She said it in the tone of somebody accustomed to being asked for an alibi. If you told the police you were on your own at the time, then nobody could be asked to back up your story and get the details wrong. It was difficult to prove a negative.
‘And I think I’ve heard enough now,’ said Naomi. ‘If that’s all you have to say, I’d like you to go.’
Fry turned to leave. Then she stopped, as if to ask one more question.
‘Widdowson is quite an unusual name. Are you related to the huntsman of the Eden Valley Hunt?’
‘John? He’s my cousin.’
‘I see.’
‘What?’ said Naomi. ‘Is that a crime as well?’
Murfin sniffed dismissively as they got back to the car. ‘If you ask me, that woman has spent far too much time talking to her horses, and not enough time learning how to make conversation with other human beings.’
‘She was certainly a bit lacking in social graces,’ said Fry.
‘She smelled, too,’ said Murfin bluntly.
‘I’ve got so used to that smell in the last few days that I didn’t really notice, Gavin.’
‘Well, don’t forget to check the soles of your shoes before you go back into the office.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Fry, recalling her interview with Superintendent Branagh. ‘You’re right.’
‘And did you notice her fingernails?’
That was something Fry had noticed. Black, every one of them. That was due to too much mucking out, or too much time spent running her fingers lovingly through the coats of horses.
‘Gavin, did we ever get results from forensics on the prints from that gate on Longstone Moor?’
‘No, we didn’t. I’ll give the lab a nudge.’
‘Yes, with a cattle prod.’
26
Meanwhile, Cooper had found himself working backwards and forwards between calls to the horse owners on his list, and the conversation going on around him in the office. They were two worlds, existing alongside each other in the same place. The voices of strangers in his ear, speaking of their anger and loss. And the background sound of his colleagues in the CID team, familiar and somehow prosaic, just doing their day to day job.
‘… I thought those wretched horse passports we all had to buy at great expense were supposed to stop this sort of thing. Mind you, have you seen some of those passports? Mine looks like an A4 school project. It would only take a photocopier and a cheap binding machine, and a small child could forge one.’
‘Did you know the penalty for not having a horse passport is a maximum five thousand pounds fine, or imprisonment for up to three months, or both?’ said Becky Hurst.
‘Prison? For not having the right bit of paperwork for your horse?’
‘You offend the bureaucrats at your peril.’
‘God, I’m beginning to think Matt and Claire were right about easy targets,’ said Cooper, dialling his next call.
‘What, Ben?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘… I guarantee, if the gypsies have your horse and you don’t have a passport for it, the police will not take it off the gypsies. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. So off to Appleby they go. I tell people to get the feet post- coded if they breed their own.’
‘What’s a flesh mark?’ asked Luke Irvine, in between calls of his own.
‘A patch of pink skin on the horse’s face. It’s hairless in summer, so it shows up as a distinctive mark.’
‘Thanks.’
‘… I suppose she’s gone for pet food, or glue.’
‘And what the heck’s a Prophet’s Thumb?’
‘A small indentation on the neck. Like a thumb mark in putty.’
‘Really?’
‘ If you ask me, that wasn’t really the purpose of horse passports. They were actually for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, and the vets. To make sure medicines like Bute don’t have to be withdrawn from market.’
‘ Why? ’
‘ They haven’t been tested to see how long they take to withdraw. So the only way of being certain they don’t enter the human food chain is by not slaughtering any horses that have been treated with them. It’s overkill, almost certainly. But that’s the way our authorities like to do it in this country.’
Then Cooper found one case where a horse had been sent out on loan, but was slaughtered without the owner’s knowledge. How on earth could that happen? He was about to find out.
‘ Yes, Starlight was a fourteen-year-old gelding. He’d been with us for about six years, but he was suffering from arthritis, and I decided he’d have to be retired. I browsed some of the local papers, and I came across an advert. It said something like: Wanted. Horse or pony as a companion. Need not be sound. Small fee paid. Knowledgeable home.’
‘ Do you still have a copy of the advert? ’
‘ Yes, I’ll find it for you.’
‘ So you contacted the advertiser? ’
‘ Yes, and arranged to visit her farm to see the facilities. To be honest, I was quite impressed with the set- up. Her idea was that Starlight would be a companion to an in-foal Arab mare she had. I saw the mare, and she was in beautiful condition. The stables were better than mine, and the paddocks were bigger. It didn’t occur to me that I could have anything to worry about. I delivered Starlight on the understanding that he’d be there for a two- month trial period. From the start, I thought it had been made clear that this was a loan arrangement and didn’t involve a change of ownership. I got on well with the woman, and we agreed not to bother with a fee. We kept in touch. I fact, I phoned her a couple of weeks before… well, before it all went wrong. She told me Starlight was fine.’
‘ How did you know something was wrong? ’
‘ I was reading that same newspaper, and I saw a “for sale” advert for the Arab mare. Since Starlight was supposed to be the mare’s companion, alarm bells started to ring. I went straight to the farm, but there was no sign of Starlight. I reported him stolen to the police. They didn’t seem very interested when I explained the circumstances. But it was theft, wasn’t it? ’
From the sound of her voice, Cooper could tell that the tears had begun falling as soon as she started talking, and she made no attempt to disguise her distress over the fate of her animal.
‘ I kept going back to the farm until I found the woman in, and confronted her. I know I should have got a proper loan agreement drawn up from the start. I realize that now. But she seemed so nice, and the place was just perfect. I only wanted the best for Starlight. It was theft, pure and simple. The destruction of someone else’s property for financial gain. I’m right, aren’t I? I can’t believe that anyone could be so evil. There are just no words to describe what she did. It’s barbaric. If she didn’t want him any more, she could have called me and I would have gladly taken him home.’
When Fry got back to the office, Cooper broke his calls off to give her the details of his last victim.
‘I’ve just phoned the local police in Staffordshire about this one,’ he said. ‘The woman who took the horse was called Annette Wood, and she never denied that she sent Starlight to the abattoir. But she claimed the horse wasn’t on loan to her but was hers to do with as she saw fit. Without any evidence to the contrary, it came down to a question of one person’s word against another’s. And you know how hopeless that is in court.’
‘What about the abattoir?’ asked Fry.
‘They confirmed that a skewbald gelding arrived in a batch of horses delivered to them a week before Christmas. They were brought in by a man who said he was Annette Wood’s brother-in-law.’
