist. There are much bigger abattoirs out there with stronger economies of scale. We need to maximise our efficiency to stay competitive. If that means we go back to old-fashioned ratios and equipment, so be it. George here is an important information source. I want you to use him.’

  Garrod’s mind was drifting away. His thoughts focused on Alison Dexter. Kelsi Hensy had been of a slightly heavier build than Dexter. Say one hundred and fifty pounds. He had removed about seven and a half pounds of flesh from each leg: fifteen pounds in all. So that made the ratio of leg meat to carcass weight about a tenth. Dexter was lean. He estimated that she weighed about ten pounds less. One tenth of one hundred and forty amounted to fourteen pounds of leg meat. Slightly less, but Garrod knew that preparation was the key.

  45.

  The interview room was just as uncomfortable and claustrophobic as Woollard had remembered it. This time it was more crowded. DI Mike Bevan sat opposite him reading from a file. Woollard’s lawyer, Anthony Dearing, was speaking to DI Alison Dexter: the smallest person in the room but the only one that he felt intimidated by.

  ‘My client has been extremely helpful so far,’ Dearing said to Bevan. ‘He has been subject to harassment, to a house search and verbal bullying from police officers. We request that you particularise the allegations and charge my client or release him this evening.’

  Bevan nodded. ‘I agree. Mr Woollard, Inspector Dexter and I have decided that your suspected involvement in the murder of Leonard Shaw…’

  ‘For which you have no proof,’ Dearing interjected.

  ‘For which we have traces of Shaw’s blood in your client’s outhouse and a witness who says that the murder took place on Mr Woollard’s premises with Mr Woollard watching,’ Dexter replied harshly.

  Dearing was undeterred. ‘By witness, I take it you mean Keith Gwynne: a convicted thief, drunkard and con man?’

  Bevan was determined not to allow Dexter to sidetrack his case again. ‘As I was saying, we have decided to treat the investigation into Mr Shaw’s death and your client’s alleged dog fighting offences separately.’

  ‘Carry on.’ Dearing began to write notes in his leather-bound folder.

  ‘Specifically: we will be charging Mr Woollard with a series of breaches of the 1911 Protection of Animals Act, the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991, the 1973 Breeding of Dogs Act, the 1991 Breeding of Dogs Act and the 1999 Breeding and Sale of Dogs Act.’ Bevan looked for a response in Woollard’s dead eyes: he saw none.

  Dearing peered at Bevan over his half-moon glasses. ‘Which breaches specifically?’

  ‘There are several. I’ll give you the highlights.’ Bevan looked down at his file. ‘1911 Protection of Animals Act: Mr Woollard has breached Sections 1A, B, and C. In particular, Section A states that to “overload, torture, infuriate or terrify any animal” is an offence.

  ‘Section C states that to “cause, procure or assist at the fighting or baiting of any animal…or act or assist in the management of any premises for the purpose of fighting or baiting any animal” is an offence punishable by a maximum of six months’ imprisonment and a level 5 fine.’

  ‘We have explained to you that Mr Woollard has never arranged or participated in dog fighting,’ Dearing replied.

  ‘I am aware of that, yes.’ Bevan continued. ‘We will also be charging Mr Woollard with contraventions of the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act. Section 1 of this act identifies species of dog including the pit bull terrier and the Japanese Tosa and states that to “breed, sell, exchange or make a gift” of such dogs is an offence. Both types of animal were found on Mr Woollard’s premises. This offence is also punishable with a maximum six-month prison sentence and a level 5 fine.’

  ‘Those dogs never leave Mr Woollard’s farm and are always muzzled around people,’ Dearing said.

  ‘Irrelevant.’ Bevan turned the page. ‘The 1973 Breeding of Dogs Act specifies that “no person shall keep a breeding establishment for dogs except under the authority of a licence.” Mr Woollard has no such licence. That is an offence punishable by a maximum three-month prison term or a level 4 fine. Furthermore the 1991 Breeding of Dogs Act makes it an offence “to obstruct or delay any person in exercise of powers of entry or inspection”. Mr Woollard did precisely that when we visited his premises.’

  Dearing said nothing as his pen scratched furiously onto his file paper.

  ‘Finally,’ Bevan continued, ‘the 1999 Breeding and Sale of Dogs Act places a number of restrictions on the commercial sale of dogs. We believe that Mr Woollard has breached at least two provisions of this Act. The maximum sentence is either three months’ imprisonment or a level 4 fine. That’s it.’ Bevan sat back in his chair.

  Dearing finished writing. ‘You have been busy Inspector Bevan. We will of course challenge these charges.’

  ‘That’s your prerogative.’

  ‘On the other matter,’ Dearing continued, ‘the death of Mr Shaw. I understand that charges have not yet been levelled.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Dexter replied, ‘but we are investigating charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.’

  ‘My client has already given you information relating to that matter – without my presence, I might add.’ Dearing had encountered Dexter before. He disliked her commonplace accent and her acidic manner. ‘He claims that Inspector Bevan made him some kind of unsolicited offer of leniency in return for information.’

  ‘No official offer has been made,’ Dexter said sharply, ‘and if your client is in possession of information regarding the death of Leonard Shaw that he is withholding, that, in itself, is an offence.’

  Woollard was beginning to see the impossibility of his position and decided that desperate times required desperate measures. ‘Look, when I met this Norlington guy or Garrod – whatever his fucking name is – he said that he’d won his dog in a fight in Clacton.’

  ‘You told me that already,’ Bevan responded.

  ‘You’ll have to do better,’ Dexter added.

  ‘I asked him if he knew a bloke called Jack Whiteside. He’s a dog man – well known in Essex and Cambridgeshire. Or he was anyway. Jack was killed a couple of years ago. He was from Maldon.’

  ‘How was he killed?’ Dexter asked.

  ‘His throat was cut. It was in the papers. Look it up. When I said that Jack had been murdered the guy insisted he didn’t know him. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It seems a bit weird now because he must have heard of Jack if he’s fought dogs in that part of the world.’

  Dexter thought of Underwood. She wondered if the link he had made between Garrod and Essex was as tenuous as she had originally thought.

  She became aware of Woollard staring at her.

  ‘So?’ he asked, ‘can we talk about a deal?’

  She looked at him. ‘No deal on the dog charges. They stand. The Essex business is a separate matter. I’ll discuss it after we have checked out this Whiteside story.’

  She left Bevan to formally charge Woollard on the cruelty charges he had previously outlined.

  46.

  Driving in the rain through some of the less visua
lly stimulating parts of Essex gave Underwood’s mind an opportunity to wander.

  Six months earlier he had begun a missing person’s hunt for Alison Dexter’s father. She had not seen Gary Dexter since she was a child. Underwood placed that loss at the centre of her intellectual spider’s web.

  Initially he had drawn a blank. He had authorised Police National Computer checks on Gary Dexter and found nothing. Underwood knew that Alison had grown up in Leyton and Walthamstow. He knew that she had lived with her mother. He also knew from conversations with her that her father had disappeared some time in 1978.

  Underwood knew that Alison Dexter had tried half-heartedly to locate her father a couple of years previously. One night, in the deserted CID office he had rifled through her desk drawers. He found a blank PNC check and a photograph of a baby that he presumed was Alison with a man that he presumed to be Gary Dexter. The man was sitting on the bonnet of a car with the baby in his arms. On the back of the photograph was a comment and a date – ‘Gary and Alison on Daddy’s new Car September 1969’.

  Then, sitting alone in the glass office that smelt faintly of her, as the station clock had crawled around past three in the morning, Underwood had experienced a minor revelation. On the photograph of Alison and Gary Dexter was a partial car licence plate. Gary Dexter was perched on the front of his car; his leg obscured some but not all of the registration plate:

  ‘J__16__’

  Underwood remembered that the old licence plates had two letters then a number in those blocked spaces followed by a year suffix letter. He also remembered that the two missing letters were the code of the local registration office. So ‘NB’, for example, denoted a registration issued by the New Bolden registration office.

  If he had a complete registration, he might be able to locate the original dealership. DVLA records – if they went back that far – might also give an address that the car was registered to. Certainly they would give the original owner’s details. Underwood wondered if Gary Dexter had been the original owner of that car. It did say ‘Daddy’s new car’ on the photograph after all. He had written out the licence plate again: