‘Yes, they’re clever enough.’
Massey looked slyly at Cooper, perhaps remembering that he was a police officer.
‘Besides, the Eden Valley don’t hunt foxes any more, they just follow an artificial scent.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘So if I let the hunt come on to my land on that understanding, it’s not my responsibility if they decide to go off and chase foxes. The landowner can’t be prosecuted for it. That’s the law.’
Cooper nodded. The hunt had made sure that farmers and landowners were reassured about their legal position after the hunting ban came in. Lots of them had been nervous that they would be targeted for prosecution if the hunt broke the law on their land by letting the pack kill a fox. It might be easier to prove whose land it had happened on, than who had been in charge of the hounds at the time.
But Peter Massey was right. The Hunting Act said that he was safe from prosecution if he had only agreed to allow legal activities on his land by the hunt.
As they walked back, Cooper asked Massey if he’d heard about the body found not a mile away from his farmhouse.
‘Aye, I heard. That’s not my land, though. It’s farmed by someone over Housley way. He gets some crops out of the lower acreage, I believe. That’s the only way to make money in farming these days.’
‘He has some sheep, too.’
Massey sniffed. ‘Ah, well. They keep the grass down, I suppose.’
‘The dead man’s name was Patrick Rawson. Does it mean anything to you?’
‘Not a thing. He wasn’t from around here, though, was he?’
‘No.’
Before he left, Cooper gazed around the yard of Rough Side Farm. Not much money had been spent on maintaining the buildings in recent years. That was a common enough story. Matt was the same at Bridge End – he’d rather spend money on a new tractor than replace a shed roof. He said that if farm buildings were built properly in the first place, they ought to last for ever. In practice, the problem was just passed on to the next generation as part of their inheritance.
Cooper noticed a 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 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?