A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Possibly,’ grunted the pathologist. ‘Quickest way to find out’ll be to ask his family. Must have made quite a mess when it happened. Ears bleed profusely, as you probably know.’

  Den stepped back again and let the man continue with his observations. ‘Hands calloused, skin around fingernails ingrained with oil … chilblains on both feet … scarring on left knee suggesting surgery at some time. Deceased probably walked with a mild limp as a result. Flexion will have been compromised.’

  Poor chap, Den thought. Torn ear, stiff knee, broken tooth, callouses: Sean was beginning to sound like a peasant from the Middle Ages, not a modern man with all the services of the National Health at his disposal. And they still hadn’t got to what had killed him.

  That came ten minutes later, as the scalpel and the saw were brought into play. The mutterings of the pathologist accelerated as he described the damage. ‘Let’s see,’ he began counting under his breath, ‘six puncture wounds, arranged in two rows of three. One row at the level of the thorax …’ he turned to the diagram on an adjacent table and carefully marked the position of three wounds, ‘… and the second row across the abdomen …’ and he marked another three. Den stared at the diagram, wondering what could have produced such an odd pattern. The pathologist was ahead of him. ‘The lower three wounds are more ragged and more shallow, suggesting the victim resisted. They are very similar in size, depth and angle. The upper row penetrated to a greater depth and are less ragged, suggesting greater force and less resistance. As an early hypothesis, I would suggest the murder weapon was a three-pronged metal implement of some kind. Something used in the deceased’s place of work, most likely.’

  ‘Can you comment on the degree of force needed to cause this amount of damage?’ Den asked, trying to visualise the scene.

  ‘Depends on the angle of penetration. No great force at all if the victim was already on his back. Some farm implements have heavy handles. Its own weight would possibly be enough to break the skin and penetrate a few millimetres. Even a fairly slight person leaning on it could drive it in to this depth. But if he was standing up, it would have to be a much more violent action, by a much stronger individual.’

  ‘Right,’ said Den thoughtfully. ‘Well, I’ll be off now. Lots to do.’ He had hoped all along that he could skip the part where all the vital organs were removed and weighed; it always made his own insides contract with an irrational sympathy. ‘I’ll catch up with the final report later on.’

  Nobody replied. The Coroner’s Officer was making his own notes, and the mortuary assistant was washing away the seepage of body fluids as they threatened to obscure the pathologist’s work. A young trainee was standing mutely at the foot of the slab, jaw clenched, one hand flat against her stomach. Den had given her a few encouraging smiles at the outset, but then forgotten her as the findings became more interesting. Besides, he knew from personal experience there wasn’t anything he could do to assuage her queasiness.

  He drove the twenty miles back to the station as fast as he dared. Hemsley would be impatient to get on with the interviews, and there was a great deal Den wanted to tell him. The Superintendent would be expecting a briefing before lunch, too.

  But first Den wanted to see for himself the detailed findings of the forensic teams from the previous evening. According to Mark Newcombe, the Coroner’s Officer, the team had been there till midnight, rigging up lights and literally crawling all over the yard looking for evidence. But even before the body had been found, the entire herd of cows had walked over the whole yard. ‘It’s a miracle they found anything,’ Newcombe had remarked. ‘But it looks as if they managed to find the spot where the bloke was attacked. Too much blood even for a herd of cows to obliterate. They’ll be back again this morning for another look in daylight.’

  As expected, Den found a well-established file in the station office, containing a list of work so far accomplished. Most notes contained a footnote: Further examination by daylight required. As well as the samples and photos from the gathering yard, the forensics team had also examined the outer yard, between the farmhouse and the outbuildings. Evidence of no fewer than seven distinct sets of tyre marks had been identified, all of which had apparently visited Dunsworthy over the past forty-eight hours – since the last rainfall, which had helpfully provided a new layer of mud which then froze lightly, keeping tyre marks nice and crisp.

  They had also discovered what was almost certainly the murder weapon. Den smiled grimly to himself: it exactly fitted the pathologist’s description of what they should look for. He wondered, inconsequentially, if they should return the two shotguns they’d taken the previous evening. It would be difficult to argue now that they were in any way pertinent to the investigation. At any rate, he smugly told himself, if things went the way he hoped, it would all be sewn up by bedtime. If Hillcock’s clothes revealed traces of O’Farrell’s blood and if Speedwell’s did not, Den thought they’d have more than enough to launch a prosecution against Hillcock.

  But perhaps he was being unduly precipitate. There were still a host of unanswered questions. If Hillcock had dragged his victim into the barn, why was he then so horrified at its discovery? Had it been simply good acting, for the benefit of Deirdre Watson and the police? Deirdre Watson didn’t look like someone who’d be easily fooled. And if Sean had dragged himself into the barn, why would he do that? Why hide away like that, instead of trying to reach the big house and summon help? Had he staggered away in terror of further assault? Perhaps he hadn’t understood how severe his injuries were. After all, his arms and legs still presumably worked at that point, and his head was undamaged. It hadn’t looked as if any bones were broken. Perhaps he’d been so terrified – or even enraged – that the pain was secondary to the fear or his desire to hit back.

  The geography of the farm buildings was extremely complicated, and Den had difficulty in remembering how they all connected up. Could the barn have been a short cut of some sort? To a telephone in the office perhaps, or a first aid box. That struck him as a highly persuasive theory, and he made a note of it.

  And where had the murderer gone, though, immediately after the attack was over? Had he waited to see what his victim would do, or had he flung down his weapon and run in the opposite direction, hoping to establish some sort of alibi for himself? Had he been cool and calculating, or distraught at what he’d done?

  Danny Hemsley swept into the room as if there wasn’t a second to spare, his head thrust forward on his thick neck. ‘Cooper!’ he shot out. ‘Where the hell have you been? We’ve got a million things to do this morning. Forensics have hardly scratched the surface yet, and you know what farms are like – shit all over everything.’ He eyed the open file. ‘Reading the exercise in minimalism they’ve produced so far, eh?’

  Den leant against the desk, taking his weight on his knuckles. ‘Looks okay to me,’ he said. ‘Chap’s attacked in the yard and staggers, or is dragged, bleeding into the barn, where he dies. And the pathologist says it was done with a farm or garden implement with three prongs, which is exactly what they’ve found.’

  ‘I know. They phoned. There was no need for you to be at the PM. Wasting time when you could have been questioning the Dunsworthy people.’

  Den didn’t try to argue. Hemsley’s habit was to panic at the outset of an investigation, to want everything done at once, full reports submitted before breakfast. Den had printed out his own lengthy findings from the hours following the first summons to Dunsworthy, and left them on the DI’s desk the previous evening, before finally getting home at nine-thirty. His own conscience was crystal clear where reports were concerned. ‘Is Hillcock still here?’ he asked.

  ‘Too right he is. Not a happy badger, either.’ Den and the others had long ago given up trying to decide whether Danny knew the difference between badgers and bunnies or whether he just thought he was being funny. ‘He says he did not kill his herdsman, and that he can’t provide any witnesses to where he was between one-fifteen and three-fift
een p.m. Full stop.’

  ‘He only needs to account for the hour between two and three,’ Den said. ‘O’Farrell was alive at two, his wife saw him – and the Watson woman arrived just after three and was chatting to him before they started the milking.’

  Hemsley nodded impatiently. ‘Whatever. He says he had lunch alone in his house, having taken a sandwich and some fruit up to the old granny at one o’clock. The milk recorder got there about half past two and he had a quick word with her in the yard before she went into the office to number her pots, or whatever she does. Then he went back indoors where he did some paperwork. He says he made a phone call to a Mr Harold Spear, a neighbouring farmer who was concerned about a hole in their shared hedge. The call lasted five minutes max, and involved some disagreement about hunting. Mr Hillcock thinks the hole was made by the hunt, of which he disapproves. He would quite like to ban them from his land, but has not done so up to now. This has been confirmed by Mr Spear, who seems to be a very helpful gentleman.’ The Detective Inspector looked up from the notes he had been consulting. ‘On the face of it, Hillcock has to be the main suspect. But there is this Speedwell bloke as well. His clothes have gone to forensics, but Mike had a quick look at them and says they seem clean.’

  ‘I thought so, too,’ said Den. ‘And he’s quite a frail old chap.’

  ‘He’s still in the frame,’ Danny said sternly. ‘Never mind frail, the man’s a farmworker, chucking great hay bales about and turning grown sheep upside down.’

  Den suppressed a sarcastic snort at the image this conjured. Hemsley pressed on. ‘And there seems to be a number of women and youngsters about. Plus, we can’t rule out somebody visiting while Hillcock was in the house, and doing the deed out in the yard. I’ll talk to him one more time, and then we’ll have to let him go.’

  Den pushed himself upright and cleared his throat. ‘There’s something I should tell you,’ he began. ‘I should have told you last night, but there wasn’t really a chance – and besides, I don’t honestly think it’s relevant. But … the thing is, Gordon Hillcock is my ex-girlfriend’s new bloke. I hardly know him. It’s just one of those horrible coincidences. Lilah’s going to be very upset, of course. She’s been around violent death before and this’ll bring it all back to her.’ He twisted his hands together, giving his worries full play. ‘I don’t really know what it’ll do to her.’

  ‘Obviously, this is relevant,’ Danny interrupted, in the tone he’d come to adopt since his promotion. Briskly professional more or less described it, with a dash of impatience at other people’s slow-wittedness.

  Den looked up at him and chewed his lip. The DI’s mind was obviously working at full speed, his eyes darting restlessly from one point in the room to another.

  ‘It means we’ll be vulnerable to a defence argument that you lacked objectivity in the pursuit of O’Farrell’s killer. It means, Cooper, that I really ought to take you off the case, from this moment on.’

  Den opened his mouth to speak. Then he realised he didn’t actually care very much if Danny carried out his threat. Anyone else would come to exactly the same conclusions as he had done – and the case would assuredly arrive at the same eventual outcome, anyway. In some ways, it would be a relief to be free of it and let someone else get their hands covered in muck.

  ‘But I can’t really do that,’ Danny went on. ‘We need your statements from yesterday and I have a feeling it would cause more of a stink if you were taken off now than if you carried on with squeaky-clean integrity. It’d look as if we didn’t trust you. As it is, we’ll have to be completely upfront about it – try and make it work in our favour. No one else is going to have your background knowledge, for a start. You’ve always been the one we sent on the farm jobs – and it’d look funny if we changed our usual practice now.’ He tapped his teeth for a moment, before adding, ‘And anyway, there isn’t anybody of your rank to replace you, with Phil off sick. So that’s the way we’ll have to play it. You’ll listen to everything anybody has to say with a completely open mind. You’ll scour the countryside for mental patients let loose into the community; you’ll investigate O’Farrell’s life, in case there’s something in his past that would make him vulnerable to attack. You’ll get to know everyone living at Dunsworthy, find out what they do all day, what they think, what star sign they are. Sorry, mate – that’s the way this game has to be played. Your only hope for a rest between now and Valentine’s Day is if Hillcock comes out with a confession, backed up with motive and evidence. On the positive side, I’d say that isn’t totally beyond the realms of possibility. Otherwise, it’s grindstone time.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ said Den gloomily. He couldn’t fault the logic, however strong his sense of injustice might be.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When questioned again that morning, with Den present, Hillcock had sighed and slowly shaken his head. ‘I don’t remember anything more than I’ve told you already.’ He said it over and over again. The solicitor, summoned by Gordon’s mother, sat motionless and impassive throughout.

  ‘Please try, sir,’ DI Hemsley had persisted. ‘It is very important, as I’m sure you’ll realise. Shall we go back a bit? When did you last see Sean O’Farrell alive?’

  ‘About ten-thirty yesterday morning.’

  ‘And how would you describe his frame of mind?’

  ‘He was all right. A bit grumpy at the change.’

  ‘Grumpy? Change?’

  ‘I told you – I’d asked him to swap that afternoon’s milking with me. I’d do Tuesday if he did Saturday. I had plans for the weekend. It made him grumpy – though hardly more than usual. You wouldn’t call Sean a cheerful man at the best of times.’

  Den took note of Hillcock’s pallor after a night at the police station. He didn’t suppose he’d managed much sleep. But his manner was calm and relatively cooperative; he didn’t seem frightened or defensive. Den looked at Gordon’s hands, clasped loosely in his lap, just visible over the edge of the table, as the DI continued his questions. Had they wielded a heavy fork and thrust it twice into another man’s body? Den had seen the hands of murderers before, had even suffered unpleasant dreams about them, but he knew better than to suppose that he could identify guilt from them. Gordon had short fingers and square palms. The joints were pronounced, the nails clean. None of the oil that Sean O’Farrell had had ingrained into his skin and nails could be found on Hillcock. Did the farmer leave the unpleasant jobs to his employees, while he contented himself with paperwork and an occasional stroll along his hedgerows?

  Hemsley appeared to have run out of questions, giving the solicitor an opening to push out his chin and demand that his client be permitted to leave. With a sigh, the DI nodded. ‘We would ask that you remain in the vicinity for the next few days,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Cooper will be interviewing the Speedwell family this morning, and there will be further forensic examination of the yards and buildings. Please ensure that nobody goes into the barn where the body was found until we give you the all clear.’

  Gordon snorted slightly, but said nothing. Then, in a sudden rush, all four men got to their feet and skirmished briefly at the door before leaving the room in single file.

  Den and Danny exchanged a few more words before going their separate ways. ‘Mrs O’Farrell says that Sean went back up to the yard after lunch – at two o’clock,’ Hemsley observed. ‘If Hillcock was there too, why does he say he never saw him?’

  ‘It’s a complicated collection of buildings,’ Den explained. ‘They could easily have missed each other.’

  The Inspector put his hands together, pressing a fingertip into a spot beneath is chin. ‘When did Speedwell last see O’Farrell?’

  ‘I don’t think I asked him,’ Den flipped through his report and shook his head. ‘But it looks bad for Hillcock, eh?’ he couldn’t resist blurting. ‘No alibi for that forty minutes, inconsistencies, opportunity …’

  ‘And not a morsel of proof,’ Hemsley reminded him. ‘Early days, my fri
end. And a mind so open, I could get the Millennium Dome into it. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Den let a short silence elapse, cementing his serious intent, before continuing, ‘I said I’d go and interview the milk recorder woman this morning. Mrs Watson. She’s got a lot of background information – knew both men and how they behaved towards each other.’

  ‘And she was there,’ the Inspector said. ‘That’s the most important thing about her. What’s she like physically?’

  Den didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘Quite sturdy,’ he acknowledged.

  ‘I thought she might be. And she was there alone, unobserved, for the best part of an hour. What’s more, she was oddly calm and collected when you arrived, according to your report. You follow my drift, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So, I’d expect you to see her again today. But don’t leave Speedwell for long. I need to know all you can find out about him. Cross your fingers there’s prints on that fork and O’Farrell’s blood on someone’s clothes. Should get results on all that later today – at least the blood groups. You and Mike did a good job last night, you know. Very thorough.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Den nodded. Despite Hemsley’s earlier impatience, Den was aware that neither of them had any sense that this was a complex mystery to be solved. Such murders were, after all, the exception. Far more common was the red-handed, smoking-gun scenario, where the stunned perpetrator was taken in for questioning, charged, remanded, tried, sentenced, in the slow, jerky style of the legal system, and all was well with the world again within the year.