“That is Lady of Lanarkshire, well that’s her show name, she’s just Lady around the yard. The ponies in the distance are Lightening, that’s the grey, and Sage, that’s the piebald. Hamlet’s Crown is my husband’s horse, he’s in the stables at the moment. Slightly lame sadly but he will improve in a few weeks. My husband, rather calls him ‘Horse’, which shows how creative he is. I giggled. “I’m Wendy and my husband is Phil. We hope that you will become part of our family.”
8
A Mucky Business
Yelling, the smashing of wood, screams and a sudden light. I felt myself being dragged from my bed, half asleep. I was physically pulled through the living room and stables into the darkness beyond, left to stand in the pouring rain in my pyjamas. Trying to focus, I see police officers all around, the stinging flash of blue lights and the sound of crashing as the flat and tack room are being pulled apart. The other staff are huddled beside me, confused, frightened. The rain soaking their nightclothes but no attention paid to us.
“What’s going on?” I spoke to no one in particular.
“Shut up and standstill…” The female officer sneers, rain dripping from her riot helmet. The cold seeps through my bare feet as I shivers in the rain.
“There’s nothing in there.” One officer yelled, stepping out of the railway arch. There are similar calls from the tack room, its door smashed, lying in pieces and the office which is covered in a layer of smashed glass.
“What about here Sarge?” The officer gestured towards the steaming muck heap.
“Look, if you want to go digging through thirty tonnes of shite you go ahead.” He turns to the other officers. “There’s nothing here, let’s go.”
“Does that mean we can go back to bed?” I shuddered.
“Yeah… We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.” The officer sneered. “Now fuck off out of our way.” He shoved me hard as he passed, knocking me from my feet. Michelle helped me up.
“Leave it kid… Let’s try to get warm…”
***
Anne had been shocked when Sue had called her and told her what had happened. Arriving in a cab, she wept when she saw the damage to doors and windows, with tack and equipment, were thrown around the yard. “Come on let’s start cleaning up.”
***
“Now, would you like to explain to me why I have had the owner of a local stable on the phone?”
Detective Chief Inspector Willoughby coughed nervously. “Well…” He had not expected to be in work so early having completed the dawn raid in the early hours of the morning. However, his mobile had not stopped ringing despite his efforts to ignore it and he had been requested, forcefully to make attend the Chief Constable’s office as a matter of some urgency.
“Tell me, what did you find in your extensive search?” Wearing dress uniform, however having never carried out ‘proper policing’, the Chief Constable instead having completed degrees and professional qualifications in criminology. He was, on paper, very well qualified to talk about and understand modern policing, however, he lacked the respect from the rank and file who baulked at someone who had never trod the beat or been involved with what they thought of as the sharp end of policing. He could talk the talk but certainly would not be able to walk the walk. However, it would be a brave man who would be willing to say this to his face and, to date, no one had.
“Chief Constable, we had a reliable tip-off. The site is being used to store and distribute drugs.”
“So, this reliable tip-off led you to smash a small business apart and the first I get to hear about it is from the front page of the fucking Metro!” The chief constable slammed the paper down on the desk. “Incompetent police officers destroy stables. Let me see, you left the staff standing outside for over two hours in the rain and smashed every door and window. And all in front of a waiting press photographer who was ready to document the Met’s apparent incompetence. Please, tell me that you found an astonishingly large amount of drugs so I don’t look like a complete twat when I have to explain this to the mayor of London. I take it, by your silence that you found fuck all!”
“Sir…”
“What makes it worse, if it could be made any bloody worse, is that ‘local businessman’ and I use that phrase advisedly, Edwin Smith has offered to pay for the damage as a gesture of goodwill to the community. Tell me, was it, in fact, the same Mr Smith whose drugs you were supposed to find?” The chief constable snarled. “Leave them alone. Okay, you have been led up the garden path and made us all look bloody stupid. Smith fed you false information and then had the papers on standby to photograph the aftermath. If I hear that you have been within two hundred feet of that stable, I will have you handing out parking tickets before morning, do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal, sir.”
***
“Well, it is very generous of him to pay for the damages to be repaired. Do you think he could be feeling guilty?” I smiled.
“Guilty?” Anne span round.
“About arguing with you that time.”
“Yes, that…” Annea sighed. “He may do… It’s all very complicated.”
***
“So?”
“So what? The chief constable has made it totally clear. We’ve been led a merry bloody dance by Smith. He’s taking the piss out of us. I want the informant brought in. Find anything you can to stick to him.” He shook his head. “I
