The Kill Call

by Stephen Booth

  Fry nodded. She didn’t know who her victim was, yet she already seemed to have an array of potential witnesses, suspects and associates, all milling around the landscape having what passed for fun in these parts. Well, as much fun as you could have in the rain.

  A lone rider cantered down the road, a woman in a red coat who dug her knees into her horse’s flanks to turn it as she approached them. The mare trotted over the last few yards of wet grass, hooves thumping on the soft ground, steam spurting from its nostrils.

  The rider’s boots and jodhpurs were splattered with mud and her face was red from exertion and the cold air.

  ‘What’s the problem, Inspector?’

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Fry,’ said Redfearn. ‘She’s investigating a suspicious death in this area.’

  ‘I saw the activity across the way. Thought your people had just got lost.’

  ‘This is Mrs Forbes,’ Redfearn told Fry. ‘Joint master of the Eden Valley Hunt.’

  Fry didn’t think she’d ever been quite so near to a horse before. She knew absolutely nothing about them, except that they bit at one end and kicked at the other.

  She explained to Mrs Forbes what she wanted. As she spoke, the rider looked down at her with an expression she’d seen on the faces of the hunt supporters when the saboteurs got too close. An unmistakable hint of contempt, probably just the instinct of the mounted person looking down from a great height on the lowly pedestrian.

  ‘You think any of our members might know something about this?’ said Mrs Forbes. ‘What nonsense.’

  ‘If we could just speak to the people –’

  ‘I can’t allow you to speak to anyone. It’s just some mad story made up by those antis.’

  Fry could feel the horse’s breath blowing from its nostrils in warm jets. She suspected that the animal regarded him with much more benevolence than its owner did.

  ‘One way or another, I’ll speak to your huntsman, and anyone else who was in this area at around eight thirty this morning,’ said Fry. ‘If you prefer, we can stop the hunt altogether while we do that.’

  Beside her, Redfearn cleared his throat nervously, but said nothing. Mrs Forbes stared from one to the other, her hands gripping the reins tightly, as if it was her horse that was on the verge of getting out of control, rather than her own reactions.

  ‘Do what you like,’ she said finally. ‘Who is this person who got himself killed?’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  Mrs Forbes snorted, and pulled at her reins. ‘I’ll give Widdowson instructions.’

  Fry watched her go, the mare’s tail flicking from side to side as if bothered by invisible flies.

  ‘Widdowson?’ she said.

  ‘The huntsman,’ said Redfearn.

  The inspector’s radio crackled, and he listened for a moment.

  ‘This body of yours, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Did I understand that he died some time this morning?’

  ‘About eight thirty. Why?’

  ‘Funny thing, that’s all. One of my officers is reporting that some of the sabs got a bit over-excited. They said they heard three long, wavering notes on a hunting horn. It sounded to them like the signal that calls in the hounds to kill the fox, or the terrier men to dig him out. That got them all worked up. But it was too early, the hunt hadn’t even moved off. So I think they must have been mistaken.’

  Fry had lost interest, but tried to appear polite. ‘Well, thank you for your co-operation, Inspector.’

  Redfearn looked offended. ‘Well, I just thought you should know. In case it was relevant that some of the sabs say they heard the kill call.’

  Fry turned back. ‘The what?’

  ‘That’s the name of it,’ said the inspector. ‘Three long, wavering notes. It’s known as the kill call.’

  5

  A few minutes later, Diane Fry was sitting in her car and fuming. She had gone barely a few yards out of the gateway before she met the entire hunt coming back from the direction of Birchlow. Horses, dogs, people in Land Rovers and vans, others trailing behind on foot. It was a complete carnival.

  Traffic was brought to a halt at a crossroads on the A623 while the hunt went by. As the horses passed, the sudden clattering of hooves on tarmac was uncomfortably loud inside the Peugeot. For a few minutes it completely drowned out the mutter of her idling engine and even the efforts of Annie Lennox, who was hurling Songs of Mass Destruction at her from the CD player. As the hunt pressed around the car, a powerful whiff of sweating horse crept in through the driver’s window, followed by a rich aroma of saddles, cotton jodhpurs and manure.

  Many of the mounted hunt supporters seemed to be young girls, wearing their hard hats and pony-club complexions, bright-eyed and eager for a twenty-mile hack. What was really amazing, though, was that there were still so many middle-aged businessmen who sat comfortably on horseback. Surely most members of the business community had never been nearer to a horse than the grandstand at Uttoxeter race course, or the counter of the betting shop in Clappergate, depending on their degree of commercial success.

  But the joint master, Mrs Forbes, looked confident and well in control of her mount as she led the main body of the hunt. A long tail of riders was still making its way across a field from the direction of Foolow, kicking up clods of dirt as they cantered towards the road.

  One particularly large horse came a little too close to the Peugeot for comfort. Its rear end swung round and it began to prance sideways, edging nearer to the car until the muscles of its haunches were almost pressed against the window, twitching and glistening in the rain. The sweating hindquarters were level with Fry’s face, and she could see quite clearly that it was an ungelded stallion.

  Fry closed her eyes, waiting for an impact, the crunch of hooves on metal. But no collision came. When she opened her eyes again, the horses were disappearing beyond the next bend, the clatter of hooves growing quieter.

  So the motley bunch of people tagging along in a little group at the back must be the saboteurs. Some of them looked like students, glittering with piercings and tattoos, and one even had a red mohican, which was exactly how she would have pictured them, if asked. But a few of the protestors were middle-aged women, positively respectable looking, wearing walking boots with thick socks rolled over their ankles, and carrying little rucksacks. They reminded her of the Greenham Common women who had impressed her when she was a small child, because they always seemed to be on the TV news.

  A couple of the sabs were carrying video cameras, others had mobile phones they were using to take photographs. Maybe they were also keeping in touch with another group somewhere, with a person in charge of co-ordination. Or perhaps they really were just a disorganized rabble letting off a bit of steam.

  On the other hand, she could see now that video cameras and mobile phones weren’t the only equipment the protestors were carrying.

  She saw Inspector Redfearn, and wound her window down.

  ‘Inspector, do you know some of those animal rights people are carrying whips?’

  ‘Yes, it’s usual. Its one of their tactics for confusing the hounds.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you seize them? Wouldn’t you consider them offensive weapons?’

  ‘Ah, but look at the huntsman, and half of the riders. They all have whips or riding crops. We can’t seize them from one side and not from the other.’

  ‘So it’s all in the cause of impartiality?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  Fry shook her head. If the two sides had both been armed with baseball bats, knives, or AK-47s, there’d have been no question how the police would react. But nice, middle-class people couldn’t have their whips taken off them, could they?

  The inspector’s radio burst into life, and he listened for a moment.

  ‘Uh-oh. It seems to be kicking off on the other side of that copse.’

  ‘So there is another group of sabs.’

  ‘Sounds like it. This lot are probably just the diversion.’

&n
bsp; Fry got out of her car and waited to see what would happen. It was so difficult to tell what was going on. A confusion of shouting, horns blowing, car engines revving, hooves clattering on the tarmac. She smelled a chemical spray on the air, almost as if tear gas had been fired. Four police officers ran down the track from where she’d last seen the hounds. A radio crackled, someone uttered a short, sharp scream.

  She walked a few yards further up the track, feeling completely out of her depth.

  ‘Do you need help?’ she called.

  ‘It’s usually all over and done with in a few minutes,’ said the inspector. ‘It’ll just be a question of who’s left with the most bruises.’

  Four men in camouflage jackets trotted past her. They were all big men, bulky under their jackets, and one of them was carrying a pickaxe handle. He gave Fry a hard stare as he went by, and she felt sure she’d seen him before, possibly in court, or occupying a cell in the custody suite. If she’d seen those four sitting in a car within fifty yards of a bank, she would have been tempted to call in the response team to arrest them on suspicion of planning an armed robbery. Today, though, they all wore baseball caps that said HUNT STEWARD. The unmistakable scent of violence hung on the air.

  ‘I see the hunt have their own heavies, Inspector,’ said Fry.

  ‘The stewards, yes. They were stood down for quite a while, but they seem to have been re-formed for the occasion.’

  ‘Looking for a chance to teach the protestors a lesson, I suppose.’

  ‘We do try to keep an eye on them. But with an event like this, things can be spread over a wide area. The hounds are in one place, the riders another, and the car followers all over the shop. That’s why we tend to watch the sabs. The trouble happens where they are, one way or another.’

  An officer came up and spoke to the inspector.

  ‘OK, thanks.’ He turned back to Fry. ‘It seems some hunt supporters blocked the sabs’ van in with their vehicles and let the tyres down. That’s pretty tame stuff, really.’

  ‘What about all the shouting and screaming?’

  ‘Oh, one of the joint masters got a bit aggravated and chased the sabs down the road.’

  ‘When he was on horseback?’

  ‘That’s “she”. Two of the Eden Valley joint masters are women. Yes, she was mounted at the time. A horse can be a bit terrifying when it’s coming towards you at a canter. That’s one reason we use them ourselves, of course.’

  A moment later, two young women ran through the trees and on to the road towards the police. One of them had blood streaming down her face and into her hair from a cut above her eye, and the other was holding a hand to her mouth, wincing in pain.

  ‘That doesn’t look like tame stuff to me.’

  ‘I’ll get an ambulance here.’

  ‘Good luck getting it through, Inspector.’

  But the two women were soon telling their story in the back of a police car while they waited for the ambulance.

  ‘It’s often the female sabs who get hurt,’ said the inspector, when he returned.

  ‘Funny, that.’

  ‘To be honest, I think they’re probably the most provocative. Though I suppose I shouldn’t say it.’

  Fry made her way back to her Peugeot, carefully stepping over heaps of steaming horse muck on the road, and the muddy ruts left by the wheels of the transporters. She was just in time to see a stray foxhound, its tongue lolling, cocking a leg to urinate on her car.

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ said Fry, to no one in particular. ‘Another slice of country life.’

  Sean Crabbe was surprised to have made it home safely. He was still trembling and sweating by the time he arrived at the house, and he had to pretend that he’d been running. Then he had to make up some excuse to explain why he wasn’t at college, which he’d forgotten all about.

  If only he could afford to get a place of his own, this would never be a problem. He was twenty years old, for Christ’s sake. He ought to be independent, earning his own living, free to come and go when he pleased, without making explanations.

  But instead he had to mutter something vague about not feeling well, before disappearing to his room. His mother looked at him suspiciously, but she would probably decide that he must have ’flu coming on or something. What he needed most was to have a shower, and to check whether he had any traces of blood on him.

  Sean couldn’t believe he’d done something so stupid. Maybe he could blame Coldplay; ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’. Damn right. That was exactly what had happened.

  In that moment of anger at the intrusion into his territory, the invasion of his sanctuary among the derelict buildings, he’d acted without thinking things through. Just because no one else ever came up to the huts, because he was so confident that he wouldn’t be seen, he’d done something he would never have considered in the ordinary world. He wasn’t a criminal, in fact he hated the junkies and yobs and thieves he saw every night in the streets of Edendale. He never wanted to be part of their world. So why had he done it?

  Sean stripped off his clothes, holding his parka and jeans up to the light from his bedroom window. No sign of blood. But what about his trainers? Soil and dust trapped in the pattern of his soles, a few small pieces of stone. If the police got hold of them, they would probably be able to piece together exactly where he’d been, the way they did on CSI.

  He scrubbed the soles of his trainers in the sink, then showered and put his clothes into the wash basket. No telling when Mum might collect them, but there was nothing he could do about that, except hope she did it soon. If he mentioned it to her, she’d know something was wrong.

  While he dried himself, he went through the sequence of events again. From the first scent of that sweet smell in the hut, the knowledge that someone else was present, to the panicky call he’d made to the emergency services. And then hurling the phone as far as he could into the first suitable place he came to.

  Well, that was stupid. He should have thought more carefully about where he disposed of the phone. The call was probably a mistake, too. But they couldn’t trace him from that, could they? It wasn’t his phone, after all. He’d tried to wipe it clean before he got rid of it. Fingerprints were one thing he did know about.

  It was just that momentary opportunity, the desire that had overtaken him when he’d seen the phone just lying there, and the bulging wallet with all that money in it. All that money. The temptation had been too much. Anyone else would have done the same.

  But he hoped the man wasn’t really dead. After the incident with the vagrant, he’d assumed that he recognized death. Assumed, too, that he could clear out and watch the action, with no one any the wiser. No one to know that he’d been there.

  Sean shuddered as he re-lived the moment the corpse had seemed to come back to life. Like a scene from a horror movie. A bloodied zombie with a hole in the head, but sitting back up and reaching out blindly, gripping his arm with fingers that dug deep into his skin.

  That had been what made him run. He’d run from the old huts until his breath was ragged and a stitch jabbed unbearable pains into his side. He seemed to have run for a long, long time through the rain before he stopped. For a few minutes, he’d actually tried to think logically, wondered whether he ought to go back, so he could do the right thing and sort everything out. But he’d looked at his watch and realized how long he’d left it. Far too long for him to look innocent.

  Then he’d finally made the call. As quick as he could – no name, no location, no return number.

  And Sean had discovered that he was on the moor, in the middle of the dark heather and the capped mine shafts. And he’d known where he could dispose of the phone. He’d climbed the fence and watched it tumble out of sight, heard the smash as it hit the rocks on the bottom. No one would be calling that phone again.

  It was a pity, though. It had been a nice new Sony Ericsson with video calling and everything. At least he still had the money.

  Sean was feeling calmer now. H
e dressed in clean clothes, wished that he had a smoke available to steady his hand, then lay down on his bed to wait until he was called. He plugged in his iPod again. Not Coldplay this time, but the Kaiser Chiefs: ‘I Predict a Riot’.

  And Sean finally allowed himself to dream about what he could do with the money he’d taken. The money that had belonged to the dead man.

  6

  When Fry finally got back to her body on Longstone Moor, she found her DI, Paul Hitchens, waiting for her. He hadn’t even bothered walking all the way to the scene, but was leaning against a car at the rendezvous point.

  ‘Death verified, Diane?’ he said.

  ‘The paramedics were here first. The ME has confirmed.’

  ‘Life pronounced extinct, as the old boys used to say.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Fry knew that police officers weren’t officially trusted to verify death. Not unless death was obvious. Since procedures failed to define ‘obviously dead’, it generally meant decapitation or an advanced stage of decomposition before any officer could exercise judgement.

  ‘Cause of death?’ asked Hitchens.

  Fry shook her head. ‘There’s an obvious head injury. But we’ll have to wait for the preliminary PM report.’

  ‘It could have been a fall, though? Wet grass, plenty of stones lying around. Or a slippery cow pat – I’ve done it myself. What did he have on his feet? Appropriate footwear?’

  ‘No, sir,’ admitted Fry.

  ‘And the emergency call – that could have been some passerby not wanting to get involved. It happens all the time.’

  ‘In the town, maybe. But out here? It’s difficult to imagine a passer-by up at those old huts, anyway.’

  ‘The owner of the phone that the call was made on – he’s from out of the area, right?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll track him down, of course.’