The Kill Call

makes the shoe impressions smaller, but deeper. Because of the rain, not all the impressions are intact, but we’ve pieced together enough to be fairly confident.’
    Fry was starting to form a picture in her mind now. The scenario was coming to life, the details filling themselves in. She could imagine Patrick Rawson easing the Mitsubishi slowly up the track to the field barn that morning and parking his car out of sight. Why had he done that? Because he was involved in a secret assignation? Or to surprise someone who didn’t expect him to be there?
    Whatever the reason, something had gone wrong for Mr Rawson. She didn’t know yet how much time had passed between him arriving at the barn and the arrival of his killer or killers. Had there been an argument? Or had he been expecting someone quite different, and Rawson was the one who got a surprise? He must have been out of his car by that stage, or he would surely have got back in and driven away, if he felt under threat. She pictured him cut off from his vehicle, looking around for a means of escape.
    And at some point, Mr Rawson had started to run. A businessman in early middle age, wearing a waxed coat and brown brogues, he’d scrambled over a stile and begun to run across an empty field in North Derbyshire. He would have been dashing through driving rain, slipping in the wet grass, covering his shoes in mud. Where had he been running to?
    Fry turned and looked in the opposite direction, trying to imagine what Patrick Rawson would have been seeing as he ran. He had looked a reasonably fit man for his age, but he hadn’t been dressed for sprinting. Could he have been hoping to make it to the stone mill, which was visible in the distance to the east?

    ‘Anything else, Wayne?’
    ‘Yes, there is. The office sent through a bit of digital video footage for you. Thought you might want to watch it in the van, rather than wait until you get back to West Street.’
    Fry almost liked Abbott in that moment.
    ‘Brilliant.’
    ‘Apparently, this is from one of the protestors who were here yesterday,’ said Abbott as he set up the screen.
    ‘The hunt saboteurs.’
    ‘Right. The quality is crap, of course. The Photographic Unit might be able to enhance it a bit, but the camera work is decidedly shaky, I’m afraid.’
    An image came on the screen of a blurred road, then a section of dry-stone wall going past as the camera swung round rapidly. Splashes of rain hit the lens and ran sideways. Fry had almost forgotten about the rain. But anything filmed at the time Patrick Rawson met his death would have been shot pretty much underwater.
    ‘This kid obviously spotted something, or one of his mates did,’ said Abbott. ‘It steadies down in a minute.’
    The cameraman seemed to be running now, and the picture bounced up and down. Heavy breathing could be heard via the onboard microphone of his video camera, and somebody calling ‘ Over there! ’
    Then, for a few seconds, there was absolute gold. Over the top of the wall, two horses could be seen being ridden across a field, kicking up a spray of water and dirt. There was almost no detail to the image, and before Fry could blink the horses had gone again, hidden by the slope of the land and an intrusive tree. Distant shouts could be made out, much too far away to be deciphered. But, listening as hard as she could, Fry thought she made out a name, shouted twice. Rosie?
    The camera swung back again, wobbled, and focused on a group of young people standing in the road, their faces bright with excitement. Fry thought one of them could have been the girl she’d seen later with blood running down her face.
    ‘Run it back to the horses,’ she said.
    Abbott replayed it and froze the image at the point where the two riders could be seen most clearly. Fry gazed at the picture for a long time. In truth, it told her very little. She could see the general colour of the horses. She could tell that the riders weren’t wearing red coats, but tweed jackets and black helmets. But at least that was something.
    At the bottom of the screen, the date stamp said it was zero-eight thirty-six, an hour before the first of the mounted hunt were supposed to have arrived for the meet. If she could discover where the cameraman was standing, she could work out whether the riders were going towards the location where Patrick Rawson had died, or coming away from it.
    ‘So much for our Mrs Forbes and Mr Widdowson,’ she said.
       
    Cooper got