‘How long’s he been here?’ Harry asked, staring at the body, which was a hideously bloated thing, the stomach having swollen up enough to pop a few buttons on the deceased’s shirt. The flies were seemingly oblivious to their presence and continued to feast.
Harry had the fleeting image of a badly dressed, sweating walrus, basking in the sun, but quickly pushed it to the back of his mind.
The body was covered in flies; huge fat bluebottles, swarming around it in a cloud, thousands of them, and if they weren’t flying, they were enjoying the feast, drinking up the fluids of the dead, lapping it up and getting fat, and using it as the perfect place to lay their young. And it wasn’t just bluebottles either, Harry noticed. Wasps had come along to join in the party, their black and yellow bodies adding an unnecessarily lurid sheen to the awful vista. They also made it a little more difficult to get close: this was their feast and Harry was pretty sure they wouldn’t be too happy at being disturbed. And it was also pretty clear that the body had been munched on by more than a few passing carnivores and hungry carrion, foxes sniffing it out as a midnight snack, crows diving out of the sky to peck at the weeping flesh. The whole scene was, if he was honest, a complete and total disaster when it came to the collection of evidence, assuming of course that this was a crime scene.
‘Not sure,’ Jim said, his voice thoughtful. ‘Only person we’ve spoken to is Nick. He says the last time he saw John was Friday afternoon. So at most since Friday evening, though there’s no way he would be up here during the evening.’
Harry turned to face Jim. ‘A little something I’ve learned on the force is the ABC principle.’
‘The look of love?’ Matt asked.
Harry ignored him, though wondered how anyone could so quickly remember an 80s pop song by that particular band.
‘Assume nothing, believe nobody, check everything. We’ve no reason to believe Nick was telling you the truth so we can’t assume John wouldn’t be up here in the evening. Everything needs to be checked.’
‘No, I get that,’ Jim said, ‘it’s just that John really wouldn’t be up here in the evening. And I know that as well as anyone does.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Too bloody pissed,’ Matt said.
‘And where did Nick see him?’ Harry asked.
‘In town,’ Jim said.
Inside, Harry smiled. That anyone would refer to Hawes as a town was stretching reality more than a little, but he understood why. It was a bustling place, not just for shops, but with its regular market and the auction mart, and then there were the tourists. It was as much a town as this end of Wensleydale had and Harry had quickly realised that it punched above its weight. He wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet, but he was starting to think the place was growing on him.
Harry stared for a moment at the scene before them, down towards the crashed vehicles, then back to the corpse at their feet, and something already bothered him.
‘This isn’t visible from the road, is it?’
‘What, the body? No,’ Jim said.
‘No, I mean any of it,’ Harry said. ‘The crash, the smashed wall, I only noticed it once we’d come speeding through the open gate like the very hosts of Hell were on our heels.’
‘I guess not, no,’ Jim said. ‘Why? You think someone saw it happen?’
‘I’m just surprised no one called it in earlier,’ Harry said. ‘Visible or not, surely a crash like that makes a hell of a noise. And wouldn’t people have wondered where he was?’
Matt and Jim said nothing and just continued to stare at the body.
‘Any idea what he was doing out here in the first place?’ Harry asked.
Jim pointed into the field around them and, for the first time since they’d arrived, Harry noticed that it was littered with sorry looking bales of hay. They were scattered about in no real order, most of them sagging and grey, seemingly dissolving into the ground beneath them.
‘Out to collect that lot I would think,’ Jim said, ‘though it’s sod all use now, what with the rain we had last week. What a waste.’
‘How do you mean?’ Harry asked.
‘Hay needs to be dry,’ Jim explained. ‘You cut the grass, turn it over the course of a week or two so that it’s properly dry, then bale it and get it inside quick before the weather changes. And it looks like John didn’t. A mix of couldn’t be arsed and cheap booze probably. The idiot.’
Harry looked from the body and down the hill to the smashed-up tractor and trailer. ‘You didn’t like him much, did you?’
Jim just shook his head. ‘No one did. Wasn’t much to like.’
‘So how did he end up here with that lot down there?’ Harry asked, nodding to the smashed tractor and trailer. ‘You reckon he was thrown clear?’
‘I don’t see how,’ Jim said then gestured with his right hand at the field around them. ‘Not a steep slope really, is it? Assuming he was driving, he’d have been in the cab, so he wouldn’t have been thrown clear, he would have had to have jumped out through the door.’
Harry walked around the body to the other side then crouched down to get a better look. It was no better and no worse from any angle. The legs looked undamaged, at least as far as he could tell, seeing as the body was clothed and the trousers were scuffed and worn, but not ripped as would be expected in an accident involving a vehicle. The torso, however, was an entirely different story. The stomach was a swollen thing, almost balloon like in its repose, but the chest had been not so much crushed as flattened by what Harry assumed was a wheel from the
