Best Served Cold: A DCI Harry Grimm Novel

by David J Gatward

  ‘Ma’am,’ Harry said.

  On the other end of the call, Detective Superintendent Alice Firbank, who was responsible for sending Harry north in the first place, fell quiet, her silence enough of a request for Harry to explain why he had interrupted her day so early.

  ‘Ben called me,’ Harry said.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that he’s communicating,’ the DSI said. ‘A very good sign indeed.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Harry said. ‘He’s in danger. You need to get him out of there. Now.’

  The DSI coughed the smallest of disbelieving laughs. ‘Well of course, Harry,’ she said. ‘I can do that now. We have so many free beds in prisons, as I’m sure you know, so it shouldn’t be a problem to move him at all.’

  ‘I’m serious!’ Harry snapped back. ‘It’s my dad. He contacted Ben. Threatened him.’

  Further silence.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘Are you certain that’s what happened? Ben is in prison, Harry. There is no way your father can even know where he is, never mind contact him.’

  Harry breathed deep, an attempt at working to keep his voice calm and measured despite the storm raging inside.

  ‘He said that it came through one of the other prisoners, the message from dad, I mean.’

  ‘Message?’

  ‘A warning,’ Harry said. ‘For me to back off.’

  Harry was pretty sure he heard the DSI shake her head.

  ‘This sounds to me like a call for help, Harry. One that you absolutely can’t answer.’

  ‘He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t making it up. He’s terrified, Ma’am.’

  ‘You’ve no proof,’ the DSI said. ‘Just the word of your brother. And he’s in prison!’

  ‘He knew about why you sent me up here,’ Harry said then. ‘The two blokes in the van. Confidential information. The case isn’t even at court yet!’

  ‘Shit . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ Harry said. ‘That.’

  For a moment, neither Harry nor his DSI spoke.

  ‘Leave this with me,’ Firbank said. ‘I’m on it now.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Harry replied. ‘I’ll let you know when I’m back.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’

  The DSI’s voice was sharp.

  ‘Ma’am . . .’ Harry growled, but Firbank was clearly having none of it.

  ‘You have a job to do, Harry,’ she said. ‘You cannot, and you absolutely will not, just bugger off at a whim to do whatever you want! And that means you will not be on your way back here, in any way, shape, or form! Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘He’s my brother!’ Harry hurled back, his voice rising now, rough anger rolling out with his words. ‘If anyone touches him . . .’

  ‘I said do I make myself clear?’ the DSI snapped back.

  Harry took the deepest of breaths and muttered, ‘Yes, Ma’am. You do.’

  ‘I will deal with this,’ the DSI explained, her voice hard and unwavering, ‘so wind your neck in, Grimm! And I’d advise you against making those kinds of threats.’

  ‘You can’t keep me up here,’ Harry said. ‘I need to be there, to be near my brother. I have to be!’

  ‘No, you do not,’ the DSI said, her voice switching from angry to calm in a beat. ‘I am on this as a priority. You travelling down here will do nothing. The very best thing you can do is to get on with doing what you are there to do.’

  ‘I’m not needed . . .’

  ‘Damn it, Harry, you’re a DCI! Bloody well act like one!’

  Harry took a deep breath and massaged his temples with his left hand. ‘I’ll call in a few hours,’ he said.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ the DSI replied. ‘You will focus on your job and I will do mine. Understand?’

  Harry mumbled a ‘Yes’.

  ‘Good,’ the DSI said, and the line went dead.

  Harry dropped his hands to his side, stretched his neck, and stared up into the sky, before closing his eyes and sucking in a long, slow breath. He knew the DSI was right, that driving back to Bristol would solve nothing. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

  Slipping his phone into a pocket, Harry headed off towards the Hawes Community Office, only to see Matt racing towards him from the same direction.

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ Matt said, jangling the keys towards the police Land Rover in front of him, the vehicle parked outside the Bull’s Head Hotel, just a few yards away from where Harry was stood. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Farm accident,’ Matt said.

  ‘An accident?’ Harry said. ‘Then why the rush?’

  Matt stopped. ‘Jim’s out there now.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He doesn’t think it was an accident at all.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘Bloody hell, Matt!’ Harry hissed, as the detective sergeant hurled the four-wheel drive along Beggarman’s Road, sending him up and out of his seat to slam his head into the roof above. ‘You always drive like this?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Matt said, and sped up. ‘That better?’

  Harry was pretty sure that Land Rovers weren’t supposed to be driven the way Matt was doing so, and he found himself not only hanging on tight to the handle above the passenger door with his left hand, but bracing himself against what was laughingly called a dashboard with his right. And for good measure, he pushed his knees up against it as well, just in case, but all that did was cause some painful chafing.

  Matt looked far too relaxed, Harry thought, as he stared at the detective constable, who was driving along with only his left hand on the steering wheel, his right arm leaning out of the driver’s door window, truck-driver style.

  Just a few minutes ago Harry had been in Hawes marketplace worrying about his brother. Now he was more than a little concerned about surviving a journey out into the wilds of the dales. And wild it was, with Weatherfell looming down over them on their left, its roots stretching out to link with others that Harry didn’t yet know the names of.

  The dales could be both beautiful and bleak in the same stolen moment, and Harry had seen how a quick weather change could turn a picture postcard view into a masterpiece of gothic horror, with howling winds churning up rain clouds to send them racing across the landscape to devour the sun.

  Right now, the grey of the morning seemed undecided, and Harry wouldn’t put money on what kind of weather was on its way later on. Clouds were breaking far off, but over them now sat a plume of sallow white, heavy with the threat of worse to come. And to think it had been all sunshine and wasps just a couple of days ago, Harry mused.

  Matt dropped a gear, heaved the vehicle onto another road, and headed off again at speed, all without removing his right hand from the window, Harry noticed, somewhat puzzled as to how the man had managed to change gears.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Matt said, nodding ahead.

  Smooth, lush fields lay behind the walls which rose like ramparts on either side of the road.

  Matt then pointed and chirped, ‘There it is!’

  Harry saw a gap in the wall, assumed Matt was going to slow down, and too late realised that he wasn’t going to do anything of the sort.

  ‘You mad bastard!’ Harry yelled, as the Land Rover’s tyres squealed on the road, biting into it as Matt swung in left off the road, through the open gate, and up into the field beyond.

  ‘And here we are!’ Matt said, as though absolutely nothing was wrong with his driving. ‘Nice little drive that, isn’t it? Lovely scenery.’

  Harry noticed a couple of barns in the corners of fields further up and wondered if they had stood as long as the walls which hemmed them in. He guessed so, once again amazed at history of the place, how wherever he looked the landscape stretched away from him not just in distance but time, centuries laying out before him, its ghosts restless.

  Parked just a little way off in the field Harry saw Jim’s ow
n vehicle, which was another Land Rover, only this one wore proudly its farming heritage, with muddy tyres, plenty of dents and scratches, and tufts of hay sticking out from various quarters. The police had a number of vehicles to use, including the Land Rover he and Matt had driven over in, but Harry had come to understand that they weren’t always best suited to the weather and the terrain, which was why getting Jim preferred his own vehicle. In fact, getting him to part with it in favour of a police vehicle was pretty much akin to prizing the lid from off a particularly well gummed up jar of Marmite.

  ‘Well would you look at that,’ Matt said, and let out a long whistle.

  The sound drew Harry’s attention away from the vehicle and he saw just a way off in front of them, in the direction they were now walking, the front end of a tractor smashed through a drystone wall. He hadn’t noticed it at all from the road and only now, because they were in the field, was it visible.

  As they drew closer, Matt at last having slowed down to allow the four-wheel drive to do its job and just pull them easily up through the fields, Harry saw that something else was alongside it. He couldn’t quite make it out yet, its lines hidden by bits of smashed wall, which stood up like broken teeth from the ground beneath, but it was pretty clear that it, too, was not in good shape.

  Matt pulled the Land Rover to a stop, turned off the engine, and half shoved, half kicked his door open. ‘Best we go and have a gander then,’ he said.

  Harry nodded in agreement, pleased with himself for knowing what Matt was actually talking about.

  A figure emerged through a gate in the wall ahead, to the right of the crashed machinery, and waved. He was carrying a small rucksack.

  ‘There’s Jim,’ Matt said, waving back.

  ‘I can see that for myself,’ Harry muttered. ‘So who called it in?’

  ‘A friend of the deceased,’ Matt said. ‘Jim was over this way anyway so came over to see what had happened, call the ambulance out, the usual.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Let’s ask him,’ Matt said.

  Jim, a Police Community Support Officer, or PCSO, was in his mid-twenties and as local as you could get, having been born and bred on a farm in Burtersett, a hamlet just a mile or so the other side of Hawes, and just off the main road, which ran like an artery through the dale.

  ‘So, what have we got?’ Harry asked as Jim came to a stop in front of him. He could see concern in the young man’s face, his jaw clenched firm, eyes dark.

  Jim opened his rucksack and handed out some PPE: gloves and facemasks. Jim was already wearing his. Harry and Matt pulled on the gloves, the latex pinging against Harry’s wrists as he made sure they were not only tight but that he could still use his hands okay, then slipped the facemasks on over their mouths.

  ‘Got a call about twenty minutes ago,’ Jim said, reading from the little notebook in his hand, which all police carried with them. ‘Report of an accident. The body was found by an acquaintance of the deceased.’

  ‘Body?’ Harry said, then glanced at Matt. ‘You said this was an accident. You never mentioned that we’d be dealing with a body. A little bit remiss, wouldn’t you say?’

  Matt did his best to not look sheepish.

  ‘Who’s the deceased?’ Harry asked, making a mental note to give Matt a bit of a bollocking for not passing on relevant details about what was now clearly a potential crime scene. ‘Why were they here?’

  ‘John Capstick,’ Jim said. ‘He farms out this way. If you can call what he does farming.’

  ‘And where are we exactly?’ Harry asked, having never ventured into this part of the dales before.

  ‘Oughtershaw,’ Matt said, and pointed back down the field to a small collection of buildings just down the road. ‘Can’t say it’s a place I’d like to live. No pub for a start.’

  ‘There’s the chapel,’ Jim offered.

  ‘Methodist,’ Matt said. ‘Can’t even go there for a tipple, what with the wine being non-alcoholic. They actually use Ribena, you know? Ribena! Can you imagine?’

  Harry ignored Matt’s clearly deeply held issues with what the local church goers used instead of communion wine and asked, ‘Next of kin?’

  ‘Father died over a decade ago,’ Matt said. ‘Not exactly a loss either. Right old bastard he was. And his son followed suit.’

  ‘Mother?’

  Jim shook his head. ‘And no one else, neither. Or if there are, they’re not up for admitting to it.’

  Harry took a mental note of Matt’s judgments on someone long dead and asked, ‘Who’s the acquaintance?’

  Jim’s eyes fell back into his notebook.

  ‘Nicholas Ellis,’ he said.

  ‘La’ll Nick?’ Matt said, rolling his eyes. ‘Can’t imagine he’s been exactly helpful.’

  ‘No, not really,’ Jim said. ‘All panic and screeching if I’m honest. Wasn’t really making much sense.’

  Harry raised an eyebrow at both men in front of him. ‘La’ll Nick?’

  ‘Little Nick,’ Matt explained. ‘Not the nicest of blokes.’

  ‘I’m not nice either,’ Harry said. ‘In fact, there’s a few people I’m sure who think my middle names are utter and bastard.’

  ‘No, not like that,’ Matt said, then started to stumble on his words. ‘I mean, it’s not that you’re not nice, it’s just that you can be a bit, well . . .’

  Harry let Matt sweat just long enough before he turned to Jim and said, ‘Look, best we get eyes on first, right? If this is a Category One, then this is a crime scene and we need to get moving on it fast, sort out a Scene Guard and a Scene Log, the usual. If it’s Category Two, then we’ll just deal with it accordingly, okay?’

  Jim led the way up to the gate in the wall and through to the field on the other side. Here Harry was at last able to get a good look at what had happened.

  The tractor he had seen when they had arrived was a write-off, that much was clear to Harry. The vehicle hadn’t so much crashed into the wall as barged through it, spreading shattered stone and bits of itself all around. The front wheels were hanging off, the axle joining them twisted nastily. The engine was leaking oil and diesel, the acrid stink of it polluting the fresh air gusting around them. Behind the engine, the cab was a mangled shell, with glass from the windows dusting the grass like snow. The two huge rear wheels of the tractor were neither of them touching the ground, thanks to the fact that the vehicle was stuck fast on the rubble of a centuries’ old wall. The twin-axle trailer was still hooked into the couplings at its rear, but was on its side and lying to the right of the tractor, after jack-knifed at the moment of impact, Harry assumed.

  Having taken in the full extent of what had happened, Harry noticed something was missing.

  ‘The body,’ Harry said. ‘Where is it?’

  Jim pointed up the field.

  Harry followed Jim’s line of sight and was able to make out the scars in the field caused by the out of control tractor and trailer, but nothing else.

  ‘Can’t see anything,’ he said, then saw a thick grey cloud hovering just above the ground. It was about the size of a children’s paddling pool, Harry thought, and knew that the sound of it would be the sickening buzz and hum of blowflies, feasting themselves silly on the corpse which was still hidden from view.

  ‘I’m not sure you’ll want to either,’ Jim said. ‘Come on, it’s up this way a bit.’

  Harry held back for a second, his eyes still on the flies, his experience giving him a pretty good idea of what awaited them.

  ‘Where’s this Little Nick bloke that you mentioned?’ he asked. ‘I’ll need to speak to him once we’ve had a look at everything, find out why he was out here in the first place.’

  ‘He’s back at the farmhouse, just down there near the village,’ Jim explained. ‘Liz is there to keep an eye on him, try and calm him down a bit, stop him jabbering on and on, which he likes to do at the best of times, so you can imagine what he’s like right now.’

  ‘I certainly can,’ Matt sai
d.

  Liz Coates was the other PCSO in the team covering the dales. She went everywhere on a motorbike, a huge off-road beast which, at a touch over five foot tall, she didn’t look big or heavy enough to ride. And yet she handled it with the skill of someone who had clearly grown up riding dirt trails and had somehow managed to not get injured.

  ‘Good plan,’ Matt said. ‘Though he’s probably already nicked most of the cutlery and any booze he could find.’

  ‘I’m getting the impression that you don’t like him,’ Harry said, glancing down towards Oughtershaw. ‘And we’ll need to go house-to-house, check if anyone saw or heard anything.’

  ‘Won’t take long,’ Jim said. ‘Aren’t that many houses.’

  ‘As for Nick, he’s easy to dislike,’ Matt said with a shrug. ‘But John is . . . was worse.’

  Harry took a deep breath and looked up the field to where Jim had said the body was. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go see what we’ve got.’

  Halfway up the field, Harry saw blood. Not much, just a dried patch of it pushed into the grass, grown dark over time and under the sun, flies buzzing around, but nothing like the cloud of them further ahead. Walking on they passed another and another, leading off like some over-sized and grisly Morse Code stamped into the grass at their feet.

  ‘So, come on then, what do you think happened?’ Harry asked, as they made their way towards the body, the patches of blood leading the way, and growing darker as they drew closer.

  Jim said nothing for a moment then stopped and turned to look at Harry and Matt. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I guess it could be just an accident. Probably nothing more than John being a victim of his own stupidity. I mean, he wasn’t exactly the best of farmers, was he?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Can’t say that I’d know either way.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t,’ said Jim. ‘The farmhouse, the yard, it’s a mess. No pride in the place. Animals aren’t looked after properly. The walls are left to just crumble. He’s just carried on like his dad, hating farming and doing nowt to change it. Mad if you ask me. Actually, just ask anyone around here, and they’ll tell you the same, for sure.’