The Kill Call

Fry noted his reluctance. The decision was his at this stage, as the senior officer present. Personally, she had a strong feeling about the body in the field, but she was wary of talking about feelings. The notorious detective’s ‘hunch’ didn’t fit well with the pragmatic, evidence-based decision-making processes that came with the training. It sounded so old school.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘So he could have left his wallet and car keys at home, if he went out for a walk. He could have worn his nice new brogues instead of bothering to change into something more appropriate. I can see that’s possible. But why wouldn’t he have taken a mobile phone?’

‘He could have walked out of the house in the middle of a row with his wife. Slammed the front door without picking up his keys or phone, and decided not to go back for them.’

Fry turned away. ‘Done that yourself, too, have you?’

‘What did you say, Diane?’

‘Nothing, sir. I was just saying that it was more likely horse droppings than a cow pat. We’ve got hoof marks all over the scene.’

‘There’s your first line on a potential witness, then.’

‘Yes, I’m on to it,’ said Fry. ‘But without more resources out here, it’s going to be totally impossible to interview all the hunt supporters. Anyway, I’m convinced they’re just going to close ranks.’

Fry thought of the SIOs’ mantra: What do I know now? What do I need to know? How am I going to find out? On the other hand, her most important question might be ‘How much are they going to let me find out?’

‘Think of another approach,’ said Hitchens.

She sighed. ‘We could round up the sabs. There aren’t anywhere near as many of them.’

‘There you go, then. Anyway, a confirmed ID is your first priority.’

‘Naturally.’

The DI studied her for a moment, and waited until a SOCO passed out of earshot.

‘Are you all right, Diane?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. Fine.’

‘Good.’

It was well known that Hitchens had been asking everyone in CID if they were ‘all right’, ever since the arrival of the new detective superintendent. Probably it was a form of caring for staff morale.

‘An ID by tomorrow then,’ he said. ‘Top priority.’

‘It’s early days, sir.’

‘Of course. Early days.’

Fry watched Hitchens walk back to his car, his job done for now. He could go back to his paperwork at the office until another major operational decision was called for.

But he was right, of course. They couldn’t get a serious enquiry under way until there was an ID on the victim. An identification would come one way or another – possibly through a missing-person report, maybe through fingerprints or DNA, if the victim had a criminal record. If not, then a trawl around the available dental records, or more likely a tip-off from a member of the public when the media appeals went out.

That all took time, of course. It could be months, if not years, if they had to rely on appeals and bulletins to other forces around the country. And sometimes with an unidentified body, it was more than months and years – it was never. There were old cases lying on the files where no ID had been achieved after five or ten years, or more. Those were the victims with no family or friends to come forward and claim them, people who appeared to have no available lives to be pieced together.

Fry shook her head. The man in the field surely wasn’t one of those. This victim was no homeless vagrant, nor a runaway teenager or illegal immigrant. She was convinced he must be a man with a house somewhere, a job, a car, a bank account. There was probably a wife expecting him home, row or not. Or at least a pet waiting to be fed. Someone would have missed him when he didn’t come back last night, colleagues would notice that he wasn’t at work today. Even if he was a solitary tourist, his holiday would be due to finish some time. It was unfeasible that he could stay unidentified for long.

Fry’s phone rang. It was Hitchens on his way back to Edendale, safely in his car and out of the rain.

‘Diane, why haven’t you got Ben Cooper at the scene?’ he said. ‘Is he on a rest day, or processing?’

‘Processing,’ said Fry. ‘He’s back at the office.’

And it was only then that she noticed a missed call on her phone.

There was always a wind blowing, up here on the moors. Looking across the valley, Cooper could see acres of pale grass rippling on the plateau, clouded by swirls of rain. It was as if the whole moorland was moving, a vast tide rushing endlessly eastwards in the direction of Nottinghamshire.

Because of the number of police vehicles already present, he had been unable to get his Toyota near the crime scene, even with four-wheel drive. So Cooper had to walk the last few hundred yards on a lane that rose steeply from the village of Birchlow.

At the bottom, there had been plenty of evidence of the Eden Valley Hunt meet, and Matt had been tense with the expectation of encountering people he knew. But the main body of the hunt must have been away in the fields somewhere, following their artificial fox-scented trail.

Cooper stopped for a few moments to catch his breath, trying to orientate himself. Near the top of the lane, the views were spectacular, with several gritstone edges dominating the northern and eastern skylines – White Edge, Froggatt Edge, Curbar and Baslow. But, for the most part, Longstone Moor wasn’t one of the wild, barren moors characteristic of the Dark Peak further north. Its expanses were positively civilized, with farms, quarries, fields, and a criss-crossing of tracks formed by generations of people crossing the moor.

Ever since he was a child, Cooper had never stopped being fascinated by the layer upon layer of history that formed the landscape he’d grown up in. Thousands of years of history, visible right there in front of him, wherever he went – Neolithic stone circles and burial chambers, medieval guide stoops way out on the moors, the bumps and hollows of the lead mines, whose abandoned workings dated back to the arrival of the Romans. Cooper felt himself to be a part of that history, completely inseparable from it. Those people who’d built the stone circles, who’d worked in the lead mines, and carved the names on the guide stoops – they’d all been his ancestors.

Ahead of him, Longstone Edge itself was carved by the vast, white scars of opencast mining called rakes. Some were abandoned now, great gashes in the landscape as if a series of earthquakes had split the ground open. But open-cast mining was still active here, on a big scale. Longstone Edge had been the subject of a long-running campaign protesting against the extent of limestone extraction, thirteen million tons of Peak District hillside trucked away every year for roadworks and building projects.

He could see graded piles of chippings awaiting collection near the new haulage road to Cavendish Mill. Some abandoned workings had filled with water, forming the kind of small lake known locally as a flash, its surface seething with rain.

Putting his head down, Cooper carried on walking. If he remembered rightly, the mere names of the tracks in this area were redolent with history. At one time, Black Harry the highwayman had terrorized travellers crossing the moors around Longstone and Birchlow. His activities had gone on for years before they were cut short on the gibbet at Wardlow Mires. But his name still lived on in Black Harry Lane, Black Harry Gate, and Black Harry House. His memory was preserved forever on the White Peak sheets of the Ordnance Survey map.

In fact, with so many clues to Black Harry’s whereabouts, it was funny that the highwayman had taken so long to catch.

Fry found Wayne Abbott loading some equipment back into his vehicle. Abbott was lucky enough to have been given a 4x4 to drive and had managed to get near the scene without having to hike across the fields.

‘Those hoof marks,’ said Fry. ‘When were they left?’

‘Ah, I expect you mean pre-or post-mortem? It’s difficult to say.’

‘Still –?’

The crime-scene manager shrugged. ‘No, really – it’s too difficult to say. Unless we find a hoof mark underneath the body, or some other conflicting trace …’

‘Let me know soonest if you do.’

‘Of course.’

‘So we still don’t know how he got from dinner at the Le Chien Noir to a field near Birchlow,’ said Fry thoughtfully.

‘On horseback?’ suggested Murfin. ‘Since we have all these hoof marks.’

Fry shook her head. ‘It seems pretty unlikely to me, but forensics will be able to tell us when they get his clothes in the lab.’

‘Well, how else do the horses come into it?’

‘I don’t know. But there are an awful lot of the hunting fraternity hallooing about down there with their fancy jackets and strangled vowels.’