No Holds Barred

by Lyndon Stacey

  ‘Woodsmoke? Was he there?’ Jenny looked understandably confused.

  ‘I think he just happened to be passing. Out to bag himself a little something for his larder unless I’m much mistaken. Lucky for me and even luckier for Taz.’ He outlined what had happened with the net.

  Jenny picked up her knife and resumed the sandwich making.

  ‘It seems so wrong that you can’t do anything about it.’

  ‘I know.’ Daniel sighed. ‘But I know the way the law works and a good lawyer would throw my testimony out in seconds. Sad but true.’

  Jenny made a sound of intense frustration. ‘So, what now? I mean, what do we do about Taylor?’

  ‘Not much we can do. For the sake of working harmony, I shan’t let on that I’ve recognized him. It’ll be interesting to see how they play it on Monday.’ He paused. ‘How long has MacAllister worked for you?’

  ‘Oh, he’s been here a while. He was one of the first ones Gavin took on. I always thought he was one of the better ones. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Butcher Boys?’

  She frowned, pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Who are they?’

  ‘Well, some sort of gang, I imagine. Woodsmoke mentioned them but he wasn’t too keen to elaborate. He got as far as telling me that the Boyds are involved with them, but then he dried up and wouldn’t say any more.’

  ‘A gang? What kind of gang?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but I intend finding out. I tried to ring Tom Bowden earlier, but Fred tells me he’s on leave and has his phone switched off. Smart move, that. The only way to get some peace – especially in his job – but not much help to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I mean, when I asked for help, I never dreamed anything like this was going to happen. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I’ll understand if you’ve had enough – if you’d rather not stay, I mean …’

  ‘Absolutely not. I’ve got personal reasons for wanting to get to the bottom of this, now.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’ Jenny looked immeasurably relieved. ‘I just feel so guilty.’

  ‘Well, don’t. It’s not your fault. Taylor started it, and his reaction to my being here just serves to prove that your suspicions were right and there is something going on.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Jenny put two plates of sandwiches on the table and gestured to Daniel to sit down. Sitting opposite him, she picked up a sandwich, but instead of eating it, she put it back on the plate and looked helplessly at him.

  ‘Oh, God! How am I meant to go on dealing with Taylor and MacAllister after this?’

  ‘Best pretend I haven’t said anything,’ Daniel suggested. ‘I mean, you can’t fire them – for the same reasons that I can’t take this to the cops. And if you let on that you know, things are bound to get very awkward.’

  ‘Things already are awkward.’ Jenny ran a hand through her fringe distractedly. ‘It’s just one thing after another. How did everything get so complicated?’

  Daniel could think of nothing comforting to say. His own life had been complicated for as long as he could remember.

  ‘By the way, I noticed Taz has got a nasty place between his toes – probably from the net. He keeps licking it and I wouldn’t mind letting a vet just take a look at it. Who do you recommend, round here?’

  ‘Ever since I can remember, we’ve always had Ivor Symmonds. Both for the farm animals and the small ones. He’s an absolute dear. Getting on a bit now, but I can’t imagine him ever retiring. Tell him I sent you.’

  Following Jenny’s directions, Daniel and Taz found themselves on the doorstep of Symmonds and Son, Veterinary Surgeons, at the north end of Great Ditton’s main street, just after three o’clock that afternoon.

  The surgery was located in a small courtyard just off the street, the gleaming paintwork and general air of prosperity indicating that the business was doing well.

  Inside, red leatherette bench seats lined two walls, and a TV screen high in one corner advertised worming and flea treatments, dog-grooming services and the benefits of pet insurance, on a continuous loop.

  ‘Mr Symmonds won’t be a moment,’ the middle-aged, copper-headed receptionist said cheerily from behind a counter set in one wall. ‘Take a seat.’

  Instead, Daniel drifted across to the notice board and stood lazily scanning the advertisements and business cards pinned to the cork. Amongst the puppies for sale, dog groomers and walkers and house-sitters advertised there, there were no less than five notices offering rewards for the safe return of lost pets.

  ‘This seems to be a big problem around here,’ he said, turning to the receptionist.

  She looked up.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Pets going missing. There was something about it in the paper and I’ve seen several posters.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s awful.’

  ‘So, what’s happening? Are they stealing them for ransom, do they know?’

  ‘Um … I’m not sure. There was a story in the papers a couple of months ago where this family did get their dog back. The little girl had leukaemia and she was missing the dog so much the parents offered a reward. There was a lovely picture of them all together, afterwards. Lynda found it – you know, Lynda Boyd from the garage. Said she spotted it wandering down the road. Said she was going to donate the money to the dog rescue.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Daniel said, though on recent experience he felt he’d want to see the receipt before he would credit any members of that family with charitable actions.

  ‘Mr Whelan?’ A tall, wiry man in his sixties had come into the reception area. He wore camel-coloured corduroy trousers and a checked shirt, and peered over wire-rimmed glasses that perched halfway down his bony, hooked nose. The whole was topped by frizzy mid-grey hair.

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’ Daniel whistled to Taz and they followed the vet into his consulting room, where the dog began to pace nervously about, pausing to whine by the door. ‘He’s spent too much time in vets’ surgeries,’ Daniel explained.

  ‘It’s an inescapable fact that most of my clients would rather be somewhere else,’ Symmonds observed. ‘I believe I have that in common with dentists.’

  Daniel smiled. ‘Are you Symmonds or Son?’

  ‘Both,’ the vet replied. ‘The original Symmonds was my father, so in that sense I am the son, but I also have a son myself.’

  ‘And is he a vet, too?’

  ‘Indeed he is. But for the moment he prefers to forge his own path. Can’t blame him, I suppose. He’s working in Cardiff.’

  ‘You miss him,’ Daniel was watching the older man’s face.

  ‘Of course, but one day he’ll be back to stay and then I’ll hang up my stethoscope.’

  ‘Jenny said she thought you’d carry on till you dropped …’

  ‘No, just till Philip takes over. Then it’s the slippers and pipe for me.’

  ‘You work on your own here?’

  ‘I have locums. Now, let’s take a look at this lad of yours. What’s he been up to?’

  Symmonds dealt with the cut on Taz’s paw competently, finishing it off with a super-neat bandage that he recommended should stay on for at least forty-eight hours, and asking to see him again at that time.

  Daniel thanked the vet for seeing him at short notice.

  ‘That’s OK. Anything for little Jenny. Known her family for years. She’s been so unlucky, what with losing her first husband and now this.’

  ‘Yes, more than her fair share.’

  As the vet showed him out, Daniel paused by the notice board.

  ‘What do you make of this, then? All these cats and dogs going missing.’

  Symmonds shrugged. ‘It’s a bit of a mystery. But I expect you’ll find some of those are probably old adverts. I don’t know when the board was last sorted out.’

  ‘I did it last week,’ his receptionist spoke up indignantly from her position behind the counter.

  Symmonds cast her an unreadable l
ook.

  ‘An organized gang, then? Stealing to order?’

  ‘But then you’d expect them to be specific breeds – gundogs or lurchers. Some of these are just mongrels. And who’d pay for a stolen black-and-white cat? The rescues are stuffed with them.’

  ‘Ransom, then, perhaps. I don’t know. Whoever it is, I just hope the police catch up with them soon.’ Symmonds shook his head sadly.

  At that moment, the street door opened and the vet’s expression became stony. With a hasty goodbye to Daniel, he turned on his heel and went back into his consulting room.

  Surprised, Daniel looked round and saw an overweight middle-aged man with a weather-beaten face, slicked-down black hair and luxuriant sideburns. He wore navy-blue overalls and a pair of heavy-duty working boots, and as he passed Daniel, he left the smell of sump oil hanging in the air.

  He disappeared into the consulting room and Daniel heard the vet say testily, ‘I thought I told you to phone first!’

  ‘But I needed some stuff for tonight, and as I was passing …’

  ‘Close the bloody door!’ Symmonds hissed, and the altercation was cut off as the door banged shut.

  The receptionist produced an embarrassed smile.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. He will turn up without an appointment.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Daniel asked, though he was pretty sure of the answer.

  ‘Oh, don’t you know?’ The girl pulled a face. ‘That’s Norman Boyd. Godfather of the Great Ditton Mafia!’

  EIGHT

  Leaving the vet’s and heading for his car, Daniel’s eye was caught by a van parked half on the pavement, with the words Ditton Vale Gazette stencilled on the side and rear doors. He paused, looking up at the adjacent building. Just below one of the upper windows, the same words adorned a white board. Even though the day was bright, he could see a striplight on in the room behind the window and someone moving about.

  At ground level, beside the door, were three nameplates and an intercom. Daniel pressed the buzzer and waited, and presently a rather impatient male voice informed him that the office was closed.

  ‘OK. Your loss,’ Daniel told him. ‘I’m sure someone else will be interested.’

  ‘Look, wait! Hold on a minute. What’s it about?’

  ‘You said you were closed …’

  ‘I thought you were one of those bloody irritating people who want to put an advert in at the last minute. All right, look, the door’s open. Come on up.’

  True to his word, the door clicked and opened an inch or two, and, with Taz at his heels, Daniel accepted the invitation, finding himself at the foot of a steep flight of stairs with an arrow directing him up to the DVG office.

  The owner of the grumpy voice turned out to be younger than Daniel expected; a lean, thin-faced individual in his early twenties, with an unhealthy pallor and a shock of frizzy, gingery hair. He was wearing faded jeans that hung on his bony hips and a T-shirt that advertised the 2005 UK tour of some rock group Daniel had never heard of.

  ‘Er, sorry about before,’ he offered as he let Daniel into the brightly lit and chaotically untidy office. ‘Amy’s supposed to be here – she does classifieds – but she’s going to a hen do, so I let her off early, and sod’s law when I do that, half a dozen people turn up at the last bloody minute with advertising forms clutched in their sticky little mitts, wanting insertion in Monday’s paper – even though the deadline is Friday evening and it’s now Saturday. William Faulkner, by the way. Editor.’ He stuck out a long-fingered white hand.

  ‘Annoying,’ Daniel agreed, briefly clasping the hand. ‘Daniel Whelan.’

  ‘And … ?’ He’d spotted the dog.

  ‘Taz,’ Daniel supplied. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No, not at all. I like dogs.’ He raised his eyebrows expectantly. ‘So, what have you got for me?’

  ‘Ah. I didn’t actually say I had anything for you. I just implied it and you joined up the dots. I actually wanted to ask you a couple of questions.’

  ‘Oh,’ William frowned, adding with an oddly touching naivety, ‘That’s not exactly playing fair, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Daniel agreed candidly. ‘Are you very busy? The thing is, I need some info and I thought you might be just the man.’

  ‘Well, I am pretty busy. Actually, not so much busy as about to pack up for the day, really. What is it you want to know?’

  ‘A couple of things. Do you have a searchable archive?’

  ‘Absolutely. I indexed it myself.’ William moved with a slouching yet energetic stride to a workstation by the window, tapped a few keys and brought up a display on the monitor. ‘Pull up a pew,’ he added with the wave of a hand.

  Daniel gave a silent cheer. He’d struck lucky.

  Whatever William’s plans had been for the evening, he didn’t leave the office until gone six, getting caught up in Daniel’s quest for information so enthusiastically that it was Daniel himself who eventually drew the editor’s attention to the lateness of the hour.

  Although his visit to the DVG office had been completely unpremeditated, it had paid dividends. He’d arrived with a number of half-formed ideas buzzing around his head, and while it couldn’t be said that he left with any definitive answers, the ideas had certainly taken a more perceptible shape.

  The main thrust of his queries had been about animals reported missing in the area, but they had also gone on to search for cases of animal cruelty, which in turn led to three reports linked to dog fighting.

  ‘You don’t think the pets are being stolen for fighting?’ William had asked, his face showing concern. He’d already told Daniel that he had a cat at home that he was careful to keep in at night.

  ‘No. Not directly. The dogs used for fighting are bred specially for it – hence the name, pit bull terriers: bred for the fighting pit. Even though it’s totally illegal, it’s big business. Auntie Lily’s Shih Tzu wouldn’t be anywhere near tough enough – but they have been known to use pet dogs and cats as bait. Teasers – to raise the blood lust in the younger, untried fighting dogs. No doubt it gives the humans a cheap thrill, too. By the way – don’t run any adverts for animals free to good homes in your paper. They might as well just deliver them straight to the pit bull owners.’

  ‘But that’s awful! It’s disgusting!’ The DVG editor was genuinely shocked. ‘The authorities know this goes on but they can’t put a stop to it?’

  ‘It’s an ongoing battle. They know it’s rife, but it’s very difficult to catch them at it,’ Daniel said sadly. ‘The dog-fighting community is a tight one and, as you might imagine, is a magnet for some really choice characters. Nobody talks lightly.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ William was all of a sudden wary, and Daniel fell back on a version of the truth.

  ‘I’ve got a mate who’s a cop and he told me about it. So when I saw all the posters round here for missing pets, something started niggling in my suspicious little mind.’

  ‘You really think it’s going on in this area? Have you told your mate about it?’

  ‘Not yet. He’s on leave. But I will.’

  ‘So you think Maisie Cooper was actually on to something, then?’

  Maisie Cooper had featured in one of the search results. She had complained that her spaniel had been attacked and seriously mauled on a local footpath by a dog she swore was a pit bull terrier. When interviewed, she had said she had warned the police and the RSPCA that there were fighting dogs in the area but said they hadn’t believed her. It had been her stated opinion that it would take the death of a child to stir them to action.

  ‘I can’t say for sure,’ Daniel said. ‘But it might be worth having a word with this Maisie, though.’

  ‘Have a job – she’s dead. Hit-and-run accident last year. Here, I’ll find it for you.’ William’s long fingers sped over the keys and, within moments, the report of Maisie Cooper’s tragic end was on the screen in front of them.

  Daniel leaned forward. The article was brief, reporting
her death in hospital following the accident and saying that it gave weight to local residents’ calls for a speed limit on the roads around the village.

  ‘She was a bit of a gossip,’ William said. ‘But kind at heart. Always there helping whenever there was a do in the village. There was a huge turnout at the funeral. They never caught the driver, though.’

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, but a glance at the editor showed that he was taking the report at face value.

  Another news item, in the In Brief column, had told of a joint RSPCA and police raid on a suspected dog-fighting venue that William said was about twenty miles away. Several dogs had been seized and put to sleep under the Dangerous Dogs Act, and two arrests had been made, it reported, but neither was a local man. The article was in an issue dated some eight weeks previously.

  After leaving the DVG offices, Daniel drove to the garage for fuel and was surprised to see that the gates to the adjacent scrapyard stood wide and the swinging metal sign still showed it as open.

  Mindful of the illegality of his smashed headlights, he paid for his diesel and turned the Merc’s steering wheel in the direction of Boyd’s Salvage Spares.

  Hidden as it was behind a substantial fence of corrugated metal sheets topped with barbed wire, Daniel was unprepared for the scale of the site. As soon as he went through the gates, the rough gravel driveway passed between untidy banks of scrap metal fifteen or twenty feet high. It then continued across the centre of the vast plot with avenues branching off it on either side, before curving right-handed and culminating in a huge turning space in front of a forty-foot-long Portakabin, two large Nissen huts and a smaller shed.

  Although a crudely painted sign said ‘Reception’, the door to the cabin had a ‘Closed’ sign and was locked when Daniel tried it, confirming what he’d half suspected: that the main gates had been left open by mistake. There were no signs of life, although he could hear the muffled barking of a number of dogs, which seemed to be coming from some way off. In his mind he heard Woodsmoke’s voice again. Didn’t tell you about the other dogs, though, did she? The ones you can’t see.