Cooper stood looking down at the tangle of bone and vegetation, half concealed under the edge of a rock. There was no skull visible, but it could be further down, of course. Until the remains were separated from the earth and plant growth, it was impossible to judge the position of the body, or whether it was intact. Some items had already been photographed, bagged and tagged, and he picked up a bag containing a bone. It felt strangely light in his hand.
‘Ben, what do you think the “flesh eater” is?’ said Fry, breaking into his thoughts.
Cooper waved a hand around the dale. ‘Perhaps Professor Robertson was right when he talked about limestone, Diane. This whole area is limestone. The entire landscape could be the flesh eater.’
Fry nodded. ‘It’s a possibility.’
‘What do you bet some of the bones are missing from this body, too?’ said Cooper.
‘You think the killer might have taken trophies?’
T don’t know. But if we find them in his possession, it’s fairly conclusive evidence, isn’t it? He does seem to be a very careful killer. Meticulous, even. My feeling is that he won’t have made many mistakes, if any.’
Around the place where the body had lain and decomposed were patches of earth stained different shades. They marked where the victim’s body fluids had drained out.
Cooper felt a surge of anger, thinking of Audrey Steele lying out in the open in just this way, abandoned to the elements.
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And now here was another body waiting for a face and a name, another identity to be reconstructed from almost nothing.
But there wouldn’t be much more achieved tonight. It would soon be dark, and the activity around him was aimed at securing the scene for the night, ready for an early start in the morning. A vehicle maneuvering in the woods already had its headlights on.
Then Cooper saw a movement on the opposite hillside. A figure was walking along the skyline, dark and indistinct against the grey cloud. Maybe there was a public footpath up there, he wasn’t sure. The figure kept moving, but Cooper was certain the eyes were turned towards Litton Foot and the unusual activity below. That would be natural, of course. Any passer-by would be curious. But wouldn’t it be more natural to stop and look, to puzzle for a while over the white scene suits and the police Land Rover reversing over the ridge? This walker did none of those things, but scanned the area efficiently in a few seconds, before vanishing behind a rocky outcrop.
Fry had seen the figure, too. ‘He’d be miles away before we could get to him,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you were thinking.’
‘When I saw him, I was wondering if the killer came back here to check on progress,’ said Cooper. ‘And what about the smell?’
‘There was no one here to smell it, Ben.’
‘I suppose not.’
He studied the hillside again. In an open location like this, the scent would have travelled. What were those gases produced by decomposition? Hydrogen sulphide and methane? They’d have drifted away from their source on any available air currents, forming cones and pools of scent, like invisible markers of death in the landscape. Depending on the weather, the smell might have lingered for days, or
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weeks. But wind and rain would have dissipated it quickly, so that anyone passing within a few yards of the remains might have noticed nothing. What a pity this wasn’t dog walking country.
Then Cooper frowned and looked back down the hill towards Litton Foot. Tom Jarvis’s house wasn’t visible from here. It was in the bottom of the dale, and the woods were thick in between. But Jarvis’s dogs had run in those woods before the new fence had gone up, hadn’t they?
Or rather, one of his dogs had.
Then one of the SOCOs called Cooper over to the edge of a patch of bracken a few feet from the location of the remains. ‘Look at this ‘
‘What have you found?’
‘See for yourself. But don’t get too close.’
Cooper moved a little nearer. ‘It’s a gin trap,’ he said.
‘It looks a bit rusty. I don’t suppose it’s in working order.’
‘It’s meant to look like that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re supposed to let a trap develop a coating of rust to disguise it. It gives the steel a neutral smell, so as not to put animals on the alert.’
The trap was fixed into position with a chain and metal stake, and a band of spring steel was anchored to the base at one end. Fry walked over to see what was happening as Cooper pointed to the steel plate at the other end.
‘See, only the trigger plate is galvanized,’ he said. ‘That needs to be thin to keep its weight down. And the catch is made from brass to prevent it rusting to the foot plate. But everything else is rusted over. That’s just the way you want it.’
‘How do you know so much about traps?’ asked Fry. ‘They’re illegal, aren’t they?’
Cooper shrugged. ‘You learn this kind of thing by osmosis when you grow up in the countryside.’
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‘So you understand how it works?’
‘It’s very simple. To set the trap, you compress this spring, which allows the jaws to open, and a catch closes over them. When you release the spring again, the upward pressure of the jaws holds the trigger plate in position, see? An animal comes along and steps on the plate, releasing the catch. The spring snaps the jaws shut on its leg. The whole thing happens in about a twentieth of a second.’
