Best Served Cold: A DCI Harry Grimm Novel

by David J Gatward

  ‘So where’s the body?’ Harry asked.

  Gordy nodded to the barns at the back of the house. ‘Jim’s already got the tape out, Matt’s inside with the family, the poor beggars, and the rest of the party is on its way. Twice in two days, as well. Imagine how happy everyone’s going to be about that!’

  ‘What about Jenny and Liz?’

  ‘Jenny got a call in to a domestic down in Aysgarth. Liz is with her.’

  ‘Aysgarth?’

  ‘Famous waterfalls,’ Gordy said. ‘Kevin Costner was all Hollywood in them when they filmed Prince of Thieves.’

  As they walked past the house to where Gordy had directed, Harry spotted some children’s toys in the garden by the house. It was just a little wooden swing and a tricycle, but the sight of them had Harry immediately thinking the worst.

  ‘It’s not one of the bairns if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Gordy said, clearly catching what Harry was thinking. ‘I’d have given you fair warning of that, I can assure you.’

  A bit further on was when the smell crept up Harry’s nose. It was the kind of smell he’d heard people describe as the smell of the countryside, a healthy smell even, but to him, it was just cow shit, and he wasn’t a fan.

  The source of the smell was also the thing surrounded by Jim’s cordoning tape. It was a concrete pit, sunk into the hill behind, the base of it sloping steeply downwards to disappear into a steaming, slick mass of brown slurry. Just a way off to its left side was the open-sided barn with the cattle. At the sight of Harry the animals ran to the back of the barn.

  Harry saw Jim and gave him a half-hearted salute, touching the side of his forehead with his left hand.

  ‘I know I’m going to regret asking this,’ Harry said, ‘but what are we dealing with here? What happened? And how is it possible to collect that much cow shit from so few animals?’

  Jim came over.

  ‘I’ll let him explain,’ Gordy said, nodding at the PCSO.

  ‘About the shit or the body?’ Jim asked.

  ‘I think you can do both, if that’s okay with you?’

  Harry, with another look at the slurry pit, wasn’t so sure that he wanted him to.

  ‘The slurry collects over winter,’ Jim said. ‘The animals are kept inside during the colder weather and the muck is cleaned out regularly. Keeps them clean and healthy, and you’ve then got some excellent stuff to throw on your land. Good fertiliser.’

  ‘So why are they in the barn right now?’ Harry asked.

  ‘It’s been a wee bit hot,’ Gordy said, ‘that right, Jim?’

  Jim gave a nod. ‘Hot weather you have to keep them indoors. Can’t have your herd getting heatstroke.’

  Harry went to laugh but realised Jim was serious. ‘Heatstroke? Cows can get that? Seriously?’

  ‘Badly,’ Jim said. ‘Anyway, you ready?’

  ‘Not really, no,’ Harry replied, pulling on some PPE. ‘But let’s get on with it and see what we have.’

  Jim then led Harry and Gordy around the outside of the cordon tape and pointed over at the pit. ‘Call came in just over an hour ago. The farmer spotted something floating in the pit and went for a closer look, thinking a sheep or a deer maybe had fallen in, something like that.’

  ‘Only it wasn’t a sheep,’ Harry offered.

  ‘No,’ Jim said. ‘Most definitely not a sheep.’

  Harry strained his eyes to see if he could make anything out in the muck, but all he could see was a pool of brown and he had no real urge to get any closer to it. ‘Any idea who it is?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ Jim said. ‘The body is on its front and covered in cow muck. Won’t be able to see until it’s pulled out. And I’m happy to leave that to the CSI lot. Also, I’m a PCSO, and I’m pretty sure that fishing a corpse out of a lake of cow shit is above my pay grade. By which I mean, way above.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ Harry asked, then looked over to Gordy for a bit of mutual support. ‘From what I’ve been told, PCSOs are the backbone of the police force, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Gordy said. ‘Because they’re willing to go the extra mile, I think.’

  ‘Where would we be without them?’

  ‘It’s something I don’t want to even consider, so I don’t think I will.’

  Harry could see from the look on Jim’s face that he was hearing their words but not exactly listening to them. He glanced back at the farmhouse. ‘So it’s definitely not one of the family, then?’

  ‘Nope,’ Jim said. ‘They’re all accounted for. The farmer’s pretty shaken up by it, but that’s fair enough. Reckon he thought it was one of his kids when he first saw it, even though it couldn’t be, seeing as they were all still in bed.’

  ‘And so should we all be,’ Harry grumbled.

  ‘Now that I’m here, I think I’ll go and relieve the family of Matt,’ Gordy said, clearly sensing a momentary break in the conversation. ‘It should be the other way around, but this is Matt we’re talking about after all. I doubt he’s shut up since he got in there.’

  Harry watched Gordy head off back over to the farmhouse. ‘She’s really not what I’m used to dealing with when it comes to Family Liaison Officers.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Jim asked.

  ‘She’s just a little bit more abrupt than you’d expect,’ Harry said.

  ‘Well, she’s good at it,’ Jim said. ‘I hear you had fun with Nick last night? Matt was telling me about it.’

  Harry wasn’t so sure fun was the way he would have described it. ‘Yeah, we didn’t exactly learn much.’

  A shout caught Harry’s attention and he turned to see Matt striding out towards them.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Harry replied. ‘Shocker.’

  ‘Bit of a rough one, this, isn’t it? Drowning in shit! What a way to go.’

  ‘I’m assuming that’s you just guessing at what happened,’ Harry said, ‘unless you’ve got some kind of crystal ball in your pocket.’

  Matt went to say something, but his voice was cut off by the sound of vehicles pulling off the road and in at the front of the farmhouse.

  Harry looked over.

  ‘She’s not going to be happy about this, is she?’ Jim said, seeing who had just arrived.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Harry said, a hint of a smile cracking his face. ‘Not in the slightest.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Harry stood with Jim and Matt as the photographer he had met yesterday worked his way around the crime scene taking photos from all angles, as well as a little video. The divisional surgeon had already been and gone, pronouncing death with the immortal words, ‘Dead? Well of course they’re bloody dead! It’s a bloated body in a pond of cow shit! How could it be anything else?’ She had then spoken briefly to her daughter, Rebecca Sowerby, the pathologist, before heading back off into the day.

  ‘You’d think he’d have gone for something like wedding photography instead,’ Harry mused, watching as the photographer leaned over the slurry pit, snapping more photos.

  ‘I guess,’ Jim said. ‘Though can you imagine it? Weddings, day in, day out? The married couple ordering you about, the family getting pissed and falling out with each other?’

  ‘Free food and booze, though,’ Matt suggested. ‘And I doubt it stinks like this does.’

  The photographer, having finished his job, dipped his head down and under the tape and walked over towards Harry and Jim.

  ‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘Not a nice way to go, is it?’

  ‘Don’t think such a thing exists,’ Harry said.

  The photographer wandered off back to his car at the side of the road when Harry called after him.

  ‘You sent the files through from yesterday yet?’

  ‘Sure did,’ the photographer said. ‘They’re with, oh, what’s he called . . . Swift?’

  Harry bristled at this.

  ‘The hell have you sent them to him for? I’m the SOI!’

  ‘
He asked for them,’ the photographer shrugged. ‘Told me to send them to him first. I thought he was forwarding them on. I guess not.’

  ‘You guessed right.’

  ‘I’ll send them as soon as I get back,’ the photographer said. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Harry grumbled, ‘I bet he isn’t, though.’

  Harry turned his attention back to the slurry pit and the body floating in it. Walking towards it now was Rebecca Sowerby, the pathologist, and a couple of others dressed head to toe in white paper PPE suits.

  ‘Swift usually ask for stuff before the team sees it?’ he asked Jim and Matt.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Jim said, then gestured towards the white figures surrounding the pit. ‘Rather them than me.’

  One of the figures reached into the pit with a long, hooked metal pole. After a couple of attempts they managed to snag it onto the body and was able to start pulling it towards the side, before guiding it slowly towards the front of the pit, where it could be easily accessed.

  Matt turned away from the pit to face Harry and Jim. ‘Reckon we may as well leave them to it,’ he said. ‘Not much we can do here right now, is there? And it’s not exactly grabbing my attention as a spectator sport.’

  ‘Need to speak to the pathologist first,’ Harry said. ‘Then we can head back to the office.’

  Once the body was at the front of the slurry pit, the three figures who had guided it over walked past Harry, Jim and Matt to start wading into the oozing, brown, steaming pool, to gently drag it out. One of the figures peeled off and came back to stand in front of them.

  ‘Grimm,’ it said, from behind its white mask.

  ‘You could say that,’ Harry replied. ‘You got the report on yesterday’s find?’

  The figure lifted the mask from off her face and Rebecca Sowerby, the pathologist, stared up at Harry. ‘It’s with Swift,’ she said. ‘He was supposed to forward it to you.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t,’ Harry said.

  ‘Take it up with him, then.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ Harry muttered, then said, ‘but if you can give me a quick summary, that would be really helpful.’

  ‘As you can see, I’m a little busy.’

  ‘Wading through shit, quite literally,’ Harry said.

  Not even the faintest hint of a smile cracked the pathologist’s stern demeanour.

  ‘Well, there’s sod all to report,’ Sowerby said. ‘The body was in a pretty bad way, as you saw for yourself. Finding anything would’ve been a challenge anyway, with the trauma it had experienced. But after two days out in the elements?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So what did you find, then?’ Harry asked. ‘DNA? Footprints at the scene? Fingerprints? Anything?’

  ‘No DNA, no hair,’ Sowerby said.

  ‘What about the feather?’ Matt asked, interjecting suddenly.

  The pathologist, Harry was sure, pretty much growled at Matt’s interruption.

  ‘We found bruising on the deceased’s neck,’ Sowerby said.

  ‘Strangled?’ Harry asked.

  Sowerby shook her head. ‘Windpipe wasn’t crushed. More like a sleeper hold, you know, arm around the neck, squeeze, cut off the blood supply, instant rag doll.’

  Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Instant rag doll? That’s a new one on me.’

  ‘The deceased was probably grabbed from behind, choked, knocked out. Not easy to do.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ Jim asked. ‘I’ve seen it often enough.’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve seen it in the movies,’ Harry said. ‘Doing it for real is a little different. You need to know what you’re doing and to be strong enough to do it. Pretty dangerous, too, seeing as you can easily kill someone doing it. And John was a big dude so not an easy task to get done by any means.’

  ‘As for the feather,’ Sowerby said, staring at Matt, ‘all we know is that it’s an eagle feather. What breed of eagle I don’t know, but I’ll get the results to you when we have them in. No DNA on it other than that of the deceased.’

  Harry stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. ‘So, someone put a sleeper hold on him, took him out to the field, stuffed him under the trailer, then ran him over, and as a final touch shoved an eagle feather in his mouth. Well, it’s certainly creative if nothing else, I’ll give them that.’

  ‘Seems that way, yes,’ Sowerby said. ‘And before you ask, the time of death is pretty difficult to nail down at the best of times, so with that one? Almost impossible! Best I can say is that the body had been there for at least two days.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Jim asked, and Harry took note of it, happy to see that he was always trying to learn. There was a lot to be said for it, he thought, and a lot numerous detectives could learn from it as well, some of them being proper know-it-alls.

  ‘It’s not just the state of the body,’ Sowerby explained, clearly sparking at Jim’s show of interest. ‘Nature’s been having its wicked way with it, so the flies, the maggots and their size, that kind of thing, all gives us a good indication. His body was basically a massive sex fest for all the creepy crawlies.’

  ‘And we know that he was alive on Friday anyway,’ Harry added.

  There was a groan from one of the two PPE-clad figures.

  ‘How you going to approach this one, then?’ he asked.

  ‘With a hose,’ Sowerby said. ‘We’ll have to search as best we can through whatever’s on the body as we clean it off, then get it back to have a proper look.’

  ‘Sounds like fun.’

  ‘Doesn’t it just?’

  Harry realised then that the conversation with the pathologist hadn’t just been informative but almost civil. Not friendly as such but neither of them had taken a bite at the other. He was as relieved as he was confused.

  ‘What about footprints?’ Harry asked. ‘If someone did drive John out there in his own tractor to crush him under the wheels of the trailer, then they had to walk out.’

  ‘Footprints, yes,’ Sowerby said, ‘but no treads. Looks like whoever was there with him had bags strapped around their shoes.’

  ‘Clever,’ Harry said. ‘And annoying.’

  ‘We’ve taken moulds, measurements, the usual, see if we can get some idea of weight, a guess on height from the length of stride, that kind of thing. What use all that’ll be, who knows?’

  ‘Well, we’ll leave you to it,’ Harry said. ‘If you can get that report to me that would be great.’

  ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’ Sowerby said, her voice sharp again. ‘Christ alive! You really do think the world revolves around you, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant . . .’

  But the pathologist wasn’t listening and had gone back to join her colleagues.

  ‘Back to the office, then?’ Matt asked.

  Harry thought for a moment and then pointed towards the farmhouse. ‘You said the farmer found the body, yes?’

  ‘Yep,’ Matt said. ‘Just doing his morning check of his stock and there it was, bobbing about.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to him now if that’s possible? And we’ll want him to come down to the station to give an official statement, but a chat now would be good, while it’s all still fresh in his mind.’

  Matt quickly walked off towards the house to get the farmer.

  ‘You don’t think this is connected to yesterday’s thing, do you?’ Jim asked. ‘John’s death and now this?’

  ‘Do you?’ Harry replied.

  Jim was quiet for a moment before he said anything more.

  ‘Accidents happen on farms all the time,’ Jim said. ‘They’re dangerous places. I’ve not known two to happen so closely together though. But yesterday’s wasn’t an accident, was it? And now this? Doesn’t smell right.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Harry said, and he didn’t just mean the body being pulled out of the slurry either. There was something about it all that gave him the horrible feeling that things would only get worse befor
e they got better.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘This won’t take long,’ Harry said to the man now standing with him, Matt and Jim. ‘Sorry to take you away from your family. This must be hard for you all.’

  ‘Hard? It’s bloody horrible is what it is,’ the man said. ‘Not every day you wake up to find a body on your land, you know. You’re not all going to ask me lots of questions, are you? I don’t do well with questions.’

  Harry attempted a smile, despite the fact that he knew it generally made his face look worse. ‘PCSO Metcalf will just take notes, won’t you, Jim?’

  Jim gave a nod, brandishing his notebook and pencil.

  ‘And Detective Constable Dinsdale and I just want to get an idea of what you found, that’s all. Then if you can pop down to the office in Hawes later on today and give a statement, that would be very much appreciated.’

  ‘I’m not due to go to Hawes today, though,’ the man said. ‘Mart’s not on, is it? And there’s nowt I’m wanting from the supplies shop.’

  ‘Supplies shop?’ Harry asked.

  ‘It’s like a supermarket for farmers,’ Matt explained. ‘Imagine a place where you can buy anything from a chainsaw to chicken feed. Worth a look if you get a chance.’

  ‘I don’t have much need for either of those,’ Harry said.

  ‘Come on, everyone needs a chainsaw,’ Matt said.

  Harry looked back to the farmer. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘I didn’t give it.’

  ‘Come on, Pat,’ Jim said. ‘We’re here to help, you know that.’

  Harry caught a look between Jim and the farmer, who then seemed to relax a little.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it’s set me off a bit, if you know what I mean? I’m Pat. Patrick Coates.’

  Harry recognised the name. ‘Isn’t Liz a Coates?’ He asked, looking at Matt and Jim.

  ‘Probably a very, very, very distant relative,’ Matt said. ‘There’s names around here that have been around for centuries, Dinsdale, Metcalf, Coates, to name a few.’

  Harry pondered on this briefly, then was back to Pat. ‘So, Pat,’ he said, ‘if you could just run through what happened, that would be really helpful. And don’t worry if you think the details aren’t important, that’s for us to decide, okay?’