The Kill Call

quarries.’
    ‘A tricky area, then?’
    Murfin shrugged. ‘The lads are checking any pull-ins on the A623 or this back road over here between the villages. But, as you can see, there are quite a few unmade lanes and farm tracks in this area. So it could take a while, unless some helpful punter phones in.’
    ‘The victim’s shoes are muddy, so he could have walked some distance, at least.’
    ‘Eyam at the furthest, I’d say,’ suggested Murfin, pronouncing the ‘Eem’ correctly. ‘There’s a car park that tourists use, near the museum. I’ve asked for a check on any that have outstayed their parking tickets. He’s been dead for an hour or two, right?’
    ‘Three hours, according to the ME.’
    ‘He might be due for a fine, then. Poor bugger. That’s the last thing he needs.’
    ‘That’s not really funny, Gavin.’
    ‘Oh, I thought those were tears of unrestrained hilarity running down your face. Maybe it’s just the rain, after all.’
    The officer nearby was listening to a call on his radio, and became suddenly alert. Fry looked at him expectantly.
    ‘What’s the news?’
    ‘Not good, Sergeant. The control room says a 999 call was received about twenty minutes ago.’ The officer pointed towards a distant stone building. ‘A unit has been despatched to the old agricultural research centre, about half a mile away in that direction. They thought we’d like to know. There’s been a report of another corpse.’
    Fry cursed quietly, squinting against the downpour.
    ‘I’ve heard about showers of frogs,’ she said. ‘But I’ve never heard of it raining bodies.’

3
     
     
    Detective Constable Ben Cooper ran his hand down the glass of the passenger window, clearing a path through the condensation. But it was wetter outside than inside the car, and all he saw was a blurred reflection of himself – a pair of dark eyes, fragmented against the streets of Edendale. Automatically, he swept back the stray lock of hair that fell across his forehead, before focusing beyond his own image to the side door of the house across the street.
    ‘Someone home, I think.’
    ‘There’d better be. The boss won’t be happy if it’s all a wasted effort.’
    Despite the rain, Cooper would always prefer to be outside, rather than shut up in the office with a mountain of paperwork. That was why he’d managed to talk himself into this assignment, though he hadn’t anticipated finding himself trapped inside a car instead, with the atmosphere growing stale and his breath steaming the windows.
    ‘We’ll get into the property, whatever,’ he said.
    ‘We need an arrest, though.’
    ‘Right.’
    He could feel an itch developing under his stab-proof vest. Right underneath, where he had no chance of reaching it without taking the thing off completely. No amount of twisting his body and squeezing a hand into the gap would do the trick. That was the trouble with sitting doing nothing, waiting for the action to start. You began to develop unreachable itches. You began to think about things.
    His colleagues were fidgeting and grumbling beside him in the car, trying to reach itches of their own, or ease the cramp in their legs. They might have been better waiting outside in the rain, except that Kevlar was said to disintegrate when it got wet. Cooper didn’t know whether that was true, or just a canteen-culture myth that had survived the death of the canteen. He had no urge to be the first one to try it out, though. An itch was better than a knife in the guts.
    ‘What are we waiting for now? Who’s running this show, anyway?’
    ‘Laurel and Hardy, by the look of that entry team.’
    ‘Jesus. They’ve got the Michelin Man on ram.’
    Cooper watched four officers in overalls and riot helmets exiting their unmarked van and approaching the house. Well, no one looked good in a stab vest; Cooper had an uncomfortable feeling that he had put on a few pounds in the wrong places himself. Despite the muscle he’d been building up in the gym, too much good food had staged a kind of counterattack and his waist was now pushing uncomfortably against the inside of the vest. That would be Liz’s fault, he reckoned. She wasn’t a bad cook, and every time she made a meal for him, he felt obliged to return the favour with a visit to a decent restaurant. What a fatal spiral. At this rate, he’d be the Michelin Man himself before too long.
    He watched the bulky figure of the entry team officer swing back the ram. The big red