about Warren Leach, sir?’ asked Cooper. ‘He was certainly in the area,’ said Hitchens. ‘He has to be eliminated. And he has a connection to Maggie Crew - his wife was the finder on that one.’ ‘Mmm. I don’t like coincidences,’ said Tailby. ‘And is there some significance in the way that the victim’s body was arranged? Anybody had any ideas on that?’ No one answered. Cooper wondered whether they had all shared the same thought when they saw the position of Jenny Weston’s body. He had put his own reaction down to another burst of imagination, the idea that Jenny had been made to dance at the moment of her death. It was certainly too strange a thought to be contributed to the morning briefing. ‘And how do we find out more about Leach?’ said Tailby, almost to himself. Then suddenly there were voices chiming in from all round the room. ‘Talk to his neighbours?’ suggested someone. ‘He hasn’t got any neighbours,’ said another officer.
290
‘Friends, then.’ ‘Like who?’ ‘There’s Keith Teasdale. The rat man.’ ‘Is he a friend?’ ‘The nearest thing he’s got, probably.’ Tailby raised a hand, halfheartedly. ‘OK, we’ll talk to Teasdale again. Is there anything else?’ Cooper took a breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. There was something about the way he said it that quietened the laughter. ‘Cooper?’ ‘I checked the firearms register for Warren Leach.’ ‘Firearms?’ said Tailby. Heads were raised, and ears pricked up. ‘Leach has a shotgun, I suppose? Most farmers have them.’ ‘Yes, there’s a shotgun. But when I was there the other day with Owen Fox, Leach also had a captive bolt pistol.’ ‘A what?’ ‘A humane killer. It’s used for putting animals down. It fires a steel bolt directly into the brain.’ ‘Do you need an FAC for that, Cooper?’ ‘Well, not if you’re a licensed slaughterman. But Warren Leach has no licence. Farmers can get them, if they can show that they need one. But there’s no record of Leach ever even applying for one.’ ‘So he’s in illegal possession,’ said Tailby. ‘OK, let’s interview him again. Teasdale first, then Leach. Let’s do it.’ Somebody patted Cooper on the shoulder. And
291
Tailby hurried to close the meeting before anybody asked any more questions.
DI Hitchens walked over to Ben Cooper. ‘I want Diane Fry to go to the cattle market with you, not Todd Weenink,’ he said. ‘You’re too close to some of these people. That’s your problem, Ben. Diane sees things that you don’t.’
Across the room, Fry was watching him already. Cooper couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, but then he never had been able to read her. Maybe she did see things he didn’t - but from the look on her face these days, they were things that he didn’t want to see.
The two farmers had been just about to leave the cattle market. The sale was over for the day, and most of the vehicles had left the car parks, but for a few transporters still waiting to load. The men were dressed in overalls and flat caps and smelled as though they had spent some of their money in the bar before setting off home.
‘You couldn’t buy a pint of beer for those prices I got,’ said one of them.
‘Bastards,’ said the other. ‘All pissing in the same pot, these dealers.’
Ben Cooper nodded sympathetically. ‘I know what you mean. The farmer has to put up with lower prices all the time when meat is still selling for the same amount in the supermarkets.’
‘Bloody right. There’s no justice to it. What will they
292
do when every farmer in the country has gone to the wall? That’s what I want to know.’
Cooper was waiting for Diane Fry to finish taking a call on the radio in the car. He was the sort of person that people always chose to talk to, especially when they had problems. Maybe there was something about his face that encouraged them.
‘They’ll buy all their bloody meat from abroad, that’s what,’ said the second farmer. ‘They don’t need us any more. They can get anything they want cheaper somewhere else. These prices are just a way of killing us off one by one.’ He spat into a drainage channel. ‘Bastards.’
‘If we had another war like the last one, they’d be buggered.’
‘Aye, good and proper.’
Finally, Fry came back from the car and stood listening to their conversation in amazement. ‘Have you finished writing the script for Farming Today? If so, I wonder if any of you know where Keith Teasdale is?’
The first farmer opened his mouth as if he might say something, then closed it firmly.
‘You’ll have to ask Abel Pilkington,’ said the other man. ‘He’s inside somewhere. What’s Slasher Teasdale done, then?’
‘Slasher?’ The farmer said: ‘It’s a nickname.’ ‘What does it mean?’
‘Ah. You’ll have to ask him that.’
Cooper and Fry had parked at the back of the cattle market, close to where a double-decker transporter was reversed up to the loading area, its tailgate lowered on
293
to the concrete apron. They scrambled up on to the concrete, but could see no one among the rows of steel pens. They crossed an iron platform that moved underfoot, and found themselves looking at the face of an enormous weighing scale. It recorded their combined weight at just over twenty-three stone.
‘You’ve put a bit of weight on,’ said Cooper. ‘What?’
‘Well, it isn’t me. I’m thirteen stone and always have been. I never change.’
Fry stared doubtfully at the scale. Cooper wondered whether she knew he was joking. She looked genuinely worried. ‘I shouldn’t bother about it too much,’ he said. ‘They sell ‘em by the kilo here, anyway. The more you weigh on the hoof, the more money you fetch in the ring.’
Fry wasn’t amused. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘You hold on here and talk to yourself about the price of beef while I find this Pilkington character.’
‘If you say so.’
Cooper waited by the transporter while Fry crossed the concrete and stood on the vehicle’s steel ramp. Inside the market, the silence of the building was strange after the bellowing cacophony of Tuesday. The starlings gathered on the ledges were whistling plaintively and darting in and out of the gaps in the roof. All traces of blood and urine and the soft, green faeces of frightened animals had been hosed away into the gutters behind the pens. Here and there the floor was still wet, drying very slowly in dark, glistening patches.
‘Where is everyone?’ asked Fry, hushing her voice
294
automatically at the first bounce of the echo from the breeze-block walls.
