The CSM pointed up the slope to where the rocks formed a fissured cliff.
‘I’d imagine there are two possibilities. One, the victim fell from the cliff up there. Or was pushed, as I’m sure you were about to suggest. If that was the case, we should find structural damage to the bones. But the second possibility is that the victim might have come to this spot - voluntarily or otherwise - while still alive.’
‘And died right here?’
Abbott laughed. ‘In either scenario, the victim died right here. The question is how they died, and why.’
‘That’s two questions,’ said Fry.
But he took no notice. ‘Did they die suddenly, or slowly?’ he said. ‘Accidentally or deliberately? By misadventure, or … with assistance?’
‘Are you planning to give us the answers, Wayne? Or do you just like asking rhetorical questions?’
‘I suppose you think you know all the answers yourself, Sergeant?’
‘No,’ said Fry. ‘But I do know what the questions are,
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thanks all the same. By the way, the smallest trace evidence from this location might be crucial, so …’
‘No, don’t tell me - you want us to go over the scene with a fine tooth-comb.’ Abbott wiped the sweat from his face. ‘Well, I’ve got news for you lot in CID. We don’t get issued with tooth-combs any more, fine or otherwise.’
‘OK, OK. Just do your best, will you?’
Abbott began to walk away. ‘Do our best? Gosh, I’d never have thought of that.’
Ben Cooper was crouching among the weathered stones, staring at a damp patch of soil. He was out of sight, and he wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t hear details of the conversation between Fry and Abbott, but he recognized Fry’s tone of voice even at this distance. Her rising irritation wasn’t directed at him for once, and he was happy to keep it that way for a while.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take Fry long to find him.
‘Jesus, everybody thinks they’re an expert, don’t they?’ she said.
‘Well, that’s what they are, Diane. PhDs with specializations in skeletal biology or human genetics. You’ve got to respect their knowledge.’
‘I don’t mean the scientists, Ben. I mean the bloody SOCOs.’
‘Oh.’
Fry looked around, breathing deeply. ‘What are those buildings across the valley?’
Cooper had already checked. But perhaps it wouldn’t do for him to look too much like an expert.
‘According to the map, the nearest place to us is Fox House Farm, and the one further over is Hunger House. But it doesn’t look as though either of them has been used as a farm for a long time. Most of the buildings have been demolished, and the land around them is planted with mature trees.’
‘Hunger House? What sort of name is that?’
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‘A hunger house was a building where cattle were kept before slaughter. The old custom was to starve animals for a while before they were killed.’
Fry said nothing to that. She didn’t need to. Her views on the barbarities of rural life were well known.
‘They’re on the Alder Hall estate,’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose they were tenant farms at some time, but the landowner must have decided to evict his tenants and plant woodland. Timber was more profitable, I expect. That plantation is marked on the map as Corunna Wood.’
‘Corunna? Who was he? Another local hobgoblin?’
‘I think it’s a town in Spain where there was a famous battle.’
Fry’s expression told him he might be showing off too much knowledge again. But she steered rapidly away from history as a topic.
‘What are you looking at down there, anyway?’
‘This stone,’ said Cooper. ‘It hasn’t been in this position long.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The grass is still green underneath. It bleaches and dies after a few days if it’s covered over like this.’
‘How many days?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘You’re good on observation, Ben, but you always seem to fall down on details.’
‘I’m not Sherlock Holmes,’ said Cooper. ‘We need to ask an expert.’
‘An expert in dead grass - why not?’ Then Fry sighed. ‘A hunger house. God, what next?’
A team from Sheffield University were unloading equipment - shovels and trowels, wire mesh screens for sifting bone fragments from the soil, evidence bags, tape measures and orange markers. One of the students had already used a video camera to record the position of the remains from every angle before the team approached it.
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The forensic anthropology group from the university provided services to many police forces in excavating and analysing skeletal remains. Some of the team had even worked for the United Nations, investigating mass graves.
Under the supervision of the forensic anthropologist, the team began sieving soil from around the remains. They would be trying to locate fragments of bone, personal items, anything that had been dropped or didn’t belong in the area.
