The Kill Call. Stephen Booth
There was a memorial to the Rats of Tobruk, the Iraq and Afghanistan willows, and trees planted for the First Army Veterans. Everyone from the Kenya Police to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was remembered.
The guide book said that chestnuts had been chosen for The Beat because the first police truncheons were made from their wood, chestnut being particularly durable – not to say hard, if you were cracked across the skull with it. Several of the trees had been grown from conkers taken from Drayton Manor, the home of Sir Robert Peel himself. Who knew that the founder of the police service had grown his own chestnut trees?
Ben saw that Matt and Claire had reached the Memorial Garden before him. He supposed he must have been dawdling, subconsciously delaying the moment. Yet he’d promised himself he’d face up to everything he had to deal with from now on. Nothing was to be gained from shutting his memories away and slamming the lid down tight.
Startled by a sound behind him in the office, Cooper looked around guiltily, remembering where he was. For the first time, he became aware of the atmosphere in the office, a little bit more relaxed than usual.
‘So where’s DS Fry?’ he asked Irvine.
‘Call-out to a body.’
‘Suspicious?’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘Have we got some details?’
‘Here somewhere,’ said Irvine.
Cooper read quickly through a copy of the incident log. The Eden Valley Hunt? What were they doing with the hunt? Saboteurs? That could be tricky. Fry would be totally out of her depth.
Without even bothering to sit down at his desk, he made a call to a familiar mobile number, but only got the recorded voicemail message. Irvine and Hurst watched him in amazement as he headed back out of the office.
‘Diane? I think you’ll need me. I’m on my way.’
‘Don’t forget,’ said the uniformed inspector, surveying the small group of officers he’d been allocated that morning, ‘it’s perfectly OK for them to be killed – as long as they’re shot.’
Standing on a roadside near Birchlow, Diane Fry watched the inspector at work. Like a practised mind reader, she could tell what he was thinking. With luck, they wouldn’t be called on to do very much today, except watch.
Officers nodded and shuffled their feet. They adjusted their high-vis jackets and tucked in the scarves they hoped would stop the rain from trickling down their necks. Fry thought some of them looked bored already. With luck, they’d be even more fed up before the morning was over. Their presence was supposed to be a deterrent, rather than anything else. It was policing as a spectator sport.
The inspector’s name was Redfearn, a grey-haired veteran approaching his thirty years’ service, twelve of which had been spent in the Met before he returned to Derbyshire. Fry always wondered how he’d managed to maintain an unruffled, pragmatic manner all that time. It was great for dealing with young bobbies, but there had been times when she’d wanted to prod him into some kind of response. Being in CID, she didn’t have too much contact with him, but today was going to be different.
‘They can even use dogs, provided it’s no more than two,’ said Redfearn. ‘But the actual killing has to be done by shooting. Or by a bird of prey, if there happens to be one present. That’s legal.’
The inspector paused, glancing at the vehicles already gathered in a field and along the grass verges as far as the eye could see. No doubt he was thinking that the rain might keep the numbers down. But it was late in the season, and intelligence had suggested a confrontation could be expected.
‘From past experience, it’s probably the sabs you’ll have to watch out for,’ he said. ‘But we don’t take sides, all right? We’re here to uphold the law, but mostly to prevent public order offences and ensure all parties can go about their lawful activities. So keep your eyes open, and your wits about you. Oh, and try to keep your feet dry.’
As the officers dispersed, Fry introduced herself to the inspector. She didn’t envy him his job. Keeping public order was often a thankless task, especially when you found yourself thrust between two groups who each had the right to go about their peaceful activities. Hunt duty wasn’t an assignment that many would want.
The Eden Valley Hunt met twice a week, and Fry felt it was surely no coincidence that today’s meet was so close to her potential murder scene. In fact, she realized now that the air support unit’s surveillance task was connected with the hunt. The helicopter was visible hovering over a copse a couple of fields away.
‘You think one of the hunt supporters might know something about your body?’ said Redfearn when she explained.
‘Someone left hoofprints all over my crime scene, Inspector. In fact, it looks like more than one horse to me. Your operation here is less than half a mile away – I could see you from the scene down there. It seems to me you might have some potential witnesses for me.’
‘There are quite a lot of them, you know. There are horse boxes and trailers parked all the way back from here to Birchlow.’
‘We’re going to have to talk to them, and find out who was here first this morning.’
‘What time?’
‘Around eight thirty a. m., the ME says.’
‘You want the huntsman, or one of the whippers-in, then. They’d be here with the hound van, early doors. Oh, and a couple of hunt followers would have been out laying the artificial scent.’
‘Where are they now?’
Redfearn looked around. ‘God knows, Sergeant. In one of these fields somewhere. They’ll turn up later on.’
‘I need to grab them as soon as poss.’
‘Understood.’
The inspector used his radio, asking for someone whose name she couldn’t catch to come to the control point and speak to Inspector Redfearn. Well, they would do for a start. Impatient though she was to get on with the job, Fry was well aware that she didn’t yet have the manpower to start interviewing dozens of hunt supporters. She glanced at the lines of horse boxes. Was it dozens, or scores? Or even hundreds?
‘And what about your saboteurs, Inspector?’ she said, when he’d finished with his radio.
‘What about them?’
‘I’m wondering if one of them might be missing. It would be useful to talk to them.’
He shook his head. ‘Well, the sabs aren’t very forthcoming, you know. It’s difficult enough getting their own names and addresses out of them. Understandably, because if their identities get known, they can be subject to repercussions. But we’ll try to rope in a couple for you, if you like.’
‘I’d appreciate it.’
Fry turned at a clatter of hooves and saw a bunch of riders rounding the corner. Red coats, black coats, mud-spattered boots, gleaming horses. They trotted towards her as if they’d just fallen out of a time warp. Because surely those scarlet coats charging across the landscape were a throwback to a world of pub prints and Victorian Christmas cards. Hard to believe that it still went on, so far into the twenty-first century, and after all that fuss about the legislation to ban it.
‘Are you expecting much trouble?’ she asked the inspector as the riders passed.
‘Hard to tell. There’s a cyclical pattern to these things, though. Tension builds up over the hunting season between September and March. Niggling resentments from the start of the season can lead up to minor assaults and scuffles around Christmas, then more serious incidents tend to happen at the end of the season. Both sides get a cooling-off period during the summer, you see.’
Seasons and cooling-off periods; it all sounded like one big game to Fry. She wondered what constituted a goal for either side. A fox killed, or a fox saved. A black