Requiem for a Dealer by Jo Bannister Page A

and held it as if she’d never let go. ‘Thank God,’ she said again; and then again. ‘Thank God.’
    Â 
    Daniel was right. There was something about Alison Barker that made Deacon want to get to the bottom of her story. Partly because, if by any chance what she was telling him was the truth, the girl had shown courage and Deacon admired courage. And partly because if he found illegal substances in her biscuit barrel it would be a lead into the Scram network which he hadn’t had before. He’d need to take another, closer look at Windham Transport.
    So as soon as he left the hospital Deacon had Billy Mills – until his retirement Sergeant Mills, now civilian Scenes of Crime Officer Mr William Mills – head over to the house in The Ginnell with his satchel full of sample bottles.
    It would be tomorrow, and probably late tomorrow, before the samples came back with a full-spectrum analysis for all likely narcotics, hallucinogens, amphetamines and barbiturates. But Deacon knew that Billy Mills, whose experience of places where people had done unpleasant things to one another was unrivalled, would have a fair idea what to expect from the state he found the place in. He had a nose for a crime scene as good as a sniffer dog’s. As soon as he got back to Battle Alley Deacon called him to his office.
    â€˜Well?’
    It was getting to be a long time since Billy Mills had looked like the cutting edge of criminal investigation. He was the wrong side of middle age, he was rotund, and when he got down and dirty with a bit of almost invisible evidence, sometimes he had trouble getting up again. But he was very good at his job.
    He shrugged heavy shoulders. ‘It all looked pretty normal to me. There were no obvious signs of tampering.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose there were,’ said Deacon shortly. ‘If someone had drugged her food he wouldn’t want her to notice while she was preparing it.’
    â€˜Still, she wouldn’t know what to look for, and I do. If someone was messing around in her cupboards he had a good tidy-up afterwards.’

    Disappointed, Deacon nodded. ‘OK, Billy, thanks. I suppose Forensics might turn something up?’
    SOCO wasn’t a big a fan of the Forensic Science department. He considered that they took a lot of the credit that rightly belonged to him. ‘You never know your luck,’ he said doubtfully.

Chapter Eight
    Sunday morning was the sun at the centre of the Farrell family system, the fixed point around which everything else revolved. Working hours, meal-times, shopping and housework – all these were moveable feasts which could be made to fit in with one another according to shifting priorities. But Sunday morning was when Paddy Farrell went riding, and hell hath no fury like a six-year-old girl deprived of her weekly fix of ponies.
    Sometimes Brodie took her, sometimes John and his new wife Julia did. This weekend the John Farrells were visiting Julia’s parents, so Brodie pulled Appletree Farm duty. It was no hardship to her. Admittedly, she spent some of the hour-long lesson with her hands over her eyes, and about once a month she had to spread a blanket over the seats before heading home because the child had fallen off in a puddle. But set against that was the heart-choking pleasure of watching the person who mattered most to her in the world doing the thing that mattered most to her in the world.
    Paddy on top of a pony, bouncing round inexpertly and hanging onto the mane with both hands, was the human equivalent of the Cheshire cat – a smile wearing a child. Brodie felt privileged to be part of that. If her business ever took such a dive that it couldn’t fund the weekly riding lesson she would reinvent it as a knocking-shop. Luckily enough she wouldn’t even need a new shingle: that discreet slate beside the front door with the legend Looking For Something?would serve her just as well in her new