‘Take a look over here,’ she said. ‘Would you, sir? Please?’
‘Why, what have you found?’
‘I could tell you what I think we’ll find. But you should see it for yourself.’
Mackenzie crossed to the trailer with her, wrinkling his nose at the increasing pungency of the smell as they approached. Fry pulled on a pair of latex gloves, ignoring the odour and the cloud of flies that rose from the manure. She began to shake loose some of the straw.
‘I don’t know what on earth you’re doing,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Is it some kind of rural custom?’
‘It’s all a question of trajectory and velocity,’ said Fry.
‘Oh?’
‘Well, mostly. There’s also the complication of people who see only what they want to see, and ignore anything unpleasant.’
A black pellet dropped into her gloved hand.
‘Is that it?’ said Mackenzie.
‘No,’ said Fry. ‘There’ll be more shotgun pellets over this way.’
‘Where?’
‘In the trailer.’
‘But it’s full of…’
‘I know. So?’
The DCI grimaced. ‘How did they get here?’
‘Some of the pellets missed their target,’ said Fry. ‘At that range, you wouldn’t miss. Not unless your target moved suddenly.’
‘I see.’
‘And now, given the velocity and trajectory, we’ll be able to calculate exactly where the shooter was standing when he fired.’
Mackenzie bent to look at the pellet in her hand.
‘I’ll get the ballistics expert back.’
He called over one of his DCs to send him after the forensic scientist, who was probably washing his hands before departure.
‘By the way,’ said Fry, ‘when they searched Matt Cooper in the custody suite, was there anything in the pockets of his jacket?’
The DC checked his notebook. ‘I can tell you that.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Fry. ‘A seventy-millimetre cartridge casing, and a plastic wad.’
‘Yes, exactly right.’
Fry nodded. A sea of conflicting emotions was seething inside her. She loved those moments when she was proved right. Everybody did, didn’t they? It was pretty much what she lived for, that brief surge of adrenalin and excitement that made her heart quicken and her breath catch in her throat. But the credit in this instance wasn’t hers. Not truly. It belonged to the same person who had so often snatched the glory from her in the past. Even now, when he shouldn’t even have been speaking to anyone involved in the investigation. How did he manage to do that?
An incongruous shape caught her eye. Something round and shiny, a curious object to be nestled in a heap of cow manure. Fry reached in a hand. It was fortunate that she was still wearing her gloves. She took hold of the object and drew it slowly from the manure. It kept coming – more than three feet of it; a length of pale, smooth wood sliding into the light and becoming thicker as it emerged. A baseball bat.
‘Well I think that’s pretty clear,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’
An hour later, DCI Mackenzie was preparing to leave the farm. Before he got into his car, he turned to Fry with an ironic smile on his lips.
‘You’re a real farm girl, aren’t you? A proper expert in rural life. I was thinking of offering you a job with my team in Derby, but you’re obviously more at home here in the country.’
‘What?’ said Fry, outraged. ‘ What? ’
Mackenzie laughed as he opened his car door, wiping the soles of his boots carefully on the grass.
‘Look at this stuff. I don’t want to take any of this back to the city with me, do I?’
Fry stood stunned as Mackenzie and his team left the farm.
‘A farm girl? Me? ’
At West Street, Cooper had just returned from a session with Superintendent Branagh and DI Hitchens, justifying the exercise to empty and examine the slurry pits outside Riddings.
In any other inquiry, it would have been out of the question. But these were no ordinary low-priority burglaries they were dealing with. This was a high-profile case, and for once the budget had been stretched. It was important to be seen to be doing something, and officers with shovels and expensive machinery were just the ticket.
Gavin Murfin was very subdued today. Cooper looked at him, aware that Murfin wasn’t on the rota for duty this weekend.
‘Should you be in, Gavin?’ he asked.
‘No, but they couldn’t manage without me.’
‘Overtime, then?’
‘Oh? It hadn’t even crossed my mind.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Well, I’m here to help, anyway.’
‘Thanks, Gavin,’ said Cooper.
‘First of all, there’s a message for you. William Chadwick phoned. He and his wife want to talk.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Do you think they might be involved in some way? In connection with the deaths of the Barrons, or Martin Holland?’
‘Not really. I did think at one time of finding out about the incident at Chadwick’s school. Checking out the family of the pupil involved.’
‘Oh, in case it could have been a revenge attack that went pear-shaped? They just got the wrong house?’
‘Valley View is directly across the lane from the Chadwicks. I thought if the attackers were coming into the village by an indirect route, they might easily have got confused.’
‘It’s possible. But…?’
‘I didn’t bother checking in the end. It doesn’t seem necessary now.’
At The Cottage, Cooper was invited into a sitting room somewhere in the depths of the barn conversion, with French windows looking out on to a large pond surrounded by reeds and oriental grasses. There was no sign of the herons today. Had they been scared off, or had they simply exhausted the available supply of fish?
Marietta Chadwick did most of the talking. Her husband sat fidgeting with anxiety, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
‘This isn’t a place where we expect violence to happen, you know,’ said Mrs Chadwick. ‘It’s rather beyond our experience.’
‘Not for all of you.’ said Cooper.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Some of the residents in this village are probably more familiar with violence than you might think.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Never mind.’
She twisted her hands together nervously. ‘I’m just trying to explain why we… well, why our initial response might have been the wrong one, in retrospect.’
‘Oh?’
‘We didn’t want to put ourselves forward, that’s the truth of it. We’ve got so used to trying to keep a low profile. Just in case, you know.’
‘There’s really no need to make excuses, Mrs Chadwick.’
‘I wasn’t… Well, anyway… it’s about Russell Edson.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’ve never been happy with him. Such an odd man. That Barry Gamble is odd, too, of course – but in a different way. We’ve always thought he was harmless. Not everybody agrees with us, though.’
‘Mr Edson?’ said Cooper, trying to steer her back on topic.
‘Edson, yes. Well, he’s a complete pain in the neck, to be honest. Have you seen his place? Of course you have.’
‘It’s well protected.’
‘He uses that CCTV system like a surveillance network. We imagine him sitting inside the house, watching his monitors twenty-four hours a day. If you do the least thing on that lane, he sees you and comes out to object. If you park your car with its wheels slightly over the verge, or let your dog go to the toilet on the grass, or even pick a blackberry off the hedge… The smallest thing, and he’ll be out shouting that it’s his property and you have no rights. He’s a very rude person. Very arrogant.’
‘It’s a wonder no one ever punched him on the nose,’ said Chadwick.
‘William,’ said his wife warningly.
‘I’m speaking metaphorically, of course.’
‘Oh, his metaphorical nose,’ said Cooper. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘Also, he wants to cut down that wonderful monkey puzzle tree,’ said Mrs Chadwick.