The Kill Call

‘So I presume we’ve done a check on the number. Who’s the registered owner?’

‘A Mr Patrick Rawson, from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.’

‘The same man who made the 999 call.’

‘Well, the call was made on his phone, anyway.’

‘Yes, you’re right, Gavin. And …?’

‘Local police have just called at his address. His wife told them he drove up to Derbyshire yesterday, on business. But she hasn’t had a call from him since. And, Diane …’

‘Yes?’

‘Mr Rawson’s age and general description match the victim.’

‘I thought we might be coming to that conclusion. Whoever was at the huts with Mr Rawson took his phone and wallet, and then made the 999 call.’

‘A plain and simple robbery, then,’ said Murfin. ‘Mugger panicked when he realized he’d hit the victim too hard.’

‘Funny place for a mugging,’ said Fry. ‘Funny place to be doing anything, really.’

‘Well, if our suspect uses Mr Rawson’s phone again, we can trace him.’

‘He’ll have ditched it by now, Gavin. More likely he’ll try to use the plastic in Mr Rawson’s wallet.’

‘I’ll get on to that.’

‘Thanks, Gavin. Scenes of Crime on the car?’

‘Soon as they can get there. Wayne says they’re going to be a bit stretched, what with the field, the hut and the car.’

‘I know.’

Fry drove back to the West Street headquarters in her Peugeot, conscious of the water dripping from her clothes on to the seats and soaking into the mats in the floor well. She had the heater going full blast, but all the windows had steamed up immediately she got in, and she had to open the driver’s side a crack to clear the condensation. The result was that the lorries passing her on the A623 blew spray on to her face before she was even dry.

In the CID room, everyone had packed up and gone home. On a white-board, someone had scrawled their own bitter slogan:

Sergeant Wilson’s Law: lack of resources + shortage of staff = shit hitting the fan.

The paperwork waiting on her desk included a copy of the G28 sudden-death report form, completed by the first officers attending the incident this morning. By the simple act of filling in the paperwork, uniforms would feel they’d effectively passed on a problem to CID.

Fry sighed. It was one of the aspects of CID work that constantly baffled and frustrated her, this requirement for developing a love of paperwork and file preparation, a mania for detail that could border on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

True, there were a few moments of excitement, but they were usually in the court room, sitting behind a barrister when a jury brought in a guilty verdict that you’d been working towards for months. There were moments when you had to drop everything and rush off to a critical incident, but those were pretty rare. There were other occasions when you had to deal with families going through the trauma of losing a loved one.

The rest of the job consisted of making lists of exhibits, preparing Narey files, sitting in CPS case conferences, sweating over duty rosters. She spent most of her time worrying about interviews, memos, file upgrades and threshold tests. Being a detective no longer seemed to have any kudos.

Recently, a new Assistant Chief Constable had joined the force from West Midlands Police. He’d even been commander for the Aston and Central Birmingham operational command units, where Fry had once been based. He was now Derbyshire’s ACC Operations, responsible not only for territorial divisions, but also for level two cross-border crime, crime support, armed-response vehicles, the task force and dog section.

Fry might have expected to be noticed under the new ACC. But her immediate problem was here in Edendale, in the form of Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh. Since she’d arrived in E Division, she seemed to have been casting some kind of dark spell, like a female Lord Voldemort.

This morning, Gavin Murfin had referred to Branagh’s ‘empire building’. Fry was beginning to suspect that she might have no place in Branagh’s empire.

She found DI Hitchens still in his office. Hitchens had recently taken to wearing black shirts and purple ties, like a jazz musician. Fry suspected he was letting his hair grow a bit longer, too. Tonight, he looked as though he ought to be sitting in the corner of a badly lit nightclub, nursing a double whisky and a clarinet case.

‘Tell me we’re on top of this case, Diane,’ he said.

‘This is no one-day event. Not like turning up at a domestic, lifting the boyfriend and getting an instant confession.’

‘Yes, those can get a bit boring,’ he agreed. ‘Mind you, there’s likely to be a mountain of paperwork.’

‘True. Well, we think we’ve got an ID, at least.’

‘That’s like having one ball in the National Lottery. What about the other five?’

‘Five?’

‘Cause of death, time of death, motive, means…’

‘… and a suspect?’

‘No, no. That’s the bonus ball.’ Hitchens stroked his tie impatiently. ‘There’s another one, but I just can’t think of it.’

‘Where did you get this lottery stuff from, sir?’

‘Management training,’ he sighed smugly. ‘It’s a focus aid.’

‘A what?’

‘A simple concept that helps focus your mind on the essential elements of a task. You break down each task into components and identify them by a mnemonic or a visual tag. It’s so that none of the elements gets forgotten or overlooked.’

Fry sighed. ‘Time of death is estimated at between nine and nine thirty this morning. We won’t get a confirmed cause of death until after the postmortem, of course, but it looked like blunt-force trauma to me. There were certainly serious head injuries.’

‘Good. But if you’re considering suspicious circumstances, do you have any suggestion of a motive?’

‘Not until we’ve gone into the victim’s background thoroughly. We don’t know yet what he was doing in Derbyshire, even. That should give us a line of enquiry.’

‘An arranged meeting?’

‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ said Fry. ‘The old agricultural research station is too unusual a place for a random encounter with a mugger. I’ll update you tomorrow.’

‘Yes, keep me in the loop.’

‘More management speak?’

Hitchens looked up. ‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing, sir.’