‘Someone left hoofprints all over my crime scene, Inspector. In fact, it looks like more than one horse to me. Your operation here is less than half a mile away – I could see you from the scene down there. It seems to me you might have some potential witnesses for me.’
‘There are quite a lot of them, you know. There are horse boxes and trailers parked all the way back from here to Birchlow.’
‘We’re going to have to talk to them, and find out who was here first this morning.’
‘What time?’
‘Around eight thirty a. m., the ME says.’
‘You want the huntsman, or one of the whippers-in, then. They’d be here with the hound van, early doors. Oh, and a couple of hunt followers would have been out laying the artificial scent.’
‘Where are they now?’
Redfearn looked around. ‘God knows, Sergeant. In one of these fields somewhere. They’ll turn up later on.’
‘I need to grab them as soon as poss.’
‘Understood.’
The inspector used his radio, asking for someone whose name she couldn’t catch to come to the control point and speak to Inspector Redfearn. Well, they would do for a start. Impatient though she was to get on with the job, Fry was well aware that she didn’t yet have the manpower to start interviewing dozens of hunt supporters. She glanced at the lines of horse boxes. Was it dozens, or scores? Or even hundreds?
‘And what about your saboteurs, Inspector?’ she said, when he’d finished with his radio.
‘What about them?’
‘I’m wondering if one of them might be missing. It would be useful to talk to them.’
He shook his head. ‘Well, the sabs aren’t very forthcoming, you know. It’s difficult enough getting their own names and addresses out of them. Understandably, because if their identities get known, they can be subject to repercussions. But we’ll try to rope in a couple for you, if you like.’
‘I’d appreciate it.’
Fry turned at a clatter of hooves and saw a bunch of riders rounding the corner. Red coats, black coats, mud-spattered boots, gleaming horses. They trotted towards her as if they’d just fallen out of a time warp. Because surely those scarlet coats charging across the landscape were a throwback to a world of pub prints and Victorian Christmas cards. Hard to believe that it still went on, so far into the twenty-first century, and after all that fuss about the legislation to ban it.
‘Are you expecting much trouble?’ she asked the inspector as the riders passed.
‘Hard to tell. There’s a cyclical pattern to these things, though. Tension builds up over the hunting season between September and March. Niggling resentments from the start of the season can lead up to minor assaults and scuffles around Christmas, then more serious incidents tend to happen at the end of the season. Both sides get a cooling-off period during the summer, you see.’
Seasons and cooling-off periods; it all sounded like one big game to Fry. She wondered what constituted a goal for either side. A fox killed, or a fox saved. A black eye or a successful prosecution. Then they all went home with their stories to tell, and met up again next September. Amazing.
They stepped to one side of the road to allow another a horse box to pass. A late-comer, since the rest of the hunt had already assembled and scattered across the fields.
‘Before the Hunting Act, we did have a lot of violent confrontations between sabs and hunt supporters,’ said Inspector Redfearn. ‘More than we do now. The Eden Valley Hunt was unpopular, and it attracted a lot of protests. Sabs travelled hundreds of miles to be here.’
‘Have you always been on hunt duty?’
‘No, but it comes round regularly. Ironically, the turn-out for the hunt has increased since the ban. Their support is booming. On the other hand, the anti-hunt groups lost a lot of members, people who thought the battle was over when the act came in. Now there’s just the hardcore left, and they have to try that much harder to make their presence felt.’
‘And are the saboteurs local?’ asked Fry.
‘We think we’ve got three different groups today. Our own local group we see quite regularly, and they’re generally peaceful. The trouble makers seem to come from other parts of the country, and they’re of a rather more aggressive nature. It generally starts with the foot followers being given grief, then someone gets spat at, a girl’s pony gets sprayed with an unidentified substance. It can take less aggro than that for incidents to kick off big time.’
‘The Eden Valley don’t hunt foxes now, though,’ said Fry.
‘Their official policy is to observe the law. But you know there are exemptions under the Act.’
‘Of course. I heard your briefing.’
‘Well, even if they don’t catch foxes any more, their opposition still turn out. Only now some of them call themselves “hunt monitors” and they’re armed with video cameras, aiming to catch infringements of the law. We never condone vigilante groups, no matter what their cause, so we watch the sabs carefully.’
Fry nodded. She didn’t know who her victim was, yet she already seemed to have an array of potential witnesses, suspects and associates, all milling around the landscape having what passed for fun in these parts. Well, as much fun as you could have in the rain.
A lone rider cantered down the road, a woman in a red coat who dug her knees into her horse’s flanks to turn it as she approached them. The mare trotted over the last few yards of wet grass, hooves thumping on the soft ground, steam spurting from its nostrils.
The rider’s boots and jodhpurs were splattered with mud and her face was red from exertion and the cold air.
‘What’s the problem, Inspector?’
‘This is Detective Sergeant Fry,’ said Redfearn. ‘She’s investigating a suspicious death in this area.’
‘I saw the activity across the way. Thought your people had just got lost.’
‘This is Mrs Forbes,’ Redfearn told Fry. ‘Joint master of the Eden Valley Hunt.’
Fry didn’t think she’d ever been quite so near to a horse before. She knew absolutely nothing about them, except that they bit at one end and kicked at the other.
She explained to Mrs Forbes what she wanted. As she spoke, the rider looked down at her with an expression she’d seen on the faces of the hunt supporters when the saboteurs got too close. An unmistakable hint of contempt, probably just the instinct of the mounted person looking down from a great height on the lowly pedestrian.
‘You think any of our members might know something about this?’ said Mrs Forbes. ‘What nonsense.’
‘If we could just speak to the people -’
‘I can’t allow you to speak to anyone. It’s just some mad story made up by those antis.’
Fry could feel the horse’s breath blowing from its nostrils in warm jets. She suspected that the animal regarded him with much more benevolence than its owner did.
‘One way or another, I’ll speak to your huntsman, and anyone else who was in this area at around eight thirty this morning,’ said Fry. ‘If you prefer, we can stop the hunt altogether while we do that.’
Beside her, Redfearn cleared his throat nervously, but said nothing. Mrs Forbes stared from one to the other, her hands gripping the reins tightly, as if it was her horse that was on the verge of getting out of control, rather than her own reactions.
‘Do what you like,’ she said finally. ‘Who is this person who got himself killed?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
Mrs Forbes snorted, and pulled at her reins. ‘I’ll give Widdowson instructions.’
Fry watched her go, the mare’s tail flicking from side to side as if bothered by invisible flies.
‘Widdowson?’ she said.
‘The huntsman,’ said Redfearn.
The inspector’s radio crackled, and he listened for a moment.
‘This body of yours, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Did I understand that he died some time this morning?’
‘About eight thirty. Why?’
‘Funny thing, that’s all. One of my officers is reporting that some of the sabs got a bit over-excited. They said they heard three long, wavering notes on a hunting horn. It sounded to them like the signal that calls in the hounds to kill the fox, or the terrier men to dig him out. That got them all worked up. But it was too early, the hunt hadn’t even moved off. So I think they must have been mistaken.’