A Death to Record (3 page)

Den met his gaze. There was horror there, yes, and a dash of fear. But there was also a stillness that looked like resignation, acceptance
of judgement. A slope to the shoulders, a forward tilt to the head that looked to Den like nothing in the world more than guilt. Den felt a wicked inner
whoop
of triumph. This was even better than if Hillcock had been the victim. For some unknown reason, the man facing him had murdered his herdsman: it was clearly written on his face. And Den was to be the arresting officer.
Oh, sweet revenge
, a small voice sang inside him.

‘There’s something going on out there,’ Claudia called as another vehicle drove into the yard, its headlights sending slanting beams across the living room ceiling. ‘Mary! Are you there?’

Mary appeared in the doorway, her hands covered in flour. ‘What?’ she said.

‘The yard’s full of cars and men talking in little groups. Something must have happened. Has Gordon been in?’

Mary went to the window. ‘I don’t think so. Not that he’d bother to come and tell us what’s going on. Gosh, yes, you’re right! Three strange cars, as far as I can see. One of them’s behind the wall; it looks more like a van than a car. How odd. And there’s a man with a torch.’

Claudia was comfortably settled in a deep armchair, with a file of notes balanced on her lap. A cat perched on her shoulder. ‘Maybe you should pop out and see what’s up,’ she suggested to her daughter. ‘I’d go, but I can’t really move.’

‘
I
can’t go. I’m halfway through making a pie with those Bramleys. If it’s something important, Gordon’ll come in and tell us.’

‘But –
three
cars,’ Claudia said. ‘It’s not just the vet, is it? It’s cold and dark out there – hardly a moment for a visitation from the Ministry.’

‘It’s probably nothing for us to worry about. If it is, we’ll find out soon enough.’

‘Oh, drat.’ Claudia plucked at the sleeping cat. ‘I can’t just sit here not knowing. It makes us seem so
peripheral
, like Victorian womenfolk quietly getting on with things in the house while the world falls apart outside. There might be some awful crisis with the cows. Your father would have just shouted for us until we put in an appearance.’

‘He would.’ Mary pulled a face. ‘I still hear him sometimes, expecting us to drop everything and run to his service. Gordon’s a big improvement in that respect.’

‘Well, I’m going to have a look. Sorry, Kitty, this hurts me as much as it does you.’ She plonked the cat onto the floor and laid her paperwork on a stool close to her chair.

‘I hope they don’t want me,’ said Mary. ‘It’s freezing out there and my boots have got a hole in them. And one of those cars looks like the recorder’s, now I come to think of it. Probably it’s just two vets, come from different directions. He’ll have phoned them from the office. Though why he would call
two
…’

‘Oh, well, I’m up now,’ said Claudia. ‘You get back to your apple pie, and I’ll nip out and see what I can discover.’

Mary shrugged, but didn’t go back to the kitchen. She watched her mother open the front door, kicking a crumpled rug out of the way and pausing to rummage for a pair of boots in the covered porch beyond the door. Curiosity flickered, but no more than that. Farmyard crises were common enough for her not to be worried. Innocent explanations abounded – and if it was something serious, she was in no great hurry to know what it was.

‘Have you anything to say to me?’ Den asked again, as he faced Gordon. ‘There’s a police doctor here now. We’ll let him do his part and then we’ll take statements. I’m afraid the running of your farm is likely to be disrupted. We’ll need to check any possible weapons that might be on the premises.’

‘Weapons?’ Gordon stirred a little, a small
frown creasing his brow. ‘What sort of weapons?’

‘Firearms, for example, sir,’ said Den formally.

‘You think he was
shot
?’

‘It can’t be ruled out, sir,’ Den replied, feeling somehow wrong-footed. Gordon said nothing more, but merely shook his head dumbly and began slowly coiling the thick rubber hose onto a metal hook beside him. The milk recorder’s pots were still spread over the rickety wooden table in one corner of the milking parlour. ‘Mr Hillcock,’ Den said loudly. ‘Will you come with me, please?’

Den tried to muster his thoughts. Was there already enough suspicion against Hillcock to warrant taking him in for questioning? The recorder woman had been at the scene as well, of course; her input was going to be crucial. Her calmness was unusual. And there was the family to deal with yet. The first hours after finding a murdered body were the most vital, as he’d been told a hundred times.

He led Hillcock through the tank room, glancing at Deirdre Watson, who was still standing in the office, perhaps not wanting to miss the excitement. ‘Could you turn the machine off?’ he asked Gordon. Obligingly, the farmer went to a corner of the tank room and stooped over an oily-looking contraption on the floor. A second later, there was blessed silence. The world seemed reborn in that moment. A kind of
normality settled over the proceedings, as Den tried to maintain his close observation of the two key witnesses.

‘The cows need to be bedded down,’ Gordon said woodenly. ‘Am I allowed to go and shut them in for the night?’

‘How long will it take?’ Den asked him.

‘Well …’ Gordon glanced at his half-washed parlour. ‘I haven’t finished in here, either. I need another half an hour or so to get it all done.’

‘Okay,’ Den decided, after a moment’s thought. Strictly speaking, the man ought not to be left unsupervised, but Den could see no valid reason for putting a watch over him at this stage. If he’d wanted to run away, he’d surely have done it by now. ‘But don’t do any more washing down. Just see that the cows are all right for the night. Don’t go into the barn, either. Wait here in the office until Constable Smithson comes back, or the SOCO chaps arrive. I’ll meet you at the house in a little while.’

He glanced at his watch: nearly seven o’clock already. He turned back to Deirdre. ‘You can go home now. Leave your name and address on here—’ he tapped a piece of paper on the table, ‘and somebody will call and interview you tomorrow. Phone number as well, of course.’

‘But I have to be here again tomorrow morning,’ she said with a distracted air. ‘For the
recording. Can I fetch my pots? I’m nowhere near finished up yet.’

Gordon coughed. ‘You’d better be here,’ he said. ‘God knows what’ll happen now. We might need this month’s recording figures.’

Deirdre’s vehement reaction took Den by surprise. ‘Gordon!’ she said. ‘It won’t come to anything like that.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Den interrupted.

‘He’s thinking he might have to sell the herd,’ she explained swiftly.

Den shook his head. You had to hand it to farmers, they certainly kept their minds on the job at all times.

For a few minutes the yard was a jumble of manoeuvring vehicles. Deirdre left and more police personnel arrived. Den wondered again if he should keep an eye on Hillcock; after all, the man was out in the dark somewhere with any number of unpleasant implements available to him. He could go berserk and attack the police officers, or even turn a scythe on himself. Until this moment, Den had successfully suppressed all thoughts of Lilah and this man together. He had kept his mind firmly and professionally on the matter in hand. But no longer. By some incomprehensible trick, Gordon Hillcock had stolen his – Den’s – fiancée from under his very nose, and Den hated him for it. He wanted to go
out and grab the man and throw him into the smallest, smelliest prison he could find.

But common sense prevailed and reminded him that he was going to have to tread very carefully. He went back to the barn, now filling rapidly. ‘Any idea of the time of death?’ he asked the doctor, who was peeling off rubber gloves and showing every sign of having completed his examination for the time being.

‘Not more than six and not less than three, three and a half, hours ago,’ he said. ‘As far as I can tell for now.’ He consulted a thermometer which had been on the floor beside the body. ‘It’s relatively warm in here, compared to outside. That’ll have to be factored in. I’d say it must have been between two and three-thirty this afternoon.’ Den made a careful note. Deirdre had already told him that the milking had started just after three, at which point she had been on the farm for an hour. The body had been found at five-thirty.

The police doctor rubbed his nose with a stubby thumb. ‘Interesting scene for a killing,’ he remarked. ‘My granddad had a farm. Funny how the smells can be so evocative – that silage! Takes me right back to being ten again. And by the way, I think you can exclude any thought of firearm injuries. Something sharp, is my first impression. But you know the routine, Cooper. Wait for the PM, okay?’

‘Looks like he took a while to die,’ Den persisted.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Writhed about a bit, is all we can say for sure. And that can happen in two or three seconds. Muscular spasms and so forth. The damage is mainly to the abdominal region – that tends to be fairly painful. Well, I’ve done all I can for now. Has someone been on to the undertaker’s? They’ll have to open the mortuary at Exeter for us.’

‘PM tomorrow?’ asked Den, knowing there was little chance of the pathologist turning out for a post-mortem in the evening, murder or not.

‘It’ll keep till then,’ the doctor shrugged.

Den found his way down to the O’Farrells’ cottage by car, not from any lazy reluctance to walk but because he needed his headlights to illuminate the way. It was a distance of perhaps four hundred yards from the main farm buildings. The track was rutted and curved round in a tight bend; he rattled over a cattle grid just before reaching the houses. The sky was deeply black and he wondered how Young Mike had managed to find his way.

Both cottages had lights coming from their front windows; Den had no way of knowing which one belonged to Mrs O’Farrell. He examined what he could see of the two dwellings.
The further one seemed to be less well kept; its modest patch of garden appeared to be home to various pieces of defunct equipment. In the shadows he could see two bikes on their sides; an aluminium ladder missing some rungs; a metal bucket without a bottom and other bits of scrap metal. By comparison the nearer cottage boasted a tidy winter garden and no clutter. None of this, however, told him which was the house he sought. Was Mrs O’Farrell a slut or a paragon? Had Sean been a slob or Mr Pernickety? As he dithered, the door of the nearer house opened.

‘Den?’ came Young Mike’s voice. ‘Are you out there?’

‘How’s it going?’ Den answered him. ‘It’s bloody dark out here. Couldn’t tell which house it was.’

‘Tell me about it. I fell in a ditch walking down here.’

‘Glad I brought the car then. Have you got Mrs O’Farrell in there?’

‘She’s in the living room. I told her you’d want a word.’ They were speaking in low tones and Den was conscious of anxiety building inside him. Confronting a new widow was never easy.

Mike led the way through a short passage to a warm room, where Den found a huddled woman looking so white she was almost green. She sat in a large, well-upholstered armchair beside an
open log fire. ‘Good evening, madam,’ Den said tentatively. ‘I’m really sorry we’ve had to give you such bad news.’

‘I’m never going to manage without Sean,’ she bleated, her voice high and quavery. She looked at Den piteously. ‘How am I going to manage?’

‘Mrs O’Farrell isn’t very well,’ Mike explained. ‘And her daughter’s away for the night. She isn’t sure she’ll be able to cope by herself.’

‘Perhaps the people next door …?’ Den suggested. ‘Otherwise we can contact Social Services for you. Although …’ He knew from experience there wasn’t a chance in a million that anyone would be provided at this time of night, just to sit with a relatively young woman who didn’t look too sick to fend for herself. ‘The best thing would be to contact your daughter and ask her to come home. How far away is she? She needs to be told about her father anyway.’

‘She’s in Tavistock, at her boyfriend’s house. But she can’t come back by herself. She’s only fifteen. Her father would have to fetch her.’ Hearing her own words, the woman clapped a hand over her mouth. Den noted the vigour of the gesture.

‘Well, I’m sure we can work something out,’ he said briskly. ‘But for now, would you just answer a few routine questions for me?’ He didn’t give her time to respond, but quickly produced
his notepad and pencil. ‘First, your full name, please.’

‘Heather Elizabeth O’Farrell.’

‘And your husband’s full name and age.’

The strategy worked as it almost always did. ‘Sean James O’Farrell,’ she said promptly. ‘He was thirty-eight on Christmas Eve.’

Den took her full postal address and phone number, before asking, ‘And when did you last see him today?’

‘After dinner. He made me some soup and scrambled eggs and then went back to see to something in the yard.’

Yet again, Den had cause to be thankful for his time with Lilah. How many policemen would be so
au fait
with the jargon?
The yard
meant not just a single piece of ground surrounded by buildings, but the entire complex of farm structures – which, on Dunsworthy, stretched to close to half an acre of covered barns, sheds, pens, all connected by a byzantine arrangement of gates and fences. ‘What time was that?’ he asked.

‘Two o’clock.’

‘You’re sure you can be that precise?’

‘Oh yes. He only takes the hour for lunch. Exactly one till two. Gordon’s very particular about time-keeping.’

‘And was there anything unusual about
today? What sort of mood was Sean in?’

She faltered at this deviation from the recounting of hard fact. ‘Well, he wasn’t doing the milking, even though it should have been one of his days. Gordon asked him to swap shifts so he could go to some meeting or other in Okehampton. That’s quite unusual. And Sean couldn’t just take the time off and go somewhere because there were still things he had to do. He wasn’t that bothered about it for himself, but he didn’t like it on principle. Being messed about just for some whim on the part of the boss.’ Den could hear the quotation marks and assumed that Sean had probably used those very words. He felt the familiar handicapping sense of ignorance at the outset of any murder inquiry: he didn’t know what Sean O’Farrell had been like, how he got on with Hillcock, what was important in his life. So much to discover, and probably little of it directly relevant. But he squared his shoulders and breathed deep. He had to press on.

‘So you were worried when he didn’t come back? If he wasn’t milking, wouldn’t you have expected him to be home for at least part of the afternoon?’