Kill Call (47 page)

This was the sort of thing he would think about at night when he went to bed. His memories would resurface from the mud of his subconscious. The invisible creatures that had swum about his feet; the rough, fibrous thing that had flapped towards the floor. And, most of all, the white face that had turned slowly towards him. A floating, blank-eyed face, staring and staring …

Yes, those images he’d created for himself would swirl through his brain, moving in endless spirals until he drifted to sleep. He prayed they wouldn’t stay there for ever, haunting his dreams, too.

That morning, Environmental Health officers had visited Le Chien Noir in Edendale. They called Fry to tell her that they had obtained an ELISA kit for detecting animal species content in cooked meat. ELISA wasn’t in the police handbook of acronyms, so Fry had to ask for an explanation. Enzyme-Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay. She was none the wiser.

‘The testing method is based on antibodies raised to heat-resistant species-specific, muscle-related glycol-proteins. On your information, we used the cooked-horse species kit. They’re made in the USA, and we don’t use very many that are species specific.’

‘And the result?’ asked Fry.

‘No horse.’

‘No horse?’

‘Not at Le Chien Noir.’

When Fry put the phone down, she reflected that the people who hadn’t put a foot wrong all week were those she’d had the strongest personal reaction against. The Eden Valley Hunt had been above suspicion, apart from one rogue steward. C.J. Hawleys abattoir in Yorkshire was also operating according to all the regulations, so far as she could tell. And R & G Enterprises were a very respectable, forward-looking company, whatever you might think of the purple slabs of meat coming off their packing line.

No, the trouble had been caused by all those individuals with their personal needs and desires, their troubled emotions and hunger for revenge. Peter Massey just happened to have waited a lot longer for his vengeance, for the day when he could finally achieve a form of justice.

As her phone rang again, some instinct made Fry glance up at the other members of the CID team. At least two people looked hastily away. What were they waiting for? What had they been expecting her to do? She was only answering the phone.

‘Hello, DS Fry.’

‘Diane.’

She recognized the smooth tones immediately, of course. The caller was Gareth Blake. Just the sound of her name from his lips brought back all the feelings she’d been trying to suppress since yesterday. All the activity, the need to respond to Cooper’s call from Birchlow, the visit to the mortuary, the interview with Massey … it had all served the same purpose: to avoid the moment that she knew was coming. And to suppress the memories that would now forever bubble up in her mind.

‘Obviously, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, Diane,’ said Blake.

‘No. I –’

‘But it would be good to talk to you again fairly soon. You know there’s a decision to be made.’

To distract herself, Fry stared at her computer screen, saw that she had some emails, and automatically clicked on them to see what they were. It was an instinctive action, with no real thought of finding anything of interest. But she noticed a message from Superintendent Branagh, and opened it.

Blake was continuing to talk, pouring a meaningless noise in her ear, as Fry read the memo from Branagh for the first time.

Cooper had been asked to check through a copy of a statement that Peter Massey had made before his interview. It was a curious document, reading like an extract from the journal that they’d found at Rough Side Farm after his arrest. An odd glimpse into the world of 1968 and the memories that Massey had lived with for the past forty years.

Cooper thought the words were sad and thoughtful, with no apparent attempt at self-justification. It must have been a relief for him to get it all down on paper. There was even a sense of fatalism about Massey’s conclusion:

‘I thought that what they said must be wrong. At the start, Jimmy and Les and Shirley were all dead. Three of them, just the way it was bound to be. When they told me Stuart was dead, and his brother too, that was all wrong.

‘But it seems there’s a third, after all. A man I never knew, or even heard of until he was dead. But I suppose he had to die. It’s fate, and you can’t escape that. Everything happens in threes.’

Cooper wasn’t so sure about fate himself. He’d never felt that sense of an inescapable destiny waiting for him, making everything he did completely futile. Perhaps he was too young yet. It was possible that you had to reach Mr Massey’s age, before you were able to stop and look back on your life, and get that sudden terrifying perspective that convinced you it had all been in vain.

He smiled wryly to himself. Something to look forward to, then. He supposed it was better to enjoy life while he could. Best to appreciate what he had – friends, family, his relationship with Liz, the renewed prospect of promotion.

He felt conscious of Diane Fry’s presence on the other side of the room. Without looking, Cooper knew that she’d read the memo from Branagh now. The tension was obvious in the set of her shoulders, the jerkiness of her movements. He wondered what she would say, or whether she would say nothing at all. Perhaps she would store it up and hold it against him for ever more.

One thing Cooper knew. Despite his best efforts, he was no nearer to understanding Diane Fry than he’d ever been.

For some reason, Fry had found herself thinking about rats. In particular, the black, flea-ridden rodents that had brought the Black Death to Eyam. The image of those rats seemed to sum up the past week for her. They were a symbol of disease and death, and the dark, rustling memories that lurked in the disused corners of people’s heads. That lurked inside her own, for certain.

Now, a dirty sediment was being stirred up in her life, a spreading black contagion that all the rain of the last few days would never be able to wash away.

Not for the first time, Fry wondered what Ben Cooper knew that he wasn’t supposed to. There was no way he could be aware of the reason for DI Blake’s visit from the West Midlands yesterday. He couldn’t possibly understand what was going on in her mind, the continuous weighing up of pros and cons, the constant running through her head of possible scenarios. He had no idea about the struggle she would face, coping with the pressures she would come under, until she bit the bullet and made a decision.

And, above all, someone like Cooper could never comprehend the painful attempt to balance two powerful urges. The need to keep her most terrible memories safely buried now had to be set against this urge she’d suddenly discovered growing inside – the burning desire for vengeance and justice.

Without being aware of any conscious intention, Fry got to her feet and moved across to Cooper’s desk. What she wanted to ask him, she wasn’t at all sure. She was just aware of a need to speak to him, to make some form of contact. But the tense atmosphere in the room made her pause, and she forgot whatever it was that she might have intended to say.

On his desk, Cooper had spread some of the items found during the search of Adrian Tarrant’s house. She watched him pick up the hunting horn in its plastic evidence bag and turn it over to read the label, its brass and copper length glinting in the light. The sight of it made Fry blurt out the first thing that came into her head.

‘You know, Ben,’ she said, ‘I never did hear the kill call.’

Cooper looked up at her, his eyes intense, his face faintly flushed.

‘I was just thinking – we’re not even certain that the horn works,’ he said.

‘We could try it,’ suggested Fry, trying to sound more casual than she felt. ‘Do you know how to use one?’

Cooper raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe. But trying the kill call? We might contaminate the evidence. It’s a big decision to make.’

‘I suppose you’ve given it some thought, though. You’re the sort of man who would.’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And what’s your conclusion, Ben?’

‘Well …’

Fry waited anxiously on his words, conscious of an overwhelming need for someone to make a decision. One way or another, the decision that she had to take in the next few weeks would change her life, and she needed some guidance. Any kind of direction would be welcome right now. A sign, a portent, a few words of advice.

‘Actually, Peter Massey had a thought about decisions,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh?’

‘Do you want to hear it, Diane?’

‘Go ahead. Tell me.’

Cooper glanced at her curiously, before turning over a page of Massey’s statement and read from the last paragraph:

A finger on the button, or a bundle of cloth on the doorstep. An outbreak of the plague, or the radioactive cloud of a nuclear holocaust. It only needs a second. It only takes one person’s decision. And who knows what pestilence might be released into the world?

By the same author

DYING TO SIN SCARED TO LIVE THE DEAD PLACE ONE LAST BREATH BLIND TO THE BONES BLOOD ON THE TONGUE DANCING WITH THE VIRGINS BLACK DOG

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Copyright © Stephen Booth 2009

Stephen Booth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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EPub Edition © MARCH 2009 ISBN: 9780007290611

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