The Kill Call

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. ‘That’s 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 Fry’s 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 wasn’t 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 there’s 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 else’s 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. They’re everywhere.’

‘Yes, I suppose he could be a tourist,’ said Murfin. ‘Even in March.’

‘Great.’

‘Oh, and there’s a receipt from somewhere called the Le Chien Noir. It’s a restaurant in Edendale. Quite upmarket, I believe. Expensive, anyway.’

‘Not the sort of place I’m 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 man’s 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 wasn’t 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.

‘Let’s see what we’ve 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 hadn’t 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.

‘There’s no body here, Sergeant,’ said an officer who had been searching the building. ‘But we’ve 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 she’d come. The white body tent was clearly visible from here.

‘Well, unless we’ve got a dead man walking, this call wasn’t 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 doesn’t 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 we’ve 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.