Fry looked at the dead man’s blank eyes. Seven miles was a long way when you were dying on your own, weakened by loss of blood as it pooled on the floor around you. And there was no sign of a phone for the victim to have dialled 999. No landline, which wasn’t so unusual. But no mobile either. That was odd for a man of this age.
‘I see there’s post-mortem lividity,’ she said.
‘Yes, particularly noticeable in the right hand where it’s close to the floor. If the pathologist finds similar lividity in other areas of the body, it will confirm that the victim died in situ and hasn’t been moved since.’
‘What does it tell us about time of death, doctor?’
‘Well, livor mortis starts from about twenty to thirty minutes after death, but it isn’t usually observable to the human eye for two hours or so. The pathologist may be able to give you a more accurate estimate after she’s assessed the point of maximum lividity.’
‘So he’s been dead for two hours at least?’ persisted Fry.
‘Yes, at least.’
‘But how long did he take to die?’
‘Now, that’s an impossible question to answer,’ said the FME. ‘He looks a strong, healthy individual. It could have been several hours.’
On the victim’s dangling arm, the purplish-red colour of the hand was very noticeable. But Fry was looking at the fingers where they touched the floor. The tips were oddly pale in comparison to the rest of the hand. Strange, when the fingertips were the lowest point of the body.
The doctor followed her gaze.
‘Of course, the discolouration of livor mortis doesn’t occur in parts of the body that are in direct contact with the ground. The contact compresses the capillaries.’
‘Thank you, doctor,’ said Fry.
The FME flapped a hand in front of her face, as if waving away Fry’s thanks. But that wasn’t what she was doing.
‘I must say, these flies seem to have found the body very quickly,’ she said.
Fry looked around the flat. ‘No, doctor,’ she said. ‘I think they were here already.’
For a few days the weather had been unseasonably warm for September. But on the previous night a storm had hit after darkness fell. Heavy rain and gusty winds had battered the Peak District for six hours until daylight came.
This morning, the roads were littered with broken branches as Detective Inspector Ben Cooper drove from his home in Foolow. In low-lying lanes, soil and leaves had been swept into the middle and piled up on the bends as road surfaces turned temporarily into rivers.
Cooper was feeling optimistic this morning. He couldn’t explain why. It was a sensation he wasn’t used to experiencing as he headed to work. Not recently, anyway. Since he’d become a DI and taken on management responsibilities, the burden on him had increased rapidly. Sometimes he felt as though the ground was constantly shifting under his feet and he didn’t know what to expect next.
On the descent into Edendale, a farmer was cutting a fallen chestnut bough to clear a field entrance, the whine of his chainsaw sounding angry and spiteful in the bright, clear air. Cooper slowed the Toyota as he edged past the obstruction. He gave the farmer a friendly nod, but got only a blank stare in return.
He had a new CD in the player that someone had asked him to listen to. He liked discovering new music and new bands. And this one was certainly different. They were called Stary Olsa, a Belarusian folk band who covered classic rock tracks on medieval instruments. It shouldn’t have worked, but Cooper found himself singing along to a version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ played on flute and Belarusian bagpipes. That was definitely new.
In Edendale, the police station in West Street looked much the same as it had when it was built back in the 1950s. But nothing stayed the same in policing. There were only two divisions of Derbyshire Constabulary now, where once there had been five. The old alphabetical system had been abandoned completely. In the latest reorganisation, E Division had been become just one part of North Division, which covered all but the city of Derby and the southern fringes of the county. It was properly known as the Eden Valley Local Policing Unit, neighbouring the LPUs of North East Derbyshire, High Peak, and Derbyshire Dales.
Stary Olsa were getting into Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ as Cooper drew into the secure car park at West Street and keyed the code number to enter to building. After so many years based here, he found it strange and disorienting to realise there was no longer a divisional organisation in Edendale. He didn’t even have direct access to his boss. Detective Superintendent Hazel Branagh was now based twenty miles away in Chesterfield. In some ways it gave him more autonomy and freedom, but he’d come to rely on the guidance of Superintendent Branagh. A more distant physical relationship changed things for everyone.
The corridors of the station had been feeling empty for months. Cooper supposed it was only a matter of time before someone at headquarters in Ripley decided it would be a good idea to sell off some of the buildings. Disposal of surplus assets to meet a revenue shortfall. He could see the words quite clearly at the head of a report. Yes, an email would drop into his inbox one day. And it wouldn’t be long before it happened.
But that seemed to be his job now. Every day of his working life was spent adapting to change.
When he reached his department, Cooper went straight into the CID room. As usual, Detective Constable Carol Villiers and Detective Sergeant Devdan Sharma had arrived before him. It was as if they were engaged in an unspoken competition to see who get could into work first.
‘DS Sharma. What’s happening this morning?’
‘Not much, sir,’ said Sharma gloomily. ‘It’s pretty dead around here as usual.’
‘Not dead. Just under control,’ responded Cooper.
‘If you say so, sir.’
Cooper laughed. But Sharma just gazed at him, his dark brown eyes unblinking. Sharma was about as impenetrable as anybody he’d met. This was hard work.
When asked, Cooper had said several times that DS Sharma would fit in. But he wasn’t sure it was true, rather than just something you said when you were asked. He knew a little about Sharma, but it was only superficial information. Though he’d been born in the Peartree area of Derby, Sharma’s family were from the Punjab, where Hindus were in a minority to Sikhs. Cooper had learned that his wife’s name was Asha, that they had no children yet, that they attended the Geeta Bhawan Temple on Pear Tree Road in Derby. But he still didn’t feel that he knew the man, even though he’d been based in Edendale for several months. Perhaps it would take longer.
But would his DS stay that long? For months now, Cooper had been trying hard to be positive about him, but he couldn’t resist a niggling doubt, a suspicion that he and the Eden Valley LPU were being used, treated as a stepping stone to something else, something better. DS Sharma was destined for higher things.
He recalled Sharma telling him that he’d applied for a transfer to EMSOU’s Major Crime Unit from D Division, but didn’t get it. Cooper had wondered whether he knew Diane Fry. He’d denied it at the time, but they had worked together since. Cooper mentally corrected himself. By ‘worked together’, he meant Fry had used Sharma for her own reasons. She had a habit of doing that. It meant nothing to her that an officer was a member of someone else’s team.
Carol Villiers had said Sharma was ‘full of himself, thinks he’s God’s gift’. Was there a reason she resented him so much? On the other hand, Sharma had made a good impression on Gavin Murfin. A retired DC working as civilian support might be easily impressed, though — even if Sharma had been winding Gavin up. It was hard to tell whether he had that kind of sense of humour, or whether he had a sense of humour at all.