Dalby looked at Annie and swallowed. “Aye . . . well . . . We don’t use those much anymore.”

“Yes, I know,” said Annie. “You stopped using them because they can cause brain matter to enter the bloodstream, and these days ­people are all so worried about mad cow disease.”

“My, my. You have done your homework. Anyway, we now rely mostly on the nonpenetrating kind, which stuns the animal. It works without puncturing the skull.”

“The one that killed our man put a hole in his head,” said Annie.

“Well, it would, wouldn’t it? It was a penetrating bolt gun. In some cases, even a nonpenetrating gun can put a hole in a human’s skull, if it’s positioned correctly.”

“I’ll bear that in mind. Back to the stolen pistol.”

“Yes, well, as I said, we reported it stolen at the time. Nothing happened.”

“I’m sure the officers followed up.”

“Oh, I’m sure they did, but it would be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, wouldn’t it, if you didn’t even know where to start.”

“Could it just have been lost? Mislaid?”

“We might be a bit sloppy on occasion, but we’re more careful than that. It was stolen.”

“Did you have any suspects?”

“No. Well, not technically, at any rate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody saw anyone take it, and nobody knew anyone who had expressed an intent to take it. We don’t even know exactly how long it had been missing before the loss was discovered.”

“You don’t check them often?”

“Once in a while. Stocktaking.”

“So it could have been missing for some time?”

“Not more than a ­couple of weeks. After your boss called, I checked the files and discovered we had let two ­people go around that time, either of whom could have stolen the pistol. I’m not saying they did. That’s what I meant by ‘not technically.’ For all I know, the person who did it could still be working here. But she said she was interested in disgruntled employees, perhaps with a grudge, and these two fit the bill.”

“Thanks for doing that,” said Annie. She meant it, and she could tell that Dalby knew she did. It seemed to embarrass him.

“Well, we take this sort of thing seriously,” he said.

“She’s not my boss, by the way.”

“What?”

“The detective who called. She’s not my boss.”

Dalby glanced at Doug Wilson. “No, I should have gathered that much from him. You’re the boss. My mistake.”

“No problem. So why did you fire these two ­people?” Annie asked, feeling a bit silly. Was it really important enough to make a point of her rank with Dalby?

“Why do you usually fire someone?”

“There could be any number of reasons. In your business, I don’t know.”

“My business is the same as any other. You fire ­people for incompetence, for stealing, for persistent absenteeism, for failing to follow correct procedures, for insubordination.”

“OK. So what did these two do wrong?”

“They weren’t connected at all. It was two separate incidents, a ­couple of weeks apart. The first one was a skinner, and I suppose you could say he was just too sensitive. He shouldn’t have been doing the job. This kind of work isn’t for the fainthearted.”

“Then how did he get it in the first place? I mean, don’t you have psychological tests to weed out psychos who get their jollies from killing. So you can employ them, that is.”

Doug Wilson gave Annie a horrified and chastising glance.

“Sorry,” she said, holding her hands up.

Dalby paused and spoke slowly. “All employers make mistakes sometimes,” he said. “Even the police, I should imagine. It’s why we all have probationary periods.”

“This worker didn’t make it past his probation?”

“No. The official problem was absenteeism and drunkenness on the job.”

“I imagine that would help in—­”

“Yes, the drink helped him. He couldn’t handle the job so he took to drink to dull his mind. But do you have the slightest idea how dangerous it is to be intoxicated around some of the equipment we have in here? And not only for the one who’s drunk.”

“I can imagine,” said Annie.

Dalby grunted. “Aye. It worked, to an extent. Sometimes he’d be so badly hungover he didn’t come to work for two days.”

“So you fired him?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t there any counseling or anything available?”

Dalby gave her a scathing look.

“Can you give us his name and address?” she asked.

“Ulf Bengtsson. He was a Swede.” Dalby read the name and address off a sheet of paper on his desk, and Doug Wilson wrote them down. “I don’t know if he’s still there—­in fact, I very much doubt it,” Dalby added. “But it’s the last address we have for him.”

“Do you have any idea what’s become of him?” Annie asked.

“All I can say is I doubt he’s working in the industry anymore. Maybe he’s gone home to Sweden.”

“Do you know of any other abattoirs that would have employed him after that?”

“No. We certainly didn’t give him a reference, and he hadn’t yet earned his slaughterman’s license.”

“What about an unregulated abattoir?”

“I’m not saying they don’t exist. They tend to be small operations, with just one production line, and I can’t see one taking in a drunk like Ulf. I mean, it was pretty much constant intoxication by the end. I can only hope he got professional help, or he’s probably dead by now.”

“Can you tell us where any of these illegal abattoirs are?”

“I don’t know of any around here. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but I don’t know them. As you probably know, this industry is very strictly regulated, and since the various controversies, from mad cow to horse meat and rotten meat in your frozen burgers, it would be even harder to get away with anything. No doubt ­people do it. No doubt they succeed. But to be off the radar you’d have to stay out of the way and keep a very low profile. They’re small operations, as I said. They supply some restaurants and hotels, unscrupulous butchers, the occasional old folks’ home.”

“And the other man? What was his problem?”

“Kieran Welles, with an ‘e,’ like Orson. He was a different kettle of fish entirely.”

“Tell us about him.”

“Kieran was with us for some time. Eighteen months, in all. He was a good worker, not troubled by nerves or drink. He was a slaughterman, and he was versatile. Mostly he did knocking work. It was his job to use the bolt gun on the animals when they came through from the lairage. But you could put him just about anywhere on the line and he’d get the job done. A good slaughterman is hard to find.”

“And what was his problem?”

“He was a bit too keen, you might say.”

“Too keen?”

“Cruel.”

“What?”

“He was cruel to the animals. He kept it well hidden, but it came out often enough, and in the end we couldn’t tolerate his working here anymore. I can tell by your expression that you think we’re all a bunch of callous bastards in this business, but we have our lines, and Welles crossed one.”

“What do you mean ‘cruel’? What did he do that was worse than his job? I mean, it was his job to fire a bloody bolt pistol at their heads, right, penetrating or non. How more cruel could he be?”

Dalby leaned forward on his desk. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “I saw him stub a cigarette out in a pig’s eye once, just for the fun of it. He’d kick and punch the animals sometimes. Again, for fun. Sometimes he’d deliberately fail to stun them correctly, so they were still alive and conscious when they were hung up on the line.”

Annie felt her stomach churn. It was becoming difficult to hold the bile down. She noticed Doug looking into the gray distance out of the window, over Dalby’s shoulder. Maybe he was reconsidering tonight’s steak dinner. “And it took eighteen months to find this out? You weren’t aware of it before?”

“I’m not here to answer to your censure. You can save your righ­teous indignation for your tree-­hugging sisters in the pub. They do it when you’re not looking, and you can’t be looking every minute of every shift. But word gets around. Once somebody saw him. We found it hard to believe—­Welles was a big lad, but he had a sort of farm-­boy innocence about him—­but we kept a closer eye on him, and that was that. He got warnings, but they didn’t do any good.”