The Kill Call

flagged the calls up, and his boots were the ones on the ground right now in this area. If what Mr Wakeley had told him had any significance at all, he would find the answer here in Birchlow somewhere.
    He dialled Fry’s number to let her know his location.
    ‘It’s close enough to your scene,’ he said. ‘Could be significant.’
    ‘Yes, it’s worth following up. But don’t knock yourself out, Ben.’
    ‘I’m here, so I’ll do the best I can.’
    ‘As you always do, right?’
    Cooper passed a small church, which had one spectacular stained-glass window catching the light. A depiction of a saint, dying in great sanctity, with a quiver of arrows through his throat. Bright yellow daffodils grew in the cottage gardens, contrasting with a red pillar box, and a line of dark grey wheelie bins standing at the roadside, waiting for the refuse collectors. Milk bottles had been left out for the milkman, the way everyone had once done it.
    There was a village pub in Birchlow, the Bird in Hand. But no shops. And no post office, of course. There was just a small car park behind the village hall, with a phone box and a parish notice board, and several cars parked up between the stone walls.
    Looking for the farm whose land ran up the back of the churchyard, Cooper reflected that there were some characteristics that didn’t endear you to people in villages like this. Being openly inquisitive was one. Knowing too much was another. Unfortunately, a police detective was likely to fall into both categories.
    When he came to a sign for Rough Side Farm, he knew he was in the right place. Eyam was clearly visible from here, spread out on the opposite hillside. Some of the land here looked to be good pasture, so good that it ought to be supporting a dairy herd. But who wanted to run a dairy farm when prices for milk were so poor, and the bull calves worthless for meat?
    Cooper found the farmer lurking in his workshop, surrounded by tractor parts and bits of oily machinery. He introduced himself, and learned the farmer’s name was Peter Massey. He was a man in his late fifties, but lean and fit-looking, the way that the older generations of farmers often were. Physically, he was probably fitter than a lot of men half his age who did nothing but watch football and drink beer. He could certainly give Matt Cooper a fifty-yard start. No doubt all those hours spent out on the moors had done that for him. In a city, a man like Massey would probably credit his physical condition to tai chi or pilates.
    Cooper commented on the quality of the land, usually a good ice breaker with a farmer who looked as though he’d been around for a while and could take the credit for it. Across the yard, he could see an empty cow shed, and the padlocked door to what must have been the milking parlour.
    ‘Yes, it used to be all fields and cows round here,’ said Massey, then paused for a moment. ‘Now it’s just fields.’
    When Cooper explained that he wanted to see the route up to Birchlow that the old man had described, Massey wiped his hands on a rag and led him out of the yard. The farmhouse itself was a typical jumble of extensions and additions cluttering the outline of the original eighteenth-century building. A low profile against the Pennine winds, solid stone walls thick enough to keep out the cold.
    ‘My father would have been upset that I gave up the dairy herd,’ said the farmer as they passed through a gate and into the first field. ‘He bred some nice Friesian crosses. Wonderful milkers, they were. But not good enough. No cows would have been good enough.’
    ‘You inherited this farm from your father?’ asked Cooper.
    ‘Aye. And he took it over from his father. Lord, I was out in this yard helping with the morning milking by the time I was ten years old.’
    ‘You must have a lot of memories, then.’
    Massey’s eyes clouded for a moment. He was gazing at the hillside, rather than at the house and buildings. Perhaps he felt he’d grown up out there in the fields, rather than indoors.
    ‘You might say that. Yes, I’ve got a lot of my memories bound up in this land. Buried now, some of them.’
    They followed the line of the dry-stone wall as it snaked across the contours of the hillside, following the dips and hollows. At a couple of points it was intersected by similar walls running at right angles to it, dividing the fields into long, sloping strips of land. Ahead of him, Cooper could see miles and miles of wall, an