‘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 from rats.’
‘Not from the rats themselves. From their fleas.’
Fry shuddered, and began to regret that she’d mentioned Eyam at all. Rats and fleas were two of the things she hated most in the world.
‘Watersaw,’ said Cooper, when he saw the sign at the entrance to the Forbes’ drive. ‘There’s a Watersaw Rake near here. One of the old opencast workings. Abandoned now, but it would be the nearest one to the crime scene, I think.’
There seemed to be horses everywhere at Watersaw House. As soon as Fry parked her car in the entrance to the stable yard, a huge black horse ran up to the post-and-rail fence and hung its head over to stare at her. She couldn’t squeeze past the car door without brushing reluctantly against its inquisitive muzzle.
‘It looks quite friendly,’ said Cooper.
‘Are you sure?’
The one other thing Fry knew about horses was that they were supposed to like sugar cubes. But who on earth used sugar cubes any more, let alone carried them around in their pockets in case they met a horse?
But she did have a packet of mints in her pocket, and she took it out. The horse nuzzled her jacket, as if searching the rest of her pockets, a quick frisk on suspicion of possession. When she unwrapped a mint and held it out on her palm, the horse went straight for it.
Fry was used to seeing horses, but usually at a safe distance – the mounted unit controlling a crowd at a football match, Up close, she was amazed by the way the animal’s lips unfurled and grasped the mint. She had never realized horses had such prehensile mouths, almost like monkey’s. She supposed it was a characteristic you had to develop when you had no hands to use.
‘You seem to be bonding,’ said Cooper, sounding quite impressed.
‘Animals are all right, as long as they know who’s the boss.’
But then the horse began waggling its ears, and showed its teeth. That was definitely a threat. She backed away, and turned to find the owner of Watersaw House regarding her with scarcely disguised contempt.
Today, Mrs Forbes had removed her riding boots and replaced them with a pair of green wellies. Definite working boots, a crack in the side, mud and straw stuck in the ridges of the soles. They seemed to be at least a size too big, because they flapped as she moved about the yard. To Fry’s surprise, she was also wearing a head scarf. She didn’t think non-Muslim women wore head scarves any more – well, except the Queen, and Tubbs off The League of Gentlemen.
‘Mrs Forbes,’ she said. ‘Detective Sergeant Fry, Edendale Police. I spoke to you on Tuesday morning at the hunt, if you remember.’
‘Oh, yes. What can I do for you?’
‘We’d like you to assist us with our enquiries.’
‘Good heavens, do you people really talk like that?’
Mrs Forbes laughed. Fry bristled.
‘It’s about the death of Mr Patrick Rawson,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to gather as much information as we can about the circumstances of his death. Oh, this is my colleague, Detective Constable Cooper.’
Mrs Forbes examined Cooper with a critical eye, like a buyer weighing up a specimen of bloodstock. Fry wasn’t sure whether she was imagining it, but the woman’s expression actually seemed to soften a little. Mrs Forbes said nothing, but there was definitely a form of private communication going on that Fry wasn’t party to.
‘I see you run a livery stables, Mrs Forbes.’
The woman waved a hand around the yard. ‘Yes, indeed. Twenty-eight stables, eighteen turn-out paddocks, purpose-built boxes, indoor and outdoor maneges… everything you could want. We offer full-time or part-time livery. These girls you see here are some of our DIY-ers.’
Fry studied the youngsters brushing their horses and sorting out their tack. She could see straight away that these weren’t the kind of kids who hung around in the alleys of housing estates in Edendale, drinking bottles of lager and passing round a joint. These girls smelled of saddle soap and horse manure instead of alcohol and cannabis. Yet there was something elusively similar in their manner, a total absorption in their own world, and a hostile stare for the outsider. And in both cases, as Fry well knew, the outsider meant her.