The Kill Call

13

Back at the scene on Longstone Moor, Fry had found officers from the task force plodding wearily back to the rendezvous point in their boiler suits at the conclusion of their fingertip search. She gathered from their complaints about sore backs and wet knees that the search had produced precious little else.

SOCOs were still working at the old huts and on Patrick Rawson’s Mitsubishi – she could see their van parked alongside the field barn, though the Mitsubishi itself was invisible from here. She ought to find a way over there to have a look at the car.

Now that the weather had cleared and the sun was out, there were flies everywhere, hovering over the sheep droppings, gathering in small clouds over the puddles of water under the hawthorn trees. Fry heard a whine near her ear, and swatted at it with a hand. Earlier, she’d opened her mouth and felt something tickle the back of her throat. She was pretty sure she’d swallowed a mosquito. They’d been everywhere during the previous summer and autumn, and some had even survived the winter.

Wayne Abbott was standing in front of her, a quizzical expression on his face.

‘Yes, Wayne?’

‘I wanted to update you.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. What have you got?’

‘Well, first of all, there’s no sign of anything that could have been used as a murder weapon – no bloodstained stones, or anything of that kind. But we’ve been working on the blood splatter, specifically traces of blood in the soil where the hoof marks are. The indications are that some of the impressions were made before the blood traces. You can see that the pattern of spatter is intact in those areas.’

As close as Fry peered at the ground beneath the evidence markers, she couldn’t make out the tiny flecks of blood against the soil.

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Over here, however,’ said Abbott, ‘we can see that the hoof marks came after the injury. The pattern of spatter is completely broken up, some traces of blood have been pushed deep into the ground by the weight of the impressions.’

Fry straightened. ‘So the horses were definitely here before and after the victim’s injury. That would suggest they were present during the fatal attack.’

‘It might be a reasonable conclusion,’ said Abbott. ‘Also…’

‘Yes?’

‘Assuming for a moment that your killer or killers did arrive on horseback, we think we’ve managed to identify their approach route. They came across the neighbouring field over there, lower down the hill. The hoof marks are still distinct. There’s a crop of some kind planted in that field, so there’s bare soil, rather than this coarse grass.’

‘And what about the victim?’ asked Fry.

‘A little more difficult. But our best assessment is that he came direct from the location of his vehicle, which, as you know, was parked over by the old barn there. There’s a stile he could have come over. We’re examining that now, but it’s about fifty yards from the car. He might actually have come over the wall. In any case, he then went into the derelict hut.’

‘To try to get away from his assailants?’

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘And from there…?’

‘He came straight across this field. And he was running, which makes the shoe impressions smaller, but deeper. Because of the rain, not all the impressions are intact, but we’ve pieced together enough to be fairly confident.’

Fry was starting to form a picture in her mind now. The scenario was coming to life, the details filling themselves in. She could imagine Patrick Rawson easing the Mitsubishi slowly up the track to the field barn that morning and parking his car out of sight. Why had he done that? Because he was involved in a secret assignation? Or to surprise someone who didn’t expect him to be there?

Whatever the reason, something had gone wrong for Mr Rawson. She didn’t know yet how much time had passed between him arriving at the barn and the arrival of his killer or killers. Had there been an argument? Or had he been expecting someone quite different, and Rawson was the one who got a surprise? He must have been out of his car by that stage, or he would surely have got back in and driven away, if he felt under threat. She pictured him cut off from his vehicle, looking around for a means of escape.

And at some point, Mr Rawson had started to run. A businessman in early middle age, wearing a waxed coat and brown brogues, he’d scrambled over a stile and begun to run across an empty field in North Derbyshire. He would have been dashing through driving rain, slipping in the wet grass, covering his shoes in mud. Where had he been running to?

Fry turned and looked in the opposite direction, trying to imagine what Patrick Rawson would have been seeing as he ran. He had looked a reasonably fit man for his age, but he hadn’t been dressed for sprinting. Could he have been hoping to make it to the stone mill, which was visible in the distance to the east?

‘Anything else, Wayne?’

‘Yes, there is. The office sent through a bit of digital video footage for you. Thought you might want to watch it in the van, rather than wait until you get back to West Street.’

Fry almost liked Abbott in that moment.

‘Brilliant.’

‘Apparently, this is from one of the protestors who were here yesterday,’ said Abbott as he set up the screen.

‘The hunt saboteurs.’

‘Right. The quality is crap, of course. The Photographic Unit might be able to enhance it a bit, but the camera work is decidedly shaky, I’m afraid.’

An image came on the screen of a blurred road, then a section of dry-stone wall going past as the camera swung round rapidly. Splashes of rain hit the lens and ran sideways. Fry had almost forgotten about the rain. But anything filmed at the time Patrick Rawson met his death would have been shot pretty much underwater.

‘This kid obviously spotted something, or one of his mates did,’ said Abbott. ‘It steadies down in a minute.’

The cameraman seemed to be running now, and the picture bounced up and down. Heavy breathing could be heard via the onboard microphone of his video camera, and somebody calling ‘ Over there! ’

Then, for a few seconds, there was absolute gold. Over the top of the wall, two horses could be seen being ridden across a field, kicking up a spray of water and dirt. There was almost no detail to the image, and before Fry could blink the horses had gone again, hidden by the slope of the land and an intrusive tree. Distant shouts could be made out, much too far away to be deciphered. But, listening as hard as she could, Fry thought she made out a name, shouted twice. Rosie?

The camera swung back again, wobbled, and focused on a group of young people standing in the road, their faces bright with excitement. Fry thought one of them could have been the girl she’d seen later with blood running down her face.

‘Run it back to the horses,’ she said.

Abbott replayed it and froze the image at the point where the two riders could be seen most clearly. Fry gazed at the picture for a long time. In truth, it told her very little. She could see the general colour of the horses. She could tell that the riders weren’t wearing red coats, but tweed jackets and black helmets. But at least that was something.

At the bottom of the screen, the date stamp said it was zero-eight thirty-six, an hour before the first of the mounted hunt were supposed to have arrived for the meet. If she could discover where the cameraman was standing, she could work out whether the riders were going towards the location where Patrick Rawson had died, or coming away from it.

‘So much for our Mrs Forbes and Mr Widdowson,’ she said.

Cooper got a call from Fry as he left Birchlow, and decided to take the route across Longstone Edge itself. All along the edge were lay-bys, retired couples sitting in their little Smart cars to eat sandwiches and drink tea, enjoying the tranquillity of the Peak District before the Easter rush of tourists.

Driving along the edge was the closest thing to flying Cooper could think of, without having to queue at security and cram yourself into an economy-class cabin. Looking out of the passenger window of the car, he couldn’t see any sign of the ground, just an open expanse way out into space, and a glimpse of the valley down below. Coasting down the Longstone Edge road was just like being in an aircraft coming in to land, watching the earth growing gradually closer.

It wasn’t a good idea to take your eyes off the road and admire the scenery for too long, though. A while ago, a woman had driven her car off the edge somewhere about here, ending up lodged in the trees below the road. She’d stayed there for twenty-four hours, too, trapped in her car as motorists passed on the road without seeing her.

At the top, he heard the rumble of an engine, the whine of gears, the rattle of falling rock. Another quarry truck was labouring up the long track to the opencast workings. A scattering of sheep ambled along the roadside, where the dry-stone walls had fallen or vanished altogether. Their fleeces were thick and heavy after the winter, making their movements ungainly, like a bunch of walking armchairs. They didn’t seem a bit concerned to be sharing their stretch of road with those massive haulage lorries.

When Cooper appeared at the scene to get the latest update, Fry described the video footage received from the hunt saboteur.

‘A shout?’ he said.

‘Probably someone calling the dogs back. The hounds, I mean.’

He noted that she’d corrected herself on the use of ‘hound’. Could it be that Fry was finally learning to fit in? She’d been in Derbyshire for a few years now, the big-city girl out of her depth in the country. For the whole of that time, she’d made it plain that she resented officers like Cooper for knowing better than she did. And Cooper felt that he’d made himself the prime target of her resentment, somehow. It was almost as if he’d done something much more personal that had caused permanent, unforgivable offence. It was a pity – he felt sure they would work better together if he could only get over this barrier.

‘What did they shout?’ he asked her. ‘Could you tell?’

‘The quality of the sound is terrible,’ said Fry. ‘But the name sounds like Rosie.’

‘Rosie?’

That didn’t sound right to Cooper. In his experience, hounds tended to be given names like Soldier, or Statesman, or Pirate. Rosie was far too twee for a foxhound. Fry wouldn’t realize that, of course.

‘It might tie in with what some of the hunt saboteurs told Inspector Redfearn about hearing the kill call,’ said Fry. ‘You know what that means?’

Cooper tried not to look too smug. ‘Yes, I know what the kill call is.’

‘So…?’

‘These riders,’ he said. ‘Were they wearing hunting dress?’

‘They were in tweed jackets.’

‘Ratcatcher? But that’s autumn hunting dress.’

Fry laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, surely?’

This time, Cooper couldn’t resist smiling at the awareness of his superior knowledge. ‘I think you’ll find it does, Diane. You don’t wear ratcatcher in March.’

He saw Fry hesitate then. He had to say that for her, at least – if you sounded sure enough of yourself, it did make her stop and think twice.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘what I really wanted you for was to come with me to the Forbes place. The woman there is joint master of the Eden Valley Hunt. There are three masters, apparently, but the other two live in Sheffield, and she’s our local person. Do you know her, by any chance?’

‘I know of her,’ admitted Cooper. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.’

‘Good. I spoke to her on Tuesday, during the hunt. But it wasn’t a good time to get anything out of her. I want to corner her at home.’

‘Corner her? You make her sound like a trapped rat.’

‘Well, that’s kind of what I’m hoping for. I’m sure the hunt people were closing ranks against me. Definitely covering something up.’

‘So you said. But I wouldn’t be too quick to jump to that conclusion,’ said Cooper. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘No problem.’

Feeling a sudden need to get a bit of distance from his colleague, Cooper walked as far as the dry-stone wall bordering the sheep pasture. The neighbouring field was much lower down the hill. Very unusually for this part of Derbyshire, the field was planted with an arable crop of some kind, its stalks already several inches tall and showing bright green. Some hopeful farmer praying for a break?

He shook his head. ‘Diane, are you sure this is the way the riders came?’

‘We think so. Why?’

‘Well, on horseback, there would have been no way for them to get over the stile, or the wall. They must have come through the gate between the two fields.’ Cooper pointed at the gate some yards away. ‘Were there sheep in this top field when you first arrived?’

‘Yes, we got the farmer to move them.’

‘Well, the fact that the sheep were still in this field, and not raiding the crop next door, suggests to me that the riders closed the gate after them.’

‘Fingerprints?’ said Fry.

‘Exactly. The gate is closed by a steel latch, and the underside of it is protected from the rain.’

‘I’ll get Wayne Abbott on to it.’

‘Some of the prints will be the farmer’s, of course. But you never know.’

‘Here’s hoping, then.’

Cooper thought even Diane Fry ought to have spotted something like that. It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Gates were made to keep livestock in, so this one must have been closed by someone. Ipso facto .

But all she did was watch him in silence as he clambered over the gate, careful to avoid touching the latch, and studied the lower field. There was no mistaking those distinctive crescent shapes pressed into the soft ground, or the powerful odour lingering long after the horses had passed by. Brown, fibrous heaps lay on the soil, the weather too cold yet for the orange dung flies that would swarm around them in summer. But the hoof marks were in quite the wrong place.

‘Look, they rode down the tramlines, too,’ said Cooper.

‘Tramlines?’

‘The parallel tracks left by farm machinery through the crop. They’re there for a reason – to guide accurate spraying and fertilizing – and they’re easily damaged by horse riders, especially in wet weather.’

‘So?’

Cooper felt himself bristle at her tone. He hated the way she said ‘So?’ like that. It seemed to sum up all her contempt for the way of life that he’d grown up with. She made that one word suggest that none of this could have any possible importance in the real world, the world that Diane Fry moved in. The implicit sneer made him so angry. He was glad that she couldn’t see the expression on his face right now.

‘Responsible riders don’t ride down tramlines,’ said Cooper, taking a deep breath to calm himself. ‘If you did that on a hunt, you’d get sent home by the master. You’re supposed to go round the outside of the field.’

‘Do hunting people really have all these rules to follow?’

‘Yes. And they stick to them rigidly.’ Cooper turned back to face her. ‘I don’t care what your video shows, Diane. These weren’t members of the hunt.’