Matter of opinion, Gavin.
Murfin sniffed. Approximately six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes; the blood is from a rather nasty head wound.
I can see that.
Scalp wounds always bled dramatically, even a surface cut. But in this case, Fry could see the damage to the skull, where it had been crushed a few inches above and behind the left ear.
No ID in his pockets, said Murfin. Thats the bad news.
Nothing?
No wallet, no chequebook, no car keys. And no mobile phone.
A robbery victim? Out here?
Could be. Or it might have been an attempt to prevent us identifying him.
The postmortem might find something for us. It would be useful if his fingerprints or DNA are on record, of course.
The body had been moved by the ME during his examination, but now lay on its back, face turned upwards to the rain, which was being deflected by the roof of the body tent. The coat the man was wearing turned out to be one of those green waxed affairs, similar to one that Fry had seen Ben Cooper in sometimes, though this one looked a bit newer and probably more expensive. Underneath the coat, there was a blue body warmer and a cotton shirt with a thin green check. Dark blue corduroy trousers led down to that pair of nice brown brogues. Dark blue and brown never went well together in Frys opinion, but the shoes looked much too good for yomping across sheep-infested hills.
Logic would suggest that his car must be somewhere within easy reach, she said. He wasnt really dressed for hiking, was he?
He was wearing a rainproof coat, pointed out Murfin. So he must have expected to be outdoors for a while, at least.
But no boots. Just the sort of shoes he might wear at the office. Of course, somebody else could have brought him here.
And theres no visible blood spatter on the ground, said Fry. That could be thanks to the rain, or because he was killed somewhere else.
So if he came here in someone elses car, he might still have been alive when he accepted the lift.
Do dead people accept lifts?
Probably not, conceded Murfin.
And no ID on him at all? What was in his pockets?
Some loose change, said Murfin. Comb, tissues, a pair of reading glasses in a metal case. I suppose we might be able to trace him through the optician, if necessary.
Which optician?
SpecSavers, but no branch name on the case.
Blast. Theyre everywhere.
Yes, I suppose he could be a tourist, said Murfin. Even in March.
Great.
Oh, and theres a receipt from somewhere called the Le Chien Noir. Its a restaurant in Edendale. Quite upmarket, I believe. Expensive, anyway.
Not the sort of place Im likely to know, then.
Murfin held up the evidence bag and squinted at the receipt. The print is a bit faint, but it looks like dinner for two.
What date?
The ninth. That was last night.
Fry nodded. The condemned mans last meal. I hope the chef was up to scratch.
This restaurant is a long way from the crime scene, said Murfin. Eight or nine miles, or more.
So how did he get from dinner at Le Chien Noir to a field near Birchlow?
Fry looked down at the victim again. Rain still glinted on his face from the lights set up inside the tent. Blood was darkening rapidly in his hair, smears drying on the sleeve of his nice waxed coat.
Despite the difficulties presented by the location and the weather conditions, the crime-scene examiners would have followed all the protocols for evidence collection. Trace hairs and fibres first, then bloodstains, any possible tool or weapon marks, visible fingerprints or footwear patterns. Finally, latent patterns that required powder or chemical enhancement. Not much chance of some of those in the monsoon season.
Although Fry had been given an estimate by the ME, she knew that time of death should be based on witness reports and not on physical evidence. Measuring body temperature was prone to error, and the degree of rigor mortis wasnt as accurate as it was sometimes cracked up to be. But in this case, her stiff was, well hardly stiff at all. The corpse had been pretty fresh when it was first spotted.
She looked across the moor. Somewhere over there were the remains of the agricultural research station. Although units had been despatched in response to the 999 call some time ago, the airwaves had been ominously quiet since then.
Lets see what weve got across the way then, she said. With luck, body number two might explain everything.
It took Fry so long to find her way to the collection of derelict buildings on the hill above Birchlow, the site had already been searched by uniformed officers, and Wayne Abbott had moved on from the field to supervise the scene.
Most of the site consisted of little more than cracked foundations, weed-grown concrete yards and broken fencing. The surrounding bracken and gorse were gradually encroaching on to the site, and weeds had burst holes through the tarmac road.
She stepped through a door sagging from its hinges and gazed at the scene of dereliction inside. The buildings hadnt been occupied for many years, of course, and the site had reverted to the landowner. Health and Safety might have something to say about the lack of security, though. No locks, no warning signs, no measures to prevent anyone from suffering injuries through collapsing roofs or broken shards of glass.
Theres no body here, Sergeant, said an officer who had been searching the building. But weve found what look like bloodstains on the concrete in the largest hut.
Fry turned to gaze back across the fields in the direction from which shed come. The white body tent was clearly visible from here.
Well, unless weve got a dead man walking, this call wasnt to a body at all. Our victim was still alive when he came in here and then he made it across at least two fields before he gave up the ghost.
Well, unless weve got a dead man walking, this call wasnt to a body at all. Our victim was still alive when he came in here and then he made it across at least two fields before he gave up the ghost.
Why would someone phone in and give this location for the body, then? It doesnt make sense.
Perhaps, said Fry, whoever else was here believed the victim was already dead.
Murfin came up alongside her, shaking himself like a dog. It seems the 999 call was made from a mobile, he said. The caller refused to give a name, but weve traced the number, and the phone is registered to a Mr Patrick Rawson, with an address in the West Midlands. Control have tried calling the number back, but it just goes to voicemail. The phone is switched off, probably.
Has anyone checked the barn over there?
At that moment, the sight of Wayne Abbott making his way towards her again through the rain came as a relief to Fry.
No drier up here, is it? he said.
Whod live in England? said Fry.
It rains in other countries, you know. I went to Texas for a conference once, and it rained the whole week.
Somehow, that doesnt sound too bad.
Fry was wondering how CSMs managed to get sent to conferences in Texas. Perhaps shed been in the wrong job all this time. No one had ever suggested sending her to Swindon for a conference, let alone the USA.
Have you found something? she said.
Abbott pushed back the hood of his scene suit. The last time Fry had seen him at an incident, hed had a shaved head. Now, his hair had begun to grow back in ragged patches, so that his skull looked like an old tennis ball that had been chewed by the dog.
Well, weve got a series of impressions in the soil within a two hundred-yard radius of the hut, he said. Quite a lot of impressions, actually.
Shoe marks?
Well, sort of.
I thought the rain would have obliterated them by now.
In the usual way of things, yes thats what I would have expected, too. Light prints on soft soil like this would have deteriorated beyond use. But these prints are a bit different.
Different how?
The amount of weight behind the shoe marks has imprinted them deep enough into the ground to preserve them in the drier subsoil, where the rain hasnt affected them so much.
Weight? That makes such a difference?
Abbott nodded, a knowing smile on his face. This amount of weight does. That, and the fact the shoes in question were made of steel.
Fry found herself starting to get irritated. She was too wet and uncomfortable to tolerate people playing games.
Steel? What on earth are you talking about, Wayne?
Horses, said Abbott. Im talking about horses.
4
There was still a lot of processing to do, of course. With his prisoner safely in the hands of the custody sergeant at E Division headquarters in West Street, Cooper made his way reluctantly from the custody suite, dodging the rain to reach the walkway that led into the main building.
In the CID room, the rest of the team were hard at work over their paperwork. DC Luke Irvine and DC Becky Hurst had been given the desks closest to his. They were the newest members of E Division CID, and they made him feel almost like a veteran now that he was in his thirties. They were eager to impress, too anxious to get every last detail right in their reports and case files before their supervisor saw them. He had to give credit to Diane Fry for that. She had the new DCs with their noses to the grindstone. No one wanted to get on the wrong side of her.
Hi, Ben. How did it go? called Irvine.
Great. A good result.
Wish Id been there.
Irvine was a bit too eager, his face still reflecting his excitement in the job, even when he was buried under paperwork. That wouldnt last.
As he stripped off his stab vest, Cooper felt the last of the tension fall away. Suddenly, he felt bored again. He stared out of the window at the rooftops of Edendale, dark with continuous rain. His mind drifted back two days to the previous Sunday, and he realized the source of his restlessness.
There was a moment when he had been sitting in his brother Matts new Nissan 4x4 on the way back from Staffordshire. He recalled the sound of Phil Collins suddenly filling the car. Another Day in Paradise. The music had broken a painful silence that had lasted since he and Matt, and their sister Claire, had left the National Memorial Arboretum, near Lichfield.
As always, Matt had been gripping the steering wheel as if he was at the controls of a tractor, pushing the John Deere 6030 across a ploughed slope on a Derbyshire hillside, muscles tensed in his forearms as though power-assisted steering had never been invented. He was getting so big now that he could probably pull the plough himself, like a shire horse.