Scandal at Six(79)

“Justin, this is all very interesting, but I fail to see what it has to do with me. An apology from you is all I need. I’ve told nobody else about your stupidity, just that I fell over and banged my head.”

“Oh thanks! That’s a huge relief. And the other thing is, do you think I could come back to the flat? Would Josie think I was completely mad?”

“Very likely, I should think. Up to you, Justin, to turn on the old charm. One thing, though. Leave me out of it. I shall be in touch with her this evening, so unless she mentions it, I’ll keep quiet. Bye. Oh, and there’s a matter of the police. I’m afraid I shall have to tell Inspector Cowgill most of what you told me. I’ll do my best for you.”



*



Cowgill greeted her with an anxious face. “Are you ill, Lois? Not hiding something from me? And why have you got your hair done up that way? It suits you, but makes you look more forbidding.”

“Good,” said Lois, and explained about Justin and her fall, giving him an edited version. She had no wish to drop the lad into trouble at the moment, and now believed firmly in his explanation. In any case, he was more useful on the spot, than if he moved away, maybe to an unknown destination.

“I just hope you haven’t left anything out of that explanation, Lois,” said Cowgill. “What I have to say is much less worrying, and I hope helpful. You remember our main aim is to catch Pettison at the time of handover, or at least in possession of animals illegally imported. I think this time we may have a chance to succeed. Because he’s in hospital, and out of action for a while, he’ll need to keep in touch with his so-called colleagues. We are now sure we know at least one of them, confirmed by what he told you.” He looked closely at her. “Are you sure you’re feeling perfectly all right, my love? I was extremely worried, you know.”

“I’m fine, really,” she said. “Carry on. It all sounds pretty exciting to me.”

“Not so sure about that, but we do know that Betsy Brierley is, as well as being Pettison’s mistress, an occasional handler, with her Ted. Now she has been reported by the owner of a pet shop in town, asking for some kind of shrews. He knew they were rare, and smelled something fishy. In a manner of speaking, you understand. So he called us.” He was glad to see her smile.

“Ah, the poor little shrews,” said Lois. “I thought they wouldn’t survive in this weather.”

“How would Betsy have retrieved them from your shed, do you think?”

“Dunno,” said Lois. “It was safely locked, as you know. But if she had got a key from somewhere, she could have waited until the shop was closed and nobody was around, and then let herself in and lifted the animals. Then locked up again when she left. Not difficult. Justin could have lent her his key. Josie still has one, of course.”

Cowgill nodded, and soldiered on. “So, definitely Brookes is one of them. Now, if there are more animals arriving in this country before Pettison is discharged, I suspect he will find a way for the courier to visit him first. In these transactions, cash is always used. And he will already have worked out that Betsy is on the make and would probably have siphoned off a chunk of cash for herself before handing over the rest to him.”

“So how will we know which of his visitors is the suspect one? Look for a cobra disguised as a bunch of flowers?” Lois said, and laughed. “I think you’ll find Betsy Brierley has taken over the whole job until he gets out. Maybe you should pull her in? No doubt she takes her cut, but that’s something he’ll have to deal with. No hospital is going to allow animals, deadly or otherwise, into its wards.”

“I don’t want Betsy, not at the moment,” said Cowgill. “I mean to get the head of this particularly nasty setup. The head of the snake, you might say. And since all of them, including slippery Pettison, are born liars, I’ll still have to wait patiently, and catch him in the act.”





Forty-four





Lois looked at her watch. It was too early to find Mrs Tollervey-Jones, so she had spent a happy half hour looking in the library for details of elephant shrews. It was too late for rescuing them, but in case more turned up, she wanted to know what Josie would be dealing with. After finding shrews, and learning more about them, she turned to chimpanzees. She had been struck by Dot saying they could be violent. The general image was of an intelligent, friendly animal. But then, you could say that about dogs, and yet small children had been savaged by pet dogs. As she trawled through the websites, it was obvious that there was a huge and lucrative network of quite legal suppliers, and mostly the animals were sold with a full supply of documents from health authorities and vets. There were also fraudsters, more difficult to trace, and dangerous to know. Wild animals should be in their natural environment, the law said, not treated as amusement for human beings. No wonder Pettison called them his people. She believed he genuinely thought of them as equals. How ridiculous and pathetic! Perhaps he should be expending his energies on saving forests and jungles and the planet in general. Or maybe he thought that was what he was actually doing?