Stephen Booth - The kill call

Fry’s first question had actually been a polite one — an enquiry about Mrs Rawson’s welfare. Now, as she studied the woman, she wondered whether Hitchens had been right about the effects of shock. She looked a little more upset than she had yesterday. Paler, more nervous in her gestures. Her eyes didn’t seem to be able to settle on her visitors, but constantly darted back to the girl and the horse outside.

‘Your husband had been in trouble on a few occasions, hadn’t he?’ said Fry.

Deborah lowered her head, tapping out a cigarette from a packet on the coffee table in front of her. ‘He tended to sail a bit close to the wind, I suppose. Pat was just that sort of businessman, you know. I’m sure you’ve met the type before, Sergeant. He enjoyed the challenge, the adrenalin rush. Thrived on it, in fact.’

‘The challenge of breaking the law?’

‘No, not exactly. The challenge of seeing how much he could get away with. He’s made quite a bit of money, at times.’

‘But his main business was the buying and selling of horses. Is that right?’

‘The equine trade. That’s what he liked to call it, when he was talking to his friends down at the golf club. But I wouldn’t say it was his main business. Not recently, anyway. He had a finger in lots of other pies.’

She lit the cigarette from a gold lighter. Smoke drifted up into the glass roof, and hung there, swirling slowly.

‘I suppose you might say he was a born salesman,’ said Deborah. ‘Patrick had the charm to sell anything to anybody. Snow to Eskimos, isn’t that the saying?’

‘Something like that,’ said Fry.

‘He was selling cars when I first met him. Down in Digbeth, that was. A snappy suit and a dodgy hair cut.’ Deborah laughed. ‘But it was his smile that reeled me in. That, and the commission he told me he was earning.’

Yes, Fry could see Patrick Rawson as a used-car salesman. She reminded herself not to be taken in by a salesman’s smile when she went to buy herself a new car. As if that was likely.

‘What about the horses? Where did they come in?’ she asked.

‘From his father, Owen Rawson. It was in the family.’

Fry followed Mrs Rawson’s gaze and watched the horse being trotted across the paddock. She had no idea what kind of horse it was. A brown one, that was all she could say. But even she could tell that it moved with eye-catching grace, muscles sliding smoothly over its shoulders, feet lifting high off the ground. For a large animal, its step was dainty, as if it was afraid of damaging the grass.

‘I don’t know a great deal about horses,’ she said. ‘But is there really much money to be made?’

‘It’s like anything else, Detective Sergeant. It depends whether you know what you’re doing.’

‘And your husband did?’

‘Certainly. Patrick always knew what he was doing.’

Murfin had been gazing out of the conservatory windows, leaning to see the stable block to one side of the paddock. Fry wasn’t sure he’d even been listening, but he threw her a glance, raised an eyebrow, and she nodded.

‘And has business been good recently, Mrs Rawson?’ he asked.

Deborah took the cigarette out of her mouth and looked at him, surprised. Until now, she had barely acknowledged him, probably regarded him as no more important than the stable girl, there only to rub down the horse when it got too sweaty. She seemed to have to think about his question.

‘I really don’t know,’ she said at last.

‘It’s just that I notice the stables seem to be mostly empty.’

‘Horses come and go. I couldn’t even tell you what there is out there, without Patrick being here. The girl might know, I suppose.’

‘You don’t even know how many horses there are?’

‘As I told you yesterday, I’ve never had anything to do with the business. You’ll have to talk to Michael Clay.’

‘You told us your husband went up to Derbyshire for the horse sale. And you were right, there is one scheduled for this Saturday. But would he also have called on private individuals? Private sellers?’

‘I suppose so, if it was worth his while. I think he had some regular dealings with stables and riding schools.’

‘What sort of dealings?’

Deborah blew a cloud of smoke, narrowing her eyes. ‘I think my answer is the same, Sergeant. You’ll have to speak to Michael if you want to know more details.’

‘Well, we’re here to examine Mr Rawson’s papers,’ said Fry. ‘You did say you would give permission for us to do that.’

‘Yes, of course. You mean business papers, I imagine?’

‘Particularly any appointments book, a diary. That sort of thing.’

‘Yes, I see. But he was on a business trip — he might have had those with him.’

‘If we could just check — ’

Deborah Rawson rose. ‘This way, then. Patrick does have a desk he uses when he’s at home. Used, I mean.’

‘Thank you.’

‘“His friends down at the golf club”?’ said Murfin when Deborah Rawson had left them alone in a sparse office.

‘Yes, and the “equine trade”. Mr Rawson seems to have had social aspirations.’

‘He sounds as though he was just a dodgy horse dealer, though.’

‘Not just that. A finger in a lot of pies, remember?’

Fry opened the first drawer. It rattled as she slid it out, and revealed only a few pens, a stapler, a scattering of jumbo paper clips.

‘Besides, social aspirations happen to people a lot when they get some money, Gavin,’ she said. ‘It’s never enough for them. They want respect as well.’

‘Respect, maybe. Your average drug dealer on the street wants respect. But Rawson never seems to have worried too much about respectability, which is a different thing altogether.’

Fry nodded. ‘Yes, that’s an interesting bit of contradiction in his character there. Deborah was right — her husband seems to have had an urge to live dangerously, a need for a bit of risk in his life. I wonder what damage the Trading Standards investigation did to his standing in the club house.’

Murfin was rifling through a filing cabinet, tutting over dozens of empty suspension files and a half-full bottle of Laphroaig whisky.

‘If I know anything about golf-club committees, any sniff of a court case could have been fatal,’ he said.

‘Fatal?’

‘Just an expression, like. I meant fatal to his standing as a member.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

Fry tapped her fingers on the desk. She was finding no diary or appointments book. No PDA or laptop either. Nothing where a schedule of meetings or the names of regular contacts might be listed.

‘You know, if those two sides of Mr Rawson’s personality clashed, he might have got very angry about it,’ she said.

‘Angry at who?’

Fry thought for a moment. ‘Whoever landed him in court, I suppose.’

Murfin laughed as he banged the filing cabinet shut. ‘Not Trading Standards.’

‘No, I don’t think so. They’re a bit hard to get angry with, aren’t they? I was thinking more of one of Mr Rawson’s customers, someone who got stung when a deal went wrong. Or someone else in the same business, perhaps.’

‘Dermot Walsh said that Rawson blamed jealous rivals when they first brought a case against him.’

‘So he did. We should give Walsh a ring when we get back to the office, and ask him if Rawson mentioned any rivals in particular.’

‘Right. You’re thinking there might have been some kind of feud?’

‘Yes, a feud that Patrick Rawson lost.’

‘If that’s so — and since Rawson seems to have come up to Derbyshire to meet him — the rival could well be someone local to us.’

‘So he could, Gavin. So he could.’

Fry checked the desk for hidden drawers, ran a hand along a book shelf. Telephone directories, a road atlas, the Official Form Book 2009, with cover picture of jockeys straining hard for the wining post. Diaries, but filled only with dates of birthdays and dental appointments. She found the most recent diary and turned to the current week. Derby horse market was marked on Saturday, and the name of the Birch Hall Country Hotel on Monday night. But no names, no times of meetings he might have arranged. This really was a man who had learned not to put anything in writing.