Free The Slaughter Man by Tony Parsons Page A

outside. She had both.’
    ‘I guess a lot of us feel as though we knew Mary,’ Whitestone said.
    Dr Joe smiled, and behind his glasses I saw that his eyes were shining with tears.
    ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Although she was more complicated than her public image suggests.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘She was in therapy with me for a number of years,’ he said.
    We let that sink in.
    Whitestone took a step towards him.
    ‘Recently?’ she asked.
    Dr Joe shook his head. ‘I stopped seeing her ten years ago. When her children were small. The first two children, I mean. Marlon and Piper.’ He was still staring at the family photograph.
    ‘Is there a problem here, Dr Joe?’ Whitestone said. ‘Do we have to worry about therapist-patient privilege?’
    ‘There’s absolutely no problem, Pat,’ Dr Joe said. ‘Because I’m not going to tell you what we discussed during therapy. It is simply not relevant. And there’s no problem because, if anything, knowing Mary makes me even more determined that you nail him.’
    He could not control the anger in his voice. I had never known this mild-mannered man to sound so angry.
    ‘Let’s just find rotten bastard that did it,’ he said.
    And the first thing next morning Curtis Gane and I drove out to meet the Slaughter Man.

8
    Oak Hill Farm was built on the vague border where the end of London meets the start of Essex, a place of fields and warehouses, ancient farms and new houses, concrete and grass, where every colour is either grey or green.
    Just beyond Gallows Corner, I turned the BMW X5 off the A127 and we could see it in the distance.
    ‘What’s the history of this place?’ Gane said.
    ‘It was an illegal scrapyard for years,’ I said. ‘There was actually a farm – I think there still is – and the farmer sold two plots of land to a pair of travelling families in the Eighties. They built a couple of homes and the council told them to tear them down. They fought it in the courts and won. More travellers came. And they kept on coming. Now there are around a hundred families on ten acres.’
    ‘Looks like a small town built upon a rubbish dump,’ Gane said.
    ‘That’s exactly what it is,’ I said. ‘And for about five hundred people – it’s home.’
    There were two walls around Oak Hill Farm, and within the second wall the white caravans were parked nose to tail. There was only one way in, under some giant scaffolding with hand-painted signs that said WE WON’T GO and NO ETHNIC CLEANSING surrounded by children’s paintings of brightly coloured caravans.
    I drove slowly inside. Eyes watched us all the way.
    Dead washing machines, fridges and TVs were scattered between neat little chalets with net curtains. A grubby-looking white horse grazed on a scrap of grass. A dog defecated beside a brand-new Audi. Oak Hill Farm was a strange mix of suburban gentility and unapologetic squalor.
    ‘I like what they’ve done with it,’ Gane said.
    There were no street names so I stopped and Gane opened his window. A woman and a teenage girl were walking by, perhaps a mother and a daughter, holding hands.
    ‘We’re looking for Mr Nawkins,’ Gane said.
    They stared at Gane’s black face for a while and then gestured vaguely to deeper inside the camp where a lone girl was walking with a pack of dogs. She had long straight dark hair and pink hot pants, despite the weather hovering just above freezing. She was around fifteen years old but anxious to be grown-up. High on one cheekbone she had the faded yellows and purples of a fading black eye. Her dogs were a mixed pack of Staffies and mongrels with a magnificent Akita walking by the girl’s side.
    The dog paused to lick his testicles.
    ‘I wish I could do that,’ Gane said.
    ‘Maybe you should buy him dinner first,’ I said.
    The Akita was the pack leader and he considered me with his pale blue eyes as I got out of the car. I stood there and did not move while he tasted the air.
    ‘Lots of people,’ the