Belinda Bauer: Finders Keepers

‘Two on the twelfth, another two on the twenty-second,’ Haddon was saying, as he turned the pages to show them his dense writing. ‘Three on the second – and that included that bloody Scotty I always charge extra for ’cos he kicks and leans. Another two on the sixteenth and one more on the twenty-third—’

‘I see what you’re saying,’ Reynolds interrupted. He could tell that if he didn’t stop him, Haddon was going to take them through every unpaid set of horseshoes, and they still weren’t out of January. ‘What does he owe you in total?’

‘Eleven hundred and ninety pounds.’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Rice. ‘How much are the shoes?’

‘Sixty-five quid for a standard set, more if they want studs or bars, and they’re replaced every six or eight weeks.’

Rice’s mouth dropped open and Reynolds was amused to see her groping for some grasp on the sheer waste of shoe-money. As for himself, he wondered whether it was really enough to motivate abduction.

‘That doesn’t seem like an awful lot,’ he mused.

‘Is to me ,’ said Haddon with a disparaging look. ‘Would be to you too, if you’d earned it in the snow with a half ton of horse on your bloody back.’

He had a point.

‘So you threatened Mr Took?’

Haddon was still for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Yur.’

Reynolds looked at his notes. ‘He says you told him you’d break his bloody legs if he didn’t pay you.’

‘Yur,’ said Haddon defiantly. ‘And I still will.’

‘I’m sure you could find a better way to resolve the dispute, Mr Haddon,’ said Reynolds sharply.

‘Maybe better. Not faster.’

‘You do know that we could arrest you right now for making threats, don’t you?’

Haddon simply gave Reynolds a baleful stare.

‘And you do know that Mr Took’s daughter is missing?’

‘Well,’ said Haddon, looking a little uncertain for the first time, ‘I’d wait until she were back, like.’

Rice snorted with laughter and tried to turn it into a cough. Reynolds frowned but Haddon looked at Rice and winked. The laugh had relaxed him.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘Took is an arsehole. Ask anyone. He owes money right across the moor, but he’s driving around in those big bloody cars and keeping six horses while my van’s falling apart. Gets up your nose, that’s all. And I know his type – whoever scares him best will get paid first. That’s all it is. You ask Bill Merchant up at Dulverton Farm Feeds – Took owes him thousands but he never makes a fuss, so he can whistle Dixie for his money. Before you know it, Took’ll say he’s bankrupt and we’ll find out everything’s in his girlfriend’s name or some bollocks, and where will we all be then? Up the bloody creek without a bloody paddle, that’s where.’

Haddon stopped, looking surprised at his own loquacity, and stared from Rice to Reynolds and back again – daring them to challenge his truth.

They couldn’t.

‘So you have no idea where Jess Took might be?’ said Reynolds a little weakly.

Haddon looked genuinely surprised. ‘You think I took his kid to make him pay up?’

‘It’s just a routine question, Mr Haddon.’

Haddon frowned and shook his head. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘But I tell you what – I bet that ’d bloody work!’

Of the four less obviously threatening creditors on John Took’s list, all were exasperated but seemed resigned to having to wait for their money.

‘Other creditors have threatened Mr Took,’ Reynolds told Wilf Cooper, who had supplied nine hundred pounds’ worth of timber to Took to repair his manège.

Cooper smiled. ‘There’s no need for the Mafia. I just started small claims proceedings against him, like I do with all my late payers. One month, one letter and then they get notice of proceedings. He’ll pay now or then; I’m not worried. Happens all the time with men like him.’

‘What do you mean, “men like him”?’ asked Rice.

‘Men who get divorced and get a younger girlfriend. Suddenly they start to spend money like it’s going out of fashion. Took’s girlfriend – what’s her name?’

‘Rebecca,’ said Reynolds.

‘Rachel,’ said Rice.

‘Yur, well, whatever it is, she wants to ride, see? Not to hounds, like – which would be sensible, given he’s the Master – but in shows, doing dressage and the like. So suddenly he’s got to get a new type of poncey horse and a new type of poncey saddle, and he’s got to build a manège and employ a poncey trainer and blah-de-blah-de-blah, you see? Just so’s she’ll keep tupping him and pretend she’s liking it, pardon me, Miss.’

Rice shrugged it away.

‘And it’s not just the horses,’ Cooper continued. ‘You seen what he wears now? Come into the yard a few months back wearing cowboy boots!’ He laughed at the memory. ‘Trying to be young, see? And trying to be rich. It’ll work for a while, I reckon. And then it won’t, and he’ll sell the dressage horses and fire the trainer and the girl will leave him and everyone will get paid. That’s how these things happen.’

Cooper seemed so affable that Reynolds was confused as to why he was on the list at all.

‘Who knows,’ Cooper said with an expansive shrug. ‘Took’s a right paranoid tit.’

To the surprise of both Reynolds and Rice, the ninth person on Took’s list was not a creditor. It was Jonas Holly’s elderly neighbour, Mrs Paddon.

‘She must be eighty if she’s a day,’ said Rice. ‘How’s she an enemy?’

‘He said she was a leader in the campaign to get the local hunt disbanded.’

‘Good for her,’ murmured Rice.

Reynolds remembered Mrs Paddon. A tough old bird. They’d speak to her first thing in the morning; he had no doubt she was an early riser.

‘Let me handle the interview,’ he told Rice. He fancied he got on well with old folk. His mother’s friends adored him.

Mrs Paddon didn’t.

Mrs Paddon was as wary of Rice and Reynolds as if they’d been Jehovah’s Witnesses – only reluctantly opening her door wide enough for them actually to enter her home, instead of conducting the interview on the stone doorstep.

Inside, the cottage was dark but clean. Every available surface was crammed with nick-nacks. No, not nick-nacks, Rice thought as she looked more closely; nick-nacks implied miscellaneous bad-taste china kittens and Spanish holiday souvenirs. Mrs Paddon’s collection was a more unusual mix of chunky, practical objects and delicate glass animals. Brass barometers and copper kettles towered over dainty fauns and cut-glass hedgehogs. The mantelpiece held a parade of carnival glass ponies and a pickaxe handle. The ornaments gave the room a schizophrenic feel – as if a man and his wife warred constantly over the available space, and yet Mrs Paddon was a spinster, Rice remembered.

She offered them tea, then warned quickly that she had no milk. ‘Or sugar,’ she added discouragingly.

‘We’re fine, thanks,’ said Reynolds. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Mrs Paddon. How have you been?’

‘Well enough,’ she said brusquely.

The old woman had remained standing in the middle of the front room, and did not offer them a seat.

‘And Jonas? How’s he now?’

‘You’ll have to ask him that.’ Mrs Paddon took a string bag from the back of the front door. ‘I was just off to the shop, actually.’

Reynolds ignored the pointed invitation to leave. ‘We’re here about Jess Took.’

‘Oh.’ The old woman seemed a little taken aback, and then her tone softened. ‘Poor child.’

‘We asked Mr Took for a list of people who might wish him harm, and we were surprised to find your name on there.’