Free Requiem for a Dealer by Jo Bannister Page B

half his time in Europe.’ She couldn’t resist a small, vindictive smile.
    â€˜I heard them arguing about it a few days before Dad died. Johnny wanted to carry our horses again so people would think they’d resolved their differences and follow suit. He offered Dad a discount, to help with some of his losses and to bury the hatchet, but Dad wasn’t interested, not at any price. He said he wouldn’t let Johnny carry his horses for free, and if people thought that was because he didn’t trust him that was fine by him.’
    Her voice grew hard. ‘I heard him say that, Superintendent, and five days later my father was dead. I don’t much believe in coincidence. I think when Johnny couldn’t get Dad on-side again he settled for shutting him up instead.’
    Daniel could see she was tiring herself. She took a moment to rest. ‘I know everyone else thinks it was suicide. But I know he wouldn’t have killed himself. He wouldn’t have left Mary and me knee-deep in debt.’
    Deacon wasn’t buying it. ‘Even if you were right, and there’s no earthly reason to suppose you are, why would Windham want to
kill you?’
    Her answer was disarmingly candid. ‘Because I have a big mouth. Just because I couldn’t get him charged with murder didn’t mean I was going to forget. I made sure everyone I met heard what had happened and whose fault it was. I lost my home and my horses, and Mary nearly lost the business, because Johnny Windham is a lazy, good-for-nothing cheapskate. And I lost my dad because he thought his poxy reputation mattered more than a good man’s life.’
    Deacon blinked. ‘You want to explain that?’
    â€˜In this business, reputation is everything. If people buy a horse from us and it works out well, they talk and we get more business. But if they have trouble they don’t just talk, they shout it from the rooftops. This is a word-of-mouth business: dissatisfied customers are bad for a dealer’s reputation. Enough dissatisfied customers can wipe him out.’
    â€˜That’s what happened to Barker & Walbrook?’
    â€˜We lost two horses in transit. We delivered another three that were sick and one of them died. All in the space of two months. After that the yard was like a ghost-town. Nobody was buying from us, nobody was selling to us. The average horse is in our care about a fortnight, some of them just a few days. If we can’t keep them safe till their new owners take delivery we’re doing something wrong. By the end of those two months, I wouldn’t have used us either.’
    â€˜Did you work out where the problem was?’ asked Daniel.
    â€˜Don’t you listen?’ snapped the girl. ‘We were using Windham Transport when we’d have been safer ferrying the horses around in clapped-out old beast-boxes. The guy’s supposed to be a professional. It’s supposed to be a professional operation – we were certainly paying professional prices. And he was delivering us sick and dying horses.’
    â€˜What killed them?’ asked Deacon, becoming interested despite himself
    â€˜Different things. One was a twisted gut. One was a bad reaction to a sedative. Others were blamed on a virus.’
    And these things shouldn’t kill horses?’
    â€˜These things kill horses every day, Superintendent. We’d lost
horses to every one of them before. What shouldn’t have happened was so many incidents in so short a time, and every one of them involving Windham Transport. It had to be something he was doing, or not doing. He wasn’t cleaning the lorry out properly between loads. He was setting off with horses that were already unwell and should have been put back in their boxes till the vet passed them fit. He wasn’t feeding or watering them when he said he was, or else he was being rough and getting them upset. I don’t know what he was doing,