‘Mrs Widdowson, is it?’ said Fry, showing her ID.
‘Miss. What do you lot want? I don’t like you being here.’
Fry tried to ignore the belligerent reception. It was something you got used to after a while, even from people you were trying to help. She looked around the yard, with the stone house to one side and the stables on the other, a row of horses’ heads peering out at her from around their hay racks.
‘Nice place. Do you live here alone?’
‘No. It’s my mum’s house really. My boyfriend Ade helps me with the horses. And there’s my little brother, Rick. But you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘No. That’s why I asked.’
‘It isn’t Rick you’re looking for, then?’
‘No — you, Miss Widdowson. We had your name from Dermot Walsh, of Trading Standards. You were interviewed some time ago as part of their investigation into fraudulent trading in horses.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Naomi, with a shrug.
‘You can’t have forgotten it.’
‘No. She was a mare that a woman had on loan from me. When the passport scheme came in, this person forged my consent on the application and got a passport for my horse, in her name. And then she sold the mare on. In foal, too. But it’s all over and done with. Someone got a rap on the knuckles. And then they were free to go off to rob some other poor sod.’
‘You weren’t satisfied with the outcome?’
Naomi laughed bitterly. ‘That doesn’t even deserve an answer. There are still a lot of con merchants out there,’ she said.
‘Speaking of which — did you ever come across Mr Patrick Rawson?’
‘No,’ said Naomi.
‘You never met him?’
‘No. But he’s one that people talk about a lot.’
‘People?’
‘Horse people. Whenever a few of us get together, at a meeting or an auction, or something. His is a name that comes up. There used to be a piece on a website, warning against him. But he got a lawyer to make us take it down. Threatened to sue for slander.’
‘Libel,’ said Fry.
‘What?’
‘That would be libel, not slander. A published form of defamation.’
‘Oh, thank you for the legal nit-picking. How is trying to protect other people from a con man a crime? That’s what I want to know.’
‘It depends how it’s done,’ said Fry.
Naomi sneered. ‘You lot are bloody useless. You and those Trading Standards people. You never did anything to Rawson. He got away scot free.’
Fry tried to stay calm. ‘We’re trying to help, you know.’
‘Oh, yeah? It’s not the first time we’ve had trouble, and I don’t suppose it will be the last. Sometimes, it makes you feel like giving up.’
‘You still have horses, though.’
Naomi’s face softened when she looked at the heads hanging over the loose-box doors.
‘Yes, three. We had a bit of luck, actually. We bought a nice piebald filly, about thirteen hands. Halter broken and completely adorable. The owners said they were having to sell Bonny because they’d lost their land to flooding. We paid twelve hundred pounds for her.’
Murfin whistled quietly. But Fry still wasn’t surprised. These horse people were so far out of her orbit that nothing they did was going to make sense. She might as well just accept it.
‘Where did you buy him?’ asked Fry.
Naomi looked at her contemptuously. ‘I just said she was a filly.’
‘Oh. She, then?’
‘At Derby. We got her at the horse sales.’
Fry looked along the line of loose boxes. She remembered Gavin Murfin doing that in Sutton Coldfield. Here, she wasn’t sure what it was supposed to tell her, except that horses ate hay, which she thought she probably knew already.
‘I see you have one empty stall.’
‘We had a nice old gelding, but he got bad with arthritis. I really cried when he was PTS.’
‘PTS?’
The woman sneered again. Fry was getting tired of that expression now.
‘Put to sleep,’ said Naomi.
‘Oh, you mean killed.’
Her face froze. ‘We have our horses put to sleep humanely, when it has to be done at all.’
‘I’m not suggesting you don’t do it humanely, Miss Widdowson. But, let’s face it — whatever way you do it, they’re still dead, not asleep.’
Somewhere, a tune started up. A loud, irritating noise, high-pitched and tinny. It was a familiar tune, but it seemed to be coming from one of the stables, and it took Fry a moment to recognize it. Then the noise stopped just before the zap of laser guns came in. The Star Wars theme. It conjured up images of Han Solo and that big, hairy Wookiee — what was his name?
‘Yes, that’s my brother,’ said Naomi, as a heavily muscled young man peered over the half-door, clutching his mobile phone to his ear. ‘That’s Rick.’
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Fry.
Rick Widdowson merely nodded, and went back to whatever he’d been doing in the depths of the stable. Perhaps it was uncharitable to think that he’d only been keeping his head down until it became clear he wasn’t the subject of the visit.
Murfin had walked over towards the horses and was clicking his tongue at them. The animals stared at him as if he was mad. He clearly wasn’t carrying anything edible. Or was he?
‘What are their names?’ he called.
Fry winced. It was the way you’d ask a doting mother the names of her triplets. These were just animals, after all, weren’t they? Yet Naomi Widdowson didn’t bat an eyelid.
‘That’s Bonny at the end. Baby is the one in the middle. And the gelding is called Monty.’
‘Thank you.’
Taking the cue that Murfin had given her, Fry looked at Naomi again.
‘Does the name Rosie mean anything to you?’
‘No.’
‘I mean a horse, not a person.’
‘Still no.’
‘What about the horse that was fraudulently traded?’
Naomi shook her head empathically. ‘She was called Star. What is this about, anyway? Is there a reason for you being here, or did the police just have some time to spare in between harassing motorists?’
Fry smiled. ‘How would you describe Patrick Rawson? Was he a plausible sort of man? What did he look like?’
Naomi opened her mouth, then shut it again. She glowered at Fry, angry now. ‘I told you, I never met him. What sort of trick are you trying to pull?’
‘Are you a member of the Eden Valley Hunt?’
‘Me? Are you kidding?’
‘Could you tell me where you were on Tuesday morning, then?’ asked Fry.
‘What are you saying?’
‘It was a simple question.’
‘If it’s any of your business, I was here, on my own. I work part-time at the Devonshire Hotel in Edendale, but Tuesday was my day off this week.’
