A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Did he say anything about Sean?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just about him having an unexpected afternoon off because Gordon had swapped the days. And I asked after Heather.’

  ‘Did you get a response?’

  ‘Not really. I was just making conversation. I don’t think Gordon has anything to do with her if he can help it.’

  ‘You arrived just after two p.m. and the milking started at three, but Hillcock was with you from two-forty – is that right?’

  She nodded doubtfully. ‘He was in and out of the parlour, fixing up the special equipment I need for catching milk samples. He wasn’t with me, exactly. I had more trouble numbering my pots accurately, because of the computer. Do you want me to explain the whole procedure?’

  ‘No, thanks. When did you last see Sean O’Farrell alive?’

  ‘Last month, of course. The December recording.’

  ‘So, just to go over it again – nothing unusual happened during the time between your arrival on the farm and the start of milking?’

  ‘Only my bloody computer packing up.’ She stared balefully at the offending machine, where it sat recharging at one end of the table. ‘It used to do that a lot, but I thought I’d got it sorted out. I think there’s a loose connection in the cable, so it doesn’t charge up when I think it does.’

  Den remained uninterested in the computer. In the pause that followed he inspected the big farmhouse kitchen they were sitting in. Generously warmed by a big old Aga, it was obviously the favoured haunt of two cats, curled on the cushions of a wooden settle under the window. A stack of magazines and newspapers cluttered one end of the big table, and a substantial amount of washing-up seemed to have been waiting for attention since at least the previous day. They both seemed to realise simultaneously that the interview was effectively over.

  It was time he left, but the image of the body in the mortuary once again floated in front of his eyes. He tapped his pencil against his teeth. ‘Do you know what happened to his ear?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Sean O’Farrell – something had torn his ear half off, not so long ago.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she responded readily. ‘That was Fergus, Gordon’s Alsation. He was a rescue dog and his temper was always a bit unpredictable. He was okay with me – I’m very good with dogs. But Sean couldn’t get anywhere with him. He took it quite personally, I think – the fact that Fergus would let me pet him, but not Sean. I wasn’t there when it happened, but they both told me the story. Two different versions, of course, but I gather the dog went for him one day last summer. Got hold of his ear and wouldn’t let go. Made quite a mess, but it healed up perfectly all right. Everyone said Gordon should have the dog put down, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Did Sean report it?’

  Deirdre shook her head. ‘Gordon told him he’d give him the sack if he got the dog in trouble.’

  ‘Where’s Fergus now?’

  She looked down at her hands, which were loosely interlocked. ‘Dead,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m not entirely sure what happened, but Gordon said somebody poisoned him. It was horrible, apparently – he took all day to die.’

  ‘And nobody put him out of his misery?’ Den was incredulous.

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘But they shoot all those calves. It would have been easy to do.’

  She smiled bleakly. ‘Gordon loved the dog. I guess he hoped it would get better. It’s not everyone who can shoot their own dog, you know. And Gordon’s soft in his way.’

  ‘So who poisoned him?’

  ‘I hate to think anyone did it deliberately. Farmers put poison down for vermin now and then, and there’s all kinds of stuff about the place that could have done it. Gordon wouldn’t pay for a post-mortem to find out exactly what it was. He had run up a massive vet’s bill as it was, and wasn’t keen to let it go any higher.’ She swallowed visibly. ‘Though I suppose I should tell you that Sean made a poor show of hiding his relief that Fergus was out of the way.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I can’t say more than that. I’d be guessing if I said Sean had anything to do with the poisoning. I don’t suppose anybody knows for sure.’

  But it would give us a motive, mused Den silently. ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘August, September – thereabouts. I asked Gordon where the dog was when I met him in the yard, and he choked out the story.’

  Den scribbled busily in his notebook. Then he glanced at his watch, to discover he had twelve minutes to finish his interview and meet Young Mike at Dunsworthy.

  ‘I’ll have to go in a minute,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve covered everything for now. Thank you – you’ve been very helpful.’

  Her smile held something of complacency in it, he thought, and remembered his irritation towards her show of cleverness the previous day. He had an impression of a woman who felt she’d acquitted herself well and could award herself a gold star accordingly. He reminded himself that she had been at the scene of a murder, with more than enough means and opportunity, and possibly motive, once the whole story was known. Certainly she hadn’t liked Sean very much.

  ‘I’ll need to see your clothes,’ he said suddenly. ‘The ones you were wearing yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘My recording suit, you mean? Too late, I’ve washed them. They’re hanging on the line outside. I always do them as soon as I get in from a morning milking.’

  Den suppressed a sigh. ‘What did you have on underneath? I assume you don’t put on the protective suit until just before the milking starts?’

  She plucked at the jumper she was wearing. ‘This,’ she said, ‘and my black jeans. They’re in the wash as well.’

  ‘Actually in the machine?’

  ‘No – the laundry basket.’

  Den brusquely asked her to go and fetch them. At least, he thought unhappily, he’d have something for forensics to examine.

  It was more difficult to leave than he had anticipated. At the final moment, a last question occurred to him. ‘Exactly how long have you known Gordon Hillcock?’

  For the first time, a flush suffused her cheeks. ‘Thirty-five years,’ she said, with a girlish giggle. ‘We were at primary and secondary school together.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Oh, well, after that I married Robin and Gordon never seemed capable of settling down, and …’ she tailed off.

  ‘Are you telling me you were in a relationship at one time?’

  The flush deepened and she shook her head slowly. ‘No-o-o,’ she said and paused. ‘No,’ she said again more decisively. ‘We were never in a relationship.’

  The phone rang again as he got into the car. ‘Den?’ came Hemsley’s voice, ‘just thought I’d tell you – the most recent fingerprints on the fork belonged to Sean O’Farrell. Looks as if he grabbed hold of it as he was being attacked. We’ve also got another set, both hands, including palm prints. They match Ted Speedwell’s.’

  ‘That’ll be because it’s his fork, that he uses every day for chucking silage about,’ Den said.

  ‘Very likely,’ said Hemsley neutrally.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Young Mike was hovering outside the Speedwells’ cottage when Den arrived a few minutes past the appointed time.

  ‘How’d you get on?’ Den asked him.

  ‘Well, I went with WDC Nugent to collect the daughter – Abigail – from Tavistock this morning and we told her what had happened to her dad. She’s in the house now with her mother. Nugent took the car, so I’ve got to stick with you from now on.’

  ‘How was she? The girl, I mean.’

  ‘Very flat. Didn’t react much at all. She’s at the age where they just talk in grunts. Didn’t even get anywhere when I told her I’d fed her animals.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Seemed to scare her, if anything.’

  ‘She maybe thinks she needs a licence or something,’ Den surmised vaguely. ‘I’ll have to speak to her later on. How did it go with the old granny?’r />
  Mike’s face, with its big, mobile features, expressed a mixture of emotions: amusement, frustration, bewilderment. ‘Could barely understand a word she said,’ he admitted.

  ‘Why? Is she foreign?’ Den was confused.

  ‘She might as well be. The thickest Devon accent I have ever heard. Plus she’s got no teeth, so she mumbles. I didn’t think there were any people left who talked like that. Oh, and cows are all male, to hear her talk. They should put her on telly – she’s the last of her kind, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘So how much did you get out of her about yesterday?’

  ‘Not a lot. She was in her room, in a big old chair she’s got up there, watching the racing all afternoon. She thinks she fell asleep for a bit. Can’t be sure what won the three-thirty, but she knows she was awake for the two races before that.’

  ‘Did you ask her about family history? How Gordon gets on with his mother and sister?’

  Mike grinned. ‘There was quite a lot under that heading, but it wasn’t easy to follow. Gordon was a very difficult baby, born “afore his time” and his mother not yet twenty. His granny had a lot of the rearing of him, and he’s very much her favourite. Something about him being sickly on and off for years. She seems disappointed in him these days. Says Mary’s been a “gude little maid” but she’s given up all hope of ever being a great-grandma.’

  Den winced and struggled to breathe past the tightness that was suddenly in his chest. ‘So this is her entire family? Gordon’s father was her only child?’

  ‘As far as I know, yes. Nobody else was mentioned.’

  ‘What did she think of Sean?’

  ‘Didn’t seem too clear who I was talking about,’ Mike said. ‘She obviously doesn’t go outside much – if at all. She’s got a bad leg, very swollen up. Started talking about somebody called Wilf, who can do anything with a cow. Magic hands, he do ’ave, an if’n a cow be bad, Wilf can do wonders for ’e. I have a feeling Wilf was on the scene about the time Gordon was born.’

  ‘O … kay,’ said Den, making it a long, drawn-out expression of ironic summary. ‘It doesn’t sound as if she’ll be called to the witness box.’

  Mike laughed. ‘I can see it now,’ he said.

  ‘So what’s happening about the Speedwells?’

  ‘There’s nobody at home. Mr Hillcock’s back, of course, doing something important with a cow’s rear end. Ted Speedwell’s driving a tractor …’ He cocked his head to listen for a moment. ‘Yes, you can hear it. I told him we’d want to talk to him, and he just nodded.’

  ‘How was his manner? Did he seem worried or scared?’

  ‘I only spoke to him for a minute. He didn’t say anything. He did look a bit scared, I suppose. But maybe he thinks he’s going to be murdered next.’

  ‘Maybe he does,’ Den agreed. ‘Well, time we had a word with him. Do we go to him, or is he coming to us?’

  Mike looked at his watch. ‘I told him we’d like to see him at about eleven-thirty. It’s that now. We’ll probably have to go and find him. I got the impression that the farm work comes well before anything we might want.’

  It wasn’t so much the painful rush of memories that Den found so disturbing, as the unpredictability of their onset. For a minute, he experienced total recall of the early days of the investigation into the murders on Lilah’s family’s farm, when the burden of milking had weighed heavily on the girl and her young brother and Den had found himself stumbling in Lilah’s wake, trying to catch a word with her between innumerable vital farm tasks. It was disabling, as he stood there in the bleak January chill, recalling the rawness of the farming life, the completely different rules that pertained in this world.

  ‘Yeah,’ he breathed. ‘That’s about the way of it. We’d better go and look for him, then.’

  Ted Speedwell was forking up stray clumps of silage when they found him. Gradually the system for feeding the cows became clear to Den, as he assessed the scene. A long row of aluminium troughs lay beside a double row of metal railings. From the positioning of yards and gates, it would seem that the cows lined up behind the railings and pushed their heads through to eat from the troughs. A reasonably tidy operation, but some silage spilled out in the process and lay beyond the reach of the animals. Ted was carefully collecting it and putting it back in the now-empty trough.

  The fork he was using was a narrow, two-pronged pitchfork, which appeared to be causing him some difficulty. A quantity of silage fell off repeatedly, and the police officers could hear him muttering crossly about it.

  ‘That isn’t the fork you usually use, is it?’ Den asked him as they approached.

  ‘No, ’taint. You fellers ’ave tooken my normal one,’ he replied.

  ‘And where is that one usually kept? The normal one, I mean?’

  Ted nodded vaguely towards the silage pit. ‘Round there someplace,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Where anybody could lay their hands on it?’

  The man shrugged and nodded. Obviously, he seemed to be saying.

  Den took a moment to examine Ted Speedwell in the cooler light of day, supplementing the impressions he’d gleaned the previous evening. There was something gnomish about him. He wore a woolly hat pulled down over his ears, and strong leather boots, not the rubber wellingtons that most farm workers adopted. His face was small and pinched; the features clustered together gave him a defensive look. His stained and gappy teeth appeared to be reaching the end of their useful life.

  ‘How long have you worked here?’ Den asked him.

  ‘Thirty-five years, must be. Since I left school.’

  ‘You knew Mr Hillcock’s father, then?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Where were you yesterday, between one and four o’clock?’

  Speedwell turned his attention back to the silage, speaking over his shoulder. ‘Ditching,’ he muttered, and then seemed to think more detail was required. ‘That is, had dinner till two, then up Top Linhay to clear out bottom ditch. Got n’self filled up with dashles and muck o’ that sort. Next time ’e rains, ’twill run over, see?’

  Den blinked and carefully avoided Young Mike’s eye. Granny Hillcock might not be quite the last of her kind, after all.

  ‘What time did you finish?’

  ‘Near four. When ’twere too dark to go on. Days be short just now,’ he added, as if this was a piece of information they’d be glad of.

  ‘Did you go home then? Did you come back into the yard?’

  ‘Went for some tea. I starts at half-seven of a morning, cutting out the silage. Eight-hour day takes me to half-three. Never used to count it, in the old man’s time, but now we all get to clock-watching.’ He shook his head at the folly of modern life. ‘Din’t come near the yard, no. The boss can shift for n’self then.’

  ‘Even when it’s Recording Day?’

  Ted gave a blank look. ‘Makes no odds to me,’ he said.

  ‘So when did you last see Sean?’

  ‘Yesterday mornin’,’ came the prompt reply. ‘Before dinner. He was having the milking off yesterday. Proper vexed ’e were about that. I said to ’e, “You be daft to let ’un do it.” But—’ He stopped abruptly at the sound of approaching footsteps. Gordon Hillcock appeared from a small side barn, carrying a plastic bucket.

  He paused at the sight of the three men – a rather contrived show of surprise, it seemed to Den. He must have heard their voices from where he was, if not the actual words.

  There was something about the appearance of the man who’d so recently been held overnight in a police cell, now strolling around his farm as if nothing had happened. For a moment it seemed that the death of Sean O’Farrell was a mere dream, or an event that had happened a long time ago. The strands of blue police tape cordoning off one part of the yard had been broken and trodden into the muck and mud of the yard, he noted; now they just looked irrelevant. In Den’s opinion they were irrelevant. Any minute traces of forensic evidence still undiscovered after the previous evening’s searches were almost
certainly lost for ever, beneath the countless bovine feet and the comings and goings of Ted’s tractor.

  ‘Excuse us, sir,’ said Den formally. ‘We are conducting an interview with Mr Speedwell which we would prefer to be in confidence. If we’re in your way here, perhaps there’s somewhere private we can use?’

  Gordon Hillcock spread his free arm in a generous arc. ‘Take your pick,’ he said, indicating two or three buildings and doorways. ‘Office over there, as you’ll remember. Straw barn – that’s quite cosy. You’ll let me know when I can use the barn next to the parlour again, won’t you? My lame cows aren’t at all happy where they are.’

  His tone was clipped, his head held high. Den understood the struggle to recapture the dignity that had been lost in the events of the past eighteen hours or so. I am not a criminal, was the subtext. I will not become your prisoner again.

  And Den’s unspoken reply, as he smiled thinly and said, ‘All in due course, Mr Hillcock,’ was Oh yes, you will, matey, if I have anything to do with it.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll go into the office,’ he said to Mike and Ted. ‘Just for one or two more questions, if that’s convenient?’

  They settled themselves awkwardly into the small space, and Den prompted the little farm worker to continue where he’d left off. ‘Sean wasn’t happy about the change to the rota? And you were telling him to make a stand. What did Sean say to that?’

  ‘Nothing, really. What’s to be said, when it comes down to it? Precious little work any more for the likes of us; we stick it, like it or not.’ He looked nervous and spoke in a low mutter. The realisation that Gordon might have heard what he’d been saying outside appeared to worry him. Den cursed himself for embarking on a sensitive conversation in such a public spot.

  ‘You’re saying that you and Sean have both been unhappy working here?’ Den tried to clarify the point.

  ‘Tidn’ all the boss’s fault,’ Ted said. ‘Same all over, nowadays. All runnin’ downhill into the shit.’

  The image was graphic, and Den took a moment to savour it.