The Kill Call

go?’
    ‘This afternoon.’
    ‘No problem.’

    Feeling a sudden need to get a bit of distance from his colleague, Cooper walked as far as the dry-stone wall bordering the sheep pasture. The neighbouring field was much lower down the hill. Very unusually for this part of Derbyshire, the field was planted with an arable crop of some kind, its stalks already several inches tall and showing bright green. Some hopeful farmer praying for a break?
    He shook his head. ‘Diane, are you sure this is the way the riders came?’
    ‘We think so. Why?’
    ‘Well, on horseback, there would have been no way for them to get over the stile, or the wall. They must have come through the gate between the two fields.’ Cooper pointed at the gate some yards away. ‘Were there sheep in this top field when you first arrived?’
    ‘Yes, we got the farmer to move them.’
    ‘Well, the fact that the sheep were still in this field, and not raiding the crop next door, suggests to me that the riders closed the gate after them.’
    ‘Fingerprints?’ said Fry.
    ‘Exactly. The gate is closed by a steel latch, and the underside of it is protected from the rain.’
    ‘I’ll get Wayne Abbott on to it.’
    ‘Some of the prints will be the farmer’s, of course. But you never know.’
    ‘Here’s hoping, then.’
    Cooper thought even Diane Fry ought to have spotted something like that. It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Gates were made to keep livestock in, so this one must have been closed by someone. Ipso facto .
    But all she did was watch him in silence as he clambered over the gate, careful to avoid touching the latch, and studied the lower field. There was no mistaking those distinctive crescent shapes pressed into the soft ground, or the powerful odour lingering long after the horses had passed by. Brown, fibrous heaps lay on the soil, the weather too cold yet for the orange dung flies that would swarm around them in summer. But the hoof marks were in quite the wrong place.
    ‘Look, they rode down the tramlines, too,’ said Cooper.
    ‘Tramlines?’
    ‘The parallel tracks left by farm machinery through the crop. They’re there for a reason – to guide accurate spraying and fertilizing – and they’re easily damaged by horse riders, especially in wet weather.’
    ‘So?’
    Cooper felt himself bristle at her tone. He hated the way she said ‘So?’ like that. It seemed to sum up all her contempt for the way of life that he’d grown up with. She made that one word suggest that none of this could have any possible importance in the real world, the world that Diane Fry moved in. The implicit sneer made him so angry. He was glad that she couldn’t see the expression on his face right now.
    ‘Responsible riders don’t ride down tramlines,’ said Cooper, taking a deep breath to calm himself. ‘If you did that on a hunt, you’d get sent home by the master. You’re supposed to go round the outside of the field.’
    ‘Do hunting people really have all these rules to follow?’
    ‘Yes. And they stick to them rigidly.’ Cooper turned back to face her. ‘I don’t care what your video shows, Diane. These weren’t members of the hunt.’

14
     
     
    Fry felt her determination harden as they drove to Watersaw House, where the Forbes lived. There was no way she was going to stand at her own crime scene and let someone like Ben Cooper tell her she was wrong. He wasn’t even supposed to be here, for heaven’s sake.
    Yet Cooper seemed to be unavoidable. Trying to keep him at arm’s length was as impractical as taking precautions against the plague.
    ‘This Eyam place,’ she said, as they passed the end of the village. ‘The Plague Village. What’s that all about, then? The Black Death as a form of entertainment? I know people are really stuck for things to do in these parts, but celebrating the plague is pretty weird, even for Derbyshire.’
    ‘I think it’s more a question of celebrating the village’s survival,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what the story is all about.’
    ‘If the place was a bit more civilized,’ said Fry, ‘they might not have got the plague in the first place.’
    She heard Cooper sigh, and restrained a smile. He wasn’t invulnerable. There were ways to wind him up, too.
    ‘The plague came from London in a bundle of damp cloth,’ said Cooper. ‘Black rats had introduced the Black Death to England when they came off ships in the docks.’

    ‘I didn’t know you could catch bubonic plague