The Kill Call

by Stephen Booth

  Somehow, it was worse when a man of her father’s age started to act foolishly. He’d always had such a good reputation for being careful with money, and now he seemed to have lost his head. Unsuitable business associates, doubtful enterprises, a persuasive woman with an eye for the main chance. And this trip to Derbyshire was the last straw.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t go. Haven’t you done more than enough for her? Why do you have to go yourself?’

  ‘I need to see her,’ said Michael simply.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To sort a few things out.’

  Her heart sank when he said that. ‘What things?’

  Michael smiled. ‘I’ll tell you about it when I get back.’

  But Erin didn’t feel like smiling. She was starting to get more and more upset as she watched her father put on his coat and pick up his car keys. He must have seen it in her face, and felt guilty.

  ‘If you don’t want to keep an eye on the house for me, love, I’ll understand. I’ll ask Mrs Fletcher next door.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. But, Dad … look after yourself, please.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  Erin kissed him as he went to the door. Her father was trying to sound bright and breezy, as if he was just popping down to the shop for a bottle of milk. But she knew it was much more than that.

  Michael Clay got into his Mercedes and waved as he turned on the drive. As she watched him go, Erin Lacey felt a tear in the corner of her eye, as if she was saying goodbye to her father for ever.

  7

  By the end of the day, the body had been released for collection by the mortuary. Fry watched the anonymous black van crawl away from Longstone Moor in the fading light.

  Now there was nothing more she could do at the scene. Inspector Redfearn’s men had rounded up as many of the anti-hunt protestors as they could and taken names and addresses, along with statements from any who had been in the area at eight thirty that morning. They had also seized video footage from several cameras, so that might help. The sabs seemed to have filmed anything that moved.

  Fry felt uncomfortable about dealing with the protestors in a different way from the hunt supporters. But she supposed the hunt was organized in a more formal way, and there would be no trouble obtaining the identities of any individuals she might want to talk to.

  The huntsman, John Widdowson, had finally appeared, looking very tired, and as damp as she felt herself. For a few seconds, Fry had found herself surrounded by the pack, dozens of panting brown-and-white dogs crowding around her legs, pink tongues lolling, the white tips of their tails flicking. Some of them had black patches around their eyes, like burglars’ masks, which gave them a peculiarly manic look. They sniffed at her knees and shook water from their coats.

  Widdowson’s story was that the hound van had arrived outside Birchlow shortly after eight thirty. Although there had been a few horse boxes already at the scene, he had noticed no riders heading off on their own. It wouldn’t have been the custom, he said.

  ‘It’s a pity the air support unit weren’t on station a bit earlier,’ said Fry, as she left Inspector Redfearn. ‘They could have filmed the whole incident for us.’

  ‘They had a priority call,’ said Redfearn. ‘A pursuit on the A61.’

  ‘I know. It would just have been nice to get a bit of luck for once.’

  Gavin Murfin called Fry before she could reach her car.

  ‘You’re on duty late, Gavin,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Thought you’d like to know straight away, boss. We’ve found a car. A Mitsubishi, 08 reg.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Way off the road, parked up by the old field barn on the edge of Longstone Moor. In fact, I think you might actually be able to see the barn from the crime scene.’

  Fry called up a picture of the scene in her mind. ‘It’s about a mile away, I guess.’

  ‘That would be about right.’

  ‘So I presume we’ve done a check on the number. Who’s the registered owner?’

  ‘A Mr Patrick Rawson, from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.’

  ‘The same man who made the 999 call.’

  ‘Well, the call was made on his phone, anyway.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Gavin. And …?’

  ‘Local police have just called at his address. His wife told them he drove up to Derbyshire yesterday, on business. But she hasn’t had a call from him since. And, Diane …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Rawson’s age and general description match the victim.’

  ‘I thought we might be coming to that conclusion. Whoever was at the huts with Mr Rawson took his phone and wallet, and then made the 999 call.’

  ‘A plain and simple robbery, then,’ said Murfin. ‘Mugger panicked when he realized he’d hit the victim too hard.’

  ‘Funny place for a mugging,’ said Fry. ‘Funny place to be doing anything, really.’

  ‘Well, if our suspect uses Mr Rawson’s phone again, we can trace him.’

  ‘He’ll have ditched it by now, Gavin. More likely he’ll try to use the plastic in Mr Rawson’s wallet.’

  ‘I’ll get on to that.’

  ‘Thanks, Gavin. Scenes of Crime on the car?’

  ‘Soon as they can get there. Wayne says they’re going to be a bit stretched, what with the field, the hut and the car.’

  ‘I know.’

  Fry drove back to the West Street headquarters in her Peugeot, conscious of the water dripping from her clothes on to the seats and soaking into the mats in the floor well. She had the heater going full blast, but all the windows had steamed up immediately she got in, and she had to open the driver’s side a crack to clear the condensation. The result was that the lorries passing her on the A623 blew spray on to her face before she was even dry.

  In the CID room, everyone had packed up and gone home. On a white-board, someone had scrawled their own bitter slogan:

  Sergeant Wilson’s Law: lack of resources + shortage of staff = shit hitting the fan.

  The paperwork waiting on her desk included a copy of the G28 sudden-death report form, completed by the first officers attending the incident this morning. By the simple act of filling in the paperwork, uniforms would feel they’d effectively passed on a problem to CID.

  Fry sighed. It was one of the aspects of CID work that constantly baffled and frustrated her, this requirement for developing a love of paperwork and file preparation, a mania for detail that could border on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

  True, there were a few moments of excitement, but they were usually in the court room, sitting behind a barrister when a jury brought in a guilty verdict that you’d been working towards for months. There were moments when you had to drop everything and rush off to a critical incident, but those were pretty rare. There were other occasions when you had to deal with families going through the trauma of losing a loved one.

  The rest of the job consisted of making lists of exhibits, preparing Narey files, sitting in CPS case conferences, sweating over duty rosters. She spent most of her time worrying about interviews, memos, file upgrades and threshold tests. Being a detective no longer seemed to have any kudos.

  Recently, a new Assistant Chief Constable had joined the force from West Midlands Police. He’d even been commander for the Aston and Central Birmingham operational command units, where Fry had once been based. He was now Derbyshire’s ACC Operations, responsible not only for territorial divisions, but also for level two cross-border crime, crime support, armed-response vehicles, the task force and dog section.

  Fry might have expected to be noticed under the new ACC. But her immediate problem was here in Edendale, in the form of Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh. Since she’d arrived in E Division, she seemed to have been casting some kind of dark spell, like a female Lord Voldemort.

  This morning, Gavin Murfin had referred to Branagh’s ‘empire building’. Fry was beginning to suspect that she might have no place in Bran
agh’s empire.

  She found DI Hitchens still in his office. Hitchens had recently taken to wearing black shirts and purple ties, like a jazz musician. Fry suspected he was letting his hair grow a bit longer, too. Tonight, he looked as though he ought to be sitting in the corner of a badly lit nightclub, nursing a double whisky and a clarinet case.

  ‘Tell me we’re on top of this case, Diane,’ he said.

  ‘This is no one-day event. Not like turning up at a domestic, lifting the boyfriend and getting an instant confession.’

  ‘Yes, those can get a bit boring,’ he agreed. ‘Mind you, there’s likely to be a mountain of paperwork.’

  ‘True. Well, we think we’ve got an ID, at least.’

  ‘That’s like having one ball in the National Lottery. What about the other five?’

  ‘Five?’

  ‘Cause of death, time of death, motive, means…’

  ‘… and a suspect?’

  ‘No, no. That’s the bonus ball.’ Hitchens stroked his tie impatiently. ‘There’s another one, but I just can’t think of it.’

  ‘Where did you get this lottery stuff from, sir?’

  ‘Management training,’ he sighed smugly. ‘It’s a focus aid.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A simple concept that helps focus your mind on the essential elements of a task. You break down each task into components and identify them by a mnemonic or a visual tag. It’s so that none of the elements gets forgotten or overlooked.’

  Fry sighed. ‘Time of death is estimated at between nine and nine thirty this morning. We won’t get a confirmed cause of death until after the postmortem, of course, but it looked like blunt-force trauma to me. There were certainly serious head injuries.’

  ‘Good. But if you’re considering suspicious circumstances, do you have any suggestion of a motive?’

  ‘Not until we’ve gone into the victim’s background thoroughly. We don’t know yet what he was doing in Derbyshire, even. That should give us a line of enquiry.’

  ‘An arranged meeting?’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ said Fry. ‘The old agricultural research station is too unusual a place for a random encounter with a mugger. I’ll update you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, keep me in the loop.’

  ‘More management speak?’

  Hitchens looked up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  Fry made her way to the door, under the impression that her DI had drifted away into some strange seminar-like world of his own, all whiteboards and overhead projectors, with a spicing of motivational role-play.

  ‘Witnesses,’ said Hitchens suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sixth lottery ball. Motive, means … and witnesses. That’s what you need, some potential witnesses.’

  ‘I’ve got a whole posse of them,’ said Fry. ‘But without enough bodies available, it’s impossible to question them all. By now, they could have got their stories straight, anyway.’

  Fry turned the Peugeot off Castleton Road into Grosvenor Avenue and pulled up at the kerb outside number 12, a once prosperous, detached Victorian villa nestling behind mock porticos. Her flat was on the first floor – a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom with shower cubicle, and a tiny kitchen area. Strangely, the first floor was regarded as the high-status part of the house, poised between the noisier ground-floor flats and the tiny bedsits in the old servants’ quarters on the top floor.

  Directly beneath her was a flat full of students. She wasn’t quite sure how many of them shared together – three, perhaps four. The number probably changed from week to week, for all she knew.

  When she’d first moved into number 12 Grosvenor Avenue, all the other occupants had been students, most of them studying at High Peak College on the west side of town. But in the past year or two, there had been a gradual population shift, with the students packing their rucksacks and heading for smart new accommodation in the halls of residence that had opened on the college campus. Their replacements seemed to be migrant workers of various nationalities. Many of them were as young as the students, but they were out all day, and often all night, working in hotels and restaurants around Edendale.

  Fry took off her jacket and shoes and collapsed on her bed. She must have a shower, or she might never feel human again.

  Cooper arrived at Welbeck Street gasping for a coffee. He felt as though he hadn’t taken a dose of caffeine all day; the briefing before the raid on the cannabis factory seemed so long ago now.

  He knew he drank too much coffee when he was at home on his own. He never used to do that – it was a habit he’d developed when he moved out of Bridge End Farm into Welbeck Street. It had begun only gradually, just as something to occupy his attention for a few minutes, spooning the granules from a jar of Nescafé, fetching the milk, filling up the kettle. The routine seemed to take just enough time for the feeling of loneliness to pass. He was deflecting an undesirable emotion with a series of routine actions, switching the brain to a safe little rut.

  Cooper went out into the conservatory to see where Randy had got to. The cats at Welbeck Street had been his landlady’s pets originally – or, at least, they’d been strays that Dorothy Shelley had taken under her wing and fed whenever they decided to turn up. He’d inherited one of them with the flat – a furry black object who still came and went whenever he felt like it. He didn’t know how old Randy was, but it was obvious that he was approaching his later years. He was very stiff when he moved, which wasn’t often, and he continued to lose weight, no matter how much he ate. Finally, Cooper noticed one day that the cat was becoming incontinent. Despite his nomadic habits, he had always been a very clean animal, and his condition clearly bothered him.

  ‘Sorry, old chap,’ he said. ‘It looks like another trip to the vet.’

  Mrs Shelley hadn’t been well recently, either. It seemed unkind, but Cooper had begun to wonder who would inherit the two adjoining houses in Welbeck Street if and when she should die. She never talked about any children, and rarely had visits from family members, except once a nephew and his wife. The nephew had looked a bit shifty to Cooper, had given the properties too much of a proprietary examination from the street before he went in. But he was probably worrying unnecessarily, and far too early. Despite the casualness of the agreement when he’d moved in, he must have some security of tenancy.

  Besides, Dorothy Shelley was the sort of woman who would go on forever – never too strong and always a bit vague, but tottering around long after younger people had given up the ghost. He hoped that was the case. He’d got quite fond of her, in a way. Apart from the question mark it might put over his own future, he’d be sorry to lose her. And he certainly didn’t want to see her being taken advantage of by some greedy nephew who didn’t care one jot about her.

  But then, knowing Mrs Shelley, the problem would never arise. She had probably made a will leaving her entire estate to Cats Protection anyway.

  In her sitting room, Mrs Shelley had a stuffed barn owl, so old and fossilized that Cooper could have used its beak as a bottle opener. He’d come to think of his landlady as a bit like that stuffed owl. Rather bedraggled and slightly moth-eaten around the pinions, but likely to last for ever, so long as it was valued.

  Cooper looked around the conservatory. At the far end, there were so many cobwebs that the spiders would soon be complaining about overcrowding. He needed to make time for a spring clean. He needed to find time for Liz, too, or she’d be complaining he neglected her. He was supposed to have made time for a holiday.

  But time was always a problem. For him, and for Randy, there was never enough of it.

  Strange how complications seemed to mount up in your life as you got older. In his twenties, everything had seemed very simple. Now, within a few years, he felt as though the world was on his shoulders some days. Was it the creeping infection of responsibility? He had a steady relationship now. He’d been going out with Liz Petty, a civilian crime-scene examiner at E Divisi
on, for several months. He ought to be getting to know her fairly well by this time.

  And then there was that old, vexed question of promotion. It had come up in conversation with Liz the other night. Over a glass of white wine and a Bondi Chicken in the Australian Bar at Bakewell, she’d gently quizzed him about his future. Cooper never found it difficult to listen to Liz. She didn’t take herself too seriously, and might burst out laughing at him at any moment. He treasured those moments, as a rule. But that evening, she’d been more serious.

  And she had been right, he supposed. It was now or never, if he was ever going to go for promotion. Even if it meant some kind of horizontal development, a move to a different speciality – whatever it took to get noticed. You couldn’t stand still, or you moved backwards in this world. If he was going to settle down one day and have a family … Well that, after all, was what he would do, wasn’t it? If he was going to settle down, he couldn’t spend his life on a DC’s salary, growing cynical and grumpy, like Gavin Murfin. Putting on weight in all the wrong places, too, probably. Oh, damn.

  His mother had always talked so much about her grandchildren – not only those who already existed, but those that were in the future, yet unborn. They had been the most important thing in her mind in those final years, even when the illness had taken most of her memories. Matt had done that for her, the older brother fulfilling the hopes and dreams. But Ben knew he had failed her. Maybe there was still time to make up for it, though. Still time to tell her that he had settled down, got the promotion, produced those grandchildren she’d talked about. He felt sure she would know, even now, wherever she was. If it mattered enough, you could make it happen.

  8

  Fry woke with a fuzzy head, and looked around her in confusion. She’d only lain down on her bed for a few minutes to rest, but she must have dropped off to sleep almost straight away. It had been a busy day, but not that bad. There had been many days when she’d put in much longer hours, when the time to go home never seemed to arrive. There could be a few of those days to come, depending on the course of this new enquiry. But not today. Today had been … well, average. There was no reason she should feel so tired and groggy, unless she was coming down with something. And that was the last thing she needed.