Stephen Booth - The kill call

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.’

Fry felt her determination harden as they drove to Watersaw House, where the Forbes lived. There was no way she was going to stand at her own crime scene and let someone like Ben Cooper tell her she was wrong. He wasn’t even supposed to be here, for heaven’s sake.

Yet Cooper seemed to be unavoidable. Trying to keep him at arm’s length was as impractical as taking precautions against the plague.

‘This Eyam place,’ she said, as they passed the end of the village. ‘The Plague Village. What’s that all about, then? The Black Death as a form of entertainment? I know people are really stuck for things to do in these parts, but celebrating the plague is pretty weird, even for Derbyshire.’

‘I think it’s more a question of celebrating the village’s survival,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what the story is all about.’