A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘We get along all right,’ Gordon said curtly.

  The slightest sceptical flicker of an eyebrow was her only response. For the past five years, to her certain knowledge, and probably much longer, Gordon and Sean had been antagonists. They would each regale her with stories of the misdeeds of the other, given the slightest encouragement. Mostly she tried to ignore their complaints, and avoid taking sides, but it was an uneven struggle. Sean was not an easy man to like and there had been instances where Deirdre had witnessed behaviour towards the animals that she regarded as needless cruelty. There was a tense atmosphere throughout Sean’s milkings that was absent from Gordon’s. She wondered whether the cows felt the same relief as she did, when the herdsman had a day off.

  And Sean complained constantly. He was underpaid; overworked; nobody understood what a trial his life was, with his sick wife and unpredictable daughter. Gordon had no idea how to manage a dairy herd – he thought he could survive the crisis in farming when everyone around him was going to the wall. Well, Sean could see the way it was going, and even Dunsworthy could go bust. He spoke in a monotonous nasal voice that jarred on Deirdre’s nerves. She wanted to point out to him how lucky he was to have a job at all, how much worse off others were. She wanted him to shut up and get the job finished, so she could go home and forget about him for another month.

  Gordon was altogether more restrained. ‘Old Sean’s been moaning at me again,’ he would say, with a rueful grin. ‘It’s being so miserable that keeps him going.’ But today he clearly didn’t want to be reminded of the friction that existed between them. Perhaps he thought Deirdre was prying – after all, it was none of her business.

  In the middle of one row, a cow began to defecate. Manure landed splashily, reaching Deirdre’s shoulder and a considerable selection of surrounding machinery. Neither she nor Gordon reacted; it was a commonplace, not worth remarking. Despite stringent modern hygiene regulations, dried muck clung to almost every nook and cranny of the parlour, where metal and rubber piping ran along every wall, at all angles, carrying cattle cake, milk, compressed air, water. Splatters of dung reached high up the walls, their age apparent by the coating of dust or cobweb. Gordon and Sean were alike in being no cleanliness fanatics, although one or two of the farms that Deirdre visited could be so described. Yet the Dunsworthy cell count levels, indicating the presence of mastitis-producing organisms, were acceptably average; and besides, Gordon insisted, a bit of muck was healthy. It maintained good levels of immunity in the animals.

  ‘How’s Heather?’ she managed to enquire, half an hour into the milking, as she always did, however busy she might be. Deirdre never ceased to be intrigued by the herdsman’s wife and her mysterious malaise.

  ‘Much the same,’ he shrugged. ‘Says it hurts in at least twenty different places. What can you do?’

  ‘It boggles my mind,’ she admitted. Heather, at much her own age, had succumbed to ME: the yuppy flu, chronic fatigue syndrome, or Malingering Extraordinary, as Deirdre secretly called it. Her own brisk health was the measure by which she judged others and no amount of persuasion from more sympathetic souls could convince her that some people simply found life too much to deal with. Her own husband had reproached her for her heartlessness, many a time, when she’d forced a fevered child to go to school or impatiently dismissed a friend’s claim to be unwell.

  But Heather O’Farrell bothered her in particular. Married to Sean for eighteen years or more, with one daughter, Heather now lived an invisible existence in one of the farm cottages: a sort of ghost suffering endlessly but quietly. There had apparently been a time, years ago, when she’d take a turn at the milking two or three times a month, but not any more. Sean had talked to Deirdre about it over the years, with an air of puzzled acceptance. ‘Can’t be helped,’ he’d said, a thousand times. ‘Just have to get on with it. I doubt we’d know what to do with ourselves now, if she suddenly got better,’ he’d said on one of Deirdre’s recent visits. Deirdre’s fingers had positively itched with the desire to go and shake the woman into a resumption of normal life. She’d been surprised at her own strong feelings – the anger. Why she should so resent the invalid she herself couldn’t begin to understand.

  The unit detaching from the last cow in the left-hand line obliged Gordon to embark on another sequence of actions. Opening the front gate, chivvying those animals out, closing the gate, opening the one at the back, and whistling in another batch of willing milkers. Deirdre mentally ticked off another six. Only fifty-six to go.

  The routine continued for almost two hours, with occasional interruptions for quick washing-down with a high pressure hose. Then Gordon muttered something about having to bring in five cows from the adjacent barn. ‘They’re this month’s convalescents,’ he grinned ruefully. ‘Three lame, one bad calving and one victim of bullying.’

  He waited for the reaction. ‘Bullying?’ Deirdre obligingly enquired.

  ‘It’s a new heifer, and the others have taken against her. I’ve no idea why. She’s a poor little thing, and I took pity on her. She’s much happier with the halt and the lame.’

  He slid open a door at one side of the parlour, leading into an adjacent building, and went to collect his special cases. Deirdre tinkered with her pots, turning them so the numbers were all the right way up, waiting for the first lame cow to appear, thinking vaguely about how sweet Gordon could be, coddling his shy new heifer, like a bigger boy befriending a new child in the playground, unable to cope with the rough and tumble.

  But instead of bringing the expected cows, Gordon returned alone, his face white. She stared at him, uncomprehending, waiting for him to speak. If she thought anything, it was that a cow must have trodden heavily on his foot, or crushed him in some way. When he simply stood there, leaning oddly against the door frame, she asked, ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘Come and see,’ he said, his voice scarcely audible over the milking machine.

  At Redstone Farm, barely a mile away, Lilah Beardon and her mother Miranda were drinking tea beside a log fire. Lilah sighed contentedly. ‘Isn’t it marvellous without the cows!’ she rejoiced. ‘I really thought I’d miss them – but I don’t. I can still feel how frozen my feet used to get, and how they’d slip about on the ice in the yard.’

  ‘Should have done it years ago,’ her mother agreed.

  ‘I wish Daddy was here. He’d approve, I know he would. He’d kick himself that he hadn’t thought of it ages ago.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t.’ Miranda shook her head. ‘Things weren’t so bad then. He was proud of his cows. And he’d say we were wasting a good farm.’

  It was a conversation they’d had before, and one that never reached a resolution. Neither woman cared enough to pursue it to the point of serious disagreement. They lived on a farm almost denuded of animals, Miranda working for a local estate agent and Lilah attending a college twenty-five miles away to pursue a three-year course in horticulture. Plants were much less stressful than animals, she’d discovered.

  ‘Are you going over to Gordon’s this evening?’ Miranda asked.

  Lilah shook her head. ‘It’s too cold. And he’s milking this afternoon, which means he’ll be in a foul mood. I keep telling him he should pack it in like we have, but he’s got too much invested in it – not just money, either. He really cares about his cows. We were never in the same league as he is. We were dinosaurs, compared to him.’

  ‘I think you’re mad to take up with a farmer,’ Miranda said flatly. ‘Stark raving mad. And Gordon Hillcock is absolutely the last person I would ever have imagined you with. Those red cheeks – that neck.’ She shuddered exaggeratedly. ‘I’ll never understand what you see in him.’

  Lilah took the rudeness calmly. ‘You don’t know him. He’s quite different from the way he looks.’

  ‘If you marry him, you’ll be back to square one. He’ll have you out there with frozen feet, two days after the honeymoon.’

  ‘No he won’t. I’ll make it very clear that I
’m not his unpaid herdswoman. I don’t like Friesians, anyway. Great clumsy things.’

  Miranda turned to look at her daughter, without speaking. Lilah knew the look. It was a kind of impressed disapproval, which never seemed to diminish, three months after Lilah had jilted her former fiancé in favour of Gordon Hillcock. She was mildly impressed herself, at this strange, mad deed. Poor Den, to whom she would have been married by now, had wept and shouted and accused, to no avail. She was in thrall to Gordon, sixteen years older than her, a bachelor living with his mother and sister, a balding, rosy-cheeked, Devon-accented farmer, who had never been anywhere or done anything. It made no sense to anyone else, and the all-too-obvious explanation, of which Lilah herself was acutely aware, was not something she could put into words. Perhaps if she’d had a close girlfriend or sister she might have managed it. But how could you tell your mother or former boyfriend that you’d walk a thousand miles over hot coals for the things this man could make you feel?

  Deirdre went to the phone in the office and pressed the nine key three times. She kept glancing back towards the door leading into the barn, but there was no sign of Gordon.

  ‘Emergency. Which service do you require?’ came the unemotional voice.

  ‘Police, please. A man has been killed. We’re at Dunsworthy Farm, between South Lew and Fellaton Cross.’ Her voice faltered. How much of the story were you supposed to tell?

  The woman asked for her name and phone number, and a quick account of what seemed to have happened. ‘I’ll notify the police and ambulance service,’ she said calmly. Deirdre wanted to insist that there was no need for an ambulance, but she kept quiet. The whole process felt oddly irrelevant: bits of bureaucracy that couldn’t be of the slightest help to the wretched Sean now. Much more urgent was the problem of Gordon. But Deirdre didn’t think she could say anything about her last sighting of him, as he crouched in the straw, one knee in a heap of manure, sobbing like a small child.

  After Gordon’s unexpected reappearance in the parlour, Deirdre had slowly climbed the steps out of the well in the parlour and gone through the doorway. Gordon stood aside for her. ‘Over there,’ he said, indicating with his chin. ‘See?’

  There was something in a corner. All the cows were standing as far away as possible. The barn was dark, the floor covered in a generous layer of fresh straw, which was disturbed around the thing in the corner, so it lay partly on bare earthen floor. Deirdre moved closer.

  ‘It’s a man!’ she said.

  Awkwardly, with her rack swinging out from her chest, she moved to bend over the figure and felt his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘He’s not completely cold, but I think he’s dead,’ she said, turning to look hard at Gordon, who hung back, leaving it to her. She took no more action. Time seemed to be suspended, paralysed. She took in the farmer’s bulging eyes, the bared teeth against white knuckles. The sight of Gordon in such a state had done more to churn her stomach and quiver her bowels than did the body at her feet, in those first few seconds.

  ‘It’s Sean,’ she had announced superfluously. ‘But what on earth’s he doing in here?’ She frowned her puzzlement at the farmer.

  Gordon hadn’t moved. ‘I can’t look,’ he muttered.

  By contrast, Deirdre couldn’t tear her eyes away. Growing accustomed to the poor light, she could now see more of what lay at her feet. The dead man wore a grubby jumper, full of snags and holes, with a quilted body warmer over it. He had a woollen scarf around his neck and thick corduroy trousers. Dark blood streaked all these garments, and was smeared generously over the floor.

  She looked back again at Gordon. ‘The cows couldn’t have done it, could they?’ She stood up straighter, inspecting the animals. ‘None of them’s got horns. Jesus, Gordon, don’t just stand there!’ She heard the shrillness rising in her own voice. ‘We’ll have to phone – police, ambulance, all that.’

  ‘Bit late for an ambulance,’ Gordon said, the words emerging on a strange, bitter laugh. Deirdre steadied herself and squatted down closer to Sean’s body, wondering whether she’d been too quick to assume him dead. But nobody with that strangely inexpressive and cold face could be alive. With those wounds, any flicker of life would have put all its efforts into some manifestation of pain and terror. The absence of either was enough proof that death had already occurred.

  Growing up on a farm herself, she had seen sights as bad before – sheep torn apart by bloodthirsty dogs, or with their eyes pecked out while still alive; blood and muck and agony. She noted that it really wasn’t so different when the victim was human. Especially when it was Sean O’Farrell, whose death was not something she was going to grieve over.

  She nudged the body gently with her boot. It felt wooden, unyielding. She said, ‘He’s dead, Gordon.’ A crazy thought entered her head, bringing a grim smile to her lips: The Recording Day Jinx strikes again.

  Gordon appeared unaware of her inappropriate expression. ‘Yes,’ he breathed, in response to her words. ‘Yes, I know.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Detective Sergeant Den Cooper was flipping through the local paper, a mug of coffee at his elbow, while the call made its way through all the usual channels until it reached Okehampton Police Station. It was almost time to knock off and go home. Nothing much was happening; everyone was too exhausted by the New Year celebrations to carry out any felonies. They were ten days into the new year – the new century – and he was still waiting to feel optimistic, benign, newborn and all the other things that Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury said he should feel. The weather was depressing, he had a cold, his girlfriend had dumped him and he hated his job. Life was not merely proceeding exactly as it had done before; it was worse. He couldn’t think of a single thing to look forward to. Even his twenty-seventh birthday at the end of the month was unlikely to bring any reason for rejoicing.

  ‘Cooper?’ It was Danny Hemsley, the new Detective Inspector. ‘Den?’ he amended, with a cheerful grin. ‘Are you busy?’

  Den flapped the paper and glanced at the tepid coffee. ‘As you see,’ he said.

  ‘Something for you, then. Take Young Mike with you. Dead body on a farm. We’ve got the police doctor on his way, but you ought to be there first.’

  Something stirred in Den’s breast. Fear, excitement, memories. ‘Which farm?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Danny consulted the scrap of paper in his hand. ‘Dunsworthy, looks like. Woman called Deirdre Watson. It doesn’t say who’s dead. Maybe it’s her.’ He shook his head. ‘Usual balls-up.’

  ‘Dunsworthy! That’s Hillcock’s place. Who the hell is Deirdre Watson?’

  ‘Search me,’ Danny shrugged. ‘That’s for you to go and find out.’

  ‘But—’ Den looked at the other man helplessly. Nobody at the station knew about Lilah’s betrayal, beyond the fact that she’d called off the wedding and he wasn’t seeing her any more. He ought to try and explain the situation, now, right at the outset, before driving to Dunsworthy. He opened his mouth, to say, That’s where my girlfriend’s new bloke lives. Are you sure you want me involved in this? Might there not be a conflict of interest somewhere along the line?

  But he didn’t. If Gordon Hillcock was dead, it would feel like a friendly Fate lending a hand. It would make Den feel better. But it wouldn’t affect his work. There was also the unavoidable fact that there was really nobody else. Sergeant Phil Bennett was off sick and likely to be for some time, after breaking his ankle. Already under-staffed, the DI had little alternative to sending Den out on this particular call.

  And it wouldn’t be a problem, Den insisted to himself. He would do all he could to discover how and why the victim had died. But who was Deirdre Watson? At least three families lived at Dunsworthy. Den guessed she must be a wife or girlfriend of an employee.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, getting up slowly. Standing, he was a clear four inches taller than Danny, himself almost six feet. ‘Where’s Young Mike?’

  ‘Waiting by the front desk. Nobody can say that
boy’s not keen.’

  Although he’d never been to this particular example, Den was familiar enough with the general layout of farms of the same type to make enlightened guesses as to the inhabitants of the three homes on the Dunsworthy farmstead. Close to the road, two semi-detached, low-level cottages came into view first. They had been built for farm workers a century or so earlier, and were still occupied by farm employees. Four hundred yards further up the rutted drive, the main farmhouse, inhabited by Gordon Hillcock and his family, sat squarely surrounded by a motley assembly of modern steel-and-concrete farm buildings, as well as older barns and sheds. The cow sheds were huge and extensive, providing cover for the entire animal stock. A round food hopper, containing cattle cake, stood outside the milking parlour and bulk tank room. A muddy yard, dotted with glittering patches that turned out to be frozen puddles, offered ample parking space, despite already containing a tractor, battered Land Rover, a mud-spattered Peugeot, an ambulance and a very disturbing heap of dead black-and-white calves, caught in the police car’s headlights. Young Mike yelped when he caught sight of them.

  ‘Good God! There’s been a massacre here.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Den. ‘They shoot the bulls at birth. Not worth trying to sell them these days. Remember all that hoo-ha at Shoreham?’

  ‘Live exports, yeah.’

  ‘Well, now the calves get shot instead of exported.’

  ‘Hmm,’ was Young Mike’s confused response.

  Den dragged his thoughts from conversations with Lilah on this and other agricultural subjects. He’d learnt more from her than he realised, in the years they’d been together.

  ‘Poor little buggers,’ Mike murmured. Indeed the calves looked pathetic enough, their long, thin legs outstretched, the sweet faces, marked with the vivid monochrome patches, staring sightlessly across the yard. From somewhere behind the complex of buildings, the distant, wavering cry of a surviving calf could be heard.