The Kill Call

recording in a minute.’
    Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst were the two youngest DCs, who had been in the department a matter of months. Beat and response officers for a few years, then rushed into CID. That was an indication of the shortage of experienced staff. Fry was conscious of an entire generation coming into the police service behind her, with quite a different attitude to the older officers like Gavin Murfin. All of that new generation were born between 1979 and 1991. They were Thatcher’s children.
    Despite that, she’d noticed a few signs that Irvine and Hurst were tending to look to the wrong people for role models. Ben Cooper, for a start. Murfin, even.
    ‘The victim made his way from his car to this derelict hut at the agricultural research centre, about two hundred yards away. He sustained a head injury at some point here, because blood was found inside the hut. His mobile phone and wallet were also taken. It seems likely that the person who made the 999 call on the victim’s phone was also at the huts, since he told the control room operator that’s where the body was to be found. But, in fact, the victim was still alive. Despite his injuries, he managed to get across these fields before he collapsed and died.’
    ‘I wonder why he didn’t just head back to his car,’ said Hurst. ‘That would be the logical thing to do.’
    Fry looked at Hurst. ‘Yes, but if you see the severity of the head injury, you can imagine that he wouldn’t have been thinking logically. In fact, he was probably dazed and disorientated. He would have been suffering from concussion as well as blood loss, I guess. Hopefully, the pathologist will give us a clearer picture after the postmortem.’
    Fry saw Superintendent Branagh settling into a chair at the back of the room, trying unsuccessfully not to be noticed.
    ‘SOCOs have been assigned to the car,’ said Fry. ‘We’ll bring it in when they’ve processed the scene where it was parked.’
    ‘A barn, was it?’
    ‘A field barn. The track to the location is still usable, but the Mitsubishi was parked out of sight of any walkers. We’ll be trying to trace Mr Rawson’s route from the car to the scene where he met his death, and of course establishing his movements prior to arriving at the barn in the first place.’
    ‘We have two scenes to cover, then.’
    ‘Three, including the hut. And two of them are totally open to the elements. Just our luck to get the sort of weather we had yesterday morning. We also have separate lines of enquiry on this mysterious 999 caller, and on the hoofprints found all over the scene. Some potential witnesses there, I hope.’
    ‘Appeals?’
    ‘Yes, we need to get public appeals out as soon as possible, to encourage these people to come forward with information. Particularly the man who made the call.’
    They listened to the recording of the call logged by the control room. It was very brief, just a description of the location in an unsteady voice, as if the caller had been running. An insistence on ‘ There’s a body ,’ said twice. Repeated requests from the operator for the caller’s name were simply ignored. Listening to the recording for the second time, Fry thought the man might actually still have been running when he dialled the emergency number.
    ‘We won’t have the initial postmortem report on cause of death for a while yet,’ said Hitchens, sensing the end of the briefing approaching. ‘But, given the severity of the head injury, this could be classified as a murder enquiry at any time. So follow procedures, no slip-ups at this early stage, please.’
    ‘The killer seems to have taken his wallet and mobile phone,’ said Irvine. ‘Could this have been a robbery gone wrong?’
    Fry shook her head. ‘I can’t see it. No, it’s more likely they did it to conceal the victim’s identity for as long as possible. We were lucky to find the car so soon and get his identity. Our only other lead is this –’ She held up the evidence bag. ‘A restaurant receipt in the victim’s pocket. Le Chien Noir, in Clappergate. If Mr Rawson used a credit card to pay for his meal, it should provide additional confirmation of his identity, even without the assistance of the wife.’
    ‘Diane, are you going to follow that up yourself?’ asked Hitchens.
    ‘As soon as we’ve finished here, sir.’
    The DI smiled. ‘By the way, I hear you had a bit of trouble at the hunt yesterday?’
    ‘It was nothing. One of those