‘Oh, you mean a plunger.’
‘I don’t think that I do.’
‘Anyway, it’s a yes,’ Harry said.
Sowerby then proceeded to put a jug of milk on the table, along with the two mugs, a pot of sugar, a couple of small plates, and a cake tin.
‘You saw Mum, then,’ she said.
‘Going out to either attack the garden or collect souls by the looks of things,’ Harry said. ‘I’m not sure which.’
Sowerby laughed and brought over the now-full cafetière and poured.
‘She terrifies me with that scythe. I’m amazed she’s not severed a limb. Sugar?’
Harry shook his head.
‘Just some milk, thanks.’
‘Open the tin,’ Sowerby instructed. ‘Mum always has biscuits. I think she bakes in her sleep.’
Harry opened the tin and reached in for a crumbly, buttery slice of shortbread.
‘Tasty,’ he said, through the crumbs.
‘And she wonders why she can’t lose weight,’ Sowerby said, taking one for herself.
‘Nice place she’s got here,’ Harry said.
‘It’s far too big for her,’ said Sowerby. ‘But she refuses to downsize. Loves the place too much. Too many memories, I think. Doesn’t want to let them go.’
Harry sipped his coffee. Through the window, he could see up onto the fells beyond the garden.
‘With a view like that, who can blame her?’
‘Views are two a penny around here,’ Sowerby said. ‘But yes, you’re right, it is lovely, isn’t it?’
For a couple of minutes, Harry and Sowerby sat sipping their coffee and nibbling biscuits, both of them staring out into the dales.
‘So, you asked me over for a chat, then,’ Harry said.
‘That I did,’ Sowerby agreed. ‘And thanks for coming.’
‘Certainly beats chatting over a crime scene,’ Harry said, reaching for another biscuit.
‘It does,’ said Sowerby. ‘And I just thought it might be worth us chatting through everything somewhere more comfortable. And, if you don’t mind me saying so, without Swift around.’
Harry laughed at that. ‘You’ve known him longer than I.’
‘That’s not necessarily a good thing. Anyway, you’ve worked closely with him, haven’t you? Is he always like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sowerby said. ‘Like he’s spent his life chewing thistles and just generally disapproving of the whole world?’
‘Good description. Accurate.’
‘I don’t think he likes you.’
‘I don’t think he really likes anyone,’ Harry said. ‘But I’ve worked with worse.’
Sowerby stood up and went over to a large dresser against the wall, returning with a file, which she rested on the table then opened as she sat back down.
‘So, what have we got, then?’ Harry asked.
‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ Sowerby said. ‘The barn, the dog.’
She laid out some photos, not just of the barn, but of tyre treads, blood spatter, and the body of Arthur’s dog, Jack.
‘Not much to go on, is it?’ Harry said.
‘Well,’ Sowerby said, ‘we think that at least half a dozen vehicles were there that night, judging by the tracks, including four-by-fours, a motorbike, and also a trailer.’
‘A trailer?’ Harry said.
Sowerby nodded. ‘There was evidence of other dogs at the site, saliva, hair, that kind of thing. Maybe they’d planned other fights but were disturbed by your friend Dave turning up?’
‘Possibly,’ Harry said. ‘Which makes it even more important that we put a stop to it sooner rather than later. What else?’
‘There’s the tiling adhesive and granite dust,’ Sowerby said. ‘We’ve also got some shoe imprints, but they’re not that great, if I’m honest. Might be useful though, you never know.’
Somerby laughed then.
‘Something funny?’
‘I was just thinking, it’s a shame we can’t interview owls.’
‘Is it? Why?’
‘There was that one sitting there watching me the whole time I was in the barn, remember?’ Sowerby said. ‘Beautiful thing. It probably saw everything.’
‘Not sure an owl in the witness stand would hold up in court,’ Harry said. ‘So, what about Arthur’s house, then?’
Sowerby brought out another stack of photos and her notes.
‘I’m pretty certain the attacker came in through the front door,’ she said, ‘and the violence started here.’
She pointed at a photograph of some blood on the wall near the floor.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ Harry said.
‘We’ve identified two types of DNA from the blood we found. One is the victim’s, the other must be the attacker.’
At this, Harry almost lit up.
‘So, if we actually manage to find a suspect…’
‘We can crosscheck,’ Sowerby said.
‘Well, the two we’ve got are both still missing,’ Harry said. ‘But fingers crossed and all that. They can’t hide forever.’
‘Two suspects?’
Harry nodded.
‘That’s interesting.’
‘Is it? Why?’
Sowerby didn’t answer the question, instead, saying, ‘There’s no evidence of a break-in at the back of the house. The glass was broken from the inside, as you suspected, the door then opened and most of it collected and put inside on the kitchen floor.’
‘Why anyone would think that would work is beyond me,’ Harry said.
‘We also found some traces of ash in the carpet and on the furniture,’ Sowerby said. ‘We also found the stubby ends of a couple of joints. One inside the house, one on the opposite side of the road.’
‘Fingerprints?’ Harry asked.
Sowerby shook her head. ‘No fingerprints, but we did get some DNA.’
Harry sat back, folded his arms, and stared at the ceiling.
‘You okay?’
‘Frustrated,’ Harry said. ‘It’s not like we’ve got much, is it? Certainly not enough to really have any good leads. And where do we go from any of this?’
‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Sowerby said.
Harry sat up and leaned forward.
‘Go on…’
‘I went out for another look at the barn, just to make sure I’d covered everything. And I found this.’
‘What?’
Sowerby passed a photo over to Harry.
Harry drew it close, staring at it.
‘What am I looking at exactly?’
‘That’s the stub from a betting slip,’ Sowerby said. ‘Says it’s from the bookmakers in Hawes. No way we would have missed it first time round.’
Harry looked up from the photo.
‘So, you think someone’s been out to the barn since your first visit, then?’
‘Looks like it,’ Sowerby said.
‘But what, if anything, does that tell us?’ Harry asked, rubbing his eyes, as though doing so would help him to see things a little more clearly.
‘Remember what I said about the joints?’ Sowerby said. ‘Well, we found traces of the same cannabis on this, too. And it matches what was found at the house.’
‘You sure?’
Sowerby gave a nod.
‘So, that means we’ve definitely got a clear link, then, between the barn and the house,’ Harry said. ‘Not just the dog, either. Someone was definitely at both crime scenes.’
‘Well, yes and no,’ Sowerby said.
‘How do you mean, yes and no?’
‘Well, we managed to get some traces of DNA from that ticket stub,’ Sowerby explained, ‘thanks to whoever had handled it having a cut or something. And you know what?’
‘No, I don’t, but I’m hoping you’ll tell me.’
‘It doesn’t match the DNA we found on the joint from the house, but it does match the one found outside on the road.’
; ‘You’re losing me,’ Harry said, rubbing his eyes.
Sowerby went back to the photos.
‘We have DNA from blood at the house where the attack happened, and evidence of cannabis being smoked thanks to those two joints,’ she said. ‘We also have the cannabis trace and the DNA from the betting slip. However, the DNA we pulled from the betting slip doesn’t match the DNA from the blood at the house.’
‘My head’s starting to hurt,’ Harry said.
Sowerby sat forward.
‘What I think we have here are two different people.’
And then, for Harry, it clicked.
‘Someone was watching the house!’ he said. ‘The same person who left this stub at the barn.’
‘Exactly,’ Sowerby said.
‘So that means we’ve got more than one person involved, doesn’t it?’ Harry said.
‘I’m afraid it does, yes,’ said Sowerby.
‘Bollocks,’ Harry snarled.
‘Yeah, I thought you might say that.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When Eric arrived home, he knew immediately that something was wrong. Well, everything was wrong, wasn’t it? That was why he’d been away for two nights, sleeping rough, and had only now just arrived home, because he was cold, starving, and really just wanted to have a good wash and use a toilet that wasn’t a hole in the ground or a tree.
He was also hungover and shouldn’t have been driving. But it wasn’t like there was much on the roads even at the busiest of times, not around Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, that was for sure. And most of his driving had been off-road, following tracks through moorland and meadow, just to find places to hunker down and hide, away from prying eyes, and to give him a chance to get his head together.
But now that he was back home, he was wondering if he should just have stayed away and never come back. Ever. Trouble was, where would he go? He’d lived here all his life. As far as he was concerned, there was nowhere else on Earth like it and certainly nowhere that he would be able to call home.
The first thing he’d noticed had been the tyre tracks leading up to his house. The only person with any cause at all to drive out here was himself, so whoever this was, they weren’t welcome. Or invited.
Then he’d seen the footprints outside the house and that had just made him angry. Driving up a lane he could forgive, because people took wrong turnings, holidaymakers were nosy, and usually, when they saw his home close up, they quickly turned around and buggered off. But whoever this was, they’d either got too nosy for their own good, or driven out here on purpose for a snoop.
Eric, fighting back a yawn, his head thumping, stumbled along, following the footprints. His mouth tasted like he’d spent the past few hours just wandering around licking roadkill, and his entire body was doing its best to tell him in every possible way it could that he’d consumed far too much whisky.
When Eric came to his front door, he didn’t stop to let himself in. Instead, he continued down along the front of the house and through the gate to head round to the back of the building, his anger and his worry only adding to his thumping head.
At the back of his house, Eric checked to see if any attempt had been made to break in, but the lock was fine and no windows were broken, so that was something. But it didn’t make him feel any better, not after what he’d seen over at old Arthur’s place.
Eric then turned and made his way back around to the front of the house, heading past his shed, which was when he noticed a scuffling on the ground in front of the door. So, he thought, they’d been in there, too, had they?
Opening the door, Eric peered into the gloom, his most recent piece of work staring back at him. He stepped inside to check if anything had been touched or disturbed, but found nothing out of place or missing, so that was something. And nothing had been damaged either, which was good.
Not everyone understood what it was that he did, viewing it as ghoulish and weird and creepy. But to Eric, taxidermy had never been that. To him, it was a way of preserving something beautiful that would, if left, just rot. And what a waste that was. Also, it was a nice little earner. Particularly with the rarer stuff. Yes, he was supposed to have a licence to sell, but then he’d have to explain where he was getting the carcasses. And he was fairly sure that, ‘I shot them,’ wouldn’t stand up too well in a court of law.
Leaving the shed, Eric headed back around to the front of the house and let himself inside. Bed beckoned, but he needed a drink of water and to clean his teeth. So, he grabbed a glass from the kitchen, then headed on through to the downstairs bathroom.
A few minutes later, once upstairs, having closed his curtains to the last moments of the bright light of day, Eric very slowly laid himself down on his bed, then closed his eyes. He opened them again almost immediately, as everything started to spin and he was sure he was going to throw up. So, instead, he just lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling, trying to get his head around what had happened.
What had set it all off had been that phone call from Arthur Blake, Mr Perfect Gamekeeper. God, that man had been a royal pain his whole life, constantly criticising his work, spreading rumours. So, what if most of those rumours were true? That didn’t matter. It was the fact that he just couldn’t keep himself to himself, could he? No. Not a bit of it.
And his damned old-fashioned views on how the job should be done, how a gamekeeper should work, raise birds, deal with vermin and the like? The man was evangelical about it, and if he ever had the chance to point the finger, then he would. But that phone call? That had been something else, hadn’t it? Accusing him like that, like he’d already decided he was guilty. He’d said on the phone about how he wanted to have it out with him right then, which is why Eric had headed on over. There was going to be no discussion, no asking for proof, just an argument between two old men who’d hated each other for decades.
Eric had been up for it, that much he knew. He’d driven over there in a rage, ready and willing to have it out with the old man, to not just give him a piece of his mind, but a damn good leathering as well. But then, when he’d turned up, the door had been open. And that had taken Eric rather by surprise, mainly because he’d been looking forward to crashing his fist into the door himself and yelling Arthur’s name nice and loud so everyone would know why he was there and who he’d come to see.
He’d stepped into the house. Well, of course, he had! The door was open and at that moment he was sure Arthur had left it open for him and was probably in the lounge waiting with his unfounded accusations and holier-than-thou attitude. And Eric wasn’t one for holding back. No chance of that! So, in he’d strode, ready to tell that old bastard exactly what he thought of him and his accusations.
Then he’d seen it, or them, hadn’t he? At first, he’d not been exactly sure what he had been looking at. A person, yes, standing in the lounge over something else on the floor. And whatever it was on the floor, they had been kicking it, hadn’t they? Really going at it, too. In a moment of madness, Eric had wondered if Arthur had just been getting himself ready for a bit of scrap by practising on a sack or pillow or something, but then he’d heard a groan, at about the same time as he’d seen the blood.
It had been Arthur on the floor and someone had been beating the old man half to death, or at least that was what it had looked like. There’d certainly been a lot of flailing of arms and legs. Who it was, Eric hadn’t the faintest idea, and he hadn’t hung around to find out, either. Particularly after the attacker had turned to stare at him through the eye holes of a balaclava.
Of course, he could have gone in there and attempted a rescue, but the way Arthur was getting smashed about, it had been pretty clear that he wouldn’t have stood a chance himself. And what was the point in getting himself beaten up anyway? So, he’d bolted, like a rabbit with a ferret on its tail, racing out of the house and over to his truck to head off into the night. And as he’d speeded off, he’d caught sight of Arthur’s daughter, Grace, heading over to the house, star
ing at his vehicle as he’d disappeared into the night.
As he’d driven away, Eric’s mind had done a real number on him, and after a stop for fuel and a couple of bottles of cheap booze, along with a good amount of chocolate and crisps, he’d ended up in a panic that had him just driving around the dales for a good few hours. Eventually, tiredness had got to him, so he’d headed down into a small dell, turned off his lights, then cracked open the whisky.
As he’d sat there in the dark, drinking himself further and further into a blurry haze, he’d thought about calling the police, about checking up on Grace, but when had anyone ever done anything nice for him? So, he’d given up on that idea, sure that whatever had been going on had nothing to do with him. It was just an unlucky coincidence that he’d been there at all. And knowing Arthur, he’d be fine anyway, the tough old sod. More’s the pity.
But now, as he lay there in his bed on a late afternoon, wishing the night to arrive quickly, a creeping dread began to rake at him. Closing his eyes, the sickening spinning now having eased a little, Eric thought back to the footprints around his house, to the fact that someone had been into his shed and seen his work.
No one ever visited him, did they? Not a soul. Ever. And yet, on the night when he’d been called by old Arthur, gone over to have it out with him, and found him being kicked around, someone had been around his house in the dark. But who? That’s what he wanted to know. At least, he thought he did. Perhaps ignorance was best.
If it had been the police, then that was because Arthur’s daughter had told them she’d seen him, so he’d need to think of something, wouldn’t he? An alibi? Yes, that was it. And if it wasn’t the police then… then he’d deal with that if it happened. It couldn’t have been the person attacking Arthur, could it? Not unless they knew him, knew where he lived. Now that was a thought he could’ve done without. But at that moment he was too tired to care, so he closed his eyes and allowed the world to drift to nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘So, now what?’ Matt asked. ‘Where else is there for us to look?’
The day was getting on now, with early afternoon threatening to become late in the day with no success as yet in what they’d set out to do. Matt’s stomach was already giving him warning that food would soon be on the agenda. He’d also promised Jean that he’d be back in good time to cook her favourite: cheesy mashed potato with mince and peas. It wasn’t exactly high living, but it was certainly living comfortably, and he loved her all the more for it. With a baby on the way as well, life, as far as Matt was concerned, just couldn’t get much better.
Blood Sport: A Yorkshire Murder Mystery (DCI Harry Grimm Crime Thrillers 7) Page 20
