‘That Wednesday I was in the pub. Two or three pubs. There’s people will tell you that. Alibis.’
‘Move forward to Friday 24th October, then. Were you in a car in Totley that night?’
‘A car?’ Sugden laughed. ‘My wife sold the car when I went inside. You’d have thought she was hoping I wouldn’t be coming out again.’
‘You might have hired a car.’
‘Never in my life. Friday night? I think I went to the pub again.’
‘A varied social life, then.’
Sugden shrugged. He was gaining confidence. ‘That’s what you did both nights?’ asked Hitchens. ‘Yeah.’
‘You weren’t selling stolen video recorders, by any chance?’
‘Hey,’ said Sugden, ‘I think that’s a “no comment”.’ ‘We’d really like to eliminate you from our enquiries, Mr Sugden.’
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‘Well, it wasn’t like that. Right? And anyway…’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I was never there.’
717
The old cattle market was close to Edendale rain station. The overgrown tracks that ran alongside market were where the cattle waggons had once bi unloaded, in the days when animals were moved train. These days, they came in by trailer and by h cattle transporters that brought half of Edendale to
centre to a halt on market days as they attemptec negotiate the narrow corners. The days of Pilkington & Son, Livestock Auctione were numbered anyway. And not just because of d inconvenient location or the lengthening list of Et pean Union regulations that became ever more diffi to comply with. The number of cattle markets dwindling fast, even in rural counties like Derbyst And three years ago, the futuristic white sails of a i agricultural business centre that the farmers ca ‘Nine Nipples’ had appeared fifteen miles away Bakewell, part of a L12 million regeneration projec had a vast parking area, modern penning, three rings, meeting rooms, an IT centre and conference fa ties. Since it opened, Pilkington & Son had merely b counting the days.
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As a result, a bare minimum of maintenance had been done on the buildings in Edendale during the past ten years. There were gaps in the roof and missing sections of corrugated iron in the walls, rusty gates falling off their hinges, and pens whose steel bars had been bent out of shape by vandals. At night, youths rode their motorbikes through the aisles like rodeo cowboys. On the street side, the windows were full of jagged holes where the panes had been used for target practice.
Outside, the open-air pens were surrounded by parked Land Rovers, muddy livestock trailers and transporters slewed on to the pavements. Ben Cooper and Todd Weenink had difficulty finding a space for their car, and ended up parking across the front bumper of a wagon owned by a haulier from Lincolnshire.
The main building held cattle, and two smaller ones across the road were for pigs and sheep. Many of the sheep pens were empty, but there were some Derbyshire Gritstone ewes crammed together between wooden hurdles. A man was trying to drive a group of piglets up a strawed ramp into a lorry with nothing but a wooden board and a mouthful of curses. Once in the lorry, the pigs clattered and squealed hysterically, before emerging back down the ramp as the man dodged and screamed, rapidly losing his temper.
A patrol car was blocking one of the side roads, with its hazard lights on and the stripes on its rear glowing bright red. A uniformed officer ran back to speak to them.
‘It’s bloody chaos here,’ he said. ‘No wonder Traffic have hysterics every time it’s market day.’
‘Where’s the van?’ said Cooper.
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‘Over there.’ He pointed to one of the cobbled areas crammed with vehicles of all kinds. ‘It’s right at the back, so I’d say it won’t be leaving for a while.’
‘Have you got the details?’
‘This is the registration.’ The officer passed him a page from his notebook. ‘It’s registered to a Mr Keith Teasdale. An Edendale address, as you can see.’ ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘We’ve been told to hang around for a bit, in case you need us.’
‘OK. But don’t make yourselves too obvious. Hide your baboon’s bum, for a start.’
‘We’ll try. There’s just nowhere to park. The town centre bobby is here, too, by the way. They expect to see him on market day, so he’s no problem.’
Cooper and Weenink wound their way through the parked vehicles. They passed a fifty-foot-long transporter that already had two decks of calves loaded. A lorry that had been washed and scrubbed inside drove off with dirty water pouring out under the hinges of the tailgate. A farmer was trying to negotiate a cattle trailer into a space that was obviously too small.
When they found the Transit van, it was blocked in at the back of the parking area, with its bonnet against the wall and no way of reversing out past the trailer behind it.
‘I suppose it was white once,’ said Cooper, drawing his finger through the grime on the back doors. Weenink had walked round the front, squeezing his
bulk between the van and the wing mirror of a Daihatsu Fourtrak next to it.
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‘Has it got a rusty wheel arch?’ asked Cooper.
‘Two of them. Also a rusty passenger door and rusty sills all the way along this side. And look at all this crap hanging out of the side door.’
Cooper peered along the van. Strands of yellow straw stuck out from under the bottom of the side-loading door like a badly trimmed fringe of hair.
‘It reminds me of a particularly hairy blonde I knew once,’ said Weenink. ‘She was a real goer. But stripped down to her knickers, she looked like Wurzel Gummidge.’
