The Kill Call

horseshoe nailed to the door of an old byre. But it was turned with the points up, to catch the luck, the way the old superstition said.
    ‘Do you ride yourself, Mr Massey?’ he asked.
    ‘Ride what? A horse, do you mean?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    Massey shook his head. ‘Never. That’s for girls, isn’t it?’
    ‘Not necessarily.’
    The farmer politely walked Cooper to his car, as if escorting an important visitor. He even removed his cap and held it in both hands as he watched Cooper negotiate the large, muddy puddles in the farm entrance.
    ‘What about your family?’ asked Cooper. ‘Any sons ready to take over Rough Side Farm? Or daughters, perhaps?’
    Massey shook his head. ‘I’ve got two sons and a daughter, but they’re not interested in farming. They work in computers, and logistics, and human resources. I don’t think any of those things existed when I was at school. I have no idea what my children actually do all day. But I’m happy to live in ignorance.’
    Cooper took one last look at the old farmhouse, and the acres of windswept White Peak landscape that Massey had to himself.
    ‘What does ignorance of those things matter, when you’ve got the freedom of living out here?’

13
     
     
    Back at the scene on Longstone Moor, Fry had found officers from the task force plodding wearily back to the rendezvous point in their boiler suits at the conclusion of their fingertip search. She gathered from their complaints about sore backs and wet knees that the search had produced precious little else.
    SOCOs were still working at the old huts and on Patrick Rawson’s Mitsubishi – she could see their van parked alongside the field barn, though the Mitsubishi itself was invisible from here. She ought to find a way over there to have a look at the car.
    Now that the weather had cleared and the sun was out, there were flies everywhere, hovering over the sheep droppings, gathering in small clouds over the puddles of water under the hawthorn trees. Fry heard a whine near her ear, and swatted at it with a hand. Earlier, she’d opened her mouth and felt something tickle the back of her throat. She was pretty sure she’d swallowed a mosquito. They’d been everywhere during the previous summer and autumn, and some had even survived the winter.
    Wayne Abbott was standing in front of her, a quizzical expression on his face.
    ‘Yes, Wayne?’

    ‘I wanted to update you.’
    ‘Yes, I’m sorry. What have you got?’
    ‘Well, first of all, there’s no sign of anything that could have been used as a murder weapon – no bloodstained stones, or anything of that kind. But we’ve been working on the blood splatter, specifically traces of blood in the soil where the hoof marks are. The indications are that some of the impressions were made before the blood traces. You can see that the pattern of spatter is intact in those areas.’
    As close as Fry peered at the ground beneath the evidence markers, she couldn’t make out the tiny flecks of blood against the soil.
    ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
    ‘Over here, however,’ said Abbott, ‘we can see that the hoof marks came after the injury. The pattern of spatter is completely broken up, some traces of blood have been pushed deep into the ground by the weight of the impressions.’
    Fry straightened. ‘So the horses were definitely here before and after the victim’s injury. That would suggest they were present during the fatal attack.’
    ‘It might be a reasonable conclusion,’ said Abbott. ‘Also …’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Assuming for a moment that your killer or killers did arrive on horseback, we think we’ve managed to identify their approach route. They came across the neighbouring field over there, lower down the hill. The hoof marks are still distinct. There’s a crop of some kind planted in that field, so there’s bare soil, rather than this coarse grass.’
    ‘And what about the victim?’ asked Fry.
    ‘A little more difficult. But our best assessment is that he came direct from the location of his vehicle, which, as you know, was parked over by the old barn there. There’s a stile he could have come over. We’re examining that now, but it’s about fifty yards from the car. He might actually have come over the wall. In any case, he then went into the derelict hut.’

    ‘To try to get away from his assailants?’
    ‘I couldn’t say.’
    ‘And from there …?’
    ‘He came straight across this field. And he was running, which