Stephen Booth - The kill call

‘There’s nothing here,’ she said in disgust. ‘Absolutely nothing of any use to us, Gavin.’

‘Where to next, then?’ said Murfin.

‘We need to talk to Rawson’s partner. Let’s go and see Michael Clay.’

Michael Clay’s home was further into the city, Birmingham proper. Well, after a fashion. Great Barr was a suburb on the outer edge of Brum, an ocean of pre-war red-brick semis bordering on Walsall and West Bromwich. The Clay home was easier to find than Rawson’s, though. No need for a sat-nav here.

‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Clay isn’t at home.’

The door had been answered by a woman of about her own age, so tightly buttoned up in a woollen jacket that she appeared to have almost no shape. Her dark hair was pushed untidily behind her ears, and there was a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead, as if she’d been caught in some physical exertion. Moving furniture, or beating the carpets. Something she could take her feelings out on, judging from that sour expression.

‘And you are…?’ asked Fry.

‘His daughter. Erin Lacey.’

The woman carried on looking at Fry blankly. Then she began to take a step back, as if to close the door firmly on an insurance salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness. Fry held up a hand.

‘Does your father have an office address, Mrs Lacey?’

‘Well, he has an office in a business centre in Kingstanding. But he’s not there, either. He’s gone away for a few days.’

‘Where?’

‘He went up to Derbyshire.’

‘But that’s where we spoke to him yesterday. I thought he would have been back home today.’

Mrs Lacey threw out her hands helplessly. ‘I’m sorry. If you had an appointment, he must have forgotten.’

‘It wasn’t exactly an appointment,’ said Fry. ‘But he did give me the impression he would be available. I need to talk to him about the death of his business partner, Patrick Rawson.’

‘Oh, of course. How dreadful.’ Her brow crinkled. But to Fry the frown seemed to suggest a concern at whether she’d left a piece of furniture in the wrong place, rather than sadness at the death of Mr Rawson. ‘All I know is that my father is away. I’m looking after the house for a while.’

‘What about Mrs Clay? Your mother?’

‘She died, five years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

The woman seemed a little nervous. Fry would have loved to get inside the house to have a look around, but she had no warrant, no justification. Michael Clay wasn’t a suspect, or even a material witness.

‘I presume you can give us a contact number for him, though,’ she said. ‘A mobile? Mr Clay must have a mobile number we can reach him on?’

She raised an eyebrow, as the woman hesitated. ‘I’ll write it down for you.’

‘Thank you.’

Fry took the number and exchanged it for her card. ‘When your father returns, or if he gets in touch in the meantime, please ask him to contact us as soon as possible.’

‘Is there trouble?’

‘Not for Mr Clay. We just want to speak to him.’

‘I’ll tell him’ she said, already closing the door.

Fry could see her shape moving behind the glass, long after they had walked down the drive to their car.

Standing on the pavement, she made a point of phoning the number she’d been given in full sight of the windows of the Clay house. She got a voicemail message, a man’s voice claiming to be Michael Clay, but not available at the moment. At least it was a genuine number.

‘Mr Clay, this is Detective Sergeant Fry of Derbyshire Police. We spoke yesterday. I’d be grateful if you could give me a call at your earliest convenience.’

‘Not at home, then,’ said Murfin, when she finished the call.

Fry glanced at the house again. ‘I wonder…’

‘What are you wondering?’

‘I’m thinking about what Dermot Walsh said this morning, about Patrick Rawson using someone to take the fall if things went wrong. And I’m wondering whether Mr Clay discovered what his role was in Patrick Rawson’s scheme of things.’

The barrel of the gun was held to the horse’s forehead. There was just a brief moment when the only sounds were the nervous scuffling of the horse’s hooves on the tiled floor, and the distant background of pop music, something bright and bouncy, probably Abba. Then a high-pitched crack echoed off the walls.

As Cooper watched, the horse’s legs folded underneath it, collapsing as if someone had dropped the strings on a puppet. Its body hit the floor, and its head dropped lifelessly. As the animal rolled on to its side, the front legs went rigid, but the hind legs continued to kick furiously — that primal flight instinct still powering the muscles for long seconds after the brain had ceased working.

When the kicking had stopped, the operator put his gun down and began to secure the straps of a winch. A moment later, the dead mare was hoisted off the floor on two chains, its back legs high in the air, its head hanging downwards, swinging loose. A spiral of blood squirted on to the tiles.

‘My God, it’s like watching a snuff movie.’ DI Hitchens stood behind Cooper, watching over his shoulder. ‘Does this happen every day?’

‘Well, every week, at least,’ said Cooper.

They were watching a film that seemed to have been made secretly by an animal rights group. Somehow, they had managed to get a camera into the slaughterhouse in Yorkshire on the day they killed horses. The quality of the picture was poor, and the sound even worse. Also, the film had been shot from an odd angle. Cooper guessed at a small, hidden camera of some kind. Maybe even a mobile phone, though most people were wise to that now. It would need to have been left on a shelf or ledge high in a corner of the killing room, to get that angle.

‘Where is this place?’ asked Hitchens.

‘C.J. Hawley and Sons. It’s somewhere in West Yorkshire. North of Sheffield, anyway. I rang them a few minutes ago. They didn’t used to take horses for slaughter, but there are only three other abattoirs in the equine business, and all of those are located further south. So Hawleys took up the spare demand. They slaughter horses one day a week now.’

‘It looks as though the animal rights people were on to them pretty quick.’

‘I suppose it looks bad when you watch like this,’ said Cooper. ‘It makes the whole thing look seedy and surreptitious. But the abattoir isn’t doing anything illegal. They’re inspected and supervised, just like any other operation.’

‘So they’re clean?’

‘The protestors would probably argue a moral case.’

‘Morality is beyond our remit,’ said Hitchens.

‘Hold on, sir. There’s a bit here I want to listen to.’

The dead horse was disappearing through a doorway, being moved on some kind of overhead gantry. The carcass swung awkwardly as it entered the next room, its head bumping against a metal step. A caption to the film claimed that the horse looked pregnant, which it did. The slaughterman followed it, sliding the door shut behind him. That would be the butchering room, and it was probably as well that the camera wasn’t able to follow.

After a few seconds, another crack could clearly be heard from behind the closed door. Cooper sat up straight. Surely the horse had been dead? It couldn’t have recovered consciousness after the butchering had begun. But the caption didn’t question that. Instead, it asked: ‘ Listen carefully for a second shot. Was it directed at an unborn foal? ’

More horses followed into the killing room. A large grey, a small black pony. The slaughterman was good. He shot each animal one-handed, smack in the middle of the forehead, and each one dropped instantly, dead but for the spasmodic twitching of their legs. The man even took time to chat to the horse handler as he manoeuvred a horse into the killing position: ‘ Did you watch the racing yesterday? ’