The Kill Call

Fry told Cooper when she called.
    ‘Great. What about –’
    ‘Her brother Rick? No, he got away.’
    She sounded so disgusted that Cooper didn’t ask her how it had happened. If it was her own fault somehow, she would be blaming herself enough by now.
    ‘He made it to his Land Rover while we were dealing with his sister,’ said Fry. ‘There was a horse that proved a bit of a distraction.’
    ‘Didn’t you have the entrance sealed off?’ asked Cooper, though he knew it was too obvious.
    Fry sighed. ‘Yes, of course. But there was another way out: a track across the fields. His Land Rover made it, but there was no way we could follow.’
    ‘Which way is he heading?’
    ‘He should come out near the stone mill. Who knows which direction he’ll take when he gets back on the road, though. Too many tracks and unmade roads in this area.’
    Cooper mentally pictured the map. ‘We’re not far away. We’ll take a chance and head up through Great Longstone on to the Longstone Edge road.’
    ‘Thanks, Ben. I’ll catch up with you somewhere.’
    Her voice sounded a little shaky. No way to conceal that, except by not saying very much. Cooper wondered what had frightened her.
    ‘Diane, are you –?’
    ‘Just don’t,’ said Fry. ‘Just don’t ask me if I’m all right.’
       
    With his foot down on the Toyota’s accelerator, Cooper left Bakewell behind on the A6 and turned up the hill in Ashford in the Water. He slowed through Great Longstone, watching for Rick Widdowson’s blue Land Rover as they passed the two pubs, the White Lion and the Crispin, but in Great Longstone, you were more likely to see a well-known former cabinet minister walking his equally well-known dog.
    Moor Lane took them up to the Edge. It was quiet up here today. Saturday was the day for shopping in Bakewell, and tomorrow would be the time for enjoying the view. A sharp left-hand bend marked the point where the haulage road from High Rake and Black Harry Lane both met the public road.
    Cooper stopped the car for a moment, surveying the landscape for a cloud of dust, or a flock of sheep scattering across a field. The Toyota had four-wheel drive, but he was reluctant to find himself drawn in to a pursuit across open country.
    ‘What’s that up ahead in the road?’ said Murfin, pointing straight on.
    Cooper let in the clutch again, and drove on slowly.
    ‘It’s a dead sheep.’
    ‘And look, in the ditch – a blue Land Rover.’
    They were on the edge of the last surviving stretch of genuine moorland on Longstone Moor. To the east, Cooper could see the glint of the flash, the water-filled quarry workings, edged by a screen of trees. To the west, the moor itself was a sea of heather, black in the rain, a dark ocean stirred fitfully by the wind.
    He drew the car into the side of the road, and parked on the rough grass verge. They peered into the Land Rover to make sure Rick Widdowson wasn’t lying injured inside it. But the driver’s door stood open, and it was clear what had happened.
    As Cooper straightened up, he saw Fry’s black Peugeot coming the other way. She pulled a face at the sight of the dead sheep lying bloodied in the middle of the carriageway.
    ‘Better help me drag this out of the way, Gavin,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s a bit of a hazard.’
    ‘Oh, shit,’ said Murfin. ‘What a great day this is turning into.’
    Fry got out of her car and pulled up the collar of her coat as the wind across the moor caught her hair.
    ‘He’s abandoned his vehicle and legged it, then,’ she said.
    ‘Yes. But we can only have been a few minutes behind him. So where is he?’
    In this landscape, there was only one answer. Widdowson must have gone to ground somewhere on the moor, and was lying flat to the earth in the heather. As long as he remained still, they would need an awful lot of time and luck to stumble across him.
    Cooper walked as far as the first turn in a track that snaked across the moor towards the distant opencast rakes. Nothing moved anywhere, not even a rabbit.
    ‘We’ll need to get the helicopter unit to guide us in with their infra-red camera,’ he said.
    ‘I’ll put in the request.’
    Then a noise broke the silence of the moor. A tuneless warble, no skylark or curlew. Cooper turned his head to listen and focused in on the noise before it stopped. He fixed his eye on a patch of heather close to one of the capped mine shafts.
    ‘No need for the helicopter, after all,’ said Fry.
    ‘What was