Free The Slaughter Man by Tony Parsons Page B

girl said, ‘they hold out the back of their hand so the dog can smell it.’
    I laughed. ‘But there’s no need, is there?’ I said. ‘He can smell me all right.’
    ‘That’s right. You don’t need to hold out your hand. He already knows what you had for breakfast.’
    ‘He’s magnificent. What’s his name?’
    ‘Smokey,’ she said, and when she ran her fingers through her hair I saw the tattoo of a dog on her inner wrist. It looked like a German Shepherd, although it might have been an Akita. Maybe the body artist couldn’t do an Akita.
    ‘Do you know Mr Nawkins?’ I said.
    ‘My dad,’ she said. ‘I’m Echo Nawkins. I’ll show you where we live.’ Then she looked at us doubtfully, as if she couldn’t decide what we were. Gane was in one of his Savile Row suits.
    ‘You the lawyers or the council?’ she said.
    ‘We’re the law,’ Gane said.
    She nodded, suddenly cooler.
    ‘And you’re a traveller,’ I said, trying to restore relations. It didn’t work.
    ‘Our Lord was a traveller,’ she said, as if I had attempted to insult her.
    I got back in the car and we followed Echo Nawkins and her pack of dogs.
    ‘Do you think people would like them a bit more if they cleared up their trash instead of chucking it out the window?’ Gane said.
    ‘This is it,’ I said.
    She had led us to a caravan and a chalet, both twice the size of anything else in the camp. There was a skip on the drive, overflowing with junk, and the acrid black smoke of burning plastic was rising from it. On the patch of grass in front of the chalet, a man sat reading the
Guardian
and drinking tea at a small table where breakfast was set for one. He was tall, lean, fifty and rimless spectacles gave him a studious air. He poured milk from a bottle that said Oak Hill Farm Dairy into a cereal bowl. Gane and I looked at the burning skip and then at each other. They were clearly not big on recycling in these parts. We got out of the car.
    ‘I’m Sean Nawkins,’ the man said. ‘Who are you?’
    Our warrant cards came out.
    ‘DI Gane and DC Wolfe,’ Curtis said. ‘I believe we want the other Mr Nawkins. Peter Nawkins.’
    ‘My brother,’ Sean Nawkins said, shaking his head and looking at us as if he wanted to rip our throats out. ‘You’ll never leave him alone, will you? You’ll never let him get on with his life. He did his time. A lot of time. The best years of his life. What do you want with him? This London murder, is it?’
    ‘A few routine questions,’ Gane said easily. ‘Where is he?’
    But Sean Nawkins was building up a head of steam.
    ‘Can’t you let him die in peace?’ he said.
    We let that settle for a while.
    ‘What’s wrong with your brother?’ I said.
    ‘Pancreatic cancer.’
    ‘Terminal?’
    ‘He has months rather than years.’
    ‘Is he having chemotherapy?’
    Gane gave me a look. As if we were not actually here to discuss anyone’s medical problems.
    ‘Peter doesn’t want chemo,’ Sean Nawkins said. ‘He saw what chemo did to both of our parents. He just wants to enjoy whatever time he has left.’ He softened. ‘Please – can’t you let him be? Can’t you just get off his back?’
    ‘Yeah,’ came a voice from somewhere behind and above us. ‘Get off his back.’
    We turned to look at a man on a large white horse. The man was dark and bearded, and the horse looked like the one we had seen grazing on the scrap of grass. But I was no expert. It might have been a completely different horse.
    ‘Tell the bastards about your wife, Sean,’ the man said.
    ‘They don’t care about my wife,’ Nawkins said.
    ‘What happened to your wife, sir?’ I said.
    ‘Do you really want to know how she died?’ he said.
    ‘Dad,’ the girl said.
    ‘Shut up, Echo,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘Townies set fire to our caravan. Ten years ago. Gunnersbury Park. Remember that riot?’
    ‘There was an illegal traveller settlement in Gunnersbury Park,’ Gane said. ‘Some of the locals took